jack

Thanks for that, very interesting. It was a while ago, but i thought I read that once you gave up the deemed element from the government there was no going back. That's partly what's put me off finding the time to dig into this in more detail. I'll take another look! We're on a 2015 tariff too. From memory, it was from right before the rates dropped significantly. I'd have to look it up, but I think the rate was something like £0.15/kWh generated, and £0.07/kWh for export (deemed 50%).

Ah, I knew one of the components wasn't affected but I've never got around to looking it up. Good to hear it's the lower value component, thanks.

Is your electrical connection 3-phase or single-phase? There's no point getting a 3-phase inverter if you aren't on 3-phase power. Sure, although there are some good online PV generation estimation tools available. What might be harder to predict is your usage. Worse, even if you can estimate your usage patterns now, that will change signficantly if you get a battery. Assuming you don't expect to add more PV in the future, an inverter that can handle the peak power output is fine. Some people slightly under-rate the inverter, because in the UK, it's unlikely your panels will ever deliver their rated power output. A 5 kW (or more) inverter would be fine for this installation, but even a 4 kW inverter would rarely top out. You might also need an inverter with an output limit if you don't get approval to install more than the standard ~4 kWp in solar panels. If you've considering adding batteries in the future, you should consider getting an inverter (e.g., a hybrid inverter) that will work with a battery system.

If the groundworker measures out the trenches and also digs them, then the cost of both should be zero-rated (if on the same invoice), because digging a trench is in the course of construction. Just to be clear, the VAT isn't recovered - it's never charged in the first place. If the groundworker pays a contractor (or whoever) to do it for them, and then the groundworker digs the trenches, then again, the groundworker's invoice should be zero-rated. I believe that's the case irrespective of whether the contractor charges are listed on the invoice as a disbursement, or just borne by the groundworker and not separately billed on. There are probably some limited situations where careful planning can allow zero-rating of services that would otherwise incur VAT. For example, if you can get design charges for your UFH onto the same invoice as installation charges, then the design is also zero-rated. Or maybe your window installer can hire the telehandler you need for installation (zero-rated to you on the same invoice as the installation charges) rather than you having to hire it yourself and pay the VAT. Or your builder could hire a portable toilet and pass the costs on to you without VAT. I'm sure there are better examples, plus all of this assumes that the providers you're engaging are willing to play ball.

I'm thinking vaguely in that direction (except for 3 - I have no more space for additional PV!) There are a few ways to skin this cat. All of this paragraph is from memory, so I need to confirm that my recollection is correct, but some people have done the maths and concluded that it's best to fill up batteries at the cheap rate overnight. This is slightly at odds with intuition, which is that it's better to leave the batteries in a depleted state when a sunny day is expected, and allow the (free) PV to fill them rather than pay even a cheap overnight rate. Turns out it's often better to pay the cheap rate to charge the batteries and to sell the PV as you generate it. This is the sort of stuff I want to have a think about before taking action. No individual component is difficult to understand by itself, but the complexity grows exponentially when you start trying to optimise so many variables. I also need to be sure that, however I set things up, there's enough flexibility to implement a reasonable variety of approaches. And that's before you start trying to predict how things like TOU plans might change over time.

Half your luck. I discovered on the weekend that the switch for the immersion element that should have been driven by our immersion diverter was switched off at some point, possibly by the handle of a vacuum cleaner leaning on it. Based on the diverter logs, it happened... sometime last year, since we've had zero diversion this calendar year! *sigh*

When we had our PV installed in 2015, we just caught the last of the decent FITs payments. I think we get around £1100-1200 a year at the moment. Before the Ukraine situation kicked off and prices jumped, the payments easily covered our entire electricity bill. No chance of that now, especially with an EV in the mix. I've been watching battery prices fall over the last few years, and I think they've reached the point where they make financial sense for my circumstances. For example, Fogstar is selling a 16.1 kWh battery and BMS for only £1750. Add an inverter for £1k or so and you have something that would have cost many multiples of that only a few years ago. The only thing putting me off buying now is finding the time to research, design, and vaguely model how batteries would work with our current setup (8.5 kWp PV, Zappi EV charger, Eddi immersion diverter, ASHP). There's also the issue of potentially giving up the balance of our FITs in order to access smart tariffs. TBF, it still might work just using the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff, but again, lots of research and thought is required, using bandwidth I just don't have at the moment!

It makes sense within the logic of the system, but the system is the problem. Excluding things like professional services when they're provided alone but allowing them when they're on an invoice that has a zero-rated component leads to all sorts of weird outcomes. To extend your example, if the builder had hired the same surveyer for the same price to do the same work, he'd have reclaimed the VAT charged by the surveyer, then zero-rated it on his invoice to you. However, that assumes that the invoice includes a zero-rated component in addition to the surveyer's charges. If he invoiced the surveyer's charges on to you on an invoice that doesn't include a zero-rated component, then he'd have to charge VAT.

Crikey, even for rip-off Britain that's taking the piss! We had an entire large scots pine taken down for much less than that a few years ago.

Unfortunately, the law doesn't provide an option for taking personal circumstances into account. The person you're corresponding with has a flowchart in front of them, and they've followed the boxes to get to this point. If there isn't an "are there mitigating circumstances?" box, that's the end of it. The whole system is utterly disgusting. There was an article about it in the last Private Eye where Waverley Council sent someone a £67k bill after they got planning permission, demolished an old extension, and replaced it with a new one. The size of the extension meant that CIL shouldn't have been triggered, but the council is insisting that without having applied for the waiver before commencing the work, the payment is due and there's nothing they can/will do about it after the fact.

One way to think about whether labour is "in the course of construction" is to consider whether the result of that labour is a physical change that brings the building closer to completion. Demolition and digging foundations clearly satisfy that test, for example, as does first fix wiring even if the electrician didn't supply materials. In your example, a surveyer setting out foundations does not result in a physical change in the real world. Any stakes or markers are temporary indicators of locations. That doesn't result in a physical change that brings the building closer to completetion, and hence VAT is payable. However, if you paid a surveyer to set out the foundations and to dig the trenches, and he invoiced you for both on the same invoice, that would be zero-rated. Considering whether you're paying for professional services is a reasonable shorthand, but I believe it's easier to think about it in terms of construction. There are three basic principles at work: 1. An invoice solely for labour that is "in the course of construction" is zero-rated (and hence an invoice solely for labour that is not "in the course of construction" should include full VAT). 2. An invoice solely for materials is not zero-rated at source, but the VAT can be reclaimed after the building is complete. 3. An invoice only has a single VAT rate, which is set by the lowest-rated item on the invoice. As such, the whole of an invoice that includes an item for labour that is "in the course of construction" is zero-rated, even if it also include materials, hire charges, and professional services (eg, design work or engineering calculations) that would not be zero-rated if invoiced alone. Obviously these other items also need to be related to the building.

While services (without supply of goods) are generally not zero-rated, labour without supply is still zero-rated as long as it is work done "in the course of construction". An electrican should zero-rate installation even if they didn't supply what's being installed. This is why "demolishing existing buildings and preparing the site" (see below) is zero-rated even if no materials are supplied, but structural engineering services are not. https://www.gov.uk/vat-builders/new-homes: The "in the course of construction" phrase above is a hyperlink on the website, which takes you to: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/buildings-and-construction-vat-notice-708#are-my-services-made-in-the-course-of-the-construction-of-the-building From the same link:

Someone posted about a problem claiming for a home automation system that controlled their lights. I believe it was rejected because it controlled other things that weren't allowed. One way around that might be to see if the supplier will word the invoice appropriately. Or maybe the invoice could be itemised in such a way that it's clear what components solely relate to claimable items (e.g., mains dimmers). We did. We regularly bought non-claimable items at the same time as claimable items, so I marked up each invoice/receipt in pencil showing how I'd removed the non-claimable item.

Welcome. A good start would be to browse our member blogs, available from the menu at the top of the landing page. You may find people who've done things similar to what you're considering.

Either the battens/tiles are at a slight angle, or the roof itself dips towards the dormer. Difficult to say from this angle, but the fact that it levels out again towards the bottom suggests it's the roof sloping/bending rather than the battens not being straight. Depending on how the dormer is supported, perhaps its weight has caused the roof to sag a little towards the middle? That would explain the symmetric nature of the slope either side of the dormer. Whatever's causing the apparent angle, I suspect the scaffolding rails visually emphasise it. I reckon it'll be a lot less obvious once the scaffolding is down.

@luappy13, is this something you can comment on?

I think it's nice to try designing it in. We did that with horizontal cladding, which mostly worked. We also did it with brick slips, and that worked well. That said, there's always going to be some variance in dimensions of the cladding you buy, so it might not be possible to convert your perfect cladding scheme into the real world. The vertical returns into these windows will presumably have some sort of battening to form a cavity behind. It might be easier to shim out the battening so the reveal positions match the cladding either side of the window.

We use our garage as a gym. It has the same 300 mm of insulation under the slab as the rest of the house, and is insulated to slightly better than building regs standard. The main thermal weaknesses are airtightness (garage door and rear access door) and the garage door itself (insulated, but obviously not as much as a decent door, let alone a wall). We hemmed and hawed about adding UFH and wish we had now. It's bloody freezing using it on cold winter mornings! I'd only have run it intermittently during the coldest weather to keep the floor temperature a few degrees higher than it gets now, so it really wouldn't have used much energy. Absolutely not! We have polished concrete floors downstairs and they keep things very comfortable with the underfloor cooling on during runs of hot weather (all covered by excess solar). I really wish we'd done the same upstairs. If doing it again, I'd probably have tile with UFH upstairs. Use rugs during winter to keep feet off tiles, and remove the rugs in summer so the underfloor cooling can do its thing.

Necrothreadia!

I have the same, but we decided to retrofit electric heaters in our bathrooms a few years after we moved in. It wasn't like they were freezing, but stepping out of the shower onto unheated tiles wasn't very pleasant in the depths of winter. I also found that a bit more heat reduced the amount of condensation we were getting when it was cold. If I were doing it again I'd absolutely have gone for some form of UFH in the bathrooms. Some have used electric mats under tiling to good effect. The rest of the upstairs is fine unheated.

100% agree. It's been mild and sunny here recently. Left alone, the house starts slowly heating up over a few days. However, it's very cool overnight, so every morning I open up some windows to allow cross-ventilation upstairs and down. Even on boost and with summer bypass active, MVHR gives nothing like the cooling effect of this sort of purging.

I'm not sure whether it was on BH or elsewhere, but I have the vaguest of memories that there's been a case along these lines.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious here. If I understand correctly, the fence you have erected is on the correct boundary line as shown on the deeds. You're also happy enough for that to be the boundary line (presumably that's the case given you built a fence there). If that's correct, then your neighbour stating that he doesn't make any sense. The boundary (in legal terms) already appears to be where your fence is. Presumably you aren't accessing, or trying to exclude him from accessing or controlling, the strip between your fence and the retaining wall. The builder built the retaining wall and the fence that runs along it, plus it's on the neighbour's property, so I can't see how that anything to do with you. All that's left is the shared passage that doesn't currently have a fence. If you're happy with it like that, but he isn't, then he's free to put up his own fence at his own cost. There might be a question over who owns the gravel, if it comes to that, but maybe you're happy to just leave it as it is. If your neighbour doesn't like the position of the retaining wall, he'll need to move it closer to the actual boundary at his expense. Party wall laws might come into it at that stage, which could make things expensive for him (and moving that wall or building a new one will also be a significant expense, especially if you refuse him access to your land to do it). Has be specified exactly what more he wants from you? Because to me, it seems you've already given him everything that's yours to give.

I appreciate that different council departments deal with council-as-beneficary covenants and planning, and that councils aren't responsible for considering covenants that give rights to third parties. However, is the position not muddied if the same legal entity that has the benefit of a covenant over a property grants planning permission to build on that property? I'd at least run the argument that granting planning permission is tacitly waiving rights under the covenant. I wonder whether there's any caselaw on this?

On replacements, agreed. We had one of our fixtures fail after about three years (and, tbf, none fail in the seven years since). Unfortunately, the company had ceased trading, so no chance of a replacement. Given the time that had elapsed, there was no guarantee that one would have been available even if the company had been around. That said, if you're talking about using halogen-type fixtures with replaceable bulbs instead, I'm not sure whether our building control guy would have allowed them at the time we did the build. From (admittedly decade+ old) memory, building regs require a certain proportion of low-energy lighting, and he didn't consider halogen type fittings as meeting that requirement, even though we would have used LED bulbs. It may be different now given that you'd have to be mad to use actual halogen bulbs in such fixtures. Another approach would be to stick to fixtures with a separate driver. Assuming temperatures are kept under control, the chances of LEDs themselves failing is much lower than the driver failing.