ProDave

Interesting. I am looking to get an air test done soon and I would just have been ringing and booking a test. It never occurred to me that not all testers can go below certain limits. So if I booked a random test without checking their equipment, and it came back as 2 ACH I wonder how the conversation "why so bad, help me find the air leaks" would go?

I hate brush cutter blades, lethal things, don't go ANYWHERE near a wire fence with them. Just get a nylon line strimmer head for it. That cuts everything I want it to and does not get so bothered about the wire fence lurking amid the long grass.

So is that the latest way to get free spare parts? You buy a complete item from Amazon, remove the bits you want and return the incomplete item for a refund?

You can connect a 3.68Kw inverter to the grid without prior permission under G98. Over 3.68Kw requires DNO approval under G99 BEFORE you connect it. So the first thing is to ask your DNO. You may find, like here, they will want to charge you to upgrade your local grid before giving permission. If that is the case you might want to look at a 3.68Kw grid tie system and a 2Kw off grid / battery system as separate items, and load switch big appliances to the off grid system, or just have big appliances like washing machine always powered from the off grid system and only switching back to the grid when the batteries get too low?

If you have mains electricity then why do you not want the PV grid tied? I am not aware of anything that can do what you want but I am sure you could design and build something, but all the loads you want to individually switch would have to be linked to a bank of changeover relays. And then it relies on the selected equipment presenting a constant load and not minding a brief interruption to the power as it switches over. If the PV is gried tied, as is normal, then the usual thing to use up surplus is dump excess to the immersion heaters, or battery charging for use later.

Inter-floor insulation between flats is not going to be the cause of cold draughts. Your issue lies with the walls and their insulation and detailing. I strongly suspect what has been discussed lots of times that you have a "plasterboard tent" What I mean is the walls are poorly detailed, there are cracks or poorly detailed openings that allow cold air to bypass whatever insulation is in the walls. This cold air can move around between the wall and the (presumably) dot and dabbed walls and the cold air is emerging at the wall / floor junction. Short of stripping the walls bare and detailing properly the best short term cheap fix is to dry sealing up all the cracks at the wall / floor junction.

Ah glasses. I have a superb pair of distance glasses, from the optician, used mostly when driving so I can read the roadsigns at a sensible distance (mostly to correct astigmatism) But do you think I can get a decent pair of reading glasses from the optician? NO. The present pair I took back because they were not "right" but they passed the "test" which is give you some small text, hold it at "reading" distance, can you read it? Yes I can. Then they are correct "reading" glasses nothing wrong with them. But i can't read my computer screen because is is a little further away than "reading" distance, in fact the range of distance they work over is minute. I pointed out my pound shop self select reading glasses work at book reading distance, work at computer screen distance, and even if I look across the room at say the tv, I can still pretty well focus on that. What the pound stop glasses don't do is correct the astigmatism so are never going to be perfect. When i explained all this I was told I need a specific set of "work" glasses but there is no NHS subsidy at all for these so prices would start at over £150 I declined and still use £ shop reading glasses.

It's a portable home / caravan so building control will not be bothered. But planning will be. how did they get PP for that there?

SIG in Inverness did the best price on insulation for me by far. Otherwise I found the timber merchants in Inverness disappointing, Thoroughly recommend Stone Source in Inverness if looking for stone worktops etc. I am mostly now using the independant merchant Fraser Brothers in Alness but this is probably too far for you.

Yes I learned that in the main house. the only place I have a very faint crack is above the one door opening where I did not cut around it.

Last picture, that is my waste pile leaning against the wall behind the steps. Most of those are very thin strips too thin even for the ingo's. Plus a few small squares that are too small for anything useful. Right throughout, my philosophy has been efficiency to minimise waste. to the point when I need a small piece, I first scout around all the offcuts to find a big enough piece, and often if I can't find an offcut that will work, I would leave that piece out until an offcut turns up later to fill it. If I had ordered that extra sheet, I would probably have 3/4 of it left over plus all those previous offcuts that I would not have used so well pleased to get it done efficiently.

Work continues on the last room in the house, the sun room. Now it has windows time to get it finished inside. So i estimated I needed 10 boards and those were delivered. Of course I should have taken the time to estimate that more accurately. By the time the ceiling and one gable wall was boarded, it was looking clear I needed another board. Not an easy thing to buy a single sheet of plasterboard. So I set about collecting all the offcuts of plasterboard I had left over from other parts of the house, and with some very diligent and careful planning to work out how best to use what I had, I managed to get it all done, and now very very few bits left over at all. Next task, taping and filling then painting.

Don't use nails, so yesterday, use bugle headed plasterboard screws. It is the flatness and soundness of what you are fixing to that gives good results. If your wall is not straight and your screw is forcing the plasterboard to pull in up to the batten then like a big spring it will be trying to pull the board straight again and that is when screw pop.

If health and safety is your concern for iiving in a caravan with a toddler, then you have either bought the wrong caravan, or self building is not for you. There will be MUCH bigger health and safety issues to deal with throughout a build that living in what has been designed as a residential static caravan, very likely originally on a holiday park where a huge percentage of occupants have toddlers.

How "dereleit" is the existing dwelling? I suggest buy it to secure the purchase then plan the way forward, and that should include patch up the existing place just enough to make it habitable while you get the design and planning sorted, and put aside your dislike of static caravans because that really is the most cost effective means of temporary accommodation while building. Also plan the house so it can be built in stages as funds allow, e.g so it can be built as a 1 bedroom bungalow but with attic trusses already in place so later, when funds allow, you can do the upstairs.

I job I was working on, the builder had "solved" the waste disposal problem in a creative fashion. I needed to pull some new cables up an existing stud wall. When i cut the hole for the switch box, I found the "cavity" had been filled by stacking up all the odd offcuts of plasterboard on end. Yes it was a right mare to pull a new cable through that lot.

The stove needs to move to the bottom right corner, tv in bottom left corner, seating along the top wall looking at the stove, view and tv. I suspect you might have been looking for a less radical solution. If you do that, put a new twin wall flue for the stove, and ditch the old chimney and knock out the fireplace to widen the room. I'll get my coat.

I never registered my address oficcially. Everyone knows about it and it is on every address database except the Postcode Address File held by Royal Mail. None of the utilities had any problem with this and the address is now on their own address databases. For the council tax, they preceeded the address with "Caravan" to give it it's own entry on the valuation list.

Yes you are wrong. With mvhr you have controlled ventilation to all rooms, fresh air into living rooms and bedrooms and exhausted air from kitchens and bathrooms. the heat from the exhausted air gets put back into the fresh air entering the building. You don't have ucontrolled non heat recovered exhaust vents from kitchens and wc's. Those all operate as part of the mvhr system. I also don't believe a chimney in a properly installed room sealed stove is a big loss of heat (or an aid to ventilation of the house). We ran the house for 1 year before the stove was fitted and the eating bill did not rise the next winter after fitting the stove suggesting any heat loss is "lost in the noise"

Could it be one or both of the pipes kinks when the flush plate gets put into position thus blocking air flow?

Have you considered appealing on the grounds of non determination of the application?

If the heat output is too great at 11c delta, reduce the flow temperature? In any event the room thermostat will turn it all off when the room gets to the desired temperature.

We have a shower mixer very much like your first link. While we like it, it may not be the best for your mum. The top and bottom levers are the flow to the two different shower heads and are easy to turn. But the middle handle is the temperature setting. It is a completely round "knob" with no lever, so when wet requires a fair bit of grip to turn it. You don't need to turn it very often but with weak hands it will frustrate her when she does. Keep looking to see if you can find one that has a lever for the temperature knob as well. The one in your second link also has the same "fault" that the temperature knob is a slippery round knob with no features to grab, rather than a lever.

That flat has some serious structural issues, be thankful you only rent it not own it so you are not responsible for fixing them. The shed on the side, I suspect it has been built as a lean to, so it's front and back walls are not tied to the main structure, so just "filled in" with foam etc. I doubt very much however if these issues are causing the damp and mould issues that you have. That is probably and sadly just the fact it is a poorly built poorly insulated building and unless you heat the hell out of it and pour a fortune into heating and ventilating it, that is the way it is. A huge amount of the UK housing stock is rubbish like that. Your best bet in the longer term would be to look for a better place to move to. Look at the EPC ratings before choosing to rent, the better it is, the less you will spend on heating and less likely you are to ave damp issues.

^^^ That's the standard "no name" cheap pillar drill like I bought nearly 30 years ago for about £30.