G and J

Your LA maybe different, but in our case they would not use their own systems (in this case domestic rates) to verify previous occupation.....it's worth asking sooner rather than later

Thank you. In theory, 15 of these panels could sit on our roof (I’m not terribly sure how close to the edges they can be placed), giving 7.5kW of solar. The only quote we have at present is for 6.5kW. They seem a good price too. Good find on your part, thank you.

If we did that we’d have a nice colourful yellow pipe waggling around in mid air - I suspect they’d take a dim view of that.

The more I read of the experience of other peeps the more I realise we had it sooooo easy on our first build. You sound like you were so calm! Please would you point me at these more productive solar panels?

How did you know that I’m a hobbit?

So I won’t need a sauna membership then…. Excellent, that’ll save running costs. 😉

Sure, but first sit by the fire warming your toes and stare into the glowing embers as you cuddle your mug of cocoa. It’s awfully pleasant slowly poisoning one’s neighbours.

Oooh I do hope so. Anyway the heat pump won’t be running at the coldest times cos I’m a woodburner addict. I know, I know….. but many peeps have a dirty secret….

I wonder if part of the issue is the lack of a feedback loop. I have the impression that on lots of projects, the architect does the getting through planning and maybe building regs submission, then they focus on the next project. Where, in general, do they get their homework marked in the light of building what they’ve designed? And if they aren’t getting that feedback how can they be expected to either improve or even keep up with rapid product and technology developments?

Sadly I’ve stood next to noisy heat pumps, and I’m a climate emergency believer (with currently a 33 year old oil boiler!). But I’ve also stood next to a really, really quiet one - thank you @Nick Laslett, so methinks it simply becomes my responsibility, on fitting a pump, to keep it running quietly.

Hmmmm. Understood and I agree with all but one point: regardless of the actions of others we will continue to consider others, even when their feelings are irrational or in our eyes unreasonable we’ll still do our bestest to be nice. That said balance is needed, and we politely tried to ease their concerns and went ahead planned in the ASHP anyway as we believed it to be the right thing to do. I guess I reacted to the unexpected and unwelcome extra cost in an emotional manner. I try not to do that too often. The plan is to go for v airtight with MVHR and sensible insulation levels for a modest house. Jeremy’s spreadsheet tells me at the lowest temperatures outside that we can reasonably plan on will require just over 2kW to maintain 21C inside. Whilst our design does not have significant amounts of glazing we really value the idea of ASHP cooling and we’re building in a fancoil in our bedroom to boost the effect of cooling the slab downstairs. Probably the weakest part of the plan is my penchant for washing up in very hot water. So rather than destroy the COP for DHW we’re having a Quooker tap thingy to top the bowl ready filled from the tank. The original motivation to go all electric wasn’t financial. I happen to believe that tariffs and subsidies should be set up to reward doing the right thing but life’s not always like that. The thing that really got my goat was the fact that new gas connections were subsidised. That really pissed me off.

I thought I needed an MCS installer to get a grant. The ASHP is on our planning permission. Goodness my head hurts.

Ours is a demolish and replace, so we have a free hand. Gas is available but that feels like we are not doing the right thing by the planet, and that does guide many of our decisions.

Having the meter removed is free. Is having the supply cut off at the road that costs the money.

I wish I’d known that 6 months ago.

Da Bungalow we will be demolishing has gas heating. We want to be good little eco-peeps so early on we decided to go all electric with a heat pump. Which means we need to get the gas pipe removed, so I phoned up to discover that the cost is ‘from’£2k, I presume plus vat, and that there are no grants or subsidies that I can claim towards the cost of being a good citizen. There is, however, a subsidy towards having a new gas connection. The agent was super helpful, and they suggested that whilst they don’t condone this, a lot of peeps just leave the pipe capped off in situ, especially as that means it’s easier to return to gas if the heat pump doesn’t live up to expectations. In the following discussion the agent disclosed that a growing number of peeps are doing just that, though they were yet to talk to anyone with a ground source heat pump who wanted to return to gas. Our neighbours are concerned about our plan for an ASHP. It requires us finding a trustworthy MCS person to not simply inflate the labour cost to hoover up the grant for themselves. We will be spending more money to locate the pump half way down the garden. I know the heat pump will also cool the house, and that will either prove vital or pointless. But I wonder. The heat pump route will cost us more capital at a time when spare capital is not sloshing around. It will also cost us a cupboard for the DHW cylinder. It is likely to cost about the same to run as a small gas combi, which our neighbours would prefer anyway. And I could plumb things so that converting to an ASHP later was relatively painless. Or maybe I should simply leave the damn gas pipe in place, capped off, and work around it. So why am I making life difficult for myself? Why not simply go gas day one and let society/government wake up to the effect of their policies….

Ok that’s sounding good. The sound of swifts ‘skweeing’ overhead is the sound of summer and holiday all rolled into one.

Do swift boxes need clearing out? I love the idea of such things but one of our basic design starting points is as little maintenance as possible and definitely no ladder based maintenance. Odd really, cos I love monkeying around at height but the older I get the more risky that is.

I prefer my cheaper and lower stress approach based on a phone call. The CIL thing is only one consideration, but you might find your area’s CIL people are just as helpful as East Suffolk. Remember to smile when you call ‘em. That smile does somehow make it to the other end of the line.

We’re facing a similar question for our build. We’ve both a garage and a bungalow to demolish. We’re going to declare a start to the CIL team (ours are lovely and helpful on the phone) before we do anything but shrub clearance. The CIL team were happy that we declared a start way too early - their attitude was better too early than too late. It’s a similar thing with our party wall agreements, we’ll be notifying of a start well before the main demolition event takes place, but there’s lots of prep to do and we don’t want to risk an accusation of starting before giving notice. We cleared trees before planning was granted, which was a good thing. Site insurance is a consideration. We’re currently insured as an empty house till mid January, and may well start site insurance then rather than renew. But that means we are wary about doing stuff that would be questionable re the house insurance before then. With any luck, we’ll have building regs approval and planning conditions sorted by mid Jan and can start demolition after that knowing we’ve got our ducks in a row.

Does that mean you are just becoming an irritating teenager?

As a kid I dismantled a flashgun. The most obvious way to remove the pcb was to grab this cylinder looking thing (the biggest component on the pcb), my finger and thumb at each end of what I now know to be a capacitor. Ouch. Couldn’t instantly let go and had to fling out my arm to dislodge the pesky thing. My hand hurt for days. Presumably this tester is a little more gentle? Of course I’m now tempted to buy one just to play with it….

Lordy. What have I done?

Presumably this tester squirts a high voltage across the probes. Is that ac or dc and is it tiny enough so it won’t act as a defibrillator? Or should you shout ‘Clear’ just before each test?

We’ll done, Ummmm, is it polite to ask what it is that you’ve created? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…. (but bear in mind you’ll be waiting a long time to see mine!)