ProDave

It is the inverter that sets the maximum generation. My inverter is rated at 4kW but with the output current limited to 16A. This caused the DNO to initially reject my application, saying it was over the limit for automatic approval, that was resp;ved when I sent them the data sheet stating the current limit.

You can buy (but hardly off the shelf, think bespoke) G99 or G100 relays. But these only limit the export to the maximum the DNO will allow. https://www.g59projects.co.uk/g100-export-limitation/ You would probably have to build / have built for you, some custom controls to monitor export and if too much shut down one or more inverter. I dump my excess power to the immersion heater and a small panel heater if the export is more than the immersion can soak up on it's own. When it gets too hot to tollerate any more heat in the house, I might put that heater in the garage out of spite, rather than export it for nothing.

At that size you will need permission from DNO (unless it is 3 phase) Fit battery storage. then you only have to think about shutting down an inverter if the batteries are fully charged.

I hate buying timber. It does not matter if you go to the timber merchant yourself and pick out the straightest, nicest lengths, it WILL still warp when you take it somewhere else. To try and prevent that you can store it all on a flat surface with heavy objects on it to hold it straight and true. That just delays it's tendancy to warp a bit longer.

It is a private track to access your house. No different to if it were a bare plot and you were proposing a new house and a new track. Surely all that highways are interested in, is that the junction where your private track meets the public road has sufficient visibility and meets their access requirements (that may nor may not mean some alterations to what you have) You only have to build the track to highways standard and tar it if it serves more than 4 houses. I like this old map site because you can compare how different editions of a map portray the same area https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=5&lat=56.00000&lon=-4.00000&layers=1&right=BingHyb

Air will not make the valve stick. The dirty black water suggests there is no inhibitor and everything is rusty as hell and corroded as hell.

If you can persuade the zone valve to actually turn, with a spanner on the flat of the actuator and once turning give it plenty of exercise until free, then just change the actuator head if it really is burned out. What makes you think it is burned out? You can't always test the Honeywell heads off the valve base as they have a habit of the gears disengaging and them going twang, which may make you think it is faulty when it is not. So get that valve body turning and try the actuator head on. If the only issue with the "bypass" valve is it is leaking, put a bucket under it.

Why do you want to do anything other than fix it? Why change things? The "bypass valve" is an ordinary service isolator. Easy to just get a new one and replace it. BUT is should be an automatic bypass valve. That only opens when you get a certain water pressure, typically when the pump starts but in the time before the motorised valves actually open. Likewise that's a Honeywell 2 port valve. An air lock would not physically stick the valve, it is broken. So replace it with another. If you want to do cheap, the cheaper Tower ones are pretty much a copy of the Honeywell. And since you will just be changing two things like for like, there is really no plumbing to alter. However you will be re using the olives on the pipes, so give each a few wraps of ptfe tape to increase the chance of them re sealing. Just replacing the broken bits will make the system operate as it should and save you having to bodge the wiring to frig it. Do take care to do a drawing or photograph the wiring of the old zone valve before you remove it and make sure the new one connects exactly the same. Possibly the hardest part of this will be finding enough slack in the pipe work to pull the pipes apart a little to get the old valves out and the new ones in.

Guess which one I would buy if they were both on the market?

Batteries are not interchangable between makes (at least not without making an adaptor of some sort) Batteries are also the weak link, so the thought of having 2 batteries and say 5 power tools is a recipe for never finding a charged battery when you need it, and short battery life as they will be hammered.

That's an interesting project. so do you have the front of the house and the front garden, and your adjoined house has the back of the house and the back garden?

When I had my water connection, SW gave a price initially not including the road crossing. I then asked for an "all works" quote, and the price went up £1000 for the road crossing of a 3M wide single track road, hardly any traffic so no traffic management needed. That was way cheaper than I could get anyone else to do the road crossing for so I chose that option. It was not SW that did it, they instead appointed a local contractor and they guys were great and helped me install a duct for other stuff in the trench before they filled it.

Where has the lintel gone? the brickwork is sagging with only the actual window holding it up. Yes that will be an issue probably blown out of all proportion by a surveyor.

I presume a retaining wall is going in there? I would want it properly tanked with a drain out at the low end.

Could you divert it to the left of the house, around the low side? I would sleep easier with that.

My door to the garage is as above. I have several internal doors on wide load bearing structural walls and I had to make my own door liners, doubly difficult because they are Oak.

A picture would be interesing. I would be worried about a stream higher then the house. Where do you think it will all go when it floods? I am glad our burn is lower than the house with the ground dropping off down the road so it has plenty of places to flood to.

I don't know what the English regs say, but in Scotland you need a "circulation space" of either a 1500mm diameter circle or a 1400mm by 1800mm elipse. Which would mean you need 1.4M between your units and island. I suspect our Island may go for a little walk after completion sign off........

Yes we have a burn running right through our garden. We love it as a feature. Why would you want to line that with concrete? I would not. I assume you are in England? Check with the EA what you are allowed to do. Here in Scotland you need permission from SEPA to culvert part of a watercourse and they will usually only allow part of it to be culverted for a reason, e.g to create access. They won't normally allow it to be culverted just for "land gain"

@Jeremy Harris made a simple device to squirt some powder in from a distance. My own method was wait until disk when activity is low, go and empty a can of RAID into the hole, then RUN. I take no responsibility if you follow that method.

My feeling is that kitchen, in that position, with the pocked dividing doors, is simply too small to support an island. That proposed design would fail Scottish building regs (would not meet the required circulation space) I don't see any way to make it big enough for an island unit.

Yes we are one like that. UFH downstairs and in the bathrooms upstairs. I installed cables for panel heater points in each bedroom and they remain unconnected and not needed.

They WILL want to see all pipework in place and confirm somehow that it is buried to the required depth. For what I had done I showed them photos of the trenches with the pipe in the bottom and a tape measure. And they wanted to see all the double check valves. Just saying that it is less grief is you do the bare minimum, pipe from toby to your stand pipe and no more. Then add the rest later.

To save yourself a lot of grief. Only install a single site stand pipe close to the SW boundary box and get your connection made to that. THEN after you have your connection, install the rest of your pipe work. Sometimes you can buy the same sort of boundary boxes cheap on ebay. I bought 3 of them. One feeds the site stand pipe, one feeds the static caravan and one feeds the house.

I have drawers and drawers of them, just about every value going, and capacitors and transistors etc etc etc.