ProDave

Try these two

Any prospective buyer would be advised by their surveyor that is is not classed as a bedroom as it fails to meet building regs and it should therefore just be treated as loft storage. So don't bank on it being classed as a bedroom and increasing the value of the house. As the stairs don't have enough headroom there is little chance of you ever getting it to comply. It is what it is and I see no harm in making the best of it that you can.

You could test each core with a multimeter but that is probably just as tedious as crimping a plug on. The plugs are pence each so just crimp a plug on and use the tester you have.

What we need is a picture from inside the loft space showing the stack coming down the wall and a close up of how it finishes at the bottom in the loft.

As above. you are never going to make this comply with current building regs so don't even bother trying. Add whatever insulation you can.

Won't that need a trap? Otherwise how will the drain system pass a pressure test?

You could only get export payments if you used an MCS installer. the small amount I export the payment would necer pay back the additional cost of an MCS installer vs DIY.

We don't have any heating upstairs. Build your house properly insulated, air tight and with MVHR and upstairs heating us superfluous. Unless you like a particularly hot bedroom.

When I fitted my PV there were no grants, the FIT had only just stopped. So it was no brainer to DIY install it as cheap as possible. The only incentive then to use an MCS company was if you wanted to be paid the insulting price of 5p per kWh for anything you exported. I just self use nearly all of it.

How much does it weigh? Is it one with 3 solid pendants that hang down so if it gets knocked it couuld put a lot of force on the bracket? Picture of light fitting?

I would love to see just what they advise will get a Victorian house up to an EPC A? I think it is a safe bet your loft room has never been seen by a building inspector, and I would wager that the floor is little more than the existing ceiling joists. So if you are hoping to achieve a building regs compliant room that you can describe as a bedroom, forget it. So you have a non compliant room that is a useful but cold space. I would not spend anything like £15K on that. I would go for the cheap option of insulate over what is there and new plasterboard. A lot of the improvement will be proper detailing to ensure air tightness of the insulation and boarding. This is where being able to do that sort of work yourself wins. Insulating and re boarding is not that hard, do you feel up to ding it yourself? Whatever you do photograph it so you have a record of the added insulation so you stand a chance of getting the next EPC surveyor to take notice of the insulation you have fitted, though that in not even guaranteed.

Our set of Stairbox stairs, but using the Fusion handrails and spindles from Burdidge.

What calculation software did you use? Was it Jeremy's spreadsheet on this forum? I have broadly similar insulation values to you but only a 150 square metre house, and my max heat loss is about 2200W with inside at 20 degrees and outside at -10

And even cheaper on ebay, about 1/3 the price of the TLC one. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304535119744?epid=2126650938&hash=item46e7b52780:g:ia4AAOSw--1WsLjd&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA0PlzfJK3EGu1A7MKTmZi3ClYgxUNmTzmyMyhqVIF6XpKLCTEwFf1cNyfluedyBbpRShjBV15cm%2Fodn1ae%2Bxigz07WcGCpwrKDkCDkeqxg6udFRvPgnfY1jTqw466oF%2BcZeW0aaXt4mwnjDzafXMgP70AQzKtB2wX6BWWh5ZXbIZH%2F6Tejt7lB%2Be9JGED6L4FNg6Gk69Tw6Eicy4PVvMvOEihNjIXuxXskceqEQBgh4FWp2ropfQFdhv35X1lfbWqz5je%2BCJbIAHiD1yy6g9aOGs%3D|tkp%3ABlBMUODmy6zSYg

Am I missing something here. It is not just a foundation for a wall. That is easy. Just dig until you hit hard undisturbed ground, no calculation will tell you what you will find when you dig. Bit this is not any old wall, it is a retaining wall, if I am reading it right to keep your driveway from sliding down into the piggery? If so I have not seen discussion of the height of what it has to retain and the forces trying to overturn the retaining wall.

And we achieve that with no heating upstairs. If we had heating upstairs and set the upstairs thermostat to 18C it would never turn on. If bedroom gets too hot we open a window to let heat out.

We never have open windows with a light on after dark. If we need ventilation at night, we open the windows as we go to bed and turn the lights off.

Anyone who claims a heat pump is cheaper to run than a gas boiler is a brave man. My view is an ASHP running with a COP of 3 and electricity at 3 times the cost per kWh of gas, the ASHP could equal the cost of heating with gas. So for a property that does not have gas, it is a way to equal the heating costs if you had gas available. An ASHP will be better for the environment eventually as more electricity is generated by renewable means. Re the heat loss from the building. How technical are you? How much do you know about the building design and proposed insulation (if's all buried in the SAP report if you have the full report not just the summary) Then have a look at this.

I would just say you need a surveyor. When the housing officer comes out, stress the swelled bulging floor in your bathroom, and the neighbours damp in his floor and stress that is where they need to be looking, taking the floor up if necessary to find out why it is swelling and fix it. Just pointing out various patches of mould on a wall is likely to be brushed off as you need to turn the heating up, open a window etc, so don't dwell too much on that, concentrate on why is the bathroom floor swelling up to the point the door is sticking, there must be something wrong there.

There is a lot talked about damp and mould, and in a lot of cases it can be poor lifestyle choices by the occupiers. but I don't think that is the case here. As you are on the ground floor, and another ground floor tenant has a similar issue, I would be wanting to lift a floor board in or near your bathroom to have a look. Given your floor is swelling it would not surprise me to find there is a burst pipe, water under the floor and joists soaked. What it needs is the landlord to take interest and have a proper look. Just how you achieve that is the question, and sadly I don't know the answer. Who is the landlord? Council? Private? Do you know if there are any floorboards anywhere that have previously been lifted for previous work? If so you might even be able to lift one yourself to have a look.

Are you ground or upper floor? Are you a tenant or do you own (leasehold?) your flat?

To "install" an ASHP broadly the same as installing a gas or oil system boiler, perhaps a little more if the installer has not done many so more reading of the installation manual needed. Whether you can find a plumber and electrician to do that is another matter. To have the whole lot supplied and installed as a package probably a lot more, but whatever you choose you will be having the same UFH the same bathrooms etc so are you just trying to compare the cost of a gas or oil boiler with the cost of an ASHP?

Who is / has designed the house? What are you hoping to achieve, just to pass building regs or the lowest energy most efficient build you can? Has a proper heat loss calculation been done? If nothing else, upstairs will need less heat than downstairs so you could fir the upstairs loops to a wider pipe spacing.

I don't know. Mine came from the next door neighbour changing all the original wooden doors and windows for UPVC. I guess i was lucky that the front door came out with the frame intact. I also have a pair of French doors that came out with the frame chopped up. One day they will be a pair of doors on a shed, but when I do that I will have to make the frame for them.

For a start you DO NOT NEED UFH ON A LANDING. I shouted that because any UFH designer that says you do, knows nothing about real buildings and UFH. Our first self build, standard building regs 20 years ago, nothing special, had UFH on the landing, because the designer said so. That circuit NEVER turned on. Plenty of heat coming up the stairs from below. Even the downstairs hall rarely came on because there was so little external wall to leak heat, and plenty of heat from other downstairs rooms. Our present house, finished 2 years ago now, to better than building regs insulation and air tightness, has no UFH loop in the hall and only short loops in the bathroom and en-suite. No other heating at all upstairs, it gets all the heat it needs from downstairs. Unless of course you particularly want a very hot bedroom.