George

Oh this is very much my summer usage. Winter is much, much more.

Thanks - I'll start a detailed energy use log for a few days and see where I get to. I would think most electricity use is in the evening. I did look at an Eddi, but that wasn't available at the time. Now looks to be £435 I think with the battery it is a bit of a gamble that load shifting gets rewarded and off peak tariffs become more widely available.

Just pick a line and work to it. Agree that is an odd eaves design.

I've got 5.5kW of solar, generates 5MWh per year fairly reliably. To make better use of that energy we had a quote for a 9.5kWh battery for £7k. I know I don't have enough information to know exactly how much I could save, since I don't know what utilisation I make of solar. I also don't currently have a smart meter or time of use tariff, which limits the battery payback for now. However, with prices heading towards 50p/kWh even pessimistic estimates meant the payback time was reasonable. So question is, what are people's thought about the plans for capping energy prices? Will the likely mechanism that we pay back with elevated energy prices over a long period still mean my original calculation is still sound? Or will general high inflation just make buying it now a better decision by default?

I would definitely drag the average up.

We use less than you per capita then. Aside from the ASHP, much of the usage is a large fridge, a separate chest freezer, daily dishwasher (0.74kWh per eco cycle) and very frequent washing machine cycles. I also wfh so computer, screen and modem is on almost always

Just had a look. Summer stats, from late May to today. Electricity consumption 10.9kWh/day Of which, ASHP consumption 2.6kWh/day DHW use is pretty high as we have two young children. Solar generation 20.4kWh/day (no idea what the utilisation is - not very high I suspect) from a 5.5kW install with a 4kW inverter. No EV, battery or gas. Hopefully getting a battery quote today. +1 for induction. We were buying all new pots and pans anyway (had been using a motley collection inherited from an old tenanted house. Various states of corrosion and dents.) I did a test with a normal electric kettle vs the induction to boil 1 litre, energy consumption near identical and the induction hob was 20 seconds faster. However, the safety feature of a normal kettle to auto click off means I kept it. Having lived with electric hob and gas, the induction is superior in every way. The only slight issue is you can't use a wok... but there is a workaround by getting a big flat bottom wok and use a pair of silicone tongs to agitate. It's just as good.

I'm going to be really pedantic... They are attic frames, because they aren't triangulated so they aren't trusses. Sorry.

I'd have guessed it meant a cut roof. 😜 If it's a habitable space you can still get prefabricated attic frames. They're more expensive than trusses (larger timber sections) but still saves on site labour. For a new build I'd avoid site built cut/stick roof wherever possible.

1. I'm not sure what a 'stick' roof is. If it's not a trussed roof (or any other sort of prefabricated roof) then you'll probably need some input from a structural engineer. I doubt Building Control would ask specifically about the roof but you'll need a design either way. 2. If you're not building over/within the easement then no build over agreement is needed. I'd ask the council about working in the public right of way... they will probably want some way to divert/close it and an application to do so. 3. Errr... pass. Sounds like a mistake. Chase them up, it is peak holiday season.

I've been telling anyone who will listen (and is renovating their house) to put a heat pump in for ground floor ufh & hot water, and an air to air heat pump for the bedrooms. Wish I'd done it that way.

I think you want a Civil Engineer.

You could put a separate pump in a sump in the ground, a 'package pumping station'. This would be room sealed, have an alarm if it stops working etc. Probably is more expensive than a saniflow but you mititgate against noise and may be easier to fix in the event of a failure. https://www.ttpumps.com/products/pumping-stations/package-pumping-stations/trojan-grinder

If the architect was supplied with a full on professional survey then maybe... but if it's just what they could manage with a tape measure and maybe a dumpy level, then all of their drawings is based on ... not rubbish ... but site dimensions will take precedence. And even with a survey... wouldn't the survey provider not bear responsibility if the design doesn't fit?

What survey information was the architect using to design the extension? Short answer is no, dimensions should have been checked prior to ordering.

Keep an eye on it. Ideally get a tell tale and measure it.

Flat bars appear to 'work' to the yeehaw cowboys but it's a utter bodge job. Get a single leaf lintel, galvanised and designed for the job. It will avoid cracking and issues in future. Mine were all done this way by cowboys years ago. It is extremely low on the list of priorities but when the windows need replacing, proper lintels will be going in.

3 years is the standard clause for Class Q. I think you will need professional advice because Class Q is for agricultural buildings and if you aren't farmers, you may not be able to get it restarted/extended. That said, getting full planning permission may be possible if you have Class Q as a precendent. Finally - in a year you can get to substantial exterior completion and if it's got a roof, walls and windows, who is going to go poking around inside?

Could you post a picture or a sketch of the proposal? For vaulted roofs the default answer is to use joist hangers (don't need angled ones, just birdsmouth the rafter), but not necessarily for the vertical load. There are more unusual forces at the apex of a vaulted roof than in a traditional cut roof or truss roof. The connection in vertical load might not be overstressed, but when combined with lateral racking and uplift etc, the combined forces may cause some movement. And movement in a vaulted roof is not a good thing.

While steel and timber aren't really comparable in terms of yield strength or modulus of elasticity (springiness), timber lintels can work fine, especially for a short span. The trouble with timber is getting it graded. The lowest strength class for hardwood is a D30, oak is normally D40. If the engineer made some conservative assumptions and checked for any major knots, I don't see why they couldn't at least attempt the calculation check.

Sorry but you really should get a structural engineer to help. There's a few other things to consider which can't be covered on an internet forum.

Could you post more pictures? The eccentricity / offset of the breeze blocks is very high and in general that is not OK. It is likely all wedged into place but seems a strange thing to do. May have been done as a way to close the cavity? It's odd as it doesn't appear to be a wall plate? I'm hoping you've got some temporary props keeping everything in place and you're not standing beneath unsupported masonry....

This is the sort of thing to hire an engineer for. Free advice is worth what you pay for it... Few issues to be aware of... A single leaf lintel would normally work but from your description I think you are removing all of the wall entirely between the two perpendicular side walls? If you are doing that you will be bearing into the 100mm thick side walls, and you won't be able to get the 150mm bearing length required for lintels. So a steel beam is a better option as 100mm bearing is fine for them. Secondly, has the timber frame been designed to span 2.7m at that location? You can't just take out the inner timber frame and hope it doesn't deflect (especially if you would use a timber frame lintel). This is Part A Building Regulations work so a BCO will need to sign it off, they may want structural engineer calculations.

In terms of structural soundness, the main concern is wall tie failure. There is a high probability they have failed. Usually pointing isn't as big of a concern, but locally it has got to a point where that is allow bricks to work loose. I think I'd be costing up an option for external insulation, once the wall ties are remediated.

You could square it up, as least in the corners. I would normally say keep the chamfer but put the reinforcement in square (if the SE is happy with it, can't see a good reason why not on a domestic scale build), but I haven't designed a raft slab with rigid nsulation below the slab itself before. The non-structural reason for a chamfer makes laying the DPM easier and doesn't create and tricky to compact locations internally.