ProDave

Okay. The BASICS of how it should work. When you turn a themostat in a any particular room up to the point it calls for heat, that should turn on the manifold that feeds is. So in your picture 3, whatever room is connected to zone 1 is calling for heat, so the manifold pump should be running (you should be able to hear that) the pipes should get warm, and you should see one or more of the flow meters (the things with glass tubes along the top of the manifold) showing that water is flowing (may take a couple of minutes for the flow to show as the thermal actuators are a bit slow) So lets start with that manifold in picture 3, is the pump running, are any pipes hot and are any flow meters showing water flow? The other manifold that does not have a power light, that is your first challenge to find out why there is no power. Is a switch turned off anywhere? Id there a programmer or time clock that has not been set to come on? Top left on the manifold is a pressure and temperature gauge. What does the temperature say (that is the flow temperature in the heating pipes)

As it shows, you need a 3 core and earth cable from each thermostat to the wiring centre. L on wiring centre to thermostat terminal 1 N on wiring centre to thermostat terminal 2 L1 on wiring centre to thermostat terminal 4 No connection to the thermostat terminal 3 That is it. Repeat for each room stat. The wiring centre is providing power to each thermostat and reading it's output.

I am not best placed to comment on the requirements for a competent persons scheme. There is no Part P this side of the border, so no requirement to be a member of such schemes, and for a new build, building control just accept an EIC that I issue, based on the model forms in the wiring regs. This puts me in the rather bizarre situation that I could not just hop over the border and do a new install in Carlisle without paying lots of money to join one of these schemes. Since I have a maximum of 4 1/2 years to go until I plan to retire, I am just keeping my head down and carrying on as I am and hope nothing changes in that time to force scheme membership up here.

That's an unusual layout in that the only access to the rear (and the old lean too) is through the small bedroom. Just making the 2 bedrooms longer is not going to achieve much. Can we have a plot layout? A side extension would make a lot more sense but I am guessing there is no room to do that?

My own trailers (general one and boat trailer, now gone) were both built in the stone age before sticking plates on them was mandatory. Both have survived a long time doing what they were built for so it is safe to say they are adequate. But I have never been pulled or had a trailer examined. A caravan trailer will have a Maximum Technically Permitted Weight on it's plate. Once you have stripped the caravan body off and made it into a trailer just get it weighted, and the load it can carry is the MTPW less what the trailer actually weights. You will probably find the load capacity is not much. BUT I know at least one old caravan chassis now used as a boat trailer, I am SURE that will be over it's load.

Thank you for finding that. It's been filed away should I need it.

I had forgotten I posted that.

I am not sure I understand the question. It is a proven system in use and marketed in many places. as to "approved" well it was detailed on the building warrant and agreed by building control.

A few things you need to consider. First is racking strength and second is vapour permeability. These were dealt with as a "system" by our designer. The end result was the OSB racking layer (actually 2 layers) is in the inside of the frame as the OSB is less vapour permeable. The Wood fibre on the outside contributes almost nothing to the racking strength and is more vapour permeable than the OSB

You are obviously not in the "hot flush" phase then.

If you move panels so your total generation suddenly jumps up, they may start asking questions thinking you have added panels. Your FIT payment would go up and they would want to know why. I'll bet they would not question it if your total generation went down.

My house is about 140 square metres over 1 1/2 storeys. I have never worked out the external wall area. It is clad in 100mm thick wood fibre board and rendered with the Baumit.com thin coat render system. I can't give a cost for the wood fibre board as that was lumped in with the build and erect of the timber frame so I don't have an itemised price. The render material cost £4397 and the labour for the renderer cost £4750 Scaffold (my own) was already in place. This is the wood fibre board we used chosen from the first supplier I could find just now doing a quick search https://www.insulationsuperstore.co.uk/product/diffutherm-external-woodfibre-insulation-for-render-100mm-080m2.html I am absolutely certain our builders paid a lot less than that price for it. The base coat render is mixed from a powder https://www.baumit.co.uk/products/external-insulation/starsystem-nature/multi-contact-mc-55-w.html And this is the top coat render ready mixed https://other.baumit.com/products/exterior-insulation/starsystem/baumit-silikontop.html The whole point of doing it this way, is you are paying for a board to clad the frame with to apply the render, so it might as well be a board that adds a bit more insulation to the building.

I am loving your propped up ladders, and that "interesting" scaffold corner in picture 4 Shows your builders are human.

Some of the commercial once are not that clever either. A near neighbour has one, I forgot the make (but NOT immersun) and I have repaired it twice. Carp design, 2 wires from the PCB to the SSR keep failing where they are soldered to a PCB.

I tried the mist coat thing once and it didn't work. Still needed 2 more coats of neat paint to cover. Now I just do 2 coats of Wickes cheapest mat white contractors emulsion and then it's good for a top coat of your choice. Just wait until the plaster has dried to a light pink all over with no dark patches and you are good to paint. In the summer when out last lot of plaster was done, that was 3 days.

Things have moved on since the days of a bit of plywood, a layer of roofing felt and a lot of hope. I would not even have felt of a shed roof today. Useless stuff.

This is mine. I have been know to fetch firewood in it. That had the rear springs down on the stops.

Okay of you really want a second vehicle, my off the wall suggestion is a >40 year old Series Landrover, probably LWB truck cab. £0 historic road tax, MOT exempt and cheap classic car insurance. And if you don't break it, you should be able to sell it for what you paid, if not more. Take out the mats (if it has any) from the cab. Drive it in your muddy boots, and hose it down inside from time to time (yes seriously)

The trouble with a second vehicle is the extra road tax and insurance. The insurance might be more than you think as you need to earn the NCD independantly for a second car. How about roof bars and a trailer? I carry 8 by 4 sheets or any long planks on the roof. The trailer you will probably find is such a handy thing to have you will keep it forever. Or just get the builders merchant to deliver everything?

Yes. Old house, like this one has a conventional central heating time switch to set the on and off times, and when it's on each room has it's own room stat. The only difference is the new house has upstairs and down UFH on separate channels on the programmer. At the old house I briefly put programmable thermostats in 2 of the bedrooms so I could have them on and off at different times to the rest of the house, but I chose badly and they were rubbish so I swapped them back. A lot of systems that I wire for people have "set back" rather than off. I always believe that is to stop a house getting too cold over night so it does not take too long to warm up in the morning. But given the very long time constant of our house I see that as completely pointless.

Stainless steel is not magnetic. Perhaps there is an issue with ferrous cutlery or utensils "self heating?"

It took SWMBO some time to get used to UFH at our last house. She was used to radiators, where you turned the heating on, and within about 15 minutes you could feel warmth coming off the rads. First time we fired up the UFH at the last house, and hour later, nothing had seemingly happened. It was closer to 2 hours before you could begin to feel the first hint of warmth. Of course in real use you set the timer to come on a bit earlier than you would with radiators and by the same physics you can turn it off earlier. Ours used to go off at 8PM and there was no sign of it cooling down by bed time. Many times in the B&B rooms, we would go in of a morning and the rooms were up to 30 with the thermostat on the end stop. AND the window open.

Check what the UFH controller wants. IF the UFH controller is expecting a switched L then you can use that thermostat, Terminal 4 will be the switched L and just ignore terminal 3. IF the UFH controller is expecting a low voltage or volt free contact, you cannot use that thermostat.

As a Husband, you will learn in due course what a "Hot Flush" is.

Then she will be complaining it is "not working" as the room has not reached the setpoint of 30 degrees. This is the reason I wanted my heating system operating from a "normal" central heating programmer, not the fiendishly complicated thing that came with the heat pump (that is connected but hidden away in the plant room for parameter setting etc only)