Bramco

+1 for that. Had an IKEA induction downdraft hob now for over 2 years and well pleased with it. All the rest of the appliances are IKEA as well. I seem to remember when buying a new charcoal filter for the downdraft doo-dah, that it was one of the top German makes - will have to check.

Or it could be that one of the committee councillors has a vested interest - owns nearby land or property. This happened with ours, he owned a field over the back of our plot. But that should be declared somewhere - think they have to state that as comment on the application.

We have gray porcelain - the same inside and out. Builder said it would be too slippy but it's a matt finish which is working out OK. SWMBO complains about it wearing out her socks indoors. Easy to pressure wash and keep clean. The only green algae (and it's a v small patch) is on the grouting, so it shows that the porcelain is doing a great job. Having said that, we were very anti anything textured, so porcelain was really the only choice. Also, we'd had natural stone in a rental property and it was a nightmare to keep clean.

It's physics Nick, not numbers. If your panels are at 20deg then they will get less irradiance than panels at 45deg. And apologies if you thought I was dissing the whole installation - I wasn't, I know nothing about it. I was simply giving an alternative view on the angle of dangle, which I thought might be useful to others.... Maybe 'sod all' was pejorative but it is true that you can get a better seasonal spread of output by setting things out at 45 degrees. And FYI, currently we're getting well over 5kW from the 6.5kW ground mounted array in full sun at midday - which is great, means the batteries are topped up and we can do a dump out to the grid (15p) before the cheap rate starts again (7p). A lower angle wouldn't give us that option. Anyway, this is all off topic for the OP.

@Nickfromwales they will do but at that angle they'll do sod all in the winter and not much in the spring and autumn when it would be great to have more. We found via PVGIS that an angle of 45deg gave about the same overall annual output but reduced summer gain and increased winter gain. Ours is a 6.5kWp (12 panels) system. We're in the Green Belt, not as onerous as ANOB but our planning request was accepted without a problem. No request for a biodiversity gain report. Even if there were, most of these ground mount arrays go on a grassy patch. In our case, we don't mow underneath the array, so you could argue that there has been a biodiversity gain, simply by not mowing and allowing that area to 'rewild'. @K44 I'd do some searching on planning applications in ANOBs for biodiversity reports and net gains. There must be some out there. Or if you intend to put up something like the commercial PV systems, simply put in a short statement that there will be no 'loss' as the area under the panels will still be there and that by rewilding that area, there will be a net gain.

Take a look at the ITS Technologies website -> https://www.itstechnologies.shop/. They also do kits. Last time I looked the Frogstar batteries were pretty expensive as against Sunsynk for example. I'm assuming from your handle you're a sparkey - so putting one of these kits on a wall and connecting things up shouldn't bea problem. There are plenty of members that have self installed inverters and batteries.

Try DuckDuckGo. One came up on calculator.net - it's in $s but the principles are the same. Any calculator is going to ask you what your insurance costs are, professional services costs and maintenance costs - when you've got those, you might as well put them in Excel. You can get quotes for insurance, tenant find or management fees and make estimates of maintenance costs. Maybe you need to talk to a few local letting agents.

There must be some around - you're favourite search engine should find them. It's quite easy to set up a quick Excel sheet to do it though. Buildings insurance - we pay about £15/month for 3 bed semis. Tenant find is roughly a month's rent - maybe less since rents have jumped a lot recently. As others have said, using an agent will be about 10% to 15% of the monthly rental. Don't forget empty periods where you'll be paying the utilities bills and council tax. Each month of downtime eats into the annual profit (and don't forget to add a month for another tenant find). If you aren't local, or can't do DIY, then there's finding tradespeople to fix things. And over time, you'll get at least one tenant who wrecks the place. You can take maintenance costs off the rental income and costs for professionals, so tenant find or agency fees - but then you have to add the profit to your income and pay tax at your marginal rate, 20% or 40%. Oh and there's all the other things folks have mentioned - HMO, council landlord fees, etc. etc. etc. And then when you eventually decide you've had enough, there's CGT. You pay more and unlike farmers who have 10 years to pay, you have 2 months to complete the return and pay. George Osborne started the 'government hates landlords' drive - it's not what it used to be. But then again with rents skyrocketing you may be daft not to.

Take off the overflow pipe - the crinkly one top left. We've found that these attract muck, however you orient them. When you pull the plug, a gush of water goes down the main pipe but some flows back into the overflow pipe. Over time the bits of food gather and go rotten. It's a crap job - literally - I've been doing the 'that's odd, I can't smell it' for a few months now......

Plan ahead - get mates rates - have children, interest as many as possible in becoming an architect - pay their study fees and support them through their course and bingo! But also don't expect to be top of the queue when it comes to your build, so if you thought it could be designed quickly, then forget it. Patience is a virtue as they say.

I've just looked and it's 15p/kWh cheap rate and nearly 26p/kWh normal, which isn't as good as the best Octopus rates. Have things gone up?

If you are using MBC, why aren't you using their insulated slab? They know what they are doing. Ours has the UFH pipes installed as part of the slab before the concrete pour. Never heard anything from an SE about having to cut expansion slots or whatever. Not sure what our ground floor is but it's got to be 175m2. Our flow temperature is probably just above 25C. Given you are using the MBC PH build, you must be aiming for PH-ish energy requirements. Why would you run flow at 35C Anyway, the great thing about these slabs are that they are like having a thousand of the old storage heaters which you can batch charge on cheap electricity - probably your plan - but it makes for a v comfortable house. I'd sack off your SE and get MBC to do the slab.

I'd expected you to pick me up on the 'butt doesn't overflow if the pipe is level' comment above - tbh.

Ugly though innit

Indeed... The butt doesn't overflow if the pipe is level - in that case the water overflows internally in the diverter and goes down the drainpipe.

And they may have been - but as @ProDave says there are many ways they can prove useless even if fitted. Sounds like you might need to send a small child into the loft space to crawl round the edges of the roof space to see if there are any obvious issues.

We had this on an extension in a previous house - and in the winter the cold draft was a gale when it was blowing outside. Ours wasn't specced anywhere near as detailed as yours but was a similar build. In the end, I worked out that the air was getting in through the top of the wall which wasn't sealed adequately from the roof space. So the cold air simply ran down the inside of the plasterboard and out wherever there was a socket or light switch. Which meant that we were losing a lot of heat. Our new build was specced a lot better...

If you really want a half day job, get yourself one of these. Aquor water systems, also comes with an angled tap with an on/off bit. Never freezes, you just take the thing out of the socket and all the water dribbles out. The half day is spent trying to locate all the plumbing bits needed to convert from a US format 1/2inch NSF to metric...... They do look the dogs though

You need entangled bits.... Go quantum - few bits in the postbox entangled with some in the house. And hey presto the latest in postbox sensors. Powering the entangled bits on the street might be an issue but in the house must be a breeze...

Done - we're very local @CemCet, so if you want a more detailed discussion, hop on the number 1 bus and call in. DM me if you are interested. Simon

Ha! We're also black corrugated tin! So reception inside is dire.... We used one of the pucks you linked to - but mounted on top of the pole for the TV aerial which is on the back corner of the garage. I'm guessing it would work just as well mounted on the roof somehow - the instructions show it mounted on a truck roof, so a similar structure to a tin roof. We only needed it for the 4G signal, so only got the version for mobile signal. I bought extension cables from Amazon wasn't easy to compare and contrast with and without the extension cables @JohnMo but we do get a good signal. Just trying out a 5G router since our local mast has been fixed (took EE since June to sort it out!!). Tp-link seem to be the ones people are using. I tried the Archer NX200 based on info about the difference with the Deco but with our setup (we have Google Nest mesh wifi) the Archer wouldn't work because it can't be put into Bridge mode. I think the problem is down to the way Nest and the Archer handle NAT. So the Archer has been returned and a Deco should arrive today. The 4G router we used was the GL-inet 4G (Spitz I think it's called) - which works fine and GL-inet are better at having a router that is properly configurable - their 5G router is twice the price of the Tp-link ones though, so that's why we went with Tp-link. I guess if the Deco doesn't work, it'll go back to Amazon as well and we'll then have to decide if £400 is worth it for the much higher speeds of 5G.

Here's a recent one for a plot just down the road from us... Condition 10 The residential unit ('unit') hereby permitted shall be constructed as a selfbuild dwelling within the definition of self-build and custom build housing in the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 (As Amended): i. The first occupation of the unit shall be by a person or persons who had primary input into the design and layout of the dwelling; ii The Council shall be notified in writing of the persons who intend to take up first occupation of the unit hereby permitted at least two months prior to first occupation. [In order to comply with Regulation 8 of the Biodiversity Gain Requirements (Exemptions) Regulations 2024 and the statutory biodiversity gain condition required by Schedule 7A to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (as amended)]. But some small print after the conditions states that according to the Self Build Act, the permission doesn't require a demonstration of BNG He'd have a heck of a time though trying to sell the plot as a plot with planning permission....

Given the huge resource here - would it be possible to integrate Notebook LM or another AI tool into the search results, in such a way that as well as the list of search results, an AI summary is given. This would be extremely helpful. I'm thinking something like the paragraph you get above the list of reviews on Amazon - the AI there gives a good summary of what the reviews say.

Is that an ASHP throne I see there? Better not show it to ours, in case it gets the hump and wants us to build one for it.

same here..