ProDave

Your plans are not clear. You really need a full set, upstairs and downstairs, and plans for existing and for what you are seeking to end up with. It is also not clear what is the original footprint when the house was built. That is what planning rules are based on. You are permitted a certain amount of single storey rear extension under permitted development, but without knowing which part is the original part of the house it is impossible to say if your proposed new extension meets that or not.

Vast improvements but could do better. " However, Tuesday’s auction secured only half the offshore wind capacity needed every year for the rest of this decade if the government hopes to meet its green energy targets. Almost two-thirds of the new offshore wind capacity that was eligible to bid in the auction failed to bid low enough to secure a contract. Tom Glover, the chief executive of RWE’s UK business, which missed out on an offshore wind contract, said: “It is a little disappointing in the context of the government’s targets that only 30% of eligible new projects won – but this shows how competitive the auction was, which is a good thing for the consumer. “It means the government will now need to work harder to get more offshore windfarms away in future auctions if it wants to achieve its goal of quadrupling offshore wind capacity to 60GW by 2030.”"

Lots of issues in the above post. As an existing structure built without PP it is too old for any enforcement action. Make a new structure which this would be without planning, and you start the clock ticking again. Up to you if you want to take the chance nobody notices and the council come looking. It needs PP because of the height of a raised deck, with or without under croft. Again if you want to dig a big hole next to your house undermining the foundations without SE input and without building control then you take the risk if it goes wrong or a different set of people from the council come to take a look. Why not replace the rotten timber and keep the existing deck and separately build a nice shed away from the house under permitted development rules for your storage needs?

What's the issue with the Sun amps?

Good choice. Your boards need to be self supporting over 1200mm. It should be easy to find "past their best" scaffold boards for next to nothing that have rotten ends so are no good for scaffold but will cut down for what you want.

Direct link to my blog page when I did my bathroom http://ardross.altervista.org/Wilowburn/bathroom-wet-room-floor/ 22mm O5 floor panels and an Impey shower wet room shower former and the Impey tanking system that doubles as a decoupling mat for the tiles.

If it is attached to the house it is not an "outbuilding" Due to the height it would have needed planning permission for what is there. It is almost certainly old enough it will not now be enforceable to make you remove it. So if repairing what is there, do NOT take it all down and rebuild. Repair in stages. There was a case here of someone taking down a similar structure and a neighbour photographed the old structure gone and the council then deemed the replacement was new and enforced it's removal. If I read this right you are hoping the house is built on very deep foundations and you hope you can excavate a lot of soil to create a "room" under your deck? I would not be doing that without advice from a structural engineer and it should involve building control.

My money on the water stains below is NOT anything to do with the traps, but poor sealing around the shower tray and edge of the bath. My No 1 tip, is do your new bathroom properly as a wet room, with a wet room shower former and tanking system, and suitable top access trap. That will be an end to trying to seal a normal shower tray to a normal wall.

A manhole does not exist without pipes connecting to it. So there will be some kind of drain, and these days it is normal to divert the drain rather than build over it. So first work out where the drain runs, and who owns it. Come back with photographs and sketches of your findings.

Get a quote for the diversion. That is the only way you will know. High water table does not always mean piles. Our water table here is high in winter, but normal strip foundations about 1.5 metres deep are fine. You just need to get through the soft organic top soil into something solid. A SE witnessed a number of test pits dug down to about 2 metres and confirmed all was well. Our previous house nearby was the same except it needed to be a little deeper as that plot the ground had been made up a bit. The most cost effective build shape is a square box, not an L shape. If you could mirror your L diagonally so the back of the house was a straight line and the notched out L was at the corner where the sewer was you might be able to avoid the diversion. And moving it back on the plot just a bit would also help. I can't see planning objecting as the houses to the north (assuming north up) are set well back so I can't see that as a problem. Finding the exact location of the sewer will answer is it possible to design around it and avoid the diversion or not. That would be my priority.

We have a Telford 300 litre heat pump UVC. It was only last year I built the airing cupboard around it (it's in the corner of the small bedroom to give optimum short hot pipe runs) so now it is in an enclosed small space. I had expected that airing cupboard to be a real hot house, but it is only a few degrees hotter than the room it is partitioned off from. That is a testament to how little heat it loses, mostly down to all the pipework being well lagged as already mentioned, and storing water at 48 degrees.

This just shows my pet hate with wood. Wood just wants to warp. The quicker you can get it from the merchant, cut and made into what you want and screwed together tight to stop it warping the better.

Best upgrade you could do is an unvented cylinder which generally are better insulated than the simple spray foam vented sort, and one with proper horizontally mounted immersion heaters usually one at the bottom and one mid way up. The top entry immersion heaters are nothing but trouble.

If the site entrance is where the Heras fence is at the right of the last picture, then surely you would want a lot of it to remain as a site road? If not start breaking it furthest from the entrance and you have the "concrete road" there to push the first batch of rubble to the entrance with the diggers dozer blade. Then keep working your way to the entrance. Not the larger diggers might not have a dozer blade, something to check. I moved about 100 tons of soil around my site just pushing it with the dozer blade then digging it into a nice pile at the destination.

I have just completed a multi year battle with a window supplier for a faulty pane. Just like you, their initial response was "send a photo" and like you although it was plain to see with the naked eye I could not get it on a photo. They would not budge on the photo requirement. Ieft it just over a year and contacted the supplier again, but not wanting to enter the same silly send a photo lark, I said I have a window pane that I think might need replacing can you send someone to advise. I carefully did not say which window and what i thought was wrong. No doubt thinking they were going to get a sale, they sent someone. As soon as he saw it he said "you want that replacing because of the fogging between the panes." I then wrote to the supplier telling them one of their surveyers had pointe out the problem and seen for himself what the problem was I expect a replacement glass unit under warranty. It was fitted last week.

I think there is another loophole, only general purpose sockets have to comply with minimum and maximum heights and being accessible. So if you have a desire to have a socket outside those limits, it is okay for a special purpose. That is what allows high up sockets for a wall mounted tv for instance. If your BC gets awkward stick a label on it to say "tv only" for example.

your solar will not "need" anything like 100A. your 60A connection will be fine. It is only when you get to wanting 2 EV chargers or any other big loads like multiple electric showers that it will be an issue. If you want a new cable, start by examining every mm of the existing one looking for signs of cracking or other damage. If you can find anything that might be "dangerous" it will be replaced free of charge.

Nearly 20 years ago I wanted a mixer. There was an old one in the garden where I was doing some work. So I asked if he wanted to sell it. His answer was no, but you can borrow it. So I did. When I had done my job I phoned him to arrange a time to take it back. "Oh I don't want it back" was his answer. Last time I used it, last year, I find it is on it's last legs, it runs but the motor overheats. I got by running if from my big Variac on a reduced voltage and only mixing half a load, it would then run long enough, just before the thermal trip popped. Trouble is the rest of it is so rusty it's probably not even worth seeking a replacement motor unless that is also free.

You are NOT going to get an island in a 3.3m wide kitchen. Simple maths, 3300 - 1200 (worktop each side) leaves 2100mm gao, Even a thin 1M island would give you only 550mm gap each side. I don't know what english BR's say but that would not be allowed in Scotland. I would look at the overall layout a bit more. Although a single door between kitchen and WC is now allowed, I would not want a wc in the corner ofmy kitchen like that.

How much does the thermal bridge of the fixing bother you? For my timber frame hose with 100mm wood fibre cladding, I drilled a 1" hole through the wood fibre, stopping when it reached the timber behind it. nserted a 120mm aluminium tube as a spacer, well sealed as it was inserted with Sikaflex. Then a very long coach bolt through what I was fixing (balcony) through the spacer and into the wood. In my case it was not really a cantilevered load, the balcony stood on legs, it was just to fix it to the house. The 120mm spacers meant there was a gap between the balcony frame and the finished wall so it was not compressing the wood fibre. The small amount of thermal bridging using metal fittings never concerned me.

That long car port is 2 or possibly 3 cars worth of parking. If you convert the car port to accommodation and convert the garage, where will you park? If your alterations involve more bedrooms you will likely be required to add parking space not remove it. Start by objectively listing what you want to achieve i.e I need 2 more bedrooms and an extra living room for instance. At the moment you seem to be approaching it from "I can convert this and extend that to make more space but I am not really sure what I want to use it for"

Awkward doorstep converation https://www.facebook.com/reel/2510770949118445

Or you could have just waited a bit until it started to go off and then it would have been fine. And the tile spacers would stop them sliding anyway? Or forget tiles and use multipanel.

Having seen the plan, I would move the door to the utility room to the entrance hall then completely re jig that end of the kitchen. Having the utility room door in that corner of the kitchen really messes the layout up.

Initial proposal was a filter mound, the issue was although Vp was ok, in winter the water table was too high and a conventional soakaway would be flooded. That was rejected because to get the space we needed it would have been closer than 10M to the burn. Then a system using a Puraflow system (crates full of filter medium) which took up less space was proposed, but rejected for an unspecified reason. So SEPA said why not discharge to the burn. What always struck me as silly is they rejected a TP discharging into a filter mound less than 10 metres from the burn, so instead they allowed, even proposed the same TP discharging directly to the burn. Logic surely says why not discharge to a filter mound that finishes say 2M from the burn? Anyway happy with the result. but if only we had known from the start. The house was kept to one side of the plot to allow room for the filter mound. If we had known that discharge to the burn would be allowed, I would have moved the house over a couple of metrres but that would have meant a new planning application and all the delays and them probably a new building warrant, so we left it as it was.