ProDave

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.

So are you saying you HAVE done that and and it is now "working" again? if so tell us what he did please.

Educate the rug rats.

More details of what you are joining to and what you want to connect to when you have found something that will fit your 50mmOD pipe? That is not a standard UK size of pipe

4, 5, 6 are the only ones that need some more details or action plans submitted before commencing.

Radiators? Under floor heating? I can imagine the draughts through the sockets being annoying, but I would be surprised if that is the reason an oil boiler is struggling to keep the house warm.

What heating system?

Who specified and built the frame? What air tightness did they expect to achieve? Having the service void in between insulation layers is just plain wrong. Whoever specified that needs "educating" Every single hole into that space, for cables etc, will be allowing cold air into that service void, virtually negating the insulation of the 120mm if PIR between the frame members. So if you are going to do it that way, then sealing the living daylights out of every single cable penetration is required. I suspect the best you can hope for now to improve it is go into the loft, roll back the insulation all around the edges and seal the living daylights out of every single hole where cables come up into the loft. This will apply to cable drops down into the (probably non load bearing) partition walls between rooms as well. It is probably too late to do anything about the (hopefully fewer) cable penetrations down into the sub floor space downstairs. What about plumbing? Are there also pipes going up into the loft or down under the ground floor?

Until the OP replies I suspect there is no air tightness layer apart from the taped top layer of PIR that has lots of holes in it for cables. Perhaps when the OP answers he can tell is what air tightness details have been used, what about under the floor and in the loft (assuming it is a normal cold loft)?

Looking at that picture, how are the cables getting into the service void? (the gap between the PIR and the plasterboard? It looks like they are coming up from under the floor in that picture. That will be one source of cold draughts. Likewise I bet lighting cables are going up through the ceiling into the cold loft space and that is another source of cold air getting in. As an electrician, I have come to expect this sadly as "normal" when you remove a socket on a windy day, and icy cold draught comes out of the back box. What stage are you at? and who has been advising you? If you read the forum there is a lot talked about attention to detail, and that is what has let you down. EDIT: looking at the picture again, is that a service void I am looking at, or is that the frame with the insulation between studs before the over sheeting insulation went on? If so you have created a cold gap between the insulation layers.

My first question is what are you planning to put on the outside of the wood fibre EWI? I take it the idea is full fill of the frame with insulation? The reason for it being so thick is to get the extra insulation depth. My house frame is all 195 *45.