MikeSharp01

Yes around 6.5 - 7% - you can usually afford more than you think because the interest is only a proportion of the payment (assuming you have a repayment mortgage.)

Hi and welcome. I think you could look at your business model and see if you can optimise it around the stuff people, even here, really struggle with because I suspect we would all either have paid for, or will pay for, support in those areas - the high stakes as @recoveringacademichas said above. So for instance we all struggle, and evidence is more than abundant on this forum, with getting the energy systems design and installed to meet our needs. Even the omni competent @JSHarris(that's a compliment Jeremy) had a couple of goes at several aspects of this - you can read his blogs, a great resource, all about it here. The choices around UFH / DHW / Vented & non vented / GSHP / ASHP / Phase change energy storage / battery storage / PV arrays etc take a great deal of understanding in the first place and is high stakes as most, unlike Jeremy, will not be treating the build as a research project. So being able to offer project support in this area, and others, would, I expect, have value for self builders for which they would be prepared to pay. This could then be rolled up into the budgeting programme stuff you have already mentioned. If you work your away around the various topics here you will see where the needs are and how the cost / value equation might pan out for customers and hence for you.

No they will be looking at the big stuff and will use your credit file to check things like outstanding credit card balances and the like. Essentially they will look and see if you can afford it even when the mortgage rate rises - I think current stresses are set at about 7% so provided they think you can afford the monthly repayments at that rate, with everything else squeezed they will go for it. If they don't they may come back to you and ask how you would go about affording it. Given what @ragg987 has said I may have misconstrued your post!

They call this 'Range Anxiety' according to a friend of mine at FORD. There was some research in the states a while back that said people look for a range about twice their round trip commute / typical journey - which is daft but that was the range anxiety effect at work! They have a special training pack for the sales teams to help them get across the message about how people actually drive and that you only use the fuel when you are actually moving (other than the ancillary gear EG headlights!) Also I am with you @jack my Micra has now done 184000 miles and I wont get rid of it until it falls apart, which it is showing no signs of. (touch wood) When I do it will be time to get an electric replacement.

If you don't want a screen what about a groovy curtain on a rail you just pull across you can get some great looking ones. We use such a system in our downstairs wet room to keep the splashes off the loo. Works great, looks great (arty), easy to install and very cost efficient. When it gets grubby we just wash it an hang it back up to dry!

Bit harsh Ian - referring to your workforce on this way.

Yes but which Technology and Why is it complicated? I am not quite with Jeremy and others on this. I think, can probably prove to most peoples satisfaction, that where we are now is not a particular indication of where we will be in the future. This because although the future itself is not predictable the Soft systems (humans) perhaps soon to be aided by AI that underpin development are predictable in their unpredictability. Although high costs are indicated in moving from one technology to another and vested interest is a serious challenge to change we have, as humans, often demonstrated that such changes when provided with enough pressure (push or pull) our ability to make such changes. So from the time the flint knappers were wiped out by the bronze using hoards to the railways replacing the canals, to the Jet engine replacing the piston engine (and the attendant move from wooden air frames to metal ones) and so on we have demonstrated our propensity to move quite quickly and find the money. Many loose their proverbial shirts while others clean up (pardon the pun). Was it ever thus?

Singular!

Also you can probably be confident that the next technology, the one that will take over from the one we have now is already being developed along with very many that won't make it. In the end it will be about picking the winners - au revoir Flash player, Beta Max, HDVD, VCRs.....

I am confident it, or something like it, will happen the mood music is all in one direction and in 23 years it will be avalanching. What we 'more mature' coves tend to forget is that the younger generation will be well in charge by then and they are, for the most part, more planet friendly that our contemporaries. This means that they will adopt this and many other ideas and make it happen because it is in line with what they want. Already car makers are moving and the oil companies are beginning to diversify even further. The number of new build oil refineries across the planet is down by a significant percentage and, although we have yet to get any significant control over it, micro generation is making inroads. When I look back across the past 30 years I am reminded of my colleagues in the senior common room who said that my mobile phone (brick) would never catch on and now I look at my Samsung phone and realise that in 1986 you cold not have predicted the Samsung so by 2040 I think you can be confident that you won't recognise it.

Is that good or bad?

Oh er Mrs...

You can also by very long straight edges onto which you can put a spirit level these can run up to 3m and longer. One technique an old brickie taught me was to use two post at each end of the wall being built with nails in at each course level he then just moved the string up by a nail at each end once a course was complete. He marked them out together and leveled them with a dumpy level so each end was perfect. He had two lead weights on the ends of the string to stretch it straight. He told me the line drooped about 1/16th inch over 20 feet when held taught by these weights.

All sounds good but two things come to mind. Air tightness will make your insulation work hardest for you so attention to detail there will pay great dividends. Domestic hot water installations in the 'eco' sphere is a difficult one as there are so many solution there has been many a discussion on it here so you will need to pick your way through it I am afraid.

Just saw this on the BBC gives yet more credence to an advent around the corner. Worth a look, not very sophisticated in some senses but nonetheless prescient.

Welcome Adam. You will get loads of help here just upload the details and ask your questions.

When you go on streetview you can start to see their problem a pared cars along / one the kerb will obscure the view as you emerge into the road. That said it does not look like a fast road. 20 is plenty kind of place, so should not really be a problem. Looks like an immediate appeal, as you have suggested, will be your best route once you have written your case out. Several things do stand out - it is defo brown field site so development is to be expected, and the dropped kerb for the existing entrance indicates traffic is expected finally you might argue that double yellow lines 20m each way on your side would solve the problem but will incur the wrath of your neighbours

Was that you!? Very interesting read especially as we have the same planning partnership working on a similar problem not far from us.

The essential point probably is that installing an MVHR system with enough insulation, great air tightness in the fabric, windows & doors alongside a UFH system driven through a reversible Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) - so you can cool the slab as well as heat it, you probably won't need those rads upstairs just a couple of towel rails in the bath rooms and your energy bills will be tiny.

What about blown in insulation there are many variants including glass wool and old newspapers or look at having your insulation pre cut to size fro you so all you do is pop it in. We have thinsulex in part of our current home as I needed to keep the section very thin but making sure it was installed correctly with air gap both sides, limited sagging and sealing the staple / nail & batten punctures was a pain.

Welcome to THE forum. @JSHarris makes all the key points and has the experience to back it up. Looking at it in the round the only way to make GSHP cost effective will be to get the installed cost down to ASHP levels. The only way to do that is to get the equipment very cheaply and do all the digging in yourself. Go for ASHP unless you can get a supplier to subsidise the install.

She is an economist, not a scientist / engineer, so 'dissipates' is in the lingua franca I guess while physics, and being able to defy the laws of it is, perhaps, not uncommon when one is reminded of the joke that if you ask 10 economists a question you get 11 opinions. However I like this one better: A man was sent to Hell for his sins. As he was being processed, he passed a room where an economist he knew was having an intimate conversation with a beautiful woman. "What a crummy deal!" the man complained. "I have to burn for all eternity and that economist spends it with that gorgeous woman." An escorting demon jabs the man with his pitchfork and shouts, "Who are you to question that woman's punishment?" Source of this and more jokes

Probably right Jeremy but as I think Faraday is reported (Lecky 1899) to have said to Gladstone when asked what use a discovery of his would be replied. 'Why sir there is every probability you will soon be able to tax it.'

I suspect that these will also be regulated in the future as people work out that your extraction from your borehole could be a source of revenue and actually by extracting it you are stealing it from my (think of me a money grabbing politico) putative borehole 200 miles away, and lets face it water, like air should not be free should it

The one thing they cannot do is use it to cut off your water supply, they are prohibited from doing that with even a manual tap I believe. One thing you can say for sure is that the variable rate tariff will push people into more use of grey water in toilets and the like - much the most sensible thing to do IMO! I am hoping, budget permitting, to have an under garden grey water system for our flushings in the house, Looking at smart meters and factoring in rate rises the cost effectiveness of such a system becomes yet more attractive.