Carrerahill

I wouldn't bother. Think about it logically, why would a wall pull apart and leave the top piece unsupported? The building above this "issue" mortar bed is bearing down on the rest, wall ties are not going to support an outer skin of brick, you would be seeing some pretty serious issues if that bottom visible courses plus whatever is below ground level had dropped.

I agree with the above, you can see the DPC, it looks like the mortar below has just failed and fallen out, it doesn't look like anything has moved. I would do some other investigations such as look round openings and things but if the house was otherwise fine and I wanted it I would not be put off only by these issues, there would need to be a sign of structural movement for the red flag to fly. Look at it this way, if the bottom of the wall had moved down, the top of the wall would move too, its not being suspended on skyhooks.

It could be a good precedent to set if they stopped asking for the MCS certs. It would open things up a bit and as long as approved equipment was being used, which it should be if sold in the UK for UK use (I know some will not) then it could encourage others to get solar without feeling railroaded into a MCS approved contractor. That would perhaps reduce costs for all. I did know that payments were possible without MCS cert, but it was more difficult. Maybe finally they are coming round to the whole thing and being more sensible.

Buy whatever is the most economical for your SWA then, especially if it is in relative isolation unlikely to be burning, such as in a ceiling/floor/wall space. Unless of course you want to use the LSZH stuff.

When it was about double the cost, if I am honest, probably not, but I see the difference is £13 for 2.5mm² PVC vs. LSF, so yes at that price difference I would. Even if I only did all my 1.5mm and 2.5mm and say had 1 x 6-10mm PVC cable, it would be better in a fire having most of my cable LSF. If your house is on fire and the cable is burning, you would hope in a modern house you would be long out of it before it got bad enough, however, if something happened, and I did not get out of it, me and my family, pets too, would have a much higher chance of survival. So even if I needed a good few drums, I would probably use T&E LSF. As for your SWA, how much of it is in the house/outbuilding, if 95% of it is in the ground then, maybe I'd take that risk.

I wondered the same, brickie looked at them it and said, "that's the top" after rolling them a bit, all I could see that he used to differentiate it was that the top was a vibrated, or simply a naturally settled finish but the bottom and sides were smooth from being in formwork. From what I can remember, the prestressed wire/rod is biased towards the bottom, so when loaded that steel is in tension and gives the strength, however, you also get plain ones... I think if the steel is mid, then its plain and can indeed go anyway. I have been left scratching my head looking at them too. Where is @Gus Potter - he will know for sure!

Basically low smoke, zero halogen and various variants are used in every commercial building and indeed most new residential developments it is not in BS7671 but is spec'ed as a standard now and oddly seems to be one of the things that everyone just accepts and rarely value engineer out (also because I think contractors buy so much is is cheap enough anyway), they now sell more of the low smoke variants than normal PVC, I also think the time will come grey T&E will go and we will just have low smoke variants as it will become more of a hindrance to make the normal PVC version. They always kept the low smoke variants more expensive because it was a premium product and it was on every spec up and down the country, but a shift may see this change soon. So on your costings, the price difference will be driven by the market. I have terminated both types of SWA cable and in all honestly I cannot see the big difference, knife to ring the sheath, slice it down the length, that pulls off, normal hacksaw or armour tool for the armours, internal bedding is fine too. Commercial boys have no choice really anymore and they get on with it.

Is that mortar onto roof felt? Seriously, this is a shambles.

You will rarely get anything like even 2.8kW from a 3.1kW string, it is common to add about 20% over max - all it means is that on the rare day you get perfect conditions (and if your install is perfect) then you will only make use of the 3kW, but the other 364 days you will get the benefit of being a bit closer to max input. It is only 100W, chances of you ever getting the 3.1kW are slim. So, not knowing the full story here, I could be wrong. Can you not just put all 10 of them on a string? Or 5 + 5 in a series/parallel string if voltage too high.

It can be done but you need to know specific technical details of the cells to check compatibility. Generally, you should not really mix different panel sizes, even if you were to do a parallel/series mix it would not be great. Best bet is 2 smaller inverters or one with dual string. It would be a bit like mixing different battery sizes, one might pull the other down etc. PV panels are made up of smaller cells, the cells in most panels are usually open circuit, 0.5V - so a 1 V panel would have 2 cells, a 60V panel would have 120cells, however, cell efficiency's and things improve, so a cell from 10 years ago will be far less efficient, i.e. less peak W than a cell from today, so your then mixing apples and pears.

UV resistant black building breather membrane stuff.

What is the anticipated board load? TPN board, each a potential of 100A, but what is the demand actually going to be? Reason I ask is 25mm could fly quite easily if the loads were OK. At 25mm² you might save £5 a metre! Also, 35mm² additional earth is a bit excessive, on 25/35mm² SWA the armour will be fine, I have never had a cable calc fail on a 25/35 armour earth on a SWA, if worried tack a 16mm² on in tandem. Put it this way, practically every cable schedule we do, for SWA's up to about 70mm² will go out with armour as the earth. Next time you are in a building with exposed services, look for all the sub-mains, most of them will be SWA on their own. What is being proposed is not wrong I hasten to add, just a lot of overkill and maybe some over egging on some figures which you are paying for.

What is the cable route?

I don't actually see any PV - maybe the top picture the little bit at the top right but those just look like tin roofs with roof lights.

Lack of investment. Most of those big sheds will be owned by big firms, big firms are usually owned by shareholders, assets change hands, businesses are bought and sold. If I own 50% of a business who plans to use funds to invest in the business I might decide, well if I can get 5 more years out of this and sell up then I'll be sorted why would I let them spend x amount on PV - sad truth. It takes long term investors and future thinking for big businesses to get things like this. Most of these older big sheds are pretty rough inside. I did a site survey of the M&E services of a shed for a £365m turnover (with high margin before anyone comments) company, the place was a pit, a total pit, lighting was from the 80's, place was literally manky, H&S almost didn't exist, I was almost hit by 2 forklifts being driven round blind corners at high speed, a single peep peep on the horn being the safety measure. Holes in the roof, I walked into the site and had 100% access without any checks, no manned security, a few poor girls in a disgusting office. Upstairs things were maybe better, the line up of Bentleys and Land Rover's told the story really. I am also involved in new build sheds from time to time, often the developer will not want to spend a single penny more than they need to. Different game but similar deal, housing developers will put in the bare minimum to comply. We got SAP calcs in which stated each flat needed 0.45kW per flat to comply. We proposed a 500W panel per flat, contractor reduced it to a 450W panel because it was £25 a flat cheaper. Personally I would have filled the roof, but what benefit does the developer get? They don't give a stuff. We have another national client who owns and builds for its own use up and down the country, no PV going on the roof even though their buildings have heavy electrical loads. No PV needed, they comply because they have a CHP. Architect said, oh lets cover the roof in PV - client, "Oh do we need that to comply". If not, it is not going on. I think maybe things will start to change, but sadly I think the PV market has now turned and prices are increased, there was a general downward trend in PV prices, not now.

Do you have RCCB's? I would suggest you do not and that you have an RCD - if it was an RCCB then it would add another slight level of complexity to your fault, so for the avoidance of doubt, what do you have? The Workshop circuit could simply be damp or something as simple as some creepy crawlies in amongst them, it could be external lighting or a lamp. I once had external lights with slugs on the junction box. The lights would reset and work fine for a day or two then the MCB or RCD would go, the RCD usually went when the lights were off, the MCB when the lights were on. Simple low impedance offered by the slug over N and PE was enough to make the RCD upset, similar event on a live circuit acted as a dead short and the exploding slug cleared itself, circuit reset until another slug had a shot! This is where full RCBO boards are great!

You're better to start with string with a piece of rag tied to the end to make a plug, then suck that through, then pull in the rope and so on...

That is how I drew cable through conduits on my extension and house to garage routes. I have even put a vacuum in a wall to draw ribbon through a stud wall past a noggin to pull a T&E cable down. God bless Henry hoovers!

This is what I did too.

Sounds like that was a jolly fine plan!

So he owns it, but what is the legal arrangement for him to supply them water? The only way I would be comfortable with this arrangement would be if there was an agreement, legally, for water to be supplied, perhaps a service charge for the water. Where we go on holiday the chap that owns several cottages and lodges owns the local water treatment plant, everyone connected pays him £120 a year for water. He uses that money for maintenance and upgrades. So assuming there is an agreement, what does it say? If the farmer has just kept the borehole and agreed to let people take water from if FOC and with no agreement, then what is to stop him stopping supply one day or like now, the new residents having no recourse when the borehole water becomes undrinkable... I would advise your friends to initially investigate the agreement in place. If there is nothing, I think they are snookered and will need to get water in themselves or talk to the farmer and pay for the borehole to be upgraded and agree a 100 year contract or something reasonable now and in the future on it. There might also be some mileage to be had speaking to the developer who converted/sold the conversions, surely building control signed this all off, so what was the proper arrangement?

Looking at that PDF I am assuming that the hips are too high. As you allude to, 300mm is not needed for flashing, 150mm but I have seen 75mm argued. So I can assume that actually the 300mm is because they are minus 150mm at the moment and to create 150mm they need 300mm... If someone thinks they need 300mm for flashing then, there is another issue here!

So, to get the flashing in, the roof had to come down 300mm - OK. So when it was all drawn, how did the roof sit in relation to the existing house and appear to work, is that the drawing you attached? Which dimension(s) are not the same on the plan as in real life. If it works on the drawing, but not in real life, then something must be different. Is the extension higher than planned? I so see, more often than not, ground level changes on site that screw things up. In fact, my own extension roof pitch had to change because what was drawn would only work if the ground level had been about 300mm lower than the drawing suggested. It did work on paper, but the ground level was not going to be taken that low or we would have created a low point all around our extension in relation to the rest of the garden/house which we didn't want.

Those notes seem pretty common, we have notes similar on our building services drawings. Designing something on CAD and then building it in real life often throws up differences, particularly where building extensions and changes exist and site measuring is critical. I would never order things like windows and doors off plan, if I did I would supply frames for brickys and framers to work to to ensure a good fit but even then, that would not save you in this situation. It is not critically clear what went wrong and why this needed to change, if there was an on site deviation brought about by a detail uncovered during the build then I would say the architect is not at fault, if the contractor varied something on site, then it is not the architects fault. The only time you could claim it was his error would be if clearly something was totally missing from the drawing and not considered. Clear up the whys and we might see a reason. Did the architect draw the house then get the structure designed? Perhaps SE came back and had to make something bigger or smaller somewhere to get something to work and this is the knock-on, but was the architect to update drawings? Sometimes they are off the job at that point and the onus is then on whoever manages it to catch the SE changes and then rework it or appoint architect to tweak design. I am going to suggest you cannot claim for the windows, he clearly states site measurements to be used. You might be able to get him to help you understand why it went wrong, and if he puts his hands up and say looks yes, this happened, then maybe he will knock something off your bill. It is so common for stuff to change on site, and often people just re-design around it, I spend as much as 1/3 of my time on redesign due to site changes beyond our control that I think it is pretty normal now.

We have some wonky bits on our roof, and 3 or 4 of the roofers we had to quote for replacement said they would pack those battens up and using a string get them into spec. @Gus Potterand I also discussed roofs, we were going to join forces and work together to do each others roofs and we discussed options to level out some wonky rafters that had sagged a bit etc. So he talked utter rubbish saying "nothing can be done" and was being lazy not doing something about it. To an extent a little wonky is OK but, too much can be fixed.