ProDave

There will likely be an inspection chamber in the front garden where it changes direction. Lift the lid on that and you should be able to find out exactly where it is and how deep, and the exact direction it runs, those plans are not always entirely accurate.

Can you show a picture of the ends where it splits and where it goes into the consumer unit, and a picture of the consumer unit with the lid off if you are happy doing that. Is there just ONE cable or a pair of near identical cables?

Ridge tiles off and more lead flashing done properly. Whoever put that little square bit at the top is NOT a roofer.

That is common for old stone houses here, and you will note from the pictures the studwork is pegged to the stone wall in several places.

Ha Ha. I had that "discussion" with Scottish Water. THEIR meter box has a SINGLE check valve. My own boundary box that followed it has a SINGLE check valve. NEITHER are any good, not even both of them together. They would not connect me until they could see an additional in line DOUBLE check valve. Makes you wonder why they supply and fit something that is not fit for their own requirements.

The very left hand item in your diagram is an isolating valve and double check valve (non return valve) that will stop back flow. That is a requirement for any new house now. with or without accumulator or anything else.

A heat only aka system boiler gets it's call for heat usually from a wiring centre and one or more motorised valves and a programmer. There will usually be a cylinder thermostat and a programmer and possibly a room thermostat somewhere as well. A smart thermostat would go in place of or as well as the standard programmer usually. Whoever connects the smart thermostat needs to understand what controls are there and how to connect it to work with those.

And tomorrows Agile prices up to £1 per kWh for even longer than today.

It could also be a problem with the fan motor? Most heat pumps use a fan motor with a built in speed controller, and they have a fan rotation sensor output. If the fan is failing to run when set to high speed, it would not give the fan run signal and the heat pump would not start. but you would expect it to give an error message to say that is the reason.

You don't want it too hot under the floor. If the UFH temperature is lower that means it draws hot water out of your local calorifier more slowly, so should not affect the cost to you.

Ah so you buy hot water from a central source? that is usually fed into a local calorifier in your property and metered at that point. The temperature you mix it down to for your UFH would make no difference to the cost you are charged.

Can you post a picture of the Carel controller? Our village hall has a Dimplex Ground source heat pump. When the Carel controller for that packed up, it was £1500 for a replacement and then a lot of hassle getting it to work as there was very little information and in spite of being told it was configured correctly for our heat pump, it was not. I doubt yours has the same controller but I am interested to see what is there. Try and get a range og photos, close out showing the whole lot and close in showing the terminals etc.

Of course we are, and I can see storage smoothing out the peaks and troughs as demand changes throughout the day. But these winter anticyclones are not unusual, and can typically last 1 to 2 weeks. That is going to be a LOT of storage to last a week. Or make the price so high everyone turns their lights and heat pumps off and shivers in the dark......... In front of the backup WBS. This is why I just cannot see an electricity grid working without some other input, even gas power stations mothballed on care an maintenance ready to be fired up in such weather conditions.

This is what worries me about the future, when even more of our energy comes from wind, and a winter high pressure means not enough wind. And imagine a day when we are all forced to have a smart meter and forced to be on a variable tariff? EDIT: If I check tomorrows prices for my own region, Northern Scotland, it will be over £1 per kWh tomorrow afternoon. Kind of ironic the region with most of the windmills would pay the most.

OUCH. I guess that's because of the high pressure and lack of wind? Which is NOT unusual in winter.

Why is that a surprise? I set mine up to operate from a standard heating programmer, because that is what people understand. And why are you surprised to have 24/7 hot water? did you not have that with a boiler?

1) I like a garage roof being subservient to the main house roof, don't change that. Planners tend to like it as well. 2/3) Make a plant room / store room / work room above the garage access via a door from bedroom 3. you won't get a staircase from the garage, fire regulations. That is exactly what I have (only single garage)

I think the main point, is when the stove is not in use, an externally ducted stove will have little effect on the room, but a stove drawing it's air from the room, even when not lit, will by letting warm air up the chimney and drawing cold air into the room, particularly on a windy day.

If I was forced to remove this "formal area" and turn it back to grass, I would be making a point of using the grass area for exactly what I wanted to use the "formal area" for.

I liked to estimate jobs and charge by the hour of actual time spent. Plenty on this forum don't like that, thinking I would work slowly and drink lots of tea while ticking up my hourly bill. I differ in that charging by the hour you pay what the job takes. If I had to give a fixed price I would have to factor everything that could possibly slow the job down and charge more. Some seem to prefer that. I guess it is an ethics thing, if you think the guy is going to work diligently, or slack and do the job deliberately slowly.

....... And if such enforcement action is taken you will be appealing the planning decision.

My usual suggestion when starting was walk round together with a marker pen or pad of post it notes, and mark where you actually want sockets and switches. It rarely bore any relationship to what an architect had drawn on plans.

Post a site layout and how it sits with other houses and the village itself, suitably anonymised, and someone may give a stab at how likely anything might be.

I estimated labour at 1 hour per point. A "point" being a switch, a socket, a light fitting, a smoke alarm etc. For a new build that has always proved pretty accurate for me. It should be easy to count up the number of points in your house. Materials can be harder, anything from £2 for a basic white plastic switch for £10 for a stupid expensive "designer" one. So make sure they know exactly how many switches etc there will be and what sort you want.

I recall the one you mean, I believe he used Propane as the refrigerant gas? Was it not a ground source heat pump? A DIY air source would have to achieve some sort of defrost mechanism which would not usually be required for ground source.