ProDave

You are over thinking it. Light switches mounted on or in tongue and groove panelling are to be found in thousands of houses, not a problem at all.

Let us not forget up until the 80;s the UK was a world leader in the design and construction of our own reactors. Some very short sighted thinking shut down the UKAE as not necessary. Now you know why we have to buy in any new reactors, designed and largely built outside the UK. Of course I don;t have a chip on my shoulder.

In Scotland, I had an argument with SEPA when they charged me a ludicrous amount to register an ol septic tank so we could sell a property. Within seconds of registering it, I received my permit. My argument was at that point all I had provided was my address and extortionate payment, but no details of what the system was. So I argued the fee was unfair as it was supposed to be a fair cost for the work involved and since the registration was produced instantly with no staff input, the fee should be very small. In discussing my dispute over the fee SEPA told me the fee was to cover the web development to allow such an automatic registration system to operate. SO I then discussed when would they properly request the details of the now newly registered system to check it complies, and they replied NEVER. Unless there is a complaint of pollution. But if there was a complaint of pollution they would find it anyway even if not regitered. So the message from that conversation was in Scotland, don't trouble yourself trying to comply with a law that SEPA are completely disinterested in.

You only have to upgrade a septic tank if it discharges to a water course. But in Scotland, SEPA have admitted they are not enforcing it.

HOW is the house heated? What type of boiler etc? Radiators or UFH? It seems strange that all of a sudden it is cold now if it has been working for the last 3 years. It is not as though it is especially cold yer and the heating has to work hard. If we know what type of heating we might suggest what to check. It sounds more like after not being used all summer, something is stuck, like a valve or a pump? Draughts won;t help, but I would be very surprised if that is the entire cause of heating not working at this time of year.

Why FFS on a new build? Whatever heating you need you need a heat emitter. UFH or radiators. So on a new build the extra cost is the cost of the heat pump, and HW cylinder less the cost of the gas boiler you would have fitted and less the cost of the no longer needed gas connection. I defy anyone to show me any sums that suggests that is going to be more than a couple of £000

I can assure you a heat pump in a well built new build house that is well insulated and air tight does work very well indeed and the house is warm all the time. It will be "different" to an old leaky house with a gas boiler that it won't go cold overnight when the heating goes off. In a modern well insulated house if the heating goes off you might not even notice for a day or 2, it keeps it's heat for so long and cools sown so slowly. Of course whether the mass market house builders will ever be capable of making a proper well insulated air tight house good enough to behave like that is a debatable subject. The much bigger and harder issue is the plan / hope to retro fit heat pumps into the stock of old leaky houses that I have a great deal less confidence that it will ever work.

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.