ProDave

Contamination of the land from the former use is one obvious thing to check. The water tap does not mean it has it's own supply, that could just be a long pipe from the farmhouse. Get a quote for a proper water supply. Likewise electricity, there may not be any spare capacity. And probably the biggest is drainage. Is mains drainage available? If not is there sufficient land capable of supporting a treatment plant and the soakaway needed for it.

Contract with BT as your PROVIDER and request a NEW line which is usually a fixed charge of about £65. THEY will then arrange with Open reach to connect the new line. Once connected switch provider if you want to.

IF you keep the cylinder in the garage you WILL need a how water return circulating system or your hot water delivery times will be stupidly long. I would put the HW tank in the house as close to the main points of use as I could so as not to need a HW circulation system.

Go on just buy him a VSD. Change of £200 for a Parker that I just fitted to a friends wood turning lathe.

Off topic, but I have "lost" tools on a job, only to find them again still in the customers loft when I return 6 months later to do another job. I still have a full complement of tools hanging on the witness board in the garage so I have managed not to lose any of those.

I had the 2g / 3g debate and decided on 2g as the heat loss difference was tiny. If I could wind the clock back, I would have chosen 3g. The 2g en-suite window is the only window in the house that gets any condensation. Not a lot, just a little around the edges, but for that reason wish I had spent the extra on 3g

Yes completing those early entries was a job I never got round to. I must do that. I shall be pouring a glass of the good Whisky later, and we will be going out for a meal at the weekend.

They do that well because you are only heating the pool to a low temperature, similar to UFH water temperature, and you are heating a big load so no need to modulate down to a low power so DOL starter versions work well and are cheap. There are specific models marketed for this application.

I sold a lot of mine when we finished, but kept enough Kwikstage to scaffold one wall of the house at a time. And made a dry storage rack for the boards under a bit of decking. If you do lend hire any, count it out, and count it back again.

About 5 months if I recall correctly.

You can claim the VAT with a certificate of Temporary habitation which we got about a year ago, the building does not need to be complete for that. The VAT refund finished the sun room, the last part of the building needed to be finished for completion.

Today was a big day for any self builder. The day the second most important bit of paper ever arrived, the building control Completion Certificate (The most important bit of paper being the granting of planning permission) This “ends” a long chain of events that has taken way longer than we ever expected. It all started in October 2013, that’s a staggering 8 years ago, when we completed on the purchase of the building plot, though it was at least a year before that we started looking for a plot. Construction did not start in earnest until Spring 2015 when the final design, planning and building warrant was in place. Construction started well with a local building firm contracted to do the foundations and build and erect the timber frame. But that all ground to a halt by Spring 2016 when it became clear there were no buyers for our old house in a stagnated housing market and we had to terminate our arrangements with the builder, thankfully on good terms with them. Since then it has been a slow “build as you earn” self build doing way more of the work ourselves than we ever expected, and building to what turned out eventually to be a very low cost, and somehow against expectations, we finished the house that we could not afford to build. The VAT reclaim was paid out a few weeks ago and that paid off some interest free borrowing we had accumulated finally leaving us with no debt and a very modest amount of savings left. Phew. The house is about 150 square metres in total floor area and the final build cost has come in just a shade under £1000 per square metre not including plot price, services and professional fees. So now the house is “completed” does that mean we are “finished” No of course not. Some things have been left out for now and some not fully completed. So our “to do” list still includes the following: Bedrooms and stairs still need carpets and most rooms still need curtains or blinds. An airing cupboard needs to be formed around the hot water tank and we might still build the pantry in the corner of the kitchen. Outside there is the balcony still to build, some decking and paving, at least one more shed, a bridge over the burn, the car port and the tarmac entrance still needs it’s top coat and some drainage installing. Then there is fencing and making something of the garden. So at least another 2 years work to “finish” which will make it into a 10 year project. No I would never have believed at the start it was going to take that long, and it was not until I typed this and looked up the dates that I realised we had been working on this for 8 years already.

That looked an interesting build, I would liked to have seen more as it progressed. Given the hillside location was that piled foundations?

Fit a vented water cylinder fed from a header tank and put up with poor hot water pressure.

There is no mandatory need for a check on a heat pump but some manufacturers warranties may require it,. An unvented hot water cylinder rewires an annual check regardless of heat source.

The SAP assessment for my house, which was done with knowledge of the building construction, actual UW window figures and actual air tightness test results, estimated my heating usage at nearly 3 times what it actually is in practice. Jeremy's simple heat loss spreadsheet gave a far more accurate prediction. It's a good job I did not wait for that to choose my heat pump or I would probably have fitted a bigger heat pump.

Why do I get the feeling that in perhaps 10 years or less, this will be the next "miss selling" scandal?

I am sure if anybody dismantles this house they will find a lot of pencils.

The manual is here https://livewell.honeywellhome.com/honeywell_wp/wp-content/uploads/Resideo_T3R_manual.pdf It makes no mention of this "feature" It says this on the Honeywell website " Energy Saving Utilizes an advanced, self-learning algorithm for intelligent heating control, ensuring more efficient boiler control than ever before. Boiler plus compliant." If it is some silly self learning function that you cannot turn off, I would just change it for an alternative "dumb" thermostat.

That no doubt is because we are in for a couple of days of windy weather so the wind farms should be on good form.

Can you clarify the term "landlord" used in this discussion. Are you really a tenant? Or do you own the leasehold of the flat and the "landlord" you refer to is the freeholder?

Hi and welcome. My guess is a 2003 house might not be bad on insulation, but will probably be pretty poor on air tightness. If you like experimenting, make yourself a blower door and go looking for air leaks. you will find plenty i am sure. Getting at them to seal them may be more of a challenge.

My favourite is "Council tax poverty" and it is the one household bill I can do NOTHING to reduce, no investing in insulation or switching providers possible.

Well on R2 now the "experts" are doing a good job of saying how poor heat pumps are and how unsuitable they are for most UK houses. At least they are mentioning the poor insulation issue.

This £5K heat pump grant is being discussed at mid day on Radio 2 by Victoria Derbyshire. It might be worth a listen but I suspect I will be shouting at the radio. I have sent an email contribution, if you hear something from Dave in the Highlands that might be me.