Conor

When we demolished the house on our site, I salvaged everything, Inc a Belfast sink (actually made in Belfast in 1920) and left in the garden. At some point I noticed it was missing, some fecker had stolen it!!! Anyway.. we're going for a large workstation sink in our new build. Its too big to fill with water, instead it has a gridded "false bottom" and a half basin that sits in on one half. You could use something like a stainless steel trivet from IKEA to create a false bottom, and just use a plastic basin if you need to do dishes in water.

You won't get away with less than ~50mm. Setup a laser and go round with a tape and you'll see the variations in the slabs. You don't want less than 35mm at any point for standard screeds, so 50mm depth gives you a bit of tolerance for high points.

We used compriband between the slates and fascia. Tho, we are using render board and was fitted after the roof was slated.

Our stud wall company is supplying moisture resistant plasterboard for our bathrooms and wetrooms. We have a large walk in shower in our ES wetroom - is plasterboard OK to tank and tile or would we be better off using backer board for the parts we're tiling?

You're only 3-4 miles away from a set of boreholes that produce nealy 5000m3 per day between them, and in the same geology. You'll have no issues. I proceed on the assumption that you'll need a reasonably large chunk of cash to get a water supply, be it your own borehole or a new water main connection. You'll most likely not be able to use your neighbour's.

Our contactor used a combo of Mars bars and steel deck chairs. Mara bars to protect the tanking membrane and to bring the decks up to the right height.

Water doesn't quite work like that. You can have a "restriction" point like a smaller valve that will have a pressure loss effect, but may not be significant if you have long pipe runs either side of it and they are greater diameter. Basically, when diameter narrows, velocity increases along that distance and leads to an increase in friction and pressure loss. At the far end, velocity will return to "normal" and you have no further additional loss (apart from some turbulent flow). There are other factors, namely the length of the pipework, size of the outlets, number of bends etc etc... But yes, larger diameter will mean better flow rates.... But how much of a difference is unknown.

Perfectly fine. I did this on my shed to keep the roof height below 2.5m.

Then our front door would have been nearly a metre above ground level, and our basement wouldn't have been very basementy.

Insulated raft - 200mm EPS and 100mm power floated concrete (Ufh etc within). You'll need to consult a structural engineer regarding the impact of excavating that close to existing footings, water proofing etc etc.

We have the hob and ovens down that end of the kitchen to keep it away from the "tea station". Seriously, there needs to be a zone in the kitchen for making tea whilst avoiding me and my, erm creative enterprises and associated debris.

You look at the total worst case heat loss - 3056w = 3kW. So it's saying on the coldest day you'll need continuous 3kW of heating to cancel out they heatloss and keep the house at that temperature. That means you want a 5kW heat pump.

I can confirm the batteries are the real deal - after a quick charge I can't notice any performance difference between it and my original 3ah battery in my circular saw. The drill tho.... not so impressive. guess i'm too used to brushless motors. I't'll be going on ebay soon.

It's often as simple as a mini digger digging a couple small holes to about 2m deep and your structural engineer sticking their head in and grabbing a handful of soil. We did ours when we were laying our temporary electric supply, digger was already there so only had to pay the engineer her £250 site visit fee. We are fortunate to be on a high modulus sandstone based red clay. As we were digging down the basement, we came across a layer of river gravel... Fortunately it was quite thin and our target depth was just below. If it had been thicker, would have cost us thousands.

I think the only material that's of any use at that thickness would be aerogel.

Who's speccing this for you and why are they not reccomending an established manufacturer like Brink, Zehnder, Paul etc? I'm assuming it's because they are selling it to you as part of a package? I, on the other hand, have gone for an obscure Lithuanian company that is almost unknown over here ?

If it were a utility company exercising statuatory rights of entry, it would be 28 days for installing new equipment, or 14days for maintenance of existing.

Are you insulating the floor? In my shed I put down 100mm EPS, dpm, then 100mm concrete. Worked a treat. The guy that owns the house now has a laser etching machine in it and from memory it was at least 200kg, more like 300, sitting on two feet. No issues that I've heard.

Kore.

Oh god no. you could push those piers over. Unless those rebar columns are tied in to piles below the base of the block work? I don't see any evidence of footings?

I was cheap and got plastic. It's terrible. Fragile, staples rip through it, rolls back up, and doesn't stuck too well to glue. Pay extra and get steel.

I will have two immersions - one in the hot water cylinder for hot water heating, and a larger one in the buffer tank for emergency heating in the winter should the ASHP side of things need a break... And if your electric goes out, then nothing works anyway.

No problem. We had some scratches on one frame from falling slates.. happened when scaffolders were moving boards and I didn't clean up before hand and debris dropped down. Keep your scaffolding clean and don't throw slates...

My cool energy ASHP and cylinder arrived today... They couldn't get it out as it was taller than the sides of the bay... Had to take it apart and lift the cylinder out by hand. Same issue at the curtain side.... No idea how it was put in!!

I'll find out soon enough!!!