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So the above issue resolved itself in that I realised that the system was just doing what it’s meant to do. Today however, I was working in the garden and I realised that the pump had come on, which is strange because we haven’t had any rain for at least 5 or 6 days. Unscrewed the manhole cover, tank is almost empty, with no more than an inch of water in it, and it’s running. Also slightly odd is that the inch of water was warm - which means the hot water in the kitchen (SWMBO was doing the dishes) is discharging Into this. I really hadn’t appreciated that was the case. When we discussed this at design stage I had understood it was a back up for rainwater. Anyway, looks like one of the pump floats has jammed in the up position, as it’s higher than the other but maybe 30 degrees or so. What a waste of electricity.

The Brexit charges are not crazy. It is what the crazy half of this country voted for: an abolition of free trade. i have ordered from them since the apocalypse and didn’t get charged, I think because they still have a UK distribution centre, but not sure. Just email them and ask.

I would wait as anything below 5C might slow down curing time. Are you airtight and water tight yet? If so, just warm up the place with an electric fan heater.

Okay, I checked. They are “thermal and blackout”. On the side facing the room they are a polyester material. On the side facing the window, a plastic feeling material. They are definitely filled with something, but it’s incredibly thin. Touching the curtains, they do feel colder on the outside than on the inside, so I guess they must be doing something, but they are so thin it’s hard to believe it.

I have a pair of Dunelm curtains, I think they are similar to these... need to check. If so, they are fine as a draft barrier, but not really thick in the sense of any insulation.

So shed went up about 6 weeks ago. Not had time to do much to it until today. Had a damp and mould problem in another under-ventilated shed which materialised last week, mould growing on various rubber and fabric material parts of bikes, with condensation dripping from the inside roof, so was keen to avoid the same thing happening here, although this is a wooden shed, whereas the one generating mould is metal. In a bit of a rush I've gone for a rather inelegant solution of attacking it with an 8mm drill bit. Have drilled: 16 holes on one side (which is not really visible from the house or garden, and they are tucked up high, just under the large overhang so no risk of water getting in there. 5 holes on the back of the shed, again high up near the roof line, 8 holes on the other side of the shed. The front face of the shed, which is the one visible from the house and garden has no holes in it (other than the keyhole). Do people think this, together with the natural leakiness of the shed, is enough? Each hole has an area of 50mm2. If not enough, the side that has no holes on it currently, could easily get extra ventilation by shaving off 2mm or so off the top of the door to create a ventilation gap there, but maybe this isn't necessary?

I went to Japan in 2014 and at the Tokyo science museum they had a life size humanoid robot (slightly smaller than your typical western male) called Asimo, made by Honda. It used to be larger sized but they had to shrink it because people found it’s size somewhat scary. It could walk, jump and even hop on one leg. You could argue that this is not artificial intelligence, and just a marriage of mechanics and robotics, but it was bloody clever. It’s only after watching a child go through the stages of learning how to walk, that you realise how bloody amazing the human body is and how difficult it is to replicate human motions robotically. Walking is affectively akin to controlled falling, as the body shifts from one leg to the other. Anyway, they keep updating its capabilities. It was bloody impressive in 2014, and even more so now:

I think the answers to these questions are: you ain’t seen nothing yet. Give it another 10 to 20 years and AI will blow your socks off.

You and @SteamyTea are really paranoid.

Don't get me wrong. I think Chat GPT is bloody clever and really fun to mess around with. I just wouldn't use it to check whether my building is compliant with regs!

I’ve been playing around with ChatGPT the last couple of weeks. It is very clever as a chat bot, in that it can have a conversation with you or type out an essay using a very natural and humanistic language. However, in terms of the detail, I don’t think it is that clever … yet. Take the example you site: all it has done is refer you to approved document J. Google could have done that if you’d asked “what approved document of the building regs deals with wood burning stoves”. But chat GPT hasn’t answered your actual question. Give it a year or two and it should get more useful. At the moment, likely to be used by school kids to cheat on their homework (e.g ask it to write a 1000 word essay on pretty much whatever you want, and it does it) than as a serious research tool.

Probably a stupid question, but have you: checked the specs of the phone model to check that the phone itself supports wifi calling? gone into network settings and enabled wifi calling? - I think you said you did that, but it wasn’t clear. There is a “wifi calling” setting, different to data. i have actually disabled my wifi calling as I find the call quality is better on 4G. But I guess that’s not an option in the sticks.

How high will the top of the TV be from the floor? And have you chosen your sofa and tried watching it at that height from that sofa?

Ooops, I didn’t mean 1 million! i meant £1k.

We’ve been living in the house for the best part of a year now, and it’s great! My study is also great, just not finished!

Thanks @Russdl. I spent a bit of time on their website and costed up some doors. It came to £1450 and it’s rather a bit of a compromise on the look, as they didn’t have exactly what I wanted, which is just a plain slab door that is painted in our choice of paint. On the other hand, the first MDF door supplier i found online will provide six MDF 18mm thick doors in the size I need, with hinge holes already drilled, for £360. So once I spend the money on paint and hinges, it’s about £1000k cheaper than the sliding door supplier you linked to.

Could you direct me to such companies please?

I was hoping you would say that. so now the questions remaining to determine are: 1. should I keep the door on the far left (not the one with the manifold in) openable and have the sofa 56cm away from that wall of cupboards so that I can open the door. 2. if I were to do that, how big a sofa could I get away with before the sofa is occupying too much space in the room to unbalance it (the idea being that the area to the right of the doors is the study, whereas the sofa area is the snug/man cave. I’m looking at a Sofabed that comes in three sizes, 180cm wide, 200 and 215cm (and in each case 100cm deep). 3. other alternative is to make the manifold cover door 49.5cm wide and then have six 47cm doors, enabling the sofa to go 8cm closer to the wall of cupboards and still be able to open that cupboard.

The screen does not face the doorway. The screen faces me, and I’m facing the doorway. That is because I ignored my architect’s layout and went with @ETC’s recommendation to put the chair on the opposite side of the desk.

So a year and bit on I have implemented @ETC's first option: Thank you very much @ETC I am working here most days and it seems to be working very well. I now need to sort out my cupboard doors which are shown on the right of this image as four sliding doors. Sliding doors remain a possibility, but it is much easier to DIY hinged doors, so I'm exploring if that is an option, how that would work. The width of that wall is 3335mm. If i were to have 6 x 550mm doors, with 3mm gaps between them and 10mm gap between the outer edge of the door and the perpendicular wall, the elevation would look like this: I should explain that this room is in the loft so there is a height restriction towards this side of the room. The maximum height at that edge of the room is 1285mm. I have some furniture on the right as shown here: The cupboards would start where the herringbone flooring ends. You can see all the junk I'm trying to hide, lol. The thinking behind making the "doors" at either end of the wall fixed, is that the one on the right is going to be largely inaccessible anyway because of bureau that you see on the right of that photo. That is 49cm deep. Even if that wasn't there and one could open the 55cm door behind it, much of the space in that corner of the room is actually taken up by an UFH manifold. That only occupies 15cm of depth from the right hand wall, but i want to box it in and sound proof it a bit, so that will take up another 15cm or so. And with the sofabed that is going to go opposite the bureau (see @ETC's first amended drawing), the opposite corner will also be fairly inaccessible. But part of me thinks maybe I should set the sofa bed further away from the cupboards to make that corner more accessible. The sofa I'm considering would have these dimensions: So lots to think about. What do people think of regular hinged doors vs sliding doors in this scenario? Regular doors is something i can do myself and I'm fairly confident i will get a good finish. I can get MDF cut to size at my local Selco and then paint it. Whereas sliding seems harder to pull off, requiring a decent sliding mechanism. It needs to look good and function well!

Not a brand I recognise, but yes that is the correct glue, in that it is an expanding one that is rated D4.

@Barryscotland please do not mount a tv above a fire place or wood burner. It looks pants. Suggest you read this, that covered the issues in some detail:

I went with the Hauper that @Chanmenie linked above. So far so good and came with a fully charged battery which was a nice touch. It has lots of features I haven't learnt to use yet.

I take it from this that the fact that the so called “professional” examining @hendriQ’s installation used a scrap of cardboard rather than pellets is further evidence of his incompetence?

Indeed, in my build this aspect was part of the SE’s design.