ProDave

The rules are bonkers and written by a network that does not really want lots of small scale generation. To remove the limit, even of it is possible with your inverter requires permission from your DNO.

Where did we get tot he idea that a new built house now would only last 60 years? I won't be here to see it but I would hope this one lasts longer than that. Though for a long time I have thought my parents old 1930's house (now 90 years old) is long past it's best, with it's poor layout, cold uninsulated solid walls, it would best be knocked down and rebuilt with something ready for another 100 years of much more comfortable and cheaper living?

Well it should be worth more if it has been properly upgraded.

£1000 over 32 years id £31.25 per year. So are you saying if you spend an extra £1000 on insulation you don't expect it to save you £32 per year? I have a theory about houses, that one day, buyers will actually wake up to the EPC rating and realise a modern house with an EPC A will cost a lot less to run and be a lot more comfortable than a Victorian pile with an EPC G, and they might actually pay a higher price for the better house. Clearly if you think the cost of insulation is too high, then the cost of energy is still too low.

Some of us have been commenting on the dire state of much of the UK housing stock. Few will disagree with the fact we have to do something to reduce the energy usage of our housing stock. A good step in solving that problem would be stop building poor houses that will also need upgrading. We sohuld have done this years ago. building standards are only just starting to get close to where they should have been years ago. Someone has already estimated the extra insulation is less than £2000 extra per house. That's not even 1% extra on the cost of the average house. That is a small price to pay to get better houses.

The question here really is WHY are new houses still allowed to be built with such poor insulation levels? It means the main mass market house builders are still allowed to build what most on here regard as poor houses. Having just finished self building a house that exceeds even this new value for extensions, I can say it does not add much to the cost and it is really nice living in a house that is always warm and costs to little to heat.

We get that at the moment, a few choose to explore the metropolis of Invergoerdon on foot and go and have lunch in the cafe at Morrisons rather than do a bus tour of Loch Ness.

The storey I tell is they guy I bought all my scaffolding from. He lived in a semi detached house with a 3M wide driveway alongside it. His neighbour had a similar side garden. One day the elderly neighbour said to him the garden is getting too much for me would you like to buy my side garden, and offered it for not very much money with no conditions. This guy then owned a semi detached house with a 6M wide side garden and got planning for a new house on that side garden. It was this house he was just completing so I bought his scaffold. The neighbour had not spoken to him since......... I know you like your neighbour, but you don't owe them a favour like that. Which is the "front" of your house? you appear to have an access at top and bottom of that picture and 2 driveways that I am not even sure actually link together? ("sloping driveway" appears to taper away to nothing)

Find a merchant who does sale or return. Fit the traps. Invite BCO. Remove and return the traps for a refund.

Probably not. the issue is not just the flashing, but all parts of the flue have to be at least 2" from combustible materials. So you need an 11" diameter clear hole to pass a 7" flue through. you would have to take the tiles off to see the roof structure to see if you actually have space for that. But all it means is you have to move the flue a bit in both directions to meet that requirement, so it might not be exactly where your circle is.

So plots there are 10* the cost of plots here, which is insane as built houses are not 10*

You need to work out what it is you really WANT to build, then put in the plans and see the outcome. If you are really wanting a completely separate dwelling that can be split from the main house, then go for that. If it really is just an annex incidental to the main house, go for that. Then be prepared for a refusal which will at least give you a planning reason for refusal, and you can then amend the plans to meet the reasons for refusal, or even consider appeal. I don't think the constant paring it down to hope it gets passed is really going to work, because you will probably then end up with permission for something you don't want.

You tried the reset button on the bottom thermostat? Odd that one cylinder uses 2 completely different forms of thermostat for the 2 heating elements.

I know someone who cannot use LED lights, it gives her a migraine. I think the reason for this is most LED lights are not actually a constant steady light (no technical reason why they could not be) but instead a high frequency pulsed light. It's all to do with the way the drivers are designed. It is that high frequency flashing (in effect) of the lighting that triggers her headaches. Her solution was, when halogen lamps were being phased out, she bought in bulk so now has a cupboard full of them to last the rest of her life. (so she hopes)

Open the front and look inside, you see the heater snaking it's way around right on the floor of the machine inside. You should be able to see where it exits usually at the back. That is where you want to be looking on the outside (from underneath perhaps then) to find the terminals.

Those are all views looking up from underneath (I assume it is laid on it's side) I would expect the heater connections to be low down on the back of the unit so try photographing that?

Looks good. Go on, I know it would be wasted, but stoke up the fire just to give it a go.

Do please let us know what he finds.

That's probably exhausted all I can think of by way of remote diagnosis. If the thermostat is open but it's not because the water is too hot and it is not because of the safety thermostat tripping then it sounds like it is broken. I think it really needs someone there to have a better look and really work out what is going on. Do you have an electrician nearby?

Ah school electronics. When I first encountered it, the school disco rig you dare not touch 2 different bits of metal at once. Earthing was not a concept that any previous person had bothered much about. And I remember the 2 big speaker stacks, they looked very professional until when you actually read the fancy writing on the nameplates it read "heapacrap" Being part of the disco crew had it's perks, even as 15 year olds, one of the teachers would deliver a pint of beer each to the disco crew. Then the stage lighting rig. When I first got there is was a bank of dirty great big rheostats strapped to a wall. This was modernised with solid state dimmers. To make the PCB's for these dimmer modules we didn't do any chemical etching, instead one of the engineering teachers merely stuck the blank board down to the milling table and removed the unwanted copper with a milling cutter to leave the tracks that were wanted. A patch panel based on 15A round pin plugs and sockets let you patch different dimmer modules on the desk to different lights. We had tremendous interference problems with the stage sound system when the lights were used, emc filtering was an unknown subject then. I remember pre one production we had to run some new cables through the roof void above the hall, crawling on planks between the steel trusses and just wood fibre ceiling panel boards between you and the floor of the hall way below. Nobody thought this was a dangerous thing for school children to do and nobody had heard of safety harnesses. Can you imagine any of this being allowed today?

That is showing open circuit so the top thermostat is open. That red item in the first picture I think is the thermostat. Is that a black button at the top between those 4 terminals? If you press it does it go click? Is there any mention in the manual of how to reset the over heat safety thermostat?

When you did the resistance measrements, was that at the 2 terminals actually on each of the heaters, or between the blue and brown of the incoming flex which will probably have landed at one of the thermostats? If the latter then the fault is not at the tank. Try and think of something common to both heaters, it would be unusual to have 2 faults together. It's not related to the RCD assuming the RCD turns on again okay?

Yes nail or screw heads popped. That usually happens if the screws were not tight so the board was not pulled tight to the timber, then it can move and pop the plaster off the screw heads. If there are only a few, remove the loose plaster, tighten the screw and skim over it again.

Our washing machine broke a few weeks back, motor armature burned out and I was not paying half the cost of a new machine for a new motor. Had a hell of a job finding one, so many places out of stock. I even got Howdens to price match Curry's only to then find out they could not supply one for 2 weeks. We ended up with an inferior, but cheaper machine from Argos as they were the only ones that could supply one in days rather than weeks.

Turn the power off, there is usually a double pole isolating switch where the flex from the immersion meets the wall. Then with the multimeter on ohms range measure resistance between brown and blue where the flex joins onto each heater and post the result. Post a photo as well so we can see what thermostat you have on the heater.