ProDave

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.

Possible if it was a tile. This is a 2400 by 1200 sheet of "wet wall" and the way it joins in the corners into extruded profiles, you would sequentially have to remove 2 other panels first. Hence it has to be servicable from the front.

Thar's the price I would expect. Based on I expect to be able to buy a system for DIY installation for under £2500 that confirms the "mcs premium" is in the order of £2000

Here is something I suspect a lot of people overlook. The thermal mixer cartridge is quite big. To stand a chance of being able to change it in the future, you need quite a big hole. I drilled one 65mm diameter that is just about big enough. It's quite tight. Only about 6mm either side for the cover plate to cover, you need to be quite accurate with your drilling. The two black pen marks show where the cover plate covers to. I wonder how many people just drill a smaller hole like I have done for the top and bottom valves. That would be plenty to fit the cover tubes, but would be impossible to ever remove the thermal mixer cartridge and be "challenging" to later enlarge the hole.

Another issue for me is how long will you be in the house? We are building this one as our retirement home for the long term, but who knows, plans change. The point is, unless you KNOW beyond any doubt you will be in the house > 10 years, then there is a risk that should you move you will not have recovered the mcs premium before you move. And don't expect the solar PV to add any value to the house or make it attractive to many buyers. It is only 6 years since we installed the solar PV on the old house, but the much higher (original) FIT rate means that has all been paid for now. So I accept i won't add value to the house but at least we have recovered what we spent.

Picture please when you do it.

When you work out how to do it, let us know. The only way I can see is cut the bottle in half make the joints then glue or tape it back together.

The way I see it, the MCS company should charge a fair price for the labour they supply and charge a fair retail price for the material they supply. It irks me that they seem to charge way more than this because they are the only ones able to sign the paperwork for the FIT so abuse that position. The result is the only people that now "benefit" from the likes of FIT and RHI are the installers that end up with most of the payment in their pocket.

So that's in total of 6.44p per KWh (generation plus 50% deemed export} On a 4KW system here generating typically 3100KWh per year (a bit more down south) that would be a total payment of £199.64 per year. Assuming the "mcs premium" for having the system supplied and installed my an MCS contractor is £2000 (compared to a cheap DIY system) then that is 10 years payback time for the mcs premium. You may decide that is worth it? If you look at the total figures of an mcs system costing say £4K to install, then it will take the whole 20 years of the FIT contract to recoup the initial cost. You really have to want solar PV mostly for self usage to make it worthwhile. Gone are the days when the FIT payment would pay for the system in 5 or 6 years.

If you installed it yourself then take a photo and mark it up with dimensions so you have an accurate record. Of course all cable runs will be in safe zones won't they?

It is only the tundish that makes the D2 vent pipe open to the air inside the house. I think we talked before of enclosing the whole tundish inside something like a clear plastic bottle sealed at both ends so you could see it, but it would be sealed. The alternative is discharge internally into a stack pipe using a hepvo waterless trap. You must use ABS not PVC pipe for the run from the hepvo to the stack as it potentially may contain boiling water.

I haven't looked it up lately but even with the export payment it's well under 10p per KWh

The bit in bold seems unnecessary. Why take a spur to another pole. All I see in this situation usually is the transformer mounted onto one existing pole. You don't want them adding extra overhead lines across your land. They may need to add stays to that pole but that is usually the extent. You could do as some of us have done here. Make your meter box a permanent structure on a bit of fence or wall close to the pole. You can use it as a site supply there to start with then take your own feed from the meter box to the house rather than getting your supply moved.

Keep an eye on ebay. I have seen 4KW kits for as low as £2K I don't think the SAP cares if it's on FIT or not, the point is the house generates power so improves the SAP rating.