Gone West

Our last house was a portal timber I-beam framed house. Being a portal frame there were no internal structural walls and it was open to the apex wherever we wanted it. It was a PH and the MVHR vents upstairs were low level with the ducting running in the ground floor ceiling. I'm sorry I don't have any decent pictures of the ceilings.

We are hopefully replacing our oil fired Rayburn this year with an external oil fired boiler. Oil fired boilers are not quiet but I don't hear it when I'm in bed and it does produce very hot water very quickly. You are welcome to it if your new system doesn't work as you would like, although you would have to collect it. PS. I don't suppose your buffer tank would fit in your workshop room downstairs.

My solar thermal system has a thermostat, which at the moment is set at 60C, but I will increase it to 75C. The solar thermal has apparently been installed for many years and is a low maintenance system. The boiler stat is near the centre of the tank but it could be set to a higher temperature if required. I will be using radiators so I would want the temperature in that part of the TS to be around 55C to 60C.

This year I am hoping to replace our oil fired Rayburn with an external Grant oil fired standard boiler. I was going to use a McDonalds thermal store with the TS directly linked to the radiators and a coil for DHW. There will also be a solar thermal coil and a PV powered immersion heating the TS. Something like this:

I used Durbocem last summer to paint a damp retaining wall. Seems to have worked well and I only brushed the surface off before painting. https://www.andrewscoatings.co.uk/shop/interior-exterior-walls/damp-mould/durbocem/

I can only again say that I used water softeners for seventeen years with a septic tank and for eleven years with a treatment plant and had no problems at all. I can only imagine it's the salt content from the regeneration cycle which is thought of as possibly causing a problem and that the bacteria are adversely affected but I've seen no evidence of that.

We had a Southern Water chap come round every year checking for leaks from the mains. All he had was a long metal tube with a metal cup attached to the top. He used to touch the water main with the tube and listen at the cup end. He told me it was the easiest way to find leaks.

Until recently we lived in East Kent and the water hardness was very high. We used twin cylinder water softeners for many years and had septic tanks and treatment plants and had no problems at all.

I would check the tiles for Chrysotile Asbestos as it is a possibility. This system outputs more heat per m2 but without a well insulated slab you might be losing half of the heat downwards into the ground. If you used IWI the pipework could be hidden behind the plasterboard because you will need some form of wall insulation.

I used something similar to the McAlpine soil pipe adapter and in the house I just tiled over top. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/154788578070

I'm glad I don't like coffee as it's obviously saved me a lot of money.

I bought a roll of stainless steel wire wool, as used in racing exhaust systems, and I didn't have problems with mice or sparrows. I might just have been lucky though.

While we were building our last house we lived in an old bungalow with a 90l vented hot water tank which was tall and slim. We heated the water to 70C with an oil fired boiler and had baths. By the time the bath was finished the tank had heated up again.

I wouldn't and I've done renovations and a new build.

We didn't demolish our bungalow until the new build was complete, as we were living in it. The planners were fully aware of the demolition and required it to take place within three months of vacating the bungalow. We had to pay two lots of Council Tax until demolition was complete. Your demolition will be part of your planning and in our LA the Council Tax Office and Planning Office worked closely together. You might be lucky .

Nice looking house. I wanted to call our last house Shaidzagray but was overruled.

You can only buy online from Burncoose, although they do have some gardens you can visit.

We had regular visits throughout the build from the local Council Tax office. We started the build in 2010 and moved in 2018. In January 2018 the Council Tax Officer deemed that the house would be habitable in three months. In March 2018 we received notification from the VOA that it would be in Band 'F'. In May 2018 we appealed against the VOA valuation and suggested it should be in Band 'D'. We negotiated with the VOA and in July 2018 we came to an agreement with the VOA that it should be in Band 'E'. We sold the property last year and it is still in Band 'E'.

We lived in our bungalow, band B, while we built our new house in the garden. The VOA banded the new house as an F which we appealed asking for a D and it ended up being an E. The bungalow was demolished after we moved into the new house, and removed from the register and while both properties existed the new house was called New Property at 'old property name'.

We used Hedges Direct at our last house and this one. Good quality and choice. https://www.hedgesdirect.co.uk/ Burncoose Nurseries in Cornwall also a good supplier. https://www.burncoose.co.uk/site/index.cfm

Swallows generally build their nests on shelves such as beams inside buildings such as barns. They are completely different to house martins that build their nests from mud which is usually stuck to the wall and soffit.

Not my sandstone end either.

@pocster Wendy has spotted this thread and would like to know what make the cupboard doors are and where they came from. I can see another job on the horizon for me.

I had the three bathrooms Venetian Plastered back in 2016 and I was charged £62/m2. The team that did it were excellent and the finish was superb.

It's always subjective because the policies are written in such an ambiguous way that the planners can use them as they want. The Head of Planning told me one Planning Officer might refuse an application and another officer in the same office permit it. We went to the Planning Committee and won unanimously much to the planners annoyance. The planners themselves told me they didn't have anyone with design qualifications and asked the Conservation Officer to look at my application.