ProDave

I repeat it retrospectively in this case. Socket circuits, you only have to put ONE socket on each wall, then route the ring final cable horizontally around the room at socket height in the safe zone created, leaving a little slack in the cable at least at the ends. Then when you know where you actually want the sockets, cut the hole in the plasterboard, fish out the cable and connect the correct number of sockets in the right place. Experience says putting them in too early just means at least half of them are behind furniture, even worse half the socket is behind a unit........

Care to expand on the question? Not the first time this firm has cropped up recently.

Is it an illusion, or is that left hand slither narrower at the end by the doors? Is the room not square?

The best you can do with UK regs is a socket just outside the bathroom and a long flex on the hairdryer, or a suitably large bathroom so you can get a socket 3 metres from the bath or shower. Most other countries manage this without lots of people killing themselves. For instance in Australia it is normal to have sockets right next to the shower for the hairdryer and you often find the washer and dryer in the bathroom.

When I was looking for one, I found the Vortex, BioPure and Conder (the one I chose) were all pretty much the same spec and the cleanest ones I could find at the time. The discharge from mine is certainly a clear odourless liquid.

Whilst I log my energy use including what is used by the heat pump and am happy with it, I would not say I agree with "The country is ready to go heat pump crazy" I firmly believe a heat pump installed in the right situation and set up properly works well. But I don'r believe all the UK's housing stock is ready for heat pumps and I don't believe there are enough installers to do it properly, and any mass rollout into unsuitable housing with poor installers will just end up in huge disappointment.

Last (and only) time an architect gave me a build price, I just went and built it myself for half his estimated cost.

A lot of it is led by the building. e.g my maximum heat loss at +20 inside and -10 outside is a little over 2kW, so any heat pump you can buy will do it, and I bought a 5kW one about the smallest made. 200mm pipe centres for me which many consider to be wide spacing, it just so nicely worked with 400mm joist spacing (2 runs of pipe between each joist) why complicate it? With the low heat loss any pipe spacing would work. 16mm pipe is pretty much the industry standard, we are unanimous on that. I chose a cheap "no name" manifold and then changed the pump for a nice quiet Wilo pump and had no problems with them. If mix and match buying individual parts, avoid the actuators where you screw a plastic ring on and the rest of the actuator clips to that. they are utter rubbish.

Well at the other end of the spectrum, our ASHP consumes about 1200kWh per year heating our 150 square metre house in the Highlands and another 1030kWh heating DHW so a total heating bill about £624 per year. I do wonder why some with what should be well insulated houses have such high usage. I often wonder just how low our bills would be if we had built the identical house somewhere less cold that the Highlands.? There are plenty of people with lower heating bills than ours.

Our last house was 5 bedrooms 4 bathrooms, so we have "done the big house" but in fairness we did run it as a B&B. This one is 150 square metres 3 bedrooms 2 bathrooms. Not actually that much smaller than the previous 5 bedroom house but this time much more generous room sizes. One of the compromises is to do with council tax, that is our largest non food bill, even now exceeding our energy bill and one you cannot do anything about other than build smaller. To that end part of our "hobby space" is the static caravan that was our temporary accommodation during the build that remains on site as a garden outbuilding with no effect on council tax banding. We concentrated on getting rooms that were generous and not cluttered, but not stupidly large. I wired a large self build a few years back where they did that, each bedroom was 5 metres square with a 4 metre square en-suite. The furniture looked lost and spaced out. The living room was massive as well. then they complained it cost a fortune to heat.

Make it a condition of the offer that the plot comes with planning permission. then contact the council to see if they believe the development has "started" If they do, the good. If not, then you re apply for exactly the same plans and the vendor waits.

It's all one big experiment. And the golden rule of experimenting is change ONE thing at a time. I would start increasing the water flow temperature. Start with say 35 degrees. Let that settle for a couple of days. If your return temperature is not much lower than the flow temperature then you don't have a problem with flow rate. Is the UFH on 24/7 or on a timer? Is it a case of taking too long to get warm, or never getting warm enough?

Can you do 2 things please. Where those 3 joists together are (the head of the stairs) can you get in with a small camera or phone camera and look into the ceiling void so see what they join to please? and take a bit more of the ceiling down right to the very left of the room please. I don't believe that wall is supporting the 3 joists at the head of the stairs, is is simply not adequate for that. And I don't think the 2 studs together at the left are doing much. I am forming the opinion the landing and head of the stairs is supported by a more substantial joist in the ceiling void and looking in an earlier picture that appears to be supported by a post at the turn of the stairs. If that can be confirmed I think it will show this is not load bearing. But bear in mind this is the opinion of a bloke on the internet and not to be relied upon.

You need a more local electrician. The key is find one local to you, or who can call in on the way to or from another job. It will take about 10 minutes with his tester to work out if it is the controller or the heating mat at fault.

I await the photos.

So I would level the run of gutter and clip a 90 degree bend on the end then it would pour down onto next doors garden. That might focus their mind a bit.

Do you have the instruction manual? I presume the odd characters it is displaying is some form of fault code? It does not makes sense otherwise. you need to determine if it is the heating mat that has failed (bad) or the controller (relatively easy to replace) Do you have any electrical skills or know an electrician?

That is simply poor installation. there is no way that is intentional. For the sake of expedience I would just offer to go and re mount the clips so it has a constant fall and the water runs round the corner to go down the downpipe. Anything else is unlikely to succeed as you would get something like "we don't have a problem" etc.

In your very first picture, post a picture of the detail where the left pair of timber uprights meets the ceiling, cunningly just out of shot in that first picture. Be prepared to take a little of the ceiling plasterboard down in the WC to see exactly how these timbers interface. Is the one marked in pink/ purple tape on the left of that first picture a single or double pair?

16C is way better than the 0C or less it would have been here for the last few weeks if you did not have heat recovery. turn off the ventilation and you have poor quality stuffy and probably moist air. MVHR is not perfect but it is way better than the alternatives.

If you need to pour concrete above ground level at the lower bits you will have to fit shuttering to contain the pour.

You are doing that backwards. Dig the trench to the depth required, pour the foundations, build the wall and THEN fill in any low ground to build it up. Remember building up ground inside the building that will support a floor can't be done with any old spare soil, it must be inert and clean and something that will compact well in layers. Your general "spare soil" pile is only of use for landscaping outside the building. We bought in several lorry loads in inert non organic infill to build up the solum and used all the spare excavated soil to level the garden.

Why do you say that? The house clearly has poor air quality, insufficient ventilation at the moment. So some improvement is necessary. Dehumidifiers will remove most of the excess moisture so will cure the most noticable issue, the condensation, at the expense of needing electricity to power them and generally being noisy irritating things. But that does not cure the poor air quality. for that you need proper ventilation. I keep seeing people recommend DMEV or PIV for this, but all that does is blow in fresh cold air or suck out stale air with the same amount of cold air being sucked in any way it can. Neither have heat recovery so while they will improve the air quality, they will cool the house / increase heating required. Yes for sure for best results you want an air tight house. But I don't understand the logic of saying mvhr is a waste of time if the house is not air tight. If you do fit mvhr to a leaky house, at least some of your ventilation will benefit from the heat recovery. Balance the system properly so you are not pressurising or depressurising the house and little else will enter or exit through all the leaks except perhaps on a windy day. I would certainly say if you get the chance go ahead with mvhr. Since I appear to be in the minority here, I await incoming.

I wonder if you could do it from outside through the holes in the air brick? At worst case enlarge say 2 of them, one at each end with a drill to get the gun nozzle through Might help to have an observer inside directing the squirting. (having typed that I could see how that could go wrong......)

I would empty the contents of an expanding foam gun into that hole. No that's not how you connect a drain but that will be equally awkward to fit properly with the units in place.