jack

As alluded to above, unless you have mm measurements all over your planning documents, a few tens of mm aren't even going to be measurable. I've heard from more than one source that planners allow 100mm tolerances.

We booked flights to France with Ryan Air a few years ago and were offered a cheap hire-car booking for the time we were away as part of the booking process. It was a really good deal, so I booked it. When I went to pick up the car, I was told that I'd need to pay the deposit, and that they'd take the cost of a full tank of fuel out of the deposit when I returned the car. Querying this, I was told that the agreement I'd "signed" on the way through the booking had confirmed that I would have to pay for a full tank of fuel upon arrival. I couldn't believe this was true, so went and did some research when I got where we were going. Sure enough, I'd been told the truth by the agent. The tank of fuel condition was buried somewhere down in a 40 page terms and conditions document, which was only accessible at the actual time you were making the booking. I was absolutely seething, because we weren't going to need to drive more then 30-40 miles while we were there, so I'd effectively be paying for a full tank of fuel that I'd only be using a small proportion of. I will avoid Ryanair unless I literally have no choice. Hire car companies are all shocking, so I haven't bothered crossing this one off the list.

We bought from Love Your Home in Peper Harrow. Decent quality for the price and they offer extensive customisation options. Natuzzi is lovely but expensive.

... and it's your money.

Ah yes, I believe you've talked about this guy before. Never met a door to door salesman he didn't like!

Building a house is easy. It's like riding a bike. Except the bike is on fire and you're on fire and everything is on fire and you're in hell.

Have they done a full and proper annual generation prediction comparing the two systems? If not, where has the 25% come from? My guess is that it's just sale BS, and that if pushed they won't put anything in writing. The main reason to consider microinverters or power optimisers (Solar Edge is the latter I think) is if you have a lot of shading. If he doesn't, then I can't imagine that it makes any sense to change. He'd have to look at the maths, but the payback period will be woeful, especially on a relatively small system like his.

Agreed. You can cut down on expensive materials, use second hand or seconds materials from ebay, use cheap imaginative finishes etc, but fundamentally, someone needs to do the actual work, and there's a floor for hourly/day rates for trades.

It looks like there was a problem with the quote in your previous post. I've just fixed it. Looks like you have the hang of it now

Welcome! I hope you do too, although I think the general feeling is that self-build is more or less a series of reinforcement learning episodes punctuated by brief periods where things appear (deceptively) to be going right.

Great, thanks. That all accords with my understanding but I wanted some reassurance before going back to the ASHP guy and asking him not to charge VAT for his services.

But an electrician can zero rate his/her services even if there's no supply at all. I think installation of zero rateable goods is zero rated, but design (or more particularly, design without supply) is not. I also understand that you can't claim back wrongly charged VAT on services. The VAT refund is only on products. To clarify, it isn't supply and fit. The electrician and I did the physical installation. He did the electrical connections and the plumber plumbed most of it in. What's being done here is finalisation of some installation details (temporary connections outside being made permanent, for example), filling of the UFH loops with glycol (supplied by me) and testing/commissioning in accordance with the manufacturer's standards. The only supply is some ancillary bits and pieces (a valve for a filling loop and some copper tubing).

I think I know the answer to this, but thought I'd check. We're going to have our ASHP installation finalised and commissioned by a professional. I've just received a quote, which includes VAT. I can't see why this would be any different to the installation and commissioning of, eg, windows or electric circuits as part of a new build. In that case, VAT shouldn't be payable. Does that sound right? Thanks

I think this is just what we'd call "cement board", which is wood fibres in a cementitious binder. The stuff we left outside developed a similar patina over several months.

I'd consider buying a piece of cement board and experimenting with distressing it, including spraying/splashing parts of it with water, tinted washes, chemicals (particularly acids), or whatever. Try sealing the result with matt/gloss lacquers to see how that changes things. We had a couple of big offcuts lying around outside for several months and they developed an interesting patina!

Exactly the same from the guy who did our decorating. The colours can be matched by many other paints. The "chalkiness" obviously isn't there, but apparently it's a nightmare, because the moment you touch, scuff, or wash it, you get a patch that looks different from the rest.

Interesting list. We have a lot of the same equipment (even down to the railway sleepers!), so I'll be following replies with interest!

Welcome!

As a comparison, we went away for three weeks over Christmas. We've had some problems with our ASHP (hopefully to be fixed in a couple of weeks) and had been using a single column heater to keep the house warm. I didn't want to leave this on, so turned it and the immersion heaters on the UVC off for the whole three weeks. The only incidental gains were the losses from the fridge and freezer motors, and whatever solar gains there were over that period (some very cold temps and gale force winds I believe). Everything else was switched off at the power point. We returned to a very chilly house on Saturday evening the weekend before last. I didn't check the temp at the time, but I guess it was around 13 deg C based on the temperature the next day. Bear in mind we'd had cold temps and gale force winds during much of the period we were away. I switched everything back on and turned the column heater (2kW) on full with a small fan on it to distribute the heat. The house temp initially rose by around 1.5 degrees a day. Things were pretty unpleasant for a few days (not just because of my grumbling family!), but by around Thursday we were in the very high teens and I switched down to medium power. We're sitting at around 20 C now, with 1kW input from the column heater. As I've said before, we don't have great solar gain, so I was surprised to see the house sitting well into the teens after three weeks away with no incidental energy being supplied.

Could you hire or borrow a large estate car? We have one and it's definitely not classed as a van by our local tip.

If you only knew how many of yours I correct on the sly...

We have the same type of slab. The thickening in many places is due to point or line loads. Thickening the whole slab would add an awful lot of concrete.

That's great news. So pleased to hear about the improvement in your lives. I had bouts of serious sinusitis at least a couple of times a year starting about 15 years ago. Since moving into our new house with MVHR two years ago, I've had only a couple of minor bouts, and none have ended up with the secondary infection I nearly always used to get. Nothing like as serious as your situation, but better health of any sort is always nice.

Our slab was poured by MBC in slightly milder conditions than this (down to around zero on the first two or three nights after pouring) and we had terrible problems with spalling. There may well have been other factors involved in our pour, but personally wouldn't risk it if you're relying on a decent surface finish.