ProDave

Go on, make it easier. WHAT is it?

Yes, there are millions of UK houses (including mine) with suspended floors in kitchens.

Whatever you do, and whatever you buy, in the lifetime of the unit, the lights will need replacing. So make sure you allocate an accessible space for the drivers for the lights, so WHEN they fail you can get at them to replace them. Choose fittings where you can replace the lamp, not fittings where the LED is built in and the whole thing needs replacing. You WON'T be able to get replacements forever for that type. And lastly, set top boxes, Blue ray players etc, you need a place for those so make a cupboard or shelf for them in your design.

If the plywood is getting wet behind the plasterboard and other wall finishings, there is something seriously wrong. Check the boarding is not for aiding the racking strength of the structure.

Perhaps you can tell us what you are building? Being in Scotland and talking of coombed ceilings I am guessing a 1 1/2 storey house with rooms in the roof. What are you building the roof from? Ours was done with a cut roof supported on Ridge beams. It allowed the entire roof space to be unencumbered by intrusions other than the rafters themself. A much less cluttered design than say attic trusses.

We are in an east / west glen. We can't actually see that far, the mountains to the west are the most distant we can see which is no more than 10 miles, that is looking down the glen to the west. North and south we can't see far at all, can't even see the Black Isle. And looking north we are looking up hill out of the glen. So we don't see the northern lights very often, it has to be a spectacular show to get high enough to be seen over the hills to the north. I think it's only 3 times I have seen them.

Clearly the alterations have messed things up. Get both the electrician and the plumber to sort it. They broke it, they fix it.

Check all the motorised valves are opening and closing correctly. I wonder if it is stuck trying to do heating and hot water at the same time, something it is not supposed to do.

There really is a huge void between a lot of the mass market builders and best practice. I am perhaps lucky that I never worked for any of the big builders but i did do a spell subcontracting for an "eco home" builder who actually took insulation, air tightness and attention to detail seriously. And when it was shown to you, it really was not difficult to understand. They had one basic principle, they built the structure of the building and NO subcontractor was to drill any hole through the outer wall of the building. If the subbie wanted a hole, he showed them where they wanted it, and if they could not be persuaded him it was not required, then they drilled it and took care of sealing it after the pipe or cable was installed. That company were the ones that detailed the design for my house, and then another local building firm, who I had also worked for, and I knew they had similar high standards built the shell for me. The only experience I have of mass market builders was buying a late 1980's new build as my first house. It was a very cold house, that i now recognise as being a great big plasterboard tent. The principles of building well are so simple to grasp, that anyone that cares to actually listen could be taught all they need to know in a 1 day seminar. Isn't it about time something like that is mandatory for all "builders"?

ANY inward opening door will leak a bit. Our Rationel doors do. But it is understandable when you look at the physics. We have a west facing inward opening door. Wind driven rain regardless of any outside detail will run down the door and when it gets to the bottom, the outer seal stops it. This is the seal sealing the door to the frame. BUT there will be a small amount of water sitting in between the frame and the door above the seal. Guess where that goes when you open the door, yes, inside. If it is leaking all the time even when the door remains shut, then one of the seals is damaged, poorly designed or the door is not adjusted correctly to compress the seal when shut.

It sounds like they ticked all the boxes except for the "attention to detail" one. As above, not very surprising, but very disappointing.

Unless there is a planning condition requiring a wall, a cheaper way is replace it with a fence.

Yes my house is connected to the PME earth, but my static caravan remains on it's own TT earth.

I think you have to change the whole valve head and body. And there will be some wiring changes. Personally I prefer the dependability of individual 2 port valves. As I understand it a 2 port valve is a ball valve. A diverter is less sophisticated, think rubber bung swings round to block unused port.

PME is delivered by a 2 core concentric cable, the outer being a combined neutral and earth. In a normal installation the house earth is connected to the CNE conductor at the supply head. These concentric cables can fail with a break in the outer core. That would result in N and E together rising to L potential. Strangely that is unlikely to harm you inside a normal house where all metal parts are bonded together. but there are some cases where it could bother you a lot. Those are site sockets, caravans and EV chargers. The issue here is you are quite likely to be standing on real ground at real earth potential and if you then touched the "earth" from a failed PME supply it could be a very long way above true earth. This could be if you touched the metal skin of a caravan, or the earthed metal case of a tool plugged into a site socket.

So you have a "building supply" as in your own supply to the site and your own meter. Why do you think in needs "upgrading" in any way? Do you NEED 3 phase? What exactly do you have now?

So you own the barn, but only the red bit is classed as "residential"? Still okay for a potting shed and vegetable garden etc but obviously the house could not be pushed back there unless they changed their mind.

What's with the Barn at the back of the plot? does the red outline mean you only have the front of the plot and someone else has the back with the barn either as a barn or another house plot? If so is there shared access over that entrance? 25M is a very short visibility splay.

There are certainly some unusual features like the long thin utility room. having to go through the tv room to get anywhere, rooms without windows. Can we have a plot layout showing how the house sits on the plot and it's relation to neighbours buildings, that might help to explain the windows issues and offer solutions.

Yes if you want to "turn the heating off" for a period, don't flick the big red switch, turn it "off" via some control input while leaving it still powered. In my case I use the "room thermostat" input to tell it that it is satisfied when I want the heating "off" but the ASHP is still powered and indeed overnight on a cold night it will still periodically start the water circulating pump to prevent a slug of cold / freezing water being left in the outside unit. Some makes of ASHP use a crankcase heater to warm the compressor before first start up, there was a long thread about this a year or so back as some users were noticing a big unexplained usage even when the ASHP was "off" but you can't just turn those off at the mains switch without allowing them proper time to warm up before starting.

My gripe is there is not an off peak tariff available that does not in some way penalise you for at least some of the "normal" usage times. And in part my resistance to having a smart meter. There really is this thing that late afternoon / early evening electricity is expensive, but being all electric I do not want to be forced into a position where I either have to cook and eat outside a time I consider "normal" or pay through the nose for the privilege. People keep pedalling the notion that smart meters are for the consumers benefit, where the reality it is for the grids benefit to try and even out demand through time of use charging, i.e force behaviour change, cook your dinner at some other time being just one of them. I also have solar PV so have a natural desire to use as much in the daytime, so do as much of my heating then, heating at night counters that so seems to conflict with having solar PV. So on balance at the moment I will just stick with a single rate tariff on a dumb meter. Appreciate other views differ.

Sorry it's that peak rate late afternoon / early evening that would rule it out for me. It's 60% above normal rate to that would make it about 44p per kWh to cook my dinner. No thank you.

What is your peak rate vs your cheap rate?

The secret to removing wallpaper is to wet it, either with a wet sponge or a steamer. The things that will make that difficult are painted wallpaper, or waterproof vinyl. Anyone who lived through the 80's will remember the horror of painted woodchip.

Agreed some manufacturers declarations are a bit dubious.