ProDave

The official flood risk map shows a very high risk of surface flooding immediately to the south of our plot. Correct. In very heavy prolonged rain, the water table rises to the point the field floods. But it is no risk to us as the flooded part of the field runs off into the burn, and the ground level on our side of the burn is higher. It's things like the local topology that matter, so if your house is even slightly higher than the surrounding land, any flooding will just run off somewhere else. I guess your biggest risk is if the pumping station failed and the industrial scale water extraction stopped.

I am happy with our static caravan now serving as a shed / storage space / additional work space. Nobody is ever going to accuse a static 'van of being "well insulated" but condensation or stored stuff going mouldy or getting damp is not an issue. They are probably easier to buy and install than a container.

Can you show a picture of a pair of joists fixed together with these brackets? I am struggling to understand exactly what they do?

Yes move that to the pump terminals. It's as if the installer did not have, or could not read the very clear wiring instructions. Or simply did not understand them. Sadly I have found several UFH installs where the installer did not have a clue how to connect them properly.

Yes. A screen grab of the important bit The red and blue wires shown here going to the boiler are a volt free normally open contact that does exactly what your relay is doing, closes when the UFH pump is on. Ditch your relay and connect the Red and Blue shown here to the EVU

Quite apart from the probable drain problems you will encounter, is this extension really worthwhile? At 1.7 metre wide externally that will be about 1.4 metres internal width. Not a lot at all. So it will be an expensive extension for not a lot of space, and in building it you block access to the garage and lose a parking space. I suspect that will devalue your house, it would certainly put me off buying it.

Looking at your diagram, the wiring centre IS providing Switched L and N to the pump. and A1 and A2 on the relay is the relay coil. So the relay turns on when the pump is running. 3 and 4 are a normally open contact on the relay. So the relay is NOT switching the pump, it is providing a volt free open / close contact to the EVU This relay should not be necessary as most UFH controllers will already provide a volt free contact of some sort often labelled as boiler or call for heat, which will provide this volt free contact without needing the relay. Can you post a manual or a close up picture of the connections available for your UFH controller?

Most people don't have any form of relay in their fuse box to turn the heating on or off. So can we get to the bottom of why you have one, and what generates the trigger signal to turn it on or off? And how often does it turn on and off? A SSR probably could technically be used but the question remains why? Not something most heating systems need.

Our first build we did that, completed the house before the garage. No issue with planning, but building control required us to do the building warrant for just the house so they could issue completion on that and we could do the VAT claim, and then a separate building control for the garage. Of course it meant the materials for the garage you could not reclaim the VAT.

You MUST keep moving. You cannot store fitness. It will go away very quickly of you stop doing things. In the "off season" we try and go for a good long walk a few times a week to keep things moving.

Tell the council you expect the end wall of the replacement balcony to be opaque to prevent overlooking of your garden.

It's a 1 page preview of the start of an article. the last paragraphs fades out to nothing, it clearly continues but you can't read it. Usually there then pops up a message how to subscribe or whatever? But not this one.

Why do I only see the start of that article? Is it behind a paywall? but nothing to tell me why I can't read it all?

That's not a trivial job, for each joist that needs replacing, you need to remove most of not all the planks that it supports, and if the rotten joists are spread out, you might as well rebuild it completely, otherwise any fix will be short term. If some joists are rotten the rest won't be far behind.

"Energy state" is not a term I have seen used anywhere with mine. It does have timer functions built into the controller so you can time DHW heating only in certain times for instance.

Mine is an early version but the thermostat input only works for turning heating on and off. There is no official way on mine to turn DHW on and off via an external switch or thermostat.

Kind of ironic that as we discuss this we hear of the new Runways for Gatwick and Heathrow approved and a near doubling of flight numbers. So while we are all being encouraged to go green with our vehicles and houses "the message" is it's okay still to fly long distances and we are enabling more and more flights to take place. Again, I have little confidence anyone has a proper plan other than try and tick a few boxes.

What is that small room below the bath being used for? We have a similar (but oval shape) bath and the install instructions are to connect the waste with a supplied flexi coupling and lower the bath into it's casing making it a top install. But I HATE that sort of flexi. Since the room below our bath is the utility, I fitted the bath from above and made the waste connection from below before the plasterboard was fitted, knowing if it ever needs attention I will cut a trap in the utility room ceiling where it would not matter for access.

And what they don't tell you is upgrading to 3 phase is not that straightforward. We don't have this magic "3 phase LV cable in the street" We have a single phase LV cable in the street fed from a single phase transformer up a pole which in turn is fed from a single phase 11KV overhead line. It spurs off a 3 phase overhead cable at least half a mile away. Then just see how many buildhubbers get very expensive quotes for a new supply because the cable right outside their house is already up to capacity. Frankly if I ever buy an EV and install a charger for it, I am telling nobody.

Some of us are ahead of the game here, we chose to put the meter on the boundary while building and then left it there. But if this is a large scale project for a lot of people, whether they want it or not, then lets just hope they make more of a success than the ending of the E7 RTS signal.

What are the bumps / blisters under the flat roof?

Talk of new data centres for all this AI investment that is due to land. Now here is a thought. There is more wind power in Scotland than can currently be transported south, and still they are building more. Why not build these power hungry data centres up here to use up some of that spare power? I bet they won't do anything sensible like that though.

Sometimes it is best not to try and work out "how" it works, because you are never quite sure how the 3 port mixing valve in this case is actually ported. If it ain't broke, don't try and fix it.

Which would be fine if that was a plan, with the industry kept at a level it COULD be extracted later at a better price. But I am afraid the way decisions are made it would be like saying "we still have all that coal in the ground, lets mine that again"

Treatment Plant but equally just how much ground water is leaking in to bother a septic tank?