ProDave

I have a cheap plug in dehumidifier BUT if fails to work when very cold as moisture freezes on the condenser and it has no defrost function, so it just stops. Does your new build have a chimney? If so get a temporary WBS in there.

Yes the crux is definitely the long beams, how many and what size. I guess I need to phone a timber merchant and get some prices and work out the best bang for the buck from what is readily available. I will still ask my neighbour (who works for a steel company) about steel plates to make a filch beam. For a laugh I asked him to estimate for doing a steel frame for the whole lot and his answer was "do it in timber"

Interesting ideas @Iceverge So you are suggesting a 225 by 75 would span 6M if it was not carrying too much load? and suggesting 5 of them. My design already has 4 of them so not that different. I would rather not go as many as 5 posts each end perhaps compromise on 4. I will have to mark it out on the ground to see how it would look in reality and where they would land. Yes I thought the box profile could get away with fewer cross beams. I don't want to stack the cross beams on top of the long beams, that adds to the height which is also very high, I want to drop them between the long beams on joist hangers.

First stab at joist plan for the car port roof There will be 6 posts "P" 3 each side, probably 150mm square all supported on post feet. The 3 at the garage ends will also be bracketed to the wall, to locate them, not to take any weight on the garage wall. The 3 at the left hand free standing end will require some diagonal bracing. Box profile roofing from the garage high end to the free low end. Probably with a small gap at the garage end to avoid having to flash it to the wall. Total size 6M by 6M. Box profile roof needs supporting on joists running across it, so in this case front to back joists. Assumed at the moment 600mm centre to centre spacing they are Joists B in this plan and each need to span 3 metres. I don't think these are going to be difficult. The problem ones I think will be the 4 "Joists A" that have to span 6 metres and support the smaller joists. This is the one I need some design input to see if this proposal is viable. I would rather they were not too deep, say no more than 8" / 200mm. But I do expect to double or even tripple these, and there is the possibility of a steel plate between them to make it a flitch beam? Ideas please?

Those were popular in their day, and only a few years ago, you could still buy them new, it was about 10 years ago I last installed one. These days they market them for heating industrial spaces. BEWARE if your install is anything like many I have seen, the walls of that cupboard could be lined with asbestos as is often the inside of the cupboard door. They were meant for whole house heating, so 8.5kW is just like having 3 big storage heaters all in the same box. On a 7 hour off peak they could store almost 60kWh of heat. I once replaced a fan motor in one of those. Never again, miserable job with a huge amount to strip out to get at it. Even if the house has suspended floors (which it probably does for the under floor ducting) there is likely a cast in place concrete slab under there for it to sit on.

New install? Boiler swapped for ASHP? If so was it noisy with a boiler?

Those are impressive figures, the usage is commendably low. One of the reasons for my DIY solar PV diverter was the unusual meter position and PV generation remote again from the meter. I hard wired my current clamps using twisted pair armoured telephone cable between the meter box and the house, about 25 meters, then 2 pairs of a CAT5 cable from the entry to the house to the plant room where the diverter is, probably another 10 metres. All seems to work well. I have exported just over 400kW in about 5 years. Definitely very much colder from today for at least the next week.

I would love to know just what was wrong with such a new build that was such an easy fix to make a noticable improvement.

So after the work that cost her £6, is the property actually warmer? Was there really visible black mould before they came?

There will likely be a gap but it can't / won't be that much, the supporting poles will be attached to the garage wall for stability. The whole point of buying this particular type of truck is you can wind he legs down and demount the camper unit from the truck, and use the truck on it's own as a normal vehicle. So parking the other way would mean driving out onto the grass to demount which would not end well in winter when it is wet and soggy.

That is the plan, with battery storage as well.

I would have made it my business to be there and move the builders stuff out of the way myself if they were not there to move it myself.

I meant when you remove the actuator head, and energise it by electricity, i.e. demand heat, does it operate fully and turn the boiler on? 20 degree movement seems too little for a 2 port valve, I would expect a lot more so suspect a mechanical issue in the valve.

If that is the actual valve being discussed, it looks like a clone of a Honeywell.

I could extend them (externally) one to the front and one to the back so they were not actually under the canopy. The front one visible is the exhaust, the rear one, hidden in this picture is symetrical so the same distance is the inlet. There will be a small gap anyway, to avoid trying to form any sort if flashing from the wall to the roof.

DC is nasty as it is hard to let go. But these things are designed to only output a low current, so if you did touch it the voltage would drop a lot lower. It's volts that jolts, it's mills (milliamps) that kills.

A part of my build that is still awaiting to be built. And a good job as the parameters have changed as I hinted in another thread a few days ago. It now needs to be built a bit higher than originally planned to accommodate the latest addition to the fleet. It's almost 3.2 metres to the highest point so we need comfortable clearance under for that. The size remains the same, 6 metres by 6 metres. The original plan would have been sloping down from the front to the back, but that would make the front insanely high now, so it will now slope from the garage wall down towards the left. It will be roofed with box profile roofing as originally planned. I will sketch a proposed joist plan in due course to bounce ideas around. But one thing that has become obvious, the car port roof where it attaches to the garage is going to be above the MVHR vents. I am not sure if that is going to pose a problem or not?

It outputs up to 500V or 1000V depending what you have selected, but only a low current is available. It will certainly smart if you touch the probes. Try not to.

It's okay to short the probes. The damp piece of wood is a good test to give some confidence that it is working properly.

What make of valve, different makes behave differently? If you remove the actuator head from the actual valve, does the actuator move correctly off the valve? does the valve spindle rotate freely with the actuator head off?

I worked on a straw bale house build near me. But the straw bales were for insulation not structure. It was basically a larsen truss style timber frame with the gap between the inner and outer sections of the larsen truss matching the bale size and the bales were stacked up in there forming the wall insulation. Issues I recall, they were very lucky to get a dry enough spell once the straw was cut for it to dry and then be baled. they had trouble finding anyone with a working small square baler, most farms bale as very big round or square bales now. And then renting a barn to store the bales under cover until they were ready to build them in. Imho all it did was add complication and cost and made the finished walls very thick. Just so the builder had a cosy notion he had a "natural" material. He could have achieved the same building performance at lower cost and with thinner walls using some variation on mineral wool like Frametherm,

I'm going to work now dear, you can manage in the cold and dark until I get back can't you? (car runs out of charge half way to work)........

Camping stove and gas bottle. Totally silent, and the fuel won't go stale (though it may run out)

As soon as you mention air fryer or kettle that's 3kW minimum and then only one at a time. There shouldn't be a minimum load requirement, but they will be less efficient at small loads.

If you are doing a service void of 25mm and 12mm plasterboard, that is a perfect match to a 35mm back box.