ProDave

So the extension no longer has square corners? That will cause all sorts of issues.

There was the grand designs house by the thames built on effectively a captive float, and the whole house floated up when it flooded. Stilts sounds a lot simpler and cheaper, just determine the highest likely flood level ever and make it higher. All timber construction would give you a carbon neutral design, look at all that natural carbon already removed from the atmosphere by growing the trees that you are now safely storing to keep the carbon locked up. Build it as a passive house with ASHP etc and lots of PV panels to generate more power than you use. Planting more trees would probably score you brownie points as well. I think this is definitely one where you need a good planning consultant.

I have mentioned before the supplied controller with my LG heat pump is well beyond the ability of most folk over the age of 20 to understand. I chose to control mine from a normal boiler time clock that most people understand. I had to get quite inventive to mimic a "call for heat" input for the HW to the heat pump to control that from a simple time switch.

I thought we discussed before, the treated chlorinated mains water just means you can be pretty sure there is nothing nasty entering your HW tank. Assuming it is an unvented cylinder then nothing else can enter, so once the clean water is there, it does not matter if the effect of the chlorine diminishes. It has no further function.

So if the bottleneck is installers (assuming supply could then keep up if the installers could be found) then the solution has to be simplify heat pump controls. They already mimic a system boiler from a plumbing perspective, in that they just have water flow and return. It is the electrical controls that complicate things. I have already mentioned the Grant ASHP's seem nearest to that at the moment with just a call for heat for HW and a separate one for heating. Surely that is not too much of a step change for the average electrician wiring a heating system to get used to two separate call for heat commands? Plumbing wise, dump any 3 port mid position valve and replace with two 2 port valves or a 3 port 2 position valve. So there you have a relatively simple swap a system boiler for an ASHP with little change. BUT the water temperature maxing at 55 degrees may not be enough and it won't be optimum efficiency. So now you offer customers a choice. Simple swap with little plumbing alterations for a cheap price, BUT warn them of the lower temperature and that it may under perform. Then offer the upgrades, new larger heat pump cylinder, larger radiators IF they find they need them. Of course for the huge percentage oh homes with a combi boiler and no HW tank you have to fit a HW cylinder with a heat pump, so many will see that as too expensive and unnecessary. Like the discussion in the GW thread about cars, what is likely to happen is people won't be swapping heat pumps in anything like the required volumes and if new boilers become impossible to get the immediate task will be maintaining ever ageing boilers. Lets hope the spares supply side steps up, once the easy option of replace rather than fix has gone.

The very sticky tape you use on the floor to wall joints when tanking a wet room would be a good candidate for that.

Here is one more topic I have never seen analysis of. The conservation of energy. We all know that. So, if you build a LOT of wind turbines and solar farms, and extract a LOT of energy from the natural environment, then SOMETHING is going to change. I wonder what analysis and modelling has been done about that? We don't extract much power from the natural environment yet but as that increases what guarantee do we have it won't cause problems?

We are looking into one of these garden storage boxes to fix up there perhaps. No the price does not include good weather, that's why we are indoors.

Re the cost. As mine is just about finished I added ut the cost of the parts, and it has come in at about £100 per square metre. That is aided by a very cheap timber price from a joiner friend who bought a job lot in lockdown and was selling it at cost.

The only person I know to have had a serious electric shock was a lad at school. He was trying to repair a valve tape deck, the chassis was propped up with a bit of wood. He got the inevetable shock, but as he pulled back his hand, it knocked the prop out and the chassis dropped on his had trapping it and prolonging the shock. It was his sister in the next room that heard the screams, ran in and quick thinking kicked the deck off his hand. His hand was badly burned and needed skin grafts over a period of time but he survived to tell the tale.

Unless it was a really serious shock I would expect that to be so. There is this misconception that an electric shock is usually fatal. Not from 240V it is not, in most cases it is "ow bugger that hurt" then a minute or 2 later all forgotten.

Mine is 4M wide and 2M deep. Now it is up, it seems pretty big, bigger than I expected it to feel. Now, another issue I bet nobody has ever thought about. We want a couple of chairs out there, but don't want to leave them out all the time. Hands up everyone that designed in a handy "outdoor furniture cupboard" inside the house very close to the door to the balcony. Don't all rush at once........ Now we are waiting for outside weather.

We call them Skews up here. There may be another English name for them.

1) ignore. 2) If he persists ask the CARPENTER what tests he did to "test for dead" and safe isolation practice of the circuit BEFORE he removed the fan and if he isolated at the consumer unit, what lock off device did he use to prevent it being re energised. Ask for his electrical qualifications, details of test equipment used, and a copy of the calibration certificate for his tester. And ask to see a copy of HIS Public liability insurance policy. That should shut him up.

That would be me. Leaving SE England where "plastered on the hard" walls is the normal and moving to Scotland where timber frame and plasterboard was the normal, was a revalation. I never want to chase cables into a "plastered on the hard" wall ever again. What an utterly stupid and inflexible way to build houses.

Start by calling the DNO, tell them about the building in danger of collapse and you want to rebuild but should not build under power lines, tell them about the no wayleave and then say you will grant a wayleave if they move them and underground part of it.

I thoroughly agree we need to stop destroying the planet and stop over populating it. If we solve that, the global warming problem will probably solve itself.

The balcony, now it has it's deck on, does indeed shade the living room below. I now predict in winter we might wish it was not there and might make the room dark.

We have scraped by the last 70 years avoiding a hot war. I don't believe we will manage to avoid that for much longer.

Go on, post a picture, I find it hard to believe a 1995 install does not have a DNO cutout. Lets at least see the bodge someone has done. If it was you, don't admit to doing it.

An issue I see. you are not supposed to build under overhead wires or even within 6 metres of them. Existing buildings are okay because the rules were not in force then. So you really need a pole right at the left hand side of your garden and underground everything from there. Or even if the owner of the agricultural land agrees finish it at the first pole and underground from there. There is a similar case going on here at a farm and SSEPN are refusing to replace a rotten pole in danger of falling over because it has "third party equipment" on it. So I am not sure what extra complication having the telecoms on the same pole might create.

In this thread starting at page 4

Mine is only 2 leg, supported from the house but with spacers on the fixing bolts at the house end and set to a very slight fall away from the house to drain rainwater off the outer edge.

Normally something like this is offer them an indemnity policy.

Spelling error corrected.