ProDave

How is your hot water heated now? I am guessing combi boiler if you don't have a HW tank? What are you expecting? To stop using the combi and just use HW from an UVC? Or fit a pre heat tank to soak up some of the surplus PV (some combi boilers can take pre heated water in, but someone else will have to advise if yours is one) That's only about 3kWh per day average going spare, that on it's own won't do all your DHW needs.

Best of luck with that. They would not supply glass only to us, even as part of an order for the windows for our sun room. The only choice we had was the 2 local run of the mill window companies and were less than impressed by what they offered. You might be lucky and find a glazing supplier near you that actually understands windows and will make you a decent pane.

You biggest challenge will not be the cost, but finding someone that can actually make a 3G pane as good as the original one supplied.

So how does just 2 skylights comply with being a means of escape?

There is a house near me, roofed with some plastic coated box profile roofing, about 20 years old now. Almost all the plastic coating has fallen off, I assume a UV problem, but interestingly the steel it has left behind has not rusted yet, so assume galvanised.

Yes definitely fit isolators in flow and return, will save you a lot of grief if you need to change or replace anything.

If you moved it to the right slightly so it aligned exactly centred on that window, I bet it would look a whole lot better.

Interested in the bedroom (last picture), I assume there is a normal window as well as the roof windows? Looking all very nice.

No home automation here and bathtub cost £300, another self builder nearby bought it then changed his mind so we got it less than cost price.

It was at least a different take on self building, but I bet the £100K did not include services etc let alone buying the plot. One think I did not like about the old series was the wacky ideas like cladding walls in strips of old pallet wood to save (at the time) about £5 per sheet of plasterboard. If you take out plot price, services, legal costs etc our build was about £140K just a little under £1K per square metre. I doubt with inflation you could replicate that cost now. But we didn't scrimp on quality, we just shopped around a lot to ensure what we bought was the best price we could find.

If you are in a dip in the road, then it would probably still flood even if the neighbours ditches were cleared. Water does not flow up hill. There is a lot of advantage to living on a plot with a clear downward slope where water can escape "if all else fails"

We have a hybrid roof, 100mm above the roof and 200mm between the rafters. No problems so far and it is a very warm very effective roof. Why would you not want to full fill between the rafters to get as much as you can?

At the end of the day id is not up to you, it is what building control will accept. You could just tell BC you have installed X square metres of crates, and forget to mention the overflow to the ditch. When the ditch overflows, I take it it just runs down the road? or does the road fill up and flood? Or try digging a deeper hole and see if you break through the clay into something more permeable?

Standard in Australia too. Usual to have sockets right next to the shower and that is where you usually find the washing machine and tumble dryer. I told my Australian BIL that we are not allowed such things in case someone is stupid enough to plug the hairdryer in and take it into the shower with the water running. His reply (think Australian accent) "If they are that bloody stupid they deserve to die"

So why did they ask you to sign that ? It looks to me like they are expecting you to submit the design to your building control and for your building control to sign that they accept the design. What they are wanting to avoid is getting into an argument with your building control at the end of the project when he refuses to issue a completion certificate because of a staircase issue.

That is why you should have formally submitted the staircase design to building control and got them to either sign it as acceptable, or state what alterations they would need, BEFORE you spent your £30K It's not as if you were not advised to do that. An extra glass panel covering the first 2 steps down after the turn would do it, leaving only the bottom 2 without a handrail.

A solar PV diverter normally connects to an immersion heater in a hot water tank, and that heater connects to nothing else whatsoever. So I am struggling to understand why or how, when your solar diverter sends power to the immersion heater how the Joule system even knows that is happening let alone throws some kind of error. That is why I think the immersion must be connected electrically to the Joule system as well. What you need is a competent electrician to confirm the immersion heater your diverter connects to is is ONLY connected to the diveter.

I had a phone call from someone at SEPA following up mu complaint today. An outcome from that confirmation is that in Scotland, it is NOT illegal for an existing septic tank to discharge to a watercourse, and there is no requirement to upgrade them unless there is a specific problem with pollution. The General Binding rules do NOT apply in Scotland. The reasons given for not outlawing existing septic tanks discharging to watercourses was the sheer number of them in existence and the costs of upgrading. I then got onto the cost issue, £170 to register an existing septic tank which was an entirely automated process that issued a registration within seconds of submitting the details and paying the fee. That is still going to be looked at and I await a response. As part of the discussion I pointed out the fees charged by a public body must be a fair representation of the costs and work involved in providing that service. I pointed out when building my new house I had to get approval from SEPA and a discharge permit to allow my new treatment plant to discharge to the burn. That was a process that involved discussions with SEPA staff to agree a suitable acceptable system. For that, with much interaction with SEPA staff i paid a lower fee than I have just been charged for this automated registration for an old system with no staff time involved. I will let you know what they say about that.

Short hinged glass shower screen. They are dirt cheap, sold in the sheds as an over bath shower screen. Ours are set about 100mm off the floor and the top is about head height for us. Very little water splashes over or under. We have two, one to stop the towels getting splashed and one to stop the door and toilet getting splashed. They hinge either way and fold almost flat against the wall when the shower is not in use.

Can you post some pictures of how the immersion heater on the Joule connects to the diverter? Does the immersion heater also connect to any controls on the Joule? They can't both control it without a very thorough understanding of what connects to what.

Contrary to popular belief, you can do the same in the UK. The wring regs and the competenet persons schemes make provision for someone to do the work and then a competent person to test and certify it. All that building control want is an EIC from someone they trust. The issue is no tmany electricians want to do that, because they won't have seen the cable routing so they would be asked to approve something they had no way of verifying. The best you are likely to get is an electrician happy for you to do some of the grunt of pulling cables through as long as he can inspect that before it is covered over.

I moved mine on a hired 7.5t flatbed when I bought it, all loaded and unloaded by hand. Nothing wrong with Kwikstage like that. The metalwork is almost indestructable. It is the battons (boards) that are the trouble, wooden ones particularly if stored badly can be rotten. I "tested" each of mine by resting the 2 ends of each board on a concrete block each end, and then jumping up and down on the middle of it. Steelstage battons are much better if you can get them. Nothing wrong with using Kwikstage or any other system scaffold like cuplock etc. It's how you put it up that makes it safe or not.

MY very old 3t digger was almost at full reach down digging the hole for the treatment plant. And when lifting the unit, it would not lift it very far off the ground.

Left pair of terminals are "in" so they connect to the inverter. So just swap them over. And put a box or a bit of trunking to cover the single insulated cables, left pair in the picture need drastically shortening.

My 3t digger would barely lift my treatment plant a foot off the ground, it could not have lifted one from above off a truck. That is why when I bought my treatment plant, I ordered it from a builders merchant, Not only did they give a better price than anyone else, it meant it arrived on their delivery truck with it's own hiab to lift it off.