jamieled

@Amateur bob the scottish water (clean water connection?) and sepa applications (presumably registration for a treatment tank) can be done yourself with little work, though no doubt an engineer would be happy to charge you. As for topo survey, it depends on the spec and the size of your plot but I suspect a few hundred quid. Not sure exactly what you mean by proposed levels but these are usually shown on architects/planning drawings so would be included in their fee? Drainage design I can't help with cost wise but many on here including me do it themselves.

The ram needs a source of water to work and using treated water for this is not acceptable under water use regs so unless you have a secondary source of water I can't see that working. Can you fit a high suction pump on the down slope side of the break tank and use a pressure switch to operate it?

I am living proof that you can ?

Yep, that could be a nice solution. It's what I've done for our place. A small pipe limits the outflow of the pond, with a backup higher up and a small overflow. It's not as much work as it sounds and it's starting to green up well.

As far as I'm aware (and I don't work much in England so take this with a pinch of salt), you will need to attenuate the 1 in 100 year, 6 hour event so that post development runoff equals the greenfield runoff rate. In terms of meeting the planning condition you'd just need to detail aspects of the calculation showing how you come up with the greenfield runoff rates for the site. If the online tool works and allows you to do this (I don't use them so I can't confirm one way or the other) then you can probably just extract the outputs from this. Alternatively, I have heard of a standard 60mm rainfall depth being used for this event but you'd probably need to confirm with your BCO before adopting this for design. Obviously there are many ways of providing the attenuation, some more aesthetic than others and some have been referred to above.

If you have any specific questions I might be able to help. There are a couple of online tools to estimate Greenfield runoff if they might help (one is called UKSUDS or something like that).

They certainly can leak a bit with no liner. The liner stops the pipe from being compressed in the joint so if you can take it apart and slide a liner in that might work.

I'm not sure if you can build SIPS panels using blown cellulose as the insulation. Wouldn't you need rigid insulation for SIPS? How about either stick building a timber frame on site with a breathable wall buildup or the same using small panels?

I'd recommend mounting the uv filter in such a way that you can easily slide the quartz sleeve and lamp in and out. This would need about twice the length of the uv frame itself. Otherwise you need to remove the whole thing and remove plumbing connections. I also treat water for my private supply, but my setup is much larger than cpds due to the filters I need, so not much inspiration to you. If you're looking for ideas it might be worth speaking to the highland pump centre in Inverness as they deal with this sort of thing.

The plug might not be necessary. Size the outflow pipe to allow no more than the greenfield runoff rate for the design storm (when the pond is at top water level) as you're normally allowed to discharge that. That way you're not reliant on undoing a plug or a pump starting and it will ensure it works with a sequence of events. It also stops you from needing so much storage as the near constant greenfield discharge can be removed from the storage volume. A step up from this would be a hydrobrake for the flow control and while they can be manufactured pretty small they're probably un-necessary for a domestic suds for a small house.

I think one of the problems is that most of the examples are large scale for housing developments. The principle of suds was always to limit the runoff rate and there's no reason that can't be done on a smaller scale as proportionately you need less storage volume. However, it does need some space, but for a domestic build there are probably a few clever ways of including it as part of a garden (small wetland?).

Can't show you any pics as I haven't done ours. But from the start I'd planned to DIY, partly as I work with suds type stuff for a living. Plus we always wanted something quite natural looking whereas many commercial products are functional but dull. It sounds like you already have a design, so if you know the intended outcome you can work out a functional design to limit the runoff rate and then figure out to make it aesthetically pleasing. FWIW I will be directing all our runoff to a ditch alongside our access track which I will form into a swale and use a pipe to limit the outflow and another to provide an overflow.

If it's the same as mine (and it looks it), the screen isn't always on. It works by knocking the LCD with your finger. But it should still be powered from the mains even if not generating (mine is).

The growatt inverters have a built in dc isolator switch on the underside, though I don't know if that means you can get away without having a standalone one.

I chipped grooves the same thickness of the l strap, fixed them with hammer fixings so they were flush with the surrounding concrete then put the flooring over the top.

@trialuser we did something very similar. We wanted a larder that was thermally broken from the rest of the house, accessed from the kitchen. We got a company to make us an airtight door and frame. Our internal doors are pine, and so the airtight door is too (looks like the vertical planked oak, but in pine. Wasn't cheap though, so I'd imagine the doors strips might be more cost effective if you can get them to work.

We have a termatech streamline. We didn't spend a lot of time researching stoves, we needed a stove around 5kw output that was fairly efficient and could take decent length logs. The installer recommended them and he had fitted quite a few. It does most of our heating.

I'm not convinced by some of the arguments used above, in particular the one suggesting ecodesign stoves may have poorer draw and lower flue temps. The ecodesign standard was brought in to help reduce emissions and I can't see why the flue temps would lower or the draw be worse as that would surely be counterproductive. FWIW our stove is evodesign ready, has a good draw. Don't measure the flue temperatures so can't comment on that.

Welcome. I am just outside Inverness, around 40 mins west. We are technically 1 and 3/4 storeys. Most people just refer to it as 1 and 1/2 though. If it's outline costing, I'd just use floor area of ground and 1st floor together. The £/sqm costing approach is pretty rough - many site specific details and design choices can have a big influence. If it's more detailed costing then you'd just itemise the different elements (foundation, roof etc) and so the problem goes away. Some TF manufacturers give kit prices, so you could look at the difference between bungalows and room in roof type houses to understand the cost difference for the structure alone? Then use the housebuilders bible to understand potential differences in standard foundation costs?

Because there is a big drive to reduce emissions from wood burning. One of the ways to do that is by ensuring the fire chamber is at the correct temperature.

I would say it's not overly impressive. We have a much greater difference between our TER and DER and that's without going to the lengths that many on here do. It always grates on me a bit when houses like these are described as low carbon/low energy. Per m2 they may be better than a standard developer bought house, but in this case it looks about 5 times bigger. Total footprint needs considered as much as m2 values.

I think there's two different questions in the original post. One is how long it takes for the building warrant to be approved once submitted and the other is how long it takes to gather all the info, submit and then get approved. For the first, 6-8 weeks seems reasonable based on our experience, but it depends a bit on how busy the council are and also on how much back and forth there is between council and architect. I'd also imagine 4 months is reasonable to collate, coordinate and submit info for approval. No doubt it could be done quicker but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

I think that's the nub of it though. Comfort at a particular temperature is very subjective and relative to the surroundings (to an extent). Most of our house sits at around 16-18 and we find it fine. But I completely accept that 16 would feel cold if the rest of the house was at 22.

I used to work on a west coast estate. My anecdotal experience is that many continental hunters are much more switched on when it comes to sustainable hunting. They have a strong culture of hunting for a purpose, rather than fun. On the other hand, some (but definitenly not all hunters) from the UK couldn't care less about the impact of what they were doing and were by far the most ignorant people I took out. Stereotyping entire populations is a lazy way of constructing an argument.

Some treatment tank manufacturers will not guarantee/warranty the performance if a softener is discharged into it. The quantity of salts discharged into the treatment tank will widely vary between softener and operation and the size of the treatment tank is also relevant in understanding the dilution factor. As mentioned above, in a normal domestic setting it's probably not a problem but it does have the potential to reduce the tank performance in certain circumstances.