ProDave

To get a floor temp of 27 degrees you would need to put very hot water through the pipes. There will be a temperature gradient from the pipe temperature to the floor surface temperature, and that is hard to predict, but my own heating the UFH temperature is about 35 degrees and the measured floor surface temperature is about 22 degrees. It will be hotter in places e.g. underneath a rug. Try it and see, starting low and gradually increasing it, and get a cheap IR thermometer to measure it with.

The good standard bit I take exception to. What the small guys can do is is listen to what the customer wants and do exactly that. You won't get that level of detail on a mass build. I do agree not all tradesmen are equal in quality though, I know about 4 or 5 joiners, but only one of those is good enough to work on my own home for finishing joinery.

Corrected that for you.

My experience is no you won't. Well at least up here all the trades I know only do small jobs, by that I mean nothing bigger than a single house and very often even smaller like an extension or alterations. I don't know of any of these "small trades" that also work on the big building sites and I never meet tradesmen from the big sites. So as far as I see to separate markets served by separate companies.

Excellent news @oxo That's the best Christmas present you could wish for.

There is no reason why a suspended timber floor cannot be insulated properly, ours is. A solid slab is not the only way to get a well insulated floor. The original question seemed to be about access and crawl space to access services. Our previous house had nearly 2ft crawl space with access gaps through the sleeper walls so you could crawl around under the entire house, and we had 2 trap doors to get down under the floor. That house has some pipework under the floor and some cables, think building a house the "old way" Our new house has a similar void under the floor but no trap doors to get down there because we wanted a better level of air tightness. But this time there are no services down there. Obviously mains water electricity etc come up and into the building, but straight up in ducting. There is just one short run of drain pipe not under but within the depth of the floor beams to serve the utility room. That should not need access ever. There are no water pipes or cables under the floor, those are all in the service void around the walls or in the inter floor space between ground and first floor.

If you have not looked already, take a look at the website of the guy that lives off grid at the north end or Raasay which includes a lot about his electricity system. https://lifeattheendoftheroad.wordpress.com/

The price of Kerosense Vs mains electricity is making a diesel generator look attractive, particularly if you can use the heat it produces as well. That would do the winter, with some batteries so it does not have to run all the time and the PV would do most of the summer. Given your elevation, a wind turbine of a decent size is probably also viable.

Simple light switch in series with the L feed to the PIR sensor

It's definitely that orange wire, that's why I suggested physically following it through the trunking, you might even find where it is pinched or damaged doing that. My suggestion was to eliminate the "external" wiring to the lamp as the cause. Yes I am thinking green light. If the compressor is running and it's working it can't be that. If the light is on the outside of the case, UV damage could have cracked the plastic and water got in? just a guess.

I think, according to the circuit diagram, R1 (the one we thought was the problem) and R5 share the connector "D" can you confirm that one is the one you unplugged? Looking again at the diagram, R1 is energised when the compressor is OFF presumably to keep a bit of background heat in it. We need to find what is connected to the normally open contact of KA6/1. The diagram does not help us as it does not make any distinction between KA6/1 and KA6/2 So looking for NO contacts on "KA6" one feeds the compressor, and one feeds a light that is connected via terminals 8 and 9. Can you clearly identify any of the terminal blocks as being labelled as 8 and 9? If so try removing the cables from one side of each and try again with KA6/2 plugged in? EDIT the terminals 8 an 9 I am looking for are on the "Installer terminal block" not any internal terminal block.

And NEVER accept their first price.

Yep, seen many e.g load bearing walls taken out and steels inserted, stairs moved, lofts "converted" all with no building control involvement, There is a guy near here who started building a house at about the same time as us. But his is even slower and not yet finished. He was telling me how awful it was that BC wrote saying he needs to extend the building warrant. He didn't. They followed that up with letters saying he would not be able to legally occupy the house and would not have to meet the current versions of building regs to finish it. Of course he has just ignored that as well. It will be interesting to see what happens when he does finish it.

Are you saying it tripped when you put the relay back WITH that plug disconnected? If so, we have not solved this yet and this is where, due to the ambiguity on the circuit diagram, to start physically following the wired from the relay through the trunking to see where they actually go to.

Sloppy journalist alert. EXCLUSIVE: Retired businessman, 73, faces £100,000 bill after outraging neighbours by extending his house into church cemetery NO HE DID NOT . He took down the existing boundary wall and built up to what he believed was the boundary, Not INTO the cemetery. He still should not have built it without PP but I just hate seeing sloppy journalism like that.

You can probably go into your local Howdens and get them to design it while you sit there and guide them. Our local Howdens are happy to meet the end customer like that, as long as the actual order is placed through an account. I have had no problem using my Howdens account at a different branch when I have been working closer to another branch.

Yes if it does not trip with the relay back and the heater removed that should prove beyond doubt you have found the fault. Then we can concentrate on finding a new heater or fixing the one you have.

A multimeter won't do the insulation test. It will do a resistance check to determine the heater power. Follow the two black wires from the heater, they will end up at some of the terminal blocks a bit like the compressor motor cable you have already identified. Put the meter on the 200K ohm range and measure the resistance between the 2 black wires you have just followed to the terminal blocks. There is little doubt the heater is what is tripping the rcd so I would just be looking to replace it. But if you want to try rejuvenating it, I would be looking to undo the big jubilee clip, and remove the heater completely and take it into the house and put it somewhere warm for several days to thoroughly dry it out.

Well that is GOOD news. The crankcase heater is a separate item strapped onto the outside of the compressor. I would just seek out a replacement and fit a new one. It does not need to be identical. Measure the resistance (black wire to black wire) to get an idea of the power rating then any strap on heater of that power rating should do.

That's the connection to the compressor motor. So the connection to the heater will be somewhere else, almost certainly lower down on the compressor housing. Can you find another similar terminal box lower down? It will probably have just 2 wires and possibly an earth wire as well.

My own system is an old, 1980's audio system that just happens to have remote control. So it sits in a cupboard out of sight, never needing to be visited unless you do want to put a CD in to play. It spends most of it's time playing music via the Pi Music Box that can stream internet radio and all the usual spotify type services, or play music files stored on it's own memory card. you can control the music box from your phone or computer. If you want to play music that is on your phone then HiFi Cast will do that and the Pi Music box accepts streamed audio from that. When it comes to speakers, my big floor standers in the living room and a smaller wall hung pair in the kitchen / diner and another wall hung pair in the sun room.

Yes my browsing skills must be as lacking as my general knowledge. I know that is her name and she is from Oregon, but I did not see anything telling me anything about her, what she did, what her wealth is etc. The thread seems to be talking as if she is a well know wealthy person.

I think the site, a building plot in that area is valued at about £50K as there are several within a few miles on the market at around £50K right now. So it becomes is the building in that state, with all the planning issues worth £100K. If you could be sure you could keep it and adapt it to satisfy planning, and then satisfy building control then it might just be. But my guess is (without looking it up and reading the PIP) it will have the usual Highland clauses about being traditional design, 1 or 1 1/2 storey etc so it would be an uphill battle to get that design through planning. Then your next battle would be building control expecting them to approve a building that probably has no proper foundations (certainly none that they have witnessed at excavation stage) and a structure that they have not seen with the structure exposed. So I expect the only way to get a legal building there is dismantle it and start again. So is there £100K worth of re usable materials there if you dismantle it and start again? It is all so stupid and avoidable if you had followed the procedure.

Who is this Eve Wilder? you speak as if she is a well known rich person. I have clearly led a sheltered life, I have never heard of her.

I used the intello for the complicated bits like the Tony Trays, where it's chief benefit seemed to be the woven mesh embeded in it made it very tough indeed, but it was expensive, so for the "simple" stuff just plain walls and roof, I used the very much cheaper Protect Barriair.