ProDave

So, if you pushed the stairs over to be against the wall where the grandfather clock is, how much headroom would you have? i.e. how far short of meeting regs would it be?

Can we see a picture looking up the stairs so we see the roof structure that is causing the problem?

There are a surprising number of houses up here still burning coal on an open fire. The coal delivery lorries are always out and about at this time of year. We bought a few bags when we were in the caravan for a winter, I think most of what they sell came from Columbia since we don't mine our own any more. Surely this will spell the end for the nonsense that is Drax?

But it can't be upside down. The top port has the large flat flange to connect to the pump. It cant be on backwards side to side either otherwise the adjusting knob would be facing the wall. Both the 5 port manifold downstairs, which works perfectly, and the 2 port manifold upstairs that has the problem, are assembles the same. I may not need to do anything, as I am relying on the ASHP to regulate the temperature not the blending valve, so if I just leave the blending valve set to max all will be well. But I like to understand what is wrong and how?

Surely the architect originally would have done detailed section drawings to show the original staircase design worked and complied. did he do this? If so do the drawings show compliance? or has the building been built in some way different to the plans causing the non compliance? What are you hoping to achieve? someone to find a way for the original design to comply with whatever alterations to the building are necessary? Most of us would just be happy that BC are going to sign it off and that would be the end of it. Pictures might help understand what aspect of the stairs is "wrong"

This is the little UFH manifold upstairs, it just feeds the bathroom and en-suite. It's a smaller version of this one, just two ports (I will take a picture of the actual manifold tomorrow and post it) The odd behaviour is as follows: for some time I have been less than satisfied with the UFH performance in the bathroom. the manifiold seemed to work okay when installed. It is fitted in what will be the en-suite bathroom, but for some time that has just been a dumping ground for stuff in storage and the manifold has been somewhat hard to access. But now I am clearing that room to work on it, I noticed the following: I noticed the flow rate on the flow meter was very low. I removed the actuator thinking that may be at fault (no actuator the pin pushed up and it defaults to full flow) Nope, the flow was still very low. I then found by chance, if I turned the set temperature on the mixing valve up to full, then normal flow was resumed. To me that sounds like the blending valve is not working correctly. I thought water should always flow around the UFH loops, and the blending valve would let more hot in from the flow pipe when needed to maintain the set temperature. So why if I had the temperature set low, do I get very little flow around the UFH loops? The larger version of this manifold downstairs does not exhibit this behaviour. but I can't see how I could have assembled the manifold incorrectly?

I would start with a larger, or perhaps second radiator in the living room.

I found the local charity shops less "helpful" For a start they won't take anything electrical as they don't have anyone to PAT test it so they can sell it. And we tried to give them a good leather sofa, but they van driver that came to collect it decided it was not perfect so they would not take it. So that one we put on Gumtree and sold it instead. Mind you we had to deliver it into a ground floor flat. The amount of pushing and shoving needed to get it in, I would not want to try and get it out of that flat again.

It caught me out too when in a previous house I wanted to swap a defective stopcock. The trouble was the outside stopcock in the street shut off my house and the neighbour. "Don't worry" I told them, "it will only be off for 10 minutes" I ended up disabling and sealing the leak in the old stopcock and fitting my new one above it.

We get regular sunshine. In 20 minute bursts, before it reverts to "normal" which means a blizzard where the snow does not settle because the wind stops it reaching the ground and it just wizzez by horizontally. I now have about 4 full days of outside work queueing up for that elusive dry and calm day.

Don't throw them away. You might find them uncomfortable but layzeeboy is a well regarded and expensive make. Offer them for free on your local freecycle and someone will be happy to come and collect them.

I would find 2.4M to be just too narrow. That will be quite a squeeze for many cars and will prohibit a lot of "normal" things that people might want like a caravan for instance. Rather than just knock through, can you not completely remove the garage and it's walls?

One thing that struck me when thinking about mine, is when the ASHP is running, there are a total of 4 circulating pumps running, Assuming 50w per pump, that's 200w of power consumed, which over a day of heating is 2.8kWh of electricity for next to no useful heat input to the house. That is s surprisingly high percentage of my total heating usage, so is a good argument for keeping the time it is used down as much as possible.

The only way to insulate a floor is dig it up and re lay from a lower starting point to give room to add insulation, or build up insulation on top but that will reduce the room height, which might already be low on an old cottage. If digging down beware you don't undermine the possibly very shallow wall foundations. Re the roof, if overboarding with wood fibre sarking, do it properly and make it a proper warm roof, with the air tight / vapour control layer on the under side of the rafters so making the whole loft space inside the heated envelope. This is one detail you can easily get right when re roofing. It completely avoids the need to ventilate the loft space and will eliminate the source of so many draughts.

If it's running constantly now, it won't cope when you get a really cold spell. I guess that's what the weather compensation is supposed to do by increasing the flow temperature as it gets colder. I have mine set to only run in the daytime as even the gentle hum of the UFH manifold pumps I find annoying at night.

Mine is only 12mm thick. That's because I was trying to make the floor make up as thin as possible so have possibly under sized joists but lots of them, about 300mm apart, and wanted a thin floor as well. I just went to the BM and looked at all they had and chose the one that had a nice finish to the surface that I thought would sand and varnish okay. Fixed down with countersunk screws, as In I drilled a hole and countersunk the top with a counterskink bit before fitting the screw.

Make the missing doorway from the hall to the kitchen. Turn the unwanted downstairs bedroom into the utility. downstairs bathroom accessed from that. Convert a kitchen window opening to a new back door. Can the large bedroom be divided to make an en-suite?

I did mine with good quality plywood and then just sanded and varnished it.

It looks a better prospect from the front than it does from the back. First thing that springs to mind is parking. Both houses need off road parking, how do you propose to fit that in? You could design a house where all bedrooms looked out to the front or side and only say a landing and a bathroom looked out to the back with obscured glass to counter the overlooking argument. The new house really won't have much garden to the rear, so design it almost to ignore that and concentrate on it utilising the side garden as it's main garden area. In many ways this is a similar plot to a previous semi detached house we had. I did for some time think about trying to get planning for a second house, but it would have meant both having a tiny garden, having a very awkward shared parking area, and the new house in any case would have been very small. In the end we decided a better use of the plot was an extension that almost doubled the size of the house, but kept it as one house.

As a compromise, keep that gap between the bedrooms as outside space, but span the roof over it, giving a much more conventional roof design and overall appearance and making that gap a covered outside space.

Like electric heaters, all 8.5kW showers will heat the same volume of water to the same temperature as any other. So choice comes down to expected reliability, appearance and features. I personally like Triton, because they are cheap, easy to fit, and generally reliable. And that reliability I am sure is because they don't have any complicated controls.

A few others within our plot: Become Happier Correctly Tonight Landlady Builds Confirms Conspired Microfilm

"Deflate Member Wriggled" is in the middle of my entrance!!!!

Utilities were happy to connect us as "land adjacent to (next doors house name)"

If in doubt drill smaller and try it. Plug won't go in, open up to next size.