ProDave

I am not understanding the question. Each house will require it's own supply cable and it is up to the network operator how they achieve that. The larger cable is more about reducing volt drop and impedance than anything else. They will fit a cable they deem meets anticipated needs. You might get a slightly cheaper connection price of all houses are connected at once, but then again you might not. Be carefull YOU are not paying for the full cost of the new run, only to find other then tap into it much cheaper than you. Many of us have put the meter box near or on the boundary and ran our own cable from there to the house.

We considered wall hung, but honestly I could not see the benefit of the huge extra cost just for not having the pan touch the floor. I absolutely "get" back to wall pans, but just don't "get" wall hung. I guess it is a personal choice.

Well I did a reasonably accurate costing to try and work out how we are going to finance the last bit, we have spent about £200K with another £20K to go. So I guess that puts me pretty well at the 90% done stage, so only 90% left to do then. Purely on the basis of finance, half way did not even get us to a wind and watertight shell, that is probably more like 75%

What is needed is a change of attitude. Yes it is hot here, but I don't see my water usage increasing massively. I don't feel the need to water the grass, it has pretty well stopped growing just now, why would I want to change that? I don't see the need to clean my car more often. We don't see the need to have a paddling pool. I might shower more often but that is it. So perhaps a hosepipe ban is what is needed to stop people making bad decisions and simply wasting water?

What you should do is come out of your isolator into a short bit of copper then into this for you flexi to fix to https://www.screwfix.com/p/male-coupler-15mm-x/69358 That will give you a flat surface for the washer to seat to. If you put the flexi straight onto the isolator, the washer will be seating on a much narrower edge where it is tapered to fit an ollive. Having said that one of my basins is working just fine straight onto the isolator.

Do they need to see the empty trench? Put your pipe in, fill most of the trench and leave just the ends exposed?

This temperature thing is funny. Yesterday we were under the harr all day so it was cool outside. The house felt a nice cool comfortable place. 23 degrees inside the house. Today The sun is shining. Inside the house feels hot and uncomfortable. Temperature 23 degrees. Explain that one.

I wired one 18 months ago that was in a tiny loft of a mostly vaulted roof. I said at the time it would be impossible to get to to service the filters but nobody seemed to care. What you (or somebody) needs to do is make a walkway from the loft hatch to the unit (when you find it) so you (o someone) can get to it to change or clean the filters. I would leave this until the autumn. You will find people "less than enthusiastic" at wanting to do an awkward job in a very hot loft in this weather.

Someone over ordered. They won't do any harm left there. You could offer them on freecycle on the basis the collector gets them down from the loft (and if they put their foot through the ceiling pay for the repair)

Cheap fire rated downlights at Screwfix https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-fixed-fire-rated-led-downlight-gloss-white-220lm-2-5w-240v/3701f?_requestid=233988 It has to be a pricing error, fire rated downlight complete with LED lamp for under £3 Just bought some, stock up while it lasts.

It always used to be that if you rotated them all the way, there was a slide bolt in the top (that is now the bottom) that slides across to hold it there. I have not looked in detail at recent ones so they might have deleted that useful feature. Edit: Still there. From the Velux website

If you are SURE it's not going to rain, pivot it all the way round as if you were going to clean the outside of the glass and put the bolt across. But if it rains like that.........

Here are the long awaited photos of that floor. Battens, UFH and start of the biscuit mix And the oak flooring laid More pictures on the blog, look for the entry "Under Floor Heating and Oak flooring"

I am beginning to wish you were in the Highlands. I would come and relieve you of them and find a good use for them. If you really want them gone, put them on freecycle. I am still in "collecting mode" so far this week I have "recovered" 2 sheets of reinforcing mesh for concrete (didn't you have some of that spare) , and at least a full sheets worth of kingspan offcuts from various skips.

Or in direct sunlight for much of the day

Re sockets etc. It is surprising how many people say "put them where the architect showed them. Then when you walk around and start marking them out, you soon realise most are not in the best place. Another thing to think carefully about is lighting and light switches. e.g as a matter of course I like to switch the hall light 2 way (from upstairs and down) Most only do that with the landing light, but it saves the irritation of reaching the top of the stairs and realising the hall light is still on. I can't understand why this in not normal practice.

No not that. But I have found it http://klober.co.uk/shop/product/loft-vent-tray It creates a ventilation space, while still allowing the loft insulation to go as far as possible.

You need airflow in a cold roof to prevent condensation, so you will need to open up some ventilation. There is a product, which is basically flat plastic board, to insert down between the rafters to create a gap down to the soffits, but I don't know it's proper name.

I think this highlights "If in doubt, ASK" Someone on the forum would have been able to tell you about the window positioning for example.

I did the same for our plot with the SE looking at what came out of the hole. The only difference I left one hole open, with just a sheet of OSB covering it so I could look down it from time to time and see how the water table went up and down. I left it like that for nearly a year until we were ready to start.

The jets in the Polish ebay kit are in the range 65-70% so I think I will proceed and buy that.

I would use my submirsible pump if I felt the need to water the garden from the burn, but since our water is not metered, I see little point. At a previous house, we had a well in the garden from before mains water came to the village, as far as we could tell it used to serve at least 4 properties. I had a pump to extract water from that, which sat on a ledge just under the manhole well above the high water line. It wasn't self priming, but a non return foot valve took care of that and ensured once primed for the first time, it was ready for use any time we wanted. The pump I used was one that got chucked out from work with an odd 208V motor that got very bothered fed from 240V so I lashed up an old transformer to act as an autotransformer and it worked well.

You can tell a lot from the flame colour, if it burns with a yellow flame I would be worried. And there will be a CO alarm not far away

I did a lot of research into filter mound soakaways and made a long thread about it on ebuild but that is gone. (should be able to find it on the way back machine) You basically build a raised mound out of graded filter sand, and put the soakaway on that, then cover with earth. The sand is not cheap, it would have cost roughly £1000 There is a BRE document that describes the design of the mound. It is fiendishly expensive for a little 20 page publication, so I borrowed it from our local library on an inter library loan. I have to go out now, I will be back later with more details.

We have just spend the coldest winter for many years in the Highlands in a static caravan. The best thing we did was put a wood burning stove in it, and it hardly went out for 4 months. Keeping up with a wood supply for it was challenging and we burned coal overnight. Our heating bill for the small amount of electric heating we used, mainly in the bedrooms, was surprisingly small. We only had one pipe freeze and that was due to the mice stripping a section of pipe insulation on a little used leg of pipe. Thawed with a hairdryer and no damage done.