ragg987

Yes I suppose it is, but the rate of change makes it more challenging. 13A sockets are not likely to change in my lifetime, I can just plug in todays fashion into that. Oops - good catch.

I feel USB charging ports are a transient technology so I avoided fitting any. Would hate to have to change them in a few years. USB current has gone from 500mA to 900mA to 1,500 to 2,100 and now 3,000mA over the years (and maybe some other values). USB is being replaced by USB-C which is a different connector. Proximity charging is happening and may become mainstream soon.

Yes. It worked in my favour this time, so I let it be. The FX risk is limited to 20% of the £13k - given the sigificant savings (approx half price compared to UK purchases) this seemed insignificant.

Maybe. The invoice date is very different from the payment date, so this can be material given the volatility of the GBP. Invoice is only issued on despatch, whereas payment is on order. In our case there was about 3 months between these events as we had special order on the Bette baths - factory drilling for taps. On my other European purchases, most vendors charged the UK rate of VAT and one charged the local rate. Not sure why, it makes no difference in the end.

Megabad applied the UK rate of 20% instead of the German rate of 19% - I assume they had to apply the rate of country being sold to. HMRC will refund EU VAT - I attached the EU invoice, in Euros, plus a screen print from oanda.com showing the equivalent GBP at invoice date. The VAT percent applied is irrelevant for the refund form - it asks for the amount of VAT.

£17k is a lot to allow for 3 bathrooms and toilet, you can definitely get good prices by going to Megabad - their pricing structure means you can earn up to 10% discount on their already cheap prices if you hit certain amounts. In our case, I spent £13k on 3 bathrooms and one toilet, delivered to UK. I was able to reclaim VAT off that as well, so nett was less than £11k. This was for some higher-end supplies - Bette baths and showers, Hansgrohe taps and valves, Villeroy toilets, hanging frames for toilets etc. Price included most of the accessories that are affixed - e.g. towel hooks and rings, soap holders, toilet brushes, shower screens, fixing accessories etc - I pretty much went to town there. Having said that, I did not check if there was a way to save more money by buying different brands. I stuck with the ones I knew have a good reputation which narrowed my choice, someone in the know may be able to point to cheaper brands that perform well.

Why not ask your current lender if they are willing to split it into 2 mortgages? I suspect this would only be feasible if these are considered separate properties - e.g. you can sell one and not the other. One advantage with using your existing provider is you may be able to avoid application and similar fees, which can be substantial.

Just a thought, as mortgages for self-build are much more expensive than for homes, could you max the mortgage to your "current home" (holiday let) and then reduce the borrowings against the build? This might work if they are considered to be separate properties. i.e. treat as 2 properties with separate mortgage arrangements. I have not tried, but I suspect shifting a mortgage to another lender on a partially built property could be tricky.

If you look at my profile picture, you can see the boards on the garage (left of the image) and main house on the lobby side, and also how we tried to match the gutters etc.

I used Cembrit Cembonit for our boards. This is a through-coloured board that when cut presents the same colour and finish as the surface. It needs to be supplied cut to size as is a pig to cut on site, though you can do so using a specific diamond blade. You will need colour-coded screws, these are not cheap. I also looked at Marley Eternit and Pictura. These are not through coloured and would require edge painting and sealing. Also more expensive than the Cembonit. And finally I received samples of Hardie cladding boards - did not look very nice at all, had a bobbly texture. If you wish to go through this route pm me and I will let you know my supplier. The big names you get with a google search were horrendously expensive.

I have heavy fire doors, so went with these all round. Look fine and the finish works well with my SS door handles, have a lovely, smooth action and no issues after 1.5 years of use. https://www.hafele.com/us/en/product/ball-bearing-hinges-hawa-20-a-folding-wall-45/000000bd00020ee400020023/

Did the government not change this as being too restrictive? I recall our council appeared fixated by a "look that fits" and had publised a document. They withdrew it just prior to my planning application, about 3 years ago.

I think this is not so clear. Our claim had some materials after sign-off date, VAT refunded no questions asked. The notes also allow for e.g. snagging to happen prior to claim submission.

Our combined BC and build warranty provider started down this route at the end, after we had finished most of the build. I objected as they were retrospectively adding conditions that were not in there when I purchased the service. They backed off without explanation. The cynic in me thinks that they are either trying to back-off their risk with the 10-year build warranty or to sell additional warranty (which they suggested when I said that we did not have this in place for e.g. our external render). Naughty.

Agree with @Ian. Our inspector sent a list and lef the organisation soon after. I submitted the items on his list and the new inspector added a new one. Will also depend on your method of build, I think.

@jsharris, maybe back up your profile then do a clean install of FF to rule out some configuration or other issue first. You can always restore your personalisations of it does not help.

I looked at the option before starting my build. The maths suggested benefit was marginal, and just another thing to go wrong. Now if multiple showers can share one of these then this might change. It seems best use would be to heat exchange against incoming cold mains water from outside. Complicates the plumbing quite a bit.

Just a thought - did you fiddle with any of the memory or pre-fetch parameters in firefox? Under about:config

FF 58.0.2 seems to be the latest, so seems pretty up to date to me.

I have an aging laptop , Core i5, 4Gb RAM, upgraded to an SSD and Windows 10 x64. I also use Firefox. Observations: Windows 7 to 10 was a good boost. I suspect this is because Win10 has much improved memory handling and compression over 7 SSD was a major speed boost Firefox will grab as much memory as it can, but in practise it does not slow the laptop down (at least not noticeably). As far as I can see it is just taking advantage of available memory, which i see as a good thing. I use uBlock. I tend to have 5-10 tabs open, including memory hogs like gmail. Multiple family members use this laptop, each has their own account. It is not unusual for 2 or more accounts to be logged in concurrently, but the Windows memory compression and paging seems to work well. It slows down a bit when switching accounts. So the main difference to your setup might be Win10 - any chance you have the free upgrade still available? MS stopped it for new upgrades over a year ago.

There are a few genuine companies that still believe in providing customer service and goodwill. One such replaced a mini vacuum for my parents well outside warranty, agreeing that the failure was unreasonable. Others offer these things to sell more products then find all kinds of excuses to either avoid the warranty being valid, or refusing the claim. They hide behind small print, by this point the sales have happened. I had the same issue with another branded washing machine. Refuse to buy their products ever again.

Sorry quoted the England regs. Missed you are in Scotland. It seems that a short and free conversation with your local PV installer on options / costs / returns might be worth it, at least you will know. As per @JSHarris, PVGIS is a great tool.

Not trying to convince you re PV (in my view, the case is diminished if you cannot use the generated power effectively, and an ASHP is a part of that usage), however PV is permitted development even in conservation areas provided panels are not fronting a highway. https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects/51/solar_panels/2

Fair point, might be my ignorance but would a TS be more beneficial in this respect, assuming you are only running UFH?

As you have mains gas then boiler seems the right approach. ASHP can, in theory, be cheaper to run but you get into the issues of low COP when your supply temp is high (DHW at 50C becomes a problem). The good thing about gas is that, provided return is below the condensing temp of 55C, you do not hit the same efficiency issues as ASHP. Factor in current and likely bathing habits, so if you expect to run 2 large baths in the evening then you need more than 4 short showers in the morning. With my kids, I found "more means more" - we had a 120l DHW in the old house and it ran out, we have 300l now and it still runs out! There is a tendency (esp my younger boy) to stay in the shower until water gets cold. So maybe a 200l UVC with at least 20kW (or higher, depending on the spec of the coils in the UVC to transfer heat) to reduce recovery time to about 30mins or less. 100l of hot water at 60C will easily fill a large bath. Or a 15-20 min shower at 10l/min. (Both assume blending with cold at 33%). For UFH, a buffer + blending valve would give you what you need. The boiler will modulate based on energy transferred from coil to cylinder, gas boilers can modulate quite low, I think down to 10-15% of peak. Once your UFH load gets too low then the boiler will cycle. Inevitable at some point.