ProDave

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.

Offer the pipe up so it just touches. Measure what is sticking out. Then push the pipe fully home and check the amount sticking out has reduced by about 50mm. If not, it's probably not fully home.

I think you are right that the present system has no trust. Look at @JSHarris house. He had accurately modeled the structure of the house and determined it would warrant a C, but the assessor had his own ideas, made sweeping assumptions ignoring the facts he was given and gave a poorer rating. But people still buy old houses with an EPC of F or G, and then complain they are cold, damp, and cost a fortune to heat.

I have long been a fan of Click Mode. Cheap but nice looking and good quality. What not many people realise, is the switch modules can be unscrewed from the front plate, enabling you to mix ordinary 2 way, and intermediate light switches on the same plate, without having to choose a "grid" system type switch. Nice to have a local supplier for them at last. I usually buy them on line.

Yes indeed. It appears that nobody cares about the running cost of a house. Yet they will only buy an A+++ rated fridge. The fact that the FIT payments for our old house just about paid for the annual electricity bill (and probably would pay it 100% if we took more trouble to save usage a bit) was irellevant to most people. The running costs of that house are about £1200 per year in heating oil, and the council tax (which is the dominant bill with nothing you can do about it * ) I still suspect that our new low energy house, might actually cost more per year to run than the old house, because there will be no FIT subsidy. I know of one case where a house sale fell through because of solar PV. A friend of SWMBO was looking for a house, and they found a detached house, with ownwer owned solar PV on the original high rate FIT. I advised them to buy it. But the sale fell through because the surveyor mentioned that the roof might not be adequate to support the extra load of the PV panels, and might have damaged the tiles and they might need replacing. They pulled out, and ended up buying a semi detached house without PV. I felt sorry for the vendors, and for them missing out and ending up with a less good house. * I might have mentioned "council tax poverty" IT has often been stated if you spend 10% of your income on fuel, then you are in "fuel poverty" Well for some time we have been in the situation, where we spend more on council tax, than we do on fuel, with no way to reduce the council tax bill. Since the council tax is 10% of our income, I declare that we are in "council tax poverty" And before you ask, we don't qualify for any of the low income council tax reliefs, because our assets are way too high.

What's the slightly blue / purple tinted plasterboard? or is that just a trick of the light?

What irked me about a lot of ready made sheds, was the almost total lack of diagonal bracing. I discovered this first when in 1983 I had bought my first house and wanted a shed. I set off on a trip round the purveyors of sheds, to be greeted with display grounds full of leaning sheds (we had just had some winter gales). This clearly demonstrated a lot of sheds on the market were not fit for purpose, so I built my own for less money. I once since then bought a ready made shed, and added my own diagonal braces to the frame to ensure it did not become to the same design fault.

Right or wrong, I run a hose into ours to refill it as soon as the tanker has left. But this is at the old house, where it was wrongly put in pea gravel, and I only ever get it emptied during a long dry spell, like the one we had this early summer.

They are sold to you on the basis that you will save energy. But ONLY if you watch the display like a hawk, realise how much is being used, and turn something off. The hidden agenda, is smart meters have half hourly metering built in, so have the ability (only 1 supplier implements it so far) to charge different rates at different times of day. Are you happy to pay much more if you want to cook your dinner in the normal early evening "meal time"?

I dug a tapered hole. Less likely for the sides to cave in, and less concrete to fill it. The plant is after all a cone shape so why dig a cylinder shape hole for it? In my case it was concreted in up to the ring around the bottom as the anchor to prevent it floating out.

That is exactly what I wanted to do. There was a building plot for sale at the time for £20K. It had an old timber, lath and plaster bungalow on it to be demolished and replaced. To be honest I would have lived in the old house, or a caravan in the garden until I could afford to build, but back then nobody would lend me money to buy this "plot" (it was unmortgageable as a house). So instead my only option was pay £36K for a starter home as you described So that plot was on sale for 55% of the cost of a 1 bedroom starter home. Given that the market value of that starter home is now about £200K, where are all the building plots in Oxfordshire for £110K? That plot I was denied looked to be good value. Like many others here, I started in a climate of high interest rates and high inflation. The good thing about high inflation was it eroded you debt quite rapidly (assuming of course your salary kept up with inflation which mine did) and when interest rates went down like many others I just paid the same and paid of the mortgage much quicker.

Only if you WANT a smart meter? What reason can you give me that a smart meter will be a benefit to YOU?

Your digger is about the same size if not larger than what I had, it will do the job no problem. I was almost at full reach down into the hole by the time I got deep enough but could easily have dug a little ledge for the digger to go down onto if I had needed to go deeper There wasn't much headroom to lift it so just a short bit of rope The ONE thing I would do differently if preparing to do it again, is get a HOOK to hang from the bucket. I think it took 3 tries of lowering it in, no it;s not deep enough, take it out and dig a bit more, and that was a right PITA having to undo shackles. A HOOK would have made it a lot easier.

I would have struggled to get any more than a 10ft 'van here It was easy to maneuver into position with my Landrover, they only weigh about 2 ton. A front mounted tow ball would have been easier. If you buy one from a dealer by law it has to come with a gas safe certificate so that will do you for your use of the 'van.

About £1800 seems to be the best price for a 4KW system on ebay, but not necessarily black panels. Most 4KW inverters will have that as 2 strings on separate inputs so lends itself for example to an E/W split.

I seriously question the logic of self build on the Western Isles. Yes it's a lovely place, but with one of the lowers house prices in Scotland, I seriously doubt you could build a house for less than you can buy one ready made, even if you were gifted the land for nothing.

I hope doing dig and pour in the same day, someone remembered to inform building control and they managed to take a look before the pour? The drone pictures really make sense of the site.

I am pretty sure these are all C24 timbers. My worry is not that they are "wet" still and will rot, but whatever unknown chemical has soaked into them might not be good for them in the long term. If it is as I suspect car wax polish will that do any harm? The only other thing it might be is oil, but I am sure that would smell of oil. I am absolutely confident the timber is dry now and there is no issue with damp getting in (sole plate bone dry and no staining) so this is the result of a spill of something and no more.

mine are all 11mm, but my outside walls have 2 layers of 11nn racking. I am putting OSB on one side of even my non load bearing walls, it makes them so much more solid.

Are you SURE they are not load bearing? If load bearing they may need OSB racking panels as well as plasterboard.

100mm (actually 95mm) is standard with 12.5mm PB. If you are really tight you can go down to 68mm CLS on 400mm centres if a room is tight and need every last mm of space in a room.