ProDave

I too wanted to self build in my 20's, but I was thwarted. At the time, looking for my first house, I could buy a cheap developer built 1 bedroom house for £36K (late 1980's prices) or there was a detached 2 bedroom bungalow being sold as a building plot for £20K. I looked at the plot, and it was a timber lath and plaster built bungalow clearly sub standard even by 1980's standard and it had subsidence issues so was being sold to knock down and rebuild. I was thwarted because I could not find anyone willing to lend on the plot, but several said if you buy the plot we will lend the money to build. And I had no bank of mum and dad (they did not have the money either) So reluctantly I bought the developer box. I was 40 before I got to scratch that itch and built my first self build. I hope you get a more favourable answer from financial institutions.

Solvent weld is good, BUT. It can't be undone. So make SURE before fitting the solvent weld coupling that you have the height right and you will never ever want to remove it again to adjust the height with respect to finished floor level. AND make sure you use plenty of solvent weld adhesive and do it thoroughly. Otherwise a poorly done joint that leaks cannot be undone to re do it. If in doubt practice on some scrap pipe and fittings first.

It's a failure of all governments over my lifetime. The basic problem is we have 5 year parliaments, so nobody, ever, pledges to do something over a long period. It is all about what we will do for the next 5 years that will be popular enough to get us a win next time. So there has never been any long term planning. The fact there are more pensioners than ever and fewer of working age is entirely predictable as the ongoing result of the post war baby boom, but no one has planned in advance how we will invest and adapt to cope with that change.

You are never going to do a perfect job sliding it down from above, but if you don't want to strip the plasterboard off it is a case of doing the best you can, accepting it won't be perfect. I would try solid batts of rockwool type material. they should be stiff enough to push down the gap but with a bit of flex to hopefully take up the irregularities. Buy a small quantity and try it, if they work buy the rest. PIR is so solid with no give, you will end up with gaps around all the edges. If you use that, the most important thing is get the face of the PIR down flat on the plasterboard, i,e, no gap between the plasterboard and the PIR, then foam in as much of the edges as you can reach from above. Buy some thin plastic tube and experiment using that to extend the reach of your average foam gun.

In fact, from next April, ALL pensioners under the new scheme will pay some tax, as the pension will go up to just above the tax threshold, but the threshold is not rising. So over the next few years pensioners will pay more tax. Add in a personal pension as well (shock, horror, current pensioners are more likely to also have a personal pension) that is more tax to pay. I know my circumstances are not average, but by the time me and SWMBO reach state pension age, our combined income will be more than we have been earning for the last 25 years.

Looks like you have identified the problem. Now lets hope they agree and swap the pipes over. Keep us posted how it goes.

I got mine from stairbox, but I don't recall ply being an option.

If you study a female - female coupling when mated to the respective pipes, there is literally nothing for "passing material" to hit on it's way past.

Do what I did, make it clear to the planners you want it to stay and in my case they agreed the 'van could remain but not for habitation.

Can we have a closer / clearer picture of the jumble of pipes coming out of the floor bottom left of the photo. Following the copper pipes between the 2 manifolds, the left manifold has the hot pipe connecting to the right hand manifold cold. These are the flow and return to / from the manifold. So either one is connected with flow and return swapped (which is wrong) or they are connected in series, which I have never seen before.

The annoying thing is why was the warranty issued. The worst case suspicion is there was some detail done wrong on your half that the warranty provider was not happy with, but it was done correctly on the other half. Warranty providers inspections are often more stringent than building control.

Question. Has the downstairs UFH ever worked properly? i.e. are we trying to solve a fault (it used to work but has stopped working) or is it a new install that has never yet worked on the ground floor? Post some pictures of the ground floor UFH manifold please.

I would be surprised if the kitchen heat loss is really 1.4kW that would be more than half my total house heat loss at -10 outside.

That's it in a nutshell. That's why this needs sorting or a solution on the table before you conclude the missives. What did the home report say about the drainage (let me guess get another survey?)

That will say whatever the vendor told them when registering it prior to putting it for sale. I know of 2 round here with septic tanks draining to a watercourse and SEPA have shown no interest in doing anything about it. My suggestion of rodding it was to see just how far it went and if by chance it did go to the stream, you know you have a route to discharge a proper treatment plant.

It's part of the building warrant process and agreed with SEPA who issue a permit. Generally they only do so if land drainage is not possible which appears to be the case here. You could always get the existing tank pumped out and get at the tail pipe with drain rods and see how far it goes and who knows it might go all the way and you unblock it?

NO it's NOT "working fine" Clearly whatever soakaway it was supposed to have is either blocked, non existant or the water table is too high. It is just leaking it's effluent into the now boggy garden. Seriously, you need to factor at a very minimum getting the soakaway completely renewed which WILL mean digging up the field next door and re laying and so will need a deed of servitude. I would be having serious discussions with the vendor (via your solicitor) to sort out the deed of servitude needed AND reduce the price to cover the work you WILL need to do. You also need a proper percolation test done in the location you will construct the replacement drainage field to determine if indeed it is even feasible. Failure to do that could leave you with a non functioning drainage system without the means to fix it. If that is too much for you, walk away and look for a different house to buy.

Fundamental question: Is this a boiler just for the garden room, or is the garden room close enough to the house to be fed from the boiler in the house? WHY run the boiler at 70C, First thing turn that down to 55 or lower. You will probably have to run the heating longer but it will work out cheaper.

Top post. Why can't talking heads on television explain it clearly like that? Regarding old UK houses, rentals and EPC's. I am certainly glad to no longer be a landlord myself. It astounds me that buyers still seem to mostly ignore an EPC. You would have thought old houses with a poor EPC, clearly in needs of upgrading and lots of money spent, would be valued less than a modern well built house. but pretty "period features" seems to override common sense in most buyers eyes. (the exception being I bet no landlord now will consider a house worse than EPC C unless it is very cheap) There have been discussions here before about EPC's and assumptions, with one particular person having vastly improved his house. When he sold it, he explained all the extra insulation and air tightness and showed photographs of the work to the assessor, who promptly ignored it all and made the standard assumptions. Talk about banging your head against a (insulated) brick wall.

That makes sense. What I was reading from the OP is rainwater was getting in, THAT would have to go up hill.

I doubt the water is getting in from the condensate pipe, that would have to run up hill. You won't get anywhere without taking the cover off to see what is going on inside. Try drying everything thoroughly with a hairdryer.

What does it do if you turn the FCU off? Does it turn off all the thermostats? Simplest solution would be leave it where it is, but swap it to a fused connection unit without a switch.

Lack of long term planning. It was entirely predictable that post war baby boomers are now well and truly beyond reproductive age now and the opposite of boom is bust. But nobody thought of investing something during that boom time to fund the old age of those boomers.

We have no concept of energy security. If we did, we would not have crucified our oil and gas industry and we would be drilling all we have got to use our own to see us through until renewables make it largely redundant.

There has been a lot of "poor" reporting in the last few days. One being the energy price cap is increasing very slightly, about 25p to most households. BUT hold on, the main stream news does not drill down into details. It turns out gas prices are going DOWN 5% while electricity prices are going UP 5%. That is hardly what you want to convince people to switch from gas to electricity is it? But it gets worse. Why is this happening? Well gas is going down to reflect the drop in wholesale prices. So why is electricity going UP? That apparently is because of all the network upgrade spending so the grid can cope with all the new wind farms and increased electricity demand. At this point my blood starts boiling and steam comes out of my ears. Several people including the PM have told us electricity prices will come down as we build more wind farms. This RISE in electricity prices now, shows that to be a LIE and in fact as more wind farms are built and the grid is expanded, those costs are being added to our bills and prices are going UP because of the extra infrastructure updates. Don't you just hate it when we are fed miss information?