ProDave

What is below that wall? I would design the stairs properly, then rebuild that wall so it meets the underside of the stairs however they end up.

A monblock ASHP requires some plumbing skills and some electrical skils. Do you have these?

Ours remains as a permanent outbuilding, so I panelled in all around the bottom, I made a deck and some steps to get up to it, and just 1 month of running the gas fire and seeing the appetite it had for LPG, I fitted a small cheap wood burning stove. The stove might not be such a good idea if you are planning to sell it. Mine is not fixed to the stone hearth it stands on so it might not be in the same place if the van were moved. As you have the house shell put your washing machine etc in there. Get the van up on blocks off it's wheels and off the silly little wind up legs that are not man enough for permenant use.

About 30 or more years ago, I bought a small Honda E300E generator, it was second hand but in good condition and little used. I used it caravaning and camping, mainly to charge a 12V battery. Then we moved to Scotland, it got stored in various places while we built house no 1. I tried to start it 10 years ago and it would not start. Now house No 2 is all but finished I have more time, so time to blow the dust off this and have a go at getting it going. It turned over, plenty of compression, nice spark on it's tiny little plug, and for good measure I fitted the new spare plug. but no sign of life. Plug remaining dry so no fuel. I opened the float chamber drain and nothing came out, so no fuel to carb. Time to start taking it apart to get the fuel tank off. Problem found, no fuel out of the fuel tap. Dismantled the tap and it's filter to find everything completely jammed up with crud. Cleaned it all out and now fuel leaks out of what should be a vent hose. More investigation needed there. So before I spend too much time, time to rig up a temporary fuel supply, a little tiny funnel to feed a small drop of fuel to the carb inlet hose. Second pull off she goes and runs like a dream until the little bit of fuel ran out. At least the carb is not in the same state the fuel tap is. So time to sort the fuel tap. I had thought just buy a new one until I started searching. It turns out this was Honda's first "suitcase" generator launched in 1965, and is somewhat of a collectors item now, but everywhere you look you can find parts lists, and most things, including the fuel tap are not available. Looks like i am going to somehow have to refurbish the one i have, which might be a challenge. I will take pictures later.

I am still not clear if you have bought the plot or just thinking about it. I would want to hear what building control say they will accept as a solution? They are the ones that will be signing it off, so you need their accepted solution.

A nail gun would blat a nail right through plasterboard. Are you sure it was not a screw gun? Plasterboard used to be nailed, by hand, with large headed galvanised nails. How do you know the plaster is thicker at the bottom?

Do you have a site plan perhaps from the sales particulars? If it has PP there would be some plans with the planning application. If you are concerned at the distance from a neighbours existing soakaway, then a far bigger problem is likely to be where would you put a treatment plant and the soakaway for the house you would build on this plot? Don't commit to buying it until you have found a solution.

A neighbours relatives have been visiting this last week. On the hottest day last week I saw them going for a walk down the road with coats on. They had just arrived from Dubai.

You definitely need to get the old tanks pumped out, then try it with just clean water. If it still does not drain away, then the soakaway / drainage field is clogged, if so time for a lot of digging.

Are you only looking at fixed price deals? All suppliers should offer the capped standard variable rate but none really want to as they will be losing money, so you might have to insist your present supplier lets you drop onto the SVR. Not many suppliers are taking on new customers, but if you do fond a good deal with Octopus, PM me for a referal code that will get you £50 credit.

Similar to us except we have 100mm wood fibre board on the outside of the rafters, making it a warm roof and no need for the ventilation , and 200mm between rafters. But no PIR layer.

What exactly is your wall make up? Our calculated decrement delay time was 13 hours and it certainly seems to be close to that, our house maintains a pretty constant temperature only warming up or cooling down slowly. You need to eliminate solar gain as the culprit so even if you can make temporary exterior blinds to prove a point e.g even something as simple (on a dry day) as cut a large piece of cardboard and tape that to the outside of the velux windows for a day to block the sun out completely.

I have a portable air conditioning unit, the sort that just exhausts it's warm air through a big pipe. I found it next to useless. Yes it is nice when it is blowing cold air at you, but it was way way too noisy to keep running over night in a bedroom, and insufficient cooling power to meaningfully reduce the air temperature enough for it to stay cold when you turn it off. I see nobody has mentioned a night purge? This is what we do on the occasions it gets to hot. Once the evening / night temperature outside is less than inside temperature, throw all the windows open to let the house cool down overnight, then shut them all in the morning. With a long decrement delay the house should stay cool through the heat of the day. Repeat each night. Not much help if the night temperature does not go below 25. The "mistake" a lot of people make is "gosh it's hot, lets open a window" when the outside temperature is even hotter, you just let the heat in quicker.

That is more like October figures after the next rise in the energy price cap? July SVR should be about 29p for electricity (not sure about gas)

When I did my solar PV at the old house, I notched the tiles that would otherwise have rested on and be lifted up by the bracket. Easy to do with an angle grinder.

What is anyone doing chipping something 3" diameter? That is good firewood. What a waste.

And there is also a big difference between a pump impeller and an impeller for a generating turbine. I have an old dead submirsible pump somewhere, but it's impellor is just completely flat blades, no "scoop" to them, and they are a lot smaller than the cavity they run in. I struggle to get my head around how that can be "efficient" but suspect that allows the pump to work at differing heads and flow rates rather than usinin minimum electricity, and feel if I tried to use the impeller from that, it would be very inefficient as a lot of the water would simply go around the blades rather than push them. Water wheels are a lot easier to understand.

This will be a LOT smaller than that. I am not talking of a pelton wheel which technically runs "dry" and gets propelled by a very fine very high speed jet of water. Rather I am talking of a "wet" running turbine. With no load, the peripheral of the turbine would pretty much rotate at the speed of the incoming water, i have not measured that, but by going small the idea is to get a much higher rpm. I think the half speed you talk of, is the optimum power out will be when you load the turbine so it is running at half no load speed. I keep finding lots of people who have built DIY small scale turbines but very little detail. so I am to a large extent guessing what I want and hoping to find a project that worked with proper details to replicate it. Lots of people with their DIY turbines showing the voltage they generate, but very few putting a load on and quoting what power they get.

That could be problematic. The shaft is 6mm diameter, but it is a D shape with a flat, and I would be expecting to drill and tap a thread for a grub screw to tighten down on the flat on the shaft. That seems unlikely then? Could you print a D shaped hole and I would just glue it onto the shaft?

So since I posted that comment, for the last week I have been turning the main television off at the plug (and it's surround sound system) when not in use. And this weeks "non heating" use is down to 67kWh, so 8kWh down. To early to say if that reduction is all down to the tv on standby or something else, but I will continue the trial to see. I have now extended this test to the other big tv and it's surround sound system also turned properly off when not in use.

Another here who self installed my mvhr. If choosing this route, I highly recommend using a radial ducting system (BPC sell this) where each inlet and outlet has it's own pipe back to a plenum box near the MVHR unit. Much easier than rigid ducting and branches. For setting up, the forum had an anemometer to loan for measuring the flow rates at each terminal, I am not sure if it is still available or if it got "lost"? Here is my blog entry http://ardross.altervista.org/Wilowburn/mvhr-ducting/

So the government advice is don't expect your salary to rise to keep up with inflation. Yeah right, we should all just accept a low pay rise and shut up and watch our standard of living plummet. with government advice like that I have very little confidence they have the slightest clue how to solve this problem.

So I would be looking for something a bit like this Outside diameter 75mm, height 38mm and the bore of the central hole 6mm Is that possible to 3d print? if so I would suggest the inner hole a bit smaller and I will bore it out to fit the motor

Run the stack up the corner of the hall behind the front door as planned. Up into the right corner of the bathroom where it will branch off to the WC. It must continue about 1 metre higher where it terminates in an AAV. That corner bit will be boxed in, but if your drawing is accurate you have a back to wall WC so you will be boxing in a section of wall anyway to hide the cistern. This reinforces my earlier belief, if you had just carried the stack all the way to the roof it would have emerged through the original roof not the lower roof with the velux windows.

For 3 phase you want a 5 core steel wire armoured cable. 16mm absolute minimum if a short run but 25mm would be better. It needs feeding at the kiosk with a switch fuse, 80A to discriminate from suppliers 100A fuse. Best terminate the SWA in a large adaptable box in the house, so you can take a single phase to a consumer unit and have the others terminated for future use.