ProDave

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.

What software are you modeling your heat loss with? There is a simple heat loss spread sheet on this forum written by a well respected former member. I used this to predict the heat loss of my new house, and it's prediction of a worst case heat loss of just under 2.5kW turned out the be absolutely spot on. As built air tightness is all down to attention to detail, all build methods can achieve good air tightness if you detail things properly. There is no such thing as a design air tightness. You don't deliberately design to have poor air tightness, except in rare cases where for some strange reason you don't want to fit an mvhr unit so you deliberately make sure your house is full of leaks so building control don't insist on you installing mvhr. In short you are approaching this wrong. Plan to build an air tight house, plan to detail all aspects well to achieve this, and plan to install mvhr.

Another post i will disagree with. Our plan had a large "plant room" but the realities when actually doung the work, was it made no sense. All that is in our "plant room" is the mvhr, a few electrical boxes related to the ASHP, a circulating pump and an expansion vessel. There really is not much indoor stuff for the average ASHP. Consumer unit was far better on the wall in the utility room. And hot water made much more sense in an airing cupboard formed from the corner of the spare bedroom putting the tank central to hot water points of use for quick hot water delivery. I summary our services are distributed each being where makes best sense.

Interesting. We love our balcony, a lovely place to sit on a nice day and look down on the burn and listen to the wildlife. But out balcony is 2 metres deep, I think it was mentioned in another thread, it has to be big enough to use, not just a narrow space barely wide enough to stand on.

So what I am saying is measure the ridge height on the approved drawings and work out from the scale how high it is. Then see how that compares to the non approved drawing you have with dimensions. I am guessing if no ridge height specified in planning they are not that bothered.

Similar to above, I wish I had moved the house about 3 metres to the east. Initially we positioned the house to leave enough land to the side to accommodate an on site drainage field. During building warrant that became impossible and we eventually got permission for discharge to the burn instead. At that point we did not need such a large side garden so I would have loved to move the house over which would have given more parking on the other side, but that would have meant going back and re submitting planning and starting building warrant again which would have been delay and extra cost, so we left it as it was.

Do the drawings have a scale? Yes I know everyone says do not measure from a drawing but it might be the only way.

It is often a complete unknown what you will find when you dig a hole, until you start digging. We came across a multicore probably telecoms cable, but nobody's phone stopped working so it remains a mystery what it was. Was your pipe "live" i.e. did your hole start to fill up with probably smelly water?

For no nonsense simplicity you can't beat these available almost everywhere for about £20. Ugly as an ugly thing but basic 3 power levels and a thermostat. I have several used for heating the static caravan when we were in it and not used since. * Almost everything else seems to have over complicated electronic controls to comply with LOT20 an EU directive that for some strange reason we seem to think we still have to abide by (but lets not discuss that) * not entirely true. One is still in use controlled by my PV diverter to turn the heater on (set to it's lowest 700W power) on the rare occasions when surplus PV exceeds the 2.8kW of the immersion heater.