ProDave

I suspect at the end of a let, they frequently find phones left behind in that drawer and have to post them back to their owners.

^^ put some boards under the wheels. or by the time you next come to move it, you may find it has sunk to the axles (it would in our ground in winter)

It is is an ellipse. I have the unit fronts face to face 1400 apart with a small worktop overhang. As it happens I still have the same circulation space the other side when you allow for the worktop overhang. But I suspect my Island might move a little after sign off.

If it backs up, it's when it gets to downstairs WC pan level that your "problems" start.

Our island is just a single run of 600 units. It is not fixed down, it just stands there under it's own weight. There is so much stuff (all the pots and pans) that it is not going anywhere.

Pleased with it. It seems well made and works well. As I say it was the only one that was small enough for our particular application and it achieves this by putting the sockets on their side. Drilling the 6cm hole in the 40mm oak worktop gave my hole saw a bashing. I would say 1200 between opposing units is about right, which is probably where ours will end up eventually.

It is unseasonally cold at the moment. Last night was down to 7 and it's barely been above 15 in the daytime. If we were in the 'van now we would be using some form of heating, either electric or the WBS.

Beware of activity spaces and circulation spaces. You will have to check English BR but up here one must have a 1400mm by 1800mm "circulation space" in the kitchen. This has forced me to leave a 1400mm gap between the main run of kitchen units and the island. That seems "too big" and makes the space the other side cramped for the larder, so we are likely not to build the larder yet and after sign off, move the island closer to the main unit then build it. You need a solid top on your mocked up units and then make cardboard templates for a sink, a hob etc and you can position them in different places. For us, the island was as much about a seating area to get the view to the west over the mountains as any cooking purpose, thought he hob is on the island. Re sockets, I have fitted a pop up socket bank on the Island. I chose this one https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pop-up-Power-Extension-Sockets-for-Kitchen-Worktop-Office-desktop-Ã-6cm-cable/132544570559?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649 I chose that, because it is only 6cm diameter, so when retracted drops down into the 7cm wide gap between the back of the island kitchen units and the back panel. You can get better ones that have USB sockets built in, but they are all much larger diameter, so would have had to drop down inside a cupboard which we did not want. Remember the standard width of an island is 900mm. Our island is 900 by 1800mm and gives ample seating room for 3 along the back edge. All our units sit on the finished floor.

The purpose of the tumble dryer, is not to "dry" things, but make them "fluffy" towels and socks in particular. Though it also does save on ironing. The TD only gets used for the bare minimum time. Stuff comes out still damp and goes on the airer to finish drying, but as long as it has had some tine in the infernal machine, it passes the fluffyness test.

I would like the tumble dryer to be used less, but that is "outside my control" At least it is a condensing dryer so any waste heat stays in the house, so for half the year it is contributing to the heating (but not as eficciently as the heat pump would) I have already mentioned the desktop pc, that perhaps I should use less (only for office stuff) and use the laptop more for browsing etc. I have some satellite receivers on 24/7, I could put them on a timer, but that creates other issues. I know our "stuff" usage is lower than in the old house, but can't really think of anything we are doing different (though I always had a suspicion the FF at the old house used a lot more than i should)

Not easily. My heat pump has no data logging. As a VERY rough guess, it seems to spend about an hour per day heating water, and I think I once measured it's power consumption as a peak of 1.5KW, so that would only be 1.5KWh so not very much. I think I need to buy a cheap electricity meter just to measure what the heat pump uses to get a separate reading of "real useful" energy usage compared to just "stuff"

The biggest issue you need to address, which is so common in Scottish stone buildings, is the "plasterboard tent" that you are living in. With the gap between the plasterboard (lath and plaster?) and the stone walls open to the loft space, then that space will be full of cold air and your heat losses will be horendous. I regularly work in this type of building and if you remove a socket or light switch in winter you are greeted by a howling icy cold blast of air. Having the sloping skeillings is not going to make this easy to fix, and sadly the only real solution is strip the ceiling off the skeillings to get it back to the bare frame, seal up the tops and insulate behind the wall voids, insulate in between the rafters and replace the ceiling.

Back to energy usage. I have just taken a meter reading so now have the first full months usage now we are in the house. It comes out at 15.08 KWh per day, and with my present energy supplier that's £2.46 per day. Extrapolating that to a full year gives a total of 5504KWh and a cost of £897. In square metre terms, that's 39KWh per square metre or £6.48 per square metre. That is everything other than space heating which obviously not using at the moment. That is still an unknown. I am not expecting winter lighting to add much as the house is all LED lighting. That figure worries me because so much of it is "stuff" not actually running the house. But I struggle to think of any major saving I can make to that other than use the desktop pc a lot less and use a more energy eficcient laptop more (e.g when I am only browsing)

The problem for me at the moment is my landline is used for people to contact me in relation to my business. Any VOIP offering as far as I know will not allow me to port an existing landline number to it?

Save that argument for your appeal.

No. Deadly serious. Councils don't like appeals so I would want them to know for sure that I would take it to appeal if it was refused. They would be hoping if it was refused you would be resubmitting plans for something smaller. I would want to remove that doubt.

And make the closing sentence of your 3 minute presentation "I therefore fail to see how this is over development or against any planning policy, so if it is refused I will take it to appeal."

I think this s a case of be careful what you wish for. We currently get about 3Mbps via BT landline for about £24 per month including line rental. It will be interesting to see if BT improve that. I have often talked about a community council led scheme. It is now coming to fruition with the surveyors doing the rounds and we have a proposal for our area. There will be a large mast in a neighbours paddock to get a signal from about 10 miles away, and then smaller "wifi" aerials on each property. They haven't quoted a speed, but that will cost £35 per month just for broadband. So if I want to keep a landline and landline number that will still be an additional cost. At the moment I am minded not to bother and just stick with what we have. For general browsing 3Mbps is not bad. But I suspect the result of this is fast broadband will be "available" to us, so Open Reach won't have any obligation to speed up their landline offering. So I would much prefer this wireless scheme was not available and OR were forced to improve their network.

Am I missing something simple? You STICK the compriband to the smooth window side of the gap, and it then expands to conform to the rough durisol side of the gap. What was so difficult they could not do that? TIP. It is a lot easier to fit comriband in cold weather, it only expands slowly when cold so you have a lot more time to get it right. In hot weather it expands quite fast.

Interesting. Our electricity for the last 12 months has cost £800, Mostly that has been in the caravan and not much of that has been heating (WBS) nor cooking (LPG). We clearly use too much "stuff" as that is mostly just washing, tumble drying fridge, freezer, tv's, computers etc etc. So if we assume in the house now we use the same "stuff" that's £5.70 per square metre of house, even before we add water and space heating (now ASHP) and an electric oven. I get the impression, space and water heating might cost less than all the other "stuff" we use. Solar PV will bring that down (but there won't be any FIT) when we eventually add it.

Yep beats my using a bastard file.

Thanks, I did not know that. Hager is another make I like a lot, particularly for CU's.

Water is 900mm in Scotland. Separation between services 300mm which you can just get in a 300mm wide trench.

I have recently made some changes after we had a "ran out of hot water" incident (something I thought would not happen with a 300L tank) It was a perfect storm. SWMBO had been doing some cooking, which seemed to mean the hot tap running for some time to rinse stuff. Then she had a shower, not the normal one, but the monthly "put loads of different conditioner in the hair" showers that takes longer. Then daughter ran a bath, or tried to and got half a bath of hot water. So I was in the dog house instructed to "fix it" The problem was simple. I had put the temperature probe in the top thermostat pocket, which is about half way down the tank. Analysing what happened, is half the water had been used up before the probe even knew the hot water was being depleted, and that just did not leave enough for the shower and bath. The fix was simple. Move the probe to the bottom thermostat pocket that is about 1/3 up from the bottom of the tank. It now behaves very differently. Before it would heat the tank and then do nothing for a day. Now it heats the tank much more often, but for shorter periods. So it starts to re heat a depleted tank of water much sooner, making the chance of running out much less. A by product of keeping it topped up more often has been I have reduced the set point temperature another couple of degrees.

Heat pumps do seem to throw up some problems. I found the documentation for my (LG) unit appalling and some basic but vital information missing and it took many emails to customer support to finally get it working. Even then I had to diagnose and fix what I believe is a design fault to get it to work reliably. I feel there is some way to go in terms of product development, documentation and support before these will be as universally accepted and usable as a humble boiler. Which is a shame as when set up properly they are very good.