ProDave

Re which pole, if the land owner with pole 345 gives consent without contest or conditions I would go for that, and even ask them if you (or your contractor) could dig the short bit of trench on their land as that would be cheaper then the DNO doing it. There is little to choose between the options from a technical point. You could get 3 phase to future proof yourself but only use 1 phase (to simplify solar PV self use) to start with knowing if you really need more power (multiple simultaneous EV charging for example)

If this is a new build, then you will have a SAP assessment and as long as it is done honestly and accurately you will know how much heat the whole house needs and can size the heating system. e.e. I knew the worst case heating demand for my house was just over 2kW so I chose a 5kW ASHP and under floor heating.

It's easy to say a brick house lasts a long time. But look at all the early (and some not so early) 20th century brick houses. By todays standards re insulation and air tightness they are absolute rubbish. It would probably be better if these were now accepted as "end of life" and there was a program to replace them with new energy efficient houses.

We had the waste water charge thing with the council tax. There is no joined up thinking between the different council departments. YOU have to tell council tax that you are not connected to mains drainage.

Can you not ask your local building control? Here you can phone the "duty building control officer" for a question like that. I had to get permission from SEPA as we discharge to a burn and that does need granting of a permit. But if you just submit your building warrant, BC will soon tell you if SEPA permission is needed and I found building control a lot easier to deal with on technical matters like this than planning ever were. They won't just throw out your building warrant, they will wait until you have permission from SEPA if it is needed.

We used the Marley Edgemere Riven tiles. That was a planning decision as the planners wanted us to use slate, and the Edgemere Riven finish were about the only concrete tiles they would accept that looked enough like slate. The Riven version of the Edgemenre tiles were thinner than the standard Edgemere and so probably about the same as your Forticretes ones. I didn't have any problems with breakages in use but I did have a LOT of broken tiles coming off the pallet. So much so that I notified the supplier that we had an issue with breakages. As it turned out, by carefully picking out the broken ones and putting them in 2 piles, broken left side, and broken right side, we were then able to use the ones broken on arrival for all the valley cuts so there were not in fact many wasted and we never did have to proceed with a claim for breakages. I did the roof myself so I was happy to spend the time sorting the tiles in that way. I wonder if a roofer paid on a price would do that, or just pick them off the pile and then end up with a pile of unusable broken tiles? Once I discovered the breakage issue, I had a golden rule, NEVER cut a good whole tile, go and find a broken one on one of the pallets.

I think houses "settling" is a thing of the past. I have not seen a modern house with cracks anywhere. We tend to have properly designed well engineered foundations now, not a trench that's not very deep and "that will be okay, it's how we have always done it"

We use about 10kWh per day powering "stuff" that is not heating or DHW and that is pretty constant throughout the year. Some day I will do an appliance by appliance measurement to try and see if there is anything we can save on, but at the moment short of watching less telly I can't see an easy saving. Re the tumble dryer. the compromise we have is it is NOT a "dryer" it is a "towel fluffing machine" Certain things like towels, socks and underwear "must" have a spell in the fluffing machine so they end up soft and fluffy. If they dry entirely naturally they fail the "fluffy" test and get described as "cardboard". So just half an hour un the fluffing machine does it, they don't come out dry, but then when hung on the airer in the utility room under an mvhr extract vent, when dried by that they do pass the fluffy test, as long as they have had the short time in the fluffy machine. One day I will pluck up the courage to see a a period in the fluffy machine on "cold" will have the effect of making them fluffy.

If the ASHP is connected to the same "normal" radiators that the gas boiler used to feed, and you are trying to run the ASHP at 60 degrees or more to get the house hot enough, then it will perform very badly. It is what we keep saying, "Design" An ASHP is not the golden goose to replace a gas boiler UNLESS you re design the whole heating system that may involve changing ALL the radiators or installing UFH. I am willing to bet most of the retro fit ASHP systems we see criticised are "designed by salesman" and are not correct in an engineering sense.

When we got a battery vacuum I put an extra socket in the utility room where it hangs on the wall. I could do that because the service void existed with the cable running all the way round the room at socket height ready for additional sockets to be fitted wherever required. Likewise I did not fit the hall socket straight away, as there were 2 possible places for it, but until the stairs were completed I did not know where the grandfather clock would fit, so had to wait for that and only then did I know where to fit the (now seldom used) hoover socket in the hall. The battery vacuum was bought because SWMBO was finding the mains one too heavy to carry up the stairs. But strangely my suggestion to fit the charger and socket for the battery one upstairs and for it to be used as the upstairs vacuum and the mains one to still be used downstairs was rejected. The perfectly good mains one hardly ever gets used any more.

As above, both methods can produce a well insulated low energy house. both can also produce a rubbish house, so whatever you do take care with the details. Timber frame is traditionally recognised as easier to run services, but that assumes if you build in brick and block then you chase all the wires into the walls and wet plaster direct onto the block. If you want the best of both worlds, there is nothing stopping you doing brick and block, and then creating a battened service void and plasterboarding the walls (NOT dot and dab) which will give you the same service void for easier alterations or additions in the future.

He said although they share the same area code, the new house would be on a different exchange.

I have to ask the obvious question: Why not make the bit between the 2 doors out of blockwork like the rest of that wall? and then only the bit circled in red of timber?

You balance all the rooms by adjusting the water flow rate through each of the pipe loops with the aim being to get all the rooms to heat up at roughly the same rate. I omitted pipes under the kitchen units and in particular none under the fridge, but i did not compensate with changing the spacing, normal balancing was all that was needed.

I have a cheap compound chop saw. While it works well for general cutting bits of wood up, I found it did not work very well for getting an accurate clean mitre joint for the corner of skirting board. I ended up making a cutting jig and cutting them by hand with a nice new fresh sharp hand panel saw.

Interesting. I have the quotation from which I ordered the glass unit and while it details what I am buying, there is nothing to state the terms and conditions or guarantee period. I will search their website to see if I can find anything. but in any event there should be no doubt regardless if I get a claim in before it is a year old I would have thought. That being the case I will monitor the situation for a while longer If the condensation (and obviously excessive heat loss) alone is reason alone to reject it then that will be my approach rather than trying to prove the more elusive internal misting issue, though that will probably get worse and easier to see as time goes on.

Short story: We had planned to get a stained glass unit made for the landing window, so we bought that window from the supplier without glass, and it sat for 3 years boarded up. Eventually the penny dropped that making a triple glazed unit with stained glass was too complicated and expensive and we needed the window finished for completion of the building. So earlier in the year we paid a local Inverness glazing company to make and fit a plain glass triple glazed unit for this widow. All appeared well to start with, but then we noticed the window appeared "dirty" but it was not dirt that could be cleaned off. It is inside, as far as we can tell on the inner pane of glass. Now this staining is a peculiar thing, sometimes it is visible, a lot of the time it is not, it is as if the inner surface of the glass mists up but only under certain temperature or other weather conditions. So far it has defied any attempt to get a meaningful photograph of it. We are wanting to take the matter up with the supplier, but mindful of the fact if they come to look and happen to do so at a time when it does not show, they will dismiss any claim. So I at least want to wait until I have been able to capture a photograph, or the problem has become more persistent. Separately, the last few nights have been cold, and we have had an overnight frost twice in recent days. We are now finding on such a cold morning, condensation is forming on the inside of this triple glazed panel at the bottom. That makes it the only window in the house, 2g or 3g to have a condensation issue, and must point to something being very wrong for that to happen. So my questions are as follows: Is there a time limit to make a claim for a defective glass unit? At the moment it has been in place less than 6 months and my thinking is we should be safe until at least a year after it's fitting to make a claim. That might give time for the fault to become more persistent and therefore easier to show. Is the condensation issue alone valid reason to reject the window unit and ask for it to be replaced? I am only thinking that is easier to demonstrate, they only need to visit early after a cold night to see that. P.S. I just want to make clear this is only one glass unit we have a problem with that was fitted by a local supplier. ALL the original glass units supplied by Rationel with the windows have been faultless.

I built an entire shed of dismantled and rebuilt pallets. Several were stripped for useable fencing wood, and I have just used the last 9 of them to floor my "solar shed" with the remainder joining the firewood pile.

Yes seen that happen. We were badly advised at our previous house and the tank is in pea gravel. It is not an issue when full, but it means we ONLY get it emptied usually in the spring after a long dry spell when we can be sure the water table is low, and then immediately refill it with fresh water. that would probably "surface" if we emptied it in winter.

Whilst I am all in favour of DIY work, I am not sure knocking out and propping up the corner of the house on a post is a DIY job.

Presumably your usage is high at the moment because you are in a static caravan well known for having very little insulation. So you are in a temporary situation. Your goal should be to make your barn conversion as well insulated and air tight as you possibly can to minimise it's heating, and then plan to heat it with an air source heat pump. It should be pretty easy to halve your electricity usage from your present hopefully temporary high level. Solar PV in our case provides us about a quarter of our electricity and being able to use stuff in the daytime makes self usage easier. This us with a typical 4kW system. If you go larger than that (will need prior DNO approval) then battery storage might become viable as otherwise it will be hard to self use all the daytime peak. The energy market is in turmoil at the moment, this is going to be a very bumpy winter for many struggling with energy bills. I too looked at options to switch and found nobody wants to take on new customers at the moment. So for this winter at least stick with your new supplier, you will probably be put on a transitional tariff which although higher than what you were paying, is probably less than any new customer will get.

3 phases is as the name suggests 3 separate L cables each one being 120 degrees out of phase with each other. That is what you would get if they changed the transformer for a 3 phase one, and upgraded the cable from the transformer to your steading. If you want the maximum single phase, ask for an upgrade to 20KVA. The transformer will probably be okay but the cable between would probably need upgrading. 2 phase would be just that, only 2 of the phases connected, a bit pointless (as you can't run 3 phase equipment) but might be handy to give you double the capacity, but you can't get that with that transformer. Your options are: Do nothing but seek clarification of what they rate the capacity in KVA of the existing supply and see if that is enough. Ask for a price for an upgrade to 20KVA single phase Ask for an upgrade to 60KVA 3 phase. Asking for the quotes does not oblige you to proceed if you don't like the answers and can live within the power limit of the existing supply.

Hi and welcome. What a wonderful opportunity with so many options and possibilities. If the existing structure is really a pair of static caravans that have been "improved" then at the very least you should get a certificate of lawful development and then you can replace the existing structure with something that meeds the requirements of a "caravan" (which does NOT mean it has to be on wheels) and you can build such a building to a high standard and very well insulated. that has the advantage of no planning (as you already have it) and no building regulations, an immense amount of freedom. Alternatively you could apply for planning for a replacement dwelling and build it as a proper house without having to be constrained by size limits of a caravan. Plenty of options, take your time to decide which is right and you will find the forum very helpful. And we like photographs.

So you have 3 phase to the pole, but that is only a single phase transformer. You could probably get 3 phase to the house, but it would mean upgrading that transformer, it would be interesting to see how much they wanted for that.

If I am understanding this correctly, even if not removed, your window was going to get blocked by the neighbours extension? The time to have spotted this and objected was when the neighbour applied for planning permission for the extension. You should have a party wall agreement, others will advice how you go about getting one drawn up at this late stage.