ProDave

Agreed that looks great. More details in due course please. And another one here very happy with our builder, but I suspect being in the trade and working on a job with those builders previously so I knew their work and how they were to work with did help in the decision making.

But when a SA goes wrong? Some reports of failures. You can't just swap the heating element out when it fails. What will it cost to repair if it breaks after the guarantee has expired? Compared to a HW cylinder, every plumber under the sun knows how to swap a failed immersion heater for not very much money.

If you just want a satisfactory EICR then just get them to quote individually to correct all the C1 and C2 items. Perhaps you might want to list the C1 and C2 items stated on the EICR and a picture of your existing consumer unit.

Where I take issue with such a precise quote as that, is it is IMPOSSIBLE to actually quantify the time required to do each aspect of the job in advance. If it were me I would be quoting for the materials cost for each bit of the job and an estimate of labour for each bit of the job. NOT all items quoted are required for a satisfactory EICR. Like the smoke alarms or the sockets in the loft to avoid extension leads. That should be your choice which items you get. Just one working socket in the loft would satisfy the EICR and it's up to you if you get more fitted or use extension leads. Oh and find someone charging less than £85 per hour. Hager are good but not the cheapest, you can get a perfectly good CU for less money. Some things you can do yourself like pop the downlights out and cut the insulation away and pop them back in,

It is unclear where the upstairs floorboard up picture relates to the downstairs pictures, but the upstairs picture shows the ends of 2 separate joists bolted together. That MUST be supported below that bolted joint either by a wall or an RSJ

You won't know what air tightness you have until is it tested, so aim for the best you can do. Most of it is detail where services e.g. pipes and cables enter or leave the building. Seal all those up really well. Build a service void round all the external walls e.f 25mm battens then plasterboard. Then your cables and pipes can run down the wall without penetrating the already sealed building. And the roof is the other difficult area, especially if you have the more common cold roof with the insulation on the floor of the loft. Then your ceiling plasterboard layer upstairs becomes your air tight layer. So fit an air tight membrane with all joints taped first, and then EVERY penetration in that i.e. every light fitting cable, all vent ducts, loft hatch etc have to be sealed. That is why I much prefer a warm roof design with the insulation following the line of the roof but that really only works in a room in roof design.

You measure the height from the highest point of the actual ground that the building sits on. The ground level at other parts of the garden is irrelevant.

That used to be common in light fittings for loop in.

Yes I am a firm believer that batteries don't yet make sense for a typical 3.68kW system where it is relatively easy to self use it all, but at 5kW that would surely make battery storage viable to power stuff after the sun has gone down. I set the ASHP to heat the DHW to 48 degrees late morning so if the sun still shines and nothing else is using the PV, the immersion can heat the water hotter (probably meaning no ASHP input required next day)

No 1, the immersion heater. Put the 3kW element back. Fit a PV diverter, These send excess power to the immersion heater and by pulsing the power ensure the power sent to the immersion heater exactly equals the surplus that would otherwise be exported . The tumble dryer. Good for getting a heat pump model. Now modify your usage. A TD does NOT need to "dry" the clothes. We use it sparingly for "fluffing" the things like socks and towels. A short time in the TD then finish the drying on the airer (or outside in summer) is all that is needed to ensure fluffy towels. The rest of self use is shift the use of the big appliances to the middle of the day, on a timer if you are not in. The other thing I do is have the timer for the ASHP set to start DHW heating at 11AM. By then there should be reasonable PV generation so some or possibly all it is using will be from the PV. Fit an export meter (if you don't have a smart meter) so you can see how much you are exporting to see how well you are doing. I am only exporting typically 100kWh per year.

I would say go with what matches the local vernacular. Remind us where you are? Up here it would be the white render, but whatever you do that is not going to be mistaken for a town house.

All of us with recent new builds, have a properly done as built SAP that is based on real figures and real air test results. but that only lasts 10 years. So if we sell >10 years from completion we would be expected to get a new EPC done. What are the chances of that being right? I suspect it would be a case of get the cheapest you can regardless of the result to satisfy the law, then show the buyers the properly done as built SAP and tell them to ignore the new one? Or would it be possible in 10 years time to get the original assessor to re issue the as built SAP for another 10 years?

I recall one member here had done a lot of work to his previous house to improve the insulation and air tightness. When he came to sell the house he showed the EPC assessor details and photographs of all the extra insulation he had added and the assessor completely ignored it all and just made the standard assumptions for the age of the house. THAT we all thought was very very poor. When I got the EPC done for our previous house, the assessor said something stupid that he could only take solar PV into account if the generation meter was next to the normal electricity meter. How stupid is that?

Before you get too excited adding more to your existing 4kW, check with your DNO id they will allow more or if they will hit you with a network upgrade cost to add more? That could change the ballance. If you are only using half what you currently generate then you have not learned the art of time shifting big loads to the middle of the day and excess diverted to an immersion heater. Probably your best bet is an ac coupled battery system to self use 100% of what you generate now. If that works then subject to what the DNO says think about adding more PV.

If you want to go the bargain basement DIY route that I went, the same supplier that I used has these https://www.bimblesolar.com/used-260w-rec-solar-panels 16 of those is 4kW of panels four just under £1000 then you need an inverter, switchgear and mounting rails (I used Unistrut) so you should be able to do a complete system for about the £1500 I paid.

And another thing you see is (usually young) electricians trying to give C1 or C2 codes to things that are not really dangerous. like some who code a plastic CU as C2 because it might catch fire. It was not many years ago these were the norm, and changes to the wiring regs are not retrospective, so arguably you should not be failing an EICR because it does not exactly comply with the present regs. The worst thing the EIT did a number of years ago was to remove the old C4 code.

I think you are looking at a Larsen Truss. Typically two frames made of 4 by 2 joined bit strips of ply or OSB. The main reason being to avoid cold bridging apart from the joining plates.

The better method is make it a proper warm roof. Put the insulation ABOVE the rafters then the membrane counter battens, battens then tiles, and full fill insulation between rafters.

That requires "further investigation" I would be very surprised if it was the actual cable that was at fault. More likely is a a faulty socket or light fitting. The correct procedure is to disconnect all the accessories on each affected circuit and test each leg of the cable. If it's not a faulty accessory it could be a screw has nicked a cable, in which case that damaged cable would need replacing, but highly unlikely to be the whole lot. If this electrician is incapable of testing it like that and just wants to replace the lot, get a different electrician.

If you can't have a proper garden building I would be inclined to site a tatty old static caravan there, and then apply for planning permission to replace the tatty old static caravan with a nice proper garden building of the same size.

There are sadly a lot of electricians that like to over state "faults" in the hope of getting work that is not strictly necessary. Nothing wrong with red and black cable and plastic consumer units. I see plenty of old wiring almost daily and it is quite rate to find any cases where the actual cabling is at fault.

STOP. Get a second opinion from a different electrician. I would be VERY surprised if a 21 year old install needs rewiring. Care to say EXACTLY what was said on the EICR. Unless the original wiring was a shoddy or substandard job, themost I would expect is to be recommending a new consumer unit. Even that is debatable.

I must just be a dinosaur then. I put Cat 5 to every room, and so far ONE is in use. A bit like a telephone cable to every room, yes only one of those is in use as well. Everything else works on wifi.

Hi and welcome. That's high for a dwelling even in Scotland. I can think of a few villages that high, mostly in the Cairngorms.

Rather than just cut the wires, trace them back to where they join either in a junction box or at another switch or socket. Let's be honest here, 1946 wiring NEEDS rewiring. So personally I would disconnect the whole of the old install, install a new consumer unit and start with a couple of sockets by the CU for powering tools etc while you rewire the whole thing as part of the renovtion.