ProDave

It depends what is wrong, the wiring? The setup? the immersion thermostat or the actual immersion element. Only the latter is strictly a plumbing job requiring the tank to be drained and a large immersion heater spanner, but many electricians will do that better than plumbers will fault find the wiring. If you want to tackle it yourself give us more information and photos and do you have any test equipment like a multimeter? If the over heat trip on the thermostat won't reset then it is faulty, but how do you know is has not reset without any testing? If you just want it done, just call a trusted electrician.

Foundations can be horrible, usually things get a lot easier when you are "out of the ground"

As a sole trader it is indeed very annoying when a client does not pay. It has only happened to me 3 times. Usually a "letter before action" gets the bill paid or at least gets the client talking to you to agree a compromise. The only time that failed was when a couple split mid job. The man paid half the invoice but the woman paid nothing. She claimed she had no money. I did not take it to court as I thought it futile and I had already received enough to cover all the materials and most of the labour. I did however have a bit of "satisfaction" when I later read the man had been found guilty of abusing the woman he left penniless.

I guess I am lucky to have a local plumber I know well and often worked with. He was happy for me to run all the pipes after discussing with him, he just came and filled the tank, checked everything and signed the paperwork for a modest sum.

Buildhub is not a place to publicly debate a builder / client dispute. Personal information removed from the post, any further attempt at posting personal details will result in the tread being removed. It is currently under discussion by the moderators

They are both wrong to charge you VAT on a new build. If necessary show them the PP to prove it is a new build. If they won't back down choose someone else. You will not be able to claim it back.

No they don't. See @JohnMo description above. You have to store the water in the thermal store much hotter than your target water temperature if you want to get a decent volume of water out, which is why they are a very poor match to an ASHP.

A thermal store sounds like a good idea, just like a combo boiler does, until you drill down into the details. Un vented cylinder every day for me. Why are people so against a modest maintenance requirement to get something good?

I see he's used "structural PIR" at both ends.

speak to designer / architect / builder and get a blown in beads or celulous cavity fill. WAY more chance of actually achieving theoretical calculated U value of walls. As noted several times, forget UFH in halls. Use SAME spacing throughout if you are uncomfortable at 200mm use 150mm. That will mean rooms more likely to be balanced so easier to fine tune with flow rates and use as one or 2 zones.

And I bet the builders will be saying what a good job, a nice insulated house.....

If you cylinder is large enough you can improve on that by reducing your target temperature, ours is set to 48 degrees which is plenty. ASHP flow temperature set to 55 degrees max,

So pragmatic solution. Leave the existing wall as it is. No planning or anything needed to "fix" it. On your side raise the ground with gabions to not quite the full height and infill behind. This will give you a narrow raised strip on your side to plant a hedge or build a fence and stop the wall falling over.

This leads onto "What is a Canadian Well?" Care to start yet another thread to enlighten those of us that have not heard of that?

Neither do I. But I have only seen a picture of a leaning wall, and have no context where this wall is in relation to the listed building, your build, or indeed any property boundary. For all I know your build may be 50 metres away, or right at the bottom of the failing wall?

What the website does not SAY (you have to look at a video to understand it) is this is a continual process mixer. Feed bagged content into the top and as long as you keep that fed, you get a continuous stream of concrete out of the end. A Completely different thing to the conventional mixer which is a batch process. So I would say different machine for different use with limited overlap. Choose the machine that suits the task.

As above DO NOT fit UFH loops in hallways. I made that mistake (on professional advice) in my first self build over 20 years ago. It seems the "professionals" do not learn. The hallway has only a tiny bit of external wall / door to actually loose heat and lots and lots of internal walls which adjoin heated rooms so zero heat loss. UFH pipes pass through them, they will give some heat, not that you need it. How well insulated is the house? We are in the Highlands so a cold climate and find 200mm pipe centres throughout perfectly fine so someone would have to present me with a very good reason why any of your rooms should need 100mm?

Simple. Don't fit a dedicated UFH loop for the plant room, but lay the connecting pipes to other rooms spread out as if they were actually used for heating (not all bunched up together as seems normal) And for no extra cost or effort you get some heat into the floor of the plant room whenever any other room is heating.

What is that "support beam" supporting? It looks too tiny to be doing anything as a "beam"

If you have done first fix and fitted all the vents and ducts, then you have bought and installed the expensive bit. I found the actual MVHR unit cost less than the ducting so you might as well buy it and fit it. For a good portion of the year we sleep with the bedroom window slightly open, but that won't ventilate the whole house so we leave the mvhr on.

No problem, sometimes the shade it creates is welcome. Definitely a well liked and used space.

Dumb question. Is there no water coming out of the hot tap? Or is the "hot" water coming out cold? Not such a dumb question when I as an electrician drove 40 miles for "no hot water" expecting an immersion heater fault, only to find no water coming out of the taps and they needed a plumber.

One of the plumbers will advise I am sure but if you could take another photo with the pipe insulation removed they will see what joins to what more clearly. You have an interesting mixture of actuators. I assume as a result of failures and replacements?

Where are you? Which country? You definitely need one if in Scotland?

Loch Ness is the largest volume of fresh water in the UK, largely thanks to it's depth. It is not the largest surface area of fresh water though. You have to be very hardy to swim in the loch, it's only about 6 degrees and does not vary much. 73cm drop might require some dredging in Loch Dochfour to maintain navigation depth of 3 metres, and adjustment of the weirs to maintain some flow into the River Ness. For context, Loch Ness on a good day.