ProDave

Permanent dwelling or holiday home is a planning matter. A lot of caravan sites have planning that only allows say 10 months of the year. How many units is again planning, though I believe a croft for instance can have 3 "caravans" under permitted development. It is perfectly possible to make a modern, warm, energy eficcient house as a "caravan" and live in it permanently if you can accept the caravan size limits which is a little over 100 square metres and of course single storey. I have worked on several such modular homes.

Treated is fine. Sometimes it is hard to find untreated battens in a builders merchant.

There is certainly a hysteresis setting in mine, which is set to about 3 degrees. It would be very unusual for it to be set as high as 25 degrees. You need to get your installer back to unlock the settings or give you the code, then you can go through all the DHW settings with him.

What does your water Co say? Usually the water meter is in the underground Toby (stopcock) box where it enters your land.

What's that "crack" / stepped out brickwork? Last picture in particular?

NOTHING. Almost none of the rails will be visible with the panels on, just a tiny bit at the ends. Don't worry or do anything.

It is probably the vent pipe for the drains. When I was building this house I tried to okay it with building control to not have a vent pipe through the roof and instead just use air admittance valves. They would have agreed to it IF I had an upstream vent pipe outside the house. For me it was too late as I had concreted the space beside the house for parking so it was too late to do that, but an upstream vent like that could do away with the need for a vent pipe through the roof. We have such a vent on the side ot the static caravan, but BC would not accept that as being "permanent"

A former member who built an entirely timber clad timber framed house used these people for his insurance https://gsi-insurance.com/get-a-quote/household-insurance/#gf_10 I will be trying this in a few weeks as we are so near to completion I want to move away from the site insurance.

What do others say about building control on Shetland? I can't imagine there are many BC inspectors so anyone care to mention of they are okay, or jobsworths? Re the VAT reclaim One of the documents you can use for "proof of completion" is a council Tax valuation notice. You will still get that if you build it as a "caravan" so I see no reason why you could not try a VAT reclaim using that?

It is a job I HATE You level the ground, you compact it, you lay some sand, you level the sand, you lay the slab and it WOBBLES. So you lift the slab., try again levelling the sand taking account of the wobble and you lay the slab again. It does not wobble but it is not level with the adjacent one. You might have guessed I don't have a natural flair for this job. No wonder Tommy Walsh uses 5 blobs of sloppy cement and tap it down until level and no lip......

You are looking at this the wrong way. You don' fill in the ditch and build on it. You dig the foundations, e.g. strip foundations into the present ground at it's present height. You then build up the walls from that. The foundations will be deep with respect to finished raised ground level, but probably not especially deep with respect to existing ground level. Then you infill the area inside the garage with hard inert infill compacted in layers and pour the concrete slab on that. the ground outside the garage area if you want to raise that as well can be infilled with anything, e.g all the soil you stripped off the build area and what you dug out for the foundation trenches.

Are you happy / familliar with changing parameters? the new ones have a completely different user interface to mine so I am not sure how much help I can offer, but if you list all the parameters that relate to DHW and what values they are presently set to, I might be able to make some suggestions.

There is a setting on mine (older version) to give priority to heating or DHW. Mine is set to DHW priority. Then there are further parameters to set DHW heating time, mine is still set to the default of 30 minutes. There is then a wait time, how long it waits before giving the next burst of DHW heating. the default was something silly like 90 minutes, so mine is set to 30 minutes now. If the default settings in the current version are as daft as in my older version, then it will allocate only 1/4 of it's time to heat DHW meaning your re heat time after using some hot water is very long. Do you have the install manual or just the user manual?

It's what I do with all woody garden waste (i.e. something that will not compost) But I do wait until a day with no washing on anyones line.

Burn it. Choose a reasonably windy but not gale force day to take the smoke away. The worst day to burn it is dead still. Mid week weekday when it is less likely washing will be on neighbours lines.

Did you measure them before you burned them? Lots of variations 800, 825, 835 for instance https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=workmate+jaws&_sacat=0

No Topo here. I did my own surveys with laser level (at dusk) and a long tape measure to map important features like site levels at each corner of the house, road levels at spot points etc. Then did some basic maths to work out volume of excavated soil and predict final site levels as I used the excavated soil to build up the site low points. It all worked out well.

That looks like my WM800. I think the 800 is the width of the top jaws.

But even those you can get wrong if you use the standard fittings that mount on a plate inside the wall. Better to use the fittings that go on over the pipe from the outside and then you cut the pipe to length.

I like Howdens, because they have a branch close to me and if there is anything wrong that needs changing even if not in stock they can usually get it quickly. Contrast that with the last kitchen I was involved in (I only did the electrics not the fitting) the customer had ordered it all from a big orange DIY store and it had all been delivered. When the inevitable happened and parts did not fit and the design was wrong, you could not just pop to the local branch and pick them up, everything had to be ordered with a corresponding time lag, resulted in a very unhappy fitter who could not finish the job and had to keep coming back when the parts arrived.

Most twin wall flue manufacturers will specify a "distance to combustible materials" typically 50mm. So your hole through the roof / wall needs to leave that clearance. The supplier we used, flue-pipes-com supply an "insulated sleeve" for that purpose. The sleeve clamps to the pipe and is the required thickness, so the outside of the sleeve can by definition touch combustible materials. It is also reasonable to assume since it was sold for the purpose the sleeve is not combustible so it can be in contact with the outside of the flue pipe. So you cut your hole in the wall or roof to match the diameter of the sleeve and seal the joint between the sleeve and the wall / roof. Use a standard flashing to prevent water ingress. Here is my insulated sleeve being prepared to fit:

If I have to transport them (about once every 2 years to get a pair refilled) I put them in the back of the Landy and ratchet strap the pair together which stops them rolling.

The message from this thread to any casual viewers is to decide exactly an you wall finish BEFORE you mount the shower valves. Then check with a mock up of your actual wall finish that the valve is recessed the correct amount. If tiling don't forget to allow for adhesive thickness.

It would be a lot better if you had UFH upstairs then all the heating requirement would be low temperature water.

The first job of the architect is to design a house that does not need very much energy to heat it. That is the biggest contribution he can make to it being "green" If you are having PV then an ASHP makes a lot of sense. Oil of gas makes sense if it is a very large house or poorly insulated perhaps?