Stones

How about EPDM, single piece ordered cut to size online? That's what I used when building a log store at our last house. Yes you need a substrate for the EPDM but OSB is fine. Easy to do on your own and trims available to keep it neat.

Absolutely, The past month (and some days before) we have had internal house temps getting up to 24C (ambient air between 10 and 12C). Our house is orientated south west so gets the benefit of the sun most of the day, when it is out. As the sun rises in the sky over the summer, we don't generally see temps going as high inside,simply on the basis that the sun doesn't penetrate as far into the house. We almost always have a cooler air temp and breeze to help cool / regulate if required (with the exception of a couple of summers ago when air temp was a glorious 25C). I spent a fair bit of time trying to model our specific heat loss / gain by factoring in wind generated heat loss and solar gain, and I think got a pretty accurate model as borne out by what we experience. Determining the impact of solar gain, both average and peak, was fairly straight forward and identified what our cooling requirement was.

@Margaret dailey have you considered that spending on a Structural Engineer may well SAVE you money in designing something that works and is cost effective? One member here saved over £10k on his foundation cost due to an SE coming up with an alternative solution.

You need to STOP! NOW! Everyone has told you this needs properly designed and signed off by a Structural Engineer. You may want to consider some of the other consequences; https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200128/building_control/38/building_regulations/3

Exactly this, a combination of officer observation and complaints or queries from the public or elected members.

@Margaret dailey You need a Structural Engineer. However good your builder is, you still need one to design this properly for all the reasons others have alluded to. You are not going to get a different answer to that point from anyone here.

@DOIGAN will give you a call later and talk you through it.

Quick photo of our custom folded aluminium cill. With all our EWI, the window company cill wasn't going to be big enough. I got mine folded and painted by: https://www.mspcladding.co.uk/ Very helpful, happy to deal with small order and a lot cheaper than the window company.

I'm looking to get myself a table saw. Not wanting to spend a fortune, thinking up to £250 or so. Any recommendations?

I've fitted both types of duct systems in various houses we have built. I found radial systems much easier and quicker to install compared to branch systems, BUT I have found the radial system to be nosier (even having installed silencers which helped).

Clearly the RAF (or maybe the Russians) have got something to get on with!

But pretty much the same, is not the same...chancellor did say it was something that would have to be revisited, especially as you could argue that the current CV19 support is more generous (in that theoretically you could claim and continue to earn) If it means a levelling up on the benefit side, doesn't seem unreasonable, although the media commentators who scuttled the last chancellor's plans to do this would I'm sure argue otherwise.

Out in the garden yesterday, I immediately picked up on the absence of background noise from our treatment plant air pump. On investigating, found it was dead and had to swap it over with a spare that I have. On opening it up to determine what the problem was, I found the wires to the alarm warning light had somehow shorted, and that the plate linking the two diaphragms was to all intents and purposes magnetically attached to the left hand coil. Having safely terminated the alarm wire lights, I took the diaphragms off, cleaned and refitted, and the pump is once again working, but as you can see from the image below, the connecting plate between the coils is not centred, and I'm guessing it wouldn't take very long in terms of operating hours for it to come to a halt again. I have a new set of diaphragms which I can fit (guessing this is the issue), however as I'm not going to be using this pump for a while (this pump will now become my spare), would I be better advised to leave the new diaphragms in their vacuum sealed pack and replace as and when I need to fit this spare? It's only a 5 minute job so not really a concern time wise, more a question of deterioration in new diaphragms if not being used.

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A couple of inspection pipes, i.e. cut some sections of drain pipe, sit on top of your water pipe and back fill around, let's an inspector check the depth of the water pipe him/herself.

And you can keep working and earning...so if your SE income / work remains stable /at the level it was pre crisis, the govt support is in effect money for nothing, assuming your income level makes you eligible. Clearly the intention is to support / top up / replace SE income that has fallen significantly/reduced to near zero because of the crisis /government restrictions. I think the chancellor was asked about this and had to concede the point but didn't want as he put it, the perfect to be the enemy? of the good (or some such form of words).

Hello @Eric welcome to the forum. Is this a retrofit or a build just being finished off? You could either take the intake and outlet pipes our through the gable end or through the roof (you get vent terminals for both). Ideally you need at least 2m separation between the two. To save having to core through a finished wall you could take out the intake and outlet via the soffit (overhang of the roof truss outside). Both should be on the same elevation, up here on the leeward side from the prevailing wind direction. You could use the existing bathroom vent wall penetration of big enough, as you won't need the bathroom extractor assuming you have / are fitting an extract vent in the bathroom, so only one additional to core. Yes you could use the SVP for the drain but you DO need a trap between the MVHR and the SVP to prevent smells coming back.

FTTC

After having to get my local MSP involved, Openreach have finally updated their systems and recognised that it is entirely possible for me to connect to the new fibre cabinet installed about 250m from my house. We are currently on the end of a long local loop but do manage to get standard broadband at a speed of around 5Mbps download, 1 Mbps upload. While this is generally acceptable, we have 2 data hungry teenagers in the house, plus stream all our TV, so even before the current Covid crisis, I was planning on upgrading to Fibre. Openreach has put restrictions in place on what their staff will and will not do. Work at the cabinet and emergency repairs in the home they will do, but not new connection work in the home. My question therefore is what is involved in the home if you switch from standard to fibre broadband? Is it simply a new router for me to plug in or do they have to change the master socket / come in to test the connection etc?

+1 to everything @Bitpipe has said. We have installed MVHR in a number of houses, the first was a standard regs build back in 2003. Leaky, poorly insulated in comparison to today, yet the difference it made to air quality inside the house, i.e. constant fresh pre warmed controlled flow air (rather than howling gales through trickle vents) and the elimination of condensation made it a must have for us irrespective of any cost savings on heating bills.

In our last house, I had a hard wired heater set up from PV diverter (immersion took priority via volt free contacts due to the complicated way the immersion was controlled). I used an old storage heater rather than convector and found it very useful in the shoulder months. Even relatively small amounts of input were noticeable in terms of heat output. I used an isolation switch with neon indicator and it was really interesting to see it flickering away according to the amount of electricity being diverted to it, barely a flicker at some times, full intensity at others. In the summer as you have indicated, it was surplus, but given you have a portable set up, could you potentially use the heater in the garage for speeding up the drying of laundry?

My neighbour has the exact same issue, and resolves with a damp towel over the drain when stormy outside. Seems to be a combination of a shallow trap and as you described, pressure differential caused by wind.

@DOIGAN is it just the utility and kitchen sinks, or bathrooms as well? As above, I'd put it down to dishwasher and or washing machine waste sitting in traps / pipework.

I do know someone who fitted a 'domestic' rotary unit (not sure of make). They really struggled to see anything above 60% efficiency, and no end of tinkering with control settings helped. They had been steered down that route on the basis of the larger air handling capacity of the rotary unit compared to a fixed HE core.

I'd have to look on the controller / manual to tell you the lowest flow temp, but as I've just sat down with a cuppa it'll have to wait. From memory around 12C flow temp. Run through your UFH it would have the effect of pulling heat out of the slab which should in turn cool the house. We haven't really used ours for cooling. @jack and @Jeremy Harris have used the function very successfully in their houses.