newhome

Mine is downstairs off the utility room and all of the heating kit, central vacuum, electric meters etc are in there. Seems to work well. The one thing I wish was different was that the MVHR unit was in there too instead of the loft. The more inaccessible stuff is the more PITA it becomes. I have a thermal store and whilst the losses from that aren't huge everything that is lost goes straight into the utility room that helps to warm the house (I keep the plant room door open in winter for that reason).

Jeez, I fry at around 24 degrees which is what it got to in here in the heat of the day last summer. Agree with @Sue B. Have a play with some temporary shading with the use of sails or a gazebo to see what's ideal, then fit something without any guesswork.

Have you read these albeit some are not very recent? I think many Facebook blogs for self builders seem to be closed groups as they tend to be more to keep friends and family informed than for public view. Industry wise some sites are pretty dire and hardly ever updated but the Scotframe one isn’t too bad. https://www.lexisclick.com/blog/builders-cracked-construction-industry-social-media https://www.pauleycreative.co.uk/2010/06/how-do-the-top-15-construction-companies-fair-on-social-media/ https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_construction_blogs/

Thanks. So they slide up and down the window and are not attached at the top or bottom? . Now hit me with the damage for the 2 at the side of your door please ?

They sound very like the blinds we had in our caravan actually. Sometimes the pleats wouldn't fold down evenly and took a bit of fiddling with but they worked pretty well. The pulled up from the bottom though rather than the top as they were meant as privacy blinds as well as to keep the sunlight out.

They look good @JSHarris. I have a couple of windows like yours down the side of the door and one above and they might work for there as I don't have integral blinds in those. The solar gain is welcome in the spring and autumn but it's way too much in the summer. How easy are they to clean? Spiders seem to take a liking to the vestibule and run their damn webs across the windows.

They sound like mine. Looks like they do Ral 7016 but not black. https://www.morleyglass.co.uk/available-colours/

Perfect Fit blinds are blinds that fit neatly into the window recess.

I have integral blinds inside my windows. They are called Uniblinds.

Lol, that’s the type of thing I would have done when younger ?. Team working, aka maximising the chance of a win, at its best! ?

Yeah that’s what I was thinking that @nod and @Nickfromwales would say too! ?

Watch the weight. I find the heavy ones too difficult to use and when using a heavy one as a driver the screws go all over the place as I can’t hold it steady. I was going to buy the girly Titan one that @PeterW recommended a while back but by the time I made a decision it was OOS.

Bloody hell you probably bought the whole lot! ?

I’m 20 miles from England so all good ?. One thing’s for sure though, I’m not getting involved in foreign currency to buy it!

Would be ginger no doubt ? A McMerkin! ?

Lol. Maybe. But I’ll likely be moved by then, especially if Scotland starts using the Scottish Merk or whatever!

Could I do that and still retain the 3 phase boiler?

@ProDave if I wanted to swap to a normal type meter in the future is it an easy job for an electrician to wire both my CUs into the main meter? The thread on Money Saving Expert mentions tails but don’t really understand what that means. Just want to know what to expect if I do decide to swap. Thanks

I have a similar tariff with Scottish Power and I asked them about swapping to a single meter tariff / economy 7 etc. as I'm completely unable to swap supplier currently. They told me that they would put the new meter in but they were not responsible for rewiring the 2 CUs into a single meter and I would need to engage an electrician and pay for that myself. Essentially I had to get the electrical work done first and everything running from the standard meter and then they would swap it. My rate seems a bit better than yours however. I'm currently on: Standing charge 19.57 Heating meter 7.818 Standard meter 15.116 In the end I decided to stay where I am for the time being because the rate I am paying isn't too terrible compared to what I could get elsewhere, and I can use my heating more or less 24 hours (there are 3 x 2 hour breaks in a 24 hour period at a time of Scottish Power's choosing). Thus I have a TS so that I am not impacted by the breaks. Here is a thread discussing your tariff and who is responsible for the swaps. The second page has recent posts from someone annoyed about the current price increase. It does sound a lot compared to what I'm paying for a pretty similar set up. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5619838

I agree. Even companies like mine who have traditionally only employed grads for trainee IT roles have started to look at the person more and not the certificate. After taking on a mix of grads and non grads we found that the grads were no more equipped to hit the ground running than those without a degree. They all needed the same support and training, and in fact some of the non grads have been amazing (and for balance some of the grads have too). Thus going forward we are looking at school leavers / those who want a career change more than we ever did in the past. Apart from specific jobs where a degree is mandated I don’t see a need for one in the vast majority of jobs.

I have semi rigid but made of metal (aluminium possibly) rather than plastic.

Possibly because it’s easy to miss 0.6 so gives them a lot more leeway? Doesn’t mean it won’t meet 0.6 though, just means they are only guaranteeing 1.0.

I’ve been in your position and I got mine via Quoterack. The scaffolding was down and the working at height risk was over by then. I would try to complete any working at height before the insurance runs out. My insurance ended up being with Halifax in the end but it was not the sort of insurance I could arrange with them direct as I tried a few. It wasn’t much more expensive than a standard policy.

I’m not entirely convinced by this. Most people buying from SunAmp when they were still selling to the public wouldn’t rock up and say I need a model A, they would provide Sunamp with their requirements and be told you need a Model B. I wonder if Sunamp themselves didn’t fully understand the implications of the 50% setting when someone was using it with PV and thus specified the wrong model. As an example one of my colleagues bought a full system from Sunamp (ASHP, Sunamp for DHW, MCS install) last July. His remit was to use his excess PV for his DHW. Sunamp specified a UniQ eHW 6. For reasons best known to Sunamp this system still hasn’t been fitted some 7, nearly 8 months after paying them 10k but having read your ‘over specifying to compensate’ comment I wonder if that model is really going to be suitable for his excess PV. Yes he will be able to top up using electric but the primary purpose was to use excess PV. But it was Sunamp who specified it so it must be adequate, right? ?

The VAT reclaim form says that the property cannot be used to run a business from and indeed there are several tribunal cases where claims have been rejected due to the business purpose on the PP. Looking at this tribunal case it does appear that it was a section 75 condition that made this croft ineligible for a reclaim. https://library.croneri.co.uk/cch_uk/bvc/2017-tc-05687 In England this is a section 106 condition and in addition to the house not being tied to business use it can’t be restricted from being disposed of separately from the land / business. http://www.gabelletax.com/blog/2015/11/20/property-and-vat-buildings-qualifying-for-zero-rating/ Given the significant amount of money involved it’s definitely worth checking this out properly before starting to build if the PP has conditions attached to it.