ProDave

But before you finished it he was grown up and married and left home?

The draft of the 1st amendment to the 18th edition is out for review. Just 15 pages updating the requirements for EV charge points. https://electrical.theiet.org/media/2332/amendment1_read-only_final.pdf I hope the situation matures soon. By the time I buy an EV I expect to be able to plug it into ANY public charge point anywhere, and to be able to charge it at home under a regime that I dictate that will be either time of use or based on solar PV generation. Those don't sound like particularly strange requirements if we are to have better controlled use of available grid power, but I see no sign that it is possible. At the moment there is a 4PM to 7PM shortage of power. How many EV's will be arriving home at say 5PM and plugging in the chargers just when they are not wanted, and with no easy timer function, most won't be bothered to say "oh I'll go out at 9PM and plug it in"

It's crying out for a fireman's pole. There was a Grand designs where they built a tardis in the corner of the boys bedroom and inside it was a fireman's pole down to his play room below.

So we need a trading standards input to force them to recall the cars and make them comply? Imagine if they were non compliant with some other motoring standard that actually made them unsafe? I bet they would act then. Nothing I hear particularly encourages me to get an EV at the moment. I just know it will come with a certain amount of unnecessary grief.

I thought EV chargers and systems were still in the Betamax / VHS tussle, but now I think they are still at the super 8 cine film stage with "some way to go"

Isn't there some control protocol tat you previously used to control the charging of your previous car, rather than turning on and off the mains supply?

So are you saying someone built the downstairs extension without joining it to the rest of the house and you are putting in a staircase in the glass box to join the two together?

Don't PayPal for a "collect in person" item. Or more a case as a seller, don't accept PayPal payment for a collect in person item. In the event of a dispute PayPal will side with the buyer if no proof of delivery exists. Sometimes scammers use this, pay for an item with PayPal, go and collect it, then wait a few days and claim it was not delivered and get their money back.

I have a lot of sympathy with the seller. Previously when selling cars you get plenty of people who say they can come tomorrow and never turn up. I am not going to turn away potential buyers, it sells to the first one to turn up with cash. I would probably have explained that to you and said phone when you are ready to set out, and if it's still available I won't sell it during the time it takes you to get there.

Storage heaters should work with 7 hours charge, but they will be running out of stored heat by the end of the day. They were pretty rubbish in my 1930's house as that leaked heat like it was going out of fashion and most evenings in winter I needed to top up the heat somehow in the evening. You can't turn a storage heater on outside it's night charge. so you top the heat up with a convection heater, or something else.

How can a HP be set up so wrong to make such a high bill? There is no day to day user input to mine. It works on a conventional boiler time clock and room thermostats. It puts just enough heat into the house to maintain it at 20 degrees. Or are you meaning it was set up wrong by the installer? No doubt if I set mine to something silly to run at 50 degrees all the time it would cost more. Or if it was set up to work with high temperature radiators then it would not work very well. But that is not a case of "not knowing how to use it" rather a case of the installer making an error.

There is something VERY wrong when they are on a tariff that gives the off peak rate as 15.72p or more with the peak rate even higher. I pay 14.183p per unit 24/7 with Octopus. they would all be better off ditching the off peak and just going for a single rate. The "solution" to this must surely be dump the economy 2000 and go to a normal E10 or E7 so they can switch suppliers Is this somethging the tenants could do on their own or would they need permission from the landlord?

When were they last serviced? in particular the expansion vessels and pressure relief valves?

The main thing to check is do the readings given on your bills reflect the readings on YOUR meter? It is surprising how many people never read their meter and rely on estimated bills.

I a previous buy to let we had, I found between tenants that the peak and off peak readings were reversed on the bill. It took months to sort it out. I had two visits from a meter reader both agreed the readings were transposed and submitted the correct readings, but nothing changed on the bills. It took lots and lots of arguing to get that sorted. It was further complicated as they had to contact previous tenants to correct their past bills.

Ask your DNO for their specification. It's normally white or black plastic with a bend formed at the bottom, and known as a "hockey stick" due to it's shape. https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/MBHSW.html

Personally I would just leave the existing fibreglass, saves the awful job of removing and disposing of it, and just top up with earthwool on top of it. Stop the new top layer just short of the eaves for the reasons mentioned.

Can someone clarify something. Why do you need to apply to do something under permitted development? I thought the whole point was you could just do it? Am I wrong?

My take is I installed a fair few cat5 cables just in case. They remain labelled but unterminated. When I find a use for them I will terminate the ends. So far ONE is in use with one more I have a foreseeable use for.

A while back I got a call from out tenants in the B&B. they had a foreign guest staying with an EV who produced it's Granny charger wanting to plug it in. Only trouble was it had a Schuko plug on it. So I had to make a hasty adaptor. What puzzled me was this charger, with a moulded on Schuko plug which has a rating of 16A, claimed to be a 7kW charger. I guess that will be "hifi watts" then?

Anything to hand, so for me it was either Stixall, or Sticks Like Sh*t

Isn't this the tariff that @newhome has and complains about? It was something specific to one supplier and a derivative of the former Total control" system. You can change supplier but you must first change to ordinary economy 10 with a bit of rewiring of the consumer units. But then not that many suppliers do economy 10. To use Economy 10 properly you want a storage boiler. These are usually little more than a very large thermal store with three 3KW immersion heater elements. When you look at the economy 10 cheap rate periods you get 3 bursts of cheap rate including an afternoon cheap period so you don't need to be storing heat for particularly long before using it. The controls should have been set up so it only heats the tank on the cheap rate periods. The big problem though is with any off peak tariff the peak rate electricity is more than most of us pay so that won't help the bills. I know of one of these boilers here, heating a small cottage used for holiday lets. Even though the house is small, she constantly complains how much it costs to heat. As I say, this is just the beginning of the issues many many people will have if they have to heat with non fossil fuels. I am still of the opinion that heat pumps are the only sensible solution as they effectively bring electric heating costs down to comparable levels to gas, but they cost more than this sort of electric boiler and will usually mean some drastic changes to how the heat is distributed, at the very least changing to high capacity / low temperature radiators. EDIT: Looking at the picture above, I am willing to bet there was a blown air central storage heater system in that cupboard before, the old Electricair system. They were the standard heating in several of the council estates in the town around here, and quite a few are still there and working. Parts are still available for them so they can be maintained, though it was one hell of a job stripping one down enough to change the main fan motor several years ago, It would probably have been better for the tenants to just keep those and maintain them.

I think you are over thinking the family room. I prefer layout 1. the point is, you have the separate lounge for when you want to be away from the kitchen. That lounge imho wants a much bigger window in the end wall. On another point, I would move your stairs so they are more in the middle of the right hand wing. At the moment you arrive at the top of the stairs with a long corridor. I would want to arrive at a central staircase with a bedroom either side of the stairs. It would also separate the downstairs bedroom from the snug.

The poor UK housing stock and how to heat it, is one of the many elephants in the MMGW room. It is all very well many of us on here being smug our new houses are energy efficient and designed form the outset to use an ASHP properly and are working very well. But quite what to do with the millions of Victorian houses etc and how to heat them, and who will pay for all the upgrades is another matter. I have never understood electric boilers. If you are going to heat with direct electricity, then what's wrong with panel heaters or resistance UFH? Why are all these council tenants locked into an expensive electric tariff? Does a council tenancy overrule the free market?

And if the design of that cabin puts internal walls within that span, that are helping tp support the roof then that puts extra load on the floor joists to take account of.