ProDave

Only if it has say an infiltration feild. They will not allow one discharging to a watercourse, and I believe from next year, existing ones discharging to a watercourse will need to be updated (several people around here are in for a shock)

Just to add, I think you would be mad now to install a septic tank. I don't think it will be long before they are no longer allowed. You really should install a treatment plant if you are going self contained. And in any event discharge to a watercourse will only be allowed for a treatment plant. It can be a complex process designing a system. It all hinges on where the liquid output will go. If you have a watercourse that is a damned good option, though as I found, it is not so easy to get permission for that in Scotland. Otherwise you have to have some form of soakaway system installed, and that can consume quite a large area of land. That all hinges on the percolation test which is a measure of how quick the land drains that will allow you to calculate the requred area. When you also factor in building regs limits on how far the various elements must be from buildings and boundaries, it can often be hard or even impossible to actually fit a treatment system onto your land. A common solution to that if you are in the countryside is to negotiate with an adjacent land owner to have the soakaway under their land. And a last resort of the ground has issues like a high water table is an above ground filter mound.

Yes. You have to take into account the extra dead load when sizing the joists.

This is biscuit mix. A sand / cement mix laid dry that just absorbs moisture from the air and it sets. It is not super strong, and you can snap it, a bit like a ...... biscuit,

What standard of house are you wanting? We wanted something approaching a passive house. When I was taking to Scotframe, I mentioned taking one of their standard kits, and adding extra insulation to get the performance level I wanted. They then refused to quote me and wanted nothing to do with it. I guess I could have just kept quiet and added the amount of insulation I wanted without telling them.

Did mine myself. A morning to dig the hole (that's me in my own digger in the picture above) and a day and a half mixing barrowing and pouring concrete into the hole.

Here you can see my bedroom door / window that will eventually open out onto the balcony once we build it. You can see we have a normal window next to the door so that can be opened just like any other window. Also the fully glazed door lets us see down to the burn from the bedroom easily.

The reason I chose the Conder, is we have seasonally high water table so it needed concreting in. Around the bottom is a "ring" and it only needs concreting in to that level to anchor it. It also has 3 legs to stand on while you are pouring the concrete. Here it is about to go in the hole, you can see the details I am referring to. You can also see at the top there is a little bit sticking up with a green cap on it. That is the access to insert the pump out hose. This is the finished install. The big green lid in the middle houses the blower pump and the smaller green cap to the right in this picture is the emptying point. What was mentioned before is the BioPure units require you to lift out the air blower box to get access to the emptying point.

Our planning app took a long time. When it got to the 8 weeks, they had only just started looking at it and asking questions. I did look into appealing because of non decision, but it was not as simple as just bang an appeal in at 8 weeks and 1 day, there was a much more complicated procedure to follow. That and the time it was likely to take for an appeal, I just waited for the planners to grind away at their own slow pace.

What is the point in a Juliette balcony? Go the whole hog and make one you can walk out onto and sit out there on a pleasant evening. That's what we are doing. Eventually. Until then we have the "suicide door" from our bedroom.

Basically any of the plants that work on the Air Blower principle. That includes the Biopure, Vortex, Conder, and Graff units. When I was looking all these air blower units had very similar performance and were way better than units that have some mechanical process. Often the actual choice is down to which you can get locally for a reasonable price. Surprisingly, Travis Perkins gave the best price for my Conder unit and it was delivered to site by their own wagon. I have the Conder 6 person plant and it is doing it's job very well. Mine discharges to the burn and what comes out is a clear odourless liquid.

And if you do get stuck in mud / quicksand, stay still until help comes. The more you wriggle, the more you sink.

It's all in the regs. Some things can overhang into the activity space like a basin I believe and they might be able to overlap, but a door cannot swing over them. The other one often missed, is the WC activity space does not need to be in front of it, it can be beside it, or if in front it does not need to be in line with it's centreline it can be at an angle.

I can 't emphasise enough what a very dangerous position you put yourself in doing the work between the walls, and the unstable excavations. Getting up to your chest in mud was bad enough, but if there had been a landslip it would have been curtains. What I want to know, is where the French drain around the perimiter that deep down drains to? as surely most of the time it will be below the water table so will just sit full of water unless you have piped it somewhere lower or installed a sump and a pump.

Set back is more about how long it takes UFH to heat up, so by not allowing to room to get too cold, it won't take so long to warm up again. In our new well insulated house if I implemented set back, you could probably measure it in days before the set back temperature brought the UFH on again. It certainly would not over night.

Don't over complicate it. Forget "disabled" You have to provide an "accessible" facility, and Scottish building regs define "accessible" which basically means a certain "activity space" in front of or beside each facility with nothing (except a few allowable things) intruding into that activity space, and a certain minimum width of door opening, That is all you have to comply with. Nothing stopping you swinging the door outwards, and reversing it to swing inwards after completion

The pump on the manifold will not get bothered by pumping into a short circuit for the time it takes the actuator to open (a couple of minutes usually) An overall bypass as far away from the ASHP will stop the heat pump tripping on low flow while you wait for the actuators.

You can't get 2 SWA cables into one gland. Your only option would be an external waterproof box, bring your existing an new SWA cables into that, and then a short length of 5 core SWA from that box to the treatment plant. 1.5mm 2 core SWA would do for your extra alarm cable. Or look at a wireless alarm link, might be a whole lot less hassle.

Our house went up with temporary OSB sheets covering about 90% of the floor to give a working platform. It was some time later that we actually put the proper floor down. Most of my internal stud walls sit direct on the joists and then boarded up to them, that's a personal preference thing. How about a cheap OSB temporary floor to support the spreader plates and UFH, then 25 by 50 battens following the joist lines then the final floor. Pretty much what we did but we used buiscuit mix rather than spreader plates.

But a multitool will sever a cable without you knowing. A padsaw, you will feel a cable pulling on it before it has done anything more than bruised the outer sheath.

Cut back box holes in plasterboard before you skim. If you skim first and then start cutting holes you will likely chip the plaster. Actually (and this is a personal thing) I always cut the back box holes as I fit the sheet, usually measuring up, cut the back box hole, then screw the plasterboard to the wall.

Don't complicate it. Use the proper kit designed for the job. Keep and use the 2 port valves (making the non return valves redundant) Each manifold will be controlled by something presumably, e,g a time switch to say when that UFH system will be on? So connect that time switch to control the manifold controller that each UFH manifold should have. The manifold controller takes care of switching on the pump and the actuators when each zone calls for heat from it's thermostat and if no zone is calling for heat the pump will stop. The manifold controller has a relay output contact that you use to energise the 2 port valve for that manifold. Each 2 port valve has a switch contact. Connect all these in parallel to fire the boiler when any 2 port valve is open. That is it. If your heat source is an ASHP it may get more complcated as some ASHP's want to take over control of the 2 port valves so you have to alter the sequence of the wiring a bit.

I thought the activity space was 1000mm long, you would have to find a very small toilet indeed to fit a toilet and the activity space in a 1600mm long space. The obvious question, if this is a new extension, can you not find more room to make it comply? And swing the door outward so it does not swing over the activity space.

And how much will a 40m long horizontal dry riser with all the right fittings and certification cost? My guess is about the same as a sprinkler system?

Strip foundations and insulated suspended timber floor. The main issue for me is the slop of the site and I wanted to raise, not lower, the ground level. At the back, the house floor is 1 metre above ground level (and that is after the ground level was raised using all the spare soil) To do that with a passive slab would have been a lot of material to import, and would have meant building up a raised platform that extended beyond the perimiter of the house and would not have worked so well with the landscaping plans.