ProDave

This must be a new thing. It is a looooong time since I installed a genuine Velux and it didn't have this "feature". But my new windows arrived today and I unpacked one, and it does indeed have this feature. So I engaged it gently and all was well. My take on this, is the bean counters have been on the case, and this cheap and nasty latch is just a mechanism to allow the operating handle to be stowed out of the way for transit, presumably to make it fit into a smaller box. Once you have engaged it upon unpacking, that should be the end of the matter.

You might have enough drop in one place to go with an overshot wheel, undershot will not get much power out. This describes the different types: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_wheel#Summary_of_types Go with the best the height you have available allows. I only have a tiny drop so undershot is my only option, but you could probably manage Probably a Breastshot wheel with the wheel about twice the diameter of the drop you have available.

That is the sort of drop I would be able to achieve. At that low drop you are probably looking at an overshot water wheel rather than a turbine. Design it right and it could be a nice garden ornament as well. Because it's hard to capture our gently falling burn I will probably at some point experiment with an undershot wheel.

The trouble is, the DNO will just sum together all your generation power and assume at some point it is possible for all that to be exported. And it the total exceeds 16A per phase, you will need prior permission to connect it, and may need a network upgrade to do so. Even if, in the real world, very little of it actually gets exported.

The key thing is how much fall can you get? You need to capture water (in the pond or one of the streams feeding it) and pipe that to somewhere lower where it is released through a turbine. So the key issue is how much fall can you achieve on your own land? We have a burn through the garden but the fall is too small to do anything useful, I think I calculated I could generate somewhere between 50 and 100W. Something I might play with as a bit of fun some time but not as a sensible viable energy source.

The kiosk needs to house 6 supply heads, s meters and 6 switch fuses to feed the supply out to the individual flats. Ask the DNO exactly how much space they need inside the kiosk for their equipment. The switch fuses will be your equipment and will be in addition to the space that the DNO say they need.

What size ASHP? It might have been one of my comments. We only have a 5KW ASHP and with that (just by the laws of physics) 5KW will heat water a lot slower than even a small gas boiler, so it will take longer to heat hot water than many people will be used to. So I treat DHW as a "stored" medium and don't expect any useful real time re heating while I am using it. I store hot water at 48 degrees, so that will reduce the amount of usable stored hot water for a given volume. What temperature are your installers suggesting?

I find there is nothing wrong with your heat loss spreadsheet and no need for anything more complicated than that. The predictions from that agree closely with reality.

Run a new CAT6 cable under the landing (following the route of your test cable as close as you can) and see if that fixes the issue. Is the length of cable to this thermostat radically different to all the others?

Is there a watercourse within or near that field? If so discharging to that would be the long term solution but will require both of you to update to a treatment plant.

I think your first port of call would be the owner (not the tenant) of the field. There must be some form of right of discharge, if not by agreement, by established use. Impress upon him any improvement to the existing situation will be to his benefit as well. Then with his agreement dig some test holes in various parts of the field so establish what the soil type is there, and to measure the percolation rates. Then with that information you can begin to design an alternative. I would regard dealing with the infiltration field as a separate exercise to upgrading the septic tanks. Once the infiltration field is established there should be no issue upgrading to a treatment plant.

One I stumbled upon, made for this market is the PortaPura https://portapura.com/ If you do investigate these and get a price for one I would be interested to know. I am not connected in any way with them.

There is a requirement for inspection chambers at intervals so you don't end up with 10 sets of drain rods trying to rod a 250M run with no access.

Thank you

There is nothing to stop the panels being fitted in advance of everything else. The one thing you need to decide is where will the inverter(s) go. then run the DC cabling from the panels back to that point and terminate the cables in the input terminals of the DC isolator switch(es). Then everything is safe and ready to connect later.

Looking very crisp indeed. Funny enough, we are just, only just, beginning to think we might just have the finish line in sight. Still a long way off, but actually in sight.

My 3 years at Saunderton was not the pinnacle of my career, but was the best I could get when I needed to change jobs. Out of one dying industry straight into another. The pension scheme was worthwhile.

Did you used to work for them? I did 3 years at Saunderton.

If the house is for short term, forget solar PV, it will never repay it's cost in the time, it won't add any value to the house, and it may even put some buyers off.

If you are at all practical you can buy the parts for a 4KWp PV system for about £2K I went a bit better and by a lot of careful shopping around got it down to £1500. If I manage to self use £250 worth per year that is a 6 year pay back. In this new non FIT era don't even think of finding a "solar PV company" to fit it you should be looking at sourcing the kit as cheap as possible and self fitting or just getting an electrician to fit it.

Ah the old "creaky, wobbly timber frame" myth again. Well my house is timber frame and not a creak or wobble to be found anywhere. I am sure we have all seen for example creaky floorboards and joists that sag as you walk on them. This is just poor joinery or rotten / wrong spec joists. There is no reason a properly built timber framed house will be creaky or wobbly. And one feature of a timber frame house is they have lots of space to fit lots of insulation and the result is they are usually very quiet houses. A cinema room if you are going to have loud sound and want other rooms to remain quiet is going to want special attention whatever build method. Perhaps the most important question is WHERE to put it. Backing onto the utility room and plant room would be far better than backing onto a bedroom.

Providing he met the conditons for "starting" the development then the planning will be locked in. I would seek from the council planners a letter of comfort stating they are happy that all the pre comencement conditions were met and they recognise the development has started. That will prove the existing permission is still valid. Then you can embark upon submitting plans for something on a similar footprint but smaller. If the conditions for "starting" were not met, then the planning will have lapsed and you want at least outline planning before you proceed.

If someone supplies AND fits materials to a new build, they have to be charged to you zero rated.

You missed the late 80's mayhem, but will still have got (in todays terms) a cheap house.

I recall the 15% rates. Over HALF my take home pay went on the mortgage, leaving me less than £500 per month to survive on. There were no luxuries, no going out. People today say how well we had it buying our first houses for so little, but I can't see many putting up with all the "going without" we had to do to survive those first few years. About all that saved it, was high inflation, and a salary that kept up with that high inflation, which had the effect of fairly rapidly deflating the debt in real terms, but it was still a few years before you could start to relax a bit.