ProDave

Have you worked out which nosy neighbour reported your fence? If you loose your appeal I would go with your suggestion of a 1M fence painted in vulgar colours.

I am with Octopus and they have just told me my prices are going down 8% to less than the price cap, and standing charges are not going up. If Octopus can supply for less than the cap price why can't others? In theory if actual prices are less than the capped price, we should be back to proper competition. If you want to switch to them (and I recommend them for a variety of reasons) then PM me for a referal code to get £50 credit.

I only worked on one straw bale house. That was using the straw as insulation not structure. they basically built a larsen truss timber frame with a massive gap between the inner and outer frame, exactly one bale wide and the bales were stacked in as the insulation but not really doing anything structural. IIRC the outer part of the larsen truss was erected first and clad in OSB and membrane and the bales stacked from inside before the inner leaf of the larsen truss was fitted, meaning stacking the bales was a dry, indoor job. The big challenge they had was sourcing the bales. Small bales are not easy to find now, most balers are round, or much larger squares. They had to find a farmer with an old small baler, and then next challenge was a good weather window to bale them completely dry, and then a dry barn to store them until ready to go into the build.

What do YOU thing is wrong or bothering you? Agreed he did not have proper corner bricks for the bay but he has done a reasonable job of cutting the bricks for that. I must be tolerant because nothing there would bother me much.

Why is yours only going down £16? Mine is going down 8% which at my annual usage is about £150

Did you apply for PP or is the result of someone noticing your fence erected without PP. If you lose, you could always reduce the fence to 1.0M (permitted development) and just let the hedge grow.

You don't swap your empty fuel tank for a full one which would require you to lift a 70Kg lump. Instead you just pour some liquid fuel into the one you have.

I can drive 500 miles on a tank of fuel. Why would I choose a vehicle that meant I had to fill up 5 times as often and each stop would take longer?

Why not overhead lines and a catenery built into all EV's aka high speed trolley bus.

Please don't joke, the SNP have already discussed the possibility of requiring an EPC C before you are allowed to place a property on the market for sale. I really really do hope they completely implode at the next election.

I think generally most of us shudder when you say "Damp Specialist" They want to sell you their solution to solve the problem. How many will be blunt like I was (sorry if I offended you) and tell you that what you have is a total bodge, has been done completely wrong, and needs ripping out and starting again with a proper conversion of the building. That is not something some magic damp solving product will fix. It wants a fundamental re design and rebuild. If you did just adopt some damp specialists solution and continue as it was, you would still have a very substandard very poorly insulated, cold and expensive to heat room. Is that what you really want? Or would you like to do it properly and have a nice warm dry kitchen?

I will sell you one. Payment by bitcoin, you have to arrange your own transport.

So you have "converted" a garage just by plastering the inside of a single skin brick wall that may not even have a DPC, kept the original concrete floor without building up the level and adding insulation? and the outside ground level appears to be too high. Who has done this work, and more importantly who "designed" this conversion. Just about everything done is wrong. Strip off the plaster, then start again properly designing the conversion and getting it right this time. This forum will give much better advice how to do it properly than anyone that has been near it so far.

In a rewire you can route all circuits to anywhere you want. It is the one time you can sensibly get to choose anywhere in the house to put the CU. So make that sensible choice. You probably will need a switch fuse and appropriate cable from the meter box to feed the new CU so the routing for that cable might influence where the new CU will go perhaps. Kitchen cupboard is a silly place. Awkward to work on and unless you never use that cupboard for anything, loads of stuff to move just to get at it.

Yes what most people don't see is all the gradual changes to the rules LL's have to operate under. More requirements for tests and checks and general paperwork, changes to the tax rules so less genuine expenses can be offset against tax, so more tax for the LL to pay, compulsory registration of LL's, another paperwork mountain and costs, reductions in CGT allowance so you pay more CGT if you sell. And for a lot of people the rise in interest rates. There has been a general trend over the last few years to hurt landlords and charge them more just about everywhere they can. And then they act all surprised when LL's sell up and there are fewer properties to let and rents go up. They just can't see cause and effect. Make things better for tenants = make things worse for landlords = landlords quitting the business = fewer rentals = higher prices for tenants. Oh and during Covid / lockdown etc give tenants a right to a rent holiday as they were not allowed to work, but at the same time give NO HELP to landlords who still had to pay their bills.

Of course if you are buying now. But many landlords have older properties bought before there was any hint that someone might impose a minimum EPC for letting. This is perhaps the beginning of the housing market pricing houses with a good EPC higher than those with a poor EPC?

I would choose a system boiler and UVC any day over a combi boiler. Chalk and cheese, a UVC wins hands down for pressure, flow and consistency of hot water.

There are so many estates of old, cold, damp houses 100 or more years old. At some point, someone needs to make a bold decision, and replace them all with properly built modern houses. A sort of modern slum clearance? Don't ask me how to make that happen and who pays. But that is what is needed. I spent nearly 40 years when I was younger living in cold damp expensive to heat 1930's houses. Frankly I would only buy one of those now at building plot price and knock down and rebuild. Yet we have a housing market where if it is quaint, people will pay the same or more than a modern well built cheap to run house.

Before you let them fob you off with that excuse, ask for a written explanation from Ecodan describing exactly what it is doing, why it is doing it and how do you configure that aspect of it's aparently essential and normal operation?

So a new build, embrace the chance to fit a LOT of insulation, properly designed, make it air tight, fit MVHR and UFH and you will have a house that needs very little heat input. Then a small ASHP will be all you need. It will be cheap to run, and no oil or gas tanks to bother about and no boiler servicing. While you are at it, fit some solar PV on your roof and your running costs go down even further.

I blame the poor way they are packed and the even poorer way builders merchant hiabs handle them.

I would just call your installer back. It would be almost impossible to diagnose remotely. Tell them they need to stay long enough to witness the phantom activation and determine what is causing it. It does sound like water is circulating somewhere all the time, go round and try and work out which pump and where is on all the time, that is another thing to point out to them

You might have heard them say it, but that does not make it true.

What make and type? They look like the ones i used. As I started to unload them from the pallets, I noticed a LOT of broken tiles (many MUCH worse than your examples). So much so that I notified the supplier and told them if I do not have enough to complete the job due to breakages, then I would expect the broken on arrival tiles to be replaced. In my case I had 6 valleys to tile, and I adopted the practice on only use already broken tiles for the valley cuts. And I was then able to complete the job. Some may say I let them off the hook by being so obliging to do that.

Absolutely. Certainly I find it sad that all new build developer houses are not being built to close to passive house standards, that is criminal. Whatever solution you come up with to a problem, it has to be achievable. Set an unrealistic goal,. which I believe is what we had before, and it will fail. Set a realistic goal and you stand a chance of achieving it. The older houses are the problem that nobody has the solution for yet. Pointless trying to put an ASHP in a Victorian semi unless you improve the building and there is no plan for that.