ProDave

Henley blocks don't provide isolation and over current protection of the submains, so your electrician is correct.

Here in the Eastern Highlands, -10 is not uncommon so I sized my ASHP for that. Heat loss at -10 and +20 inside is just over 2kW so at -15 it would still be under 3kW so a 5kW ASHP does the job nicely. I think -18 is the coldest night so far but that is not a sustained cold. So your heat losses are coming out about twice mine for a similar sized house. Defrosting is not usually an issue well below 0, there simply is no moisture in the cold air. Defrosting is mostly an issue around and a few degrees above 0.

There is no hard or fast rule. Try rigging it up on a bench before comitting just to ensure there are no problems. By the way I never use low voltage downlights, that is just one more thing to fail. I much prefer GU10 mains downlight with LED lamps in them. I walk a mile from any that do not have replaceable lamps, because you can almost guarantee in a few years when a sealed one fails you can't buy identical replacements.

My money is two 2 port valves, one for radiators and one for UFH, and the feedback microswitch in the UFH one has failed. Are there any 2 port motorised valves anywhere? Of course this is basic stuff and it is a poor show that plumbers and electricians have failed to find the fault. I hope you have not paid them?

Ignoring the tree you might have a bigger problem. Is this foul drainage with a treatment plant or rainwater? Check your local building regs. Here in Scotland a drainage field must be 10 metres away from a road. That is what scuppered us, but drainage to the burn came to our rescue. What is behind you? A field? Can you get permission to drain there?

Also poor design compared to UK 13A plug. Where are you to have this in use?

It should not need to get warm enough to warm your feet. Does it put enough heat into the rooms to get them to the set temperature?

I tried twice to get contents insurance for a static caravan on site during a build. Both times I was told nobody would insure contents in a caravan that was not on a recognised residential site. The 'van itself was covered by the self build insurance as were tools and plant, but not contents of the 'van.

We burn bioethanol on our boat for the cooker. Contrary to popular belief it is not odourless and it does need ventilation, a lot of it in the small space of a boat. The CO alarm will sound very quickly if the hatch is not open. It is way better than burning meths of the cooker!! In a house I much prefer a WBS with a proper flue and combustion air direct from outside.

If the condition was "plant a native hedge" but it then died..... There was no mention of maintaining the hedge.

Do "conditions" time out? As in you build something without planning and if nobody notices after a certain number of years you are immune from enforcement. So if you "forgot" to do something that was a condition of planning, would the requirement to do that time out x years after completion? asking for a friend.

Is there some local rule that says a boiler cannot be seen? If not just choose the least viewed elevation and put it there?

Just use fire rated lights. It is a LONG time since I have used those horrible cheap and nasty open frame ones. And just leave a gap in the insulation around the light. This is acoustic insulation., a lot less critical than thermal insulation.

Tell your local DNO you need to do some digging and ask them to come and locate the cable. You will need a new connection anyway for the new house so get a quote from them and have a site meeting and get them to identify the cable location. It should hopefully be a cheap connection if there is capacity in the cable to support another house. If it does need moving you would have to pay the DNO to do that but is should not cost much, especially if you or your builder does all the trench digging.

It is also worth mentioning that the plot we now have a house on was just like that, an infill between 2 houses. It also had long lapsed planning permission. But our local plan also showed it as outside the area for "development land" But the infill clause overruled that and we had no problem getting planning. But they are less resistant to individual plots up here.

That reminds me of when I lived in the south and was looking for a plot. I came across a LO settlement plan just like the one above but the red settlement boundary was drawn like the teeth of a comb, carefully excluding every single scrap of land that did not already have a house, for no reason other than spite to prevent the settlement getting developed with what most people would regard as an infill in keeping with the settlement.

Sorry for late reply. The internal profile of the AuraPlus sliders is much the same as the normal doors, so it boils down to whether the blind company could make a perfect fit blind wide enough.

I see you have quite a bog gap at times between target and actual temperature. On my ASHP you can adjust a parameter so set the hysteresis, i.s how for below the set point it has to go before the ASHP starts re heating. You might want to investigate if you have something similar.

Why so low? I heat my HW to 48 degrees, the ASHP has no trouble achieving that. My cylinder only has 2 sensor pockets and I use the lower one of the two which is roughly mid tank. Because of the nature of an UVC as water is used it tends to just fill up the bottom with cold with little mixing occuring. So it is quite possible I have half a tank of hot and half a tank of cold before the ASHP turns on to re heat it.

If you want a random pattern with random joints, what I find is you lay the first row, cutting the last board to fit. The offcut from that is then used to start the next row. Regardless of how long or short it is. As well as zero waste, it gets away from identical joints.

To keep a "trench" there you don't need to build it up with bricks, how about railway sleepers to hold back the trench?

They normally just push into a pocket. Note the depth the old ones come out and set the new ones in the same depth. But if the new PCB is working with the old sensors I would just leave it like that.

I serviced mine recently (completely different type) It was the little tiny rubber pad that part of the mechanism closes on to form a seal that had worn. Of course it was impossible to replace the little rubber pad, so I turned it over and re fitted. That of course just kicks the problem down the road until the other side of the little rubber pad wears out then I need to try harder to find one.

Reading this thread in conjunction with your other one about the septic tank, I would be having a very long hard look at this. It really sounds like a candidate to knock down and rebuild with everything in the proper place, as long as the site has enough room to do that. If you want to keep the traditional look you can use the original stone for the external skin of a new building.

Which country is this in? In Scotland SEPA are taking a way too relaxed view, I know of at least 2 old systems that don't comply with the General binding Rules either for location or discharging into a watercourse. Basically they are not interested unless someone raises a pollution issue. I doubt building control would be that relaxed though, so if there is no suitable location on your land to locate a proper treatment plant the correct distance from the house and the watercourse then you are either stuck with things as they are and keep quiet, or seek permission from an adjacent land owner to site something on their land. Building control do have some leeway to be flexible, i.e. I know one house near here where they allowed the TP closer to the burn than would normally be allowed as there was nowhere else.