jack

Nothing at all wrong with the premise, but you really don't want a room that's 6 or 7 times longer than it is wide. Why do you have a particular square meterage in mind? One way to think of this is to look at your budget for the building itself, and divide it by the anticipated cost per square metre. You might hope to get this down to below, say £1800 per sqm, but depending on where you are in the country, even that might be optimistic if you aren't doing some of the work yourself.

I'm assuming the 8m and 12m indicators aren't related to the underlying drawing, as that would suggest a house much larger than the 200m2 (100 up and and 100 down, I assume) you mention. The long, skinny utility and storage rooms won't work, and the kitchen/diner aspect ratio also seems wrong. Another way you can approach this is to think of rooms as blobs, and just draw out where each blob is relative to the other blobs/rooms - this sort of thing. This will focus you on function. Once you have that, you can start thinking about room dimensions and relative positions. Also important is where the sun is, and where views (and things you don't want to look at) are located.

One thing to consider: it you ever needed to sell it (never say never), the lack of a central heating system is likely to be seen as a significant negative for many/most buyers.

Same as you, I very occasionally - once every few months maybe - crave a full-strength coke. Unfortunately, the last couple of times I've given in to the craving I haven't enjoyed it at all. The last time was last week and I think I'm now officially off them for good. Can't stand the taste of artificial sweeteners in anything.

I can't believe that even an unqualified person (eg, a homeowner) could/would do this bad a job.

Or "what's-the-point?" Coke, as I like to call it.

Sterling work gents. Given how much beer and bacon you got through, would it have been cheaper to just buy a new system? When you've had some rest, we'd all love a brief summary of what went wrong and what you did to fix it.

This is also the first house I've ever lived in where I don't wake up every morning with a stuffy nose.

I sleep very well in ours - it's very quiet, for a start! In winter our bedrooms are cooler than downstairs by typically a couple of degrees. It's enough to be noticeable as you change levels. That makes it perfectly cool enough to sleep in. Also, rather than cooling the room, you can just use a thinner duvet or a blanket to reduce your sleeping temperature. I'm struggling a bit at the moment, as we have a duvet that's a bit too warm now that the house is warming up a bit with this milder weather.

Welcome! A good sense of humour will definitely help you through the process. When you're ready, head over to the relevant sub-forum and ask away.

Welcome to Buildhub. By far the friendliest and most information building and renovating site in the world (honest). The Dunning-Kruger Effect!

As is so often the case, it depends who you get. Well done for taking the bull by the horns.

Or they could do like probably 90% of the trades we had onsite and refuse to use any form of PPE. I'd say well over half of the people we had onsite wore trainers. My worst memory was trying to hand a youngish guy a set of ear defenders and face mask while he used a petrol diamond saw to cut a load of blocks. He refused because they were "uncomfortable" and he didn't have that many to do. My ears were ringing just from the 10 seconds I was standing nearby waiting for him to finish a cut. He was cutting for 15 mins straight. I can't comprehend people not being interested in their own health.

I know exactly what you mean. I've been repeatedly disappointed with the work of experienced tradespeople, even when they come highly recommended from friends and family. I can't say that we had anyone on site where I felt completely happy with their work, except maybe our electrician and the guys that did the screeding in a couple of downstairs rooms. I've become so disillusioned that I'm trying to finish the work myself, but I'm very slow and often not very good. I don't know what the solution is, but I feel for you (if it helps, I spent around 10 hours last weekend rectifying the plasterboarding in our garage, due to the boarders not listening to the one simple instruction I gave them).

I've heard this before, but ours (AEG) works perfectly well in our warm and well-insulated house. The previous condenser dryer we had needed its heat exchanger cleaned periodically. Could yours be clogged with lint or has it always been the same?

I just assumed £200 a day and was thankful whenever it was less!

Just to be clear, the heat pump is just the means by which heat is generated. A heat pump is more efficient than direct electric heating. It's the condensing nature of the dryer that avoids the needs for punching a hole and feeding huge gobs of energy to the outside world. There are condensing dryers that don't use heat pumps (in fact, the vast majority don't). I don't know whether heat pump dryers use the cold side of the heat pump to improve condensing. Seems to make sense that they might.

We had a glitch with ours around the two year mark. We had great service from Quooker - they sent out an engineer who replaced several parts at no cost. However, for the time we didn't have it, we were completely lost. Who knew that having to figure out how much water you need, and then waiting for it to boil could be so bloody infuriating! If I were building another house, a hot water tap would be at or near the top of the list of things I'd specify.

Check whether what you're looking at actually delivers "boiling" water. Some apparently only deliver a lower temperature.

You can connect either or both. You get the highest efficiency from connecting both the tank and mixer valve: http://recoupwwhrs.co.uk/installation/installation-methods/

Oh dear, you have my condolences. I've been flat out with other things and haven't had time to look into this yet - hoping to get around to it this week. Will update the thread when I get some advices/prices.

Me too. The plumber and I couldn't figure out how a properly functioning softener could cause corrosion of stainless steel when we saw the "no softened water" line in the instructions. I called them to ask for more info and was told that no warranty claims would be considered if softened water was used. Between that and not having time to do any research, we just went ahead and plumbed in unsoftened. I just had a look on their website and it includes the following: If choosing a water softener, it is important that you choose a system that does not remove all the minerals from the water, leave excess salt behind or reduce the pH-value of the water below 7 as the water will become corrosive otherwise. Reverse osmosis systems may not be suitable and are not recommended. Hydrogen Resin Exchange systems could rapidly change the pH valve of the water and are not recommended. Be aware that Sodium Resin Exchange systems can cause excess salt in the water which will cause corrosion on the Quooker tank. But then, Harvey water softeners says the following: Yes you can absolutely use our system with your Quooker (or other) hot water tap. Our technical director has verified that softened water from one of our units is fully compatible. My best guess is that Quooker is oversimplifying the situation for convenience, rather than giving tailored advice based on different softeners.

Incidentally, Quooker specifically advises against running softened water in their tank. Something to do with pH levels. I suspect it's probably fine if your water isn't too hard, but not something I'd risk my warranty over. They also sell some sort of water conditioning unit, although I don't know the details. It could well be a phosphate dosing arrangement.

Thanks for the advice, I'll be careful. It's a Siemens - I don't have the serial number, but will look it up when I get a moment this weekend. Thanks again

In theory, the MCS premium is not the MCS supply and install cost minus the cost of hardware. It's the difference between the cost of supply and install by MCS and non-MCS installers. Are there non-MCS installers of PV though?