ProDave

I was about to say that. Cheap, they seem to work, and the pointed arrow head bit does not skate around. Usually sold as a set of 3, 4mm, 6mm and 8mm No coolant needed.

AND check both diagonals of the door FRAME as well.

When you find out how to accurately predict rain, wind speed and direction, please let me know (speaking with my boating hat on)

Here is a link to the heat loss spreadsheet

If you have been offered them free, then I would go for it for just the transport costs. Most take the simpler route of a static caravan or large touring caravan, easier to transport and easier to sell at the end. But think ahead. Would one or both be useful to keep after the build, spruce them up a bit and you have a large shed / workshop. If that is likely and you have the room then build into your plans the option to keep one or both of them on site permanently.

You are clearly building a well insulated house. Have you tried using Jeremy's heat loss spreadsheet to work out your heating demand? Many of us have found it clearer and more accurate than SAP calculations. Regarding no heating upstairs, I am one of several here that took that bold leap and am happy with the result. Heat transfer throughout the house is not really via the mvhr but more just convection through the house etc. It works for us and many others provided you are happy with a bedroom temperature a little lower than downstairs in winter.

When I had a pebbledashed and painted house, before re painting, I just pressure washed the whole house and let it dry before re painting. That removed all algae and any loose paint.

Have you bought the lights? Some types will fit in the depth of a sheet of plasterboard and so need zero space. Or counter batten and lower the ceiling by 25mm.

How about praise for the massive reductions in CO2 we have already made? We are still treated like naughty school children misbehaving. How about stating we should move to greener fuels for our cars and home as soon as practical, stop pushing the idea that if you don't buy an EV then you are an evil monster who does not care. How about sort out the MCS and grant mess so that if the government gives a grant, it is truly that sum repaid from an already sensible install price. Pay the grant to the home owner not th installer on receipt of the paperwork saying it has been installed. People would be more likely not to feel cheated. How about in the mean time we still NEED gas and oil, so it might as well be our own recovered to known good standards rather than import it from god knows where with all the transport pollution to go with it. Stop destroying our heavy industry and closing everything because it is too polluting. All that does is kill jobs and the economy and MOVES the pollution to some other country that will fill the gap in the market and make it instead probably to poorer environmental standards, and with the added transport pollution to move it. Stop pretending that cutting down forrests and shipping them round the world to burn in DRAX is good for the environment.

Yes, but for so long now the electorate have been let down by broken promises. Labour are in now only because people lost faith waiting for the consravative promises. Labour seem set to break their promises. If they have not made good by the next election you may well get Reform, as the electorate will have become fed up with the hollow promises from the established parties. I don't see why the main parties don't see this and start being honest with the electorate. There is no point saying you will do something then not doing it.

I just think it has got to the point that nobody believes a word a PM says. Any PM of any flavour. For too long they have said lots of good words and not delivered. So until we see electricity prices actually coming down, however they achieve that, a lot of people will think like me, that it's all building up to another broken promise. I hope I am proven wrong this time.

No, but telling consumers more wind turbines = cheaper electricity prices, yet with no plan to restructure pricing so it is not set by the gas price, is setting consumers up to be let down when electricity prises do not fall. No wonder people want to do the opposite of what they are told, they simply no longer believe what they are told.

We can only guess until what they are actually going to do is known. It is no surprise they have to raise more tax from somewhere and "those rich home owners" are seen as an easy target. Except an awful lot of people are now "those rich home owners" As with most things this government do* , it would result in unintended consequences, like people not moving house and a whole section of commerce (estate agents, mortgage companies, removal companies, builders etc) grinding to a halt. * whoever would have guessed placing more tax burdens on employers would result in them employing fewer people for instance.

Given the door is a rectangle, if the bottom right (outside) corner was 5mm too low then if that was down to the hinges sagging then the upper left corner would have pulled about 10mm away from the frame. If that had happened, then the 10mm gap would be obvious, and the door top right would be carching on the frame. So although you don't want to believe it, the issue is caused by the door frame no longer being a right angled rectangle but the frame has distorted. The basic problem is the actual door frame is not very strong. So if the weight of the glass was evenly distributed along it's bottom edge, it's weight would distort the frame over time as it has done. So the heel and toeing thing is to try and pack it so the weight of the glass sits almost entirely on the hinge side. That would make the glass want to tilt away from the hinge side, so that's where the top packers come in to prevent that. There is only one way this is going to be resolved by having the glass removed and re fitted properly after squaring up the door frame.

I will add my thoughts to this thread. I have an ASHP and am happy with it. It was really my only choice on a new build. Mains gas is not available here (if it was a gas boiler would have been given serious consideration) and I did not want an oil tank to feed an oil boiler. I paid for my ASHP myself and self installed it and cost was similar if not perhaps a bit cheaper than the oil option. It;s been running for something in excess if 5 years with only 1 fault, a bearing on the fan motor, which I replaced myself. I am yet to be convinced it is actually any cheaper to run that a modern condensing gas boiler would have been and still of the opinion anyone being "sold" as ASHP as a replacement for an existing system expecting much lower running costs might be in for a disappointment. It is the insulation levels and air tightness that give my house the low running costs. So you might think it is a good idea for everyone to swap their fossil fuel boilers for an ASHP. Lets think about that (ignoring for the moment if we all did it straight away the electricity grid would collapse) What is not to like about an ASHP. Well nothing when they are working. BUT I doubt they will all keep working forever with no repairs. Your gas boiler goes wrong, and there are plenty of people that can come and fix it, they understand them, parts are available and easy to swap. All very good. Your ASHP goes wrong. Who is going to fix it? Not so many people around that can do that. I consider myself educated and understand electrical things so a lot I could do myself, but not everything. So your ASHP fails, it's a critical part, part not available or nobody willing to fit it? Oh you will need a new one sir. Now most people will probably have received a grant (and still paid a lot of £££ on top) to have the first one installed. I bet if it has failed out of warranty they will be offered a replacement, but oh sorry no grant, this replacement is going to cost you even more ££££. If you change for a different make, it won't be like swapping to a different make of boiler (where controls are fairly standard) you will likely need a lot of electrical alterations as the electrical control scheme from one ASHP to another can be very different. I don't know how we resolve that, but where we want to be is some form of common electrical control interface (like boilers) where it is easy to swap from one make to another. A LOT more people with the skills to service and repair them, at sensible prices, i.e. at a similar hourly rate to plumbers at the moment. Better availablilty of spares at a sensible price. I think the present MCS / BUS grant scheme and the way it is being applied at the moment leaving customers still with a large bill, is doing immense damage to the reputation of heat pumps, Something has to change. Until it is possible to get a heat pump installed as simply and cheaply as a gas boiler, and until servicing and repair is similarly easy and cheap, I will not be recommending any friend of mine to get an ASHP fitted, as I don't want to lose friends when / if it goes wrong and costs them a lot of money.