ProDave

Part P is only of relevance to a Scottish electrician close to the border doing some work in England No doubt when Scotland does introduce something similar it will also be different.

Yes in Scotland, there is no need for anyone to be a member of a "competent persons" scheme, there is nothing like Part P in England (though it will happen here soon I think) All that building control want is a valid EIC.

So you have been quoted £22K and will get back £10K in RHI payments so a net cost of £12K You can buy the ASHP and cylinder for £4914 plus VAT = £5896 Is the UFH and install really going to cost £6K if you just get an ordinary plumber to fit it? (hint mine did not) I am just saying before you sign up to an MCS / RHI scheme, check the alternatives. If you can cost the install and UFH separately with a non MCS plumber and it comes at at no more than £6K then there is no point in the RHI scheme.

What have the council asked for? I just included the size and type of each tree on the planning drawings and showed the ones that are to be removed. No other questions. It seems some councils like to bury the issue under a mountain of expensive paperwork that has no practical purpose other than antagonising the builder, causing delays, and making them poorer.

If the internal walls are not load bearing, why not make them of timber and plasterboard? easier, cheaper, easier to run services etc?

Our previous house with a brick chimney used the clay ones in your right hand picture and the gap between the liner and the masonry was filled as they went with vermiculite. You then fit a closure plate at the bottom to seal around a flue pipe from a WBS

It sounds like you are trying to support the internal walls from a thickened raft. Who designed this? What do building control say about it?

Probably, but might even be 1" Does it not say anywhere?

Why would you want an outside bathtub where you never change the water? They are surprisingly popular up here. Next door neighbour has one. We declined the offer to join them in it.

You will need a male BSP connector and a reel of ptfe tape.

I am not sure 140mm of mineral wool in the frame, on it's own will even meet building regs now? that was the standard spec nearly 20 years ago. I would definitely want to over sheet the frame with something to improve on that. What's going on the outside of the frame? Brick or block or something else?

Can you post the pictures of the two garage CU's with the covers off?

The way mine works is I have two motorised valves, one for heating and one for DHW. Only one is open at a time depending on what it is doing. To add cooling, either via a duct cooler or fan coil units, I would add another motorised valve. Mine ASHP has a separate "cooling" thermostat input. When that is activated the ASHP starts up in cooling mode. It would be simple to arrange a cooling thermostat to open the cooling motorised valve, and the feedback contacts on that motorised valve to activate the ASHP cooling input. I haven't done this yet, I was still trying to find some cheap fan coil units, but the other idea is to pipe the cooling to a duct cooler and cool via the MVHR, you would want to switch it to a boost speed for that to be effective.

I already have a meter built into my solar PV dump controller. that is constantly measuring generation and house consumption and I have a centre zero meter that shows if it's importing or exporting, but that meter is up in the plant room. I bought the cheap generic meter as i hoped it would be a wireless solution but it proved useless.

Standard board in the back of a meter box is very thin chipboard, so it seems no need to be anything particular.

Last house was an E appealed down from an F. All I know is whatever they give me for this one, I will be appealing again, well worth it.

Ah you mean air tight taping of the joints. I don't know the tape you mention but I used Tescon Vana, and another popular take is Siga Sicral.

It this taping plasterboard, as in taping and filling the joints rather than skimming? Have not heard of Gawler tape. A scaffold tower on wheels sounds like what you want, always handy for maintenance and painting so probably worth buying one.

I have a portable AC unit. It does it's job but it has 2 "issues" One is the horendous noise it makes, no way could I have it running in a bedroom. And the other is you have to pipe the heat out somehow. A thought has dawned on me. to run it outside (under a rain cover) and somehow duct the cool air to the mvhr inlet port, and run the mvhr in bypass mode. Perhaps I will knock up something to try that one day.........

Watching this with interest. Early in the build I ran a branch from the feed to the static caravan, via a stop valve, to an outside tap at the far side of the garden in case we want a vegetable plot over there. All piped in burried 25mm mdpe. First winter I forgot to turn the stop valve off and drain it. Never mind, mdpe is resiliant to freezing. Tried to draw some water from it that winter and all I got was a drip drip drip from the tap. Oh it's still frozen underground I thought. Bur even now, all I get is a slow drip drip drip. One day I will investigate where the blockage is.

Wood burners are a marmite subject. The man complaints are pollution to near neighbours. Some, in sheltered valleys, experience foul air from nearby wood burning stoves on a still night. Here in the Highlands with such a low population density and almost always some wind it does not seem to be a problem.

Generation meter is some distance away and almost impossible to hard wire anything to it. Import meter is also remote from the house but I have a twisted pair cable to the meter box. I can't see anything that measures the flashes of the impulse light will do much, my import meter is one that just goes solid red if anything at all is exporting which happens quite often when generating. I bought the cheap thing I did as it was wireless and will display in watts being used or pence per hour and thought it would be hand to have in the house to see how much say the dishwasher was using, but it has prove totally useless for that unless you put the dishwasher on when there is no PV generations. It does not even just show the net import or export, which would be a small number, it gets really bothered by the pulsed nature of the immersion diverter and gives random large numbers.

16mm should be fine as long as fused at 80A Voltage drop won't be an issue over just 12 metres. If it's steel trunking all the way then I would fit 16mm twin and earth and drop in a 16mm earth cable as well Can you take the cover off the two garage CU's and post a picture inside? and a picture of the house CU with the cover off?

Let me know what is a DECENT energy monitor. I bought a cheap one from ebay and it is pathetic, it cannot tell the difference between what is being imported and exported, and the pulsed nature of the immersion power from the solar PV diverter really upsets it and makes it a random number generator. About the only thing it can do is tell me how much we are using at night.

Solar PV installer "set in his ways" I might be inclined to suggest move the solar PV to the main garage CU to free up the space needed for the switch fuse. Or even re purpose the solar PV CU.