ProDave

Remind me if this is a new build? A house you already own? old or new? In a self build new house with no mains gas I would say without a doubt UFH and ASHP. With a new build you have one chance to get the insulation right and make the heat demand low. Whatever system you fit, you will need UFH or radiators, so ignore that cost, that is constant regardless of heat source. So it literally boils down to the cost between an ASHP and an oil or LPG gas boiler. An ASHP is probably slightly more expensive but not a lot. The running costs will be about the same at the moment.

Has it been installed properly? A self builder near me had an Ecodan system installed and it did similar things. It was about a year after the install he got me to look at it, and the call for heat from the UFH manifold had not been connected to the Ecodan controller, so when the heating was "off" it was still circulating water in the short loop from the ASHP to the UFH manifold and occasionally starting up to keep that warm.

The people that make these policies seem to think it is easy and cheap to make any property up to an EPC C and the only reason it is not happening is those lazy tight landlords cannot be bothered to spend just a little time and money to do it, so we will mandate that they have to do it. The reality is a huge amount of the UK housing stock is going to be very hard and very expensive to upgrade. And with no financial help to do so, many landlords which such property are evicting the tenants and selling, while they still can. This is just a symptom of "them" not understanding the problem and not knowing how to solve it. Some people reading this and my other recent posts on the subject might think I don't care about energy efficiency and the environment. I do. But I also understand the challenges ahead and know there is no quick easy cheap solution. It seem that "they" are finally realising that as well.

Good news for tenants. There will be fewer landlords selling up as the properties are impossible or too expensive to upgrade, so less of a reduction in the rental stock.

What do you mean by "off grid"? I read that as LPG gas or oil, or even solid fuel boilers? If so there was never an intention to outlaw mains gas boilers?

Not at all "oh dear" A touch of reality. I have long said it is pointless telling us all to get an EV until the extra generation capacity is there to charge them, and preferably from green sources not just burning more fossil fuel to charge your "green" EV Same for heat pumps, we can't make them, install them and provide the power for them quick enough to all have one in such a short time. And a realisation that bringing old buildings up to modern building standards is not possible for an affordable sum. So at last, we might get a plan to go green in a proper thought out, progressive manner as fast as we can sensibly achieve without crippling the economy or pissing off the electorate. Such a realistic, achievable plan is far more likely to be taken on board and acted on by the public than some unachievable plan that stands no hope of being achieved. I am a lot more confident today that we might actually manage to go green in a sensible manner now. Well done for having the balls to make these changes.

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.