ProDave

Probably change of use of the bank, as you would need parking space, services connections, access to the boat etc Without that you might be able to live on the boat if you never get on or off it.

Strictly speaking you should get PP for it. It is normal for temporary PP to be granted on request for a static caravan to live in on site during a build. You should also notify the council when you occupy the caravan and pay council tax for it, normally band A We bought ours from one of the 2 caravan dealers nearby. Buying from a dealer has the advantage they they will have the large flat bed lorry to transport them. You can search adverts and buy one privately (e.g from another self builder who has finished with it) but then you will have to find someone to transport it. The 2 local dealers near us are notorious for not wanting to transport anything they have not sold so it can be hard to find someone to move one. When we sold ours after the previous build, the buyer had to get a company from nearly 50 miles away to transport it as the 2 local ones said no.

Reading this I think you need some plumbing alterations AND some wiring alterations. Every TS system I have been involved in draws hot water from the TS to drive the heating (whatever form that takes radiators or UFH). The heating is usually via 2 port valves and conventional time clocks and thermostats to say when the heating is on or off. then QUITE SEPARATE to that, the boiler will fire up driven by the tank thermostat to heat the TS to desired temperature. That can also be under the control of a time clock if you want (i.e often the "Hot Water" side of a normal dual channel time clock) Separate issue, the UFH manifold should regulate the temperature to the UFH pipes. If your UFH is running too hot check that is set up properly and the corect low temperature is set on the manifold blending valve.

Hi and welcome to the forum. If you have an end of terrace plot I assume your build will be joined to the house next door? In which case there will be a need to make it fit in with the surroundings, so probably timber frame with a brick or rendered skin to match the surrounding houses. Basement will add a lot of cost and work and uncertainty. I would personally try to avoid that.

If you own a river bank and have mooring rights, you do not automatically have the right to make it a residential mooring. I would guess the same applies to a lake?

Isn't the "VHS / Betamax" issue with EV's currently that different makes of car have different types of charge socket, so you have to find a charger that has the one that fits your car? And the charging networks require you to pre register? Why do you need to do that? Surely you should be able to turn up, plug your car in and insert a credit card to pay for the charge. Why does it need to be any more complex than that? Imagine if you had to choose a particular pump to suit the petrol filler on your particular car, and you could not use a Shell garage unless you had previously registered with Shell and had a card from them?

So just put up a fence where the wall was. Still the very worst that could happen is you have to replace the fence with a rebuilt wall.

If you are replacing a faulty wall with a fence of the same height and in the same location I can't see it matters that anyone can see your new fence. Leave the ivy in the ground and it will soon grow up the new fence. If you wanted to be cheeky, put the fence further out. If nobody complains then after a number of years you can claim it under adverse possession as it sounds like your neighbour has done.

Are you sure the overgrown bit is yours? If so I would put up a 2m fence closer to the road and just wait and see if anyone complains. If they do worst case is you have to move it back to exactly where the wall was.

Gas safe is not what you need for an UVC

I don't think the "timber frame" supplier can take the blame either. I suspect in the case of the mass builders, they do their own frames, not like a self builder. The fact is the houses will all have drawings showing how to build them and those should have been used to build them. the fact some operative misses off some important parts, and nobody notices, is not the fault of the TF company, it is the fault of whoever is supposed to be managing the builds for not ensuring adequat control and checking of the build process.

Okay ignorant question. Can Hydrogen be burned as the fuel for an IC engine? All the talk I hear of hydrogen is using it in a fuel cell to make electricity to drive a motor.

I did consider that but just going round the walls in trunking / conduit would have involved 2 bends. My method just requires 3 straight pulls done in sequence. And we don't know what size the "next" AV connector will be so what size conduit to leave for it.

Don't you mean the HDDVD Blue Ray.....

Re tv's and cables for them. When I built the last house, hdmi had not even been invented. When I built this house I installed just about everything I could think of, butr of course another 10 or 15 years and the successor to hdmi will prbably come along. I might then be faced with getting new cables from the tv's to the "AV cupboard" To try and allow for that, at both ends of the two main bedrooms I have left "trap doors" in the flooring at the ends that can be lifted. This should allow me to drop new cables down the service voids of the rooms below to the tv's and AV cupboard.

It sounds like it is time to say the sample inspection has failed and "trust" has been broken by the large builders. So now it is time for the building inspector to inspect every house with additional costs to the builder.

I take it they are talking about the fire stops that go in the cavity between a timber frame and it's outer brick cladding layer, in some cases missing or with gaps. If they are found to be missing that is hardly an easy thing to put right. It's not as it it is an expensive or difficult bit, and there would normally be plenty of chances to spot the problem, even the bricklayer building the outer wall should notice it, stop laying bricks and bring it to the attention of the site manager? To not do so shows the root of the problem, NOBODY cares. It's not a private BR issue as this fault has been found in Scotland where the local authority still have the monopoly on building control. But they don't make that many inspections. Perhaps if the MD of the building firm faced a manslaughter charge in the event of a fatality, they might start to buck up their procedures a bit?

Re the central vacuum. I wired a house with one of those. To use it you have to uncoil a monster hose, plug that in and drag it around the rooms. It is FAR easier just to push a normal hoover around the place. One to add to your list is build whatever roof you have (assuming pitched roof) using attic trusses, so adding a room(s) up there later is easy because the structure is in place.

Definitely the poor house. It can be upgraded (as proved by the other one) but you can never move a house off the busy main road.

To some extent I share that view, it is disappointing that the small Toyota's are not plug in. We have just bought a Yaris hybrid. We did not set out to buy a hybrid or even an Ev, we just went into town with an open mind to find a new car for SWMBO as hers was well past it's best, and was not a very good car anyway (bought cheap to last a few years, which it did) After spending a day looking at lots of different cars at the end of the day we ended up looking again at the Yaris hybrid and it still ticked the boxes. But it was another couple of days before we went and had a third look and bought it. What surprised me is the Yaris hybrid was not that much more expensive than the petrol version and I like the £0 road tax and better fuel consumption. But it is a shame that it is not plug in to be charged in the daytime from our solar PV. It is also a shame that Toyota tell you you cannot tow ANYTHING with the car. Not that we want to as my Subaru does all the pulling we need, but it just seems such a strange thing to limit your market by excluding someone that just wants to tow a small trailer. Ours is just about as new as you can get and still get the £0 road tax. and it confirmed my thoughts to never buy a new car, the depreciation the first owner suffered for owning the car for 3 years is eye watering (to me)

So I have the Pi, I have sorted the memory card programing, I have ordered the network adaptor. All I need is a DAC board. The pHAT DAC linked above has a 40 pin header, as do modern versions of the Pi. but mine being an old Mk1 only has the original 26 pin header. As I undrstand it this DAC works over the I2S lines, which are on the original 26 pin header, so I see no reason why a pHAT DAC would not work if I just fit a 26 pin header to it. But the supplier linked to above says it won't work. I have however found this one that clearly only has the 26 pin header so should work, but not yet found a UK supplier so may just have to wait for it from China https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HIFI-DAC-HIFI-Audio-Sound-Card-Module-I2S-Interface-For-Raspberry-Pi-B-Black/292203010088?hash=item4408a81828:g:Jz0AAOSwJLJZguV4

I am another one in a house with (just about) passive house levels of insulation, and a WBS. The No 1 thing is it is a low power (4KW) stove with air intake ducted straight in from outside (room sealed) It works very well. Only used in very cold weather. Burn it for a few hours and yes it will warm up the house, typically to about 25 degrees (that is the point we stop refueling it) some will say that is "cosy" some will say that is overheated. The bigest benefit for us is that gets a bit more warmth upstairs (no heating upstairs) on the few occasions it gets a bit cool up there. However I am convinced it works for us because the layout of the house, with a central stairwell, and double doors from the living rooms to that stairwell, creates and easy route for heat to circulate and the stove to heat the whole house. If we shut the doors and the heat from the stove was confined to just one room, that room would get uncomfortably hot very quickly. so if you are still considering a stove think about it's location and how heat will circulate the the whole house. And like @joe90 we are in a very low density rural location. I would think again if we were in the middle of a town.

Either Thermal Store or Unvented cylinder would provide what you want. Both would let you divert excess solar PV to hot water. Sun Amp may be an option but someone else will have to advise which type would be best as I am not up to speed on all the different variants. The main advantage of the SunAmp over any form of tank, is lower standing heat losses. I have an unvented cylinder. I chose that because the stored temperature is the temperature that it delivers to the tap, in my case set to 48 degrees so it is within range of an ASHP to heat it. A thermal store generally needs to store water at a higher temperature than the delivery temperature. Also a lot of thermal stores seem to be not so well insulated. There is no reason for this, but it just seems from those I see that the insulation could be better. But the key to getting good flow rates even when someone flushes the loo, is a good mains water supply pressure AND flow. If the flow rate of that drops when more than 1 tap is on, then you will need to consider an accumulator to maintain a decent flow.

This whole EPC thing puzzles me. Most people will not now buy a fridge unless it has an A++ rating, yet are happy to buy their largest ever purchase with an EPC of F and then complain about the fuel bills. Logic would say that poorer rated houses that are going to cost more to run and cost money to upgrade should have a lower market value, but that does not seem to be the case. Perhaps the really poor ones that cannot be let now will be worth less? I suspect most landlords have simply been selling poor ones rather than upgrading. And charging more rent? so are you saying if it costs £7K (number picked to make the sums easy) to upgrade a property, the landlord is justified in charging £1K more p.a. in rent so he will get payback of his improvements in 7 years? Will he find he is able to rent it or will it sit empty because it is above the "market rent" for the size of property? i.e. are tenants astute enough to pay more for a property that will cost them less to heat and be more comfortable? As a landlord (now reluctantly) I see none of this in tenant behaviour. I am pretty sure if buying a property now, I would not even consider anything lower than an EPC C unless it was spectacular in some other way (in which case it would be a renovation project and would have to be priced as such). I also suspect I would be in the minority having requriements like that.

In it's simplest form yes. Some people recommend a small buffer tank so the ASHP is not cycling on and off so much. My own ASHP drives my UFH directly.