ProDave

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.

Terrace houses are often timber floor downstairs so a vent in the floor as close to the stove as possible to draw air from the under floor void is way better than a cold draught sucked all the way across a room. Why do you have to choose between those 2? If you did I would say the first one.

What sort of house? What do you want to achieve? My must have when we bought ours was a must be room sealed, so combustion air comes in on a duct pipe. Your first one offers that but I could not see mention of that for the Hampton 5, so that would be off my list.

We use a condensing TD that removes the water from the room. As above such a small heat pump would not give much heat, and if you are not splitting the FGAS circuit, you would have to contrive a way to get one part inside and the other part outside. Like mounting it through a door or window. It might be a project to keep say a garage a bit warm without costing a fortune, if you can contrive an inside / outside mounting arrangement. But an old fridge would be much easier for that than a condensing TD.

Is the manhole on your drive or the pavement? It does not look like a sewer manhole cover, that type of concrete cover looks more like an old BT cable duct cover, and having seen inside a few, it would not surprise me in the least to find it is full of water. If it's not on your drive, it is not your problem. A picture of the whole of the slab might help and some context where on the drive or path it is.

Could it be that vertical timber is helping support the ceiling by hanging that binder from the purlin? Removing it may make the ceiling below start to sag?

Build the new house properly insulated and air tight and you won't need heating upstairs.

Yes of course, test the RCD / RCBO, but then you need to buy an RCD tester if you don't have one........

You won't get far with trial and error component substitution. To make any meaningful progress you need an insulation tester. It's likely you have a faulty fitting, damp or damaged wiring. If you fancy a go yourself then you can buy a cheap old uncalibrated tester that will do what you want for not a lot on ebay, otherwise get your electrician to look at it. I guess one thing you could try is remove every single lamp, and see if the tripping stops, then replace one at a time if it does.

Hi and welcome. Don't get too fixed on the build at this stage unless it's already on order? My gut feeling is you want more insulation than that in the walls. Before sizing the heating you need to do a proper heat loss calculation rather than guess. Then you can size the heating accordingly and get a good idea of running costs. Any reason for prefering A2A rather than A2W and UFH? And in any event with a big roof like that why not solar PV?

Of course, me being me and liking a challenge, if that was the nearest available but I didn't want a thread on the right hand part, I would be tempted to put that on my lathe and turn the thread off

Just a point. You kept confusing me with this "ribbed end" It is not ribbed, it is threaded. Perhaps you were thinking of something else?

What is it from? If it's one part of a packaged waste trap, the intermediate parts are often not a standard size that will tit much else.

Section B-B If that flat roofed dormer is only there for headroom for the stairs, then re design the stairs and avoid the dormer. Fewer steps on the first flight to the half landing then more steps on the second flight, until you achieve required headroom on the upper flight without the dormer. That will save you a lot which you can spend elsewhere. And why do you want concrete stairs?

Our public single track road is only 3 metres wide tarmac with a bit of grass either side. Bin lorries and fire engines have no problem. I think you will need to provide turning space for a fire engine on your plot.

With such a hybrid is nobody suggesting a mixing valve on the UFH manifold to regulate the UFH temperature regardless of the boiler flow temperature? And a 3 channel programmer so UFH can turn on and off at different times to radiators.