Jeremy Harris

Happy to do any tweaks needed. probably only a few minutes at most to sort.

Spot on! Exactly what I was thinking of.

My money's on a split pulley tensioner, with spacer plates between the two halves, thinking about it, as they are completely vibration resistant, so the tension would be maintained no matter what.

If there's no belt adjuster, then the chances are that the tension is adjusted by spacers or shims to physically move the two pulleys apart, or possibly it may use a split pulley adjuster. The split pulley adjuster will have three or four bolts holding two halves of the pulley together, with a spacer between the two halves, that effectively changes the internal diameter of the pulley to tension the belt. If I had to guess then I'd say that the adjustment is most like made by moving one pulley away from the other somehow, as split pulley adjusters are not that common. Any chance of a photo?

Is the belt a vee belt? If so, then it needs to be pretty tight, usually about 3mm to 4mm of inward centre deflection per 100mm of belt unsupported length on the longest run. So if the longest length is around 300mm, then the inward deflection when pushed hard by your thumb in the middle of the run should be about 9mm to 12mm.

According to the display on our MVHR, the exhaust air always seems to be about 1°C warmer than it really is, the fresh air intake sensor reads about the right temperature and the fresh air supply sensor reads about 1.5°C too low (it always looks as if the MVHR isn't warming the fresh air by as much as it really is). I don't know what type of sensors it uses, probably fairly cheap thermistors I think, but it does seem that they aren't well calibrated. The same goes for the room thermostats. We have two identical wireless thermostats, that have 0.1°C switching hysteresis, mounted close together on the hall wall (one controls heating, one cooling). They always read differently, usually by around 0.3 to 0.4°C, despite the fact that they are within inches of each other.

Just like you've already paid tax on the income used to buy goods that have other taxes in the price, like VAT and duty. The taxation system is really complex, and changing to only taxing income could make things a lot simple. The major downside is that income tax would have to rise, and despite that being offset by the reduction in other taxation, an increase in income tax would be seen as punitive.

I've found that the temperature sensors used in our Genvex MVHR aren't very accurate. There is about a 1.5°C error in the sensor in the wall mounted control box (which can luckily be calibrated out) and similar errors on the internal sensors. I've got some pretty accurate DS18B20 sensors scattered around the place and I know these are all accurate to within about 0.2°C, when checked against an NPL calibrated mercury in glass thermometer, so I'm pretty sure that the errors are with the MVHR sensors.

Just had a look, Social Energy has to be the most annoying supplier website I've seen. Zero information about their tariff rates, so there's no way of being able to see if they offer good value. I'm inherently extremely suspicious about any company that only does business via a home appointment, as 99.99% of the time that's just an excuse to get a foot through your door to try "double glazing sales" tactics. If they can afford to employ an army of people to spend time doing home visits then their cost base must a great deal greater than any of the multitude of suppliers that let you just sign up online or over the phone, so I very much doubt that they will be good value. We're currently with Bulb, on their standard E7 tariff, which is 15.729p/kWh peak rate, 8.148p/kWh off-peak rate and 20.44p/day standing charge. Currently about 57% of our consumption has been at the off-peak rate.

The DNO may appear to provide the fitting service in some cases, but they are prohibited from owning or being responsible for the meter (in England and Wales). When the market was deregulated the new regulations prohibited DNOs from involvement in the supplier side business. There are a number of companies that are sub-contracted by suppliers (not DNOs) to install meters, but they are always acting on behalf of the supplier.

Yes, OVO will continue to pay your FiT and read your generation meter from time to time. DNOs cannot supply and fit meters, as it's outwith their area of responsibility. Metering is a supplier function, so all meters are effectively "owned" by suppliers, not the DNO (it's a bit more complex, as meters pass from supplier to supplier in terms of responsibility, as people switch). We had our E7 meter fitted by SSE just before we switched to Bulb, as I'd heard that Bulb could be really slow to change meters. SSE changed our meter quickly (within a couple of weeks of the request) for no charge. I think there may have been a charge for a meter change from Bulb. Bulb have been supplying us on an E7 tariff since January this year, with no problems.

FiT is completely separate from energy supply, so you can have the FiT paid by one supplier and buy your energy from another one. For example, we get paid FiT by SSE yet buy electricity from Bulb. Also, DNOs don't supply and fit meters, suppliers do. If you want an E7 meter then you need to ask your supplier to fit one. Some smaller suppliers may not offer an E7 tariff, though, so won't be able to fit an E7 meter. The responsibility for the various bits of your supply is split into three. The DNO is responsible for the cable coming into the property, up to, and including, the main fuse. Your supplier is responsible for the cables from the main fuse to the meter, and the meter itself, you are responsible for the cables from the meter to your consumer unit, and everything downstream from there.

In Part P land, it depends on the body the electrician pays his/her dues to as to whether or not he/she can pull a main fuse. Some of the accreditation bodies seem to allow some of their members to do this, with DNO consent, some will not.

Well worth noting, that as we found out the hard way, and others have also found out, an NHBC warranty simply isn't worth the paper it's written on a lot of the time. We bought a new (ex-show) house on a small development, and it came with an NHBC warranty. Because the house had been built around 18 months before we bought it, when we found a significant problem (water penetrating around the chimney and dripping down into a bedroom) we were into the stage where NHBC took responsibility, rather than the builder. We fought a legal battle with NHBC for around a year, until our lawyer advised that we were going to spend more in fees trying to get redress than we would if we just paid to get things fixed. I still have the photos somewhere of the poor workmanship on the roof, including lead flashing fitted the wrong way around, so that water could run under it. There was never any doubt at all that the workmanship was poor, but NHBC are extremely adept at using delaying tactics to get out of paying up for rectification. At the end of the day NHBC work for builders, not purchasers. It's builders that pay them and call the shots, so they are always going to side with them over any purchaser. I tend to agree with @Russell griffiths, it might seem harsh, but you really only have any leverage to get things fixed before you have finally committed to buy. Builders can, and do, cover up a lot of defects, so anything you can do to get any sort of sneak preview would be to your advantage.

Sounds like an interesting project. I'd be inclined to look long and hard at the economics of the changes you wish to make. As @Russell griffiths says, it's going to be a lot quicker, and probably cheaper, to just remove the existing roof and make the changes with a new roof (main advantage is you remove loads of risk, created by working with old and unknown structure). However, this gets into the area where VAT becomes significant, so it may well be worth thinking of being a bit more radical, and looking at the cost implications of a knock down and rebuild. The advantage of this is that the whole job will be zero rated for VAT, which may swing things in its favour. I suspect that, as a part of bringing this old house back into habitable condition you may have to make it comply with current building regulations, which will mean upgrading the insulation level, probably rewiring the house as well as quite a few other smaller changes. Perhaps a good start would be to look at the costs of just doing the work needed, taking careful account of the risks involved (there are bound to be a lot of structural unknowns in a house that's been around for around 90 years) and then comparing the costing for doing that with the costing for a rebuild. Apart from the VAT gain for a new build, there is also the fact that you start with a clean slate, so can get exactly the house you want (within the limitations imposed by the plot). We tend to want different things from a house now than we did in the 1930's, like more space for appliances, changed usage of living spaces, etc, so there may well be some gain in value from a new build, that offers something that better suits what people look for in a house today. Is there any specific reason for not increasing the ridge height? Planning policies can restrict this, but there may be a valid argument that can be made to support increasing it, and giving more usable volume. A lot will depend on the local street scene, and whether a larger, taller, house would fit in with neighbouring properties. Might be an idea to see if you can get pre-application advice from your local planners. Sadly many local authorities now charge for this, but it can be money well spent, in terms of gaining a better understanding as to whether your proposal is likely to be acceptable. Always worth bearing in mind that there is a assumption that panning consent will always be granted unless there is a valid policy reason to refuse. It doesn't seem like this at times, but that is how planning law is worded.

Our MBC rafters are 301mm deep I beams, rather than Posijoists, but for the same reason, they are both stiff and light, so well suited to longer spans.

Same here. I did the cleaning today, and there's barely any dust. I have a feeling it's the MVHR that makes the biggest difference, just by filtering all the air that comes in.

I had a similar encounter flying back from the US sometime in the mid-1990s. I got bumped from business to first and ended up chatting to this really nice lady for an hour or so. No idea who she was, until I ended up standing behind her in the check-in queue at Heathrow for the Glasgow shuttle the following morning. She was holding her boarding card up and I saw that the name was "Ms Ruby Wax".

First question: "Does the hob actually need 10mm²?" 20mm conduit is damned tight, even for 6mm² (our island fitted hob is fed with 6mm², but the under slab conduit is 25mm). 6mm² T&E in a buried duct is OK for up to 41 A, which equates to a hob rated at about 9.43 kW. If the conduit is running deep in the EPS then I'd be inclined to treat it as being within insulation and derate 6mm² to 34 A, still OK for up to about 7.82 kW. If you wish to run 10mm² single conductors down the conduit then that's fine, but you will need to use conduit at either end to provide the second insulation layer required. Could be a bit of a faff to run conduit into back boxes etc, but probably doable with some flex conduit sections. My choice would be to look to see if you can get away with running 6mm² and then using a bit of cable lube (after attaching the pull-through) to ease it through the conduit. This stuff is safe to use with PVC insulated cable: https://www.cef.co.uk/catalogue/products/1748927-aqua-gel-ii-cable-pulling-lubricant

They are often GRP mouldings, hence the need to clean them to remove any mould release. There are examples of similar roof edge and corner mouldings pictured here, although from the look of those I'd say that CFS has switched away from the GRP mouldings and maybe gone for some other sort of plastic moulding (I've used the older style of CFS ones a couple of times, and they used to be GRP): https://www.cfsnet.co.uk/acatalog/CFS_Catalogue__Roof_Trims_550.html

Looks like the preformed mouldings at the edges and corner weren't bonded to the GRP making up the roof when it was laid. Could be for a few reasons, but I'd guess that the mouldings weren't properly cleaned before installation. The chances are there may still have been some mould release residue on the surface of these mouldings, which has prevented them bonding together. The fix will be to remove them and redo part, or all, of the roof. The guarantee period on a properly installed GRP roof should be fairly long, at least 10 years, so as @nod suggests, first port of call would be to track down the guarantee and the installer and see what they have to say.

How do you deal with expansion gaps around the edges of flooring if you don't have skirting boards to cover them up? When I laid our bamboo flooring (bonded down) the MIs stated that there had to be at least a 10mm gap between the walls and the flooring, to allow for expansion and contraction. I believe the same is true for most timber flooring products, too.

I think the issue here is one mentioned before. Sunamp seem to have adopted a technology company approach to the product design and "testing" of these things, with early customers doing a fair bit of the development testing, and consequently finding some problems. Nothing wrong with that as long as customers are made fully aware of this before they buy. For example, when I bought our original Sunamp PV I did so fully understanding that it was a early production version, and may not be as reliable as the final version. I had no problem with that at all. Move forward three years to the release of the Sunamp UniQ and things had very much changed. When I purchased the UniQ I thought I was buying a mature product, that had been tested and shown to be reliable and function as would be expected. The reality was that what I bought turned out to be far from production-ready. The case distorted badly, the supplied lid wouldn't fit properly and the control system didn't work properly. Sunamp shipped a new design of lid quickly, which partially resolved some of the case-related issues. They eventually got around to replacing the control box and sensors, which seems to have resolved the control issues we were having completely. They also offered to replace the whole unit, to resolve the case bulging problem, but I declined, solely because of the work involved in swapping out a 150kg unit that's installed on the first floor. I suspect that most domestic appliances go through a significantly longer and more rigorous testing stage than Sunamp products. Some of this may just be experience - a company that's been manufacturing washing machines for years will have built up a significant knowledge base of likely failure modes for any new model design. A new startup, with a brand new product, won't have that advantage.

The stuff is readily soluble in water, so washes away fairly readily. It may stain stuff blue for a time, but this will usually fade/wash away with time. When diluted by rainwater etc it's very unlikely to remain at a concentration that will cause harm, other than to fungal growth. 6kg of copper = 24kg of copper sulphate, and I believe the Soil Association have allowed the use of copper sulphate solution for dealing with fungal disease in crops for some time, which is a reasonably good indicator that it's fairly safe to use.

The VAT rules for self-build seem clear. If a contract is for labour and materials then the person doing the work must zero-rate the whole bill, both labour and materials. They cannot charge VAT for the materials part. If a contract is labour-only, then the labour must be zero-rated and the self-builder must buy the materials themselves, with their name and address on the receipts, in order to reclaim the VAT.