ProDave

But he is talking of renting out his former home, not the self build with the CIL exemption. The question is does owning and letting another property affect the CIL exemption on the self build?

Who is offering you this combi replacement and why? Many of us here are happy with Telford stainless unvented cylinders.

I had had enough of being a landlord. Having previously owned 2 buy to let properties for a number of years, I have a low opinion of the average tenant and their inability to look after a property that they do not own, and the (usually avoidable) repairs needed at each change of tenants. That and the added raft of legislation a LL has to comply with, including paying to be registered as a LL (In Scotland) The final straw is end of no fault evictions, so if you let your house, then decide you do want to sell it, don't bank on being able to evict the tenant quickly, if they don't respond to you asking them to move out, then it has to go through court to get an eviction order etc. You might be fine with all that, we were not, we just wanted it sold but circumstances dictated what we had to do, but thankfully it all ended well.

It is NOT that simple. HMRC just take your original purchase price (which could be a LONG time ago) and your sale price, and draw a straight line and assume the gain has been linear throughout your ownership. Then the period of time it has not been your principle residence is charged pro rata CGT. the actual calculation to make it so is in true hmrc fashion a bit more complicated. The point of that being there could be a house price crash and you then sell it for less than it was worth at the start of letting it, but tough the hmrc calculation still shows an overall rise since you bought it donkeys years ago so you still pay on the "gain" while it is let. CGT allowance is now pitifully low so you almost certainly will be liable for some CGT and it has to be paid very swiftly after the sale, no more waiting until the end of the financial year as it used to be. We did this with our old house, as at the time we could not sell it, and like the OP we could see old house from our new house. It was not what we wanted to do but the best offer we had at the time and I would not want to do it again. BUT 6 years of rent from it before it sold did wonders for our final retirement position.

MCS is the root of the problem, I am sure many agree. Their heat loss calculations often come up with silly answers and result in an over large heat pump, particularly for new builds, and their pricing structure seems to end up with a very large figure, even after deducting the £7500 grant, leading many to conclude the only person benefiting from the grant is the installers who pocket a very large sum for the install. A TOTAL re think is needed. Zero VAT on heat pumps even to retail customers would be a good start. Get rid of the MCS monopoly. Allow anyone to install them, and then submit their invoice for parts, labour and material to receive some of the cost back as a grant. Make fitting of ASHP's permitted development under planning. Of course it won't happen, too many vested interests. Ask Norway how they do it? I bet they don't have anything like MCS? First thing is ensure from NOW (not some date in the future) all new builds have a heat pump for heating. Just write it into building regs. No heat pump, no completion certificate. No bureaucracy, simple. Or just make a properly calculated SAP EPC A mandatory for new builds. Same for at least some PV on the roof. Swapping out boilers for heat pumps is not proving value for money under the current schemes, concentrate on new builds first then find a better way to encourage heat pumps in existing houses.

Thanks,not seen that sort of offer before. All the kit and paperwork for free and you just pay your plumber and electrician to connect it all. Surely for a self builder that has to be the best way to avoid the sort of silly prices a lot are being quoted?

I would escalate this to a complaint to the CEO of Octopus. Have they explained what the problem is? I don't believe it is just because you are in rural Scotland though getting a smart meter to communicate may not be a trivial matter (but at least it would be a meter and you can get on)

And what price has MCS quoted you? Have you looked instead at just buying a heat pump and your plumber and electrician fitting it? Assuming it is a new house what does the SAP say about heating requirements?

Is this a light on the actuator or on the UFH control box? Post a picture of both the control box and the type of actuator you have so we know what you have please

What makes you think he is intending not to render the side facing you? Are you suggesting you will deny him access to your land to do that?

Not sure about England, but in Scotland the only way to do less than 6 months is a short term holiday let.

At what point in the construction did you tell the builder you wanted internal drain pipes?

The US president elect wants to "turn off the windmills" No I don't support that view but the next 4 years could be "interesting"

Yes. All very well for us to close our steel works and oil refineries as they are too polluting, but it's okay we will buy steel and fuel from others. but if everyone shuts down their steel works and refineries, then we are back to pre industrial. Which of course is what a lot of people want. But perhaps they might not want it so much when they see what that would really mean?

He is correct. A neighbour here had a massive tree, and Ash I think, that worried him when the wind blew as it would crush his house. but it was also close to and thus in danger of damaging an overhead power line. Electricity co came and looked and agreed they would cut the tree down for the safety of their line.

No this was the Douneray overhead power line. Originally only built with 3 conductors. It became dead when Dounereay closed as a generator decades ago. Within the last 10 years it was upgraded, the existing 3 conductors upgraded to larger and the missing 3 added, and new substations built to connect all these distributed wind farms. This tied into the Beauly to Denny new overhead line down through the Caringorms built at about the same time. And there is still not enough capacity, so somewhere, somehow, more are needed. Perhaps it is time to say Scotland has enough, no more here until every hilltop of the Cotswolds, Chilterns, South downs, Berkshire Downs, Malvern hills etc etc is covered with wind farms like is happening in Scotland. Build them down there instead and we might not need to many new long distance pylons?

I ran 10mm twin and earth to mine, in 25mm conduit with swept bends, so that could be pulled out and something else inserted. Currently my 10mm feeds just a couple of sockets but it is there in case we change to an induction hob.

Depends on the cladding? Are you using something substantial or DIY shop ultra thin shiplap cladding?

And who back in the day would have thought Memera, Merlin Gerin and Square D might become obsolete?

There is now far more renewable generation in Scotland than we can use, particularly in the Highlands. The local connection from a wind farm to the nearest large substation might be underground (one passes under my neighbours garden with a second to be added soon, they even approached me a year and a bit ago and I convinced the surveyor there were too many obstacles to putting one through our garden, thank god) But the north / south grid to carry it is at capacity already with many more wind farms proposed. In the time i have been here the one operational north / south grid has been supplemented by re conductoring and re purposing the old Dounereay line (which was unused since Dounereay shut down generation. That has more than doubled capacity (it is higher voltage and current than the existing line was). That is still not enough. Another high voltage overhead line is planned and the plans keep changing from a bloody eyesore out of my window to far enough down the glen to be barely noticable. and there is talk that might not be enough. While wind farms may be "distributed" it is a fact there are a lot of them in less populated windy parts of the uk and nowhere near enough in the flatter, less windy, more populated parts of the UK so there needs to be a lot more long distance delivery of electricity than the old days when there was a coal fired station in almost every county.

the thieves got clean away.......

Nothing wrong with that. You have drilled holes in a gland plate in order to fit glands. That is what it is for. At least you have a removable gland plate to do that easily rather than having to drill the box directly. My only concern for something like FuseBox, is will they still be going and replacement parts available in 10 or 20 years?

That is on the plan, but not widely talked about. I saw one video but can't find the link to re post it, that said at present 40% of homes do not have a car. That must rise to 70% to achieve net zero. So there you have it. Most of us must stop driving in any form and just use public transport to get around our 15 minute cities, with the great British countryside only available to the few who are still allowed to live there, not in a 15 minute city, or those willing to walk or cycle to explore that great wilderness that people used to live and thrive in in small communities......

Lightweights. We have had snow for over a week, hardly worth a mention, -5 last night and won't go above 0 for the rest of the week. and not a breath of wind, but the sun is out. But not enough strength in the sun to do much thawing.

Electricity use will rise 11% by 2030 and double by 2050 Which shows we have only just scratched the surface re converting from fossil fuels to electricity. So in the next 25 years, the already struggling electricity grid has to double in capacity. That is twice as many overhead pylons everywhere, and if built where needed they will not all be following existing lines of pylons. And consider where most of this new generation is, in the north, and most of the usage is in the south, the north / south interconnects need to more than double. And we don't have enough green generation to power what we use, let alone before we double what we use. And then when we reach the utopia of double the grid capacity and perhaps 3 or 4 times the renewable generation we have now, nobody has answered how the lights will stay on and our heat pumps will be powered and cars charged during a 2 week winter anticyclone. By then all the fossil fuel stations will have been decommissioned and not even on care and maintenance for backup. I am all for keeping on doing as much as we can to generate more green electricity and move what is viable from fossil fuel to electric, but I think aiming for zero fossil fuel is doomed to failure and unreliability.