ProDave

Sheds / garages will never be rodent proof. One year I filled the lawnmower tank for the first time only to watch it all drain onto the floor. A mouse had eaten through the petrol hose from the tank.

No the external air only enters the stove, making the stove room sealed.

A stove under I think 4kW does not NEED an air intake according to building regs. I would however recommend buying a stove that has a ducted air intake. Our stove at 4.5kW has both it's primary and secondary air intake via a duct. In my case that duct draws the air from the ventilated space under the suspended floor. When the stove is not in use it does not create a draught and makes little change to the air tightness.

I use MDPE for outside taps. The building site standpipe never gets turned off and survives Highland winter freezing without issue.

Not at all a problem. Tapers have to deal with square edge to square edge on a large ceiling.

This "saves energy" claim has been investigated at least twice by the ASA. You will now note the footnote now to the smart meter advertising that you can only save energy by monitoring your energy usage and making changes to what you use. But lets be clear about that, it is NOT the smart meter that enables that, it is the energy display gizmo, and as already noted you do NOT need a smart meter to have one of those.

No, because almost certainly the slightly less than half a board offcut would be just right to do the vertical bit of wall up to the sloping ceiling. I was surprised just how little waste there was when I boarded my house. My philosophy was every offcut was stood up or laid down so you could clearly see it, and I was constantly looking for places where an offcut would work nicely and get used up. All I ended up with as waste really was little slivers of board where such offcuts were trimmed a little more to make them fit their destination. In many cases if I needed an offcut to finish a run and I didn not have one, I would not cut it from a fresh board, but leave it out, and wait until a suitable piece became available.

You need solar PV. Washing day here and the sun is shining.

So fit the infill. But a note to anyone else doing this, put the boards upright and cut to length so no infill bit needed.

But with a standard meter you send a monthly reading or they estimate it. the days or regular meter readings are long gone. Now you have a statutory meter reading every 2 years. I assume even smart meters get that as it's as much about safety and detecting fraud than getting an accurate reading.

I thought smart meters were meant to put you in control and feed you all the information you need? Yours has done the opposite, you now have no idea how much you use or what it costs. Do you ever look at the bills or just let them take their monthly amount without checking it?

On the point of all the newts and their bugs. I have always believed we need exposure to bugs in small quantities to give us immunity. Remember the old jokes about plumbers never get colds and bugs because they spend so much time with their arm down someone's U bend they are immune to every bug on the planet? In this new world of social distancing, disinfecting and copious hand washing, are the present children growing up going to lack exposure to bugs and grow up with much less immunity to bugs?

I take it you have fitted a 1200mm wide board on it's side and the length of the sloping part is 1235mm hence the gap? If so i would have put the boards vertical and cut to the exact length.

The bypass won't stop the smoke. That just stops the exhaust air from going through the heat exchanger.

Re downpipes. I used110mm 110mm hoppers with a grill over them and the downpipe ending just above them. the grill catches any leaves that come down the downpipe. I dod not like the idea of a direct connection.

Reminds me of a pub down south. Sally Pussey Inn. I think there were a few alternative names for it.

I can add lots of other benefits to a well sealed house. You just don't get any bugs in. The only time we ever get spiders in the house for instance is when someone opens a window. Otherwise there is no way in. They don't even seem to be able to get in through the MVHR, the gauze over the external vents, and filters seem to stop that.

I would say the biggest design benefit with a room in roof design, is to design the roof as a warm vaulted roof hung from a ridge beam. This makes the entire internal space part of the heated envelope of the house and it really really easy to detail properly and make it air tight and ensure the insulation works. The biggest issue I keep on seeing (like the house I mentioned above) is those that still build a room in roof design with attic trusses, and then try and insulate only the actual room spaces. You end up with cold eaves spaces that must be ventilated and a very fiddly detail to insulate the room space properly. In fact I don't think I have ever seen that type of roof construction insulated and sealed in a manner that I would be happy with.

I dispute that "good" has to be "expensive" I am well on the way to completing our near passive house standard new build for £1000 per square metre, which by any measure is the lower end of building costs that you can achieve. Yes that low cost has been achieved by me doing a lot of the work but I don't believe material costs are that significant. Yes we have spent more on insulation because there is more of it, and yes we paid for good triple glazed windows. Those are probably the only tangible "extra" costs. The MVHR system was a cheap (but good) unit bought from ebay. The heat pump was another ebay bargain and since you need some form of heating, I doubt you would have got anything else, e.g a conventional boiler any cheaper. The main thing that differentiates a good house (in energy terms) from a poor one, is attention to detail, to make sure the insulation is fitted properly and the building is made air tight and most importantly no air path to bypass your insulation. That latter point was brought home to me earlier this year when I completed the wiring on a budget self build. I was staggered at just how badly it was put together, particularly the room in roof upper floor. Plenty of insulation went into the building, but it was so appallingly fitted that most of it is completely useless with air paths bypassing much of the insulation.

Hi and welcome to the forum. Please go and start a thread about the mixergy tank. I think we have discussed the theory but it will be good to hear from a real user of the product.

I very much doubt that wall is just built on the compacted hardcore, I bet you will find it extends down to some footings. You will need to discuss the foundations for the new wall with your BCO.

I suggested a spare duct "just in case" It is trivial to install one at build time, a HUGE job if you find you need one later. In my case the electricity meter is remote and when you come to fitting a solar PV diverter, you need a connection from the meter to the solar PV diverter. I used a wired connection using a length of 6 pair armoured BT phone cable (just because I had it) but you can also now buy solar PV diverters that uses a wireless connection. But I would still install a spare duct just in case because it is so easy and cheap to do at build time.

Taper imho. Otherwise you get that thing I hate about tape and fill. You put a corner bead on, and that forces the corner to be proud of the rest of the wall. That's why I prefer a proper skim to tape and fill.

My thought on UFH Don't get hung up on a particular make, mine is all bits and bobs of different makes put together by me. Instead look at the quality of the individual components. For pumps as already mentioned Wilo every time now. I swapped both of mine for Wilo because they are so much quieter than any other make I have tried even Grundfoss. Actuators. The things that screw onto the manifolds to turn the zones on and off. In theory they are all the same. Wrong. Avoid the ones where the bit that screws onto the manifold is plastic. I have seen no end of those where the plastic bit breaks or never works properly in the first place. Instead choose the ones that have a metal threaded collar that screws onto the manifold. Very much better. It is questionable if you actually need heat in a hall. It is certainly a waste of time putting an UFH zone on a landing. At our previous house the hall and landing zones never came on. In this house I just did not bother wasting pipe etc for them.

My BIL has a 100 year old low set Queenslander that is built pretty much like a shed. Because of the warm climate, a lot of the rooms have no insulation at all, and on the inside you see the frame, and the inside of the cladding!!!!! It would not work here. I think termites are a bigger threat to wooden buildings there than the weather and rot. If this house with the 89mm frame needs 160mm of insulation on the inside it is going to make fitting out tricky, lots of long fixings through the insulation into the frame. I would avoid.