ProDave

If it works that is great. To be sure the dimmer must be an LED dimmer, and both the transformer and the lamps must be "dimmable"

As explained earlier, the red core is permanent L feed which will go to both switches. Easy to do if you have a twin 1G back box. but I don't see what 2 separate switches achieves compared to the options already suggested?

Re inventing the wheel. It is an "electric storage boiler" A thermal store heated by a number of immersion heater elements, typically up to 4 of them for a 12Kw input so on E7 a storage capacity of up to 84kWh. I know several people with them, and none have a good word to say and the conversation always uses the phrase "expensive bills" More effective? That just means more able to heat very hot water to run small radiators to avoid upgrades, i.e. cheaper install. I can't see how it is cheaper to run than an ASHP. Unless you can still find an E7 tariff with the off peak rate 1/3 a normal tariff, i.e. about 10p per kWh at the moment. It's just spin from a manufacturer desperate to maintain a market for such a product.

Corrected.

I wonder why the plumbers did not diagnose that? Could it be they were not 100% sure and did not want to look silly / carry the cost if they replaced it and it did not fix the fault? As it happens it was blocked with debris so there was no cost in removing that to fix it.

Individual build plots here have not been viable for developers for a long time. And that is with plot prices being low. It is worthwhile for self builders because you get the house you want, or by doing a lot of work yourself you can build it cheap enough that you might get a modest profit if you sold. The problem has to be building land is being valued too high. It is almost like a ponzi scheme if the developers can only make money if the market rises so they can sell the house for enough to cover the costs and make a small profit? This was a big issue when at the start of our build we could not find a buyer for our old house unless we reduced the price, and that would have meant it would cost us more to build the new 3 bedroom house than we sold the old 5 bedroom house for. And sorry I could not stomach paying money to downsize which is why we did what we did.

It's in German with no subtitles. I await a transcript from @ToughButterCup

I assume LED G9 lamps? If so try a different make. We have G9 LED's in a living room and bedroom light fitting. Only 1 lamp failed in 5 years so far. As it's IP44 it is probably quite well sealed. Try opening it quickly after it has been on for a long time to see how hot it is getting inside? That won't help lamp life if it gets hot. Perhaps the problem is leaving it on all night? All our G9 lamps are in open light fittings.

Your "2*4" will actually be 195 * 47mm Be careful. OSB sheets are available in 8ft by 4ft or 2400mm by 1200mm. As far as I know (someone tell me if otherwise) plasterboard is only available in 1200mm wide not 4ft, and usually in 2400mm long not 8ft (though can be bought in longer sheets) 16" is 406mm. So over 3 studs that will be 1218mm. By the second or definitely third sheet of plasterboard the joints will miss the studs.

Lots of interesting points raised. Still none giving me a convincing reason to buy a holiday let. The location we are thinking of is a place we have visited for holidays many times and like. But as everyone keeps pointing out, we don't know anyone that lives there. So the biggest challenge would be finding someone to manage the changeovers and the cleaning for which they would obviously be paid. Anyone care to take a guess at what someone might charge to clean, change bedding etc, manage the handover and then do the laundry ready for the next handover for a 1 or 2 bedroom holiday let? Then I could start running some figures. My view of the property market is somewhat tainted by what happened when trying to sell our previous house. Property can be an illiquid asset at times that you cannot sell unless you are prepared to give it away. Especially in a remote location like we are considering. There might well be scope for some form of holiday let where we live now. We still have the old static caravan, though that has a planning condition prohibiting it's use for occupation. But there might be scope for some form of holiday let in it's place. but we would only consider self catering, having previously run a B&B we found it too demanding and restrictive of your time. Still lots to think about.

Why 16" centres? 400mm or 600mm

Shame you have to buy so much of the 25mm pipe, I am sure I have some short lengths here

That is exactly what I had in that previous house. If you lifted a first floor floorboard and looked at the party wall, it was a 9" solid brick wall with poorly pointed brickwork. The perp ends are the perpendicular, i.e. upright ends of the bricks and there was very little mortar on them with lots of gaps. So the cooking smells from next doors kitchen could get up into the ceiling void, probably through light fitting holes, and then through all the gaps in the party wall through to the ceiling void in my house and then out into the rooms. Expanding air tight foam would be the easiest way to seal them but you would need the whole run of floorboards the length of the party wall lifted to get full access. The rest of the party wall was probably build with similarly poor pointing, but the plaster on the walls made that more air tight.

Yes constant slow running PIV into bathrooms and kitchen might ensure your neighbours smells don't enter. If the bathrooms are on a party wall, they may even benefit from your "exhaust air"

Yes there is a lot more to retirement planning than most people think. Conventional wisdom is just plan as much as you can in pensions aiming for the maximum pension income when you retire. There are 2 big flaws in that conventional wisdom. One is people concentrate on private pensions because they don't want to wait until state pension age to retire. But if you have sufficient pension to retire early, then a few years later when you reach SP age, you will probably have more income than you need. So your pension income needs to be more flexible so you can draw more at the start of retirement and reduce how much you draw when SP starts to pay. I seldom hear anyone else mention that. And retirement is not just about replacing earned income with pension income. Most of us will have a bucket list that involves buying big ticket items. You won't do that, with a pension based entirely on income. And that is what this pot of money in our case is for, those big ticket items on the bucket list, and the shorter term plan being discussed here is about preserving that pot against inflation until we are ready for those big ticket items, and possibly ticking one item of that bucket list (the holiday home)

The issue being mentioned here, is ASHP's are really simple things, they move heat from A to B. So in winter when heating the house they cool the air outside. In summer when cooling the house they heat the air outside. That is a waste. The issue is why does nobody seem to make a heat pump where there is an option when cooling, to put the "waste" heat into a hot water tank?

Oh the joys of living joined to other properties. I recall a previous semi detached house, where every Sunday, I could smell next doors cabbage boiling in their kitchen. A quick look under the floorboards showed very poor pointing on the party wall brickwork with most of the perps not fully buttered. Not a lot you could unless you wanted to take all the boards up along the entire length of that wall.

Yes at the moment I am in the process of distributing the money to ISA's premium bonds and looking at fixed interests. The only "issue" with fixed interests at around the 5% mark, is they don't just lock in the interest rate for that period, they also lock in your money with no access to it, so I would not want too much in there. Already maxed out ISA's with more to be moved over in April. That and PB's will get a good chunk of it tax free.

You are probably over thinking it. The best thing you can do if you are worried about break in's is move. Where I used to live, in the 13 years I lived there, my shed was broken into (nothing taken) and someone attempted to enter the house by prizing a double glazing unit out, but failed. And my sister who still lives in the vicinity has had her house broken into twice, once by the burglars lifting a paving slab from the ground and throwing it through the patio doors breaking the glass. The alarm did not stop them, in and out in a couple of minutes and everyone passing by ignored the alarm sounding. Where I am now and have been for 20 years, no reports of burglary by anyone I know.

Yes you are all reinforcing my own view. I have had enough years of being a residential landlord, so would never want to go back to that, the inability to get possession of your property when you want to being the big problem with that. Holiday let should at least solve that one issue, but just adds other problems. I share the view that the EPC requirements are stupid, but that is the stated aim of the Scottish Government. Even more stupid is their dream to enforce all properties including owner occupied houses to be EPC C eventually. That one is just hopium But it has reinforced my view that I don't want to buy a really lousy property unless it is priced properly to reflect the work needed. The obvious advantage of our trailer caravan is we can take it to any site we want to, not always back to the same place. Plus our plan is to spend more time on our boat as well.

It is mainly SWMBO who wants to do this. I keep trying to explain all the difficulties as you explained. If it was up to me I would just take our very nice comfortable caravan over for long holidays and stay on the camp site we know well and have used many times., I might even talk to the site owner about storage to see if we could keep the 'van there all season.

So we have a pot of money from the sale of the old house. One idea we have had for some time, is spend some of it, on a property in a location we particularly like partly for our own use as a holiday home, and partly to let to paying customers as a holiday let when we are not using it. The thing that is causing me concern is the amount of regulation there is in that market now thanks to those at Hollyrood. You have to be registered and pay your fees to the local council to be able to let a property now even as a holiday let. There is a raft of paperwork you have to comply with, most of which involves you paying someone to provide a certificate to prove you are complying. In other words from my POV money for old rope to pay someone to certify things that although I am capable of judging, I am not "qualified" to do. Now I can just about stomach that insult as a business cost. But what is troubling me, it at some point not very far in the future, there will be a requirement for all such properties to have an EPC C or better to get your licence. And looking at the properties for sale in our chosen location, most have an EPC of E, F or G and strike me as needing a lot of work to get them to a C. This is not intended to be a buy and renovate project and in any event the prices are not cheap enough to cover that. It would appear most buyers at the moment are blissfully unaware of the rules heading this way, but one day they will and I feel certain such "poor" properties will drop in value when the reality of the work needed becomes clear. At the moment there is one for sale with an EPC of D. I am awaiting the home report and EPC from the agent though suspect they won't even read my email until next year. My thinking being getting that to an EPC C should not be so challenging. The other challenge if we do that is finding a local person that can manage the property for us, by that I mean the cleaning, laundry and handover to renters. We would be 200 miles and a ferry ride away so would not want to be doing that weekly. I know some on here run holiday rentals, and some I think do so remotely so interesting to hear how you do things.

Well red is the L feed and the blue and yellow are switched L out. You need a grid switch with one dimmer module and one switch module. Wired as before.

That's lucky you hopefully have fixed it. I speak from experience that it can sometimes be difficult finding an identical blending valve.

We had a storm while living in the static caravan. Obvious concern about would the 'van survive, it did and is still in one piece now. But we barely noticed the noise of a neighbours tree blowing down. We were asleep in the 'van when that happened, good job the wind was not the other way. Being an all timber house, we expected a lot of creaking and groaning when the wind blows but surprisingly little. I guess are two big worries are if a tree blew down onto the house, or flooding from the burn. Neither has happened yet. The burn has had two "once in 10 year" floods in the time we have been here. No danger to the house, just a little damage to the banks of the burn and each time we learn and try and alter things or improve them to make them more resilient for next time. The lesson learned from this years flood is we now know where flood water is likely to run across the garden back into the burn and that bit of the bank has been reinforced, and the berm I built along the boundary to try and keep flood water out of our garden in the first place needs to be a bit higher. See this picture. the berm along the boundary needs raising to try and limit flood water from the field entering. And where most of it spilled over back into the burn, that part of bank that got eroded has been reinforced with big rocks. The grass in the foreground is the house side and no flood water threatened that so the house was not in any danger.