ProDave

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.

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.