ProDave

Today an old stone mill building. Not much to say, some will like it some won't. But Building regs? It appeared to be a 4 storey building, now with the staircase from each floor opening out onto a large open plan area where you walk round to the next flight to the next level. How does that comply with a protected staircase? and hardly a door in sight, let alone any fire doors?

And that is supposed to make my mental image any less bad?

No, I often get called by landlords to pat test a brand new item.

@zoothorn I am trying to "un read" your last post, and expunge from my mind, a rather horrifying mental image of your damp, brown and yellow Y fronts. I think I need therapy.

I charge my normal hourly rate for PAT testing with a minimum of 1 hour. PAT testing is not something all sparks do, it is mind blowingly tedious and on the flip side for an office full of stuff there are outfits that charge silly cheap money per item that i would not get out of bed for. Why do you want it PAT tested? Clearly not for your own use? are you going to rent it out by the hour? Or is it part of the inventory in a rental?

It sounds like you are new to house renovation. I think each of these issues needs to be broken down into a thread of it's own where it will be easier to offer advice.

+1 to above. The really noticable thing is on a windy day you can open 1 window or 1 door and not have a howling gale flowing through it. Unlike a normal house where doing so would have one of the internal doors slamming shut with the through draught. But why do you want to open a window in winter to let the cold out? In summer we regularly sleep with the bedroom window open to hear the gentle trickle of the burn, and the owls hooting throughout the night.

Was it me that originally posted that? I think so but not in this thread? Just to clarify, my measured flow rate was not satisfying the flow switch so my flow switch in my heat pump must be well on the pessimistic side, or my own flow meter is reading a bit high, or a combination of both.

What is the floor construction? I have twice been involved with the renovation of (older) houses that have flooded from burst pipes, and the remedial work has been serious, strip everything back to bare joists, try out for weeks with industrial dehumidifiers and rebuild. Not a cheap or quick process. I guess they are concerned if you don't strip back and just dry out what you can see and redecorate there is the risk of something like dry rot later?

What this shows to me is how much prices of materials have risen. We built our previous house for a construction cost of £110K for a 180 square metre house in 2003, so that was £610 per square metre. Not as expensive finish and not as well insulated but a lot cheaper.

No don't go talking to your mortgage yet. As you were gifted the land by the farmer you must know them well or have some close connection, so I would start by talking to the farmer and pointing out the mistake and see if you can buy enough extra of the land so you then own all the land the house is on. That has got to surely be the easiest resolution? The other issue is have planning noticed the house is in the wrong place? Don't go mentioning it to them though.

How did this come about? Was the plot wrongly fenced? Was it previously 2 parcels of land and a mistake happened when you bought the plot an only one got transferred? Or did someone simply make a total error when marking it out and put the house in the wrong place but that would presumably have involved removing a fence? Before you can apportion blame and look for a resolution, you have to understand exactly what happened to result in where you are. How long since work started? i.e. how long have you been occupying this wrong bit of land, and did the owner of it not notice and mention the problem to you?

At least the builder of that had a spirit level and a string line

We settled on a "chimney" type island extractor. It was a very difficult thing to buy, probably one of the hardest kitchen items to choose. The first problem is there are not many to choose from, and that is compounded by the fact we could not find ANYWHERE to actually go and look at any. The only white goods shop left in Inverness had NONE on sale. Pathetic. So we had to buy on line trusting pictures and dimensions and our own judgement visualising that. Then had to battle with some suppliers wanting silly money for delivery further limiting the choices. We ended up with one from B&Q When it came to fitting it, it was one of the most awkward things to fit. You fix a bracket to the ceiling. That is the easy bit. The hood then hangs from that on 4 "legs" These legs are 2 parts and are "telescopic" so I assembled them at their shortest extension only to find when it was fitted it hung down way too low, lower than it's specification suggested, so low if you leaned over to stir something in a pan you hit your head on it (and I am not exactly tall). so down it came again. The only way I got it high enough (and still not as high as the instructions suggested was possible) was to use just one of the two telescopic parts but that needed re drilling a set of holes at one end to match the ceiling bracket. That has got it above head height, but still not as high as the instructions suggested. The only way you could achieve that is with a hacksaw and more re drilling of holes. And it is a 3 man job to fit it, you have to assemble the complete thing then lift it up and screw it to the ceiling bracket, so 2 people to lift it and hold it while the third goes round fitting the screws. That is a lot of waffle to say a chimney type island hood probably works better and is less bodgery to fit if you have a taller than usual ceiling. At a standard 2.4M ceiling you may find yourself struggling

So check NI building regs for activity space. circulation space or whatever else they call it. Perhaps others from NI could advise?

Where are you? That kitchen would fail Scottish building regs on activity space and circulation space. I am not convinced it is big enough to support an island. Check building regs where you are to be sure it is compliant.

Don't forget to put the cables under the cable clamps.

No blending valve and manifold pump?

I would file that in the "A solution looking for a problem" category.

So January you use 6903 kWh that's 222kWh per day (ouch) or an average of 9kWh continuous so a 17kWh ASHP would need to be heating the house 13 hours per day to achieve that (plus the time it takes for DHW) So the sizes about about right, but don't forget to allow for the increase when you build the extension

Yes I have that unit. It was a cheap ebay purchase. When you drill down into the detail, my understanding was it cannot extract entirely from a humid area so no good for a swimming pool or large changing room. But in a domestic setting ours extracts from 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and a utility room. It is rare for more than one bathroom to be in use at once and the utility and kitchen are rarely very humid. So the high humidity while showering is "diluted" by the other rooms. It certainly does not give any issue in use and the heat exchanger core never appears to be wet or in any distress. As to the question in the OP, mine is off to one side in the house not central with the shortest vent run being about 3 metres and the longest about 10 metres. It was no problem balancing it.

Yes a GSHP is a bit more efficient than an ASHP. But it is a LOT more expensive to install. What were they proposing for a heat collector? A borehole? Or dig up your entire garden, lay slinky heat collector pipes and put the garden back? Before you comit, forget their heat loss estimates, look up a whole years worth of gas bills and post them here so we can see how much gas you use in a year. That will give a much better idea of how much heat you need than any estimate just by looking at the building. That will give a better idea what size heat pump you would need.

This is 3 bed detached with a single garage. A very similar sized house locally that was 4 bed (but one of those downstairs) so very similar, sold last summer for £250K. Our all in price with land, services and legals will be about £225K so I am absolutely convinced if I had paid for all the labour, the total cost would have exceeded market value. As it is arguably 5 years work for £25K "profit" is poor value. But we have got a better house than if we had just bought one. The weather man confirmed this evening what I have thought that we have just had the coldest January for 10 years yet we are nice and cosy, never feeling cold and with nice low heating bills. As I say not finished yet. Sun room,. decking, car port, driveway to finish, balcony, a bridge over the burn, garden fencing, another shed at least. Yep i will be at it for another 2 years I bet.

I hope the rotary isolator never gives trouble and nobody wants to take the cover off

Yes cost includes VAT, about to send off my VAT claim. The refunded VAT should complete the sun room and other stuff so net build cost should not go up any more. I will recalculate when finally finished to take into account larger area and final costs.