ProDave

It could also be a problem with the fan motor? Most heat pumps use a fan motor with a built in speed controller, and they have a fan rotation sensor output. If the fan is failing to run when set to high speed, it would not give the fan run signal and the heat pump would not start. but you would expect it to give an error message to say that is the reason.

You don't want it too hot under the floor. If the UFH temperature is lower that means it draws hot water out of your local calorifier more slowly, so should not affect the cost to you.

Ah so you buy hot water from a central source? that is usually fed into a local calorifier in your property and metered at that point. The temperature you mix it down to for your UFH would make no difference to the cost you are charged.

Can you post a picture of the Carel controller? Our village hall has a Dimplex Ground source heat pump. When the Carel controller for that packed up, it was £1500 for a replacement and then a lot of hassle getting it to work as there was very little information and in spite of being told it was configured correctly for our heat pump, it was not. I doubt yours has the same controller but I am interested to see what is there. Try and get a range og photos, close out showing the whole lot and close in showing the terminals etc.

Of course we are, and I can see storage smoothing out the peaks and troughs as demand changes throughout the day. But these winter anticyclones are not unusual, and can typically last 1 to 2 weeks. That is going to be a LOT of storage to last a week. Or make the price so high everyone turns their lights and heat pumps off and shivers in the dark......... In front of the backup WBS. This is why I just cannot see an electricity grid working without some other input, even gas power stations mothballed on care an maintenance ready to be fired up in such weather conditions.

This is what worries me about the future, when even more of our energy comes from wind, and a winter high pressure means not enough wind. And imagine a day when we are all forced to have a smart meter and forced to be on a variable tariff? EDIT: If I check tomorrows prices for my own region, Northern Scotland, it will be over £1 per kWh tomorrow afternoon. Kind of ironic the region with most of the windmills would pay the most.

OUCH. I guess that's because of the high pressure and lack of wind? Which is NOT unusual in winter.

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.