Conor

Cheers. Just found the empty drum outside and says inhibitor on it, so happy days.

Thought just popped in to my head the other day. Do you need inhibitor in an UFH system? All plastic piping, short lengths of copper pipe at the buffer and DHWC, and of course metal components in the heatpump. Presumably stainless steel or brass. Currently filled with water and glycol. Lovely pale blue colour 😀

The regs for stairs to single rooms or storage areas are different... Glorified ladders.

That's insane, mine was £500 for three pits and engineer supervised. I think you should look at different building forms, because if they are charging that much for a simple dig and report, who knows what they'll charge for anything else out of contract?

I don't see any drainage. What the floor build up and where does the water go? You'll always have the risk of water coming in, therefore you should treat it as an external element - e.g. insulated underneath, waterproof layer (EPDM, PVC etc), DPC along and wall and flashing etc at doors and most importantly a means for water to escape. Apart from the glass ballustrade, only other thing you can do is some sort of overhang/ shading fins on the soffit and around the reveals.

For the double slates (aka slate and a half) you want one for every other slate that's on a verge, plus another dozen or so for breakages etc. You should be able to return unused double slates as they normally come from an opened pallet anyway. We went with 600x300mm as it's a more modern look... And that's all they had in stock 🤣

None of our windows open outward. Or doors.

You say this is bespoke new build. Your project or somebody else's? If yours, surely you know all the details of the design and what was done? Then you can go chasing your builder/suppliers if something wasn't to spec or not setup properly.

For us, the demolition planning application went in at same time as the FPP (just a separate form), and was automatically approved at the same time.

The next day. The longest time limit depends on the LAs policy

Your big issue is, as Dave says, is that you won't be able to offload materials on the road side, you'll need to ensure a 40fter can pull right in to the site and out again, that's the worst case. That's a tall order. What will probably need to happen is that you'll have to unload on opposite of road and use a telehandler to bring stuff in to the site. When ordering materials or plant, ensure they use the shortest rigid lorry they have. We have OH cables on the opposite side of the road to us, and they still caused issues. E.g. couldn't unload a digger the other week as the boom was too close as the driver needed to swing the machine round 180 (block grab and buckets on the bed as well that had to come off first) to offload. Was a faff and took nearly an hour to get the things off. Youll need to erect goal posts under the cables one way or another. Find out from NIE if they are HV or LV, as that impacts things as well.

Check the diverter (3 way) valve that splits the flow from the heating system from the hot water cylinder. See if it moves fully when switchimg from heating to hot water.

Are the rads heating up? If the rads are warm, but room stays colds, suggests that heat loss rate is higher than what the system can match. What insulation and airtightness did you achieve? What size is the heat pump?

25mm???? Mate, you're going to be throwing heat away and you'll resent that extension for the rest of your days. The roof is the least of your worries. You need to get those walls sorted before you go any further. You mentioned 25mm insulated plasterboard. That won't do the job either. Can you get to the wall cavities at all? You'd want to remove the boards that have been put in and get the walls pumped with EPS beads. Either that or 75mm insulated board.

Getting out of the ground is the hard bit. It might be worth getting somebody in with a total station to see where you've set everything out, esp the levels.

There should have been a separate manifold with its own pump upstairs for those loops. Too late now. At least you can bleed the radiator. What are the flow rates set at when it's all running together? The pump might be struggling to get the water upstairs when lots of zones are open, which would explain the cool rad. You'd be looking for flows of 0.5-2lpm depending on the loop length and heat loss.

You'll never notice once is up. How was this an issue in the first place? How were the footings and brickwork setout?

Does it have a service menu you can access via laptop etc? A lot of systems have a service menu for commissioning etc, Vs the owner menu / interface which can be limited My mvhr had four different modes that correspond to different fixed fan speeds. Default is 3, then when humidity goes over a threshold, it goes to full boost. In this cold weather I've changed it to mode 2, and on a timer as despite the heat exchanger, incoming air was only 15c and noticeable in bedrooms. Also, air was far too dry. Dry skin and static shocks all the time. Much better now and only runs at certain times of the day.

I've the neoair stats. Useless, range is terrible. I have one sitting directly above the receiver on the floor above (literally less than 3m straight line distance) and it doesn't connect half the time. That could be your problem if the stats aren't communicating with the hub and therefore failing to call fo heat. I'm getting rid of mine and hoping for a refund as not fit for purpose. Not even attempted to install the top floor one. All three are currently sitting in the plant room beside the hubs. But... The high gas usage seems to suggest that the boiler is working hard, so the heat is going somewhere. You mentioned that pipes are heating up but not the floor? Or is it that some floors heat up, but not others? Do you know the ground floor build up? How much insulation is under the floor? If there was only 100mm insulation in the loft, my money is on very little or nothing on the ground floor and you're basically heating the earth.

Yep, the cold weather forced me to look closely at the setup. Most of my flow rates were far too high which meant the return temp to the heat pump was too high. Dialled right back and the temp in the buffer tank is no much steadier. I've no idea of how much electric it's using, but when I went in to the setup menu the other day the compressor and fan were shown at 100%... so guessing the full ~4kW power consumption most of the time. Frosting up has been an issue, we're in a sheltered valley near the sea so very humid air. Just went outside when it was defrosting, and back out 10mins later an already fins are all white. Has been a good learning experience, I now know the next time there is a period of cold weather, is to get the heating on in advance as it does take a long time to heat up the house once it's lost a couple degrees. Oh, and curtains. It's amazing how much heat you radiate away with bare glass.

Working brilliantly. Keeping the house at 18-19 mostly on economy 7 overnight with an additional 4 hours in middle of day. If we had curtains/blinds it would be even less. No issues meeting the required flow temps. Air temp hasn't been over zero for several days. Can't complain.

We're in exactly the same scenario. As are thousands of others, I'd guess. For us, it's a bit different as the garage provides screening as was key to us getting permission... but as my architect says it's highly unlikely the LA will take action when it's entirely reasonable for self builder to run out of money!!! However, I am going to build the front facing wall of the garage up to eaves height as it basically forms a continuous wall from our house across to the boundary and will provide most of the screening and I'll plant small trees along it to get the rest of the effect.

The developer may as well hand you a blank cheque. Enjoy your early retirement.

Thinking the same. Ours is a 5 bed plus an office / games room and is 315m². A three bed would be more like 180m².

The answer to that depends entirely on your overall ventilation strategy. I.e. mvhr or individual room extracts plus trickle vents.