ProDave

In the time I have been building this house (a surprisingly long time) I have found the whole planning and building control system has changed. As Ian mentions, it is almost impossible to actually get to speak to anyone. Now if you want to communicate with either planning of building control here, you have to file a "proposal" via the Scottish edevemopment website which is really 2 in one, eplanning and ebuildingstandards. A "proposal" is not a planning application (though it could be) but it is a way of selecting what it is you want to communicate with them about. My last 2 "proposals" were a temporary habitation certificate about a year ago and a completion certificate just recently. During the process of dealing with both of these I did get some communication by email from the BC officer dealing with it, but the "result" was an email from the ebuildingstandards portal giving me the outcome. I found the whole procedure clumsy, clunky and impersonal. I can't see how it saves them work other than perhaps the whole thing is so clumsy that someone with a trivial matter might not bother to proceed and write to the newspaper instead? I don't think this change has anything to do with manpower or staffing issues rather is has been something dictated by the Scottish government that all councils should be using, No doubt someone somewhere thinks it is a big improvement and are congratulating themselves on such a wonderful system. This won't be the reason for Ian's issues but may give a clue to the way procedures are changing. One other comment in that respect, the BC officer when inspecting for completion came clutching a big wad of paperwork and drawings, and commented "this is one of the last ones still done with paper files"

Right No 1 question to get the context, is this a new install you are trying to get to wotk? Or an existing install that used to work properly but has now stopped working properly? And are you (trying to) heat the house with under floor heating, radiators or a mixture? A point of not, almost all ASHP's heat DHW or the heating, never both at the same time, and usually you can select which has priority.

Electrical input to the ASHP. I have an old dual rate electricity meter set up to meter heating and DHW electricity usage by the ASHP.

Hi and welcome. Your approximate location might help someone give advice re finding a plot.

Is this about inaction of the planners re a planning enforcement matter?

Move your BT master socket into your loft. then run your own cable out of the house loft, across on your own catenary to the garage. Far simple and legal.

I am a fan of the cheap generic (sold under a host of names) convector heaters, that have a thermostat and 3 different power levels down to 700W. They are silent and don't have the worry of a fan heater so I would be happy to leave them unattended (which I would not with a fan heater) Usually about £20

Mine is not a passive house. I have applied a lot of passive house principles but it has not been modelled with PHPP. 150 square metre house uses about 1600kWh to heat it each year which is about 10.6kWh per square metre per annum.

You are first rather optomistic in assuming developer mass built houses are built to anything other than the minimum they can get away with in terms of insulation and air tightness. But even then a heat pump will cut heating bills down to about 1/3 compared to resistance heating, so 1/3 of a small number is an even smaller number. Once you have experienced showering from an unvented tank of hot water with a decent flow rate, you will never ever want to go back to using a direct resistance heating electric shower that will struggle to deliver 3 litres per minute, and should you ever want a bath, I would hate to think how long it would take to run that with an instant water heater.

Have a chat with him and suggest you quietly put up a fence down the middle and each take over half of it with a view to claiming adverse possiesion in due course.

More information? What is the property and wall make up? If you wanted more insulation, the time to add it was before plastering? Lining paper will not do much. I would only paper a newly plastered wall if you had a rubbish plasterer.

My PV is ground mounted Nothing wrong with my room sealed wood burner, in fact I am very pleased with it and would buy the same again Other occupants is your life choices. Nothing wrong with an LPG hob if you want gas and don't have mains. I designed our bedroom and daughters bedroom to be opposite sides of the stairwell so 2 insulated walls between us.

Yes as a lot of us, my new build was designed for what we want, not somebody elses idea of what that might be. The main one was probably our roof build. It's 1 1/2 storey or room in roof and I most certainly did not want a normal roof with dormers. There is something about dormers that I hate. So we came up with the "gable end" design which I first saw are relatively common on the isle of Skye which gives you a much more open roof space with nearly all the roof space having usable height. And being hung from ridge beams means you can have vaulted ceilings right to the ridge if you want to. The other thing I wanted to avoid was pokey narrow corridors. There are not many things that I would change if doing it again.

Strictly speaking Open Reach should do that. but if done properly I doubt anyone will even know. Your problem is where you want it to go to, you will need a short pole attached to the side of the building to provide a hook above the guttering for it to terminate onto. Your challenge is to look around at other similar situations to see what is the local practice for that situation and find something to achieve that that does not scream "diy bodge" It would probably just be simpler to rewire your internal wiring to tidy things up, e.g. by running from the existing termination point up into and through the loft then down to the room where you would like it,.

I assume as you mention SELECT you are in Scotland? Important to know as the rules differ between England and Scotland. Just what is the job you are doing that involves building control? You talk about being refused a building warrant (Another Scottish term) for a bathroom fan. Nobody is going to apply for a building warrant just for a bathroom fan, so that's why I want to know the scope of the job. In Scotland there is currently no equivalent of Part P (but it is on the way) so any competent electrician can issue a MWC or EIC. I myself am not registered with any scheme but Highland and Moray council accept an EIC from me for building regs jobs, though I have been told not all councils do.

A "normal" sized bath with a normal sized occupant, some part of your body is out of the water, e.g if you lie down it will be your knees. SWMBO had the requirement that it must be possible to submerge your entire body in the bath.

Only if you switch it to bypass mode over night.

Yes, still in use, still in it's sprayed light metalic blue. I have a near identical one that was one of my dad's tool boxes, I wonder if he made it or if it was bought, I will never know.

The centre finder I made is the same as @Roys one. I haven't seen my knurling tool for a long time, that might be lost. Watchmakers screwdriver set, including a case for them machined from Tuffnel. Printed circuit board holder, I can't remember if that was engineering at school or apprenticeship.

Must be the standard design, exactly what I made, even the hinges were made from scratch.

The question becomes, who do you complain to if it becomes impossible to get a new meter fitted?

I actually don't think BCO looked in our main bathroom, the size and depth of the bath may have been a concern to them if they did, But the reality is it gets used once in a blue moon, most of us shower normally, so it's size is pretty irrelevant. It was offered to us by another local builder at half price as he had bought it and his SWMBO had "changed her mind"

Have you been up to witness exactly what it is doing during this time? Could it be the water circulating through the system has been up to 56 degrees or more when doing DHW, then it switches back to space heating, and the water in the system is still hot and it takes that half an hour for it to cool down to heating temperature and put any demand on the heat pump. Ours does something similar (different ASHP) but for a while after finishing DHW heating, the water in the system circulates at above heating demand temperature and if say only one UFH zone is actually calling for heat it can take a while for it to cool down before the ASHP next comes on. The obvious way to test this or at least make sure you are getting the most out of the limited cheap rate period, is time the DHW cycle to happen at the end of the cheap period, not the start or the middle.

Not true. For a temporary habitation the building needs to be safe, but not complete. At Temporary habitation we had no internal doors downstairs, one pane of glass missing (window boarded up) and the big one, the sun room was a bare shell. Paperwork needed for that was just electrical certificate and gas safe certificate. For completion we obviously had to complete the building, then the extra paperwork needed was air test and as build SAP / EPC and they wanted to witness yet another drain pressure test.

Did you actually apply for a temporary habitation certificate. So so through this website https://www.ebuildingstandards.scot/eBuildingStandardsClient/default.aspx It's a bit of a clumsy site to get used to but certainly up here Highland Council now insist you use that portal. You want the "Temporary Habitation" proposal form. Councils are very slow, it took us 3 months to get a temporary habitation, and then nearly a year later nearly 2 months to get completion. After out completion inspection I heard nothing for 3 weeks until I got a refusal to issue completion certificate notice due to 2 really trivial issues which I had to correct and apply again for completion which this time was granted. By doing it the official route above, they either have to issue what you asked for, or refuse it with stated reasons for refusal. Perhaps is is just better to pay a few £££ for your architect to do this for you? He might be better at arguing the case if there are any things they are not happy with?