ProDave

I can't give a recommendation. But I was first fixing an extension on Monday, and I noticed at least half the silver tape joining the gaps had simply unstuck, and appeared to have virtually no tack left in it to re stick. So some of it is utterly rubbish and not fit for purpose. Does it have to be silver? I would be happy to recommend Tescon Vana Air tightness tape that I used, and if you search on the bay you will find a German seller selling it a lot cheaper than anyone in the UK.

That wall on the long bath edge is soaking. It needs stripping and some time with the dehumidifier to see if it dries out. It might be wet from the shower leaking through failed grout, it might be wet from something else above or the other side of the wall (is that an outside wall or party wall) I have seen people carry on using a shower in this state during renovation by hanging a shower curtain or 2 up the wall while showering then take it down to allow the room to breathe and dry out. If it does not dry out then it is a building problem and he has the "fun" of explaining to the HA the present state of it..........

Is this bottom bend a proper rest bend or an ordinary tight bend?

I can't find anything about what the temperature range should be, only that the safety cut out is set at a fixed 80 degrees. Hence deciding 70 would be a good max temperature for the normal stat.

Well I opted for the "pragmatic" solution. The original thermostat has an adjustment that you turn with a screwdriver. As already noted at it's maximum setting, it switches off at 55 degrees. That adjustment has a "pip" that comes to rest against part of the moulding of the case to limit it's travel. Well not any more it doesn't. Now with it's new found freedom to rotate a little further, I have been watching how it performs. Today the tank got to 63 degrees before SWMBO decided to have a shower and run off some hot water. My aim is to get it so it cuts off at 70 degrees, alas I will have to wait for another sunny day for that, which seem in short supply here at the moment. P.S this might not be the recommended way of "solving" limited thermostat range.

This highlights just how utterly rubbish a huge amount of UK housing stock is. Poorly (or no) insulated walls poor heating and poor ventilation. Add tenants who scrimp on the heating and disable the fan because it is noisy (if they can) and it's easy to understand "damp" and "mould" issues. Our previous house still running as a B&B and with reasonably well insulated walls and ceilings has no condensation or damp issues, and no there are not any fan isolator switches so the fan comes on with the light and cannot be disabled. And the showers get a fair bit of use. Gut the room, dry it out, insulate it (internal insulation) re board and re fit a new bathroom in the now slightly smaller room, is about the only solution. Just hope the landlord does it a bit quicker than @Onoff Not many landlords will do that, so it just gets patched up again and again..........

Thermostatic Radiator Valves would help a lot allowing you to some extent set the temperature in each room.

The problem with "buy a new fridge" is how do you know how noisy it was. The LG double door "American" FF in our last house proved to be the quietest FF we have ever owned. That was luck, not judgement. In the new house SWMBO did not want anything that big but when we looked most upright FF's (one above the other) were too small. We ended up with a Becko FF because it was 700mm wide and had quite a bit more space than the majority that were 600mm or less wide. There really was not much choice. Let alone then being able to choose the quietest one in that format. As it happens it is disappointingly noisy. It is in the "kitchen / family room" and now sits alongside a bit of projecting stud wall next to it that has quietened it a bit. This just reinforces my view that open plan rooms incorporating a kitchen are a very bad idea. I am now very glad we have the other living room available away from the noise of the FF, the dishwasher, the fan oven, and the extractor hood. Kitchens are WORK rooms, not relaxing rooms.

For our first house, we made some small changes and BC wanted an updates set of "as built" drawings. They accepted an original set marked up with tipex and a pen. We might be in the same position this time as the designer we used went bust. They have been taken over by a new company but it is anyone's guess if the old files have been preserved so if I have to do the same, it might be tipex and a pen again. I only have PDF copied of the drawings.

I don't know the rules of a HA tenancy. a LONG time ago I had school friends in council houses and it seemed normal for the council tenant to fit a new kitchen or re fit a bathroom, and look after all the decorating. So what do the HA rules say these days?

He could just claim the tiles fell off the wall one night with a big clatter. Agree he has dug himself a big hole. HA should have been informed about the problem LONG ago, as soon as he noticed a hollow sounding tile.

So is he the tenant? you said rental property? Shouldn't the landlord be sorting this?

What a sorry state. Condensation and mould heaven. It looks like a very poorly insulated very poorly ventilated bathroom. Is the property occupied? (I hope not for the tenants sake) First thing is ventilate well and use a dehumidifier to dry the whole lot out. While you are doing that scrape and scrub that lousy ceiling to get back to something sold and clean as apart from the tiles you will be renovating that ceiling. If it dries out okay and remains dry go ahead and re tile after making good any rotten plaster. If it remains damp you really have to find the problem. And ensure the place is heated and ventilated properly. The only times we had issues was when the tenant was too tight to turn the heating on, and turned the fan off. Tip: Rental properties should NEVER have a fan isolator switch, that just invites the tenant to turn it off. If it is a problem room due to poor insulation consider a single room mvhr.

Just to add, you don't need water at 80 degrees. Our hot water is heated to 48 degrees, that being hotter than I can hold my hand under for any length of time. I see no reason for needing it hotter than that.

Okay I can see how this system achieves a higher temperature than an air to water heat pump. BUT I cannot see the claim it can achieve the same COP in winter as in summer? What about defrosting? As regards different way to do the same job. Well yes it is, but with the big drawback of needing more complex and robust plumbing and an F gas engineer to pipe it, check it and then charge it with gas. It would be interesting to see a proper comparison, The extra eficciency and energy saving Vs the cost of the install and gassing, and see what the payback time of the extra expense really is.

With 4KW of PV you won't get more spare than one can handle for much of the time, so for simplicity I would have one solar PV diverter feeding one immersion heater. However I would probably consider a manual summer / winter changeover switch that switches it from the bottom to the top one. Alternatively make that changeover with a contactor. Some solar PV diverters have a switch output to do that. So for example heat the top one first, and then that reaches it's cut out temperature, switch to the bottom one. The ability to do things like that is one reason why I preferred to make my own,

I assume as you are heating with a heat pump you will be running the hot water temperature lower? Mine is an unvented cylinder normally heated to just 48 degrees and it does not seem to heat the room much. I am pretty sure all the connecting pipework gave off more heat than the tank until I carefully lagged all that with good thick pipe insulation.

Is it too late to relocate or "distribute" the plant room? For instance, out hot water tank ended up in a bedroom (will be boxed in as an airing cupboard) as that put it more central to points of use than the plant room. Any heat that leaks for most of the year will be a bit of beneficial heat to that bedroom that otherwise has no heating. And lag ALL the pipes. If you can get at them to install them, you can get at them to lag them? The whole plant room might have been better in the old part of the house.

We learned that lesson when we moved here in 2003 and both started work self employed, having previously been self employed. A year later we were refused interest free credit to buy a sofa.

I don't think a knock down and rebuild is viable here, particularly as bare plots are available and cheap. But that didn't stop a neighbour paying £180K for a small cottage then finding out it was in very poor shape so he knocked it down and rebuilt. I am convinced he now has a (very nice) new build house that has cost him a lot more than it's market value would be. That is fine if you can afford it and have no plan to sell but not a position i would choose to be in.

Who fitted it? I strongly suspect looking at the state of it, that it was an internal door. We have a timber external door on the garage of our old house that has been there since 2004 and is still in good condition with no warping or no de lamination. Our new house has a second hand SwedeDoor front door that our neighbour removed, Again about 15 years old and still in good condition.

If using the jig described above by @jack you could add 2 legs to get all socket dwangs noggins at the correct height

Are you battening a service void? Not sure what this "wood bit of Durisol" is? 25mm battens and 12.5mm plasterboard makes enough gap for a 35mm plasterboard box to fit into snugly.

Absolutely. 30 years ago I could have bought a plot for about 2/3 the cost of a 1 bedroom house in Oxfordshire. But nobody would lend me the money for it then. That very same 1 bedroom house is now worth about £175K so if plots were the same proportion you should be able to buy a plot for about £116K

U value 0.15 so not bad, but won't that have a very short decrement delay so likely to get very hot in summer?