ProDave

Post some pictures of the affected area both inside and what is immediately outside at that point.

You have a ventilation system without mvhr. The only difference between what you have and just trickle ventilators, is you know the ventilation rate, trickle vents it is a guess and depends how windy it is. Are you units right there? Do you mean 5.2kW Vs 6.2kW i.e. you need 1kW less heating if you fitted MVHR?

No, I am know as a "grazer" I take a packed lunch and a flask, and I will take a bite of my sandwiches every now and then as I keep on working. I would rather get the job finished sooner and finish earlier. I can't see the point in going out and sitting in your van for even half an hour let alone a whole hour as some do.

Post the model number of the MVHR unit and a picture of any controls you have associated with it. The place you usually get condensation is the external cold air pipe going from outside to the MVHR unit.

This will be condensation in or on that duct. I am a little surprised to see it on an inlet pipe, that pipe at that point should contain "warm" air that has been heated by the heat recovered from the exhausted air. I do notice that vent terminal is shut down probably too much, so the airflow will be low. First you need to establish if the condensation is on the inside or outside of the pipe.

Would that be Ardross Castle? I wondered what they were filming there this summer. The program you mentioned is not my cup of tea when it comes to tv viewing but I might take a look now just to see some interior shots of the castle. The local B&B's (including our old house) did very well out of that this summer. We can just see one of the turrets of the castle sticking up above the trees, from our kitchen window, and there is a nice walk along the river in front of the Castle we have done several times.

That will be why my joiners took so long, they did it the old way with a chisel.

You DON'T want a storage heater in a bedroom. The heating patterns of a bedroom are different to a living room. More typical is to just have an electric panel heater in a bedroom, usually with a built in timer and thermostat. You will probably need some heat in the evening before you go to bed, that will be at the peak rate. But then it can stay on overnight with it's thermostat controlling the heat output and most of that will be at the off peak rate. If you like a cool bedroom for sleeping, leave it off and use it's timer to come on just before you get up to warm the room.

Thanks @saveasteading do you happen to know who is the best (cheapest) supplier in the Inverness area? I will only need four 2.4 by 1.2M sheets (though I see a lot comes in imperial sizes)

As to why 5AM seems to be the hottest time. They start charging with heat about midnight, give or take a bit depending on where you are. They charge until the core has reached the required temperature as set by the input control. It is unlikely they will take the full 7 hours to fully charge, so about 5PM would be a likely time to reach peak temperature and then just maintain that until the E7 time finishes about 7AM. Of course a better control system would be to calculate the expected heat loss in the house in the next 24 hours, and from that calculate how much charge the heater needs, and adjust the start time so it finishes charging just as the off peak time finishes. That is boffin territory but at least one well known member here has a control system that does that calculation each night and does just that, adjusts the start time according to how much charge is needed. A simpler version would be just make the "input" knob adjust the start charge time, so at maximum it would start at midnight, at minimum it might not start until 5AM and then it would charge until the off peak time ends. I doubt even the new posh electronic ones even do anything as useful as that.

The steel wire balustrade kit I ordered from Amazon never arrived. Amazon refunded the money. There was a clue this might have been vapour ware, as nobody had reviewed the product, suggesting nobody else received it either. So I am about to order this one instead https://www.amazon.co.uk/TooTaci-Stainless-Railing-Decking-Hardware/dp/B089R8CJJN/ref=pd_rhf_d_dp_s_pd_crcd_sccl_2_1/258-9523872-5047151?pd_rd_w=jBmWw&content-id=amzn1.sym.48cd8206-854f-4d53-baa5-acd3460f23ee&pf_rd_p=48cd8206-854f-4d53-baa5-acd3460f23ee&pf_rd_r=024CGYTAKF0D6XXCT7PP&pd_rd_wg=jocms&pd_rd_r=4d65b2ec-8e7f-4864-9e4a-404a735f864c&pd_rd_i=B089R8CJJN&th=1 At least that appears to have some generally good reviews so someone must have actually received it and used it. I also like the tensioning method, opposing left and right handed screw threads just screwing into the wooden posts. Thinking more about flooring. I am looking at solid floor options. the 2 candidates seem to be aluminium chequer plate, or Phenolic board. The Phenolic boars seems to get variable reviews some saying it is fine for outside use (e.g. trailer flooring) others saying not. I suspect the issue will be it will need to be cut to size so the exposed cut edge will be the weakness. Does anyone have any experience of using this?

If you can't force water through that loop with 3 bar pressure, then there is a serious blockage. Pipe kinked flat at a bend perhaps?

Usual question, has it ever worked? Probably an air lock in that loop, i.e. it wasn't bled properly.

When I moved into my 1930's semi 35 years ago, it had storage heaters and an open coal fire. In that first winter I would get home from work to a cold house, even with the storage heaters on max, and then light the open fire. I later upgraded to a gas fire (LPG bottles) but at least it was instant heat. I have a theory that storage heaters tend to let the heat out quite high up, and with a poorly insulated house (no floor insulation) even if the rest of the room gets warm, there is a pool of cold air at floor level that never gets warmed properly. Fitting under floor heating in our last house was a revalation, no more pool of cold air at floor level.

That would be going some. My joiners took best part of a day for 2 men to hang 9 Oak doors into door liners I had already fitted. Not including architrave.

Oxygen free copper is the best.

Can you post a very close up picture of your actual cartridge on your boiler. I bet there is some form of catch that it clicks into first before you put the screws in.

So which direction is your current aerial pointing? (approximate compass bearing)

Don't forget on a small job like this, it will take the electrician much longer to look at the job, see what's needed, and then go and get the parts, than it will to actually do the job. If he just charges you 1 hour labour, he will be losing out big time and might as well not bothered doing the job.

The ethernet cables in my house are left coiled up in the service void next to the sockets, I put them in as it was easy and cheap when building but only ONE is in use, to connect my old desktop computer in my office. The rest will probably not get used, everything else is wifi. Unless you like a lot of unused sockets I would do the same. It will be easy to cut out a backbox hole in the unlikely event you actually find a use for them.

That will be me then. I don't advertise and I don't even have the courtesy any more to tell the likes of checkatrade to clear off and stop pestering me, I am not interested in their service. All my work comes from personal recommendations.

Laminate is usually laid as a floating floor? I guess you could first use some tile adhesive as a levelling compound.

After you enter your postcode, scroll down to this bit Main thing is do you get green for good reception?

I think currently Solis is a recommended make of inverter. Fit a generation meter for your own use, so you can see how much you have generated. 2.5mm twin and earth from inverter to CU How to connect to CU, post a picture of your CU first, that is possibly the hardest bit to get right. You need to notify the DNO under G98 that will need some paperwork, but nothing too complicated. you notify after connection. And as a separate thing without export payments you want to be load shifting to self use as much as possible, so washing machine etc only on in the daytime one at a time close to mid day, and fit a solar PV diverter to sent excess power to your immersion heater, that will pretty well guarantee nothing significant gets exported. Oh and respect those DC cables, they will be live now.

Storage heaters are far from perfect, in fact a lot of people describe them as utter rubbish (sometimes using rude words) But in a house with no mains gas, they are often the cheapest option, or were. They work better in an office where they only have to deliver heat until 5PM and nobody cares if they are stone cold in the evening. They also work better on Economy 10 which has it's 10 hours of cheap rate spread at 3 different times of day so they don't have to keep heat stored in for as long. The flap that opens to let the heat out is controlled by the output control. There is usually a bi metalic strip mechanism that attempts to give it some control so the more the core temperature falls the more the flap opens to let the heat out quicker. There is also a crude mechanism that is supposed to close the flap whenever the heater is receiving a charge, perhaps that mechanism was faulty on yours? But really that mechanism is only there for people who forget to turn the output control back to zero when they go to bed. The modern one that uses a fan to circulate the heat would probably annoy me if the fan was not silent. Nothing you can do about that one now. The only alternatives in a house without gas are an Air Source Heat Pump and I suspect you might not be advising that, or oil fired boiler.