ProDave

Almost all houses I have ever worked on have been over 240V We "changed" to 230V some time ago but all that did was change the target with then a lop sided minimum and maximum tolerance meaning the typical 240V that almost every house receives is well within tolerance, If you want to rule out voltage rise due to local PV generation, measure it at night when it is dark.

Re the bins. There are thousands of remote houses here with long driveways and the owners just wheel the bin down and leave it at the street on bin day then wheel it back. Don't tell me that common sense solution is no longer accepted? The other issue is do you have a legal right to pass and re pass on foot and in vehicles to the potential plot?

As a non professional (at least not a structural professional) I have seen this sort of thing a lot. The left hand side of the arch has to support a lot of weight in a small space, so my take is the mass on that left had footing is more Kg per square metre than the rest of the foundations and that left hand foundation has settled more. Given the age of the house I bet the foundations are not particularly deep. The crack is not going to go away. IF you buy it now like that, it might just stay the same, it might get worse but one thing is sure if you ever decide to sell the buyer will be asking the same questions. The only safe way is to get a structural survey and then negotiate the price down for the repairs needed. Or walk away and find a different property. It all depends how much you want it.

I was about to say that. Cheap, they seem to work, and the pointed arrow head bit does not skate around. Usually sold as a set of 3, 4mm, 6mm and 8mm No coolant needed.

AND check both diagonals of the door FRAME as well.

When you find out how to accurately predict rain, wind speed and direction, please let me know (speaking with my boating hat on)

Here is a link to the heat loss spreadsheet

If you have been offered them free, then I would go for it for just the transport costs. Most take the simpler route of a static caravan or large touring caravan, easier to transport and easier to sell at the end. But think ahead. Would one or both be useful to keep after the build, spruce them up a bit and you have a large shed / workshop. If that is likely and you have the room then build into your plans the option to keep one or both of them on site permanently.

You are clearly building a well insulated house. Have you tried using Jeremy's heat loss spreadsheet to work out your heating demand? Many of us have found it clearer and more accurate than SAP calculations. Regarding no heating upstairs, I am one of several here that took that bold leap and am happy with the result. Heat transfer throughout the house is not really via the mvhr but more just convection through the house etc. It works for us and many others provided you are happy with a bedroom temperature a little lower than downstairs in winter.

When I had a pebbledashed and painted house, before re painting, I just pressure washed the whole house and let it dry before re painting. That removed all algae and any loose paint.

Have you bought the lights? Some types will fit in the depth of a sheet of plasterboard and so need zero space. Or counter batten and lower the ceiling by 25mm.

How about praise for the massive reductions in CO2 we have already made? We are still treated like naughty school children misbehaving. How about stating we should move to greener fuels for our cars and home as soon as practical, stop pushing the idea that if you don't buy an EV then you are an evil monster who does not care. How about sort out the MCS and grant mess so that if the government gives a grant, it is truly that sum repaid from an already sensible install price. Pay the grant to the home owner not th installer on receipt of the paperwork saying it has been installed. People would be more likely not to feel cheated. How about in the mean time we still NEED gas and oil, so it might as well be our own recovered to known good standards rather than import it from god knows where with all the transport pollution to go with it. Stop destroying our heavy industry and closing everything because it is too polluting. All that does is kill jobs and the economy and MOVES the pollution to some other country that will fill the gap in the market and make it instead probably to poorer environmental standards, and with the added transport pollution to move it. Stop pretending that cutting down forrests and shipping them round the world to burn in DRAX is good for the environment.

Yes, but for so long now the electorate have been let down by broken promises. Labour are in now only because people lost faith waiting for the consravative promises. Labour seem set to break their promises. If they have not made good by the next election you may well get Reform, as the electorate will have become fed up with the hollow promises from the established parties. I don't see why the main parties don't see this and start being honest with the electorate. There is no point saying you will do something then not doing it.

I just think it has got to the point that nobody believes a word a PM says. Any PM of any flavour. For too long they have said lots of good words and not delivered. So until we see electricity prices actually coming down, however they achieve that, a lot of people will think like me, that it's all building up to another broken promise. I hope I am proven wrong this time.

No, but telling consumers more wind turbines = cheaper electricity prices, yet with no plan to restructure pricing so it is not set by the gas price, is setting consumers up to be let down when electricity prises do not fall. No wonder people want to do the opposite of what they are told, they simply no longer believe what they are told.

We can only guess until what they are actually going to do is known. It is no surprise they have to raise more tax from somewhere and "those rich home owners" are seen as an easy target. Except an awful lot of people are now "those rich home owners" As with most things this government do* , it would result in unintended consequences, like people not moving house and a whole section of commerce (estate agents, mortgage companies, removal companies, builders etc) grinding to a halt. * whoever would have guessed placing more tax burdens on employers would result in them employing fewer people for instance.

Given the door is a rectangle, if the bottom right (outside) corner was 5mm too low then if that was down to the hinges sagging then the upper left corner would have pulled about 10mm away from the frame. If that had happened, then the 10mm gap would be obvious, and the door top right would be carching on the frame. So although you don't want to believe it, the issue is caused by the door frame no longer being a right angled rectangle but the frame has distorted. The basic problem is the actual door frame is not very strong. So if the weight of the glass was evenly distributed along it's bottom edge, it's weight would distort the frame over time as it has done. So the heel and toeing thing is to try and pack it so the weight of the glass sits almost entirely on the hinge side. That would make the glass want to tilt away from the hinge side, so that's where the top packers come in to prevent that. There is only one way this is going to be resolved by having the glass removed and re fitted properly after squaring up the door frame.

I will add my thoughts to this thread. I have an ASHP and am happy with it. It was really my only choice on a new build. Mains gas is not available here (if it was a gas boiler would have been given serious consideration) and I did not want an oil tank to feed an oil boiler. I paid for my ASHP myself and self installed it and cost was similar if not perhaps a bit cheaper than the oil option. It;s been running for something in excess if 5 years with only 1 fault, a bearing on the fan motor, which I replaced myself. I am yet to be convinced it is actually any cheaper to run that a modern condensing gas boiler would have been and still of the opinion anyone being "sold" as ASHP as a replacement for an existing system expecting much lower running costs might be in for a disappointment. It is the insulation levels and air tightness that give my house the low running costs. So you might think it is a good idea for everyone to swap their fossil fuel boilers for an ASHP. Lets think about that (ignoring for the moment if we all did it straight away the electricity grid would collapse) What is not to like about an ASHP. Well nothing when they are working. BUT I doubt they will all keep working forever with no repairs. Your gas boiler goes wrong, and there are plenty of people that can come and fix it, they understand them, parts are available and easy to swap. All very good. Your ASHP goes wrong. Who is going to fix it? Not so many people around that can do that. I consider myself educated and understand electrical things so a lot I could do myself, but not everything. So your ASHP fails, it's a critical part, part not available or nobody willing to fit it? Oh you will need a new one sir. Now most people will probably have received a grant (and still paid a lot of £££ on top) to have the first one installed. I bet if it has failed out of warranty they will be offered a replacement, but oh sorry no grant, this replacement is going to cost you even more ££££. If you change for a different make, it won't be like swapping to a different make of boiler (where controls are fairly standard) you will likely need a lot of electrical alterations as the electrical control scheme from one ASHP to another can be very different. I don't know how we resolve that, but where we want to be is some form of common electrical control interface (like boilers) where it is easy to swap from one make to another. A LOT more people with the skills to service and repair them, at sensible prices, i.e. at a similar hourly rate to plumbers at the moment. Better availablilty of spares at a sensible price. I think the present MCS / BUS grant scheme and the way it is being applied at the moment leaving customers still with a large bill, is doing immense damage to the reputation of heat pumps, Something has to change. Until it is possible to get a heat pump installed as simply and cheaply as a gas boiler, and until servicing and repair is similarly easy and cheap, I will not be recommending any friend of mine to get an ASHP fitted, as I don't want to lose friends when / if it goes wrong and costs them a lot of money.

It's officially finished when BC issue a completion certificate. Then you are free to finish it as you want, when you want, if ever.

Also, the 110V secondary is usually centre tapped and the centre connected to earth. So if you did come into contact with a live wire the most it would be is 55V which is little more than a tingle. By the way who actually says they are going to use a 110V transformer or indeed any mains powered tools. I have worked on several new builds including 2 of my own, all timber frame and I don't recall much use of wired power tools. Plenty of wired chop saws etc but they are sited away from the actual build a little, and later in the build perhaps a large drill to drill a core through a wall. But most day to day stuff is all cordless tools now. So what I am trying to say, is mains power available next to the build is probably enough.

You sketch is wrong. The hing side of the door is still tight to the frame, not as you have sketched. Instead the door is no longer square. If you put a big square to the corners of the door, you would see they are no longer right angles.

If you raise the hinge side, that may start to clash with the top before the outer side has lifted enough to clear the cill. Your issue seems to be the glass unit has tilted or moved and putting undue pressure on the outer edge deforming the frame. You need the glass removed and refitted correctly. the alignment of the glass inside the frame is called heel & toeing and by using packers and wedges the glass is set to place all it's weight on the inner, hinge side at the bottom with further wedges to stop the resulting outward tilting force rotating the glass in the frame. You want a glass fitter to come and do this for you. EDIT: seeing your post with pictures you can see the upper glass panel has rotated in the frame just as I described. The fitter would neet to take the glass and the solid bottom infil panel out, square up the frame, and refit both with the correct setup of the packers.

Are you saying, that if you look at the bottom of the door as it closes, the hinge side is correct, but the outer edge of the door bottom is too close to the outer edge of the door frame bottom and that is where it is catching?

This sounds very much like one I encountered some years ago. Property was high up a hill. Mains water was provided to a buried tank, as high up the hill as the mains pressure would get it. From the tank it was pumped up to the house. They were responsible for the pump, the pipe and the switchgear. On one occasion when we looked in the tank, another party had simply added another pump to draw from it. Is it that sort of arrangement? if so it was I guess technically mains water with a break tank. More details would be needed to find a solution.

It won't just be the electrician using a 110V transformer, most trades will, and most will just bring their own and expect somewhere to plug it in. So get or make a very heavy duty long 240V extension lead, or since you have the cable that is going to feed the house already buried, buy a waterproof cabinet and put a temporary site consumer unit in it with power sockets etc right at the house site.