ProDave

Yes. But SWMVO gets very hot and bothered if you run out of hot water.

With a thermostatic mixer (I have the same one) you don't even have to do that. Turn it on, and it will be at the correct temperature, just like it was last time. A thermostat will look carp, will probably go wrong at some point, and will become a "dare" to see who can withstand the hottest. And it will delay the bathroom being finished.

Siga tape is good but expensive. I was very happy with Tescon Vanna tape. There is a German ebay seller who sells it a lot cheaper than anyone in the UK

I used a lot of Barriair A few comments. It was the cheapest stuff I could find. The 1.5M width does NOT line up with 600mm stud spacing, so some joints will not lie on studs. Not a great issue for me as my frame was lined internally with OSB (see next point if you are expecting floating joints) I do NOT trust the supplied inbuild sealing tape. As it is it joins sticky tape to sticky tape, so you would think it sticks like $&!£ but it doesn't. While waiting to batten and board, I found a few seams coming unstuck. So what I did, anywhere there was a joint that did not end up under a batten, I screwed ripped strips of OSB offcuts over the entire length of the joint to keep the joints sandwiched together. I could do that as I had 2 layers of OSB to screw through into. If you are expecting floating joints, don't just rely on the inbuilt tape, supliment the joint with a trusted air tightness tape as well.

Normal priactice up here with a timber framed house, is the window (plus it's fire stop) forms the cavity closer so window partly into timber frame partly into blockwork skin.

I ordered an ordinary drum of plain old RG6 from a well known "tool" supplier but what turned up was a huge drum of very expensive labgear twin shotgun WF100 so it would have been impolite not to have used that. The point about all cables converging in an accessible place, is should we ever (heaven forbid) want sky and it needs a direct feed, then we can patch a direct feed through to any room, and should I need extra cables, there is space in the hockey stick that exits the floor of the under stairs cupboard and comes out of the wall under where the deck will go (with a trap door in the deck to access it) I have 3 coaxes going to each tv point back to the hub, only 1 in use at each presently for the freeview aerial. To see more, look at my blog (link in signature) and look for the entry "The Electrical cupboard"

Is it the hinges dropping or the frame the glass is in sagging? In a previous house we had a big UPVC double glazed French door and we had the suppliers back twice as it kept sagging. Basically the UPVC frame of the door was not strong enough to support the weight of the glass and the frame was sagging. They had the glass out and re packed and re glued it in twice.

Firstly they used this new fangled "insulated concrete" mix. When the form work went up, there was about 100mm thick slab of EPS in the middle with spacers to maintain a gap. It was arranged so there was a thin layer of concrete on the outside side of the insulation slab, and a thicker layer of concrete on the inside of the insulation slab. The tie holes that held the formwork together and the spacerrs for the insulation slab were plugged with concrete plugs when all set and formwork removed.

Just run multiple cable from all tv points to a central hub, in my case in the under stairs cupboard then you can patch anything through to any tv. I have an octo LNB on thr dish. I really don't think I will need more than 8 points in use, but of course if I do, I could change the octo for a quatro lnb and fit a multiswitch in the under stairs bupboard.

I would not want to be that target market thank you.

I read somewhere, perhaps on a thread here, or on another forum, that to be enforceable, a covenant has to be written to benefit "land" If that is true, this covenants benefits "a company" and so may not be enforceable. Can you buy an indemnity policy to cover this? That is what we did when selling a former house where (without realising it) I had breached a no building clause by building an extension.

Something desperately wrong there. No pedestrian door from the garage to the house. No "stuff" in the garage, not a workbench, shelves or anything. Not even a SOCKET on the wall.

I take it the other series "impossible build" has finished? or is it just on a break this week. If so it was a short series. Mind you I think that's all the new ones for this series of GD, looks like it's a "revisited" one next week.

By the time they bought the plot (£500K) and spent £450K building it, then I suspect this is the first GD house in the SE that would not be worth it's construction cost. I most certainly would not pay almost a a £million for that (even if I could afford to do so)

Does your heat pump have any provision to control the thermostat? My LG one has control of the thermostat via a contactor. That is either for periodic "stertilisation" cycles, or to do just what you want and heat the water the last bit up to full temperature. I foresee a problem with the logic though. If the HP heats the tank to 40, then the immersion heats it to say 55. Then as soon as you draw water and the temperature drops, the immersion will come on and heat the water. So unless you run a full bath and use the whole lot up in one go, the HP will never get a go at heating and it will all be done with the immersion. That is why I am heating my HW to full temperature with the HP. Mine is now set to 49 degrees (minor adjustment from previous setting) and so far no ill effects and no sign of the HP defrosting. P.S if you are thinking of using the cylinder stat, that won't handle the immersion heater load, you will need to use a contactor or SSR to switch the immersion.

Re service cavities. Years ago they didn't bother and you just drilled the studs of the timber frame for cables, and the plasterboard went straight onto the frame. It is only now that most people (still not all) are wanting air tight houses that we fit an air tight layer and make a service void inside that. 25mm battens then 12.5mm plasterboard comfortably fits a 35mm deep back box so copes with all wiring. Even where I wanted to bring the 15mm hot and cold pipes to the kitchen down the wall, the 25mm gap was plenty (just be careful with cable routing so none have to cross the pipes). The only place I used 50nmm battens for the service void is the utility room where I wanted 22mm pipes buried comfortably.

This was a constant issue in our last house. they were always in the loft. I believe they got through the air bricks then up the cavity into the loft. Lots of rat poison was the only solution. Occasionally the cat would bring one into the house alive and lose it, that would end up dead somewhere under a kitchen unit or behind furniture, you knew about it by the smell. Oh that smell, revolting. Not seen or heard a single rodent at all in the new house. A BIG advantage of a warm roof design is there is not the tiniest ventilation hole in the loft anywhere. Oh and no cat flap, so the cat can't just bring a mouse in, and if she appears at the door, mouse in mouth, she does not get let in. Harvest time was when they started to come in having been displaced from the fields.

I take it this house does not have MVHR?

The RCD requirements are for most final circuits, and circuits buried less than 50mm deep in a wall. So you could run a submain on the surface without rcd protection, but not many people would like that, so often the easiest way is SWA buried where possible The earthed metal covering obviates the need for rcd protection just as steel conduit does.

Don't worry about the building warrant, you can extend it. £100 buys you a 9 month extension, £200 buys you a 2 year extension. The on line system to do is is somewhat clumsy to say the least and I messed it up earlier in the year and only did the 9 month extension, so early in the new year I will try again for another 2 year extension. I will try and avoid the on line system and instead print the form and post it with a covering letter making it clear it is a 2 year extension I want. Like you our financial issues are due to the inability to sell the old house when we wanted to, and we are now grinding on slowly, but now with a real prospect of eventually getting the new house finished without the sale of the old one.

But likely to be 18 months away, I doubt they would fix a price that long.

The mitigation strategy I would love to implement is buy my windows now. Unfortunately I can't yet afford them.........

The trouble with 3 phase, is things like your ASHP won't be, so you will be unlikely to get any where near 100% self usage. If you can stick to single phase, use the HP as much as possible only in the daytime, keep your use of big appliances to the daytime and one machine at a time, and then have a diverter to put excess power into water heating you should be able to use a good percentage of what you generate. If the house is well insulated it won't cool down or heat up quickly, so "allowing" the heating to go off overnight will not be noticed. Don't forget by the time you get your panels, the FIT will have closed to new entrants. So no need to pay an over inflated MCS installer price, just buy them as cheap as possible and get your electrician to connect them.

When I had my digger, I tried to get my daughter interested to have a go at driving it. She was not interested, the most she would do is sit in the cab with me occasionally, but never touched the levers.

I still have the windows and doors to buy for my sun room. Hoping they will be Rationel to match the rest, but uneasy at the cost of importing "foreign" windows Plan B, if the cost has gone through the roof, or there are logistical difficulties is choose a different make of window, the sun room while attached to the house is clad completely different, so it would not be the end of the world if it had different windows.