ProDave

Apart from anything else, choosing to store over 4 tons of water in the loft, forced them to install a steel frame to take that weight. If the tanks were on the ground floor, or outside for the RW harvesting, that is a big expense saved.

Timber frame usually achieves it's air tightness by having an air tight layer on the inside of the frame. In my case that is standard OSB then an air tight membrane with taped joints, other systems use an air tight board with taped joints. Insulation on a timber frame is whatever you make it, how thick do you want the frame? Installing the insulation in a timber frame can be a DIY job that reduces the cost down to just the materials.

Perception is most of it. Some people perceive "concrete" as bad but Hempcrete as good because it is natural. The electric car thing is interesting. SWMMBO saw an advert for a "self charging hybrid car" . "Oh that's a good idea, saves all that messing about plugging it in to charge it" I had to go through a process of questioning her well how do you think it charges then if you don't plug it in, before the penny dropped.

I wasn't belittling the trade, just saying that as you don't have to join a competent persons scheme to be a joiner, anyone can rock up in the branch and say they are a joiner and they have no way to check you are other than just accept your word and open an account.

If the plot has PP then plenty that are looking will know about it. I take it you are in discussion with the owner? Put a few sheep on it, then any presence of people and you are "tending the sheep" You say you based your estimate on £10K per pole and there will be 4 poles. I think that is more than it will be. For a comparison my friend needed part of an 11KV supply re routed and undergrounded. It cost £10K to remove 1 pole and re route 2 poles worth of 11KV cable underground. Underground is more expensive than overhead, so I suspect you are looking at less than £5K per pole so even if the supply is £20K it would probably be worth it, as long as the plot is not too much.

These are taking some of the weight of the purlins down to a supporting wall in the middle of the house. you can't go removing them without replacing something else and this is really into structural engineers territory to design some alternative less intrusive support. If this is just for storage, an easier option might just be to relocate the loft hatch so it comes up into the more usable space in between the two A frames?

So it seems every Howdens had different special offers as well, Ours had "3 saws for £10" and the cheap CT1 but not the 2 for 1 on screws.

So was this MVHR designed on a Dalek some form of passive ventilation stack that does not use any electricity? And yes I would have been tempted to have attached a sink plunger to it to get the neighbours talking. Agreed some internal "finishes" were rough, but they did say it was not finished. All the wood I burn is free, but I suspect free firewood is not so abundant in Oxfordshire.

Get a proper quote for the power connection before making a decision. Anything else is guess work.

And mention of T*****l M**s

Tonight's offering had the usual non compliant staircase, in this case too wide a gap between treads. And a balcony that had only a basic top and middle handrail that would fail Scottish building regs. Would that be allowed in England?

If you have a 40ft drop you need to catch the water at the top and pipe it down to a turbine at the bottom, and I suspect it will do rather well.

Just watched this weeks episode. Again, building regs issues. The Eco house at Findhorn (a place I know well) Has a U shaped kitchen with barely a metre between the 2 sides of the U, falls foul of the minimum 1400mm "circulation space" and a Mezanine floor with a near verttical ladder to access it.

I set my designers the brief "to simplify the foundations" by that I meant remove unecessary sleeper walls. I got the impression designers do that as an easy way to reduce beam sizes. My reasoning was the upstairs joists are going to span that gap, so the downstairs ones are damned well going to span the same gap without the aid of sleeper walls.

It is right to look at running cost vs installation cost. In my case annual heating cost is about £250 with ASHP. If we assume that runs at a COP of 3, then that would cost £750 pa with direct electricity. So the ASHP is saving me £500 pa * In my case the ASHP cost under £1000 so in 2 years it has paid for itself. *of course it also saves money on the DHW heating so payback time will be even less.

We are talking about the low temperature version of the sun amp here, where the temperature range is within limits for an ASHP to charge it. So why would you not use that with a COP of say 3, and instead choose to use direct electricity? Jeremy charges his high temperature sun amp with direct electricity because the temperature is too high for an ASHP so there is no alternative. I am in the camp that things there is not much benefit to a heating buffer tank, and my ASHP feeds the UFH directly.

A sun amp is just a heat store. Without the ASHP how would you propose heating the sun amp?

Your bit of snake oil will have done what it is good at, regulated the voltage, so your light bulbs last longer. I would not have an issue if that was the feature they were advertised for and sold for. I call them snake oil because most of the advertising claims they will save you money on your electricity bill, which is mostly wishful thinking.

Zdb at my house is 0.2 ohms. (Ze at the incoming supply a little less) so my immersion heater pulsing on and off may make the supply pulse up and down by a shade over 2 volts. I can't say I have actually noticed any effect. If everyone in the street had PV and the same burst firing controller as I used, then they would not be synchronised so when mine is on, someone elses would probably be off. So they would probably just even out and it would just be like we are all running low power loads. Now if everyone used phase angle control (like old fashioned light dimmers) to regulate the power to their PV dump controllers then that could create a much worse situation for supply stability.

I can never understand why oil users fill up "little and often" At our last house we fitted a 2500L oil tank that would do the heating for more than a year. It means for a start you get a better price per L (you get penalised for small loads) and you can pick the cheapest time of year to fill up, with most years was about August, before most people feel the need to turn the heating on and the price starts rising again. And doing that you know exactly how many litres and the exact cost of a years heating. I avoided oil this time because it must rank as one of the most volatile fuel prices going. So back the the OP have you calculated how much power you might actually generate from the stream to see if it is actually worthwhile? i.e what flow rate can you sensibly extract from the stream, and what head have you got available?

Re smart meters. Say NO. they are not compulsory. Yet. Not all spinning disc meters will run backwards if you have PV fitted. As to your voltage optimiser. Snake oil as far as I am concerned. Yes reducing the voltage for say a light buld will reduce the power it uses (at the expense of it being dimmer) But most of the big loads that take all the real power are used for heating things up, like your kettle and water in your washing machine or dishwasher. Reduce the voltage and the heater produces less power so it takes longer to heat the same thing up. Result is it uses the same amount of ENERGY.

I always believe it needed to be 2 sheets of the 15mm fireline plasterboard, with the joints in the second layer staggered from the first layer. At least that is what I have done. As to finish, taped and filled and then painted.

You do know you don't have to have the supply moved. You could do as many of us have, and leave the meter there, and just run your own cable from that box into the house. At those prices it will probably save you a lot of money.

That was expensive for such a short connection distance.

Okay I accept that for a true IR heater. the sort of things used a lot in churches to save heating the whole massive leaky building, instead shine some heat on the parishioners. But this is a graphite "panel" that you put under the floor or behind the plasterboard on a wall. Please someone explain to me how this is ANY different to ANY form or resistive electric heating placed under the floor. If this claims to be radiant heat, then so is my under floor heating?