Jeremy Harris

No, it's definitely a split - see pages 34/35 of the pdf that you linked to above. The refrigerant pipes come inside the house to the indoor unit, with its refrigerant to water heat exchanger.

The insurance business really is a bit scary. We used a broker for buildings and contents insurance and they sent me a renewal recently which was 30% higher than last year. I rang them to find out why and they told me that the insurer I'd been with (technically still are with for another couple of days) went into liquidation some time ago, so they had to go out to another company. The fact that they didn't bother to tell me this until renewal time hacked me off, to the point where I've taken out a policy with someone else now.

With those straight runs at the tees at either end you have two hydraulic switches that will preferentially flow straight across, so I'm sure the system will work fine without the valve doing anything.

Looking at that data it's a split, with the refrigerant circuit coming indoors to the heat exchanger, so it needs gassing after install, which means getting an F gas qualified person to vacuum it out, fill it and leak test it. I think I'd be very concerned about how the refrigerant pipes have been capped off and sealed when the unit was taken out. If they have been left open then the unit may well just be scrap, as it only takes a small amount of moisture to get into the refrigerant circuit on the heat pump itself to do damage. If the pipes have been left open then the oil in the pump may well have absorbed moisture, or even been contaminated by dirt and dust during removal, so there's no telling how reliable it may be.

Good that you've found the cause. As it's working I'd leave it. The chances are that your pipe work may well have created a low loss header, where there is a hydraulic preference to go straight across the top of the bypass.

You're not that far from us, are you? We're about midway between Salisbury and Shaftesbury, right on the Wiltshire/Dorset border and just a bit North of the A30.

What's the difference between taped and filled 15mm plasterboard and 3mm plaster skimmed 12.5mm plasterboard? Both have ~15mm of gypsum plaster, so I'm struggling to see why there is a problem, but I'll try and see if I can find any fire test data later. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that a plaster skim possibly provides better fire protection than taped and filled boards, but that is just a guess, based on the fact that I believe that the critical factors are the heat capacity of the plasterboard, the thermal conductivity and the effectiveness with which it provides a flame seal for the 30 minutes resistance that's required.

That looks like the optional hydronic unit for our unit that I mentioned, I think.

Could be a hydronic unit, perhaps? That's an option for the monoblock we have. Essentially it's just a heat exchanger arrangement that keeps the DHW and heating circuits separate in the house, I think (not bothered to look at it closely).

They look very similar to the GSE Integration trays we used, but may be another make. Easy Roof trays look similar.

I believe they are referring to insulation directly behind the plasterboard, which might well cause the plasterboard to heat up far more quickly and fail, when compared with plasterboard fitted to a timber frame stud with a void. We have a service void, but the counter battens are 50 x 50 and fitted to the timber frame, and the timber frame has a 12mm thick vapour-tight board, so I would guess that would meet or exceed the 30 minute fire resistance time. Not sure about internal stud walls, though, as although the plasterboard is screwed directly to the studs, there is dense insulation packed in them to reduce noise transmission.

We used 12.5mm with a 3mm plaster skim, but building control were happy with just 12.5mm plasterboard. A lot depends on the insulation used, I think. We have blown-in cellulose, behind a 12mm vapour-tight board, and that's almost non-flammable. I tested some of the cellulose and it's very reluctant to burn, even in the open, it tends to just char and only keep burning when a flame is pointed at it. Supposedly, when packed into the frame, there isn't enough air available to maintain combustion, at least during the early stages of a fire. Coupled with the 30 minute protection of the plasterboard and the fact that we have no combustion devices in the house, I suspect that the fire risk is pretty low, and really only in the kitchen. If the price of the retrofit kitchen fire suppressing mist systems comes down I might look at fitting one.

There is definitely a cost saving by going for in-roof, over on-roof, that's worth taking into account. For us, the cost saved in not having to purchase and have fitted slates for the area covered by the in-roof panels was around £2.5k. We were lucky, in that we got in before the last FIT rate cut, so we get around £1000 a year from generation and deemed export payments, plus the Sunamp is able to store excess PV pretty efficiently for DHW, so we're on-track to recover the capital cost of our system after around 7 years or so, which seems reasonable. If fitting a system now I think I'd still go for the same setup, but reduce the cost by not having an MCS approved system. The repayment time would probably end up being a fair bit longer, but with battery storage prices dropping fairly sharply, plus the fact that I've already got a plug-in hybrid, I'm likely to be better placed to use more of our self-generated energy in future.

There's name for leads like this. They are called "Widow Makers", for an obvious reason. Their most common application is to connect a generator to a house, astonishingly dangerous, really.

My mother taught me to wire a plug when I was just a small boy, and I can still remember her telling me "Red on the Right"...

The estimate/quote from SSE should be split into two elements, the contestable work and the non-contestable work. The contestable element can be undertaken by any authorised contractor, whereas the non-contestable element can only be undertaken by SSE. Often the utilities will give a fairly good price for work that involved digging up highways, as they don't have to jump through so many hoops to get the authority to do it, but they may not give such a good price for non-highway contestable work. In general, contestable work is stuff like digging trenches, laying duct, making good etc, whereas non-contestable work involves actually running cables and making the connections. They do allow cable laying within the non-contestable element if pushed - we did this, where SSE supplied the cable and our ground workers laid it to the SSE specification, leaving coils of it poking out of the ground and holes so the SSE jointing team could come along and make the underground connections.

I believe that a part of the problem is that the building industry isn't really an entity, in that the majority of the tradespeople working in it will be either self-employed or on short term contracts. The incentive just isn't there for most of these people to take time out from earning a living to go and learn new skills, or acquire an understanding of new construction methods. We've seen a few examples here where the only way new knowledge is acquired is at the expense of a customer. @recoveringacademic s experience with Durisol is a good example. The other incentive to learn about new methods of construction seems to be regulatory/economic, when the only way to be able to continue to run a business is to get ahead of tightening regulatory requirements. An example of this is what's happening/has happened in Ireland, where the government tightened regulation, (because they had experienced some REALLY bad construction standards during the boom) and the companies and people that have stayed in business, or seen their business grow, are those that had got ahead of the regulations by coming up with methods of construction that met the new requirements without a massive cost premium. I don't think it's in any way accidental that there seems to be a fairly wide range of Irish methods and materials finding their way into new builds.

I'll be changing GP soon anyway, so I'm hoping that the new one may have a more enlightened view on treatment. My old GP (he's now left the practice) had seemingly become a bit keen on just prescribing drugs, something that I think may have been driven, in part, by the demands of having to hit short consultation time targets in the practice. There's not much a doctor can find out, or advise on, in the 7 1/2 minute consultation time allowed. The practice we're moving to has a 15 minute consultation time target, which seems a lot more realistic.

I'm tempted to, once we're settled. I've been putting it off because I didn't want to be out of action for a few weeks, TBH.

So is mine!

Michael Mosley does seem to be well endowed with common sense, and, refreshingly, seems very willing to challenge conventional medical thinking, even to the extent of experimenting on himself. My GP was very keen to refer me to a consultant surgeon the first time around, and I had the shoulder surgery as an outpatient, followed by physio, and it really was incredibly effective - I've never had any medical treatment before that had such an immediate and profound impact. Over the past 6 years or so, all my GP will do for my right shoulder (same symptoms as for the left shoulder that was operated on) is prescribe painkillers (which I've stopped taking - I do not like the idea of taking codeine all the time at all), plus a cortisone injection into the shoulder joint every six months or so. The latter works well for a month or two, but gradually the pain and movement restriction returns. The GP hasn't told me why the surgery is no longer an option, but the programme last night seemed to reveal that it was no longer available on the basis that "placebo surgery" worked just as well. Sadly my GP didn't tell me this, and hasn't offered anything other than continuing long term drug treatments, which frankly annoys me, as I do not like the idea of drug treatments at all.

Diet and medicine are two fields where very bad science is normal, and belief systems massively outweigh decisions derived from hard data. The power of belief, even subconscious belief, is massive; far more effective than pretty much any drug. We've know this for decades, but considered it to be a nuisance, in that it masks the true results from scientific studies (in lots of fields, not just health). The vast majority of the treatments, deprivations, dietary restrictions etc that some choose to promote are based on belief rather than hard facts, but that doesn't make them any less effective. After all, all the world's religions have been harnessing the power of belief for millennia, very successfully. There was an interesting programme on last night about the placebo effect, that highlighted just how powerful it is. IIRC, their findings, from a group of around 100 people with chronic back pain, was that the placebo effect had a medically significant impact on reducing pain for 45% of the test sample. That's better than pretty much any pain medication available, and there are no side effects. Quite surprisingly, the placebos carried on working even after the people had been told that they had been taking a placebo. Even more interesting was a small section at the end exploring a conditioning process, rather like Pavlov's dogs, where taking a foul drink with a medicine, then just taking the foul drink without the medicine, had the same physiological effect. That indicates something that's far deeper in our subconscious at work, and seems to be a very interesting area of research. I was particularly interested as one of the related studies was on shoulder surgery that I had a few years ago on my left shoulder, that worked like a magic bullet. I have had the same problem with my right shoulder for several years, but have been told the surgery is no longer available. This programme explained why, but, unfortunately, watching the programme hasn't cured my shoulder...

Two things. Firstly, try going around and seeing how well secured the water (not heating) pipes are. Sometimes it's just poorly secured pipes that don't have enough pipe clips to hold them that makes the noise - this is what we had after the lazy gits who swapped our boiler over and re-ran some of the cold water plumbing. They had left a long run of pipe in the loft barely secured at all, and it was flopping up and down and making a noise when any tap, or the dishwasher or washing machine, turned off the water. The fix was just to clip the pipe securely to the ceiling joists. If that fails, then you can try fitting a small expansion tank in the supply. They make tiny ones that are ideal for this, like this one: https://www.bes.co.uk/mini-expansion-vessel-shock-arrestor-11355

If you click on the "See Full Item Description" button you get this link: http://vi.vipr.ebaydesc.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemDescV4&item=173540599051&t=0&tid=310&category=41981&seller=energystore3&excSoj=1&excTrk=1&lsite=3&ittenable=false&domain=ebay.co.uk&descgauge=1&cspheader=1&oneClk=1&secureDesc=0 That makes it clear that the kit only includes 12 panels plus the fitting instructions. Bit deceptive having the inverter and mounting kit in the eBay photo, though. The same supplier does have a listing for a complete kit, 16 panels, mounting frames, inverter, cabling etc: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PLUG-IN-Solar-4kW-4000W-PV-Panel-Kit-System-for-House-Self-Sufficient-DIY/172785554836?hash=item283ad25594:g:U2sAAOSwUFtZaInN but the price is £3,995

Sadly I don't think there's a way of dodging inheritance tax either way, is there? The only difference is one of when the tax liability would arise. There's always the option of gifting the land, building the house on it, then them gifting it back again, but that still gives an inheritance tax liability for 7 years, I would guess.