ProDave

So this is a concept of the accommodation you would like. Not much point going much further until you actually have a plot. Some key things with a plot are where south is, to get the sun, and where the views are. Until you know that you don't even know which room wants to face where. Don't assume you must have rooms facing front and back, our best view is out of the side to the west down the glen to the mountains. Part of the positioning and angling of the house on the plot was so we could see down the glen in front of the house next door to achieve that. Point taken about stairs being "non productive" space, but we had already decided on a 1.5 storey house so stairs is a given, it was a case of make all rooms open to the hall or landing in the most efficient way (i.e. directly) without corridors or multiple doors to pass through. Try to imagine a lot of rooms might have notional names assigned to them, but a downstairs bedroom could equally make a good office or additional reception room if not actually needed as a bedroom. And it is important to either try and follow the local vernacular, or design something totally different (like the examples above) Re cheap to build on plots, dead flat is not always the best. Our plot was on a slope, which gave a perfect place to use all the excavated soil to make it less of a slope for the finished garden. No muck away costs.

Think about vaulted living space at one end, and 1.75 storey over the rest of the downstairs and over the garage for upstairs rooms.

Any reason it is single storey? 1.5 or 1.75 storey will enable a smaller footprint building to deliver better £ per square metre. Lots of things don't flow well for me on your present layout, particularly your office, utility etc. I am not a fan of living room and kitchen together but if that is what you want and don't mind the noise of a fridge or dishwasher disturbing your relaxation. Kitchen / diner and separate living room for me. The key to our low £ / square metre cost was building slowly doing a lot of the work ourselves to save labour, and careful buying of everything. One of my design criteria was minimise corridors, make as much of the square metres actual rooms not circulating spaces.

Anyone on overhead lines and with trees nearby can get power cuts in a storm, and our record was 5 days before reconnection. When our fault only affects a few houses it gets pushed to the bottom of the pile when there are lots of faults affecting more people.

I have been to look at the job this morning. I find the borehole liner appears to be 4" mdpe so a 4" borehole pump would be a near piston fit and I suspect that is what is there and it has jammed. So I think I am now looking for a 3" pump. Previous (now stuck) pump is 25 metres down (measuring pipe that came out having pulled out of the connector) and water level is about 10 metres down. So any of the "20 metres immersion" pumps will do the the cable might need extending. From the well head it needs to pump up to a holding tank in the loft of the house so another perhaps 15 metres so needs to be a pump that will pump up more than 40 metres. Any recommendations? This would do I think, but it's not in stock https://www.waterpump.co.uk/borehole-pump-aj4-plus-5500-litres-per-hour Or what about this one, supplied with a 40M cable and will pump over 100 m head and in stock. https://www.pozzani.co.uk/Pozzani/3-borehole-pump-ssscrew-0-75kw-220v-40m-cable.html

Pumped hot water from it's (usually) external cold tank through it's hot water heater. It provides hot and cold running water and a toilet, the basic requirements.

I have said before, buy a cheap touring caravan, they will provide all you need. Of course someone will have to fetch water every day, and empty the porta potti

So what I am finding, is you can buy a borehole pump from £200 upwards (when you ignore the toy ones) but everything I am seeing says maximum depth 20 metres and they typically come with 22m of cable. He is adamant his borehole is 80 feet which is 25 metres. I guess as the old pump is still at the bottom and he is sure the water is a lot higher up, that will be okay to buy one of those and only lower it 20 metres down the well? This is the one that has caught my eye so far. Thoughts please?

Bit of an odd one, helping out a neighbour. His borehole pump failed, he needs a new one quickly. But it is not as simple as it seems. He failed to get the old one out, he even set up a tripod and a winch and all that succeeded in doing was breaking the shackle holding the wire to the pump. So the old pump is still down the borehole and there it will stay. but it means I have no idea what pump was there before and anything about it's rating. He thinks it is an 8 inch borehole liner but he is not sure. He thinks it is about 80 feet deep but the water level is a lot less deep that that. So erring on the side of caution I am tempted to spec a smaller pump, perhaps just 4" it will be going down with a new lifting cable and a new length of mdpe pipe. So any recommendations, not too expensive but available reasonably quickly?

You won't know for sure until you move in, but typically on top of the closed panels you would create a service void typically with 25mm battens and then the plasterboard over that. It is then relatively easy to make alterations.

This corner is just horrible continue the wall units round and ditch that upright cutting across the worktop. Another vote for hob in the island in our case directly backing onto the sink. I don't subscribe to the "island is the place for homework" thought, no it is part of a kitchen for food preparation, and the seating bit of it for a short break looking out over the view.

Lots of rural properties around here with private water and the best systems I have seen is a borehole pump to charge a large accumulator controlled by a pressure switch. Even without the pump (during a power cut) there will still be 200 or more litres of pressurised water in the accumulator.

Thoroughly defrost it and try again? Is that round thing in the first pictures a fan? some fridge freezers just cool the freezer with the compressor, then use a fan to blow some cold air into the fridge to cool that. Is the fan free to rotate or frozen solid?

No I mean zoomed out other bits of equipment not more details of the ones you have show. Somewhere there should be an inverter, here is one as a random picture to give you an idea what it might look like It may not even be in the same room, but I would have thought it likely to connect to that run of white trunking running down the wall from the consumer unit you already posted.

Unusual choice. While Air to air is good, to fit that without thinking about how water is strange. An ASHP with hot water tank would have been a better choice. So probably best choice now is a direct hot water cylinder heated bu immersion heater, using off peak tarrifs if available.

Can you post pictures of all the other bits that connect to that white plastic trunking? there should be an inverter and some switches and possibly meters and things. I enjoy your posts here, please don't stop, it is interesting to see how other countries do things, the only frustration is we don't know the regulations in France so can't make much comment on what is correct from a French regulation point of view.

No they are not. They have a motor running inside them 24/7 driving a gearbox and I think a chain to move the big rotating paddle wheel. They are anything but silent. An air blower type treatment plant just has a standard air blower pump running. There can be a bit of hum in some designs because the manufacturers don't seem to bother with sound proofing and just sit them on a flat surface that can act like a drum. But with a bit of care it is easy to make them very quiet, and some designs let you mount the air blower away from the plant, some have build a brick enclosure for the blower for instance to make it totally silent.

Can you post pictures of exactly what you have inside, i.e. inverter and any switchgear and what is connected already and more importantly what is NOT connected? It sounds like you have a very different way of connecting and metering to us in the UK and until we understand how it is connected we can't advise much. It might be as simple as it is already connected but you are awaiting a separate export meter to be installed to enable payments of exported power.

That's an in line fan. You need to oncouple the ducts both ends and work out if it is the fan itself that has failed or something in duct catching on the fab blades.

A 2 port motorised valve and a room thermostat wired or wireless, but you will need a power supply to that area for it.

Shame you have to buy the whole lot just to replace the broken / missing bits but that would be your easiest solution.

I suspect that thermostat knob is supposed to connect to the grey bit on the left hand pipe, looks like a TRV for the UFH? Not seen one like that before but if it is supposed the be attached but is not it could explain why not working. Will it just clip on like a radiator TRV does? What was the thermostat in the original post that appeared to be mounded on a wall?

Yes definitely get a static caravan as large as you can find. Then spend the time and effort to add external insulation and clad it if you want it to be warmer and look nicer. It will comply with all the rules it has to and be fit for habitation. I don't know the law in Ireland, but in the UK a static caravan comes under a different set of rules to building control. Assuming you have planning for the house build, it should be easy to get permission for the static and do it legally. Alternatively as you are building a house, why not design it so you can build one wing of it first and kit that out to live in while you build the rest? That way all your work is permanent and gets you to a finished house quicker. You can think of outbuildings for holiday use after the main house is built, but do them properly.

I am not sure what you are measuring there, your 2(n) on everything confuses me? You want to measure terminal 10 on the wiring centre or terminal 1 on the boiler, with respect to neutral which can be found on terminal 2 on the wiring centre. This is the call for heat to the boiler that should be on all the time HW, CH or both is demanded. This is the one I think you will find is pulsing on and off. Verify that first. And testing on someone elses system won't get you closer to finding what your system is doing.

The obvious thing from the photos is that thermostatic valve is turned down to minimum. Turn it up to max and tell us more about what you find. When the system is running and the radiators are hot, do any of the grey pipes get hot? And remember UFH works slowly especially when turned on from cold, it is likely to be a couple of hours at least before you feel any warmth in the floor.