Declan52

But your surveyors should have realised that an ashp is the wrong choice for your type of house, poorly insulated, esp as small a heat pump that you have been given. That's their job. To come out and do heat loss calculations and show that what they are going to install will be good enough to cover the losses. The fact they wanted to install extra insulation is a good indication that they didn't think it was suitable. To over come your heat losses you need water going round the rads that is 70 degrees or higher. An oil boiler would have been the wiser choice. It could run flat out and produce hot water fairly quickly. An ashp just won't be able to do this and maintain any degree of efficiency. Most here that have an ashp have very low energy builds so need very little heat to maintain that 20/21 setpoint.

Put the kettle on and let an electrician do it.

You can't have any other means of heating your house except something that is room specific like a wood burner. Even though in a low energy house a single wood burner will heat the house and more likely over heat a house you are allowed one.

Was there not a new member a few weeks ago asking was it ok to remove a wall in his basement!!!

Welcome. Whereabouts in the UK/Ireland are you looking.

Going by your info of it only occurring after persistent rain then it's definitely getting in from above and coming down your cavity. No matter how hard it is going to be to remove all that's there, to really discover what is going on it's going to have to come out or it's just going to be another bodge after the multitude of Bodge jobs that have already taken place. You could try a few coats of Thompson's water seal painted over the face paying particular attention to around the top of the lintel. Then next summer arrange for what's there to come out and be fixed permanently.

Think you going to have to remove all the beading,tape,wooden header etc and leave just the window sitting there so you can look up the cavity. Take a hose and squirt above the lintel on the outside and look up the cavity and see if water is getting in and coming down the cavity. Then you will know where it's coming from and the next step to fix it. The dpc they put on should go from the outside skin across to the inside skin not just wrapped around the lintel.

So rain looks like it's running down the face of that wall and going back into the cavity at the head down the cavity and onto your window. Look at the difference in colour of both lintels.

Is moisture coming down the cavity and can't escape via the dpc due to the compriband.

I looked at the granite version and it would have worked out more expensive than my quartz.

The main one would be this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Housebuilders-Bible-13-Mark-Brinkley/dp/1916016804 But it all depends on how much knowledge and experience you already have. To be honest if you read each blog here you would pick up as much info as in that book plus some of it might be more specific to your own type of build.

Think your going to have to lift the floorboards and open pandoras box and see what's happening. It's not an quick fix but will be a permanent fix. Pop the floor boards in the bad spots and take a few pics and post here.

Just buy a few electric rads. The money saved will more than pay for the cost to run them. Still put the insulation in the floor, walls and roof though.

From that front lip you would want maybe 20-25mm of a gap till your render then another 20-25mm for the render. But it all depends on that front gap. Some like that to be 10 mm so it sits further onto the block but then you have barely an edge before the render. It's just about how they wanted it to look from below.

Did they build up to that height and then went to put the fancy sandstone ledge on and in doing so realise they where way out of plumb and square and have stepped it back in in order to give less issues fitting the truss.

In NI when they closed the rhi scheme you had to have it installed and commissioned and the paperwork into them by the shut of date. Some installers where working round the clock to beat the deadline. Just phone them up and ask what will they accept.

I think you have to make an appointment to visit an apple store to get anything looked at by their jedi masters.

Won't need to.

Best advice yet. Take it into an apple store and see if they will give you your money back and go and buy a good Android tablet!!!

Do not under estimate the physical toll of carrying that amount of blocks and mortar will have on someone who has never done this type of work before. Your fingers will have little to no skin left on them. Your knees, back, elbows and wrists will be sore each and every day. Plus by the time you have the house built you might have become pretty decent at laying blocks and go and look at the first few walls you built and cringe at what way you left them.

The waste pipe will be put in before the pour. You need to know the size of the tray so you can use some timber to create an opening. Then you can easily connect it all up when the time comes. They will be no ufh pipes under the tray so nothing can get damaged. You can just fill the opening with sand to make it safer to work round.

There was a 100 waste pipe already set in the sub floor so I used the correct cap and bend to get it roughly where it needed to be. I had a channel cut out of the floor insulation which allowed me some wiggle room for moving the pipe and waste trap. Dry fitted the tray to make sure the trap was where it needed to be and then covered the waste pipe in sand then the dry sand cement mix.

I left a rectangular hole in my screed, used 3*2 to form the opening, to allow my finished floor to go down. Once I had my tiles picked out I could work out my final height and used a strong dry mix of sand and cement to fill the hole up to the height it needed to be. My tray was also the same size and it's heavy so it's not the sort of thing you would move when you stub your toe on it. The weight of the surrounding slab keeps the insulation from moving plus with the gap round the outside of the tray filled in once you where happy with how it set it can't move so was solid.

From usa maybe.

The use of a tile or anything for that matter isn't really a big deal. It happens. Won't cause any issues. The bigger issue looking at the last few pics is either that house is way way out of square or really out of plumb. Have you enough room between the wall and the scaffold at each corner to drop a plumb Bob to check how bad it could be. A long piece of string and a weight, bolt would work.