Carrerahill

No - it isn't working anyway. Just ensure electrical connections are made safe (terminal block or a tape even for a temp fix).

Go make a cup of tea/coffee and view this. When he says "top piece" that is what has been called a "Head" above.

On the back of your motor, it says Synchronous Motor - Original - 230V etc... then there is a code, what is the code, I can't quite make it out. However, looking at your motor, and the box you posted a photo of and the cross reference of the part No. I did, I think yes from what I can see. You could always take your motor to the parts store and ask to compare the new one out the box. Look at my link and your motor, they certainly look very similar to me... they all tend to use the same motors and parts as few people actually make them, Drayton & Honeywell etc. However, if in doubt run the part no. physically engraved in the back of your motor through Google and check. What make of valve do you have?

Yes the silver round thing, also look at my link to Screwfix which shows what it looks like in isolation. Look like it will be 2 or 3 small screws that hold it on and 2 wires which you can just leave alone.

Yes - it is quite a common fault in these systems. My in-laws had these replaced about every 2.5 years until British Gas finally replaced the cheap part that they fitted on the first fault call out with a Honeywell and it has been fine ever since - the engineer told my father in law that the one he fitted was all metal gears and would not fail for a long time.

According to the part no. on the side and a quick Google search it appears to be just the motor with an integral gearbox: https://www.screwfix.com/p/drayton-synchronous-motor/28670?tc=ET5&ds_kid=92700020956158103&ds_rl=1241687&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1249404&ds_rl=1249799&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1249481&gclid=CjwKCAiAyeTxBRBvEiwAuM8dnb3pVx19nwtu5X8NA6JZ5eL4liyTvPdCK_LVKYXDA2ldTHlkdaMLIxoCQQoQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds Note the brass pinion gear as mentioned above. I would pull the motor off, then have someone call for/cancel the call for heat (wait a bit between as it is not always instant) and see if the motor spins - just leave it hanging safely and watch it. Then look into the hole where the pinion gear goes and see if you can see mashed teeth - if mashed teeth this motor will not help.

By "Head" he just means the whole actuation caboodle, the "head" could be unbolted and chucked and a new one bolted on. These things are very simple; it is to all intents and purposes an electrically operated valve, a motor/servo turns, moves some bits via a pinion gear and rack usually or just two gears. Often the issue is plastic gear teeth actually, the pinion is usually metal (often brass) but the others are plastic and they wear or a tooth breaks off and the thing cannot work on the motor anymore - chances are the motor is actually OK, it could certainly have failed but more likely an actuation issue from the drive gears. Do you know this valve is getting the "signal" i.e. a supply to actuate it? If so I would suggest you just change it out on this occasion and next time you will have more to knowledge to play with. If it was me I would take it apart and cut new gears in brass!

Not at all, I think what you have done is excellent. Start as you intent to go forward! You basically almost have your BC drawings. Depending on your LPA you may just need to add the "text collage" around the drawing to detail it all and a couple of small drawn details for anything that needs it and that is you!

Um... where are you?

Yes, I fully understood that. But my point was, "If you are going electric then I wouldn't bother with the boiler, just fit electric heating". Electricity has the benefit that it can just be wired to where required and used, whereas oil, gas & solid fuels need to be burnt centrally and conveyed via water to the UFH/Rad's for obvious reasons but I just would not use grid electricity to heat water centrally as said above the costs would be high - probably painfully so. However, I understand what you are saying, if you think you may eventually heat the water with an alternative source of heat then can you not just keep your oil boiler going for a bit longer? How long are we talking? Bearing in mind it will be summer before we know it, could you do something about it in September? Or do you foresee another winter or two on the oil? If it was me, and I had the intention of going ASHP fairly soon then I would fit a wood burner with back boiler for now, which would then be a backup and supplementary source going forward. Other benefit is they can be run if there is a power failure with a pump running on an inverter.

I would say an electric boiler is not a good idea unless you have some solar/wind on site to generate electric for you. If you are going electric then I wouldn't bother with the boiler, just fit electric heating but then I don't much like the idea of electric UFH from a fault and longevity point of view. Any figures I look at for electric boilers just seem insane. You are about, say, 4p for a kWh of gas and about 13.5p for kWh of electricity. Boilers are in the 10's of kW's range. Our gas boiler has a max output of 32kW - even if we disregard all the conversions and just take some simple numbers if it was running about 50% capacity on electric that is 16kW - that is going to cost £2.16 an hour! Then think about all the losses in getting the water to the heating area etc.

I'd save yourself some time, money and hassle and just do that. If it's really just your shed then I see no issue with this. As with any extension cable just keep an eye on it and make sure any damage is rectified.

The thing with BC drawings is that largely you can get away with a plan of the house and loads of text laid out with details here and there, that is what we submitted. Any structural stuff obviously needs detailed but nothing drastic, in our case it was a letter in the form of, yes that wall is suitable - it wasn't even referenced as such in the BC drawing. It also depends how big your house is, anticipated build cost and anticipated final value, if it's a 80K build then that is nearly 3.5% of total cost, if it's a 300k then shrug it off as a cost. Also, never trust a builder to do your drawings. They will always think with their back pocket and you will end up with a self-build Cala home!

Been speaking to some kitchen firms about the kitchen, truth be told I will use some of the free design services to get some ideas and basic layouts pulled together then I can proceed with whoever or whatever I want to use. Called one lot up, spoke to their guy, sounded pretty clueless really, and I said, "Can I send you a CAD drawing, are you able to work with those" - his reply, "yes yes we can do that". Perfect, I take our architectural drawings and tweak them to as-built sizes and add a sink block, hob block and some notes to the kitchen designer, spent maybe an hour on it all told. I get a call this morning, "I have got your drawing, that is one we did for a customer the other day, is that what you want" - Hmmmm. I explain that no, he must have the wrong file as I sent "Kitchen.dwg" and that was my kitchen as personally drawn by me. "Oh, right, I am clicking it and it just says I need to save it to disc, it won't open". I do some questioning and ask can they in fact open CAD files, and has he saved the attachment out of his email onto a disc? "No no, I don't have a disc here - I'd need to do it on the computer, can you send us what is called a PDF file?". So I told him I could send a PDF file but it would not be of much use as there are no dimensions on it and unless his software can import and scale a PDF I see no benefit. "Oh, but I would need full dimensions" he exclaims, I explain that a CAD file is a fully scaled accurate (well should be) drawing as used by architects and engineers and all sorts, we only dimension things for the end user or construction drawings and it is not common to dim everything. So, has anyone dealt with a firm who actually use proper drawings? For this I will dim it all up and going forward send them all the DWG, DXF and PDF but I just wonder what sort of software they are using that they cannot at least import the drawings as a background for their design.

Photos!

I'd just run a cable to the container on a piece of decent cable suitable for the job, i.e. external grade, etc. etc. and take that into a garage consumer unit in the container, stick a single 6A and a 16A breaker in that, 6A out to your lights and 16A out to your sockets. I'd probably treat the container as a caravan, and therefore earth it with a rod. Having said all of that, I actually wouldn't in practise do any of that, but that is me - I'd run a good quality cable 16A extension cable into my container permanently, and have either a twin 13A socket on the end, or a 16A socket and have a 16A socket to 4 way, and flex my light. Depends how temporary all this will be and who will be using it. My new garage is still fed off a 13A extension cable from my old garage.

Edit on my above post (2 up), it looks like you could drop the active parts from that valve by removing the collar under the temp adjustment without the need to remove anything from the system. Not only that, if you did need a new one, I would be tempted to leave the existing body and replace only the inner workings to save some faff.

Of course it could, simply put yes, but it is basically an automatic valve which varies the flow from return or hot to create the ideal temp. If it was to completely isolate the hot intake side, which in the event that there was no demand and the manifolds were hot, it would just cycle the local water until demand dropped circuit temp.

This is obviously not the correct one, however, a bit of searching and you may find the right part: https://www.showerdoc.com/grohe-avensys-wax-thermostat-element-00798000 Another failure more could be a rubber diaphragm type seal, however, normally these work on very reliable plunger type affairs and a small leak past isn't an issue.

I think I would be taking the valve out, stripping and inspecting it. It will operate with a waxstat capsule, the whole thing really is very very simple. I'd probably jam it on no blend, remove parts to disable it or similar, refit and if the system heats up you have your fix. Only run system like this temporarily but it proves your fault. Water in a pan over the hob test for me if you suspect, and it almost certainly will be, the waxstat.

Can you post a less close up version of the window opening with the slipped section of wall.

The issue with professional services giving you advice is that they believe, rightly or wrongly that they become wholly liable, however if you called S. Jones Builders round and he suggested a leak at the soffit or a window or a waste pipe, you would probably nod you head and proceed on the ground that this may be indeed a water ingress route, you may even ask them to proceed with repairing this or at least a semi-invasive investigation to prove the cause of the smell and then to quote for such works. If Mr. Jones was totally wrong, albeit fixed a genuine issue, perhaps you would not be best pleased but you would admit defeat and move on, you only have Mr. Jones word and he probably said, "It might not be...", really, he is not liable. However, if it was the pro, and £3k in you discover the leak was not correctly diagnosed, sadly, many people immediately start waving a piece of paper in front of the pro's nose demanding satisfaction. Which is why when I write reports pertaining usually to electrical issues: controls, switchgear, lighting etc. and very very rarely I may even give a report on things like poor workmanship in other trades such as roofing and plumbing where I can use the British Standards, building handbook, other regs and manufacturers instruction including my own professional knowledge learnt from reviewing details and being on building sites to write a fully corroborated report, I will always put the important conclusive statement at the end of the report. This explains that due to the nature of a building or lack of access or limited ability to tear down a wall to view something, there is always a chance that this is indeed "not the cause", "non-related", "not the result of" - and other such words and phrases. I've given written reports on some high stakes arbitration cases and I am not scared to do so. If I am confident in the topic and have enough information then I will proceed, but it must be understood by all parties that a report can only be as good as the time invested in the investigation and the acceptable level of intrusion by the building owner or tenant etc. I am currently advising on a fault at a site in Edinburgh for a major financial organisation where the ceiling of their newly renovated offices, the reception in particular and corridors leading from the reception will need to be taken down to repair a mistake in some lighting. I've never been to site, I have never seen the issue personally but I have my contractor on site for about 5 hours investigating for me and getting details for me, I know what the problem is - if they take this whole ceiling down to make these repairs and I am wrong, people will not be pleased, but I do know. The difference here is that so far the bill runs to a days labour on site for a contractor to investigate, the whole repair will probably cost about £10-15k so frankly spending £300-400 to confirm the issue isn't that much really. So it is finding someone who is knowledgeable enough in their field to give some certainty to a diagnoses or invest the time looking that you want. Anything can be found if you look hard enough. Most pro's will only really look at your house as it stands, some will carry some basic small tools maybe an endoscope and have a good look but often nothing beats cutting out a section of plasterboard or pulling up some flooring and therein lies the big issue. If it is done purely on looking from within and outside the house then you are probably on a route to failure unless it is blinking obvious! So, the take away from this is probably invest a little in the investigation, be it money, time, or new plasterboard and paint and/or get in a pro, ideally one with no vested interest in the repair work which most pro's will not have and ask them if they will core through plasterboard to look or get under the house etc. etc. Building surveyors are a bit, jack of all master of none and although I am sure very good at their jobs, they would still often not have extensive knowledge in every discipline and would often need to call in another discipline to confirm X,Y or Z. The worst are the ones that work for banks and estate agents and seem unable to find trap doors or do even the most basic of investigations to ascertain if insulation has been installed etc.

Is your build the one with the big gazebo over it? If I am passing and see you I will pop in. A

You can get that exact "U" thing as I have seen it in my merchants, I would download the Osma and Marley and FloPlast catalogues and have a look. I had a look through an MK catalogue the other day and found all the bits I needed after being told "No, no one does anything like that".

If you have a plan ping it over and I will pass it on and get you a price - I'd say source the glazing locally if this did work out for you and just fit it up yourself.