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Nope! Water and gas go off before I leave the place if it will be unoccupied for any length of time. Though if you have a bad water leak then even an hour of flow will likely do a lot of damage so something automatic is a good idea (which I'd like to implement but haven't).

I know what I've said above is a bit off topic from your question @flanagaj but I think it's relevant. If you've already satisfied yourself that the second SE is right and the first is wrong then why are you questioning the seconds proposal? If you have not satisfied yourself about who is correct then I feel you need to resolve that first. Clarifying this, it's likely you need bracing anyway. So the OSB is required in any case. But my point is that maybe the first SE specified heavier OSB than normal or other details about that to deal with the situation that has been missed by the second. If you look at their calculations are they basing them on the same wind load or have they started from a different base? If so, why?

You have two differing opinions, both by people who are professionally registered and insured (I assume that you have verified their credentials and insurance). My first thought is that the second opinion is working on incomplete information/different assumptions. For example, the first SE specified OSB bracing and the second is specifying windposts. Is the second fully aware of the OSB bracing? Are they planning to require both the windposts and the OSB or is the OSB redundant in their scheme? Fundamentally, you should be able to go to the second SE and say 'I have a design from a registered and properly insured professional (who are standing behind the design) that you are calling inadequate, please explain precisely why you think that? Also if you think the design is inadequate will you be raising this with professional bodies for investigation?' That might be seen as a bit confrontational and I'm sure you could soften that somewhat, but they need to be able to explain to you in detail why they are right and the previous SE is wrong. Another way to potentially resolve this is to either engage a third SE to explain this to you or potentially query the discrepancy with the professional body ("I'm being given conflicting information from two registered professionals - how do I resolve this?"). Having said all this, my feeling in this case is that you have a design from the first SE who has heard the criticism from the second SE and still stands behind their design (ie, they have confirmed they have not made a mistake and are happy for you to proceed with their design as-is). As long as the BCO is happy to proceed with the design I would continue on that path. Edit to add: I wouldn't tell the BCO about the conflicting advice. Just review the first plan with the BCO to confirm they are happy.

Expanding on this. What is your heatpump make/model? Most modern (<10years) heatpumps can be set to cool, though some may require 'enabling' with a dongle, code, or similar. Seems like it would be well worth exploring this before spending money on any new system. You might have to make some adjustments to your existing system but shouldn't be that big to at least get ufh cooling (which is not the same as full A/C but does make things a lot more comfortable in hot weather).

Change one thing at a time but another thing you could try is to disable the legionaire cycle (I don't know the heatpump but I imagine it might be possible it has tried to use the immersion for that, detected some fault and got into a loop where it keeps retrying).

Then the UK is an exceptionally bad example to look to, other countries are a much better guide in those situations. Which most other countries think is stark raving mad. Even the countries with difficult systems generally have a much easier time than we do for nationally significant projects. This is an example of an area where if we were setting a good example we would have changed this system earlier (there have been recent changes), which would have fairly significantly lowered the cost of some of our decarbonisation efforts, which in turn would have enabled us to do more, faster, or resulted in less impact on our industrial base. We still have so much low hanging fruit that we don't address because the costs of doing so are ridiculous (compared to contemporaries). No, but you can compare costs between countries. Other countries generally do big projects at a significantly lower cost than we do.

On it's face it's impressive but still I think there are fair criticisms that we choose an expensive way of doing it. In mitigation you can say we started relatively early and it's inevitable mistakes were made. However, I think there are likely better examples out there even just confined to generation (and that's taking a holistic view of the last 30 years). If you limit yourself to just examples from the last 10 years or so (ie, during the time when technologies matured) there are many countries that have done a very significantly better job than us at taking advantage of the more recent developments (second/third mover advantage). If your goal is to help more countries achieve big reductions, then learning from these second/third movers should be the goal. Using the UK as a guide to less optimal solutions.

Agree, but that's not what I was responding to. We have been somewhat talking past each other. I responded to you saying the UK is a good example of decarbonisation and that by extracting more oil/gas we are risking that. My response is that while we have achieved a significant reduction in our emissions, a significant proportion of that is because we decided (intentionally or indirectly by actions) to just stop doing a lot of high carbon things. We aren't a good example of transitioning existing industry to low carbon, industries in this country are shutting down because they can't operate in our business environment*. Other countries have done a much better job of that. Talking about Burberry and Mulberry is a distraction. They are relatively small components of our economy that are not generally replicable. * Mainly it's electricity/gas prices (which we could have addressed in a different way) but it's also a general complication of rules over the last few decades (and Brexit) that adds friction. When other countries have adopted holistic carbon reduction schemes that encourage and support companies through the transition with active government support (and in doing so have achieved some great results) and we don't, we really can't claim to be a good example.

'In immersion mode' which it only sometimes switches to. So my reading is that the system works fine for a while then something happens and it stops working as normal and needs resetting and then it works again. @MorganP can hopefully confirm.

My reading of the OP is that the heating is still working (as a heat pump) but there are spurious activations of the immersion during which time the system doesn't heat up.

I think that's missing the point. If all countries deindustrialise to decarbonise then there is no industry and that's not going to work. It's not that what we did was necessarily wrong for us (debatable point) it's that what we did is not a useful guide for a large part of the remaining emissions we need to get on top of. Edit: and even if you think we are a good guide overall, the way we chose to do things has proven very expensive. So from that POV other countries are a better guide even if your goal is to end up in the same sort of situation we are in now.

You're wrong. Cooler feet has a huge impact on how you feel overall. I don't have UFH but do live in a building that suffers from cold floors/cold air layer at floor level in winter. The thermometer can read 23/24 at table level but 16C at feet level. In that situation I feel fairly cold. Nothing to say you need to be barefoot. Wear socks if you want, even open light slippers. You'll still feel much cooler in a space with a floor that is noticeably cooler than the air temp. Edit: Frankly, given my experience I suspect even if you wore whatever outside clothes you were comfortable with I suspect you'd still feel the cooling effect from a cool floor, just maybe not as pronounced.

Partly, but also our demand for electricity has gone down a lot because we now buy products made abroad (mainly using electricity from coal) vs making here. BL? British Leyland? Obviously, our past economy had lots of problems and we didn't decide to move from production to importation for climate reasons. But my point was we are not a good example of decarbonisation. A good example of decarbonisation would be an economy that has shifted away from carbon emissions without changing the domestic industry mix.

Agree with this. We have already cut our emissions substantially from prior levels, but any serious analysis just shows we've exported the emissions (and to some degree damaged our future economy by doing so). In international forums now we are among examples of 'how not to decarbonise', whether we extract 2% more of our needs domestically or not won't make any difference to that.

You have a kitchen made from particle board, by far the cheapest and least moisture resistant form of wood out there. Higher end kitchens would be made from other materials that stand up to moisture better*. The plinth board generally will have to deal with a lot more moisture than a normal skirting board, especially around the sink area. That you have a routed slot for an insert rather than just a stick on strip suggests some care but fundamentally everything comes down to cost and ease of installation by less skilled people. I wouldn't expect scribing to be done unless you had a truly custom install or arranged the install separately with someone who you'd discussed this with. I'd be quite disappointed if I'd ordered a bespoke 'made-to-measure' kitchen and got short drawers, etc. The Schmidt website talks up how custom everything they do is but you don't appear to have anything better than could be bought from DIY Kitchens. * My kitchen is also particle board (most are these days) and there is damage to one of the units caused by water from the sink. The kitchen is old an needs a refresh but if it wasn't for that one unit that's damaged I'm pretty sure I could freshen everything up with just some new doors and a bit of glue (some of the melamine edge banding is debonding). As it is, a whole new kitchen is needed.