ProDave

Hi and welcome. I do believe you are the first from the IOM.

I would just rebuild on the same footings then.

Having seen the site layout, I would go completely back to the drawing board with a new design and resubmit to planning. The bit of garden to the left of the house as shown on the layout plan, will get most of the sun. I would want that to be my main bit of garden. I would want to move the house a bit to the right to make that bigger. The bit of ground above the house (straight on from the drive) is where I would put your car parking and the entrance door on that side of the house. I see no reason for it's odd shape that makes construction more expensive and makes internal layout more awkward, I would go to a simple rectangle.

Is the soil level in the garden higher than the pavement? Is that's what's pushing it over? If you you will need to widen the footing inside the garden to build it as a proper retaining wall, wider at the base (underground) on the garden side.

Nothing about this design flows. Lots of disjointed odd shaped rooms. I don't even like the position of the stairs. Stairs rising from the living room should be for small houses where you have no space for a hallway. And why does the upstairs shape differ to downstairs? Overall dimensions and a site layout might make more sense of it and enable suggestions how to improve it?

Don't like their "flush mounting box" it makes them so bulky and ugly. So it's either that, or a big hole and poke a junction box up. Or just buy aico.

Ah so that sloping ceiling with the window panels in it is a completely false structure and not part of a roof profile?

Ours came from Stone Source in Inverness. they have a yard full of huge slabs of stone of all types to browse and choose from. And their service and fitting was excellent.

Do you have a stone supplier near you? if so go and have a look. Quite a lot of Granites are light colour and may suit your preferences. Ours is definitely impervious to just about anything including red wine.

I have mounted Aico alarms on a wall in a similar situation with approval from Aico and accepted by BC. You must have picked the tea boy to answer your questions. I forget exactly but I think it had to be >300mm from a corner.

Aren't the Kidde ones the sort with flying leads, so you have to cut a bigger hole in the ceiling and come prepared with a load of small junction boxes to poke up the hole? That's why I like aico, just about the only ones that provide a proper terminal box.

A full plan would help, do you have the joist plan for that floor?

I uses the spread sheet above. What really annoyed me is I could not get a definitive answer to the actual extraction rates required by Scottish building regs. Even a call to the duty building control officer did not help, so I have done mine to the English regs. I will find out in due course if it is accepted, but if not I will say well bloody well give me the rates that the Scottish regs require then.

Must be a more easy going sparky than me. Some makes of alarm are not exactly easy to connect.

What do you perceive as a problem with a longer decrement delay?

Aico all the time for me. you won't find another that's better for wiring and neatness. I usually buy them from random ebay sellers for a much better price, but check the "replace by" dates as some are selling old stock near the end of life. I particularly like the fact Aico do a combined heat and CO alarm in one package, perfect for a kitchen with a stove or boiler in it. I just wish they would make a combined CO and smoke alarm as well. What questions do you have that they could not answer?

Middle of the day for us (it will be going on shortly) so it can run from the solar PV power.

In a new build you would hope that the level of insulation included means warm up times will not be an issue. In our previous house, built in 2004 that had UFH upstairs and downstairs. It was noticable that upstairs took longer to warm up mainly due to carpets slowing down the rate of heat transfer (solid floors downstairs) In our present house, it is so well insulated we do not have any heating upstairs. If you choose radiators, they will need to be over size / low temperature, to work with an ASHP.

Winter ASHP usage for water heating is typically 25kWh per week. In the summer that can drop to less than 10kWh as a lot of the hot water comes from the solar PV. It's actually better than that, as my meter still measures how much the ASHP consumes but in many cases most of what the ASHP is using in the daytime is coming from the solar PV. That is for 3 people.

If you have solar PV then you really DO want a hot water tank, with a solar PV diverter to send excess power to the immersion heater (rather than export it) an ASHP will probably cost half to run compared to bulk LPG but remember they work best (highest COP) with low temperature water so that means under floor heating or hich capacity low temperature radiators. I am still marvelling at your £200 electricity cost. I have dome measurements when away on holiday. With only a Fridge freezer, mvhr and waste treatment plant, and a sky box left on to record some stuff, use 31kWh per week which works out at £230 per year. Another test during a different holiday, with a second freezer running and two televisions left on standby pushed that up to 46kWh per week or just over £300 per year. I really don't see how to get that base load down. And that is with solar PV that will have offset most of the daytime use of those appliances.

Those are interesting figures. I spend just under £250 pa heating my house with an ASHP but I spend double that powering all the other electrical "stuff" in the house so I am mighty impresses that you only spend £200 on electricity per year.

I didn't get much luck searching that part number, the Earth Save website is not the most friendly they don't seem to quote the model numbers. My concern is that it is one of the "classic" range which I am pretty sure are not inverter driven. What more can you tell us? Power rating etc? have you seen the installation manual? Do you have any pictures? I would want to know WHY it is being replaced.

We have long since determined it is only socks and towels that need to be tumbled to pass the "fluffy" test, but they do not need to come out bone dry, slightly damp and finish off on the pulley is okay. Nothing else goes in the dryer.

It's not normally a planning issue. Building control however WILL be interested.

I have some of the stuff in my "AV / network" cupboard on a simple timer so things like the sky box (and other 2 satellite receivers) and printer are off between midnight and 4PM next day. Just the hifi system and BB router on all the time in there. The Sky box is a huge consumer of power, when that is on, the cupboard really warms up inside. Barely any noticable heat from anything else. Perhaps one day I will seek out a freesat box that consumes very little power but there are a few unique features that still make using an old Sky HD box attractive.