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I was under the impression that for low risk buildings the Principal Designer role was only about the design phase, not build phase. I quickly googled and this came up which seems to confirm but I may be missing something: https://www.ribaj.com/intelligence/navigating-the-role-of-principal-designer-building-safety-act From that article it suggests that I was wrong to say 2024 above, in which case I'm not sure how I square it with others here saying they didn't need these details on recent projects.

Isn't this to do with the new changes related to building safety where you need the Principle Designer to sign off on the design and the Principal Contractor to sign off that the building has been built to the design? In which case it shouldn't matter that the architect wasn't involved beyond the design stage? As others have said they have recently got sign off without this but it may depend on when construction started? Not sure of the date off hand but vaguely recall late 2024.

If you pair two Victron inverters they share configuration and restritions, but two independent inverters (one behind the other in series), one g98 compliant set to export and one set to not export at all might be an option (but check the technicalities on this) but again if they are running seperately they couldn't share a single battery pack. If you have a heatpump for heating and hotwater, unless you have a really big one 3.6kw should be enough for most of the time, a 10kw heatpump will draw less than 3kw most of the time. Cooking is spikey so when you first turn on an oven or hob it draws a lot, but once things are up to temperature the usage is relatively low. Or maybe others have since used whatever spare they added, or there were multiple limitations and they fixed one enough for the farm but others are still in the way for you.

The multiplus models don't have built in solar MPPTs so the amount of solar connected to them is disconnected from their size. So could easily get a G98 Multiplus with lots of solar. Would be limited to 16A from the solar for house use + export though so guess you'd want big batteries to spread the solar over 24 hours. Most houses will only very rarely draw more than 16A (unless you use an electric shower or electric resistance heating/immersion. Could also look at whether some loads (immersion, maybe lighting) could be run straight off the battery. You could potentially get a second inverter that was set to zero export, but the way Victron works AFAIK you wouldn't be able to share the battery so it would be a bit tricky and I'm not sure about how that works with the DNO approval.

Not answering your question but looks like a good job on the boarding. Did you do it in the end?

@Spinny You highlight many real issues there but I think that just reinforces the point I was trying to make, that you can't take any single paper or single scientist saying something as a fact or true. The process of science relys on lots of work repeating, refining, proposing alternative explanations and only when you get to the point where there is broad consensus amongst the scientists in the field can you call something basically settled. This process removes a lot of the noise you highlight but it takes a long time and is not something a layperson (or even a scientist from another field) can really usefully engage with. Even when something is considered settled, say climate change, just because the fundamental principles are settled the precise details are still discussed. From my limited understanding the scientific debates are now along the lines of if the models have been too conservative and the actual effects of climate change will be worse than previously expected.

Just thinking aloud, listen to others as to wether this is a good idea: Given your DHW use might it be worth getting the second tank and keeping existing? The heat loss from the tanks will be a bit higher but it sounds like you'd use all the water quite quickly anyway. If you were going with the PHE route for the existing tank, then the new tank could be a plain simple tank with no coil, these are much much cheaper. Alternatively, two tanks in parallel, the heating capacity of two coils might eliminate the need for the PHE. Obviously only makes sense if you have the space.

AFAIK FFP3 masks protect the wearer and prevents spread. The other masks provide little protection for the wearer and stop large particles which at the time some speculated would help limit spread to others. Once the science came out that properly analysed how covid spread (a lot of smaller particles that go through/around masks that don't seal to the face) the advice should have changed to have everyone wear the better masks. Our country was quite an outlier on this. The person making decisions on masks in the NHS was a nurse with no training in infectious diseases, at the COVID enquiry she was insisting that masks weren't effective despite all the evidence presented there and elsewhere. I get the distinct impression there was pressure caused by the lack of supplies that lead to hesistation recommending anything better than cloth/low quality surgical style masks. Personally I think this is one of the bigger mistakes made in this country - prioritising managing the situation rather than being very clear on facts. Too often the government focussed on 'the message' rather than communicating what was known, this may have helped short term with getting people to do what they wanted but it sowed massive distrust that continues to this day. The big caveat to all this masks only work if worn properly and at population scale plenty of people don't like wearing them or make half assed efforts. In those cases masks can provide a false sense of security. Without good ventilation indoor spaces are still a problem even with masks (because masks aren't perfect) and it's again one of those areas where England is an outlier. Many other countries, including Scotland, have tightened ventilation requirements for buildings to ensure more fresh air (something that is a good idea even ignoring covid or other infectious diseases).

I think a lot of conspiracy theories especially around Covid and climate change come from people forgetting/not knowing how science works. Science gets to answers by investigation, analysis, testing, etc. It's a process not a single result. Scientists make mistakes, there are misunderstandings, different people do the same testing and get different results. It takes time and multiple people working on the same things to get to settled conclusions where the inconsistencies are resolved and understood. In the past scientific results generally only made the news in a substantial way once near the end of the process not as a blow by blow during the process. Most of the climate change research happened away from the news and things were mostly settled in the late 90's early 2000's. However, there are always outlier papers contesting one point or other (its just part of the process) and those whose interests are against decarbonisation try to hold them up as proof that they are right. You have to be an expert in the field to really understand the points raised and why these outliers are indeed outliers (and even sometimes deliberately misleading) so the general public can't easily tell. COVID really highlighted the workings of science in a way that made conspiracies very easy to start. Scientists were publishing research as fast as possible. As is usual, some of that research had errors or inconsistencies but because of the urgency there wasn't time for the scientific process to resolve those issues before the information was brought to the public. When the public and governments were presented with this inconsistent information it's easy to see how a 'choose your own adverture' type experience happened for lots of people, especially when people in power weren't following their own rules. An example is masking against COVID. @marshian claims that masks have been proved not to work dispite the earlier claims they did work. That's not really accurate. There have been many hundreds of papers published looking at masking. Some show it works, some show it doesn't. Again, you have to be an expert in the field to understand these results and come to an overall conclusion. I'm not an expert in the field so all I can do if I want to make an informed decision about whether to wear a mask is listen to people who are. The conclusion I found from doing that is that good FFP3 masks worn properly do massively reduce your risk of catching airborne illnesses (covid included). A bit of cloth over your face is much much less effective and possibly counter productive (how often were people cleaning those?). Surgical masks are also not great for airborne viruses but better than cloth ones.

None of the AI companies are making money, their users are spending far more in compute resources than they make in subscriptions and as the models get more complex the cost goes up (there are limits to power/data centre availability and compute demand is going up faster than Moores Law scaling). Once you get the real bill for your use you might suddenly find your laziness lessens

And those that are financially and politically motivated (though political motivation is often driven by financial interests as well) I'd prefer this government to what we had before or Reform but they really don't seem up to the challenge we face in basically any field. I wasn't expecting anything miraculous but I'm geniuinely shocked at how back they are and the country seems to agree (ratings not far off the Liz Truss budget atm). Zero chance that would fly in the past and likely still today (though less so). When's the last time they put up fuel duty? Not entirely sure about this. We get solutions to problems designed around constraints in our system. We have so many layers of crap that we keep building on rather than fixing the underlying problem. No doubt the current system is incredibly inefficient and the money could likely be better spent but I do think the uptake is likely higher than if they hadn't done anything and fixing the underlying problem is something that would take years, though we should be laying the framework for that now.

There are ways you could do this, but it sounds like this isn't your only issue. First useful thing I found when I searched, there will be easier ways: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3946145 Can you infer the building from the sequence they were taken in? I would expect if you go through the pictures numbering and labelling things it might be possible to show the route you walked the building and thus where the photos are. This seems like the bigger deal than the geotagging. How thoroughly have you checked? Maybe something is visible in the background of another photo or maybe a walk around video (if you took them). How would it affect your SAP score if this was assumed to be the default value? (I thought it was possible to move forward on that basis but I might be misunderstanding). That all said, the easier option is to find someone willing to work with what you have without a fuss if thats possible.

@Canski is the location data in the photos simply not accurate enough to figure out which site the photo was taken in or is the person just not willing to look at it? If the former, can you say with certainty based on something else where the photos were taken?

Well that sent me down a rabbit hole. I think what I've said above about licences likely only applies if you have on-site generation and even then maybe it's only bigger scale - really not finding much info. Looks like it's perfectly fine to do sub-metering to tenants so long as you don't profit - charges need to pass through. That does of course mean any sale would have to be a leasehold sale for it to continue after sale. This does sound like the easiest way to sell, though if you were looking to sell you could also price up the cost of a connection to the grid at that point.

So long as you own both properties and aren't metering the use of energy/recharging I doubt there is an issue in the short term assuming you can get past building control (not sure about that aspect). Doubt you'd be able to sell the property seperately though. If the property is close to your existing then I suspect the cost of electrical connection will be much lower than the previous connection as the DNO should be able to reuse a chunk of the work they charged you for last time. If it's far away then trenching from your existing house to the new would also be expensive. Having said all that, I'm out of my depth here, replied earlier because I am aware of the restrictions on resale of energy, etc, not sure about anything beyond that.

I'm sure there was a previous thread with a similar issue but I can't find it right now. What I did find is this one: Which includes the attached PDF that suggests geolocation embedded in the image is ok. It does suggest that the file name of each photo includes which plot though. Something you could handle with some tedious work if needed. Technical_Bulletin_A_Guide_to_Photographic_Evidence_for_New_Homes (1).pdf

Would this be an annex style property dependent on the first? AirBNB with all bills included? If so then I think this is ok. If it's a property you want to be independently leased out or sold then I think theres an issue. AFAIK you are not allowed to privately resell energy without registration and a license and it certainly wouldn't be worth the admin, etc, to do that for a single house, it does happen in large blocks of flats with shared energy systems.

The site refers to meeting the needs of approved document L appendix B. Having just read that I can't see why your photos do not meet the standard. All the app does is stamp the image with the information that is embedded in the metadata. If the assesor isn't happy accessing the meta data how about using a program to extract that data and overlay it on the images. With a little scripting you could even make the last modified date on the files match the original. Not looked but I suspect you could script something like infranview to do this without too much trouble (ask ChatGPT?). Without cryptographic attestation there is no way that there is any way anything could be enforced. Worst case your assessor doesn't accept and look for another with the modified images and don't tell them you modified them by adding the overlay.

Living the dream!

It really doesn't. Maybe it used to but but now with every news outlet scratching around for money and everyone just wanting to get news on a free website/short video clips the most common motivation behind a headline or an article is 'What will get the most clicks?'. The number of staff dedicated to investigations or detailled reporting has been slashed to almost nothing. Instead of a journalist being given time to research a story, talk to people to understand the subject, etc, they are expected to churn out 2 or 3 click worthy articles a day. An article on a website, even the big ones, has a good chance of either being substantially written by AI or by a PR agency pushing a certain line because the outlet is just not earning enough money to pay for more staff. This doesn't just affect the for-profit media either. Both the BBC and Guardian are supposedly non-profit with funding sources at least partially outside of ad-sales/readership but they have been following the same pattern (maybe a little slower). Thats before touching on the partiality of a lot of our news sources these days, which overall is slanted to the anti-environmental right and thus those outlets are even less likely to report on good environmental news.

I tend to think the focus on this is misguided. It's obviously true but it's one of the things that makes a large number of people reject the idea of making changes to deal with climate change. Maybe it wasn't true in the past but we have the technology now so that we can relatively easily achieve a future with very low emissions without these sorts of changes. Solar, Wind, Batteries are all cheap enough now that it makes sense to use them even ignoring the environmental benefits. SIAC in China has just launched its new MG car there for about $10k with a new type of battery that is both much cheaper to make and much longer range. They claim something like 400miles and very rapid charge. We are very near the point where it is illogical for pretty much anyone to want a fossil fueled vehicle. Theres a guy on Youtube 'Electric Trucker' who vlogs about his job driving electric 40t trucks around Europe. IDK what they cost to buy, but he is easily using up all his allowed driving time in these electric trucks and the charging infrastructure is good enough that it doesn't seem to be causing him much inconvenience at all in his deliverys.

Security screws are so odd given that pretty much any set of screwdriver bits generally has them all in. I guess they stop some people but they certainly don't stop me or I guess anyone interested in electronics/computers (as security screws are more common and so are the bit sets) they just make removing the screws more annoying.

Welcome, I like your line of thinking in the subject!

For the price of the FP washer you can get two decent 400mm wide ones. So at the cost of 200mm extra space you can have two independent washers. Seems like a much better idea to me. Not something for retrofit though.

Coming back to this after taking a while to think. I'm not really coming up with much that hasn't already been suggested. Reconfiguring bedroom two as posted would allow you to widen the hall and potentially allow space at the end for stairs. I like Mikes suggestion best if you want to preserve bedroom 3 as it keeps the top of the stairs fairly central and the rooms fairly square. I would look at reconfiguring the built-in's in bedroom 3 to create a square space for the bed around the window. Simpliest is just deleting the builtin nearest the window. Alternatively it looks like there might be room to slot the wardrobe in next to the door (would mean a narrow corridor) and then putting another at a right angle to that facing the bed/window: If the room was wider I'd have a desk by the window and the bed headboard on the left hand wall but I don't think there's enough room to comfortably pass by the end of the bed. Not really coming up with a good use for the garage without a much more significant remodel. If you widen the hall then putting a wall up with door to separate the hall from the dining room wouldn't be a big issue. Probably lots of layout options within that space depending on your preferences. With a more involved project you might be able to look at stealing a bit of room from the living room but that doesn't seem overly worth it to me.