ProDave

A bit of a re plumb, but to me it would make a lot of sense to have a decent sized buffer tank for the heating, and divert excess PV to heating that. Then as well as your tank of DHW, you would have a tank of heating water for the evening.

We had this sort of anyway. The planners made it clear they wanted us to use a slate roof. I made it clear I did not (both houses wither side of us for 2 or more houses are concrete tiled) In the end they said they would "accept" Marley Edgemere Riven finished concrete tiles. So that is what went on the plans and that is what was approved. So they didn't strictly enforce a single product with a planning condition,. rather the discussions during the planning application made it clear that was the only concrete tile they would accept.

This all started a couple of weeks back when I was asked the question" What toilet cistern are you going to buy" "The same as in the last house" was my reply. They were cheap, easy to install, dependable and (when one did play up) easy and cheap to service. What more could you want? "but I didn't like the flush plate, choose a different one." I then had to explain you can't just fit any make of flush plate to any make of cistern. So that took me to the start of this thread. The next "discussion" will no doubt be where to fit it, left, right, or middle. I suspect middle, to force one to close the lid in order to reach the button.....

In our house the Tumble dryer is actually the towel fluffing machine. If you dry towels any other way they fail the fluffyness test. That is it's sole reason for existing. We now have a condensing dryer, so at least we don't shove 3KW of heat out through a big hole in the wall any more. However the condensing mechanism is very poor. It takes in room air at floor level to pass through the condenser. That might work okay in an old house with no floor insulation so the floor is always cold, but in a well insulated house with under floor heating, the room air it sucked in was simply not cold enough and you could run the thing for ages and the towels came out wet and warm. I swear in the new house the TD is going in the garage where there is more likely to be cold air for the condenser. Perhaps we need ducted air from outside, over the condenser, then back outside again?

Our builders handled them all by hand picking them up with those suction cup things.

The "problem" I am having looking for parts to make that DIY one is the 42 - 54 reducer. You need a "slip" version to allow the 42mm to pas through.. Normally there is a stop that won't allow the 42mm all the way through.

One of my favourites

Don't know about paper blinds, but we are setting up cardboard doors.

A quick costing on ebay (almost certainly not the cheapest) and it comes out at £167 for a 1 metre long copper 42/54mm heat exchanger for the pipe and all fittings. If I could get that down to £100 I might give it a go.

Thanks. I will go and cost it up. This might have to be well and truly hidden and not mentioned for BC sign off.

Don't like the idea of the shower waste being reduced for that run. I will have a look at available pipe sizes. But a nice simple idea. He has plumbed the heat recovery into the feed to the hot water tank. I think it would be better to connect it to the cold water feed to the shower thermal mixer valve?

The idea is you pre heat the cold water feed to the shower with the wast recovery, and the thermostatic mixed adjusts to use less hot and more of the pre heated cold to maintain the same temperature.

That would do. At the moment I have separate 40mm wastes from each shower to the stack (my philosophy to only have a single item on each "small" pipe) so that would either mean 2 of them, or combine the 2 showers onto one 40mm waste. I am actually more inclined to try and find a length of 40mm copper pipe, some 10mm annealled copper coil, and get soldering......

You look to have plenty of room to move the house left a bit on the plot, then stretch the main body of the house a bit wider and perhaps a bit deeper as well. I have worked on a house up here with a very similar layout. but instead it had the downstairs bedroom where you have the kitchen shown, and then the kitchen / dining from the front to the back of the house in the now stretched bit currently shown as study and utility.

the major "problem" with that is it does not accept a 40mm input allowing you to keep the existing wet wall shower trap that is installed. It looks to want to replace the shower trap and it's too late for that now. I similar thing with 40mm in and 40mm out would be quite easy to retrospectively fit to our existing run of shower waste pipes.

Nearing completion of our main bathroom. Just one more item to buy before I can complete the plumbing. A concealed lavatory cistern to fit inside a vanity unit (with a back to wall toilet) You would think this would be straightforward. Not if "the ladies" are involved. You see the most important part of selecting the right cistern, is nothing to do with it's technical merits, choosing a reliable brand that can be serviced easily,, choosing on price, or any other such requirement. No, the ONLY criteria is choosing a flush plate that both of the ladies like. Nothing more, nothing less. So starts many hours of internet time. The first thing you find, is most suppliers treat the flush plate as an insignificant (but essential) sub purchase. IF you are lucky you will find a small poor picture of it. You have to be really really lucky to find a decent picture of it, and if you actually find someone that tells you the size of it then you have done really really well indeed. Then add in the complication, that daughter has chosen a large rectangular flush plate for "her" bathroom (I think it's grossly over size but my opinion does not matter) and SWMBO has chosen a smaller square flush plate for the en-suite. At least both flush plates are the same make. So now we know what we want, we just have to buy it. That's when you find some suppliers (a lot actually) only stock one of the flush plates. Then when you eventually find one that does supply both types and are a keen price, you start on the long journey through "checkout" only to find they want to charge £99 for delivery to our "remote" location. We finally got them from these people, https://www.bathroomsupastore.com/ being the only ones we could find with both flush plates, not quite the cheapest prices but at least they only charged £9.99 delivery. So please, nobody tell me that Tavistock cisterns are rubbish, because as already stated that is not a "selection criteria"

I had to repair the roof on our former rental house. So I had a section of Kwikstage up and my roof ladder up on the roof. I left the roof ladder there overnight (though not the ladder to get up the scaffold) I cam back next day and pondered why the roof ladder was was not on the roof, but leaning against the scaffold.Surely it had not been that windy? Then I noticed the roof ladder was covered in paint. The cheeky blighters a few doors down were painting the outside of a house and decided it would be okay to borrow my roof ladder without asking to paint the bit of gable end where the terrace was staggered.

This is one of the reasons I built my own shed. Where else will you get a garden shed built with a frame of 4 by 2 timbers, and a diagonal brace? Mose shop bought sheds have barely a 1 and a half inch frame, and the only thing giving any bracing is the nails in the planks.

I once has the uneviable task or repairing a tv where the cat had sat on top (when tv's were big enough for a cat to sit on, and usually warm as well) and then peed down the back of it.

Currently paying just under 12p per KWh (single rate) and just over 20p per day standing charge. Comparing that to @SteamyTea E7 tariff, you would not need to use many daytime units to offset the huge premium he is paying for day rate vs only 3p per unit cheaper at night.

It is still a tough one. I maintain with today's low FIT you need to WANT PV and be happy to spend the capital as just another part of the build. Otherwise if you look at it purely as a money exercise, the big question is "what if we sell before 11.7 years?" It will by that measure have been a "bad" investment.

From Scewy's website "Unfortunately this product cannot be delivered offshore." Somebody needs to look up where Ross-Shire is, then look at a map.

For all it's failings, at least the Scottish system of having a home report before you put a house on the market, you as the seller know up front exactly the condition of the property and any work that is needed. I hate the English system "I paid for the survey so you can't see what it says" attitude, and the next buyer will pay for another survey........

Ah I see now. To get to those I can simply cut with the multi tool to join the 3 holes I have drilled into one big opening, so easy to do in situ. Shame there was no mention of them in the instructions.

Where are the filters? There are none on the input or output ports and no mention in the instructions. There are two "unexplained" screws on the front labelled H and L are these what you talk about? I assumed there were high pressure / low pressure adjustment but have not touched them because again no mention of them in the instructions. I can drill further holes as long as they will be covered by the front plate.