ProDave

This is the sort of thing that comes up for "dosing pot" https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Flamco-mild-steel-dosing-pot-3-5L/183242350344?hash=item2aaa185f08:g:fbcAAOSwS-Va6B0B What I am after is way way simpler. It's a clear (or semi clear) plastic bottle. the bottom is open to a pipe and the top has a cap (with a vent) to top it up. It is literally a very small header tank that you manually fill with antifreeze mixture to keep it topped up. Out of desparation I could just use a 4 gallon conventional header tank and not have it connected to a ballcock, but you can;t see the level. Just about every heat pump system I have seen uses this arrangement, but I just can't find the damned thing for sale because it probably has some bizarre name that has nothing to so with header or tank or vessel.

Once the "house" is finished I recon another 2 years, to build the car port. shanty town of various sheds, bridge over the burn, 3 wire bridge over the burn for fun, zip line, decking, then perhaps a chicken coop and chicken runs. Then all the stuff I have not yet thought of.

Yet again I am struggling to find what I want because I don't know what it is called. For a closed circuit heat pump circulating loop filled with antifreeze, I see these not filled from a conventional header tank, and usually not sealed and pressurised. Instead they seem to be fed from a "bottle" that sits on the top of a pipe and forms the function of feed and expansion. You top it up manually and it is usually clear so you can see the contents Well I have searched loads of plumbing sites and I am buggered if I have been able to find one. It would help if I knew what it is called as "fill bottle" "header bottle" etc is clearly wrong.

Jewsons were charging me £7.61 +VAT per sheet at the back end of last year. Perhaps our proximity to the Norboard factory helps?

Up here rendered garden wall don't do well before frost gets in and the render bursts and falls off. House walls never seem to suffer like this I assume because they never get so cold, and have a proper DPC to stop it getting damp behind the render (which I am sure many garden walls do not) I would build it in blocks, point it well, and paint it.

Yes I used (cough) old bits of pallet wood slotted through the joists to hold the insulation in place. I wanted to keep the insulation from touching the plasterboard, just in case one day I need to add extra cables and I will stand more chance of threading a wire through if the insulation is not down on the plasterboard. I put my insulation above the mvhr vents

Still struggling I have found this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/new-4M-ARMAFLEX-HIGH-TEMP-solar-copper-MDPE-pipe-tube-A-C-Insulation-lagging-UK/122801904482?hash=item1c97905b62:m:mQh2N7BMledKQZKkAMSS2CQ That's flippin expensive. (I need about 6 metres so that one would not be long enough) BES don't have Armaflex or that other one. I keep finding "Class O Nitrile insulation" but it doesn't mention outdoor use https://www.bes.co.uk/class-o-insulation-tube-7-8in-x-25-mm-x-2-m#product-details-tab Would that one be okay if I did as @newhome suggests and wrap it in aluminium tape?

Se will the nitrile rubber survive the tendancies or rodents to eat anything vaguely plastic? As always it's knowing the trade names. You would think the sellers would refine their search engines so this comes up when you search for "outside insulation"

Do you mean sound proof insulation? Not posted before but this is mine

To insulate the pipes from the house to the ASHP All I seem to be able to find is the normal foam stuff. I can't believe that will be any good outside for long, and the mice will eat it anyway. I want something properly rated for outside use, that won't turn to dust and won't get eaten. All the usual outlets, the sheds, BES etc don't have anything. Bhe best I can find is this, but it looks pathetically thin. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EXTERNAL-INSULATION-FOR-USE-WITH-PEX-AL-PEX-COPPER-PLASTIC-PIPE-10-METER-LONG/142498377460?hash=item212d90aef4:m:mK9vmX0SOEaVH7M3-B-diAA What do the rest of you use? why is it so hard to find?

Mdpe pipes work with brass compression fittings. I used the brass 25mm in 22mm out stopcocks. Some on here don't like them, but I equally dislike the copper adaptors if you instead use an mdpe in / out stopcock.

It has to be the location. Why else would we be building a house less than 100 metres from the last house we built 15 years ago? But this time it is better than the last one, we get a view of the mountains to the West of us, which is made a feature in the views from the kitchen / diner windows. The previous house was robbed of those views by trees in the neighbours garden so we only got to see farmland and relatively low hills.

We found some interesting differences between Scottish building regs and NHBC guidelines, so much so that we had to tell one of them we would do something one way, then tell the other we would do it different. We always did it the building regs way in case of conflict.

Shop around is your answer. My Air source heat pump cost me £455, I have just bought all the downstairs under floor heating kit for £502, and the hot water tank was the expensive bit at £875 That's the heating and hot water system all bar the pipe and some valves for £1832. How much is a combi and your radiators?

I will almost certainly use the one I have just bought for the downstairs manifold. Now I have put it in a spare DIN rail enclosure, it is such a perfect fit. Then I will use the one from @newhome with the yet to be bought manifold for upstairs.

I only need 1, I will use the one I have just bought for the other. There will be 1 manifold and 1 controller on each floor. They will operate independantly possible even on at different times so there is no need for them to link together so it matters not that they are different. I have not bought the upstairs manifoild yet so that too may end up different to the downstairs one.

The DiseqC switch comes before the LNB so the LNB would know even know, let alone care, it was fed from a switch. The only theory I can come up with is it's quite a long length of cable from the house to the dish about 30 metres, and I wonder if the old LNB consumed more power and was causing a volt drop issue stopping the switch from seeing it's signal and switching, and perhaps the replacement is lower power? It was an OLD LNB it has been on that dish for 15 years, and it was by no means new when I got it then. It's replacement is a modern one, no more than 10 years old.

There is a time and a place for a wood burner. In a town or city or the bottom of a sheltered valley may not be it. But up here in the sparsely populated Highlands, where neighbours are not close, and it's nearly always windy, they really are not a nuisance to neighbours. Of course any law passed will be based on regulating their use in Central London, then be applied equally everywhere.

@Nickfromwales and @newhome I will have the one going begging. I still need another one, I only bought one of my cheap ones to evaluate so yes please I will give it a good home.

That's pretty normal. The way they stack the terminals, things get very cosy indeed when you have a thermostat and then say 3 actuators connected to each zone. How much did that one cost?

Why not just stand on a stool to clean the flippin shower head like everyone else? I now firmly believe my en-suite will be finished before this bathroom, and I have not even yet set a date to START my en-suite.

Re setting up my satellite system. Previously I had a separate receiver for each satellite, but thought I would streamline things and have one receiver covering Aatra 1 and Hotbird with a DiseqC switch. Dish was alligned and working. So tune in Astra 1 (connected to LNB1 on the Diseqc switch) all okay. Start tuning in Hotbird (connected to LNB2 on the DiseqC switch) and hang on, it's getting the same list of channels. Tried every DiseqC setting I could find on the receiver still just finding the Astra 1 channels. Out of desparation I went to the dish and physically unplugged the Astra 1 LNB. Re scanned the receiver, and it found the Hotbird channels. Go and plug the Astra LNB in again. Switch to an Astra 1 channel, okay, switch back to a Hotbird channel "no signal" Go and unplug the Astra 1 LNB and it switches over to the Hotbird LNB. Out of desparation I swapped the Astra 1 LNB for a different one. Now it all works. So what was going on, with the old Astra 1 LNB it would not "let go" of the DiseqC switch but the new LNB works fine. What would cause that? never seen anything like it before.

I doubt that exposed conduit will be cheap. You need a good electrician to bend and thread galvanised conduit and get it looking sharp like that. I am willing to bet that will hardly be any cheaper than conventional wiring in a service void then plasterboard.

Yes I undid the screws and there was enough wriggle room to get it to all line up. I like the idea of keep the valves there, and fit 2 more in line so you can isolate for a pump change.

I got all my UFH parts for downstairs for £502 I had one company price up a supply only package and that was just a few £ short of £1K I still need a manifold for upstairs, but everybody was out of stock of 2 port manifolds so I will buy that later.