ProDave

I bought it at a time when prices were rising quicker than my wages, mid 80's. It was the only house in the county I could afford, literally and was nowhere near what I wanted and I had no intention of staying there any longer than I had to. In my case it was easy to put a gate in the back fence onto a public path and wheel the mower round. Most of the estate where gardens backed onto other gardens did not have that option. If nothing else that house confirmed what I did and did not like about houses. I can't say there was very much at all about that one that I liked other than it was cheap.

My real extreme case coldest day is just over 2kW I have just tried it again, selecting the option to change things, and there is only gives very coarse options like insulation over or under 200mm no mention of type or U value so it is clearly NOT reading the actual values from the EPC. Oh and at the end of inputting the values there was no "proceed" or done option, so it never did manage to give me a revised figure. Sorry a broken / not properly tested website that either spits out meaningless values or does not work at all.

It astounded me when I bought my first house, a new small terrace house. It had a lawn front and back, but the only way to get a lawnmower between the 2 was to pick it up and carry it through the house. My first DIY job was put a gate in the back fence so I could wheel the lawnmower around the outside. Why are builders so stupid?

Just tried that. It found my EPC (which was lodged as As built, A94) and it came up with heat load of 7.4kW Which compares to the actual heat loss of just over 2kW which my 5kW ASHP has been dealing with comfortably for the last 5 years. I think I said at the time, even an as built SAP with all component parameters entered correctly seemed to calculate my heat loss at about 2 times the real value. I will say it yet again, Jeremy's heat loss spreadsheet on this forum got the estimated heat loss bang on correct. EDIT: I just tried it again, this time selecting our old house which is larger, less well insulated and less air tight, with an EPC C, and guess what, it also claims that house has a heat loss of 7.4kW. I don't know how it is calculating that heat loss, but it is certainly NOT reading any actual figures from the EPC you select. Total work of guestimation, and totally useless for any practical purpose. I wonder if this is the sort of tool MCS folk uses?

What the OP has created is a DIY electric storage boiler. Typically the commercial ones are quite large and have 3 or 4 immersion heaters. they work best on an Economy 10 tariff (not sure if that is available to new customers now) which meant the time they needed to store water between the 3 off peak times was not too great. An Air Source heat pump is a far better idea though.

If you go down and underground then back up, then there is no way to drain that "sump" if you need to.

Personally I don't like steps with a very long going, it is not natural and I end up making a very long step, or 2 little steps to ascend them. We are all used to internal stairs and their rise and going, so I like to stick to similar. Or at the most stretch them out to the longer going of commercial stairs, i.e. what we are all used to in a shopping centre.

Can we clarify: Is it noisy all the time even if the stove is not lit and it is circulating cold water? Or is it only noisy when the fire it lit?

We did as above with 150mm by 20mm planks, either side of the posts. Plenty strong enough to space posts at 2 metres and no additional support needed for the planks. All standard stuff from fence suppliers. Planks either side of the post like that give privacy while allowing wind to pass through.

Fit a waterproof external junction box in place of the old light and extend your cable from there. Most LED outdoor lamps now come with a captive length of flex.

What diagnostics have you done to confirm it is the solenoid coil that is faulty? It could the signal that is driving it that is not present? It could be it is energising but the thing it is activating is stuck.

Wind driven rain will be your greatest challenge there.

Generally speaking, the DNO's expect the incoming cable to enter the kiosk at the bottom left and they put their supply head and fuse to the left then the meter above it. That kiosk is large enough that the incoming cable can just make it's way to the left. Consumer side outgoing cable usually on the right. Assuming the DNO fit a 100A fuse the outgoing cable wants protecting by a lower rating fuse to give discrimination, I normally use an 80A switch fuse for that.

Mice only need a tiny hole to get in, about the size of a hole in an air brick. If it is a normal cold loft it will be ventilated and the standard sized vents will allow a mouse in. Not much you can do but traps, poison and get a cat. This is not a problem unique to timber frame. If there are no obvious signs of water damage all you can do is keep topping up the heating pressure and see if anything develops. Is is solid floor or suspended timber floor downstairs? If suspended are there any access traps to the under floor space? If it only loses pressure when the heating comes on and then goes off, it is equally possible the expansion vessel has failed and water is getting expelled via the discharge pipe each time it heats up.

I definitely agree with remove corridors but we found a stairwell right in the middle of the house worked very well. Straight in from front door into a small hall area giving access to all downstairs rooms from the one small hall. Up the stairs, 180 degree turn at the half landing, and the upstairs landing is directly above the hall, and gives access to all upstairs rooms. Nice and compact and efficient. The only one we struggled with downstairs was how to get a utility room and downstairs WC without a corridor or having to pass through one to get to the other. Simple answer combined utility and WC all in one room. Not to everyone's taste I agree but it works well.

Reading between the lines, I suspect @Crofter is asking at what size does room in roof make sense? Ours is 150 square metres total and that is what we in Scotland know as 1 3/4 storey. With the "normal" roof pitch here being 45 degrees (which I would thoroughly recommend for a variety of reasons) it is easy to turn a dead loft space into very economical extra accommodations. Our walls extend just over a metre above the first floor level before they turn into "roof" and by building the roof as a warm roof hung from ridge beams, you get almost all of the upper floor as usable space with no obstructions or wasted space. So in simple terms going from a bungalow with a silly flimsy W joisted roof that is wasted space to a proper room in roof design is a very economic way of almost doubling your floor area. Then it comes down to good design to minimise wasted space, i.e efficient stairwells and minimum corridors to get to rooms. The English vernicular of very low pitched roofs make this a whole lot harder.

Hindsight. You should have screwed a batten to the joist for the PB to fix to before you fitted the PB. You were probably pissed working in the pub.

This situation should not be a "surprise" now. Clearly it has been like that since the neighbour built their extension. WHY was the issue not raised then? And given the roof and panels overhang, your PW surveyor surely has negotiated a solution? What do your plans show as how the roof of the 2 extensions are proposed to join? I am guessing you are proposing some form of valley gutter with the valley on the party line, which WILL involve moving or removing the bottom row of panels. Time for you or your PW surveyor to get tough on the trespass of the offending parts of the roof and panels.

Can you read the scale on the flow meters if so what is the flow rate? That begs the question if the water is warm, and it is flowing through the UFH loops but never getting warm, then just what is the under floor make up? and has it EVER worked properly?

Sadly it has been plumbed wrongly. There is a perfectly good isolating valve on the bottom manifold, completely un used. The bottom connection to the manifold should have been connected there, and I am certain that unused isolator could be swapped to the left hand end where it would then work. But you would need a plumber to do that, unless you are good at DIY plumbing, which would mean draining down a large part of the system just to move that isolator somewhere useful. Once done you would be able to isolate the top and bottom manifold and flush the UFH pipes through with water. Are there any flow meters on the top manifold hiding out of sight behind the pump?

Can you post some pictures so the issue makes sense?

Before you try that (which may not be necessary) you first need to find out exactly what is not working. So with heating on and all room thermostats turned up, is the pump in your picture running? Do ANY of the pipes on the manifold feel warm, especially the copper ones? If they do, but the white pipes are not warm, try unscrewing the two actuators on the bottom, With them removed the zones will be on regardless of thermostats. And do remember UFH is not instant like a radiator, it can take a long time to warm up.

I have seen skip lorries lifting their front wheels, and if they really can't lift the skip, I have seen them attach just 2 chains, tip the skip up and tip part of the contents out and try again.

Posi joists over about 3m span I think are usually specified with strongbacks. Would adding a second set reduce the deflection figure? I have mentioned before, look for little "gotchas" Our joists were specified for the longest span, but since they span the entire width of the house as one loing joist, that meant in most cases the 2 shorter spans in effect had over specified joists. Nothing wrong with that. Except our bedroom, where the long span was broken by the stair well, so half our bedroom got done with the "correct" joists for the span, and the other half the over specified continuous joists. There is noticable bounce on the "correct" span side of the room and my regret is not spotting this on the plan, and insisting the whole room got done with the same over specified joists.

Not entirely as simple as that unfortunately. So worth checking with your BCO what they want. In my case BC insist that the drain run be vented at both ends, it is vented in the treatment plant, and they insist the other end has a real actual vent pipe. Now because I did not realise this, I had not provisioned for one, so I was not allowed to fit an AAV to the top of my main stack pipe. I could have done that, if only I had known of the need to vent the end of the drain run. I could have run a pipe up the outside of the end wall of the house to achieve that, and then I could have used an AAV inside the house. Unfortunately by the time I realised this my driveway was concreted so it would have meant digging that up.