ProDave

Full time or occasional use? How about a modern caravan chemical toilet, the built in sort not a bucket and chucket. Or a composting toilet?

The biggest issues are when someone puts something "too big" or "too hard" down them. I would encourage it only to be used for No1's All the ones i have seen use 40mm pipe. The plumber doing one on a recent job puts jubilee clips on all the joints because in his words not mine "solvent weld is not strong enough and can blow apart" (I don't think he is the best plumber) While the 32mm mdpe will be stronger than solvent weld waste pipe is is also smaller. Is this leftovers you just want to use?

Thanks, I had not seen that documented so succinctly before. My house meets those energy requirements and I hope it will meet that air tightness level (will be getting it tested later this year) Like many I strived to get somewhere close to passive house levels but without paying to have it certified s such. You know when you have got it right, that your heating bills are a minor part of your total energy bills. In my case about 1/3 of total energy used.

What do people think of mixing "systems" e,g putting a different make of top coat, e.g. krend, onto a Baumit base coat?

Are you really sure it is 7.5mm? 9.5mm or 3/8 inch used to be common and certainly at 400mm centres was adequate. A great many older houses I encounter still have 3/8" plasterboard with no problems. I would not be fitting it in a new house but unless there were visible defects I would not be rushing to rip it out of an old house.

So 15000kWh in a year, some VERY rough sums assuming you use heating for half the year is 82kWh per day for the heating season and a very rough guess that the coldest day will use twice that so 164kWh per day. Assuming the heating is on 18 hours per day, that's an average of 9.11kWh for those 18 hours. You are probably about right sizing a 14kW ASHP for that to give a bit of extra. Assuming you can get a COP of 3, then your 15000kWh of heat would consume about 5000kWh of electricity. You can have endless fun playing with different electricity tariffs to see how your bill might compare with your present gas bill. If you want to do most of your heating in the cheap afternoon and store it for the post 4pm expensive period, you would need to be storing something in the order of 80kWh of heat in something. and condensing your heating requirement into a shorter time period might push you to a larger heat pump. Plenty for those with an analytical mind to chew over.

I called into our local merchant earlier in the week, he was telling me timber prices have risen sharply in recent weeks, particularly Oak.

The original setup did not have any actuators on the mainfold, just manual adjusters. If you want to try the Salus actuators, just connect them all in parallel and connect that to the manifold pump power. you will probably want another junction box to marshal that number of cables into the existing wiring centre. I will be intertested to see if it makes a difference, I am sceptical but willing to be proved wrong.

My issue seems to be our climate. I don't want to take this off int my problems (that will evolve on my own thread) but up here, it has been average of below 0 from Christmas to last week, with -16 one night. Extreme cold like that, coupled with a well insulated house so little heat gets out, means frost on the outside of the walls is common, and I have first hand experience of where the top coat has failed, water has got through, and the base coat, now damp, has frozen and cracked. Probably not an issue in Kent?

Following this with interest. (I have another thread on my render problems so don't want to take this too far) The Baumit base coat on it's own will absorb water, and when it freezes will crack and flake. It cannot be used on it's own though I am open to the suggestion that it could be used with a truly waterproof paint over it?

The height thing. That is measured from the ground adjacent to the building. I would say it is measured from the path / gravel along the front. It is only just higher than a standard door, so what is that measurement? If it scrapes in under 2.5M you are home and dry. It does not matter if the ground is sloping and at some other point the height might be more. And it's built of block, so the non flamable if <2M from boundary is taken care of.

I am interested to know what you have dome to a 1930's house to get the heat input requirements down so low? Loft insulation and new windows won't get it so low, I used to live in a 1930's house and remember it's appetite for heat. Before committing to a heat pump I would want to be SURE that heat requirement calculation is correct. It would be safer to base that on known gas usage over a cold winter. The biggest cause of criticism with heat pumps is when they are sized too small and in cold weather and cannot keep the house warm. And what is your motive? It certainly will not lower your fuel bill. It;s very honourable to want to reduce CO2 emissions, but it will cost you more.

It is not your problem to fix it properly. I might just hide it all behind tall fence panels and let them worry about where the water goes and what rots until they are willing to sort it out properly.

Forget the blockwork, I would not want to live where you are jammed that close together with such tiny gardens, and where everyone feels the area is dodgy enough to have such search lights outside their house. Once you have lived in a detached house in the countryside with 1/3 acre garden, there is no going back.

No 1, before the installers leave, get them to show you: How to set the times that the heating and hot water are on and off How to set the hot water temperature How to set the heating water temperature How to set, turn on, off or adjust any anti legoinairs program be ready with a load of post it notes to mark the relavant sections in the user manual as they explain it to you.

The first "efficiency" hurdle you have, is having radiators in the system. Even high output radiators will demand a higher operating temperature than the UFH. If you had UFH throughout your best efficiency choice would be to run the flow temperature from the heat pump as low as possible. If the only controls you have is simple thermostats, then replacing those with programable thermostats would be a good move then you can set indivisual room temperatures at different times of day.

Probably all you needed to do is balance the system, turn down the flow rate to the shorter loops and turn up the flow rate to the longer loops. can you post a picture of your manifold as it is?

Post some pictures of the roof and what you are trying to do. I think spray foam properly applied in a new build is okay. The issue with mortgages is an old roof, with no under felt, and spray foam applied from the inside as a "fix" makes the roof completely un repairable as the tiles are stuck by the foam,. so in the event of any repairs then being needed it is a new roof required.

I don't see the relevance of the adjoining houses unless you want access over their gardens? an anonymised plan would help understanding. I don't see the council owning one of the houses is any different to any other owner. All the adjacent owners will have been notified and can object to the planning application.

When i tiled my roof, you will find if they are interlocking tiles, then you can adjust the overlap at each tile by 2 or 3 mm easily. That, over the width of a garage roof, plus the fact you can buy half width tiles, will enable you to get the length you want with the overhang you want, without any cutting.

My thoughts, ASHP is a viable source of heating and works, and solar PV gives you free electricity to reduce your bills. Both are good modern building ideas not "bling" I am far less convinced about rainwater harvesting. Perhaps that's because I live in a sparsely populated area with plenty of rainfall not renowned for water shortages or droughts. Perhaps if i was still in the SE where hosepipe bans were common when you got more than a week of sunshine, it might start to make sense to prop up the failing infrastructure a bit.

My only input is the TF walls don't look very thick = not enough insulation?

A ram pump will increase the head that it will pump, but only by dumping some of the water so I doubt the volume delivered will increase. Are you even allowed to fit such a thing to a mains water pipe? What is the pressure at the toby? and what size is the pipe from the toby to the break tank? Probably the best thing you can do is increase the size of the pipe or fit a second in parallel to get as much flow as the water pressure will allow. And fit a float switch in the break tank to stop the pumps running dry if usage is too much. I assume the pumps are pumping until an accumulator near the houses reaches a set pressure?

Presumably you have road access to the site so could the utilities not take a longer route along your own access if the other land owner wants too much? I would look at the feasability of moling under his land rather than digging it up, he would be more likely to say yes if there was no disruption.

I wasn't seeking a solution, not my problem, I am just the sparky. I was just confirming my suspicion that it might not be "best practice"