ProDave

I would say 15mm is pretty insignificant for a 175mm joist. The important point is drill the hole on the centreline.

Hillockhead is not far from me, on the north coast of the Moray Firth. It's one of the weather stations I use when checking if it's good sailing weather. Contrary to popular belief but sun does shine up here. The reality is the main difference in the weather up hers vs down there, is here it is colder and windier.

It's an electric fan heater. If it uses half the electricity of another heater it will take twice as long to heat the room and cost exactly the same. If you want an electric fan heater, just buy the cheapest one you can. Trying to claim it is more efficient than others is snake oil. EEK I just looked at the prices. AVOID.

You are slightly confusing the discussion by talking about a "reed relay" Those do exist but they are not what you want. you want a "reed switch" that is just a switch that closes when it gets near a magnet. You might find the contact rating a bit low for your needs so you might need to use the reed switch to switch an conventional relay to turn the lights on. My personal preference in that situation would be to reverse in. Reversing out you are putting the rear end of your car in danger before you can see if anything is coming. That is actually safer at night because you hope they would have lights on so you should see someone coming. If you were building that house now they would insist you had turning space so you could enter and then leave in forward gear.

With mine, an LG ASHP I turned off all the settings in the heat pump to automatically use the immersion heater. A well respected former member did a very good analysis that if you are on treated mains water, you can be sure there are no bugs in the water supply, and if the cylinder is unvented, no way for bugs to enter, so no need for a legionairs cycle. Different matter if you are on a private water supply or have a vented water tank fed from a header tank. I can still turn my immersion heater on manually should I need it, and in any event surplus solar PV automatically goes to the immersion heater.

Just watched this episode. I don't have a problem with the size if it. If someone can afford it and that is what they want best of luck to them. Although it took longer than their plan, there were not any major blunders with the build. But what did get me quite angry and shouting at the television was this Passive House Plus. The house has to generate 4 times the power it uses. That's a very laudable aim and one you would hope would be achievable. And it is the achievable bit that got me angry and shouting, because where I am, and in countless other places it would simply NOT be achievable. Not because I don't want to, but because the DNO would not allow it. They did touch on this in one sentence right at the end, the DNO export limit in this case is limiting them to about 2.5 times what the house uses. That is way better than what I am allowed, but still it shows the infrastructure and the red tape is holding back proper domestic scale self generation. And the £100K plus cost of the roof PV system would be another deal breaker for me. If programs like this keep on showing that domestic scale self generation is being hampered by an under funded under capacity grid, and stupid red tape, then perhaps, just perhaps the situation might improve.

These Horstman timers can be wired in a number of ways bepending if you have 1 or 2 elements and if you have a switched off peak supply. But the general principle is you want the tank heated between about midnight and 7AM during the cheap rate. The boost is only there in case you have used a lot of hot water and ran out, and will be charged at the peak rate. I would set your normal timer times from say 3AM to 7AM to get the latter part of the off peak time, and then only ever press the boost button if you have used all your hot water and need more before the next overnight charge.

I seem to be the only person who has the downstairs hall light also switched from top of stair and bottom of stair. It just seems such an omission not to do it.

Main bedroom light switched from by the door or either side of the bed. Bedside lights were 2 gang also switching a wall light. So one of them had to be a 2 way and an intermediate side by side on the same plate.

If you do more than 2 way switching, i.e. if you want the same light controlled by three switches, then the middle one has to be an intermediate switch which is different and has 4 terminals. If it then happened that the intermediate switch had to be on the same switch plate and another switch controlling a different light then with most manufacturers you have a problem. Most manufacturers only sell single intermediate switches and the traditional way around that is buy "grid switches" where you buy a mounting frame and the whatever switch modules you need. but that limits your choice. The Scolmore Click are not exactly grid switches but you can unscrew the switch mechanism with a single screw and swap them from one switch to another enabling you to mix intermediate and normal switches on one plate.

The two separating the living rooms (walls with bifold doors) I would look at aligning the walls with the pipes, so using perhaps 5 by 2 studs centred on the pipes so the pipes become completely encased in that bit of wall with no visible boxing in. That would take some carefull planning probably at foundation time if they are load bearing in any way. The air testing, buy the testing kit from somewhere like Screwfix and do it yourself. Up here BC want to witness a test so it is handy to have your own kit to save paying the plumber to come and do it when BC come.

That land will be well contaminated then.

I bet the original socket had scorch marks from the plumbers soldering.

Use common sense. Assume pipes WILL leak or drip, so avoid sockets directly under pipes. I have a socket in the sink unit for the boiling water tap. While we are at it, for dishwashers and washing machine, I fit the socket right at floor level UNDER the adjacent unit, so you don't need to pull the dishwasher or washing machine out to get to the plug, just remove a bit of kickboard. That REALLY bugs me for PAT testing when you have to heave a washing machine out just to get to the plug.

Yes they are my go to choice for basic stuff. They are cheap but good quality. A lot of our house has them. One of their hidden tricks, id the light switches you can remove the switch modules, handy if you want to mix intermediate switches with ordinary switches without having to go to a full grid system.

For me, the mention of "APP" turns me off. If I want to do this sort of work I want a big screen, and proper multi window OS and proper input tools like a mouse and a real keyboard. i.e. I want a fairly decent computer. APP to me means a phone, the very last tool I would choose to use for such a task. I manage such tasks quite easily with a web browser, a spreadheet and a word processor.

What fuel is the boiler? Unusual to not have an indirect hot water tank heated by the boiler.

I always feel it is a shame we are all so poor that we even have to consider storage heating as a way of getting it a bit cheaper than real time electric heating.

The only bit that needs knowledge is the initial setting up and comissioning, getting flow temperatures and flow rates right. After that is all done you just leave it to get on with things, you never need to tinker with it. Just like any other central heating. In the heating season I never touch any controls and the house is always the correct temperature. That is a far cry from storage heaters when you need to look at the weather forecast each evening and see that it is going to cool down tomorrow so you need to increase the input control to put more charge into the heaters tonight to be ready for that.

I do wonder if a storage heater might actually make more sense in a modern low energy house with good insulation and air tightness. My own house heats up slowly and cools down slowly. So an injection of heat overnight and it won't have cooled down much by the evening. Some I believe do that charging a heavy insulated slab overnight. But a heat pump is still way better. I used to have storage heaters in my old 1930's semi. Absolutely hopeless. The house leaked heat so quickly that it really was of the type that needed constant heat input when you wanted it to be warm, and it barely had any left in the storage heater by the evening. I did find an LPG gas fire was good for topping up the heat in the evening. And I have lost count how many people I have had to explain how they worked. I turn up to a reported fault of "heaters not working" and when I get there, I see they are turned off at the wall. "Oh i turned them on waited a couple of hours and they were still cold, so I turned them off again" Bangs head against wall.

Why don't you use the appropriate beads and do the corners yourself?

In the real world the 4mm cable or that in parallel with the 2.5 will be okay. At both ends, join those to a short length of 6mm and connect that to the bits of kit. In the event of a warranty claim, they are not going to pull your house apart on the suspicion it may not be 6mm all the way. Just don't make the transition obvious at either end.

I would just build up the ground level by 4cm. It only needs to be built up in one place. 5cm in case any inspector has a wonky tape measure.

Is there anything restricting the depth in the cavity? the time I find the lugs don't click into place are when the back end of the yellow lug has hit the back of the cavity. Get a long flat screwdriver behind the bit sticking out either side of the screw and you can sometimes pull or lever it forwards that last bit it needs. I doubt all your cut outs will be this thick, how many have you cut so far? P.S I usually do the cut outs before the spread arrives.

For just 2 resistors it simplifies to Rt = (R1 X R2) / (R1+R2) When I get time I will look up the ohms per metre of the 2 cables and try an example. I don't think you actually need the parallel resistance. All you need is the ohms per metre of the 2 cables and then work out the current through each cable when in parallel at a combined total of 32A. You are looking to see if they share the current in proportion to their max current carrying capacity or of one gets overloaded.