jack

We had a lot of room to play with, and ours dealt with it like this: As built, we ended up with a parallel-sided channel rather than the complex things the architect drew. It's important to make sure that there are decent falls all the way to the exit of the outlet into the downpipe. In our case, some of the falls were a little marginal. As the underlying USB has sagged a little over time, there are now places in the gutters where water pools.

I'm not sure whether they cover NI, but try Frontier Insurance.

Looks like it changed in 2023: I think this must have been when the changes I mentioned above went through. I assume that's also when they moved to electronic submissions.

No guarantees, but I had 3 or 4 (out of a couple of hundred) receipts that were in a tradesperson's name. I just made a note in the covering letter when submitting the VAT reclaim and they paid out. One was for exactly your scenario. In our case, our tiler could get insane discounts on certain stuff - way better prices than I could source the same things anywhere else, even after VAT reclaim. My thinking was that we'd either get the refund even though the invoice was in the wrong name (which is what happened), or the refund would be refused for that invoice, in which case we'd still be ahead compared to having paid for it ourselves at the higher rate. One other thing: a reason that some companies will refuse to give you the same discount as a business (such as a tradesperson) is that you are a consumer. A consumer sale comes with far more protections for the user (and hence potential hassle/risk/cost for the seller) than a B2B sale.

This has all changed over the last 2-3 years. Before that, there were a few years where HMRC regularly rejected VAT reclaim applications based on all sorts of odd definitions of "completion" (including some definitions that went against their own written instructions to applicants and internal employee guidance documents). Eventually, a few appeals went against them, and thankfully they appear to have become a lot more reasonable.

Welcome. Is it his customers who have complained about noise and performance, or is he repeating the Daily Mail's opinion? Agreed GSHP is a lot more expensive. Even assuming you have the space for a GSHP, chances are it'll cost at least £10k more than an equivalent ASHP. They're also rarely specced in the UK so there isn't much knowledge about them in the industry. For that reason, from a performance perspective, I think installing a GSHP is as big a risk as installing an ASHP. Having too small a field (or bore), or burying loops at the wrong depth, or if you have ground that is sandy and often dry - any of these factors can lead to poor performance. We've had a 5 kW ASHP on our new build for nearly 10 years. It hardly makes any noise and has had no problem at all handling heating and hot water for our ~290 m2 house (admittedly PassivHaus-class insulation and airtightness, and we're in the South East, so not much energy required, but still). Until last winter, I'd been running ours with a base flow temp of 25°C, with a bit of weather compensation up to the high 20s in very cold weather. I now run the base temp a few degrees higher, and keep the heating period concentrated around the cheap period, so I use less energy in the expensive period.

You'll almost certainly get better and quicker answers if you start a new thread. A lot of people will see "VAT reclaim" in the title of this thread and not read any further.

Worse, after weeks of blue skies, it turned cloudy and rained for several days as soon as I switched the immersion back on.

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.