ProDave

Both strictly are "under pressure" An unvented cylinder is usually pressurised to 3 bar, regulated by a pressure reducing valve. Expansion is taken care of with an expansion vessel with safety relief valves in case that fails. A vented cylinder is pressurised by the water from a header tank usually in the loft. Because the tank is usually not very high, the pressure will usually be less than 1 bar. Expansion is taken care of by venting back into the header tank. Vented is considered old fashioned, you get poor water flow rates due to the low pressure, and often have to fit a pump if you want half decent pressure and flow from a shower. Unvented, because it runs at a higher pressure delivers much better flow and pressure for a decent shower, there is no header tank in the loft to freeze in winter and less chance of the water getting contaminated by muck in a header tank.

Those bare wires twisted together bottom left don't give me much confidence it has been wired properly.

There will be a pressure gauge somewhere. What pressure is it reading? If you have been bleeding air out, and not putting water back by opening the valves on the fill loop, it may have shut down due to low pressure.

Basic observation. This WAS working (to a degree) and the tank was getting hot. Now it is not. have you changed ANYTHING? Where is the stove in relation to the tank? and more importantly does it flow by thermosyphon or is there a pump? Is the pump running?

Is there a thermostat on the thermal store? if so what temperature does it read? These things are usually a big thermal store with a heat exchange coil for DHW so I can't see how it is possible to not have hot water if the tank is hot. And if the tank is not hot yet the stove has shut down, then something is wrong. Can we see some pictures.

In all the mechants here. Know as "2 by inch and a half"

Rather than carve out a shape in the laminate, could you not have used the multitool to trim the bottom off the ornate carving so the laminate would slide under it?

It will be an improvement, and only trying it will tell. I don't buy the "priority" thing. Anything else drawing cold water will use up some of the available flow.

I fitted a 300 litre UVC. You need a larger one as you are storing the water a bit less hot, and you need one with the high capacity heat input coil. Mine was in the region of £850 They are quite tall, about 1.8 metres, so I doubt you will get a tank and a washing machine in that cupboard, which may be a good argument to swing it in favour of a sun amp for your application. But both the washer, and the sun amp are heavy, so whichever goes on top will need a substantial shelf to sit on.

The panels would typically connect together in series to form a string of typically 8 panels, and only one pair of cables from that would enter the house. Be VERY careful connecting them up, once you get a few in series you have a very high DC voltage, and DC is a lot more dangerous than AC. The very last connection of each string is the most dangerous one, you must be absolutely certain the other end of the cables are terminated into the DC isolator, and absolutely certain that is turned OFF. Also be certain there are no short circuits on the cabling. I would not recommend this as a DIY job, get an electrician who understands the risks and procedures.

An UVC is a hot water tank, but unlike old fashioned ones that were fed from a header tank in the loft, they have a mains water feed in to the bottom (via a pressure reducing valve supplied with the tank) and also have an over pressure and over temperature release valve so they won't explode if something goes badly wrong. It can be heated either directly by an immersion heater, or by a heat input coil that can be fed from either a boiler or a heat pump. The advantage being you can heat them to any temperature you want with the heat pump, unlike a sun amp that needs the input water temperature to be at least 65 degrees. No electric boiler needed.

If you go for the simplest solution (like I have) ASHP driving UFH directly, and heating an UVC to 48 degrees for DHW: Assume a COP of 3 when heating the UFH so that's 2200KWh of electricity @15p per KWH that's £330 per year for space heating. Assume COP of 2 when heating DHW so that's 1150KWh of electricity @15p per KWh that's £172.50 per year for hot water. The real figures will be cheaper than that, as most of the time the COP figures should be better than that, and you will probably find a cheaper electricity tariff than we can get up here (extra 2p distribution surcharge) The fact you can halve (or better) the DHW costs by using a simple unvented cylinder is what swung me away from the Sun Amp solution. Yes the UVC will have a higher standing heat loss than the sun amp, but that heat loss is more than made up by the saving in heating cost. Plus for half the year that "loss" is just helping to heat the house. The sun amp solution makes sense if you have a lot of solar PV so are always looking to use up surplus PV generation, are short of space, or the particulars of the install mean the standing loss from a conventional tank becomes an overheating nuisance.

We put the dehumidifier on the day after the plasterer finished. Until we did the windows were running with condensation and SWMBO was complaining the washing on the pulley was not drying, so we had to remove all that excess moisture from the house. Too cold at this time of year to leave windows open, but that is what we did for the last lot of plastering done in the summer. (we are living in the house so don't want it getting cold) 2 days later it was all bone dry and we were painting the plaster. Not a crack to be seen anywhere.

It might be "correct" but I always tend to over engineer things and I just like the security of the hanger folded over the top of the wall plate and a few more nails to keep it there.

Here is the tread describing setting up that three internet / phone solution

No not me unfortunately. I wish I could get that all you can eat deal from three, but no signal from there network here, just 2G O2 and vodaphone. So still stuck for the moment tied to a landline. A local commercial offering (thinly disguised as a community led scheme) is now offering wireless broadband, but it would cost us more than BT's phone, broadband and mobile package we have, so at the moment we are ruling it out.

The problem is nailing the hanger to the joist down that gap. So nail the hanger to the joist, slide the joist into position, then nail the joist to the wall plate. A magnet on a stick to hold the nail, and 50mm is enough room to swing a hammer. P.S. To me the hanger looks too short. Every one I have done, the hanger is long enough to fold over at the top and also nail into the top of the wallplate

If house prices fall, that always leads to the large house builders mothballing sites and stopping building until they can see the market recover. That will reduce demand for materials.

My only big ticket item left is the windows and doors for the sun room. The fall back is they don't absolutely have to be the same as the rest of the house, it is after all clad completely differently as well, so if the cost of European windows goes silly I will have to see what the UK offers instead.

Just connect a vent stack to the static caravan, that is what I did.

If you had one that opened on positive pressure it would let all the stink into the house and might as well not be there.

I have never understood that argument. You adjust the hot and cold to get the temperature of water you want out of the tap. If you have got to the point the cold pressure is pushing the hot water back, then you would only have cold water coming out of the tap, and you would have turned the cold tap down long ago to maintain the water temperature that you want. So while it is theoretically possible for the cold to overcome the hot and push it back, in the real world if you are trying to run a hot bath, you would never actually let that happen. Our previous 1930's house was plumbed like this and never gave any problem.

Can I ask the obvious question. Why do you want to terminate them outside? The logical and normal thing is bring the SWA cables inside, whole, and terminate them directly into the consumer unit with the correct glands.

Turn it off while he is plastering as it might be dusty while he is mixing, but turn it back on when done.

It was lucky it failed today. Should be able to get and fit the replacement tomorrow. No guests in tonight but a full house tomorrow and they may have been less than best pleased if there was no hot water.