ProDave

That is abysmal workmanship. What little insulation there is on the upstands is doing absolutely nothing by virtue of the fact cold air can get behind it. To do that properly is going to take some care to fit the insulation a nice and snug fit, foam in the gaps, and tape the joints so everything is enclosed nice and snug with no path for cold air to bypass the insulation. And sadly what most of us know of mass market builders is the chance of actually getting them to do it properly is quite slim. But you have to try and if it is not done right keep banging away at them. When you do get them to do it, please post pictures as they go.

They should provide the grounds on which they refused the permission. i.e. reason for refusal. I would appeal. That costs you nothing. Don't mention the Arcade machines, just focus on the fact at the moment you have a garage with very limited headroom that you cannot even stand upright in, and you just want to raise the height so it becomes a normal usable garage that you can stand up in, keep your car in, perform normal maintenance tasks on the car, and have some shelving to store usual tools and materials.

It is not clear, has planning permission actually been refused, or are they merely at the moment discussing the application with you and saying they are minded to refuse it for all sorts of odd reasons?

Normally once you start building and building control (or equivalent) are involved, then changes to building regs mid build do not apply, you carry on working to the building regs in force when the build was started. Missing insulation sounds like a failure of the builder and failure of the building control body to notice.

Re kitchen and cooker. Fit a recirculating cooker hood with a filter and then position the kitchen extract a little away from this.

the network operators are very aware of that issue. Up here in the sparsely populated windy north, where a lot of new wind power is being built. They are upgrading the grid as fast as they can to carry all this newly generated power down south to where most of it is needed. But it seems to be a slow process. There are already pinch points on the grid where it is already at capacity and that is limiting new generation coming on line. It has been at least 5 years, probably much longer since the plan to build a third HV grid connection from the far north to the Central belt was first proposed. The section of line that will pass near us is now in the public consultation of it's third proposed route. It has not even got as far as a formal planning application. To all those "stop oil" protesters, I say it is no good telling the public to stop using oil. You need to be be lobbying the government so that the necessary upgrades to the grid to enable the full potential of wind power, does not get bogged down in a 10 year planning battle before they can even start the 10 year build program to implement it. The government needs an honest discussion. Do we carry on as we are, and take a VERY long time to plan anything like this, so we "get it right" or do we adopt what some countries have and "do it regardless" because it is important. It will be quicker but there will be a lot of people moaning they were not given the chance to object. You can have it quick, or you can have it right, but not both.

This just highlights how easy it is for countries with low population density, abundant land, and a warm sunny climate to go completely green. Not so easy for the UK with a much higher population density, not so much "spare" land, and a much less sunny climate. Oh and tight planning regulations. We can see the difference in the UK. Orkney for instance produces more green energy than it can use. Easy on a low population windy group of islands. Even Scotland as a whole with it's low population density, lots of coastline for offshore wind and already a lot of onshore wind should be able to generate it's own green energy. Not so easy for the SE of England with it's high population density and not much "spare" land.

It seems to vary a lot. BC inspected my wind and watertight shell. I asked when was the next inspection and they said "completion"

Keeping a room cool in hot weather, we achieve by a "night purge" Keep the windows shut in the day to keep the heat out, and as soon as it cools down in the evening so it is colder outside, throw all the windows open. That does not help of course if is remains uncomfortably hot overnight, but that is seldom a problem up here.

I have indeed, I have some in my own house. But I did once have trouble with LAP light switches where the screws would not grip multiple cables. Separate to "what make" the ones I hate are screwless flat plate. You really do need a perfect wall and a deep back box to stand a chance of getting them right. Some are better than others, and it's not easy to generalise what is good and not.

We don't have heating upstairs, not needed. When the heating is on, we keep the bedroom door shut to stop heat rising by convection. You can still open the window of you want to cool it down more, mvhr does not prevent that, but having mvhr means it is not necessary to open a window to get fresh air.

That differs to my findings, it is a long time since I have regarded MK as "quality" I have had lots of problems with jammed screws in new MK sockets, jammed to the point you can hardly turn them, and I am not alone.

If it is a 3 phase board I can easily see it costing that much, but equally it would have to be a very rough 3 phase board to warrant ripping it out and replacing. So it's a 16A circuit for the kitchen at present, I agree that is too small for microwave and kettle, regardless of what diversity says, they WILL be used at the same time. So that's north of 20A. You need to find if it's just a radial circuit at the moment and of so what size cable. It could be feasible to convert it to a ring. It is pretty normal for tenants to be responsible for electrics in commercial. One unit I know which the owner bought for his own use has a REALLY old rewireable 3 phase fuse box well past it's best, but it is still there as no tenant has paid for an upgrade.

My favourite are Scholmore Click Mode (available from toolstation) They are budget price but good quality.

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.