ProDave

Yes that is one of the ones I contacted. If you don't mind me asking, how much did they charge?

Who have people used for a blower door air tightness test in the Inverness area? Since returning from holiday I have been searching. I found 2 in Inverness claiming to do the air tight test. I emailed both. ONE has replied (after nearly a week) to say he will reply from his other address (so are both the two I found the same person?) That was several days ago and still no proper reply. so who did you use?

A small update. The plasterer has seen the stripped garage wall, and has delivered some material. His observation, there are two base coats applied (same material) and it is the top layer of that that has failed. He bought some material with him, but he had not expected the issue to be the base coat so he had not ordered enough of that, so there will be a short pause while some more is ordered. Now, a difference. The base coat used originally was MC55W. What he has bought this time is RK39. I have not looked up the difference yet. Anyone know?

A few issues with that proposal: You will need deeper kitchen units, most full size machines need every mm of the 600mm depth so so sit behind the kick board like that the units will have to be deeper or you will need one of those "half depth" low capacity machines. The 2 hinged doors, ONE of them will get in the way while loading or unloading it. I would only do this if you have to have the machine in a kitchen. In a utility room I like the simplicity and honesty of the machine on show.

For me the killer is the inflated daytime rate and usually higher standing charge. It would probably be possible to do all your heating at night but then if someone uses up all the tank of hot water I would want it replenished and not be rationed to one tank of HW per day, which would mean daytime rate. The final nail in the coffin is we have solar PV so want to use the ASHP as much in the daytime as possible to self use that and as little as possible at night.

When applying for a new supply I ticked the box to say ASHP. We then had a discussion about network capacity and the upshot was I convinced them it was a low power inverter driven ASHP and I accepted an offer of a 12kVA supply without any network upgrades. The next person to build a new house in this street may not be so lucky. I informed them of the solar PV and that caused a minor issue as they saw the inverter's model number had "4000" in it and tried to tell me not to connect it and apply for a network upgrade. It was only when I sent the manufacturers declaration stating the output was limited to 3.68kW that they accepted it without network upgrade.

Sounds a really interesting project. I look forward to reading of it's progress.

I am pretty sure these are the thermostats I have, if not a very similar model, they are simple, dependable and reliable, and contrary to popular belief don't have massive hysteresis and control the temperature to a tight tolerance. That's why I wonder if the neutral is connected properly? If it is not then it affects what you can replace them with.

What I was suggesting is the neutral may not be connected? It certainly looks okay. I would start by getting it checked to see if the neutral is actually connected, if it is there is no reason for the present thermostats not to work properly. Did they ever work properly? If so they might have failed but that is very unusual.

I would suggest that they have been wired incorrectly without a neutral connection that is required to power the tiny accelerator heater to overcome the inherent hysteresis with a mechanical thermostat. Any digital thermostat should do as a replacement and solve the problem, but make sure it is suitable for "2 wire" operation.

You have to question WHY they are that expensive. Peter has quoted the material cost as being less than £5K So why is it you think the bargain basement installed cost is £10K? That's £5K for install. At say £30 per hour for labour that's 166 hours, or 20 man days labour. Do you really believe it is going to take 20 man days to install an ASHP system? Or could it just be, that introduce a government subsidy under the condition you use an acredited installer, and said installer inflates the price, so the effect of the subsidy is not to save the customer money,but to line the pockets of the installing company? You could of course just buy the kit for £5K and pay an electrician and a plumber to install it which would probably cost about £1000

Perhaps posting a site layout plan showing the neighbouring houses might give a better answer?

I spent a week with a relative recently who had a combi boiler for hot water. Hideous things. The hot water took ages to warm up for the first time, the temperature delivered to the tap varied with the flow rate. Turn the tap off for a few seconds and turn it back on, then the tap would run cold for a bit as the boiler took time to get going again. The only good point is it will never run out, but in all other respects I found it a really irritating hot water source. Previous experience with an oil fired combi was better but those work differently maintaining a small internal store (tank) of hot water to give a quick response to demand and even out the peaks and troughs of burner usage so delivered a much better user experience.

Dometic seems to be the most common make at the moment. Not sure how boat fridges are vented. On a caravan you have 2 big air vents above and below the fridge on the outside. But you don't want to go cutting dirty great holes in the side of a boat, so there must be some other way to vent them. So perhaps a caravan fridge is not best choice for a boat?

I have not looked into legal avenues yet. At the moment I have a commitment from the plasterers to rectify the problem, if you like the plasterers have baled out the manufacturer? It is complicated. We bought the materials from the then UK supplier NBT and bought all the beads, corners, starters etc from them with the render. They no longer exist. A different company has taken over the UK distributor now. the manufacturer referred our complaint to the new distributor who "answered" it with what looked like a standard letter blaming poor workmanship, wrong materials (supplied for the job by the previous supplier) So now I am just telling it as it is, wharts and all. IF that results in bad publicity for Baumit.com then so be it. I am only publishing facts. And you guessed it, I could not recommend this system to anyone else, mainly because I would never recommend anyone use something like this where the manufacturer has a history of not helping the customer. It is all very sad, because the previous supplier had a very good and knowledgable rep, who would have visited and looked at the issue and tried to help. He is no longer with the new company and attempts to contact him in the hope of tapping into his knowledge have failed.

Earlier in the year I had a thread describing the problems I had with my Baumit.com thin coat render system on wood fibre EWI that thread is here: This thread is to document the attempts at repairing / re working it and to show what we find as well as invite opinions as to what may have caused the problems. As yet the cause of the problems are unknown, largely because the manufacturer and UK distributor for this render system have washed their hands of the issue, refusing to help and they have not even been prepared to come and look at the problems to give some proper technical input to what went wrong. So we are in the dark, trying to work out what went wrong and how to rework it so it stays put next time. Discussions with the plasterer suggests we have 2 separate issues, and that is how we are tackling it. The first area we are tackling is the gable end wall of the garage where a huge area of the top coat render has delaminated. That is where we are starting. The other issues are small patches in other parts of the house having a similar problem. Because of the large area affected the plasterer suspects either an application error or a material failure. So starting on that garage gable end, the scaffold is up and today I have been busy with the scraper. My job to start with is to remove all the loose render and the plasterer will then visit later in the week and we will formulate a plan. So a picture of where I am after today's work. What I have found is a huge area of the top coat render came off very easily, all the lower part of the wall apart from small areas either side of the door, and right up to the mvhr vents. Higher up the roof towards the gable end it still seems solid. Where the render has failed, it is clear it is the base coat that has failed. Much of the base coat in the failed areas has turned to powder. The red mesh you can see is a plastic mesh that was embeded into the base coat and is only visible because so much of the base coat has turned to powder and fallen off. What has been exposed appears to be dry, and in a few places I have exposed the underlying wood fibre board and that too appears to be dry.

Check building regs. Treatment plants must be a certain distance from a building, I would be surprised if a pump station does not need to be s similar distance.

Bought a single treated tile batten just now (last bit of timber needed for this build) Just over £6, that's over £1 per metre.

With a plasterboarded, timber framed house, the wiring is usually done before the plasterboard goes on. This creates a problem. All you can do is leave the cables in a bundle where they want to emerge, and HOPE whoever fits the plasterboard does at least drill a hole and poke them through. If the gods are shining on you, you will get a good boarder who will cut the back box holes in exactly the right place and size. More often the boarder will just drill a hole at a completely random height and poke your cables through. So 1 1/2 fix is go back after the plasterboard is on, cut all the back box holes, leaving the spare holes the boarder drilled at completely the wrong height for someone else to fill up. Then go fishing for the missing ones that got left behind the boards and hope you remembered sufficiently well where they were so you can find them first try. Worst case (yes this really happened) I drilled a hole for a downlight, no cable. Drilled the next one. No cable. Luckily the floor was up above so I went to look, and the cable I had left looping from light to light in the kitchen had been unclipped pulled out from where it passed through the joists and coiled up in the middle of the room. If this is your own build them make sure your boarders don't miss any cables and at least drill a hole at the correct height and place to pass them through. TIP: 2 way switching needs intermediate switches. Wtth a lot of them, you might find yourself needing a norlam and an intermediate switch on the same plate. Have a look at the Click Mode switches, they let you unscrew the switch module and swap them around so you can make up unusual configurations.

Bad luck if you draw the short straw and have to eat the pie just to get your new motor cover.

A standard twin wall insulated flue, has the inner joint overlapped such that if there is any condensate, it will run down into the stove (and evaporate again) rather than run out at the joints and down the outside of the flue.

There is no reason boats (and caravans) can't have decent cookers, our present one has 4 gas hobs a gas oven and grill. What they do lack is work surface so you have to be organised and use things like the table as additional work surface. Failing that there is the much fabled Fray Bentos pie.

Actually in a lot of cases a low socket looks neater. In most cases you have a flex coming down to the floor and along to the appliance. A cable hanging almost half a metre down the wall to just get to the floor looks untidy where a socket close to the floor can look much tidier. In an ideal world I would put all sockets likely to have something permanently plugged in close to the floor, and one higher up socket in each room to plug in portable stuff. But I try and position sockets to be carefully hidden e.g one behind each of my floor standing speakers, and don't forget dedicated sockets can be any height, these regs are only for general purpose sockets.

Similar to my bath. Shame they are lacking on the details they show you. It comes as 2 parts, the bath, and the bath surround. The official fitting procedure is to use the supplied flexible waste pipe. stand the bath surround up on 6" blocks of wood, lower the bath into the surround, couple up the flexible waste, remove the blocks then lower the whole lot onto the floor. Personally I did not like that, it is the flexible waste I don't like and you have no control how it settles. So instead in my case I just fixed the surround to the floor, fitted the waste and a short bit or rigid waste and an elbow and lowered that into the surround, then went downstairs and connected the waste from below. This was in a new build before the ceiling was plasterboarded, and in the unlikely event of a waste problem worst case is I have to cut a trap in the utility room ceiling to gain access to sort it out. Another consideration is the bath waste. they might supply a cable operated waste. Again I rejected that, it's one more thing to go wrong and necessitate the bath lifting out to fix it. I instead used a McAlpine top access "click clack" waste fitting, which can be serviced from above.

As a minimum that needs blending valves and pumps on each manifold, AND an automatic bypass valve to maintain flow to / from the ASHP when not much is in use. Don't under estimate the flow rate an ASHP needs all the time. "Wiring Centre A, B, C" are not plain wiring centres but manifold control units that have a few relays in them, usually to turn on the manifold pump when one or more zones calls for heat, and to provide a volt free call for heat contact to the ASHP (or other heat source)