ProDave

Do you care to suggest where such battery packs might be available?

Firstly, as you don't have a constructional hearth, you have to choose the stove carefully. You need one that guarantees the bottom of the stove will never exceed 100 degrees (which often means the raised ones with a log store underneath) and then it needs a "hearth" of a non combustible material at least 12mm thick. of a size described in building regs. If you just tile the floor with regular floor tiles, they may not be 12mm thick so it may not comply. As to a "step" or not. You seem to be able to get away without. Our last house had a constructional hearth but I set the tiles that finished it off flush with the wooden floor. BC had a grumble about it but passed it. And a house near here tiled the entire room (on a concrete screed) and that was also passed. What is the fireplace recess built of? If not brick, then you need to consider "distance to combustibles" from the side back and top of the stove, so again choose carefully.

Perhaps you need to call an electrician? (I'll get my coat) Most rcd tripping faults turn out to be a fault on a completely different circuit. A partial N-E fault will cause an imbalance, and a DP switch that might close the L contact slightly before the N contact, will momentarily exagerate the earth leakage due to the partial N-E fault.

Ours was floored in 11mm OSB as a temporary deck. It didn't get wasted, that eventually got cut into strips to drop into the bottom of the JJI joists to support the insulation. For that application it didn't matter that some of the edges had swelled a little.

I put satellite tv receivers / dvr's, the hifi, and the printer in the cupboard under the stairs. That is more about hiding "stuff" that you don't need to touch and all operates by IR remote control than anything else. Any "waste" heat from that will go up the stairwell to upstairs (that has no specific heating) so won't be a bad thing.

About 35 years ago I first saw a fantastically simple DIY omnidirectional wind turbine. Take an oil drum. Cut it in half vertically down the centreline. Mount the two halves side by side facing opposite ways on a vertical axis. Whatever way the wind blows it will always rotate the same direction. This just sounds like a refined version of that principle.

Why spend so much on a computer controlled fan? I am a big believer in keep it simple, i.e a direct 240V motor, nothing else. But am I the only one to question why you want a fan in the utility room? In our old house we had one because building regs said so. but it never got turned on, even when hanging wet washing in there to dry. Why would I want the noise from it? And we never had condensation or other issues.

Now come on, this thread is just taking the pee? It's probably no different to making sure your new stone kitchen worktop won't get stained by red wine.

This thread highlights the very worst of selling houses, surveyors and solicitors. In this case the wiring is in good order, wired to an compliant with the standards in force at the time and time still just as safe. In the real world it would now benefit from an upgrade to a new consumer unit to give the better protection of rcd's and mcb's But surveyors like to get their teeth into this sort of stuff and make a mountain out of a mole hill and scare the poor buyer into thinking the house is about to burn down and needs an immediate full rewire. And sadly most buyers just believe the tosh they dish out. @JSHarris since you know a local chap, can you not give him your test results and pay him to issue an EICR in his name with those findings?

The worst thing they did was remove the C4 clasification "conforms to earlier edition of wiring regs"

The EIC for a rental just goes into the tenants information pack. I suspect, along with things like the EPC certificate, nobody ever reads it. In Jeremy's case his buyer wants an EICR so they know what to expect in terms of any upgrades it may or may not need. The only "issue" is the buyer then might approach him after completion to do the upgrades? But then again plenty of garages do MOT's without the ability to fix things that cause a failure.

Wiring regs just say you have to be competent. So no reason at all why not. But if the purchaser notices your address is the same as the address of the property being tested they might raise a concern. In my case it is handy having 2 addresses, e.g when I do an EICR on the old house, I use the new address. When I do an EIC for the new house, I use the old address. So just use your new address and there should be no problem.

I would think it has to be at least worth a try for planning. It is only just outside the (revised) settlement boundary, and there are lots of existing houses outside the boundary. As it is owned by friends, hopefully there will be trust between you and they won't just run off and sell to the highest bidder if you are successful. This is where the Scottish legal system is so much better. When we bought out plot I made a formal offer to buy it for an agreed price, subject to getting planning permission. Planning was granted and under the Scottish system that quickly then became a legally binding contract, but had planning been refused I could have walked away and been under no obligations.

The fly in the ointment there, is as I understand it, you cannot erect a permitted development building until completion day. So you could be in the hypothetical situation I might have faced. I wanted to keep our static caravan after the build. But to be "by the book" I would have to remove it on completion day, and then put an identical caravan back in the identical position for it to be a permitted development garden building. When I put this scenario to the planners, they allowed PP for the 'van to remain (but not for habitational use after the house was complete) It is highly unlikely anyone is going to raise a fuss over a garden shed though.

That's 15W / m2 of actual heat. That heat is derived from an Air source heat pump into wet UFH so assuming a COP of 3, that's 5W of electricity / m2 You can do a lot with figures and statistics.

This 15W / m2 thing Our house is about 147 square metres and using Jeremy's heat loss spread sheet, I worked out the peak heating demand when it's +20 inside and -10 outside i about 2200W That woks out at 14.96W /m2 We set out to build a well insulated low energy house but with no particular certification to any standard, but does this mean we have (almost?) achieved passive house standard then?

I am another that had no written contract with my builder, just an estimate, and an open ended contract ("carry on until I say stop") This worked probably because I knew and trusted the builder. I was kept informed as they progressed how the bill was mounting up and I paid instalments due on time. When it became apparent my old house was not going to sell quick we moved onto "plan b" and took over the build ourselves. By this point we had a wind and watertight shell and I have been doing the rest myself. Taking much longer, but it enables me to keep a lid on spending and only spend at the rate we can afford. Because I had a good relationship with the builder, was honest with them from the start about finances, and kept them informed, then when the time came to part, that parting was amicable to the point I know when I am ready to get them to do some more work, they will do so.

I had this "discussion" regarding our static caravan. I wanted to keep it permanently as a work space / studio. When I pointed out that on the day of completion I could remove it from the site, and immediately replace an identical 'van in an identical location under permitted development as a garden outbuilding, they agreed it could remain without me having to do that. In your case I would just build the shed. The VERY worst that can happen is after completion you would have to dismantle it, then put it back as a permitted development garden building.

I had an EIC ready but SSE were not interested. But some DNO's / suppliers are.

1) No, ours is right on the boundary with next door. 2) some DNO's get uppity if you take up space in "their" meter box. Use a small mini CU right in the top right corner of the meter box and you will probably get away with it with little more than a grunt of discontent. What happens next is highly regional dependant. I would suggest the TBS CU is present with meter tails already connected so the meter monkey can connect them to the meter. Having an EIC might smooth the waters if there is any uncertainty. In our case SSE supply a meter with a built in isolator and the electrician makes the final connection.

I did hardware filtering on the heat pump. But if I were building it I would do both. i.e don't act on an input until it has been on continuously for a certain period of time.

Make sure you filter and debounce what it intended to be a low frequency on / off input. You may have read my thread about my LG heat pump that was spuriously tripping. I eventually found it was picking up noise on the room thermostat input, something that is supposed to monitor an low frequency on / off switch. But instead the input was way too sensitive and responded to short duration induced noise spikes. I had to add my own filtering, something you would think someone like LG would have known to do.

But that would still be an open loop control of the power level then, unless your home made controller senses the flow temperature itself and uses that to "close the loop" and adjust the power level to suit demand. A Raspbery Pi or an Arduino controller could do that quite easily.

Are you saying this hat pump does not regulate the flow temperatures? My LG heat pump, and I am sure most others, allows you to set the water flow temperature independantly in heating mode and hot water mode, and it modulates the compressor speed to maintain that water flow temperature. I find it hard to believe this one does not do the same.

I took your approach. I designed the house to have window sizes appropriate to the room sizes and the local vernacular. And included as much insulation as reasonably practical. However I did add on the "sun room" (not yet finished so I can't yet comment if it will work as I expect) The sun room has large windows on 3 sides but a proper well insulated roof (so not a conservatory) It is connected to the main family room via proper quality exterior double glazed doors (even though they are really internal doors) The theory is, if we need some additional solar gain, open the internal doors to let some heat in from the sun room. If we don't need the solar gain, keep the internal doors shut, and also open windows in the sun room to cross ventilate it and cool it down.