ProDave

So BC is asking for design of the discharge pipework. It may be the designer that submitted my building warrant did specify a random make and model of cylinder and detailed the discharge pipework, but during the build I changed the location of the cylinder and chose one that suited me that may or may not have been mentioned before. The only thing the BC inspector was interested in was the G3 sign off was done by someone they know. Who is preparing your warrant? it is easy enough to detail the discharge pipe route and details and pick a random make and model of cylinder.

If you tried that with me at the moment while I was at home you would get the same. SMS messages don't seem to queue up like say emails, so if I drive into town and get a phone signal, only recent messages are there, older ones are lost. He may have lost or broken his phone. So try landline or physically knock on his door. Try phoning his mobile from a number he does not know to test your "blocked" number theory.

What contact details do you have for the builder? is is just a mobile phone? I only ask, because since mid December I have lost my mobile signal at home and customers have been having a hard job contacting me if they don't know my landline. (In my case I am preparing to change mobile provider as the present provider has spectacularly failed to fix the issue)

Sadly that was a mistake. He would be more interested in talking to you if you still owed him money. Go round to his house and knock on the door?

Post some pictures of your hot water tank. If the water is circulating through the input coil at 52 degrees, then it should reach 48 in the tank, not get stuck at 42. Heat pumps normally heat the rooms OR the hot water, never both together. If it is "stuck" trying to heat the hot water for so long it might not be heating the rooms which might explain your other issue with heating. What is the background? new install in a new house or retro fit in an older house? How are the rooms heated radiators or UFH? if retro fit did you have a new hot water tank?

Please tell us you have not paid his full price in advance?

I don't recall BC being the slightest bit interested in which UVC I fitted, they just wanted to see the G3 signoff. that is the bit you need to check your installer can do.

Ask locals. A tradesman any good will get plenty of work and won't need the check your trade outfits to find them any more work. I don't "do" facebook myself, but a lot of people tell me they ask in local groups for a recommendation and my name comes up often.

But did anyone investigating this examine or test the flue? or just re seal the leaking joint and hope? It really should not need to be a perfect air tight seal. I have worked with some builders that have an old stove they use on new builds in the winter. They just stand their "portable" stove on a couple of concrete blocks in the fireplace, a short length of flue, not even properly sealed to the stove stuck up the chimney. Because the flue draws air when working properly, not a drop of smoke leaks from their temporary unsealed joints.

As part of the investigation, did anyone check the flue? check it was not blocked? swept it? been up on the roof to check the outlet, used a smoke candle etc? Normally the flue draws and as already sated that will be a negative pressure inside the flue with respect to the room so a leak would draw air in. The fact smoke is leaking out really suggests to me the flue is partly blocked so the heat of the stove is forceing the smoke up the flue. Re sealing the joint had hidden the true fault for a while until the seal cracked a bit and allowed the positive pressure smoke out. I would get an independant HETAS engineer to check it out, check out the flue and write a report. If he can point to a defect in or blocked flue etc you might have a chance of a claim against the original installer. Or having identified the true fault it might just be quicker and easier to fix it.

What does it no now it's getting dark and no PV generation?

For maximum light I suggest a normal ridge roof with big windows, not unlike my sun room perhaps?

I would say it is broken. How long was the guarantee?

Can you post the video on here?

Thanks for the pics. No nothing obvious wrong. In a situation like this I would do a web search to find the CEO of Heatmiser and address your complaint to him (her) Say you have been fobbed off with the usual out of warranty reply. Tell them you believe the original PSU design is faulty and you believe the design fault has been corrected with the new one with the ventilation. Make it clear the stats themselves are okay and it is the back plate / psu that has failed and that is the part you need replacing not the whole thing. Let us know how you get on. If you are brave, you could open up the new one and photograph the pcb and see if it is just the same with the addition of vents, or if it is a different design.

Did you take a video this time?

I am not sure why you would want to build such a large house there, on a main road? A better use would have been for 5 smaller houses matching the plot widths of the houses it backs onto?

That puts you in a good position. If it is any help, the only time I talked to an architect, they gave me such a silly estimated build cost that I could never have afforded it, and I would be paying to build it way more than it's market value was. I built if without an architect for half their estimate. Are you really in a hurry? How much if any are you prepared to do yourself? I think if you wait a year, with large builders mothballing sites demand for materials will fall and you will find builders merchants a lot more interested in self builders and prices may come down. If you can get a basic shell built, then most of the rest you can do yourself, that is what we did. Because of a change in our circumstances and I did not want and was probably unable to borrow, ours became a 5 year long build as you earn. Are you prepared to put in the graft for a similar result?

Is that 3M internal or external? Wall thickness is an important consideration with such a narrow build. that would swing it in favour of SIPS but what are you going to clad it with?

Such speculation assumes things were "normal" until recently and would follow the same pattern as before. But we have had 15 years of emergency low interest rates and a decade of "austerity" to try and revive the UK economy after the 2008 crash. We have certainly NOT been living in "normal" times for a long time now. So long that a lot of people believe this fragile propped up economy was in fact "normal" Logic says we are at the start of a recession , and house prices will fall as demand falls, this is not a good time to invest in a house building company. Unless you genuinely believe they are going to carry on building houses and manage to sell them at a profit?

So they were refused the original plan, got permission for a different design, then built the original refused one. I would certainly NOT risk an awful lot of money playing that silly game.

That's not the end of the puzzle. With interest rates rising, and so many people used the the previous emergency low rates as "normal" it is widely forecast people will stop buying houses and wait, causing a slump in the housing market, and falling prices. If that happens, mass market builders will mothball their sites, they won't build with rising costs and falling prices, just like they did last time. And so we enter the next "bust" phase of the unstable housing market. If all the mass market builders do stop building material prices should come down. I think keep looking for a plot but not to be in a hurry to actually start might be a good plan at the moment?

Looks very nice, and a plug for the fourm. I take it you had to do a lot of tidying up for the photos?

It perhaps shows the disjointed system? If you apply for a building warrant, do building control actually check with the planners that what you have drawn for the building warrant matches what you have planning permission for? I read it as the planners told him what alterations he needed to make for it to meet planning policy and instead of doing that he fought it but missed various deadlines. I would never dream of applying for a building warrant for something different to what the planning permissions says, but then most of us understand the system.

In Scotland for certain it has to be a double check valve. I argued this point with the Scottish water inspector. The single check valve in the SW supplied toby was not sufficient. Nor was the single check valve in my own toby that followed that. And nor was the single check valve built into the tap on my standpipe. So to keep them happy, in addition to the THREE single check valves on place, I had to install an in line double check valve. Only then would they make the connection.