ProDave

The whole "system" is rigged. We keep getting told if we have more renewable the price will come down. Not with the present pricing scheme it will not. And predictions are we will still be burning some gas for electricity in 50 years time, so that will still set the price unless the method of setting the price changes. Do you ever get the feeling we are being fed a whole pack of lies?

I fitted my insulation from underneath. I used Frametherm 35 which is a lot less nasty than some other forms of mineral wool insulation, and it is quite stiff, so cut a bit wider than the gap and it just pushed in and stays where you put it.

Is there a way you could get the house you want, by building a smaller one now to get planning, but designed in such a way you could add an extension later, i.e. almost immediately after you finish the main build? I know someone that once had 2 planning apps in at once, and the day before the committee meeting one was withdrawn. Having 2 applications at once confused the objectors and only one received objections, the one they withdrew, so the one that went to committee had no objections.

Lack of light to landing, fit a Sun Tube (they come under a whole load of different names) and a glass panel above the small bedroom door to let some borrowed light in. Then you can have the layout you want without the big landing just to get natural light.

To be clear, when you push the probe back in the water temperature is NOT rising rapidly. That sensor reads the temperature and uses that reading to control it when the ASHP is doing the heating. The water is already at whatever temperature it is, it is just without the probe in, it is not being read. So the rapid rise when you put the probe in is the readout just catching up, not the water heating rapidly. As you have a solar PV diverter the hot water will likely have been heated a lot hotter than what the ASHP does, just to use up surplus solar PV. It will stop doing that when the immersion heater thermostat says so. So just put the probe back and relax, everything is working normally.

It might be the tiles were delivered like that? (in which case they should have been rejected) I tiled my roof myself, and as soon as I started unpacking the pallets of tiles, it became aparent a LOT were damaged, often just with corners chipped off. So much so I notified the supplier and put them on notice they would be liable if there were insufficient due to the damages. In my case as it happened, I have a lot of valleys so as I unpacked them, the damaged ones got put on 2 piles, damaged on left, and damaged on right. By only using the ones that arrived damaged for the valley cuts and using the good ones elsewhere I had enough. But if my roof had no valleys I would have been claiming for replacements for the damaged tiles. If yours came like that perhaps the roofer did not bother as it would hold up the job?

I have a warm pitched roof, or more correctly a hybrid roof, with 100mm wood fibre board over the rafters and 200mm mineral wool (Frametherm 35) between the rafters, then an air tight layer then plasterboard. I swear by this method and it is infinitely better and easier to detail that any other method.

Invite them to come and clear up their mess off your property first, but if they don't, follow that advice.

You can see my point though? All those years ago I had a covenant saying no building without permission of XYZ council. I took that to mean if I gained planning through appeal, I would not have their permission, but if XYZ council granted planning I would. The wording of the covenant did not stipulate which department of XYZ council should grant permission under the covenant. We hear when cases go to court, it hinges on the exact wording of documents, not necessarily their intended meaning. So I would love to know how such a covenant would be treated by a court if it did not state which department of the council needed to give permission, and one department of the council had.

We once had a property with a covenant "no building to be erected without permission of XYZ council" I applied for and was granted PP by XYZ council and then building regs and building control sign off. Later when we sold the property, the buyers solicitor contended that we had not got permission from the correct department of XYZ council. It was solved by a cheap indemnity policy, but surely they should have been more specific if the covenant permission had to come from a particular department. I often wonder how such a case would end if they ever tried to enforce the covenant.

No, you should not see board lines like that. Was it tapered edge plasterboard? did he lay a scrim tape? Did he go over the joints first with a base coat before plastering the lot?

Does the passage between the dark brown fence and the wall lead anywhere? e.g to a rear access or steps up to the neighbours higher garden, or is it really a strip of dead space your neighbour is arguing over?

SIPS is one of the easiest methods to get correct and air tight so to get an air test of 2.9 seems like a lot of poor detail, or deliberate leaks? To be honest the difference between 2.9 (needs mvhr) and 3.1 (does not need mvhr) is not significant. I doubt you are going to get problems, especially if the bathroom fans have a slow constant speed. But the house would have been better if he had tried harder and done the job properly. You will no more get BBQ smells via mvhr than any other ventilation method, and they do have an off switch so if there was a rare case of a bad smell outside you could turn it off for a while.

So YOU have erected the dark brown fence on what you believe all along is the correct boundary? and the builders erected the light brown fence on top of the wall in the wrong place. If you continue the fence down the (shared?) passage between the houses then the problem is solved. It does not need to be an intimidating high fence if you don't want, just a row of posts and wire would mark the boundary and leave your neighbour free to do what he wants with his half. This would seem a lot simpler than trying to get legal and argue it is the deeds that are wrong. My only concern would be now you have erected the dark brown fence, the neighbour may decide to take down the light brown fence which would leave his garden looking down on yours compromising your privacy.

There is probably not as much spare / surplus firewood where you are. Around here, without a WBS I would be constantly begging people to come at take my firewood away (I am sure there would be plenty of takers)

IF you make that choice (I advise against it and avoided doing so in my own house) then make sure you buy a LOT of spares. You can almost guarantee when one fails in say 5 years time, you won't be able to buy an identical replacement. So to avoid having an odd one out, or having to change the lot, buy lots of spares at original purchase time.

One thing missing from that list is a downstairs bathroom, or space to create one. You have to show that somewhere you have room to provide a bath or shower room. In our case that would be achieved by splitting the utility room in half to make the shower room if we ever need to. Our downstairs WC at the moment is in the utility room. A bit unconventional but allowed. Minor thing, CO2 monitor in main bedroom.

I used to estimate new build wiring on 1 hour per point, where a point is a light switch, a socket, a light fitting etc etc. So go and have a count up of what you want, it is likely to be a lot, well over 100 so I would say the hours being estimated are about right. This is a rewire, so will take longer as the old has to come out. Also this is a "period property" so we are talking about plaster on the brick, or lath and plaster walls. So you have to include chasing out the plaster and re plastering afterwards, is that included? and the re decorating? And no electrician likes lath and plaster walls if there are any or lath and plaster ceilings. I was mostly timber frame and plasterboard thankfully, I hated when I had to do work in that sort of house, sorry.

That's another statement I contest. I found almost by accident that dowsing works for me. I have done absolutely nothing to develop any skill.

My point a few post above is it needs a massive movement of your hands to make the rods come together if you are just standing there. go on try it? When you are actually dowsing and you find something then the rods move together with no preceptible movement of your hands.

or mains powered lights?

Where are you mounting a cylinder with such limited height?

I still want to know what makes the rods come together, as I am absolutely certain it is not movement of the holders hands. So rather than arguing does it find water or not? I would like to see any study into just WHAT makes the rods come together when they do? My example is my water connection. Scottish water sub contracted it. The subbies turned up, dug a hole where the plan said and found no water pipe. They dug deeper, no pipe. They dug further into the field, no pipe. They were about to pack up and go away so I went and got my rods. You could almost see them stifling laughter when I walked slowly into the field and "found" the pipe about a metre further than they had dug. They agreed to try a little further and there it was. I had no knowledge of where the pipe was and was as surprised as them that it was so far from where Scottish Waters plan said it was.

The cost of extra materials for air tight is not much, for our TF house it was a few rolls of air tight membrane and a lot of air tight tape. The BIG thing is attention to detail at EVERY stage and by EVERY trade to avoid unnecessary holes of any size, anywhere. And then there are avoiding the planned holes. No individual extract fans (which most of the time are just an unwanted 100mm diameter hole in your building) No letter box, no cat flap, no open vented fire with a chimney or a flue, no trickle vents in windows. Instead you have MVHR that does all the ventilation with just one ballanced inlet and outlet and removes the need for all the other uncontrolled holes. And if you fit a stove, have one with ducted air inlet or otherwise known as room sealed. There are additional costs if you want good quality triple glazed windows etc. Our house has typical U values of 1.3 to 1.4 in the walls roof and floor, and even up here in the Highlands we don't have heating upstairs. If you are going to do it. seek detailed advice here, but it really means educating and supervising every trade. Don't just let the electrician and plumber drill holes where they feel like it. Plan it with them and keep an eye to make sure they stick to the plan.

I found I can do dowsing. Don't ask me how, it just works. For the skeptics, I suggest you take two rods with bent ends and hold them in your hands. Now try and make them come together on purpose. You will find you have to twist your wrists quite a lot, certainly a very visible amount, to make the rods come together. Then watch someone dowsing and the rods come together without any visible movement of the hands of the person holding them. The comment above about them coming together about 1 metre past the target. I find that is more a time delay than an actual distance. Having got a rough location, pass by again walking very much slower and the point of action will be closer to the target.