ProDave

Don't re invent the wheel. Look at Exhaust air Heat Pumps that are usually built and packaged with a hot water system to do exactly what you describe. Where in the UK are you? I am skeptical that any UK house can really run all year with no heating,

Fit MVHR to the whole house, which will ventilate it well and recover most of the otherwise wasted heat with ordinary fans. Having lived several years in our house with MVHR when visiting a relative last week we both noticed how stuffy their house was and needed to open a bedroom window each night to get adequate ventilation.

That would be an upstairs / roof ceiling. The drawing show was an inter floor ceiling so no issues. But good point depending on the roof make up and where the vapour / air tightness barrier is going, a service void may make sense on an upstairs ceiling,

For walls, 25mm service void is plenty for cables, only use 50mm on walls that are going to have pipes in them. Service void is pointless in a ceiling, you have the whole space between the joists for services, it is just unecessary work.

Hi and welcome. Sounds like a good project. My best suggestion is to look at getting the basic structural shell built for you usually to "wind and watertight" That entails the foundations, frame (by whatever method you choose) roof, windows and doors. Those will be by far the hardest to do yourself with no experience. Then all the inside work is relatively easy. Don't at this stage get too fixed on one construction method. It is possible to build a really good well insulated house by all the different methods, so it may come down to what is normal for your area, i.e. what do the trades local to you know how to build?

The only thing that is "right" is the readings on the display on the meter. Have you been noting those daily? You need to check of those agree with the in home display. It does sound like you need a "discussion" with your supplier, but not before you are sure of your facts. People often ask me why I am refusing to have a smart meter. One of the reasons is to avoid this sort of grief when clearly it seems the technology is not working.

Gas meters measure in cubic metres of gas. but it is billed in kWh. One of the boffins will be along soon I am sure with the conversion factor.

I would not contact your supplier yet. I would spend say a week gathering evidence. Daily meter reading on the display on the meter itself not the IHD, preferably at the same time every day. Keep a note of those readings and work out how many kWh is actually being used each day. Then get the daily usage figures from your suppliers web page and compare them. When you clearly have differing figures, then is the time to discuss it with your supplier.

Are you saying your in home display attached to the smart meter is giving different readings to your on line account with your energy supplier? That would worry me and I would want to get to the bottom of it, by taking dailiy readings from the meter itself, not the in home display, and comparing that with what your on line energy account says. So much for smart meters, I will stick to a dumb meter and a once a month reading submitted to my provider.

Behind our house is a field. No buildings for a very long way. Just what this pipe connects to is a mystery, other than all the time we have been here, nothing whatsoever has come out of it, until this recent storm caused some flooding, and perhaps the extra hytrostatic pressure forced the blockage (probably mud) out of it. This is a low point in the field and is shown as a high surface water flood risk on the flood map. Well that is certainly true, it was flooded on Saturday and the flood water ran across part of our garden to reach the burn. This is probably therefore some sort of land drain to try and drain this low part of the field. Perhaps now it is flowing again, that part of the field will be less wet, though the capacity of this pipe will not make much dent in the water that was flowing on Saturday. I did some searching with my divining rods to try and trace it before. It goes under our garden and under the fence into the field., but not much further. from that point I traced something left and right, almost perpendicular to this pipe going a short way in each direction. So I am searching for a length or pipe either about 160mm diameter to try and sleeve inside this existing pipe, or >200mm to sleeve around the outside. So whichever I can find first I will try. If anyone in the locality (a little north of Inverness) has anything going spare, donations gratefully received.

The issue at the moment is the mud that is left behind where the old bit of pipe sat, having been well soaked, is like treacle. To just lay the old pipe back there is going to require some serious work and going to require the ground to be dry. Am am also mindful that the remaining piece, if it is the same 18" long is not very far into the remaining soil before the next joint so that too is very vulnerable to becoming loose. I am going to seek out some 150 / 160mm plastic pipe and experiment with that to see of I can do anything by way of a sleeve.

It may not be clear from the pictures but the outside of this clay pipe is a very irregular shape with a flat bottom. Presumably for laying it on, which would work fine if laying it onto the bottom of a nice flat dry trench. So I can't see any form of sleeve over the outside working. It might be worth trying 160mm drain pipe if I can find a bit, but it would have to be squashed to go in, and I can't see that happening. Anything to do with concreting, will require it to be dry, i.e. burn lower than present and nothing running out of the land drain pipe. Can you see the dilemma?

Try sealing where the cable enters the back box to stop the air flow.

the recent storm and a minor bit of garden flooding eroded part of the bank of our burn. It is easy enough to rebuild it and I am already collecting large rocks to build in as reinforcement. But my question is what to do with this old clay land drainage pipe? It has always been there, sticking out from the bank, but until the recent storm has been dry. Now it is running water, which is good, it is doing it's job. But where the bank eroded a whole section of this clay pipe has come off. It would appear the sections are short, about 18" each, and they just butt together, not even a male / female socket at the joint. I want to re fit the detached bit of pipe or otherwise extend it so I can rebuild the bank back to about where it was. So I thought I would try and see if any standard size pipe is a snug fit inside. No such luck. That is a bit of standard 110mm drain pipe. Way too small. but it also shows this clay pipe is not round, a sort of egg shape about 130mm wide and 160mm high. Any ideas how to either join some modern pipe into it, or re fit the original clay pipe. the problem I see with fitting the original flay pipe is needing it to dry out thoroughly (i.e wait until next summer) as it will need a solid base laid, probably concrete, to set the detached piece on a bed of concrete and encase at least the joint in concrete. Any ideas please?

That would only apply to anyone lucky enough to have bought say agricultural land and obtained planning permission. I suspect most self builders will have bought land with PP in place and paid building plot prices.

Is the law different? Other than I think England allow a larger "Caravan" as Scotland didn't update it's own caravan act when England did.

Yes it was our own residence from moving into the caravan to moving out of the house. It has been let since, so fair doo's CGT will be due for the period it was let, but I would not expect it to be due for the period we lived there.

I wanted a dumper but never found a cheap enough one close to home. But I did find the dozer blade on the digger did a pretty good job of pushing the muck around so I could pile it all up in one corner of the plot.

This is interesting as this is a situation we might face soon (sale of our first self build). I had assumed I would put the date we moved onto the plot into a static caravan as the start of the period of ownership. After all from that date it was out main residence even if it was only a caravan, we had nowhere else to live.

This is how the Highland Council define a "caravan" https://www.highland.gov.uk/downloads/file/1346/bst_018_caravans_and_mobile_homes It would be worth searching your own planning authority to see if they have a similar definition.

It does not have to be on wheels. The usual method is make a number of concrete pads either cast concrete or concrete blocks and build a timber frame of joists that literally just sit on your concrete pads. Then you can justifiably say the whole building can be lifted by a crane onto a low loader truck and be moved that way. Several on here have build substantial buildings like that without problem and they have been classed as a "caravan"

My take on garage doors, is there is absolutely no need to have the blockwork across the opening. I did not even dig the foundation trench across the opening and waste concrete filling it up. BC did raise an eyebrow but accepted this. Then the concrete floor of the garage extended out to level with the outer edge of the wall. I have a roller door and the rubber seal at the bottom does a good job of stopping any blown rain entering. Though a bit of foresight and that portion could have been sloped. We too have a drive that slopes down to the garage and have an aco drain across the front. That is set slightly lower than the garage slab so a small step up into the garage. All performed well in the recent storm and heavy rain, the drain coped well and no water in the garage. I am glad we had the tarmac done before this recent storm, in a previous storm when it was just the MOT1 and some gravel, a lot of that got washed away.

You are about as likely to get talked out of buying a digger here, as you are being talked out of self building a house.

Buy the very cheapest pre made off the shelf softwood staircase from someone like Howdens, and regard it as temporary. Fit proper stairs later.

The best bit of buying your own digger is it is there, all the time. I had mine about 3 years, not only did it get used for all the digging tasks, foundations, drainage, treatment plant, landscaping, it was damned handy having it there to be used any time you wanted it. Often it would just get 5 minutes work to move something, you can't hire a digger in for that.