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100% agree on that. Appliances shouldn't be on the DHW PRV.

Fair, though I didn't initially put my point across as clearly as I should (later edited to mention the pipes but still maybe that's not clear enough). I've both experienced personally and know people who've had leaks caused by the connections between the appliance and the fixed plumbing. That is the element that I'm most suspicious of and it's an age related issue. In my mind the lower the pressure the less likely there is to be a problem and for most appliances pressure is not really required to be high. If the washing machine takes another minute or two to fill who cares? So for me, if building new and lucky enough to have a high pressure feed (around here people are complaining about <1bar, thankfully not affecting me) then I would intend to feed the appliances off a separate PRV from the DHW one.

Indeed!

cyanoacrylate Loads of brands, your local corner shop will have it, don't think it's gorilla glues thing though. They focus on urethanes and pva I think. I would go for cyanacrylate as its a very thin glue line and fast. Gorilla glue foams and might produce a less nice join.

They had some good stuff until they went batshit over brexit. Once they showed that they didn't care about facts I stopped looking.

It's been bought by Axel-Springer the German publishing house. Known for having an opinionated right-wing leader who wants the publications he owns to reflect his POV. Having said that they may be less right wing than the previous ownership. You're the first person I've seen saying the Telegraph has become more liberal recently (and I've seen a lot of fairly extreme articles linked to in that time including plenty of climate scepticism) but that's not to say it might be shifting tone somewhat.

Even the Telegraph is having a 'Hang on lads! Maybe we've gone too far?' moment: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/26/climate-change-real-right-needs-to-get-serious/

👍 Oh those are interesting. I haven't looked at lighting recently but I think that's the first sensible cost option I've seen for a CCT light that has the two light colours separately wired (so they can be controlled externally) rather than with integrated wifi/bluetooth control.

Taped onto what? 90 bend is going to be tricky. Have a feeling others might have better suggestions but from what I know I would be wanting to use the old cable to pull through the new. (so total space occupied doesn't increase). Have one person pull the cable you are withdrawing and another feed in the cable you are installing. If the old cable is not stranded then will make things difficult. Easiest way is to cut an access in the plasterboard and then repair it. But if you've tiled or something then that's tricky. Another thought is can you abandon the existing cable route and make a new easier one. Finally, instead of feeding the multicore cable through, can you use the existing cable as a power feed for a smart controller installed locally. May be the last choice but guess you can hide a local espnow/shelly type device locally and connect to it over wifi/matter/zigbee/etc

My memory is vague but I think that's about the point I stopped liking my 3d graphics course at university. (some of the best teachers I had were on that course, very keen on props and jokes) * It's possible I learned about that maths after that course but it's long enough ago that Silicon Graphics were cool so I think it's a an accurate enough story 😛

Is there a water softener? Not sure I'd trust modern appliances (or the flexible piping/connections) to be robust (long term) against 5.5 bar. At least check the manual of them.

Just to add, I checked how much water you'll get out of an electric shower. If the incoming water temp is 8C and you want your shower to be 38C then a 12kw shower will output about 6 litres per minute. That's a pretty low flow. In my book a 'decent' shower is about 10lpm. If you like the luxury rainfall type showers they are more like 20lpm. 38C is about the average shower temp for people. Some like it hotter, in which case an electric shower will flow even less water. Now the incoming water temp varies by time of year and how the water gets to you. But in winter when you usually want the hottest showers its around 8C.

They are pretty crap AFAIK. You get ones with a small tank (15L) which then use energy continuously to keep warm and will give you reasonable flow for the first 15L and then cold water if you keep wanting to use water. Or you get them that heat directly on demand. The little 3kw ones you see advertised won't do much if you expect much flow (some limit the flow to produce the set temperature, in which case you will likely get a dribble). The 15L tank ones will heat the water to 80C to get the maximum storage from the small volume. They aren't well insulated so will lose a lot of energy to the surroundings. Compare this to a big well insulated cylinder designed to run off a heatpump (50C). The big cylinder stores less heat per unit volume but is better insulated, and the losses from the tank are much lower as the surface area/volume ratio is better AND the delta between the water and the surrounding air is lower. A good 300L tank at 50C will lose less than 2kwh a day. If heating with direct electric thats what 50p? If with a heatpump that's more like 12-15p. It's a fairly weak shower, especially if the incoming water is especially cold. If you haven't experienced it yet (or this is all you are used to) I encourage you to try the difference. Find some friends/airbnb's and try an electric shower vs a modern pressurised water tank fed system (not an older gravity fed system). Night and day. The government grant can be used for new houses so I would strongly check the rules before ruling it out. If not strictly covered right now, I suspect you could get creative with heat sources used during construction that you then need to 'upgrade' at the end. Insulation will be by far the best investment you make in the property both for comfort and running costs. Insulating an old building is hard and compromises will be needed, but in general if the compromise is a smaller room vs a colder room I'd go for the smaller room. Always

If you want to go direct electric with no tank and don't want variable water flows (ie, slow kitchen tap if shower in use) then you either need individual units for each tap or a very big three phase central unit. TBH. If you want decent flow rate in a shower you need large units anyway 15kw+. The electrical infrastructure will add up quickly. Cylinder is the way to go IMO. Heat it via heatpump or direct electric (that's just a cost/environmental calculation). Direct electric can be relatively cost effective in use, but if you need to spend on bigger electrical supplies, large cables, etc, you could easily spend more. Plus the boiler upgrade scheme will include installation of the tank as part of a heatpump system. Installers tend to have healthy markups that somewhat defeat the point vs DIY without the scheme but I get the impression this wouldn't be an area you'd want to DIY anyway.

Ah joined up government! You'd have thought they would be plugged in to the land registry and could see if you are the registered owner there before writing that email. Costs everyone more time to deal with the email and response.