ProDave

Have you actually asked the wall owner of you can lower the wall? Don't mention the new dwelling just say you are trying to improve visibility to make it safer. Make it clear you will do or pay for all the work so it will cost them nothing at all. Only if they say no, do you have to get creative.

Thanks. If they are 4 different users from different households, how do you make each secure so they can's see each others computers and printers etc?

What unlimited data deals are EE doing now? Last time I looked not a lot and what they did was expensive. The only ones that seem to openly offer unlimited data aimed at 4g internet are three, but we get no three coverage, but do get a good EE 4g signal.

The issue is the quote was 4 men 6 days, but it actually took 4 men only 3 days to do it. So you have paid twice as much for labour? I often say this but seem to be a lonely voice that an hourly rate is better for this sort of job, then you would have only got charged 12 man days not 24. and why I prefer to price all my jobs on an hourly rate with an estimate of the time it will take. Was it the tradesmen or the customer that wanted it priced on a fixed price? I always maintain if a customer wants a fixed price, i have to try and think of all the things that could go wrong to make it take longer and price on the fact they will go wrong. The customer almost always pays more.

Absolute shambles. The sole reason for forcing smart meters on us is the eventual aim of charging us all half hourly metering (different tariff for each half hour of the day). If the damned things cannot even do that properly, with the sum of all the half hours usage equalling the total days usage then that is a dirty great big FAIL. I will resist having one as long as I can and hope that by the time one is forced on me, they will have got this simple bit of programming correct. On the plus side you are with Octopus who have a good reputation for customer service. I can see people with other suppliers hitting a brick wall with an issue like that.

Yes it's belt and braces. I have my tank thermostat set to 65 degrees. It never opens under normal heat pump operation, but is there to meet the regs. There is an theoretical fault that could happen, the HP could turn on it's willis heater and the thermostat on that could have failed and it could boil the water. Extremely unlikely but theoretically possible.

Yep, and he can't do that until he gets planning to relocate the business.

Definitely object. Base you objection on it being agricultural and outside the development boundary. My bet is the "prize" he is after will then be to redevelop the old garage site for housing. I once lived in a similar situation, there was a small paddock across the road from us and there was a proposal for a filling station. All the neighbours objected, planning was refused and it was refused on appeal. Last time I passed by, it contained a small orchard.

System boiler with unvented hot water tank and thermostatic mixer showers. you will not be disappointed.

I think the more important question is how many people in the house usually and how many showers are likely to be used at once or in quick succession. and what heating source you have at the moment / plan to have?

And how many pages did it take to arrive at that summary?

Had the same problem with a HW tank and immersion heater, I had to cut a hole in a wall to get the old immersion heater out and a new one in. People just don't think.

That can be removed by undoing 2 screws, and ours will be very shortly after completion......

Thanks that paper is an interesting read. Though it does not deal with render on wood fibre directly. Re wind driven rain. The wall that has suffered worst here is the east facing wall. that gets very little direct rain. The West facing wall that gets lots of wind driven rain has not suffered anywhere as bad. I don't buy the too close to the ground argument. If that were the cause I would expect all the problems to be along the bottoms of the walls. but in many placec the delamination and blistering is higher up the wall, sometimes a lot higher up. If it were water getting in at the bottom and wicking up, then why has it only failed higher up and not all the way up to the point this supposed moisture has wicked up to? At some point I need to strip off the failed top coat in places to see what is going on underneath. That should tell us a lot about what is wet and what is not. I don't want to do that yet, I wanted to wait until the manufacturers rep was here to look at what is going on. That is what I am trying to get, someone to come and have a proper look rather than give me a remote diagnosis. Re the EPS detail at the bottom. That seems to be a treatment of a wall below DPC level or of a timber wall that goes all the way down. We have blockwork below DPC level and that is exposed and painted with masonry paint. I am not a fan of rendering a wall below DPC as it will obviously be damp and with frost is a likely candidate to fail. I really cannot see how not cladding our below DPC blockwork with EPS and then rendering it has caused our problems. At the moment the supplier does seem to be hiding behind the "you got that tiny detail wrong" excuse and not wanting to help. If you are considering an external render system, ask yourself the question, do you want to buy from a supplier that will do all they can to wriggle out of any responsibility and not even offer any constructive help if they can find an excuse to do so? If you want a supplier that takes an interest in their product and wants to help solve a problem, at the moment I suggest you look at a different render system. At the back of my mind I am concerned that the root of the issue might be our cold climate. Is it just too cold here for such a system? That suspicion is partly because it is the east wall that has suffered the most, and that is the garage wall so it is an unheated space so there is not even a tiny but if heat escaping from the building to limit how cold the wall gets.

Our Rationel top hung are not simple hinges. Someone will come and give the proper name but those geometric sliding mechanisms. They open and stay open to the point you push them, and push them far enough and they pivot over and close "inside out" handy for cleaning upstairs windows. And yes they open wide enough for means of escape.

All ours are top hung in this house. First time I have had top hung windows and I would do the same again, I can't think of a compelling reason to want to go back to side hung. What are your concerns?

Is it just me? or what is an OPE? Google does not help me.

Yes they definitely work. They take in cold mains water use that to dump the removed heat and when it gets too hot they run that down the drain and take in a new lot of cold water. I would use one here if I needed to as we are not metered and there is no shortage of water. The issue becomes whether it is morally correct to "waste" water like this and if you are metered how much does that cost.

Turning off the room temp modulation function sounds like the best idea. If I was going to add any automated solar control to my ASHP it would me more along the lines of trying to maximise the time it runs when the sun is out (to use solar PV generation) and shut it down when the sun goes behind a cloud.

That does not sound like a true warm roof. A true warm roof needs insulation above the rafters before the tiles and then you can full fill the rafter space. Clarify with them what they mean by 140mm PIR to slope of truss" To me that sounds like they mean under the rafters but I could be wrong.

So are these actually still legal to install? the one I referred to above was a friend installing it in his conservatory and he was a bit sheepish about it. He said he had been given it because they were "outlawed" and he was fitting it to his conservatory on the quiet hoping nobody would notice.

All that building control in Scotland (at least here in the Highlands) wants for the electrics is an EIC (Electrical Installation Certificate) If you plan to issue that yourself, expect a call from building control to verify your qualifications. You really want to find an electrician that will work with you, let you pull the cables and let him view them before they all get covered up and let him test and certify it.

I used 13mm OSB as a temporary floor. Not so bad downstairs (400mm joist centres) but upstairs (600mm joist centres) it was a bit springy, but nobody fell through it. It all got re used, mostly cut into strips that laid in the bottom of the I joists to support the insulation, and as the first layer over the joists to support the UFH biscuit mix.

I have a 4kW system on an E/W split (hopefully to lengthen generation time rather than optimise total output) I manage to self use about 90% of what we generate, by using the big appliances one at a time in the middle of the day (use a timer if you are out) and by dumping surplus to the immersion heater rather than let it export. The small amount we do export is usually when there is no load to use any, and the generation is >3kW so more than the immersion heater can absorb. In the shoulder seasons the ASHP will help use some but for all the summer that won't be heating the house. I also time the ASHP so it only starts heating the DHW at 11AM when there is plenty of PV generation to use. I assume the quote you had was from an MCS installer? do you feel confident to install the panels on the roof yourself then just get an electrician to connect them? That will be a lot cheaper. Even my DIY installed system will have a payback of 6 years based on how much we are self using.

My view is you are very unlikely to use all you generate from an 8kW PV system. Unless you are installing battery storage (another topic for debate) I see little point going beyond 4kW