ProDave

Do Rationel do level entry sliders? They didn't when we bought ours, and we have a normal slight "step"

The expansion vessel tees off between the outlet of the control group and the cold inlet to the cylinder which is at the bottom. I can see no operational reason why it would not function correctly lower down, BUT it would mean you would have to partly drain the cylinder if the expansion vessel ever needs replacing. Is there a legislative reason it cannot be mounted low down?

They will move the supply and their fuse in the morning, the meter man will connect the meter in the afternoon and then YOUR electrician will be expected to connect the meter to your consumer unit. They may or may not provide an isolator switch but your electrician should know how to deal with it whatever they do. Have him on standby for late that afternoon as I doubt you will be given a time for the meter man.

Both times I built, we had the plot long before selling the old house, so had plenty of time to get the static caravan on site and services connected. A rural plot you might well have to install a sewage treatment plant as well. And not all plots are even suitable to live on. One plot we looked at was on a very steep hill. Not only would the foundations potentially cost a lot, but we were not even sure we could create enough flat enough land for a caravan. Regards what to do in the short term, when I was visiting the site organising services etc I stayed in my touring caravan having to fetch drinking water and dispose of chemical toilet waste as you do on a caravan site. I would not want to be doing that for long.

You say that is your "front" garden. The context is not clear in particular where are the neighbouring houses, where do they front to? Normally the elevation facing the road is the principle elevation, so that to me is a side garden. Where the building line lies depends to some extent on what neighbours there are. but if you move your garage just a little to the right so it is inline with the house wall that faces the road I would say it is okay. Won't that make it a tight turn into the garage or will a car never go in there?

What you really need it a thermal camera, assuming you can't stretch to one of those, an IR thermometer would tell you if it's the ceiling or walls that are coldest hence losing the most heat. Probably no floor insulation either.

Yes basically the linesman cocked up and instead of burying a pigtail of copper wire connected to the earth, he had connected the pigtail to one of the Live conductors. There would have been a continual current passing through that limited only by how wet the ground was and therefore what the earth impedance was. And that current would have been warming up the ground hence causing the steam. I hope someone got a good talking to,.

Can we assume that this room under the garage is also a semi basement? At least the front bit of the room (front in terms of where the garage door is) must be underground. So presumably everything about the room is cold? not just the ceiling. So you are probably looking at insulating the walls as well. Assuming there really is no insulation (age of building?) then anything will be a vast improvement, even 50mm pf PIR. How much can you afford to lower the ceiling height by or reduce the room size by with wall insulation?

Have you got the building plot yet? It can take a long time to get services connected before the site is ready to move onto.

Check the socket that is is plugged into. PAT test will only confirm continuity from earth pin of the WM plug to the WM case. If the earth is missing from the socket you could get the effect you describe. Volt sticks have their uses but this is not one of them.

I think they originally said £700K was all they had and it ended up almost £1.4m

I would love to see the planning history. IMHO a far better use of the site, would be to keep the original cottage separate and 2 new builds, one being where the "car barn" is and one being the other side of the cottage. But let me guess, it's green belt and planning would not allow an additional dwelling or 2, so this abomination was the "solution" to extracting as much from the site as planning would allow. IF that is the case then I despair of the planning system. At least in Scotland, it is highly likely a new build would be allowed in the garden of an existing dwelling.

But a COP of 2 is better than effectively a COP of 1 if a heat battery and a resistance heating element is the alternative being considered in this thread.

I got most of those. Ne mention of Eco Friendly, and I didn't see two coats at once.

I am not seeing a "chimney" there (do I need to look harder?) I see the chimney breast formed but I don't see a masonry chimney coming out of the top and up through the roof structure?

That turned out to be one expensive house, that was nearly double their "all we can afford" estimate at the start. They had no concept of how to save money, e,g I would have made a habitable home in the existing building and saved building the new wing until you could have afforded it. I think they said they could have bought 3 houses for the cost of building this one.

Your problem is going to be the fact the UFH will take a LOT longer to heat up than the radiators. So if you just connect it and treat it as another radiator, don't expect the extension to be warm until some time later than the rest of the rooms, and then probably stay warm after the other rooms have cooled down. I would have a 2 port valve feeding the radiators and another 2 port valve feeding the UFH and then a time clock so the UFH could come on earlier. But you can't really do that just with the ASHP's controller. That is why I don't bother with using the ASHP's controller as a timer and just treat it as somewhere to set and look at parameters, and my timing is done with a 3 channel central heating time clock. Two heating zones with separate times and DHW on the third.

Stove pipes go female up, so any condensation running down the inside stays inside. Male up as your picture shows, and condensation could run out at a joint.

There is a little confusion here. It's not ASHP's that take an age, but under floor heating. Even heated by a gas or oil boiler, UFH takes a long tome to warm up. I think you are talking about an electric heating element for the towel rail? Not a "300 or 400W TRV"? They work well, but be aware if you do turn the upstairs radiator circuit on, all the heat in the towel rail from the electric heater will be distributed to all the radiators.

ANY build method, done properly with attention to detail will give similar results. We are timber frame and achieve those sort of results. Heat loss calculations, and proven by actual experience, says our house will need a maximum of a little over 2kW heat input when it is -10 outside and +20 inside. You should seriously be aiming for something similar. We originally planned 2 stoves, but only fitted one as you will find out in a well insulated house, it is near impossible to keep one part of the house cooler than others so the one stove does a good job of heating the whole house. In such a well insulated house, a stove needs to be somewhere it can circulate heat all around the house. Your open plan area would be good for that. But put one in the living room with the door shut and you will cook in no time. I would not fit conventional chimney's. A stove just needs a twin wall flue system up through the house and out through the roof. Then you can choose withing reason where to put the stove later on.

You need a screw extractor set, something like this https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/6-piece-screw-extraction-set-3---25mm/ You drill a pilot hole into the broken off stuck but then the screw extractor will bit into that pilot hole and unscrew it.

Wood burning stoves is a marmite topic on here. There is nothing wrong with one in a well insulated modern house as long as you fit a room sealed one, that takes it's combustion air in via a duct direct from outside, rather than from the room. Beware not all stoves with an air in vent take both primary and secondary air from outside. Check carefully. Our main reason for having one is a good supply of free firewood. If we did not live somewhere with plenty of free wood we might not bother if we had to buy all the fuel. Appreciate you wanting a house specific to your needs, nothing wrong with that. It might be worth planning a way to floor over the vaulted area should you want to make way for another bedroom, i.e. design the structure to allow that should you want to. A hot water tank really needs to be as close to the kitchen and bathrooms as you can. Probably a little airing cupboard incorporated in your en-suite complex could achieve that.

That will no doubt go to appeal and drag on somewhat.

If the 330mm brick wall is not built yet, build in an opening, bridged at the top with a lintel, to create a space for the pipe to rise between rooms.

Hi and welcome to the forum. That is obviously a house to suit your particular needs and certainly not optimised for best resale price should you ever do that. Agreed master suite needs a re think, apart from anything else it is a tortuous trek from the bed to the loo in the middle of the night. Double garage while it may fit 2 cars at a push, the door is not wide enough for 2 cars. Store room would be better as the family bathroom leaving 2 larger bedrooms above the garage (one used as craft room) and it might as well go to the back wall.