JFDIY

Red and blue Butterfly handled valves are correct and both open. Top 'knobs' are actuators controlled by your room thermostats, short of removing them and looking at the pin underneath when room stats call for heat. Bottom knobs are the flow adjustments for each zone, if the water in the system is clean you can see a flow indicator and these are your best clue to see if water is flowing. Have a feel of all the pipes, see where heat is getting to. Underfloor heating can take a good few hours to start to increase a room temp. Is there a pump near to this manifold, it is usual to have one, in my opinion the thermostatic mixer is not conventional and you usually have a pump/mixer combined to circulate the water locally at the manifold, blending it with a fresh slug of water from the main boiler circuit regularly. Do the temperature indicators on the manifolds ever rise? All that said I suspect it's a controls issue and a switch somewhere has been in-advertantly turned off isolating the UFH .

Getting the most out of the plasterboard off-cuts too

Should be able to isolate the supply and swap that isolator to avoid unnecessary joins etc.

Tradepoint account can be set up with a business card.........?

Just made me double check, the one I've used says either wet or dry trap;

As others say, you will get warm water at your taps due to heat soak, we've got this in our place. I would run a 10mm or 15mm pipe to the kitchen tap under the floor, either below the sub floor or in the insulation. All other taps won't bother you so much, but on a hot summers day it's a bind to run off 10 litres or water to make a cold glass of squash for example.

I've used a flexible, convoluted washing machine extension hose for my condensate drain, made it very easy to site the unit and remove later on if I need to, any excess is lost by closing up the convolutions. you can also pull the pipe through joists etc as needed rather than struggle with rigid pipe and joints where you don't need to. You can create a U-bend loop in the pipe to form the trap as well, just made my installation very easy that way. The condensate is clean fresh water, not like boiler flue condensate which is acidic, so you can even use copper if you wish.

Can you leave the standard panel unfitted, then use some sort of L bracket or corner block to fix the decorative panel and that becomes the back of the cupboard.

Interesting topic, and if you look at the finances they probably don't add up. There doesn't appear to be many parallel comparisons either as most people fit it to new build houses or as part of a major refurb where lots of other work to improve the building fabric is being carried out. I'll be honest I've not done any work on the financial benefit in terms of reduced heating bills, this is my experience. We have a converted barn, about 50-55m², two adults and one child, converted 10 years ago, built to building regs from around 2000 (when work started), so by no means air tight. Double glazed, UFH etc. We've always suffered with condensation on windows, every morning I'd get up and wipe the bottom 3" of water from the windows and frames, the external door handles would be dripping wet with condensation. To try and combat this we'd keep several windows on vent and the bedroom skylight vent open all year round and even in the winter often have the skylight open several inches to help and reduce the stuffiness my wife complained of, and a chilly drafty bedroom on my side.... We never dried clothes in the house, have a tumble dryer in an outside shed. Were building a large extension (125m²) and I've looked into mvhr in the past before the extension was a reality and shy'd away from the cost. However I decided fitted mvhr to do two things, get rid of the need for a downdraft extractor over the island hob and also try help with the above in our existing part of the build. Over the summer I've fitted the unit and ducting and turned it in in October, set it up by feel for now in just the original barn as we've not properly broken through to the extension yet. Cost was higher than many on here, but I bought new everything and DIY'd the install for about £3K, I think to get the quality of what I've done off trades people it would have been closer to £6K. Since switching it on, doing a rough set up, I can honestly say the difference is night and day, the house is no longer damp, air in all rooms is fresh, as mentioned by @Jeremy Harris bathroom towels are always dry and we no longer need any window vents open, even dry a few clothes so reducing the tumble drier usage. If it cost me £250 a year to run then I'd still be happy, in reality it won't - I bet we were using close to that having a skylight open all the time. Like I said; same house, nothing else has changed, but the difference in feel is remarkable.

I must have crap taste as well seeing as I've used it on my place.

If in the heated envelope they need to be lagged, the incoming / outgoing air will chill the pipes more than the building air will heat them and condensation will form on the outside of them - I have one un-insulated filter enclosure and I see condensation on the outside of it on a cold day, it will get lagged soon. If his pipes are going to get encased in insulation then that might mitigate it.

Finally a bit more insight into a MVHR install, I've done most of mine but it would have been handy to have seen this 6 months back. Link (Hope he's going to lag the inlet\outlet pipes to fresh air.)

Click Grid do a neon module to put next to your switches in the same faceplate. On my garage that only has access from the outside, I have external pir operated outside lights with a bulkhead light above the internal light switches, so when you approach in the dark the inside is partly illuminated on arrival. Also you can tell from inside when the outside lights have been activated.

I guess it depends if it makes any financial sense, and do you have a use for it? If it's going to sit as a spare for 'one day' then by the time you need it the chances are it's life will be limited due to age, and you've got to store it in the meantime.

Could you hire calibrated kit with proper funnels etc and range for him to view the test while you do it, if you set the syetem up before hand , prepare a compliance chart with expected flows of each room (and reference how each one meets the regs requirement) should only take an hour to prove it to them in person, tick each one off as you go through it.

Or take up drone flying, would severely 'hamper your enjoyment of the land' if you couldn't use half your garden

Don't Pollard the tree until issue is resolved, might help your cause. They shouldn't be pruning your tree to clear a new cable, different if already installed I'd imagine that then they can prune for clearance. Deny them access Be unfortunate if the cable did go in and was pulled down by a falling branch at a future date ?

∆ and those are the best part of £200 bare. I got two off eBay for £75 each over 6 months

Just thought I'd add that although the duct is quoted as 25mm, that is internal height, so at the joints it's closer to 30mm on the outside if not a bit more .

Just took some photos from ground level, might be a bit grainy. I'm using 100mm terminals, all ducting joints are from Toolstation but using manrose duct, because it can be purchased in 2m lengths (less joints) and it's a tighter fit into the TS joints than their own joints. All joints sealed with domus Flexi joint sealer then taped The tricky part was getting from 75mm semi-rigid, I'm using either a home brew adaptor for a single pipe to 100mm and channel connector Or a TS air brick adaptor then onto a blauberg 204*60 channel connector which gets to twin 75mm semi-rigid where higher flow is required. @gc100 Can't comment on noise, far from ready to couple up yet, but I don't forsee a problem.

If you chop it in, do the opposite end to the taps, nothing worse than the tap heads clattering the tiles, like my sister's do. ? Not do much of an issue with modern 1/4 turn taps. Oh and lifting one end of the bath toward diagonal is usually the way to get them in, assuming it's not got fixed parallel ends.

I always thought that, but on these large format tile planks I've been advised 1/3 bond is a better plan, because they often have a pronounced bow, (generalising as @sjb1288 mentions theirs are flat) , any height difference because of the bow is said to be less obvious/reduced if you move the bond away from mid point. That said, the bond on these just looks odd to me, let alone the general highs and lows. How do they feel underfoot with just socks on, if can be tolerated then scribe and cut skirting boards to hide it if just visual.

Can't you just register a 'charge' on the property, if memory serves this is done with land registry, so if the property is sold you get the money owed. Likewise when you split the title of the plot you will be able to remove the charge when the land registry is informed of the split. I'm not a solicitor, but this is how I borrowed from family against a property - just so it's formally recorded.

I've use 225x25mm duct across my vaulted ceilings, to save space loss, not connected up yet but the cross sectional area is equivalent to two 75mm o/d (63mm I/d ) ducts. The only tricky bit is getting from the 75mm ducts to the flat channel, can photo what I've done if interested.

Air will be fine, set the line pressure to 15psi (1bar) and you won't damage anything, this is the typical system pressure when in use.