ProDave

Before you tighten up, have a look that the olive is touching it's "cone" in the fitting. What can happen sometimes is the pipe is pushed in as far as it will go then tightened. Change the fitting for another, and the new fitting does not have as much room for the pipe, so the olive (already compressed and stuck to the pipe) does not seat in it's cone as the pipe has bottomed out in the fitting first. If you encounter that, shorten the pipe a bit. You learn this when no matter how tight you tighten it, it won't seal.

That is going to be a "marmite house" and personally I would be on the "I hate it" side. It just looks un finished. I wired a house a while back where the owner wanted OSB sheeting as the finished wall. The joiners did a very good job of making the OSB very neat, but again it just screamed not finished.

Only 1? Too much information.

Then the bottom quarter of your screen is covered in a pop up telling you to turn off your ad blocker.

I give them 9 out of 10 for trying. They have made it a similar size to a switch. To get 10 out of 10 it would need to be the same size, fit into a standard 1G electrical box, and be no thicker than a typical switch.

It sounds to me like you need to buy yourself a digger. You can get forks to fit on, or in place of a bucket, and a boom extension can make a handy crane, e.g our builder lifting the big ridge beam onto the house

Delivery to a new house can be a problem. I had a parcel not arrive and they kept telling me they tried to deliver but nobody was in and they had left a card. I was in and n card left. They tried this for 3 days. On the 4th day I saw the van go down the road, knock on the door of an empty house so intercepted him on the way back up the road. Sometimes delivery companies just do no pass on instructions to their drivers like "if there is not a green landrover parked in front of the garage, you are at the wrong house"

I would look at extending the whole end of the bungalow out, not just one side. That will give you a utility room or whatever you choose yo use the extra space the other side of the entrance for. You might tun into problems with where the building line runs in the side street, if your extension would stick out further forward than that, then it is not a given that PP would be granted. I had a similar situation with a previous house on a corner plot that took an appeal to establish the fact I could extend sideways.

That's a brave man cladding those dormers from a ladder. I would want some scaffold up personally.

Why so big?

Try this for a start, at least it gives you an idea of the price http://www.discount-electrical.co.uk/product.php/385707497/6943x16-0mm-basec-approved-6943x-black-3-core-steel-wire-armoured-cable-16mm--priced-per-metre- I got mine for £4.36 per metre (including VAT) from The Electric centre in Inverness. You need to be buying from a wholesaler not a "shed" to get it cut to the length you want.

What sort of smell? I assume you mean sewage smell? Ours does not smell at all. And certainly the discharge (into the burn) is completely odourless. Are you sure the pipe feeding it is vented properly at both ends? Yes the old recommendation was throw a dead rabbit in to get it "started"

Mine is not as good as @JSHarris and needs 2300W of heat input when it's -10 outside. But still not bad.

Am I miss understanding something here? You have windows that go down lower than the parapet. So there is a thin gap bwtween the parapet and the window. Where does the water that goes down that gap drain to? Inside the house seems the answer at the moment Can't help feeling I would have had the window higher with a window sill lapping onto the parapet avoiding that awkward gap to detail.

As ours was being built, we lived 2 doors down the road, so I simply informed the builders that the loo at our house was available. Most of them chose just to go behind a tree (No 1's only of course). This actually seems quite common up here, many an individual new build I have worked on one "makes their own arrangements" For what they want for their portaloo hire, you could buy a cheap old touring caravan, and that gives you a chemical toilet, somewhere to sit down and brew a cup of tea etc, and a bit of dry storage, what is generally given the label of a "welfare unit" these days. And you would have it for the entire build not just 5 weeks.

It is all very good to care about the environment, you are doing that by building a low energy house, fitting PV, and an efficient means to store hot water (the Sun amp) However I am not convinced about the battery storage. I suspect you won't have that much surplus PV to charge it with. I keep looking at battery storage, but we are "not there yet" Even if all the electricity to charge is free, it still looks unlikely you will have paid back the capital cost by the time the batteries need replacing. What is the environmental cost of those end of life batteries to dispose of? The idea of charging them with off peak electricity is equally dubious. To get an off peak tariff you pay a much higher daytime rate and a higher standing charge. It is not just viable for this imho. I want battery storage for my own house eventually. I am still thinking that will eventually be a DIY built system with NiFe batteries. At least I know with those there is a reasonable chance of the batteries lasting until I fall off my perch so it should be a buy once system. One of the best things you can do to self use as much PV as possible is use the big appliances like Dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer one at a time close to the middle of the day. If you are out at work you would need to do that with timers.

The transformer arrived today and your unit is now working @Gav_P I will post it back early next week.

It seems any scheme or "initiative" to subsidise renewable energy just ends up with the subsidy paying a registered installer who has joined the "club" an over inflated price, while the consumer is no better off. I have a very cynical view that it is just a scheme to benefit the installers, not the consumer. The unbelievable bit is my friend that paid the £11K install is a plumber.

Interesting observations. I have just got a full week data on energy use in our house for a "cold" week, outside average temperature for the week 0 inside temperature 20. The heat pump used 87KWh in the week. If I assume a COP of 3, that would have been 261KWh for the same heat from a willis heater. That's a big enough difference for me to conclude the heat pump is essential. At that usage, if the temperature was 0 all year, the heating bill would be £678 with the heat pump it should be a lot less than that for a real year. The saving over just a willis heater will pay for my (very cheap) heat pump in the first year. The maths may be a bit different if you are paying a company £10K to install a heat pump for you (I know at least one person who paid more than that)

Why don't you leave a note with the builders for the owner, introducing yourself and mentioning this site?

If you are going budget, then I would use a floor standing back to wall pan so no need for a frame to hang it on. I am not convinced the wall hung ones give enough improvement over that to make the cost and extra work worthwhile.

Not much chance of that on the West Coast. It actually made the local news this year, that Stornoway had 28 consecutive days without rain.

Some of you will know I did dome work for CLDB. When we worked away we took our camp beds and sleeping bags and dossed down in the house we were building. Obviously I was not involved until they were wind and watertight. But a job like Jura, well that is probably a dozen people to accommodate. Best put the Jura Hotel on notice, at least for food and beer if not for accommodation.

Seriously, take a look a Carbonlite Design and Build in Invergordon.They build low energy houses as modular units and ship them to site. They were featured on one of the recent "impossible build" programmes. As long as the modules will fit an artic trailer, it will get on the ferry they are well versed in remote builds. They did the design for ours but because it was not a build that easily converted to a modular build, the kit was built and erected by a local small building firm. When I was looking a few years ago none of the big name kit builders impressed me, and one of them, I think it was Scotframe, refused to continue a dialogue with me when I talked about taking a standard kit frame and adding extra insulation to it.

Yes indeed. If you fit an automatic bypass valve do NOT plumb it close to an elbow, better still do NOT plumb it in between 2 elbows. Assuming the 3 port valve is mot the lowest item in the system you won't have to drain it all. I did not have to drain much at all to sort the ABV.