ProDave

I wonder if this will lead to DIY systems becoming more widely for sale, and at a cheaper price?

Since we are doing "what can possibly go wrong" Well we bought the plot, started the build, put the old house on the market, and gave up after 2 1/2 years on the market with no buyer. Now limping along as a self builder hardly employing anyone else, and building as and when we can afford it. The good news is when we eventually sell the old one, we will have more left over than we ever expected, but boy it has been hard and frustrating.

The problem with borrowing £500K is you need the salary to support that kind of loan. That will be your first hurdle. then you will need the lenders permission to take away half (or more) of the garden to build the new house. Sold old house and caravan on site will be a lot less complicated.

Hi and welcome to the fourm. You are in good company here and there will be plenty to hold your hand as you embark on what at the outset can appear a daunting process.

And skews the market in favour of new builds rather than existing houses that are not eligible for the help to buy.

The temperature probe switchover relay is now installed. With the relay de energised it is connected to my 560 ohm resistor and that gives a temperature reading of 85 degrees which is way above the setpoint so the hot water heating is off. When I turn the hot water on at my programmer, the relay energises and switches over to the real temperature probe, and the hot water heating turned on immediately, giving a current tank temperature of 38 degrees. So that appears to be working. I am making some progress on these spurious flow errors I keep getting when everything is idle. So far LG have not been much help in solving this. Yesterday I just happened to be next to the controller when one of these flow errors happened. What I saw was the "on" light came on very briefly, just for a fraction of a second, and the pump also ran for that very short period. Then a few seconds later up came the low flow error. It is no surprise it didn't measure any flow as the pump was on such a very very short time. This got me thinking WHY did it power up for such a short period? As a test, I have for the moment disconnected the thermostat input to the heat pump (this is what calls for room heating when needed) and with that disconnected it has now gone 24 hours without a spurious low flow error. I don't believe it is the UFH manifold controller that is generating a real short demand. That is all very basic relay logic. There is nothing there to glitch like that, and the room thermostats are all mechanical, so again they would not glitch like that. So I am wondering about crosstalk? Perhaps the thermostat input is a high impedance input with a stupidly sensitive threshold and it sees a small spike from an induced voltage from something else? To test that theory, I am going to re connect the thermostat input, but connect a load resistor and a snubber to try and kill any induced voltage it might be seeing. I will report back once that test is done.

A kit house does not have to arrive on a low loader and need a crane. Ours was built by a local firm of builders in their steading nearby, and brought to site a few panels at a time on a tri axle 3 ton trailer behind one of their vans. Concrete delivery is the one that is likely to be an issue. Park the concrete lorry in the wider road and bring it in in a dumper truck? or mix on site?

My honest advice is go to a caravan dealer and look at the stock they have for sale. We are fortunate there are 2 such dealers close by up here. This will let you look at a lot of 'vans from the old £1000 barely habitable wrecks to some quite nice younger vans. and make a choice what suits you. The one we bought, we chose because it had an unusual layout with the living and kitchen area in the middle and a bedroom at each end. Not only did that seem a better layout for our site to live in during the build, it also has more potential for later use as work / storage space. (we are keeping outs as a garden outbuilding so it is not going anywhere) The advantage of buying from a dealer is usually transport is included. If you buy privately you will have to arrange and pay for transport, and not all the dealers up here will transport 'vans they have not sold. Ours was only single glazed. Yes double glazing would have been better, but you are never going to get particularly good DG units in a static, expect a very thin gap between the panes. Don't rely on bottled gas heating. In the first month of living in ours, the inbuilt gas fire had emptied a 47Kg cylinder at a refill cost here of £80. We stopped using it then and before the winter fitted a wood burning stove, that hardly went out between November and the end of March. Top tips. Support it well, ours sits on 12 piles of concrete blocks. Panel in the gap between the bottom of the 'van and the ground. Insulate under the floor. Strap it down to some stakes so it stays put in a gale. Lag all the pipes. Check the lagging from time to time, we had one freeze up due to mice stripping a 12" section of pipe insulation. These things are poorly insulated. However having said that we had no problems with condensation, unlike the very old one we had last time, so the more recent ones are not quite as bad so perhaps buying a more recent one is a better idea than an old wreck.

You tried asking anywhere for DIY gas advice?

Surely the DNO will give you a price for the 2 connections and you pay half each. To try and split hairs by saying "yours uses a little bit more cable than mine" is just silly? the cost difference will be a tiny fraction of the total cost. The cable might be something like Wavecon 95 with a drop down to 23 or 35mm concentric to feed into the houses.

Last house was tape and fill, almost the normal up here. Screw heads pop, and some taped joints the tape started lifting after a few years, needed some rework. Also some boards were not perfect with ripples visible on the untaped bits in some light conditions. So this time we have had it skimmed, now we have found a good plasterer who is as rare as rocking horse ...... up here. At this time of year, a plaster skim is dry in 2 days and painted in 4.

It could be that if someone "gives them all the information" they think you are trying to pull a fast one and get an EPC better than it really is, so deliberately ignore what you have given them. It you told your MOT tester "the brakes are just fine" would you expect him to not bother testing the brakes?

My guess is it was once an airing cupboard and where the socket is once powered the immersion heater.

Because the special location is a room containing a bath or a shower. The barber shop has neither.

Another option, if it's a plasterboard wall is just move it to the hall then? This no electrics in bathrooms is just because we are wimps and not allowed to make our own safety decisions. In Australia it is normal to have a socket right next to the shower and that is usually where the washing machine stands, and a hairdryer plugs in. When I told my BIL we are not allowed to do that because someone would walk into the shower with the hairdryer plugged in and the water running. His reply in his Austrailian accent was "well if they are that bloody stupid they deserve to die"

Just take the socket front off. Connect the wires in some heavy duty terminal blocks, and put a blank front plate on. No socket in bathroom, no problem. don't make life more complicated than it needs to be. I refused a request to put a socket in a bathroom once. I had to go back a while later for something else and found the washing machine sat next to the bath, a small hole drilled through the wall through which the flex was threaded so it could be plugged in in an adjacent room.

Fitting solar PV might be the easy fix for a landlord to boost an otherwise too low for rental EPC. And because the EPC is too poor for FIT's anyway, and they are so low now, might we see a lot of landlords fitting DIY solar PV just to bump up the EPC and not claiming any FIT?

Be VERY careful with your plumbing if you put them back to back. Search the forum for "swap contents"

Just to put it into perspective these were both free. It is a fact, that I have never bought a working television set. Since the age of about 13, I have been repairing the things. Every television I have ever owned came to me faulty and I repaired it. When I was younger I used to buy faulty sets just to repair and sell. I am always keeping my eye out for more. These present 2 I was asked to repair them for the owner, located the fault, quoted them a fair price to repair them and they declined, so I repaired them for me. That is probably more sad than the fact I have 50" But for a good viewing experience, sound is as important as the picture. As sets have been getting bigger and thinner, the excuse for speakers they fit into them has been getting smaller and more tinny. So both sets are hooked up to surround sound systems, and yes I got those as faulty and repaired them as well.

I am sure in your case it won't. But you now (or very soon will) need an EPC of E or better in order to let a property. That is going to give a lot of landlords a big upgrade bill, or they are going to stop renting them and sell them. Either way I predict a glut of old low EPC houses that have a much reduced demand with landlords not wanting to buy them, and that will have to push their value down somewhat? Personally I would now not buy anything worse than a C unless it really was priced lower to compensate for the higher running cost, or the upgrade costs.

And the sun never comes above the horizon in winter.

Yes this is the only downstairs space that's finished. And yes the "small" 42" tv is in here. The slightly larger 50" one will go in the snug living room when that's finished, along with my floor standing hifi speakers. No prizes for guessing which will be my favourite room.

I stripped the top soil (grass had long gone) and piled it up before marking out the foundation trenches.

Thar's a standard timer board used in millions of fans. I often have one or 2, if I replace a fan and the timer board is working, I keep it as a spare, but don't have any at the moment.

I was right about watching telly in the same room as the Fridge and dishwasher. Can't wait for the other living room to be ready. This stupid modern idea of having a lounge in the kitchen will never really catch on.