ProDave

I was thinking of the Oban Tesco flooded a few days ago. I have a day on a boat tomorrow moving it to a new location, looks like it's going to be a wet one.

Mine only heats DHW OR heating, never both at the same time, with a much lower supply temperature when space heating. Mine also has a unique feature that it only heats DHW for 30 minutes at a go, then reverts so space heating for another 30 minutes. It will keep on doing these 30 minute bursts of DHW hearing until the tank temperature is satisfied. There is no explanation of why it does this, but I speculate it is to minimse the time the HP is working hard, and reduce the risk of needing to defrost.

I don't subscribe to the notion that burning wood is "carbon neutral" Burning anything sends CO2 up your chimney. The notion that cutting down trees specifically to burn is "carbon neutral" is some warped logic that I don't agree with. Would it not be better to leave the trees to grow and absorb more carbon and burn coal instead? (not meant as a serious suggestion but to illustrate the flaw in the wood is carbon neutral theory) I do burn wood myself but I never cut trees down for it, it is all windfall that I burn.

Been a little bit wet over there in the last few days.

You know when you are getting old, when you kneel down to do something, then ponder, "what else can I do down here before I get up"

I agree I have been tinkering with mine for weeks on and off, just a little adjustment here and there, then wait and see how it behaves. And it has been a steep learning curve to get inside the head of the heat pump designer to really understand what each parameter really means. Had I been paying someone to do all these tweaks, I feel it might have got expensive. I am also aware that having learned how my unit works would not help me very much if I came to set up a different unit. It is really easy to see how badly specified and badly set up heat pump systems can be dismissed as "useless" and removed by their owners after only a short period of time.

On my unit (I know it is different to yours) There is a parameter for hot (sanitary) water temperature. Mine has a temperature probe in the tank so heats the tank until that is satisfied. I also have a parameter for "sanitary water leaving temperature" that is supposed to set the flow temperature from the heat pump when heating hot water. I have that set to 50 but whether by overshoot, or simply ignoring that parameter, I have seen the flow temperature as high as 55 on occasions. What mine did not have was any external control ability for the hot water functions (i.e on and off times) so my solution was a bit of a fudge, already described on another thread.

The more I think about this, the more of a can or potential worms it is. So PP has been granted with the condition the turning space is provided. But the land the turning space will be on was not owned by the applicant that made the PP application. Did he serve notice on the owner of that land that he was submitting the planning application? Did the owner respond or make any objection to the PP application? The granting of PP for the turning space does not give permission from the owner to build it. If you build the house on your land without the turning space, you will be in breach of a planning condition, and if they try to enforce it but you have not achieved ownership or permission from the owner, what do you do? If the owner of that land knows this strip is vital to the development, he may value it as a ransom strip. I would either be looking to amend the planning (might mean re submitting) to get a scheme approved entirely on the land shown in the title plan (preferably without the obligation to provide the turning space) Or I would not be exchanging contracts on the purchase until an agreement is reached on the strip of land.

There is certainly some "interesting" logic applied by whoever programmed my LG ASHP. I could have set the supplied controller to be my time switch if I wanted to (though it is fiendishly complicated and no "normal" functions like advance to next program, or boost) But as soon as you enable the dry contact "thermostat" input, the internal timer is disabled and it just turns on and off according to the external thermostat. So my heating is now controlled by a conventional central heating programmer that powers the UFH manifold controllers when heating is on, and the volt free "call for heat" contact on the manifold controller connects to the ASHP dry contact thermostat input. I now only use the supplied controller just for setting parameters etc, not as a controller.

Hi and welcome to the forum I come from Oxfordshire but we moved up into a static caravan on site for our first build 15 years ago. Now 3/4 of the way through the second one.

As i said on the other thread. I would turn the issue around, and suggest you buy just the bit on the title plan, and your main access at the front to that comes directly from the track. Make the vendor responsible for creating the "public" turning space and he retains ownership (if he ever had it) of that bit. It nicely keeps it as the vendors issue to get any permissions to create the turning space.

Having seen that, I would turn it around and suggest the vendor creates the "public" turning space, and you buy just the plot without the turning space. That also passes the verge issue back to him.

I wasn't suggesting you put an Electricair back in again, merely saying that might give you an idea of the heating requirements of the property (assuming the Electricair had proved adequate) I know they were not popular around here. But then storage heaters in general are not popular, people prefer gas or even oil rather than electric storage heating. And it's also possible it proved inadequate in cold weather.

Having dug deeper than you "need" I would have just poured more concrete rather than filling it in again.

I just have a gut feeling the making an offer to buy it might have just killed an adverse posession claim as they openly admit it is not theirs. The bit that is paved and used as access and has been for many years you may have acquired a right of access over even without owning it. As this strip is only along one side, have you looked at alternative plot layouts that would take access from where your plot joins the track without crossing this strip? Can you post a site plan showing this strip?

It is usual for planners to want you to be able to drive onto the plot forwards, turn round, and drive out of the plot forwards. That is the purpose of the turning space. And it is normally designed to allow an ordinary car to enter and turn. Asking for space for a 7.5 metre truck to turn sounds unreasonable, I would contest that and say you are only going to provide turning for an ordinary car. The visitor parking space sounds like just 1 more space than the number of bedrooms would dictate so you don't have to park on the road, I very much doubt anyone not visiting you would use it.

Just watched last nights GD. The thing that struck me about this one, it they seem to have picked about the hardest part of the site to build on, excavating probably thousands of tons of sol to dig into the hill. Why do people do that? Is it really a case that the planners would not have allowed them to build on an easier flatter part of the site? or they perceive that to be the case?

I have mine connected on 6mm SWA on a 40A mcb (no RCD at the source in my meter box) that feeds the small CU in the caravan. Remember you don't connect a caravan to a PME earth, so I cut the armour off the cable under the 'van insulated it and just routed the inner cable up into the 'van and connected it's own earth rod.

I would keep en eye out on freecycle for someone scrapping a similar heater. In a flat we used to own, I needed a "new" storage heater because the case was looking very tatty and rusty and I wanted it to look better (for sale of the property) I ended up buying an identical heater from ebay for £10 and getting the seller to post the heater, but not the bricks and I just used the bricks from the old one. If you can't buy that insulation as a spare part, that is probably your best hope. But I still maintain if you can get the insulation slab to hold together long enough to get the front on, it will be fine, it won't go anywhere once sandwiched between the bricks and the front part of the casing.

@stevethayne It sounds like your house was originally heated with an Electricaire unit, which is a big central storage heater with a fan to blow warm air to all the rooms. They are still made, though now targeted at commercial use https://www.dimplex.co.uk/product/electricaire-r1073 The smallest one has a heat storage capacity of 73KWh and typically will run a 10KW heating element for the 7 hour off peak period to achieve that. This will give you some idea of how much heating you will need for your house in order to size the system, so you will need typically three 3KW heaters just to store enough for space heating requirements I would seriously consider changing to economy 10 which gives you 10 hours of cheap rate but delivered I believe in 3 off peak periods, so it is never so long until the next top up.

It won't be very far before you hit the bedrock there. But other places could be more challenging, e.g Ranoch moor, where the railway line literally floats on a raft over the bog.

It's an interesting fudge for a supply capacity issue, as the neutral for both supplies is strapped together (it has to be for the dual rate meter) I am sure it would not be installed like that now. I have heard of, but never seen a summation supply to give greater capacity, but never one supply for normal loads, and one for off peak loads. As there is only 1 meter, there will only be 1 MPAN and 1 standing charge I would expect. Lets hope it does not cause too much confusion when getting the supply altered for the new build.

That was another house who's build cost far exceeds it's market value. There is a lot of very solid rock, and peat bog on Harris, but no gravel quarry that I know of. About £99 to get a car across the Minch, a lo more for a lorry.

Very strange supply arangement there. Can we have a picture more square on to the two supply heads and showing what happens above the top one please. It does look like the top supply just feeds the off peak. Were there an unusually large number of storage heaters perhaps? Get one removed and just 1 supply left for the new build. And in the mean time, be careful of that contactor in a metal box to the left missing it's lid and exposing live terminals.

Actually what I am trying to achieve is very similar. In my case it is to house the amplifier for the surround sound system, and the front speakers for it. I have already set a box or "pocket" into the wall so the front of the pocket will be flush with the finished wall, but the surround sound amp is deeper than I can accomodate, so there will be an additional shelf in front of that, and extending wider than the pocket. It is how to attach this shelf without big clunky looking brackets. A bit more searching has found these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pack-of-4-Concealed-Shelf-Supports-Metal-Brackets-Floating-Hidden-Masonry-Walls/273035824638?hash=item3f92340dfe:m:mtAhGdc51vpD3fc6c_o7tLw 9mm diameter bar, so would probably drill a 10mm hole in the shelves, These are intended tor masonry, but looking at the picture it looks as though the bit that goes into the wall is in fact a threaded rod and rawl plug arrangement, so remove the rawl plug bit and it looks like a threaded rod that could screw into the wood.