Hastings

Yes. Building Control specified very small vents every 1.5m, 30cm above ground level, and that the cavity be open at the top to the roof space. I used Manthorpe Refurbishment Drill Weep Vents set into the ends of MDPE water pipe drilled into the walls. Had to buy a 35mm x680mm masonry drill bit just for the purpose. These weep vents are rubbish and fall to pieces within months, due to UV I suppose. Drilling this type of wall seems a bad idea because it disturbs the loose stone fill inside (sometimes jamming the drill bit) and therefore the structure of the wall. The gable end walls were too thick to drill but had a bigger vent in already to feed the woodburner. The woodburner had a duct off the back of it going through the internal wall to the cavity.

Airtight build with MVHR. Structural wall panels were filled with 100 wood fibre, fitted together with expanding foam tape, Intello membrane, then cross-battened 50mm and filled with 50mm wood fibre. One or two needed a pulley to lift. Window reveals framed out and fitted with PIR, 25, 50, or 75mm depending on available space.

We did a structural 2-storey inner timberframe, 50mm away from the old stone rubble walls, with metal-web Posi-joists for the mid-floor (ideally hang these off the inner side of the frame to avoid cold bridging). New slate roof was sat on the old walls at my insistence - the engineer wanted it to sit it on the inner timber frame *. New windows (Accoya d/glazed traditional sash) also set into the original openings of the stone wall. The difficulty with this is the foundations required - have to be very close to the inside of the old walls and, depending a bit on soil conditions, likely to disturb the ground under the old walls if you are not careful. When we dug for the new floor/foundation concrete raft and discovered the old walls stopped not much below ground level the engineer said we should underpin the entire building but then he agreed we could instead just feather the the edge of the internal foundation raft at an angle, away from the old walls. *If the foundations were even deeper, to support the roof weight too, I doubt we would have got away with it.

That is very helpful to know, thanks. We have a 10,000L tank but it was the local rainfall data vs roof area calc that was equally, if not more, important in our having to prove 'sufficiency' of the supply. Was there any official assessment of the water supply, like to show roof area vs rainfall calculations for how much water you can ever collect in a year?

Same, in Argyll. But we're restricted to max occupancy of 2 by a planning order due to the rainwater supply not being sufficient. Is your rainwater harvesting your sole supply for water?

Honda EU10i working well with my 5yr-old Multiplus offgrid system. I use it fairly seldomly, in winter mostly. Run it at 80% capacity to keep the exhaust hot and prevent carbon buildup. Before the EU10i i had a cheaper Honda frame generator that I couldn't get to work with the Multi.

Did you manage to improve things? My system is 5 years old and one thing that's clear from reading this forum topic (MVHR) is that not enough thought, attention and design is applied to how to keep all the myriad parts of the airflow path clean. In particular, positioning of the external intake vent (mine is on a slate roof two storeys high and I don't know whether it has a mesh within it) and cleaning of the heat exchange core unit.

Previous house was Grade 2 listed 2 up 2 down cottage and last time I asked the council (about 15 yrs ago) what the options were for adding insulation they said they couldn't answer questions without an upfront £250 fee. Annoying when everyone else was getting paid to insulate more modern houses.

Never installed anything like this before and looking for advice on how to fix to the RSJ and to the vertical two sides which are very rough. Thanks.

I wasn't going to worry about thermal bridging as it won't be a heated space.

Are there any special precautions to take when fitting an aluminium d/g 3 door bi-folds unit into an opening (2360x2200) that has an RSJ over it? I expect to fit packers between the steel joist and the bifolds frame so they won't be directly touching each other but wonder if the fixings that connect the two will create enough of an electrical connection to cause the aluminium to corrode prematurely? Environment is fairly high humidity (West coast Scotland) close to sea. Wind blown rain regularly contains salt. My 5-year-old timber front door handle and lock made of aluminium alloy and stainless steel parts is already showing signs of corrosion. The bi-folds will be installed in an attached uninsulated, unlined, random rubble stone workshop/store. The opening currently has a temporary timber frame and OSB panel in place with new cement render finishing up against its outer top and side face edges. The new bifolds would be fitted in the same position.

So no need to disconnect each battery from the others while I'm using it? Doesn't the charge spread out gradually between all the batteries in the group when connected back together?

I have 8x 12V 200Ah AGM batteries arranged as two 4x12V strings connected to each other in parallel to make a 48V supply. They power a 5kVA inverter/charger that powers the house. The inverter/charger has died and I wondered if, to let me charge laptop and phones while getting it repaired/replaced, I can temporarily connect a small 12V 300W inverter I have to one of the 12V batteries while it is still connected to/within the 8 battery bank setup? Or must I disconnect it from its neighbour first? I could of course disconnect each battery completely before using it but the connectors are secured by nuts and bolts and it's PITA to do so frequently. I want to keep the entire bank connected as a 48V unit so that I can continue charging it with my 48V wind turbine and its own charge controller.

This seems like a better perspective than the EU's agency blowing its own trumpet: https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review/energy-transition-tracker "...Country Transition Tracker annually assesses progress across a range of energy sector indicators and highlights those nations that are most advanced in decarbonising their energy systems." The score cards are also very nice to look at.

The very latest tomato growing greenhouses in the UK use natural gas (as well as heat pumps) to heat them, using the plants to capture some of the CO2 (source: https://energyadvicehub.org/giant-low-carbon-greenhouses-could-grow-12-of-uk-tomatoes/). I don't know if they change the fact that UK tomatoes grown in heated greenhouses in winter have a higher carbon footprint than tomatoes imported from warmer countries, like Spain, even after you add in the food miles.