ProDave

Hi and welcome A garden room that size will need building regs approval so the No 1 thing is they are happy with any proposed foundations.

Here is a link to the manual https://www.thefloorheatingwarehouse.co.uk/acatalog/Ecodan_Heatpump_PUHZ.pdf The 11.2kW and 14kW are double fan units. If you can get away with 8.5kW that is single fan

A random search reveals this price list for the Ecodan heat pumps and cylinders https://www.thefloorheatingwarehouse.co.uk/acatalog/Mitsubishi-Ecodan-Standard-Cylinder-with-Heatpump-Packages.html For instance an 11.2kW heat pump and 300L cylinder costs £5169. Lets assume that excludes VAT but you will get the VAT back. Say it costs £1000 to employ a plumber and an electrician to install it. That's a total of £6169 That is almost half the price of your "just over £12K" for an MCS install of a 9kW LG plus cylinder. Now, it you think you are likely to get more than £6K back in RHI payments by going for the MCS install then you might consider that worthwhile. If as I suspect the RHI payments will be less (they are supposed to be based on energy usage which will be low for a passive house standard building) then you might not consider paying that packaged price represents good value.

I would not bother separating the entrance from the hall. That is very similar to what we have and it works well just as one space. Again personal preference.

My point is you really have to do the sums. MCS install and claim RHI or just buy the kit as cheap as possible and pay a plumber and electrician to fit it with no RHI. Too many times it seems all or most of the RHI payments just end up in the pocket of the MCS installer, which was not the aim of the scheme. A couple of years back now my plumber friend paid £10K to have the 11kW Ecodan ASHP and tank installed by an MCS installer. So the quoted price here seems way over the top. But quite why my plumber friend did not just install his own beats me. I would have wired it, I was wiring the rest of the house. As it happens I had to go back and alter what they had done as they were not using the call for heat from the UFH manifold.

Talk to your BC My thoughts are protect the "escape corridor" by making it a fire proof enclosure, i.e. fire rated ceilings below, fire rated wall to landing etc. And hang a hammer on a chain next to the gable window so if all else fails you can get out.

I have a feeling there will be fire issues with the loft staircase remote from the main staircase. Someone more up to date with regs will be along shortly I am sure. Personally I would have all the bedrooms downstairs, i.e swap your upstairs master bedroom for the downstairs living room. I just feel you will never go down to the downstairs living room unless you have a really good reason to do so.

You will get the Mitsubishi Ecodan and matching tank for less. That's a better more well known unit as well. Nearly 4K for installation confirms my suspicion of MCS companies over charging. There is at VERY most 1 man week of labour @£200 per day that's an absolute max of £1000 almost certainly less. ask yourself where the other nearly £3K is going and what it is for?

Yes but as in so many other things, it COMPLETELY misses the small guest houses that are below the VAT threshold so it makes NO difference to them (other than people will expect the rates to be reduced) and only helps the larger establisments who are part of a large chain and probably less likely to need the help.

Can you take a dead square on picture? or even from slightly above? It looked as though the red comes out of the left hand fuse and the right out of the right hand fuse but now I am not sure.

Well that was a damp squib. The only VAT you are going to save any time soon is accommodation and meals down to 5% vat for a limited time.

Single phase with an old twin fuse head. Let's HOPE the neutral fuse holder has a solid link and only the line fuse holder has a real fuse.

Yes another on who did not know what it is. I suspect it is a regional word? Having seen a picture on the net. it's what we up here would call a "Quarry dust finish" It seems to work very well for footpaths, but I wonder how it would stand up to regular vehicle use on a slope? I suspect it might end up somewhat polished?

I charged at about 2A for half an hour so not much. assuming that 2A is split equally between the 7 parallel cells that 285mA per cell so should be a safe rate to charge at. This first attempt was just establishing a principle that they could revived from dead. So each cell has an internal management system? I did not know that.

Just to clarify all cells were reading 0V so well and truly flat as can be,. The one parallel pack I have tried so far I was charging from a constant current / voltage bench power suoply. After sitting all night that pack is still holding 3.2V. I will try later ans see if I can get that to say 4V and then repeat on each pack in turn. No BMS. That quite surprised me as I always heard that was vital with lithium cells. I guess cheap Chinesium strikes again? I guess the only safeguards are the charger will have a maximum voltage at which it cuts off.

Today I was helping a friend with her e-bike. Short story, 3 years ago "the battery died" Only recently did she get a new battery pack and charger. My first job was to connect that and working (connections slightly different) I brought the old battery home so have a look at. Initially with a view to replacing the cells. However on investigation it is actually the charger that has failed. The battery was no doubt run until it was flat, then left 3 years. It appeared to be completely dead. The battery pack is made up of 1865 lithium cells. Banks of 7 cells in parallel and then 12 of these banks in series. Initially trying to charge it as one stack resulted in some stacks starting to accept a charge while others not. It quickly dawned on me that was not going to work well. So I did a quick trial on one parallel stack. I put it on charge for a few minutes on a current limited power supply and it came up to a terminal voltage of about 3.6 volts. I don't know if that is normal, a quick search suggested it should be more like 4.2V. I don't know if it would come up further if I just left it on charge. Basically I am asking is this a lost cause? Or is it actually possible to get totally flat lithium cells to accept a charge again and have any useful capacity? If so I take it I am on the right lines to put a known charge into each stack individually before attempting to charge them as one string? P.S Some things about this e-bike battery system astonished and frankly shocked me. The DC input connector from the charger to the battery pack is a tv aerial plug. and if that is not bad enough, the DC output plug is a standard IEC (kettle) plug. If you were daft enough, there is absolutely nothing stopping you plugging an IEC mains lead with a 13A plug on it, straight into the battery pack

They usually take some of the weight. And they will hide the pipes, which is what they were designed to do,

Micro inverters are a good solution but expensive. The one thing i would not recommend is one big inverter in a roof space, they can get very hot and shorten their life. Decide what you may want and make a decision.

I would put 3 pairs of DC solar PV cable from the roof to the plant room. Probably 6mm, you buy it as red and black, so three of each kept as pairs so you know which is which. And (if the CU is not in the plant room) a spare feed from the CU to the plant room for the inverter. Probably a 5 core 2.5 or 4mm to cater for a 3 phase inverter.

A treatment plant does not cost much more than a septic tank, so why would you want to save that small amount? Anyone still using a septic tank and discharging to a watercourse should have upgraded it to a septic tank by the start of the year. I know at least 2 around here that have not.

I only have boarded up window holes in my sun room. Would I qualify for a grant to buy the 3G windows?

That should be possible. The LDC does not define ownership. In my very first house I wanted to move the fence, I ended up doing a joint application with some of the neighbours under one application for one fee, and then 4 of us all moved our fences together.

Presume it was just the motor gone? Can you not get a new motor of the right spec and use it with the original fan blade?

You would need to have the water tested. You should be able to collect a sample as it is without any expense. The results of the test will tell you what treatment is necessary. What does a sample look like if collected and allowed to settle? is it clear or coloured? is there any sediment or smell? I come across lots of private water schemes here, from the dark brown peaty ones, the dubious ones from surface streams with sheep grazing the land, to the downright hard borehole water we get here. One local farm pumps water a long way up a hill with a hydraulic ram, so no power other than the flow of the water. It arrives as a trickle into an underground holding tank from where it is pumped into an accumulator. He seems to be drinking that with no treatment at all. As it only arrives as a trickle, there can't be much overflow or throughput. The only issue with water not originating on your land, is what might happen in the future. the farm mentioned above only installed the hydraulic ram pump system a few years ago. He used to get water from a spring up the hill. but that spring "went bad" when the forrest above was clear felled.

Interesting footnote. in 2003 when we bought our first plot up here, we got a very cheap connection fee, because SSE said there was a "spare" cable in an adjacent plot, that had been paid for by that plot's owner but never connected (because that plot had not been actually built on) When they came to connect our plots (there were two adjacent plots expecting to join onto this cable) they could not find it. So at their own expense, SSE ran a new cable down the road from the substation. Fast forward to 2015, we now owned that unbuilt plot with the missing cable. I was aware of the story of this missing cable so was careful when digging. I did in fact uncover a cable, but it looked somewhat small, but I called SSE to look. they cut into it to find it was a multicore cable but not twisted pair and not a telecoms cable. I uncovered and severed that unknown multicore cable again on a different part of the plot. Nobody complained their telephone stopped working. So to summarise, a cable that should have been there was never found. And a cable that nobody knew anything about was found. My best guess is our site was part of a former saw mill. We uncovered a load of buried bricks and broken roof tiles. I suspect this mystery cable could have been an old private telecoms link from a site hut where we are, which was the log store area, to the actual saw mill at the top of the road.