ProDave

My philosophy is any wall that has a socket on it anywhere, run the cable horizontally at that socket height, in the safe zone it creates, the entire width of the wall, leaving a bit of slack cable. Then in the future, if you need to add an extra socket on that wall, just cut the hole in the plasterboard for the back box and fish the waiting cable out. I had a stand up finger wagging argument with a joiner once who was adamant I was not allowed to do that and the cable must go down below the floor, then along, then up to the next socket.

When I did mine, I only had the road up once for Water (which happened to be the deepest service) and dropped in ducts for electricity and telecoms before it got filled in. And those services were happy to just use the duct that had magically appeared for them, and re quoted a lower connection cost with no need for the road up. Sometimes you have to be creative.

Why is there no joined up thinking to coordinate these works? Should the council not try and encourage that? Do you actually need the road up or can the services mole under it?

Choose a CU with a gland knock out on the bottom. Or just drill a 20mm hole.

A typical "good" electric shower uses 10kW and a typical lady shower is at least 15 minutes so that's 2.5kWh. Yours will use more than that as with a decent rainfall head you are probably getting twice the flow rate than from an electric shower. I think the other issue, is the sunamp does not seem very good at determining itself when it is "full" and has a lot of hysteresis, so won't accept any more input until if thinks it has some spare capacity. To a lesser extent I see this with my ASHP and cylinder. The temperature probe is in the lowest pocket, about 1/3 from the bottom of the cylinder. So the ASHP does not even know you have used any hot water until you have used 1/3 of it. Or put it another way, my 300L tank might have only a little over 200L of hot water when the epic showering starts, and then you have the potential for a "ran out of water" situation.

If cable routing allows swap rcbo in main CU for MCB and then have an rcd or rcbo CU in garage so at least a trip would be more local than having to go back to the house to reset it. All my outbuildings only have local RCD's in their own CU's

I would just use a switched fused connection unit with a 3A fuse as the light switch. The earthing is a different discussion. Many don't like exporting a PME earth, but my take usually is use the PME earth and supplement it with another earth rod at the shed, adding to the "multiple" earths. I assume it already has rcd protection, either an rcbo in the main house cu, or an rcd in the garage cu?

Get one of those clamp on EMC ferirte beads over the mains lead. It sounds like the mains wiring is acting like a big antenna to pick up the interference from the electric fence. While you are at it, have a good look at how the electric fence is set up. How is it earthed, you don't want it earthed to the mains, give it it's own earth rod and have no connection to the mains earth, and an EMC ferrite on the mains lead for the fence energiser as well.

There is a legal definition of a "caravan" in the caravan act. It certainly covers up to 20ft by 40ft which is a standard twin unit mobile home. This is the Highland Council's definition of a "caravan" https://www.highland.gov.uk/downloads/file/1346/bst_018_caravans_and_mobile_homes However I think that dociment is out of date (dated 2010) I am sure the Caravan Act Scotland has been updated to increase the maximum size.

Whatever cable you use, if being connected direct to the transformer would have to be a cable approved by the DNO. In this case is is usual for the DNO to supply that cable to you. So you need to ask them, to supply you with their approved cable for a 3 phase connection. Or are you planning to leave the meter in the box at the boundary and only have your CU in the house?

This bit worries me. You do know how to terminate SWA, with a proper gland designed for the job that clamps the armour mechanically and makes contact to it. You then take the earth connection from the "banjo" supplied with the gland. It does not take up any room "in" the CU.

Sometimes you wonder who designs the forms etc, thinking of the MHRC. So you get outline PP first. Then you get full PP, sometimes referred to as Approval of Reserved Matters, but not always. So surely it is only the FULL planning permission that matters? WHY do they want a copy of the outline planning, that became an irellevant document the day the full planning was granted? My concern with the VAT claim thing was what happens if the post fails and your claim and your valuable invoices never arrived. You can't insure a packet of documents for the value of a VAT claim. All I could come up with is laboriously scan every single invoice and store a copy on my NAS drive, so in the unlikely event of the claim getting lost in the post, I could reproduce all the invoices but they would clearly be a copy not originals. So the lessons to anyone early in the self build sage: Keep a copy of all planning documents. Keep every single invoice in date order in a box file or similar. I chose to do my VAT claim the old fashioned way by filling in the paper form. If I were doing it again, I would enter each invoice onto the form as I got it, to save days of tedious work when compiling the claim at the end.

You will need to tape and fill the joints, but painting raw plasterboard in normal in many houses now where only the plasterboard joints are filled. You should have used the green "waterproof" plasterboard and use a bathroom paint. But I have seen plenty of old houses with the normal plasterboard just taped and filled and painted without issue.

And the VAT money landed in the bank account today.

So how does that work? Your single nail fixing by reckoning goes bang into the gap between the bottom layer boards? So either you are trusting to luck a bit, or you used long nails to go through the top layer, through the (gap in the) bottom layer and into the battens? Me, I have wider top boards fixed with pairs or screws that just screw into the bottom boards.

Service void before services: Note the gap in the vertical battens at 450mm and 1200mm above floor level. This is to allow socket and light circuits to run horizontally without having to drill the battens to do so. Similar view with some cables in. That's a bundle of AV cables that I wanted to take the shortest route. AV cables are not confined to safe zones like other wiring. And here are some pipes as well in the service void, hot and cold water for the kitchen sink.

So you have the power in so you will have your MPAN number. You can now contact any energy provider you wish and sign up with them and as a new customerthey will come and fit the meter. I found it a lot simpler to sign up with SSE who is also the DNO here on their standard variable rate, no fixed term contract, and then swap energy supplier once the meter was in, as not all suppliers will fit a meter.

Black 65mm duct if you can find an offcut. If not a bit of black rainwater downpipe. Do not under any circumstances use blue water pipe and then get offended when the electrician refuses to feed cables through it.

To save other readers from looking it up, this describes what HVO is https://www.crownoil.co.uk/faq/hvo-fuel/ A lot of waffle about how good it is with lots of claims but little actual figures to back it up. If it is as good as they say, why is road transport not swapping to HVO en-mass? Why is in never mentioned when discussing CO2 reduction?

Don't be rushed. Get the kitchen right. If you must move in, set up a make shift camp kitchen until you get the design right for you. I fully agree on Fridge Freezers. Our freezer is constantly full and we occasionally have to turn on the spare one for extra capacity. Why does nobody make a FF where the freezer is bigger than the fridge? Obviously I am not the only one to want that.

We sold a sofa a couple of years ago. It was a nice leather reclining sofa, very comfy (I didn't really want to sell it) and heavy. Someone wanted it but "could we deliver" we will pay extra for delivery. So we loaded it on the trailer and set off complete with the sack truck to transport it. It was a ground floor flat, accessed via a narrow alley, then up some steps with a wall either side, then a right angle turn to get in the front door. MUCH heaving, shoving and pushing and we finally got it in. Then the hall was barely any wider than the front door with the added fun of a storage heater intruding into the space. And finally a right angle turn into the living room. NEVER AGAIN. "Buyer collects" ONLY.

If the bath is sagging, you do not "fix" it by securing the edges, you look at the feet, make sure they are properly supported and the board they are standing on is not flexing, if it is you insert some kind of batten under them so spread the load. A lot of these bath screens are notorious for leaking. Just plain poor design. It helps if you have a bath actually designed for a shower with a small slight upstand to prevent any water that gets past the poor seal to at least not spill over the edge of the bath.

What nobody has mentioned is joining them DEVALUES both properties, turning them from semi detached to mid terrace. This is probably what your neighbour wants to avoid hence he built his extension on his land with a (small) gap and you cannot join to his wall without trespassing. I would just carry on building on your side leaving a gap as well. What happens at the eaves? There will be some eaves overhang you have to allow for that in setting the position of your wall so your eaves overhang and his don't clash. I would not make any attempt to fill the gap between them. Have building control raised any issues with building so close? A friend of ours was not allowed to build so close and building control insuisted they left space to maintain the wall.

PTFE tape and plenty of it. Some recommend a sealing compound as well and no doubt will come ad add to the conversation. Before you cover it and tile, fit a blanking plug and a sealing washer over the open end of the brass pipe and pressure test it to ensure your joint does not leak, then make sure when undoing that temporary blank plug you don't rotate your brass pipe.

There is no FIT any more, that stopped a couple of years ago. "How do you do it"? Buy some panels and some mounting hardware, fit it to your roof and pay an electrician to connect it all. If it is the "standard" 3.68 kW system, you install it and then notify your DNO under the G98 procedure. If you want more than 3.68kW output, you have to get prior approval from the DNO under the G99 procedure and there may be a charge for network upgrades before you are allowed to connect it.