ProDave

Exactly the same for us, joiners cut all the compound angles for the gable end ridge beams on site. They made softwood templates first to establish the correct compound angles to cut, before cutting the real beams, all supplied a bit over length. I had some offcuts of Kerto beams left outside in the rain for a very long time without delaminating.

You have just invented the "Thermal Store" with all the issues that has in relation to use with an ASHP. Namely as you draw heat out of them you reduce the temperature of the water in the store, thus reducing the effective capacity vs a hot water tank, that delivers near constant temperature water right to the end.

Horizontal cylinder should be okay, at least you are lifting it up into the loft empty. A sun amp weighs a LOT. Best of luck lifting that into aloft and making the loft string enough. I have heard of people struggling to get one up an ordinary staircase, let alone somehow up into a loft.

Foam the gap between windows and frame and then tape the window to VCL layer with air tightness tape. And tape over the leak points like those window retaining brackets. You have some work to do something sensible with that wall to eaves "joint" Is this room in roof with insulated roof or just a single storey with insulated ceiling. There may be a lot of work getting the roof or ceiling insulated properly and air tight. If the cills ordered have been delivered short, reject them. The cill usually goes in a groove in the bottom of the window frame and the outer edge must overhang over the outer edge of your cladding. If it won't then it is too short. Some window suppliers don't make them big enough and they have to be fabricated by someone else, and is supplying short ones them hoping you won't notice and they can avoid the expense of getting them made to spec?

Been there, done that, got the tee shirt, I could write a book on it.

No. Glulam is large bits of timber glued together in layers, think bits of 4 by 2 glued together in layers in both planes to make whatever size you want. Kerto is literally overgrown plywood. Think thin strips of wood glued together in layers to whatever size you want them. We used Kerto beams for our roof ridge beam. According to the SE Kerto will give the same strength in a smaller size than a Glulam. But if lift on sight, a Glulam can be sanded and varnished and look quite nice.

I think the gap between the nose of the stair and the floorboard says all we need to know about the skill of the "carpenter" that fitted that. for a start I would have had the newel post further to the right.

Re EV's and fires. They do NOT need external oxygen to burn, so conventional firefighting to starve the fire of oxygen will not work. There are plenty of EV fires on you tube including one I saw recently of an EV fire that started on a boat launch slipway (they do NOT like being immersed in salt water) and ended up with the EV completely under water and still burning.

Start by identifying a switch or sensor somewhere on the bypass module that should be making or breaking a contact to show the bypass module has activated. Once you have found that identify if any voltage is being sent to the switch or sensor and then see if it is switching it's output accordingly. It could be a faulty sensor or a faulty mechanical part so something is not reaching the expected travel to activate it. If that appears to be switching properly, then you are into the realms of tracing what the circuit board is doing with that, i.e is it trying to switch a relay that might have failed.

The UK seems to specialise in tiny houses crammed in far too close together in towns and cites then with hallowed "no build" (green belt) in between them. I would prefer a more spaced out housing with larger gardens and spaces between which would of course use up a bit more land.

If you want to use the eaves space for storage, then there is no question, insulate the entire roof following the roof line all the way. The eaves space then becomes part of the room and is inside the insulated and hopefully air tight layer. Air tightness will be a tedious detail to get right having to accurately cut and then seal (air tightness tape) around every single one of the knee posts.

I would not live above a public car park, even if it had sprinklers, unless EV's were banned from entering. But if the policy is build on top of a car park, that is a veiled way of saying most of these new homes will be high rise?

One of the things that kept getting mentioned when suggesting where all these new homes are going to be built was "Car parks" Okay so where will the cars that used to use these car parks, go and park then?

Definitely need a right of way to use the private access road, and that needs to include not only you and your visitors when the house is complete, but also all the traffic in relation to the build, delivery vehicles etc. That needs to be a condition of your offer that an access right is included. And it needs the be hereditable (might be the wrong word) i.e the right of access will pass to the new owner of you sell the house.

I skipped through some of it, there was talk of panels and generating, so my guess is he is going to tell you how to self install some solar PV?

I am struggling to think of what "searches" are likely to cost £1/3K I paid less than that for the total legal work when buying my plot. The things you need to be checking is availablilty and cost of services, water, electricity, drainage etc. Get quotes now so there are no nasty surprises. The top soil is irrelevant for building, you scrape that off and dig down, it's the sub soil that determines the foundations needed.

That's a good idea about checking the rainwater drains. In a fry spell when the problem does not show, try running a hose down one of the rainwater drains at the front for a good length of time and see if that induces the problem.

I would start by lowering the ground level adjacent to the house, if you can't lower the whole garden, dig a trench cluse to the house at a lower level and make a feature of it with decorative gravel for instance. If nothing else it will give you an indication of high water table (if it fills up and does not drain away) Ideally you would cut back the paving leading to the front door and fit a drainage channel there to again try and keep water away from the front wall of the house. And do the same on the paved area leading to the garage, stop the paving a bit away from the side wall of the house and a drainage channel to keep water away from the side wall.

Our house is built with ridge beams like that, in our case Kerto beams (think overgrown plywood) which are smaller for a given strength than say a glulam beam. It makes for a very open roof space, one of the better design choices we made.

What are the measurements of your rectangle? I suspect those stock rectangular to round adaptors are way too small. I like the idea of a re purposed drain hopper. Take some measurements and visit a builders merchant to see what (nearly) fits.

Simplest form, cut a piece of say plywood to fit the rectangular hole then drill a large round hole to match the ducting. It will probably be noisier than the proper bit as that would have been some form of tapered transition. Some more inventive people here would make something on their 3d printer.

Yes there is a part missing, almost certainly specific to that particular hood and not available as a spare part. If you have just bought it, take it up with the supplier. If this is an existing old hood, time to get inventive and make something.

Hi and welcome to the forum. Cutting your heating usage to 1/3 what it was originally is very good, and shows what can be done to older houses. If you wanted to get better hot water performance while keeping to a lower boiler flow temperature, you might look at changing your hot water cylinder for a "Heat Pump" version. These have a very much larger surface area input coil for better heat transfer. I have one (heated by a heat pump) the maximum flow temperature of my heat pump is set to 55 degrees. My sweet spot is DHW set at a tank temperature of 48 degrees. That is hot enough to get almost uncomfortably hot water for the kitchen sink and washing up and plenty for everything else. Some of the boffins on here would be pulling their boiler apart, fitting a second thermostat and a relay to switch between them to give different temperatures.

I like "Yacht rigging" wire for an almost invisible balustrade, as long as BC are not involved.

Just turn it on. the slab won't go straight to 40C the laws of physics means it will heat up slowly. I turned ours on yesterday. For all the southerners basking in unseasonably warm temperatures, spare a thought for the north of Scotland where it had been raining hard non stop for 48 hours and the temperature outside was about 7C