jamieled

There are certain plumbers who are on an approved persons list who can certificate a drains test in Scotland without BC supervision. They appear to be few and far between though and I suspect for most it is not worth the hasle. There is a list somewhere on a Scottish government building regs related website which I found a while back but I can't remember where. Something like 'list of approved verifiers of construction'. If you can I would consider doing it yourself and get BC to observe. If there are any problems I can see the approved persons route being expensive.

Mine was nothing like 'good practice' but it passed without comment. Just drafted it myself and annotated some drawings. Happy to pass it on if it helps. I can see some value in people understanding how their house works, but you really need manufacturer's instructions for a lot of stuff. The fact that that there's no mechanism for passing the document on means unless I remember to pass it on to a future buyer it will sit on a building control database somewhere.

I would try and get the invoices redone with your address on if possible. Look at it from HMRC's point of view. If they accept the invoices with the builder's details on them from you, they could also risk paying back the VAT to the builder when he reclaims under the scheme for construction companies (potentially when he makes an honest mistake with his accounting or deliberately). For what it's worth I did the same thing with one relatively low value invoice on our build and it was rejected because of the address issue.

We do something like that. The excess PV is dumped into an unvented cylinder and then I use the boost function on the Eddi to heat the water on days when there's not enough sun. As a rough idea, in summer I won't need to boost the water at all (odd exception) and in winter it might need 2-3 hours quite regularly. I like it for its simplicity and it doesn't seem overly expensive to run. There are cheaper ways of heating water, but they all have higher capital costs and it would need a much higher electricity price to convince me of changing the current setup.

Farmers die doing this type of thing with slurry tanks and equipment. Unless there's a safe way of maintaining them I don't know why these types of plant are still produced. Probably breaches confined space rules.

I used duct sealant on the plastic fittings, think it was something like this: illbruck | LD410 Duct Sealant

We get similar numbers. Building regs require us to have a CO2 monitor but we don't really pay attention to the numbers much now.

Some comments here seem to suggest the client may be getting the benefit of 'free' design services. If she's paid for the timber frame design (even if she now wants something slightly different), then it's not free, she's paid for it. Copyright may still apply, but that's a separate issue. To the OP: RIBA have some advice on their website around copyright and architectural design, may be worth a look.

I'm not an electrics guru. But, if it helps I have a very similar setup without the batteries. 70m run from house CU to inverter, mounted on the frame for the panels. 20m or so to external mater box from house CU. It all seems to work fine. The AC cable from the house CU to the inverter/panels is probably overkill in diameter terms but the additional cost was not much if I remember rightly.

Be aware that even within the same LA there is a wide variation on the approach taken to temp habitation. We were refused despite having almost everything done, and all sign offs of electrics and invented cylinder, mvhr etc. Also in Highland area. Depends on your inspector I think.

If it's physically limited from exporting (as opposed to you not wanting to export) then I think generation would drop as there's no demand.

@Thedreamer slightly off topic but I've been thinking about charcoal with some of our wood. What are you using for biochar production?

Or to put it another way, how long would it take for one tree to absorb the CO2 released from one evenings burning? Sustainable is a bit of a wooly term. You can argue that over a 40 year period if you burnt one tree then its replacement might absorb the same amount of CO2 as was originally burnt. That doesn't make it sustainable.

I'd look to understand the contamination problem first. Refurbishing the existing borehole or putting in specific treatment may be a more economical efficient. I've not seen any spec from any water company for above ground supplies; frost damage would be a concern.

Best get it built before 2024 if planning gas! Scotland proposes 2024 new build ban on natural gas boilers - Heating and Ventilation News (hvnplus.co.uk)

I might have got the wrong end of the stick here... The house is fairly airtight by modern standards but we're not at passive standard for airtightness and were never intending to, hence dibt type stoves seemed unnecessary at the outset. The direct air supply is a good fit to the stove and does primary and secondary air and tertiary air. No noticeable leakage around the direct air connection. I'm a bit surprised at the Morso not being able to seal well as they are a good make and the direct air connection should be one of the easier aspects to seal. A big metal flue exiting through the roof is a big cold bridge so I'm not sure I'd worry about a small bit of air leakage.

The brass compression fittings go into the plastic filter housings ok, but you do have to be careful lining them up as if they're out of alignment they'd strip the thread of the filter housing. Just keep a careful eye to make sure they're not wonky and don't use too much force. Once they're in then they never need taken out. UV lamp had metal threads so it was no bother. The fitting you linked to looks like something I used and yes, just used a bit of PTFE tape.

I have a similar kind of requirement. From advice elsewhere on this forum (which worked well) I converted the incoming 25mm MDPE to 22mm copper, then did all the filters using copper/compression fittings then converted back to MDPE for the run into the house.

Given the distance of the borehole from the house do you have any change in elevation to make use of or is the ground level?

Don't assume it's the 'water board' that has anything to do with it. If it feeds the canal it may well be the canals and rivers trust. I'm on a private water supply, and if I had the choice I'd get a mains connection. Factor in the operating costs and hassle into your decision making.

There would be ways of identifying a problem with the borehole before the tank runs out but if it's as reliable as you think then I can understand your perspective. I have seem a number of boreholes dry up during dry summers recently so make sure you're assesment of reliability is robust. The EHOs requirement sounds strange though. UV filters and backwashing filters need power so even if you store untreated water, how would it be treated in a power cut? Secondly, a tank would only work in a power cut if there was enough head in it to gravity feed the house (as you wouldn't be able to pump) so in the region of 10m above the highest house outlet to get ~1 bar. Is that feasible? We have a big tank, but our water comes from a burn so it's needed for balancing.

Much building work at the smaller end of the market goes ahead and is completed to a high standard without a contract with nobody trying to screw anyone. Would agree that a fair contract shouldn't spook anyone. Many trades will not necessarily be able to get access to the legal insight required to understand if a contract is fair, hence the reticence to go anywhere near them for the small jobs. The legalese can be tricky to understand and many off the internet type contracts often have legally dubious clauses in them.

HIS? Keyline delivered our mesh but I can't remember the cost. Most of merchants seem to make trips out and about the sticks, it might depend on whether they've got any other deliveries in the area. So even if the big retailers such as Jewsons/TP etc give ridiculous costs or say no online I'd be phoning them up.

Some of the newer stoves can fit on a tiled floor in practical terms, but I had thought there was some sort of building reg about delineating the area around the stove if there was no obvious hearth. May be worth checking this. A stove can be installed quite close to the end of the build, but if you do this then you need to be careful about how well both the flue and direct air feed penetrations are sealed. Related to this, you'd probably not want to finidh all your decorating before getting the stove in as there are bound to be scuffs etc, particularly when it's so close to the walls. Air feed out the back is fine as long as the stove is set up for it. Builders will need to ensure that if you're going for it as per the photo, that the distance to the nearest walls meets with the regs and that there's a reasonable prospect of the stove installer getting the flue and direct air feed in without causing too much damage. BTW, even if the stove in the photo is a convection stove (which I assume it is given the clearance to walls), to me it doesn't look like the brightest idea in the world to situate it like that. You'd be heating up the walls above pretty well and room air circulation might not be great if the stove is recessed. On the other hand if it's just to look at it probably doesn't matter.

It's probably not a bad place to start to get some understanding, it helped me. Be aware its costs are probably a bit out. If you can, visit some self builders. You'll start to get a feel for what it's really like- pitfalls, sequencing, additional costs etc. At the beginning you have a number of directions you can go in - location, size of house, build type, extravagance etc. But once you've made those decisions you're committed to a particular route, so the early decisions are key. Hence the benefit of getting a broad a view as possible on your options.