ProDave

We built one similar. The timber frame incorporated the porch and a concrete lintel spanned the porch opening built from the blockwork skin to support the blockwork above the porch. Obviously if you want to build the interior of the porch to have a vaulted roof that would make things a lot more complicated. We just had a flat ceiling at the same height as the rest of the ceilings.

The only issue I am aware you may find depending on your BC inspector is the height of the banister. For domestic stairs and a "landing" it is 900mm, but at a previous house we had a disagreement with the BC inspector that the banister around a gallery was not a "landing" and so came under "other" and required an 1100mm banister. Discuss this with BC before ordering your glass.

The immediate bottleneck appears to be the England / Scotland interconnects. If heavy industry was encouraged by cheaper fuel costs to locate in Scotland rather than England, that would relieve a lot of the pressure on that interconnect.

Pictures? First thing to establish is the ground floor entirely flat or is that sagging in the middle, if so likely to be subsidence. If ground floor is flat but parts of upstairs sagging and given your description, likely to be inadequate (probably) timber lintels or joists sagging.

Lots of wise words in that article. Particularly trying to encourage more generation down south and more usage up north. It shows the lack of joined up planning lets build renewable generation as fast as we can in Scotland, even if that is faster than we can build the infrastructure to actually enable us to use that new capacity Will we finally see proper variable pricing, where electricity for Scottish customers is actually cheaper than for south England customers? (at the moment we perversely have the opposite)

My first question is why? Give that render a good clean with a pressure washer and re paint it, job done, low maintenance external finish. Cladding would make sense if it was part of an external wall insulation system to improve the performance of the building.

I did very similar. What you have to remember is the battens follow the vertical lines of the wall studs. When mounting the tv you screw through the battens and into the studs behind them. I used a wide tv bracket, the sort you screw a wide plate to the wall and a pair of brackets fix to the back of the tv and hang on the wide plate. Mine has been holding up our old 50" plasma tv that is a 2 man lift for a few years now, way heavier than any modern tv you will buy now.

I am not disputing they are generally sensible, just curious how you appear to be complying only just with little room for a minor alteration. A floorplan might explain it?

If your door positions are that tight that you can't move it over 50mm to make the architrave work, then you must be stretching every mm of the access space requirements? Not that I have ever known them measure for compliance.

Did the smoke alarms work?

I would certainly bury the appropriate cable to allow a 3 phase upgrade later. (not an option for us the nearest 3 phase is about a mile away) But worth considering how the DNO would get a new cable in. If it means digging up your garden or driveway I would be looking at getting that done now rather than later. No harm in asking the DNO for a quote so you will find out the cost and how they would actually do it.

Another recommendation for the Dewalt. BUT if not using it for a while, take 1 of the batteries out. They eat batteries even when turned off.

If you have that much loft space and are going to use it regularly as a work / hobby space then I would do it properly, make it as a proper 1 room loft with proper insulation and a staircase. If you are worried about it being habitable space and increasing your council tax, do it as a separate "extension" after completion of the main building and after council tax valuation.

Our utility is also a separate room. How are they going to know that 1/3 of the cabinets you bought from howdens are going in a utility? Where does it even say you can't claim the VAT on utility room cupboards?

No. The one I posted a picture of earlier was done because the owner of the wall said there was nothing wrong with it. So if the wall leans a bit more it would come to rest against the king post wall and move no further.

Yes I agree with that. Unless the door opening is way over size and you are expecting a lot of packing for the door liner? At the moment you have 47mm less 12mm for plasterboard so 35mm, plus say 20mm for a door liner and say 10mm for packing that's 65mm to fit typically 70mm architrave, so you WILL be trimming it down and it may look rubbish.

Don't wish to sound smug, but I see flexi pipes as just a way to be lazy with plumbing. All mine have soldered copper bent and positioned just right to join to the cisterns without any flexi's. What do the proper plumbers say?

If it IS wired to Fig 19 then the LS is the Live Switched from the loft unit to the fan (being pedantic is is actually switched 24V but does the same thing) So if the fan stays on forever it has to be humidity. Turn the humidity adjust pot fully clockwise to start with. and the timer pot fully anti clockwise so working out what is happening takes less time.

Much earlier in the thread we suggested King Post retaining wall systems that don't take much space and would just go in front of what is there to stop it leaning any further. For some reason this was rejected?

WHICH diagram is it wired to, Fig 18 or Fig 19?

A few random thoughts. Entrance to utility from Kitchen breaks up the run of worktop. Have a combined utility and downstairs WC accessed from the hall so no door into kitchen. The cupboard from the hall between the study and WC is the obvious coat / shoe space. Don't have a door, a neatly detailed recess with hanging for coats and a shoe rack at the bottom. you might want to redact your address from the plans........

My favourite tip for finding the break point in a ring is power up one end of the ring only then go round with a socket tester. It helps narrow it down a bit but won't obviously say "this one" The fun and games start when there is more than one fault (loose L in one socket, loose N in a different one)

Turn the power off and test that it is really off. Remove a convenient socket and take the wires out. you will have 2 live, 2 neutral and 2 earth. Measure the resistance between each L, each N and each E cable. Ideally using a proper continuity meter but an ordinary multimeter on ohms will do for a quick test. You should get the same reading for L-L and N-N and E-E will typically be about 1.4 times greater as the earth core is smaller.

If the water is leaving the boiler at 70C why are the radiators only max 48C? where is the heat being lost? Use the FLIR to trace the water flow from the boiler to the radiators along the pipes to see what is happening. I would expect the water entering the radiators to be hotter than that leaving, but that does not appear to be the case. I suspect inadequate flow rate? turn the pump speed up?

In defence of the ring final. In most instances the Current Carrying capacity of 2.5mm t&e is 27 amps, and rarely less than 20 Amps, so it would not be overloaded in most cases if there was a break. (certainly not overloaded to twice it's rating) And testing the end to end loop integrity of a ring final is a very easy test that can be performed at the consumer unit or any socket on the ring.