ProDave

I too used @JSHarris heat loss spreadsheet and it gave predictions that have proved very accurate over the first winter. I tried "removing" the MVHR and my predicted worst case heat loss (-10 outside +20 inside) went from 2.2Kw up to 15.6Kw Without MVHR I would have needed a substantially larger heat pump to heat the house, I would probably have to run the UFH at a higher temperature, and I would probably have to have heating upstairs (currently only heating downstairs) The saving by omitting the MVHR I am certain would have instead been spent on a larger heating system, so no real capital saving, but a MUCH larger ongoing heating bill. It really is a no brain decision to fit MVHR, that is even before you begin to consider the much improved air quality in the house.

Interesting. I was doing a garage not long ago so walls built of single skin 6" blocks, room in roof above like this. The trusses were only supported at pint B (with triangles built in at that point to give a flat bearing surface) and point A just hung down between the block walls. I guess there is more than 1 way to do things.

It is no good getting a quote from a builder then saying to him, yes please do this bit and that bit and I will get someone else to to the rest. If you want to be using multiple contractors and doing some work yourself, then be open and honest and say these are the bits I need to subcontract and need a price for.

Which is a good example of why in a well insulated low energy house you really do want to make it air tight and fit an MVHR.

Run some very hot water through them and look with an IR camera.

The big bit on the top of the actuator should rise and fall as it turns on and off. They are a hot wax actuator, so when you turn it on, it will take 2 or 3 minutes to heat the wax and for it to expand so you need to be very patient. If they are all working without the spring I would not bother. As to working out which feeds which, do you have a plan of the pipework? That should show which pipes go to which rooms. Otherwise it is going to be a very tedious long trial of turn on the water to just one set of pipes and wait a few hours and see (with an IR thermometer) which bit of floor is heating up.

I think we were "lucky" that the year we seeded the lawn it was cool and wet for a while so no need for a sprinkler. This year has been very dry so it would not have been so easy. Our garden is split in two by the burn. The "south" garden is just what was there. We have not done anything, not levelled it, and not seeded it. We just strimmered it and then mowed it into submission and from a distance it looks reasonable. But it is quite lumpy with lots of hollows. We have a pile of soil still to use up that eventually will get spread over that to level it more. I like a large garden (1/3 acre in total) but I wish there was less lawn to mow. Eventually I will get a small ride on mower, but until I build a decent bridge over the burn to take it, it would be a waste as it would be stuck one side.

Re lumpy lawns. Did you landscape and then seed too quick? i.e not allowed any areas with a large make up of ground to settle but now they have. I have a seemingly different philosophy to most when it comes to the site and landscaping. Most people seem to strip the soil off the whole site, build the house, then put the soil back. I knew I would be building up the ground level from existing (to make the slope less severe) so I saw absolutely no point stripping anything other than the actual house ares. The rest I just left the soil and went over it with Gallup360 to kill just about everything. After the groundworks for the house was done, I spread the soil that was left (the last thing I used my digger for before selling it) and then seeded. While it's not a bolwing green, the grass has done well and it's fairly free uf lumps and bumps. I am convinced that is because no areas have had a massive layer of soil put back. There is one bit that has not done so well and that is because the builders doing the groundworks had to move some soil and in the process mixed up some subsoil and top soil. Everywhere else I had been careful to keep them separate and spread the sub soil first.

But you are pushing sand up hill when you get obstacles like increased VAT rates and having to use an over priced MCS install if you want to claim the pittance of export payments that might be on offer at some point. The way I see it, any competent electrician should be able to install solar PV, with help from other trades re mounting the panels, at minimal cost and then anyone should be able to claim the export payment. It could even be made REALLY simple with no bureaucracy if these new fangled smart meters recorded your export and simply deducted the export (at the wholesale rate) off your bill. It would be really simple with no need for separate export payment contracts. Of course when half hourly billing is introduced, the smart meter would be clever enough to pay you a higher wholesale price for that you export at peak times. Until things like that happen, then uptake of renewables is being slowed by unnecessary expense and unnecessary complication.

Water is a good form of using excess energy, but only the amount of hot water you actually use. If you heat and store more than you are using, then in reality all you are going is using that energy as space heating (heat losses from the HW tank) which you probably don't want at this time of year. We have a 300L HW tank, sized so in winter when only heating HW to 48 degrees with the heat pump it is large enough. That is currently getting to about 65 most days with surplus solar PV and most days the HP is not coming on. Jeremy will have more surplus PV than us because he has a larger array, is further south and I don't think he has any shading problems. Simply heating more water with the surplus would not actually achieve much. There might be an argument for that with a weather pattern of one sunny day followed by a cloudy day perhaps so you could store 2 days worth of hot water?

Not much, but usually a lot of oil.

It's the condensate drain from the boiler tapping into something like the dishwasher drain. If that connection is broken then you WILL get drain smells in the kitchen. It looks like a well bodged connection, you need to re make it with something that actually seals.

There are only 2 houses with PV on our leg of the grid fed from a 100KVA transformer. For there to be any return power through that transformer the 2 houses with PV would need to be exporting more than the other 8 houses are using. Possible but unlikely.

What are you trying to achieve? It will still be a ground floor flat with a ceiling price so unlikely to get back what you spend. I would just instead build a nice good quality garden building if you just want an office / man cave / summerhouse etc.

Why do you want complete disconnection? You will later have to pay for re connection, and you run the slight risk that network capacity may change and when you come to re connect it might be more expensive than you think. Certainly in the case of electricity, I would not get it disconnected, but moved to an electricity kiosk on the site boundary. you will need site power anyway. Then you can choose to leave it there and just run your own cable from the kiosk to the new house, or pay again to have the service moved into the house. with regards gas, you just want that disconnected but a gas pipe left on your site and capped, so re connection is easy. Make it clear this is a temporary disconnection and you don't want them digging up the road to cap it off there. Water, as long as you have a working boundary box or stopcock to enable you to turn off the water, you just do that, turn the water off and route it to a stand pipe for building works, then route it to the new house when ready. No costs involved.

Be careful comparing ROI of solar PV with savings interest rates. They are not comparable. Put your money in a savings account at 5% interest (please tell me where you can get that) and your capital sits there instantly giving you an income . Put your money into solar PV and your capital has gone. The ROI might be higher but if it takes 10 years just to get your capital back, then it is not much of an "investment" compared to the savings account.

That is very much like our house, which is why I went for ground mount. Although at this time of year the sun is high enough that for a lot of the day roof mounted panels would do alright, but in the Autumn when the sun is low they would suffer massive shading.

Hi and welcome to the forum. As I think you have recognised the crux is finding a plot and you seem to have chosen just about the hardest and most expensive part of the UK to do that. Let us know how you find Graven Hill. there is at least 1 member on here building there. Plots seem to be a lot more expensive now than Grand Designs recently led you to believe.

Look at Howdens really cheap flat pack range. Spruce it up with some better doors. I did a complete kitchen in a rental for under £1K with that.

Well when I last looked, last Friday, we have exported a total of 30KWh since January. At an export rate of abput 5p, that would be a payment of £1.50. Assume the annual export is 4 times that, I don't think I will lose sleep if I cannot claim my less than £10 annual export payment. The MCS premium you would have to pay on the instalation in order to claim that would have in impossible long payback. Even Jeremy's system where he exports say 3KWh per year, payment for export only would be about £150 So again any MCS premium to claim that would have to be pretty small. Even a £1500 extra cost to get them MCS installed would take 10 years to pay back.

Steel staging is "boards" made of steel. More expensive but they don't rot. I ruined some of my boards because I stored them badly. When I went to set it up and found the issue I "tested" them. I suspended the end of each plank on a 4" concrete block, then jumped up and down in the middle. If the board did not break and did not sound like it was creaking, I used it. I managed to buy some second hand boards from a local scaffold company that was stopping using Kwikstage in favour of Cuplock.(The Cuplock boards are about 1" longer so not interchangeable)

What I don't know is what heated the house? The Ecocent heated the hot water? would it even have managed all the HW heating or would it have needed an immersion heater top up. The problem here seems to be the builder installed the system and the buyers knew nothing about it, then when they tried to get it repaired, could not find anyone than knew anything about it. This is a problem that needs to be fixed if mass market housing is to move beyond a gas combi boiler.

I think the original unit was an Ecocent, which from what I hear have a reputation for parts corroding and becoming unrepairable. The replacement HP is fine, bur why radiators that probably have to run at a higher temperature? I would have kept the UFH. The pipes are still there but the manifold has gone. I am wondering what to do about the ventilation. Fit a whole house ventilation or just a bathroom fan?

Yes, because I don't see them building any houses up here, they only build them where prices are higher and they can actually make a profit. So people in the SE complain houses are too expensive. So if they dropped the price from £400K to £340K (and made bugger all profit) would people then say "that's good, houses are now affordable"?

That may be the case that certain areas will only support a certain price. The problem comes when the price the market will support is no more than the cost of actually building the house. How is anyone going to build houses then? Mass developers have the economies of scale on their side and by building hundreds of near identical poor houses might just scrape a profit, but there is no money to be made building a decent individual house in many places. Self builders will still do it because getting what they want is the No 1 goal, or they can save money doing work themselves. It does not bode well for anyone expecting developers to improve the quality of the houses they are building