Jeremy Harris

The problem I have with NICEIC, Elecsa etc is that they are far more interested in ensuring they extract the maximum amount of money from those registered with them, and also in preventing qualified people from being able to undertake work that falls under the Part P notification requirement if they believe that doing so might take work away from other members. For example, all of the accreditation bodies now refuse to allow retired, well-qualified, electricians from being able to undertake any Part P work. They also refuse to allow people like me, who used to teach apprentice electricians at college, to do Part P notifiable work. The flip side is that they will allow any monkey that's done a very short course to pay their fees and join, leading to there being some really crap "electricians" around who may seem OK because they have a snazzy logo. There are a few electricians that have YouTube channels who have illustrated some of the really rubbish work that some of these supposedly competent people have done. I have first hand experience of employing one of these bloody dangerous monkeys to do our initial site wiring; what he left behind was potentially lethal, yet he'd ticked the Part P boxes. The other thing is that Part P only covers the connection of the inverter to the supply, nothing else. The critical parts of the PV installation, like the mounting of the panels, wiring of the DC side, installation of the inverter etc aren't covered. MCS covers the whole lot, so what's really needed is something to compete with MCS, or that allows any competent person to demonstrate compliance with whatever set of regulations needed, in some other way.

One snag is that Part P doesn't exist in Scotland, so neither do any of the scams like NICEIC, Elecsa etc. NICEIC, Elecsa etc don't give a stuff about safety, or compliance with regulations, they exist as money making enterprises that collectively support a closed shop that is wholly intended to stitch up specific areas of business and restrict competition. If you don't believe this then trying making a complaint for non-compliant workmanship to one of these scammers and see where it gets you.

Still needs an accumulator on the pump output, plus, if connected to the mains water supply it must be fitted with a means of ensuring that the pump cannot reduce the pressure in the supply pipe (to comply with the water regs, for obvious reasons associated with contamination risk).

Same here. We were "plot adjacent to The Willows" when Openreach free issued Duct 56 and cable for us to lay, ready for our connection.

A 500 litre accumulator will store a bit less than 250 litres of water, as accumulators are sized on total volume, and a bit over half the volume is air in the bladder. We have two 300 litre accumulators in parallel, just because a 500 litre one was to large a diameter to fit in the space we had available.

I arranged the pipes to come in from under the shed, through ducts, so they are pretty well protected, but just lagging them well should be OK I think.

Our accumulators are outside, in a small insulated shed. I added a small tubular heater under them, wired to a frost stat that comes on at 4°C, but I don't think the heater has ever come on. In practice the high heat capacity of the water in the accumulators, together with the fairly high turnover of new water coming in at ~8°C, means that the risk of freezing is pretty low.

We similarly had two trees right on the verge that were in the way, one was where our drive needed to go, the other had grown around an overhead power cable that needed to be moved. Before submitting our planning application I got a chap in to cut both of them down. Didn't tell anyone before hand, in case they objected. I got a few moans about it afterwards, but it wasn't as if I could have glued the things back. The council received a couple of complaints but couldn't be bothered to do anything.

Our build is all-timber, timber frame clad with larch. We had no problem with insurance, every company I asked to quote did so without a murmur. The premium we ended up paying is lower than that for our smaller brick and block bungalow, for some odd reason.

I've ordered a couple of metres of slightly thicker fibre, 2mm diameter, and I reckon I can make up a support using a bit of plastic sheet fixed to the top of the relays with double sided tape, then run the fibres out through the spare cable gland to some sort of indicator panel (maybe another bit of plastic sheet with the fibres glued into holes in it).

That could work, and would avoid having to have additional indicators. The LEDs are surface mount ones on the PCB, and there's a spare cable gland through which I could run the fibres, it would just be a matter of making up something to hold the fibres in place in front of the LEDs, without damaging the PCB.

I strongly suspect that the people who cut corners (over long periods of time - this goes right to the heart of our failed accreditation and building inspection system) will never end up in court. There might be a few scapegoats chosen for a slap on the wrist, but I get the feeling that this will be another Hillsborough, where feet will be dragged and nothing will be done for decades, until those who cut corners are too old to face justice. Then again, I might just be a rather jaded old cynic.

I've been tempted to make a new perspex cover, TBH, as being able to see the whole of the inside of the controller would allow all the LEDs on the circuit board to be seen. It seems a bit daft to have half a dozen status LEDs inside the box where they can't be viewed.

Search for MBC Timberframe. The cost of ground works varies enormously, depending on the nature of the plot, the terrain, and the soil conditions. For example, we had to dig out ~900 tonnes of soil to level our plot and get down to solid ground, at a cost of around £30k. On top of that there was the cost of bringing in an electricity supply and the cost of installing a sewage treatment plant and associated drains (no mains drainage here). Someone on poorer ground conditions than us could easily incur another £10k to £30k in foundation related work, such as piles. Someone on really good, level ground could get away with just scraping back the surface, perhaps, at a lot less cost. Without knowing what the ground conditions are like it's really hard to estimate cost, it could probably span anything from £5k to £50k.

Yes, recently installed it, together with a new sensor string. They offered to replace the entire Sunamp, as the newer version has some improvements, including an additional temperature sensor, but the logistics of getting the old one out and down the stairs, and the new one in and up the stairs (they weigh about 150kg) meant that I refused their offer and just fitted the new controller. It's early days, in that we've had lots of excess PV generation since I swapped units over, so I've not been able to do a 100% test of all the cases where the old controller might fail to start a charge, but so far it does seem that the charge threshold has been reduced. One major snag is that I've been prohibited from adding back my indicator light - Sunamp are adamant that this should not be fitted (can't see why, there's no technical reason not to). This means I have to run the controller with the cover removed (exposing live terminals...) as that's the only way to check whether or not the relay is on (an LED on the PCB indicates this). The absence of any external indication as to what the unit is doing remains a major problem, as for those of us who have been caught out by having the unit fail to charge, with no hot water, not having the reassurance of the unit charging is a major snag.

In general, a "garden room" would tend to suggest that the planning consent was granted for a non-habitable room, akin to a conservatory. My guess is that planning consent for this was needed because the flat may not have had Permitted Development rights, as often such an extension would not need planning consent. The key is really compliance with Building Regulations, rather than the planning consent, as it will now be compliance with Building Regulations that dictate whether the room could be classed as habitable I think. The date is important, but I rather suspect that the applicable date with regard to whether Building Regulations apply may be the date of change of use, rather than the date of the planning consent/construction. Clearly you could convert the room from a garden room to a bedroom without needing planning consent, as nothing external to the dwelling would be changed by such a conversion. The key then is whether or not Building Regulation approval was needed for the conversion on that date or not. I rather suspect that as you purchased the flat with that room described as not being a bedroom, then the date of conversion to a bedroom would have to be after that date. That may well means that it now needs to comply with building regs in order to be classified as a bedroom, or any other habitable room.

The key thing here is whether or not the bill actually contains an element for surface water drainage via a combined sewer. If the "wastewater" element of the bill is defined as a percentage of the drinking water supply, then that's the deemed foul drainage element, not the surface water. They work on the principle that the majority of the supplied drinking water ends up as wastewater that they then have to treat, so they charge for that percentage. To be able to claim a rebate for surface water drainage, you have to show that you don't have a combined sewer and that your surface water goes to a soakaway or drains to a watercourse. At our last house every bill had the line about being able to claim a rebate if our surface water went to soakaways, but when I checked we were already getting that rebate, as if they had imposed a charge for surface water removal it would apparently have been shown on the bill as a part of the service (but not itemised as a separate charge).

The fees we were quoted from architects, for the design, planning application, building control submission and managing the build varied from 12% to 15% of the completed build cost. Most of the cost was associated with the management of the build.

"Wastewater" in that context is foul drainage, not surface water drainage, as it's the standard percentage of drinking water supplied. Your surface water will be going to the soak away, so isn't included, or being charged for, by the water company.

I've no experience with this company, but when we first started looking at builders I did have two meetings with a similar local firm. They advertised a "turn key" package, with an attractive looking price, and at that time we thought that we could live with one of their standard designs. However, once we got a couple of weeks or so into negotiations, I found that there was a substantial list of "extras" that were not included in the price. When these were added in the price rose by about 50%. Worth asking them, though, to see what the reality is. I suspect that, by the time the options and site-specific costs have been selected, the price will be a fair bit higher than the advertised price.

No, we didn't, but as it turned out the much cheaper SE we used was well-respected by our ground works chap, who reckoned that he was one of the best in the area (I didn't know that when we gave him the job, mind, so there was a fair element of luck involved).

You can never be sure though, can you? When I went out for quotes to a few local SEs for the design of our retaining wall the highest quote was several thousand pounds, plus visit expenses as required, the lowest quote was three hundred pounds plus VAT. I assumed the high quote just didn't want the job, but they rang me a few weeks later to ask if they'd got the job. When I explained that they hadn't, the lady on the phone bent my ear about how employing a cheap SE would result in a poor design that was likely to fail. As it happens the SE we used designed the wall such that I reckon it would have been OK for the U boat pens at Brest.

In all probability, yes, it's just a hole drilled through the wall. Holes in walls are OK if you're not too fussed about airtightness and drafts, but are best avoided, which is why virtually everything in our build comes up through the slab in ducts, with those ducts sealed up well with foam insulation around the cables/pipes. Our 'phone cable comes in through a length of BT Duct 56, the grey duct that BT OpenReach free issue for running their cables underground. BT OpenmReach prefer underground cables, as do the DNO with their power cables, as they are less likely to get damaged.

Recently happened to my barber. He acquired a plot through his family (I'm guessing at a good price) and then had a local builder build his house. He thought the quoted price was the price he'd pay. Inevitably it wasn't, as the builder submitted a final bill for a few tens of thousands more than the quote. I believe there was a bit of argument about it, but in the end he had no choice but to pay up, as, like pretty much every build contract, it wasn't to a firm price.

If paying a builder for what is effectively a turn-key build, then you probably won't incur much, if any, material costs on which VAT can be reclaimed later, so will have that cash flow advantage. The downside is that the cost of using a builder for the whole build may well outweigh any cash flow saving. Our VAT reclaim bill came to around £12k in total. That's the VAT on about £60k's worth of materials that I bought and used in the build. I shopped around for materials, particularly things like the kitchen, bathrooms and flooring, and saved around £20k to £30k over what we might have paid if we'd just used a builder. For us there was no real cash flow issue with the delay in claiming back the VAT, because we saved far more than the VAT on materials by shopping around. As a general rule a builder isn't really going to care what materials cost, and won't waste time shopping around, they will just buy everything from their usual supplier, perhaps the one that offers them the best credit arrangements.