ProDave

Almost. Our last house they tried to put into G. I appealed suggesting it should be E. They sent me loads of examples of similar houses in band G. I trawled estate agents listings and provided several examples of a similar house in band E. They would not budge so we agreed to take it to a hearing where we both stand up and present our case and a panel decides. The day before the hearing they phoned me and offered to drop it to band F which I accepted. I am expecting the same this time round with the new house.

They need to be a bit wider in Scotland. I measured the gap and made them as wide as would fit, at 930mm wide.

Whatever band they allocate, it is worth appealing, you will often get it down a band.

Has it been signed off? If not I suspect BC will want an amendment, and the council tax valuer will include it as habitable space. It sounds like a very easy "after completion" alteration. Perhaps leave the garage door to access a small storage space, and frame off the wall just a bit further in?

I have never seen an UVC without a tank thermostat, that is one of the essential features I thought they all had to have. Even though mine does not routinely use the tank stat to control temperature (it has a separate temperature probe for that) the tank stat is wired to kill power and close the 2 port valve feeding the cylinder if it gets too hot.

The difference with a "heat pump" hot water cylinder, is the input coil is larger. With the Telford one I have it goes pretty much top to bottom of the tank, and is corrugated to increase the surface area. As I understand it this means you can heat the tank to a given temperature with a lower temperature of input water. I don't see how this can relate to your flow rate error, but it could result in the return temperature being too high and a different error. Or it will just take longer to heat the hot water.

A cold roof will be ventilated, so it could well be vermin. You won't see them just b by looking, they will be under the insulation. After a long period, you may see droppings. Put some rat poison down, that will sort them.

Warm roof or cold roof? I would expect it nigh on impossible to have visitors in a well sealed warm roof.

The 2 newel posts at the half landing go right down to the floor. Not that it really matters as a 6 by 2 spans across the gap there (stairs are in a stairwell between 2 walls. 6 by 2 framing all round fixed with 2 big coach bolts to every upright of the timber frame. Then 4 by 2 spanning accross on joist hangers to support the floor.

You design it on the stairbox website as a full turn half landing. Yes they don't supply the half landing. They supply 2 short staircases. I then framed the half landing in 6*2 (because that is what I had left over) and decked it with 22mm P5 chipboard.

So if you are going to use an IBC as a soakaway, you will first have to drill an awful lot of holes in it to let the water out.

My pump noise was more of a whine. I changed the upstairs one first as I already had a spare Wilo pump, that was in the en-suite so proved very annoying. I have ordered a second Wilo pump to replace the downstairs pump. If any deaf member want's a couple of cheap circulating pumps let me know.

Do you mean IBC?

Jeremy Vine was discussing this today. An interesting statement. Some people think if you build something and don't get paid, you have a right to go and "un build it" Apparently you don't.

I didn't know there was more than one sort. All the builders merchants here only stock OSB3

Done

Anything will help. The main thing is to keep the wind out. Last winter during the "beast from the East" I spent a wonderful half hour under the 'van at night, in a blizard, with a hairdryer thawing a frozen pipe where mice had stripped a section of the pipe insulation. Make sure you put a few doors in your skirt so you still have access.

A solar PV diverter thread made me think of this question, but thought it best to pose it here. If you have a solar PV diverter to dump power to hot water, AND battery storage, who's aim is to dump surplus PV to battery charging. Which one "wins" i.e which one will take priority? I guess it all depends on how they are programmed. but if you buy an off the shelf battery system, you won't have control of it's software. This reinforces my view that battery storage needs to be a DIY thing, probably integrated into the same controller that is doing the HW dump control, so the one device can make a decision (your decision) whether to prioritise dumping to HW or dumping to the batteries.

I think his "extension" was made of plywood so it would quickly "get out of the way" without damaging the bridge / tunnel. For anyone not familliar with narrowboats, some of the tunnels are quite low. We took a hired NB through the Harecastle tunnel. At one point, the tv aerial (freestanding thing on a 6" pole sat on top of the boat) was scraping the tunnel roof, and the helmsman at the back had to duck

I don't know that particular model, but at the most basic level, there is a current transformer that clips onto one of the meter tails. The output from that will be a 50Hz current proportional to the current being imported or exported. That should hapily pass down a twisted pair. Of course if they choose to put some electronics in the CT and use some other protocol that may not hold true. I will be building my own (actually just redeveloping a previous one)

Your Cat 6 is 4 twisted pairs. These things work on a current transformer to send import / export measurement. I am pretty damned sure the current transformer will hapilly send it's signal down one of the twisted pairs. Well I damned well hope so as that is exactly what I am intending to do. (except my twisted pairs happen to be in a bit of spare armoured telephone cable I had spare)

Does that negate the BR requirement to provide a means of escape via a window?

Would really need to see a whole house floor plan. No 1, site the hot water cylinder as central to all points of use as possible. That may or may not be this cupboard. When designing my layout, I wanted a manifold but I also did not want to make any hot run longer than it had to be. My solution was to put the manifold in the ceiling above the utility room, and it will be accessed by a little door like a mini lift out loft hatch.

Yes recirculating hood with carbon filter. As well as fitting a cable, but some dwangs (noggins) across the ceiling where it is going so you have something to fix to.

Are you sure those will be low enough and large enough to be a means of escape?