ProDave

How "out of spec" is the staircase? If not much, I would just use the room, and accept when you sell on, it might still not be classed as a bedroom. To convert legally everything has to comply, stairs, headroom, insulation, fire escape access etc. Plenty of old houses with stairs that won't meet current building regs and they are not deemed "not habitable"

I perhaps should not mention that my Lamona dishwasher was £0 from Howdens, and included the door fixing kit.

Thanks. Just a few moments ago I found one on ebay and ordered that one. I don't want to get into a protracted fault finding saga, that would just take too long I fear.

I am concerned that the sprayed on paint just peels off. I don't think I have ever been able to peel off painted or rollered emulsion paint like that.

Grant Vortex Combi Oil boiler. Fault is the boiler fires once radiators warm up, boiler shuts off then radiators go cold. Go outside to boiler (it is an outdoor model) lights are normal indicating "demand" but no pump and no burner on. Turn the thermostat knob on the boiler down then back up, boiler fires up again for one cycle then does not come back on unless you repeat with the thermostat knob. Hot water functions still working normally. On this one the thermostat knob drives a potentiometer on the one and only circuit board. My guess it is probably one of the relays not working and I suspect the only cure is a new board. If only I could find one. Pictures including numbers: Any idea where I might get one?

It sounds like you want what I did in the utility room. Starting with a bare floor (in my case chipboard then ply glued and screwed) I went round the edges with tanking tape which goes about 2" up the wall all round. I then tiled the floor, making sure the grouting was good and all joints fully filled, and a tiled skirting made from strips cut from the same tiles, again all fully grouted. This is to ensure if there is a minor spill or leak from the washing machine, it can't get down any gaps at the edge of the room and under the floor. But it is not a proper wet room and in the event of a serious leak it would run out under the door into the hall.

So now it has started "working" do you see readings on the flow meters, because I cannot see how they possibly give a reading with the flow going backwards through them?

I expected the wall with the radiator to be an external wall. But looking at the outside picture it must be an internal wall? What is the other side of the wall with the radiator? Agreed the render should not go down into the ground like that, though it is a common fault. That was exactly what caused the damp in a previous 1930's house that I had. Once I chopped off the lower render, exposed the perfectly good slate DPC, ended the render just above the DPC it all dried out nicely.

Photo of the other side of that wall, which presumably is outside?

Pictures? I can't see how you can correct this without taking a couple of rows of tiles off.

Why is a pump so expensive? Mine uses a standard central heating circulating pump, a Wilo in my case, easy and cheap enough should it need replacing.

Yes but with the paddle going the wrong way you would not get a flow reading? So the flow cannot have been going the wrong way all this time because some were showing correct flow. I take what we have been told so far with a pinch of salt.

I still don't understand what you are doing here. To do it properly you empty the room, bath, wc and all, tank the whole lot then tile the whole lot. Form the shower base area with a shower former and the tiling over that gets cut and slopes down the the shower drain. The walls around the shower come down over the tanking upstand that goes a short way up the wall. Is this what you are trying to achieve? Or do you just want a normal shower tray above ground and want to make it so that when water is spilled either from the shower or bath it does not end up dripping through the ceiling downstairs?

Hope they left a draw string. You might need a bit of lube on the cable.

Why make the choice between solar thermal OR MVHR. they are both entirely different things for different purposes. Many of us on here are using an ASHP to heat our DHW. The two key things seem to be use an unvented hot water cyilinder, NOT a thermal store, and heat the DHW to about 48 degrees which is plenty hot enough and well within the capabilities of an ASHP. You will probably want a larger HW tank because it is not at "gas boiler" temperature, 300L seems a popular choice. MVHR is worthwhile in a well insulated well sealed house to reduce heating bills by reducing ventilation heat loss. This is quite separate to the heating and HW system. Solar Thermal is effective at heating your DHW in the summer but no so in the winter. Many of us preferred instead solar PV which can be used for DHW heating as well as a whole host of other things. Is budget limitation forcing you down the one or the other route?

I suspect the vast majority of those are "slum boats" and never move and have no intention of ever moving. that is not the lifestyle I would want on the cut.

The clearance distances are a little different in Scotland. But they do take up a lot of land and particularly for a soakaway you do need a LOT of land. That's why you often see a soakaway located under an adjacent field as there is not enough room on the plot. And since you will need building control approval for a new treatment plant, don't think you can quietly ignore the rules, they will want to see the plans that show everything fits within the required distances. The one that caught us out was a soakaway has to also be 10 metres from a road. That left us insufficient space but that eventually led to us being given permission to discharge to the burn. The one that struck me as "most stupid rule" was the distance from soakaway to watercourse. We had been given permission to discharge to the burn, but via a partial soakaway. So given all the limits we installed a partial soakaway in the little strip of land in the middle that met all the rules, and from there it is piped in a solid pipe to discharge into the burn. You would have thought in this situation as it was going to end up in the burn anyway, we would have been allowed to make that partial soakaway much larger, fight up to the edge of the burn, but no that was not allowed.

The last meter move I did, in the morning SSE turned up and moved the supply head into the now almost finished house. The SSE guy decided to be "helpful" and he moved the meter as well. So I connected the newly relocated meter to the new CU and started all my testing. Later in the day the meter man tuned up and went balistic when he found the meter had already been moved and he would not believe me when I said it was the SSE guy wot did it.

What SSE offer is a "building supply" where they install the supply onto the plot to a TBS cabinet, then at a later date come and move that same supply into the house when it is ready. It is the DNO that makes that charge and if you have bought it as a building supply that covers the cost of moving it later. I have never heard of the energy supplier charging to move a meter. Try a different energy supplier. Alternatively you can do what some of us have done, install a permanent supply box on the boundary of your plot and get the supply connected there. Then when the house is build, leave the supply head and meter there, and run your own cable from that box to the house.

I didn't know there was a difference. The few times I have used it, I search for something and it lists several of the item I want at different prices, I pick one (usually the cheapest) and buy it. In the small print somewhere is who it is "from" A case of it could be made more obvious? But my concern is not so much will I get it, but will I be able to get a warranty issue sorted in 11months time?

To choose Biomass means you have swallowed the greenwash and been led to believe burning something that shoves CO2 up your flue is going to reduce your CO2 emissions. At least with electricity, it is getting greener all the time as more real renewables come on stream.

How do you know the manifolds are the wrong way round? Yes normally the flow manifold is on the top, but that is usually dictated by the porting on the blending valve so you don't get a choice. But you have no blending valve so there is nothing stopping them being fitted any way round. I would have thought if they were the wrong way round, backwards flow through the flow meter would try to push the plunger up, not down, and you would see no flow reading. The fact you do see a flow reading on some of them suggests the water is going the right way. Or have I missed something? I subscribe to the air block theory to explain no flow on a couple of loops.

I lump the likes of Amazon into the same category as ebay. You are not buying from one known trusted company, rather a collection of small traders operating under the banner of the host company. I won't trust them for a purchase of some expensive electronic consumer item where I might one day have to make a warranty claim if it goes wrong. I will only buy that sort of stuff from a large trusted retailer.

Also factor in if you have an ASHP you just pay the unit cost as you have electricity anyway. If you have gas, you have to pay to have it installed (in a new build) and pay a standing charge. If you have a well insulated new build that standing charge may be a significant proportion of a low usage gas bill. But for many gas is not available so a heat pump makes more sense than the only real viable alternative, oil.

If you are getting a new supply just for the build only for it not to be used for the new house, expect there to be a disconnection charge as well, they don't like unused but live supplies hanging around (I could tell a story about that) So re think your logistics so the TBS becomes the permanent supply, or if there is an existing supply, that becomes your TBS instead.