FarmerN

1st half of the pipe length is in 22mm before going down to 15 mm.

Our kitchen sink is far corner of house to DHW cylinder, half run in 22mm pipe, can nearly fill a washing up bowl before hot arrives. Manifold system sounds good to me.

Our builder brought the plumber in for fist fix without sorting where everything else was to be sited, only had to change pipe layout into plant room twice ! So my experience would suggest you need a clear plan of what is to go is to go in plant room and where it can be sited. As with everything compromises have to be made, nothing is ever quite perfect. So coming into our plant room in ducts through floor – Water , broadband, mains electric, duct back to garage for EV charger and battery, drain for MVHR and spare duct to outhouse for future use. Only 7 points needing varying degrees of access! Sited in plant room GSHP, DHW, MVHR, meter, consumer units, battery control box , two expansion vessels, one UFH manifold, etc etc.

Whilst it might clutter the house ,could you put an additional door in the back hall? This would separate the bedroom area from living and give a little more privacy to the bathroom. It already has garage one side and on suite the other so hard to improve on that. Perhaps move door from front hall.

In my opinion , how much glass you have will make a massive difference. Overheating is not a problem for us with windows, two neighbours with glass walls complain about over heating. Any chance of Velux window in vaulted ceiling to let heat out, cool bedroom at night. We have MVHR and like it, have a friend with hay fever who says it’s always better when staying with us, also bathrooms dry quickly and plant room serves as drying room,

See Your in Cheshire A factory built house went up last summer which I think was Danwood, but may be wrong. I t was built on a raft foundation and was bolted together and roofed in less than a week. I have no idea if it had MVHR or other tech. It’s on the west side of the A49 in the 30 mph zone of Spurstow , Bunbury .

Our 110cm Range cooker is rated at 17 kW . Interesting as our transformer is rated at 15 Kw ! The other wiring we put in which my wife likes is a 5amp socket circuit for side lights switched at door separate to main lights. Make sure you make provision for a car charger, even if you have no intention of getting one yet.

Ours is in plant room, which is lined with 25mm ply so you can easily mount anything anywhere. Chose solid outside wall for MVHR unit so no risk of vibration noise traveling through timbers, when unit ages.

Googleing "log burner stove polish" brings up a range of products. Back in the days, I'm sure we had "Stove Black" no idea what it was.

We have similar room , it's fine for me but my wife complains all the time at noisy room, “ like an Italian Restaurant” Floor tiles ceramic work tops etc. Wife put carpet off cut on top of all tall cupboards and wall units. Curtains / Roman blinds help a bit in winter when closed, and large rug in seating area.

Thought House was limited to 11.5 M

Proposed changes to Permitted Development rights for small wind turbine from Department for Energy Security& Net Zero I have no idea if this is strictly limited to commercial sites or not “New government proposals today (Wednesday 18 March) would allow businesses and public sector organisations to install one turbine up to 30 metres – no bigger than an oak tree – without submitting planning proposals, making it faster and cheaper to generate clean power on site.” https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lower-bills-for-farmers-schools-and-factories Also Open consultation Permitted development rights for onshore wind turbines in England: consultation document (accessible webpage) Published 18 March 2026 https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/permitted-development-rights-for-onshore-wind-turbines-in-england/permitted-development-rights-for-onshore-wind-turbines-in-england-consultation-document-accessible-webpage

I have no idea how the economics would work out. But if only relatively short term would old fashioned night storage heaters have a place ? Run on Cosy or EV charging tariff.? Log burner is great for main living space. Moved after 50 years from very large, old draughty farm house 6+ bedrooms. We lived with Oil fired cooker , a wick burner so kept going in power cuts (4500 liters / year ). Log burner using 8 cu M logs a year and night storage heaters. The logs and electric were lost in the business. Our experience was you needed to keep the main living rooms warm, no matter how much heat you put in, if the fabric was cold , it felt cold. It was a healthy enviroment to bring kids up in, if a little bracing at times.

We have just built a new Robinsons greenhouse. I’m amazed at how strong the glass is. It’s toughened glass. Would withstand acorns , but mature oak trees have a habit of shedding branches, that would be a different matter. I think, but am not sure, all greenhouses have to be toughened glass now. If under a tree keeping it clean could be an issue.

We had settings changed on MVHR extract vents changed , reducing flow to utility extract while increasing extract rate from plant room by same amount, helps with drying clothes. Air flow is through utility to plant room. My wife wishes our plant room was warmer to improve it as a drying room.

No mention of thermal bridging in this discussion of blocks Is it important , especially through foundations? Should different blocks be used in foundations? Our build was all masonry construction , and due to ground conditions ended up with a beam and block construction. This meant all masonry walls were thermal bridges, more so than on ordinary foundations. I keep meaning to get a thermal imaging camera to see just how bad it is, and compare internal to external walls.

On our new build we contacted Openreach or might have been BT, and they provided Grey Ducting 50 mm , an external manhole and cable etc FOC I think. We did all the work and dug it in back to pole. Left a rope in when we pulled cable through in case Fiber came past. This is all about 3-4 years ago. My memory may not be correct or things may have change

Surely depends on what you want to do with the land after, parking, patio, flower borders or what. Does it need drainage under before you fill, does the surface water get away OK after fill ? Recycled aggregate of some sort, from crushed brick , to sand?

If position of SVP near velux is an issue , is chimney also an issue?

We are in a bungalow so not comparable. I would recommend electric towel rails on a timer . Ours are on 3 hours a day, at cheap rate, hour and a half morning and night. Towels always dry. Our towel rails have timer built in to element , but wish we had put the timer in the wiring circuit, probably back in plant room. We have wet UFH which is on 9 months of the year but we have 90mm screed and tiles, with a different, warmer surface, might not need it. The floor and stone effect shower tray do dry quickly after a shower. Not had any heat on in bedrooms through the two winters we have been here. We put a high level wire connection to take an infrared heater or similar if required but not needed it yet, but its there for when I am 90 if needed. Both our neighbours in new builds, both with heat pumps and MVHR, talk about over heating far more than heating, but both have a lot of glass. Overheating not been an issue for us but we have a lot less glass, and high level Velux windows we can leave open at night when warm.

If you have a suitable outlet pipe or ditch put a land drain or two in before any fill, to take as much water away as possible during and after build. We were lucky having a suitable ditch along side site to drain into. We put two land drains in just beneath surface, covered with membrane then permeable stone ( screened crushed concrete) If lorries are running on this go for as deep as possible, and if possible constantly fill any soft spots where traffic causes ruts. At the end of the build the surface of this was loosened, stone recovered from around site, as much as possible, while leaving land drains in place, and all used to create a permeable drive way and rear patio area. Again we were lucky in being able to build site up a bit whilst having good fall for final surface drainage, and sufficient depth for services to go above land drains.

Our builder used a Pre mixed mortar delivered in large tubs , inhibiter in it so it was workable for 5-7 days depending on weather. A range of colours was provided in 20 Liter sample buckets , which were used to build small Sample sections of wall of about 20 bricks each. It was revealing how much difference colour and type of pointing made to the appearance of the bricks. I was very sceptical of long life pre mixed mortar before use but 3 years on seems fine. Biggest problem is when a very small quantity is needed at the later stages of build to tidy up a bit of brick work as I think it was a minimum delivery of 1 Cu M. I think builder used a couple of sample bucket for final tidy up. Colour of deliveries was very consistent, but hard to match with hand mixing on site.

All the smarter Pubs and restaurants seem to have wood flooring and seem to stand the spills they get. I guess it depends if you want the immaculate look, or rustic used look?

Just make sure you have an internal pipe insert for the compresion fitting.

Looks like black alkathene pipe ( MDPE),to me, but dont recognise the fitting. If it is, any blue MDPE pipe fitting with addapter to black should work.