ProDave

Pipework can be pressure tested without a mains connection and all electrical dead testing can be done and even a certain amount of live testing with a generator. I would not say it is normal to leave services until this late, but there must be some reason why they did that.

Interesting how perspectives vary. If I had paid that much per square metre, plus plot price, plus services, plus planning etc, I would have paid at least 10% more than the market value of the house.

We were told you should not build withing 10 metres of an HV line. However drilling down into the detail found the limit was in fact 6 metres, but if building between 6 metres and 10 metres you need to take account of the line wrt cranes, scaffolding etc.

Post a picture. HV will be 2 or 3 separate wires standing up in insulators and well spaced out usually supported on a horizontal steel angle. LV will be a single (multicore) wire or individual wires just standing off the pole on insulators one above the other.

Our previous house was built to 2003 standards. Quite well insulated but nowhere near the air tightness of our present house. We only ran the heating in the day with it off at night and you could notice a drop in temperature over night. But I never felt the need to mess around with set back temperatures. Ours was either on or off.

The Ecodan has a good reputation, I don't think you will go far wrong with that. I think the key is to read and re read the manual for the controller that comes with it and understand how it works. Some of the controllers supplied with them are far from intuitive. Talk to the installer and understand how he has set it up, and discuss the setup with him so you get it as you want it. e.g don't set the HW temperature too high, most of us find 48 degrees is plenty. I would time the hot water if you can for just daytime operation. Heating hot water is the time it will most likely need to defrost, and it's obviously colder at night, so if the tank will keep enough hot water for the morning routine then you can wait until the day has warmed up a bit for heating DHW. That is how I run ours at the moment (but mainly to get maximum self use of the solar PV) Ours essentially stays on heating all day with the room thermostats controlling it. but I do have it set to turn off over night as I like a completely silent house, and even the very faint hum of a circulating pump is more than I want at night.

That sounds expensive. Near here a self builder paid £11K to have well over 100 metres of 11KV 3 phase undergrounded and including the provision of the supply for his new house, which meant hanging a transformer on one of the poles.

I have to go out so no time to search for it, but search for "dogging" by Fascinating aida" (might be miss spelled)

Sent successfully to We Transfer. Only took an hour and didn't crash. The internet is a lot less busy this time of day. Yes we have a slow broadband connection only about 200K upload.

I deliberately set mine as close to the wall as possible. The builder doing the foundations tried to tell me it was too close. But I wanted it so the stack pipe was partly enclosed in the service void. And it worked out just fine. If it is a bit tight I am sure you can shave a bit off the wall for any flange.

This is an interesting discussion. Your typical 3 phase meter has just 1 dial used to take readings and produce your bill (talking ordinary meter here not smart meter) So I assume there are 3 current transformers and the electronics of 3 separate meters and they are summed to give the total reading. One would have thought in a modern meter, each sensor only meters and counts import. So if 1 phase was exporting, that would not reduce the import reading, it would just be ignored, just as it is on a single phase meter. The export might be stored in an internal register but not normally displayed on the meter.

Actually the number of tv channels has increased. As real time multiplexers have got better, they have managed to squeeze more and more channels onto each multiplex. Though sometimes at the expense of the quality of the picture (over compression) that is one aspect where freesat is better, less pressure to over compress as many more channels available for transmission.

I am the person that complains about the noise of the fridge, so I would not want one in the house. I even went to the trouble of changing the UFH circulating pumps for a better make because they were too noisy.

This is where imho air source is better, it puts the noisy bit outside.

I tried we transfer last night. After an hour and a half it got to 90% and then my computer hung up. I will try again today.

I have some files to send to a friend, totalling 260Mb I have zipped them all into one file, now 173Mb I tried to send it by email but my email server refused it seems to have a limit of about 32Mb How can I transfer this to my friend? Could I just upload the .ZIP file to my webspace and when he has collected it, delete it again? Would he be able to download it just with a web browser or would he have to use FTP? There is no personal data so it would not matter if while it was there somebody else discovered it and downloaded it. Alternatively what is the easiest "throw away" file hosting service to sign up for just for this?

Don't forget the definition of a "wideband" aerial is different to what it used to be. A few years back the top end of the TV broadcast spectrum was chopped off and given over to mobile phones, so an older wideband aerial may now give you problems.

So all you need to do is inform the council planning department that you are "starting" the development and ask them for that comfort letter that they acknowledge the development has started and forward that to the building society. Then everyone should be happy.

No not long at all. I phoned them to say I was starting work on the entrance, I had an email confirming the development had "started" by the end of the day and a letter in the post 2 days later. This was Highland council, of course other councils may be different. Yes you must apply for and pay for a building warrant before you start work on the actual building work. No point getting that too early as it has a time limit and you have to pay to extend it if you are getting close to it expiring.

First you must have discharged any pre commencement planning conditions. In our case our planning as the first condition said we must form the entrance from the road onto the plot before any building work started. you have to notify planning when you "start" so I did by telling them we were starting work creating the entrance to the plot. they replied by email and followed up with a letter confirming that the development had "started" So that alone would have locked in the planning permission forever. You can't start work on building, until you have your building warrant in place. That is a separate application. so what you need to find is something you CAN do that is not building the house, but that the planners will accept as you "starting" the development. It sounds like the formation of your entrance will qualify for that just like ours did. I didn't fill in any form, I just phoned the planners and told them I was starting.

I don't like to be a party pooper, but if you only have 25mm of XPS under your UFH you are going to be disappointed at the running costs as a LOT of your heat will be going downwards.

No I am different, I am watching grout dry today.

Isn't that the whole point of aluminium clad timber windows?

Seen on a plumbers van: Don't sleep with a drip, call me instead. Seen on an Electricians van: Let us remove your shorts.

You could really do with some floor insulation even if you have radiators. Just one of the dificulties with these old houses, and why there is so much work to get them to a decent standard.