ProDave

The vent above the gate looks to be the exhaust from an extraction fan, not a flue.

I guess the message from this thread is ask the manufacturer before you order an ASHP, what is the standby power consumption in kWh per day. And then if you measure more than they quoted, then complain.

Agreed. 6kWh per day of "wasted" energy is almost as much in a year as my ASHP consumes doing something useful with it like heating the house or the hot water.

Well done and thanks for letting us know.

You should get planning for a temporary residential caravan, and given your neighbours delight in looking for ways to frustrate you, that would probably be a good idea.

A picture might be helpful? I would not slope it down towards the neigbours wall.

I am surprised the figures are so high in the south. Up here in northern climes, 1kWh in december is good, and 0 is not unusual. I did mine on an East / west split at a low angle to try and prolong the generation throughout the day with less of a big mid day peak to make self use of the electricity easier. Perhaps if you are installing batteries and they can charge at a rate to use all the peak generation, then optimising for mad daily output would be better. The real boffins would of course have tracking panels, or at least a manual summer / winter adjustment to elevation.

Just to add by way of comparison with other makes. My LG Therma V in the last few weeks has metered precisely 0 kWh when idle (i.e. any time it is not heating DHW) as there is no space heating use at present. This confirms the only metered use when idle is when it invokes it's anti frost water circulation function when it's very cold outside. And it's only averaging 3.5kWh per day heating DHW.

What sort of ASHP? If monoblock, then the circuit going out to the heat pump needs antifreeze. You don't want to be filling your 1000L thermal store with antifreeze so you need the break of either a heat exchanger or input coil to separate the outside ASHP circuit from the inside store / heating circuit.

If there is no space for a pillar, then there is no room to open the car door. Surely a slim pillar at the front and back would be okay?

We found that when running the B&B, you would go into a room in the morning after the guest had left, to find the room thermostat at 30 degrees, the boiler burning away to keep that running, and the windows wide open. To say it "annoyed" me is an understatement. I am convinced daughter showers however long is necessary to empty the tank of hot water before turning the water off. I simply cannot imagine just what one does in a shower for half an hour, even if you have got the excuse of having long hair and needing 3 lots of shampoo and conditioner with instructions to leave each in for several minutes before rinssing.

Is this in the context of a new kitchen install? Or just wanting someone to alter what is there? A kitchen refit it would be easy, floor up if necessary or run pipes under or behind units. Changing what's there, much harder to run pipes under units and almost impossible behind, and taking the floor up not practical without usually wrecking the present floor covering.

I have started writing a "home manual" documenting everything in the house so that when I am gone, it should at least help someone else understand some things. That has gone as far as even listing the code for my PV diverter, but I suspect if that stopped working it would be binned or replaced. Given my daughters complete lack of interest or knowledge in energy efficiency etc (she shrugs her shoulders and says so what when I point out she has been out all day and her tv was left turned on) if she is the one that has to deal with it, it would not get replaced. Really surprising that teenagers growing up now have no comprehension of using energy efficiently. Perhaps you only "develop" that interest when YOU are presented with the bills to pay from your income?

Looking good so far. What I concluded (and is general knowledge any way) is most electricity meters work on an energy bucket of 1Wh. So the meter will only increment it's counter when 1Wh of energy has passed. A typical 3kW immersion heater will take just a little under 1 second to consume 1Wh. So on that basis I did all my timing on a half second period. The immersion heater is burst fired within that half second anything from 0% to 100% of the period to match the surplus power. And thus within that half second the same amount of energy passes both ways and the energy bucket never reaches 1Wh so never counts up. Where it all gets interesting and will test your measuring and calculating algorithms is when you start firing the immersion heater, as the power that consumes will show up on your measurement. The bit I never perfected is accounting for that. In theory you should be able to measure the surplus power and calculate exactly how much goes to the immersion heater and apply it. That never worked for me. so instead mine works on incrementing / decrementing the immersion heater power level each cycle. that results in a slower response to changing loads or changing generation. On the whole it works well but no doubt causes a small amount of over / under immersion heater power when a rapid change happens. If you are sampling every cycle individually, you probably then need to average 25 cycles consecutively to give you 1/2 second average and work on that, but this will introduce the time lag I have. Perhaps a way to improve that would be rather than average over 25 seconds then do a calculation, do a rolling average so as one new reading for a cycle comes up add that to the average and the oldest one drops off, that would still give you an average over half a second but updated every cycle.

Obviously the scisor lift is broken, or he does not have permission to use it and so does not have the key.

You need to work out what you are trying to achieve. At the moment you have a shared system that "works" but you are not happy that it it technically in breach of the GBR's Apart from not complying with the GBR's are there any other issues, smell, blockage, visible polution etc? If you continue pressing with your legal complaint about it not complying with the GBR's then sooner or later someone is going to order you to update it (either install a drainage field or upgrade to a treatment plant). Whoever issues that order does not care about who owns it, they will just want it upgraded. At that point you could then end up having to organise the upgrade (it is on your land) and then fighting to the the other co owner to pay their share of the upgrade. There are some times when if there is not really a "problem" being created the best course of action is none.

As you share it, you are between a rock and a hard place. Notify the EA of the illegal discharge and you will get a notice to upgrade it to a treatment plant. Then you will be jointly responsible for the cost of that with your neighbour who you appear to have a bad relationship with, so that will make for a difficult installation particularly getting the neighbour to pay his share I suspect. BC "signing it off" does not stop it having to comply with the GBR

A Septic tank should not discharge to a watercourse, so I would say they were wrong to sign it off. More details needed, who's tank, who's land is the discharge point on and exactly what issues is it causing you?

Is it related to the septic tank itself or the drainage field?

Our design SAP was done with an assumed air change of 4. MVHR was always planned. The actual air test result came out at 1.4, which I was disappointed with, but the tester nearly wet himself with excitement as it was the best he had personally tested so far. Then when all the figures were sent back to she SAP assessor, he issued the as built SAP with an improved figure over the design SAP. In Scotland at least it appears an air test is a requirement, and I know of one builder nearby who's air test came out better than 3 and he was forced to retro fit mvhr. So plan for MVHR from the outset, or get the air test done before the plasterboard goes on.

Hi and welcome. That's a disappointing start to a build. The discussion usually starts with "Show me the wayleave agreement that says your pipe can be there"

If you want to have a look yourself, then turn off ALL the lighting circuits, and carefully unscrew each light switch one at a time and carefully pull the switch forward. Neutrals will usually be linked together in a terminal block in the back of the switch box, check all those are secure and the terminal screws are tight, and no cables will pull out of the terminal. The bigger problem will be if it's a live that's loose, you could end up with 3 or 4 brown wires all falling out of their terminals as you pull the switch forward and then no simple way (for the layman) to determine which one should go back into which terminal.

It is certainly going to be a loose wire somewhere, could be L or N. Assuming it has been wired the modern way of "loop at switch" then your problem will be behind one of the switches. Unless you feel confident checking yourself, wait for the electrician. The evenings are light now so you can manage with a few non working lights for a bit.

You may not actually need planning permisson to operate a B&B https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/planning-permission-and-building-control-tourism-businesses If this is still your main residence and you have not made any changes to the actual building to let some of the rooms as a B&B then planning may not even be required. That is the basis that we operated our last house as a B&B as the house was physically exactly as it was in the planning permission.

You are in a hole looking out.