ProDave

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.

So can we STOP calling it MAN MADE global warming. It wasn't us wot did it.

I am assuming the circuit you are connecting to already has, and if not as part of the additions to that circuit you would update the whole circuit

Sorry the term I should have used is Absorption Fridge. This is how they work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator They are less efficient than a compressor fridge, but silent in operation. They are common in caravans as the heat source to make it work can be gas, 12V or 240V electricity so very versatile. Here is a 240V one designed for silent domestic applications https://www.amazon.co.uk/Barcool-Bar40-LED-Bedrooms-Guesthouses/dp/B0875NVX17/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=absorption+fridge&qid=1674297318&s=appliances&sr=1-11

A short term solution might be to swap the parts on the worn out window with ones from a seldom used window. Then it does not matter is the seldom used window is less than perfect.

Running horizontally or vertically from an accessory is a "safe zone" and the only places you are supposed to run cables. Some people seem to forget or not even know about the horizontal safe zones, as I found out once when I had a stand up finger wagging argument with a joiner trying to tell me I could not run a cable horizontally from one socket to the next.

If it only needs to be small, how about a caravan style evaporator fridge, totally silent, no compressor.

The trouble with penny pinching and going for 18mm if you have 400mm joists is where you meet the stairs, where every set I have seen the nose is 22mm thick.

I installed a Grant ASHP this time last year on a new build being built for sale. I didn't do the plumbing and was not impressed with the plumber that did, he did not use blending valves or even pumps on the UFH manifolds, he just relied on the water pump inside the ASHP to push the water everywhere. But it did seem to work. I wired it according the the installation manual. It was very basic, a call for heat input and a call for hot water input, and the only controller used was the one Grant supplied. It all appeared to work but I never delved deeply into the finer details. but one thing that struck me was if you did a bit deeper than the basic "how to connect it" instructions, is there are a lot of additional inputs and outputs and a lot more things it can do, but most not very well explained.

A problem we have at the moment is just about every heat pump has a TOTALLY different way of connecting to the required controls and by default only operates from it's own supplied controller which tends to be a non intuitive grossly over complicated and awkward thing to use, such that the average home owner has no hope of even adjusting the time settings. In my own case I left the manufacturers controller as an object of curiosity in the plant room and integrated the system to a standard central heating programmer on the wall of the utility room. A user interface that most home owners are familliar with and they can easily turn heating and hot water on and off and program on and off times just as they have always been able to do with any heating system. But to do that was not easy as there was no hard wired hot water on and off input with my heat pump, so I had to fudge my own interface to allow the hot water to be enabled or disabled by something else. And the wiring is totally different between one make of heat pump and another. So an electrician going to wire the system if he has not done that one before he first has to read, digest and understand the manual. Only then can he work out what cable is needed between the inside and the heat pump sitting outside. You don't have this problem with a gas or oil boiler, they are virtually all the same control interface, permanent supply, call for heat, call for hot water etc. It would be good if the heat pump manufacturers could bang their heads together and come up with at least some standardisation.