ProDave

I thought you worked out with Jeremy's spreadsheet that your max heating load was just under 6KW so why are you still thinking of a 9Kw or more HP?

I fitted that type of PRV on the feed to the static caravan (because I did not trust the lousy push fit caravan plumbing to withstand >6 bar) On initial connection, it would not regulate. on strip down I found a bit of grit, cleaned it out and it worked. This summer, after having the water to the 'van off all winter, it won't regulate pressure again. I have yet to strip it down to find out what has upset it this time.

Yes Open Reach should free issue the cable and duct to you. There are some regional variations, e.g up here, they still use SWA 6 pair phone cable that can be buried direct. We only used the Duct 56 for under the road crossing.

I ended up paying about £1000. The initial quote was similar to yours but I shaved about £1000 off by opening up the joint pit myself and filling it in afterwards, so all they had to do was pull the cable through an end to end duct with a drawstring, and connect both ends. If the joint pit is in a surfaced public footpath, the only way you can avoid that is pay a highways approved contractor to do it, but I doubt they will be any cheaper as they will have to pay for a road opening permit.

It is worth understanding the water seal is made by an O ring inside the fitting that the pipe pushes into. So debur the end of the pipe and push it in nice and square. The blue split collar, that is clamped by the white ring that you tighten is purely there to mechanically secure the pipe to prevent it coming out. It plays no part in making the seal, and tightening it won't stop a weep if you get one.

I just wait for Howdens to do a "3 saws for £10" offer and go and get 3 Bacho saws. Throw them away when blunt (keep an old one just for cutting plasterboard)

As I understand it, a bulk tank ties you to one supplier, or lets put it another way, can anyone tell me a bulk tank supplier other than Calor? If there are others they must be regional as I have never seen any others up here. Even the Cylinder market is suffering a reduced number of suppliers. As well as Calor we used to have Handy Gas, Mac Gas, Flo Gas and a few others. All the "competition" seem to have amalgamated into one (I forget which of the names they retained) and the price per refill is withing about £1 of what Calor charge. We have a 47Kg cylinder for the cooker but I would not want LPG for heating. But then I would not want oil again, that was way too volatile in price. If you house is "too small" for a hot water tank, what about putting it in the loft? Re the cost of an ASHP, first off is to model the heat loss of the house and come up with a real heating load figure, rather than making a wild guess at the size. Many of us are heating our houses perfectly well with a 5 or 6Kw heat pump.

If those 2 single sockets are expected to feed kitchen appliances (washing machine, dishwasher, tumble dryer) you are likely going to be disappointed that the appliances won't go back into their recess far enough because of those pipes passing behind them. An annoyance if they are free standing, fatal if they are built in.

What windows are these and why do they need something so strong? Mine sit on a 20mm layer if PIR and even before they were fixed in place, the weight of them did not reform it.

I switch my immersion heater with a solid state relay. That provides the isolation between the controller and the mains. I chose a SSR that has a 5V input. But I still did not want to switch it directly from an Arduino output pin. So it is switched with a PNP transistor that pulls the SSR input pin up to 5V when the Arduino output goes low. So the Arduino only sees a tiny output current when switching and would be unlikely to ever be damaged by any reasonably conceivable fault. Of course I chose a SSR rather than any form of mechanical relay due to the frequency of switching (turned on for anything between 0% and 100% of every half second time period. you would not want to be switching a mechanical relay at 2Hz all day long) Edit to add, I also chose a 25A SSR for the immersion heater. Re heatsinks, I just opened my box of heatsinks and chose one that looked about right. It runs just warm to the touch on a good day when the PV is generating well and heating the HW tank.

6M by 3M per car minimum for me.

Agreed. The thing to take from what they have said so far is make the front more interesting and make it "address the street" and then they have no reason to refuse it. Have you actually been refused planning yet or was that just informal advice?

2550 is a high ceiling. We have standard 2100 window heads on bedrooms with high ceilings, but in all cases the high ceiling above the windows forms a vaulted gable end, and there the high ceiling looks just fine above a standard height window head.

My own home built solar PV diverter works by burst firing the SSR in a half second time frame. So for each half second it can be on for anything from 0% of the time to 100% of the time. I can report it works perfectly and is well withing the 1Wh dead band, which with my immersion heater being about 2.8Kw, equates to about 0.77 seconds.

The thing is, a normal extending ladder has 2 very substantial hooks that hook over a rung, You can see them clearly and be sure they are latched in place and can see if anything starts to move. These things have TWO latches PER RUNG of a design that is hidden and you cannot see if they are latched securely or not, and do not know whether to trust them. The danger is one latch failing and the ladder starting to telescope down while you are on it. No, nobody has yet given me a single reason why I would want to trust my life to something like that.

My only observation is that present gable end looks stark and uninviting, i.e. no windows or features. Design the extension to look nicer, e,g with a window or some other features. If they refuse it, there has to be a planning policy reason for refusal. I would like to see them show the planning policy that says "it does not address the street" If they start discussing it with you just make it clear you will appeal if it is refused.

I have only ever seen trenches with flat bottoms and steps.

The whole principle of a telescopic ladder is flawed to me. About the only time I see them is surveyors using one to look into a loft, and when they extend the thing and gingerly climb up it, I cringe. If I have a proper ladder I would always offer it. They seem to use them purely so they can rock up to the job in a shiny saloon car that would not easily transport a proper safe ladder. I have NEVER seen a tradesman, i.e electrician, plumber, joiner, decorator etc use one. The principle seems to be lets make a ladder that folds up small enough to go in the boot of a car, and sod the fact it is a basically unsafe ladder. It would be far better to put a pair of roof bars on the surveyors car and give him a proper ladder imho. Now I will let the forum tell me one good reason to use one of these that I may have missed.

The phrase "Mow it into submission" comes to mind, That is what we did with part of our garden before we finally got around to levelling it properly.

There is no such thing as "thermal mass" Our house is all timber, and retains heat incredably well. As well as specifying a lot of insulation, the type also has a big effect. Ours is a mixture or wood fibre and Rockwool type (earthwool) These and things like celulose as well, have a long Decrement Delay, which is a way of saying it takes a long time for heat to work its way through the walls. Other types like PIR (Kingspan etc) have a much shorter decrement delay. Our house is such that if you turned the heating off it would be something like 2 days in winter before you noticed. It certainly does not cool down a noticable amount overnight. If you do go UFH try and get more insulation under the floor to minimise losses. What sort of type and thickness of insulation are you planning?

Don't over think it. You have a house for x number of people. Buy a packaged treatment plant for x (or slightly greater) number of people. Building regs defines x depending on the number of bedrooms, so building regs says 5 people for ours and we have a 6 person treatment plant. Re fat etc. I work on the basis of treating fat as solid waste that ends up in the wheelie bin. So for exaample when you have finished your fried breakfast, do NOT just put the pan in the dishwasher. Pour what fat you can into the kitchen bin, then wipe out the pan with kitchen towel and put it in the kitchen bin. Then very little fat goes down the drain. Don't put anything down the loo that has not been eaten first, plus a bit of soft toilet paper.

Definitely an older variant on Kwikstage. When I was needing some planks I went to a local scaffold hire company. I did indeed buy some food used Kwikstage planks from him. He did a good job (but failed) of trying to sell me some of this square peg variant Kwikstage but I declined. It is okay for what it is as long as you have all the bits you need and accept you may never find and more of it, and can't mix it with the other stuff you have.

Why is it too small for an ASHP? Seek out a cheap one on ebay and DIY install it with some under floor heating. the HP won't be complaining that it does not turn on much. P.S I would be wanting some diagonal bracing on those longer front legs that it is standing on.

Is this a private supply or Scottish Water? If SW, then beware of the Scottish Water pre connection "Track Inspection" If they see the pipe that shallow, you won't get connected (at least not if you have the jobsworth we had)

I would say no. You were paying them labour for work on a new build. You cannot claim that back. Send them a cheque for the net amount with a covering letter explaining that it is work on a new build house and so they should have zero rated it. By sending the net payment they can't accuse you of withholding payment.