ProDave

What has the contractor said when you told them to come back and rectify the problem? In law you must first give the original contractor chance to rectify the problem.

All ours are 900 wide panes and they work well, so would be 3 for your window.

Get the installer back, get the flue swept and get him to test it with a smoke candle. As above, the joints in the flue are not necessarily sealed because a flue should be drawing air, so any leak will suck in air from the room, not expel smoke. I would be looking at the MVHR setup or just turn it off to rule out depresurisation of the house. Is the stove room sealed? or does it draw air from the room? if so is there an adequate air vent close to the stove?

BC are looking for the installation checklist to be signed and dated by someone they know and have already checked his credentials. They took one look at the name on mine and said that's fine. I paid a LOT less than £300 for the plumber to make the final connections test it and sign it off.

An outward opening door is less reliant on seals to make it watertight, and might be good for an exposed to rain elevation? On the other hand an outward opening door on a windy day is a very bad idea. If you are talking of security as in someone breaking in, I doubt there is any difference.

They can get through the holes in a standard air brick.

Do you really need 2 bathrooms? Is the other bedroom regularly occupied? A way to get real extra space and a real walk in wardrobe would be completely re model that area to give one decent Jack and Jill bathroom accessed from both bedrooms and then you have space for a proper walk in wardrobe, but that would probably only work if the second bedroom was a guest room and you only had to share your facilities occasionally.

More likely just cute little mice. They can sound a lot larger scurrying over a plasterboard ceiling. It is almost impossible to keep them out of anything other than an air tight passive house. * If you have a standard cooker hood vented through the wall and it has been installed with plastic flexible vent pipe, they have probably entered the vent, chewed through the flimsy plastic pipe and entered the cavity and got in from there. If not already, that should be more substantial flexible aluminium pipe. Just put some rat poison down if you can find somewhere from above where you can drop it down into the ceiling void, or pop a downlight fitting out and put some in through there. * We have one in the house right now. Only the second time in 5 years and the point of entry has again been a slightly open velux roof window. SWMBO did not believe that is how he got in until I showed her the mouse droppings on the vanity unit under the window.

My impression is you don't like the "wasted" corridor so you want to make the corridor do something. All you have achieved is a narrow walk in wardrobe that you pass through just to get to the bedroom (that always strikes me as odd) and having the basin in the corridor is odd as there is no basin in the same room as the WC. You have just made the corridor longer and more awkward. I am sure you could just re model the existing en-suite to give you bath, shower and WC, particularly if you are not intent on keeping the bidet and twin basins. If you are removing (or moving) the existing built in wardrobe I would take down the wall between that corner of the bedroom and the corridor, so the corridor becomes just a corner of the room.

Well done for keeping going and getting the gas safe. Being in one of the building trades is handy as you get to know a lot of other trades working with them, and you get to know the ones you would be happy working in your own house, and the ones you would not let in the front door. So when you do want to employ someone, you know who to choose. And yes one of the things I hate most about being self employed is ordering all the materials for a job, not always as easy as it should be.

What about the rotating vents you sometimes see on conventional chimneys ? the sort that rotate so the open pipe always faces downwind. Would one work on a gas appliance? Someone else would have to advise if it was even legal to fit one to gas heater. Or a wind break fitted on the 'van roof to shield from the prevailing wind, but that would not work when the wind comes from the wrong direction.

If you have pipes going UP and then back down again to a radiator, the high up pipes will just collect any air in the system and form an air lock. If you must have pipes like that, you NEED an automatic air bleed valve on each one at the highest point. Any photos of these high pipes along the vaulted ceiling? If no bleed valve was fitted time to get your plumber back and give him a telling off. I hope there is access to them?

Three issues spring to mind. First, in a kitchen, you don't put the UFH under the units or under a fridge. So that rather limits the floor space that can be heated and you might well find the low output of UFH when less than half the room area is heated, is not enough to warm the room properly. Second, you will need a manifold somewhere. Not a big one so it might be possible in the back of a cupboard unit, but it will make that cupboard unit warm, so not one you use to keep food. A pots and pans cupboard perhaps. Third, getting rid of the radiator will mean one less thing on the wall, but what will you use that for instead, given the position of the window?

Make sure the brickies do NOT build up the end walls (the walls the joists are not resting on) You will need the ends clear to slide the strong backs into the joists. Only when those are in can the brickies build up higher.

Do the job properly, convert to two 2 port valves, convert the wiring to S plan. If they are awkward to get to and you are concerned about maintenance, use Honeywell valves.

Petrol powered pump and suitable hoses on standby as ultimate backup?

HWMBO

If you really want to avoid "single point of failure" then a 2 pump system needs both pumps fed from a different MCB and NOT even sharing the same RCD in the consumer unit. Ideally each served from their own RCBO.

We have engineered Oak boards in our kitchen. We agonised at the time what to fit, discounted pretend wood ceramic tiles as not realistic enough and prone to being like a banana and lipping issues unless laid with a very short bond. It's a kitchen dining room and we didn't want a change of surface in the room. So we chose the Oak, the whole of that room, the hall, and the living room are one continuous lay of the same Oak floor. It is lasting well. the 2 things we do, is there is a washable mat on the floor where most of the food prep is done, and we try to be careful not to drip anything on the floor. 5 years or so in user and still looking very good.

For that shallow angle I would not cut it, but plane the top of B to the required angle. Really easy and quick with an electric plane.

£8.45 for 12 logs, and they don't even say the weight. Anyone care to guess how many kWh of heat you get for your £8.45?

It is a SATA HDD, but not the original, I forget what make. But it is a good few years old. But it still plods on.

It's a strange one. It has no subscription and is essentially being used as a freesat box. There are some reasons I persist in keeping this (I do have a Humax freesat box waiting in reserve). It only misses recordings when the box crashes. The software (or hardware?) on this particular model was somewhat flakey, and being an obsolete box is not getting any software updates.

I actually took one box consuming about 20W out of use completely, and the main one an original Sky HD box consuming about 50W is not on 8 hours a day less.

You mean the house on the left not the one for sale? I wondered what that "periscope" was.