ProDave

First thing. there must be a circulating pump somewhere else as well as the one on the manifold. Find this. Then find out if it is running when the central heating programmer is on, but ALL UFH room stats are turned down. If that is the case then the radiators can run without any UFH zone calling for heat. If so and there is no room stat upstairs, it will only be the radiator themal valves controlling the temperature in those rooms.

I would add caution as well. If I had known 100% what our situation would be, I might have just stayed in the old house and improved it instead. BUT when the dust settles, we will be in a much better house, only slightly smaller than the old one (downsizing was the original aim) and we will be a little better financially than we started, but not a lot.

If you are doing a raft anyway, then the logical extension to that is a passive insulated slab foundation instead. Similar in many ways but very much better.

If our old house had sold quicker, I would have had more money, so paid more people to work on the new house, so the total cost of the new house would probably have been £250K making the plot value only 20% of the total. And it would then be very questionable whether the new house would actually be worth what it cost. The main result of the delayed sale is me doing very much more of the work than I ever expected so the overall cost reducing a lot, plus I probably strive more to get a good deal on everything we buy to eek out a stupidly small budget to go further.

If you are wanting to mainly DIY I question is standing seam is really what you want? How about box profile steel instead, that can (mine does) span between battens, and is all 100% DIY if you want to.

Just found this on ebay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/123282794794?ViewItem=&item=123282794794 I await a delivery quite from them.

Oh dear. That has highlighted something I had forgotten about. Insulation. If I went with the roller door from the local supplier that would be "insulated" now I don't expect it to be very well insulated as the ones I have seen appear to be plastic slats making up the roll, with presumably some token level of insulation between the 2 skins.

I want to get a door on our garage that has been sitting doorless for nearly 3 years now, so I can get it set up properly as a workshop. Originally we were planning an electric roller door which (I haven't actually had a quote) I understand would be in the order of £1K But as ever in a quest so save money. SWMBO points out the garage is not for a car, they will live under the car port but we will need to get cars in to get them over the pit for servicing (and my Landrover might end up living in there) So we don't need electric, manual will do. Because the plan was a roller door, we didn't make it to any particular standard size and it has ended up with an opening size of 2370mm wide and 2310mm high. Of course now I am looking for a cheaper option, I find none of the off the shelf standard doors will fit. Any ideas? A manual roller door might be the simplest, they fit behind the opening on the inside not in the opening, so the size does not have to be so precice. So anyone know a supplier of cheap manual roller doors? Another alternative might be a pair of hinged timber doors, but again not found a standard set that will fit.

What is unusual about that? My plot cost £50K, well down at the bottom end of open market plot values here, and the total cost will be about £220K

Your overhead cable worries me, and may be more of an issue than you thought. It looks like 11KV, the standard for local distribution, and your supply will come from a transformer from that quite often pole mounted. We have 11KV overhead lines just the other side of the road from us. The "issue" they cause is restrictions on how close you can build to them. I found this out when a neighbour wanted to build almost right up to the road edge, putting his building 4 metres from the OH lines. He was told NO. As it happens, there was some network alterations going on, and he was able to piggyback onto that, and get the section past his plot undergrounded for a much reduced cost as they were making alterations anyway, so he was able to build. When I looked into out own build, I was concerned it might cause us a problem. So I enquired of SSE the DNO here and was told no work within 9 metres of the OH line. Then when you drill down into the details, it is actually no building within 6 metres of the line, and any work (scaffold, cranes, diggers) between 6 and 9 metres from the line you have to be particularly careful. So we have built 6 metres from the OH line and had scaffold up 5 metres from it, and used a digger (carefully) right under it. The fact it has ended up right above your building is a concern. Has your DNO agreed to that? I would want that in writing. What is the clearance from your roof to the line at the closest point? IF it's less than about 3 metres I suspect you are going to need a line shutdown just for the roofer to work on the roof. And taking the actual build, that could be a long shutdown, and who else would be off during that shutdown. This may not be what you want to hear, but a diversion or undergrounding of a section of the line is what you really want but that is going to cost well into 4 digits. It might be cheaper to move the garage. There will be some wasted money on foundations that will have to be moved but that is likely less cost than moving the line. You might have to re submit planning but should be able to continue building the house while that goes through. Perhaps start a thread in the forum to discuss this rather then clog up your blog?

No I don't think you use that sort of flashing with a twin wall flue pipe. This is what you want https://www.flue-pipes.com/flashing-30-254.html flue-pipes.com is where I got mine from, the cheapest I could find. Depending how air tight and how well insulated you are building, you might want to look for a stove that takes it's combustion air direct from the outside via a duct rather than from the room.

The point is to avoid having to trim anything from the wall boards. The finished height is 2420 so the wall boards stop 20mm above the finished floor and the gap will be covered by the skirting. The exact measure is unimportant as long as there is a small gap that will get covered. The last thing you want is 2400 before you sheet the ceiling, then you will be trimming a slither from each board and cursing.

Yes. If I still had the prescription from the last eye test. It got "filed" which probably means I will never find it again. Perhaps after the next eye test I might look at this.

That is only a little bigger than our kitchen / living room and we have a ceiling height of 2420mm That extra 20mm means you don't have to trim any of the plasterboard when sheeting the walls. This room feels perfectly normal to us. However I don't see a 3M ceiling would be too high either. We have one bedroom with a 3M ceiling and it does not look silly.

My issue is astigmatism. Prescription glasses correct that, and my distance glasses for driving are brilliant. But self select reading glasses can correct focus issues and are adequate for reading a pc screen and general close up work, but are never perfect because the astigmatism is not corrected. My gripe is the self select glasses I am wearing right now are fine for the pc screen and fine even for looking at something the other end of the room. I could wear them around the house all the time if I wanted to. Why can't I have a pair that does that AND corrects the astigmatism without paying £170 for them?

Might try that. My reading glasses were free on the NHS as was the eye test (advantage of being in Scotland) but when I went to complain about my reading glasses not doing what I expected, I was told I needed work glasses and there was no NHS subsidy for those and prices started at £170. I walked out. Trouble is I don't even think the eye test to get a prescription for that would be free.

My reading glasses. About the most useless things I ever got from an optician, because the only focus over a ridiculously short range "reading distance" so are totally useless for the computer for instance as that is too far away (so I just use a cheap pair of self select glasses for that) If I come by something hard to read then I blow the dust off the reading glasses and use them, to try and justify their reason for being on this planet.

The price seems fair to me. Last time I tried approaching an architect I was quoted about £25K for a similar package and they would not negotiate one tiny bit, which is why you will not find me speaking highly about architects.

If it is not a wall hung pan, but a simple floor standing back to wall toilet, then you do you want or need the complication of a frame to mount the cistern in. We just used a simple dual flush concealed cistern with hydraulic flush plate. And here showing the service access

Shouldn't there be battens on which to fix the standing seam roof, and to create an air flow under the SS roof? For insulation type, I would recommend Knauf Earthwool Frametherm 35. It's less nasty to handle than most glass fibre type insulation, and stiff enough to stay put when pushed up between the rafters so it stays there while you board over the underside. I used Protect Barriair as my air tightness / vapour layer.

A lot of these "log cabins" are really little more than a garden shed. Solid timber walls not very thick and no insulation. I have wired a couple as offices or such like and they are cold uninviting places in anything other than summer heat (when they are probably too hot) I think even my humble static caravan is better insulated and would make a better office / work space (exactly what we intend to use it for now)

My plumber friend paid in the order of £10K for supply and fit of an Ecodan system, I am not sure of the size but 8KW rings a bell. I always thought it strange that a plumber should pay someone to fit one.

I can see the re plumb my house with an UVC thread starting soon.....

I read it as removing the macerator (that was presumably put there because you could bot get enough fall on an underground pipe) and replacing it with a direct soil pipe, which to get enough fall would end up above ground, but covered by the deck.

We find just sleeping in our bedroom raises the temperature 1 degree overnight. Never been in a house that does that.