ProDave

That is still not right. He has only "given you" 3 months grace. What if you are like me and expect it to be well over a year until completion? If you are happy you will finish in 3 months then fine, but I would still be fighting.

We have a mezanine to the largest bedroom (extending over the smallest bedroom) It was detailed on the plans including the building warrant drawings. We are not intending it to be anything other than a "storage platform" to start with so access only by a portable ladder and no hand rail. Eventually some form of fixed steps will be installed (and a firemans pole if my daughter gets her way) which will dictate the need to fit a handrail.

Hi and welcome to the forum. On a brick walled house you do the wiring by chasing a channel in the brick fitting the cable behind capping and re plaster. Are you sure it's cavity wall? unusual for 1930's most of that period were solid 9" walls.

Hi and Welcome. Yes I am not far away, probably 45 minutes or about 30 miles. Looks an interesting site, but being so sheltered may be midge hell in the summer.

You just bolt the pigtails to the cylinders and turn on. Remember they are left hand thread. If you bought the 'van from a dealer it should have come with a gas safety test certificate. If you have not got the cylinders yet, phone around the suppliers. You can usually blag a pair of cylinders without paying the hire charge, though when I tried this Calor would not do that so we have a different supplier (actually slightly cheaper for the gas)

Mine was through buildstore but I forget which insurance company the policy is with.

Our build used epoxy chemical anchors to bolt the sole plate down. About 10% of them did not set and had to be re done.

Ours specifically says on completion it transfers to normal buildings insurance for the remainder of the term.

So is ours which is why the pv will be ground mounted out of the way of the trees

I think it depends how the pipe run gets into the house. In my case, the pipes will travel a metre or so along the wall, into the garage, up inside the garage into the plant room above. I suspect that is a long enough pipe run with enough bends that I won't get any transmitted noise. If on the other hand they came straight in to a habitable room I would use flexi's.

Thanks. I wish someone had told me that a year ago when I was buying mine.

Ebay. A German supplier on there regularly sells bundles of 20 rolls or Tescon Vana for way below what any UK outlet sells it for. e.g. this one works out about £15 per roll delivered https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/pro-Clima-Tescon-Vana-Klebeband-Profi-VE-20-Stuck/261425541408?epid=1104754860&hash=item3cde2d3120:g:pI4AAOxy3HJTJhWC

Definitely trestles and planks. I bought a set of the short ones that go down to about 0.5 metre, very handy for indoor work.

"According to the team, the device had a peak short-circuit current of about 33 nA, and a peak open-circuit voltage of around 2.14 V. That's not particularly high, but it is enough to demonstrate that the concept works, and might be scalable. " So that is LESS than 0.7nW generated then. I wonder what the payback time would be?

The loss will be negligible. It's better to have long DC cables as the voltage is higher and hence the current is lower on the DC side. If you are losing 10% in the cables, someone has messed up big time and wired them with bell wire.

I am hoping I can hold off drawing what is left for a few years. I plan to retire at 60 which is when my largest DB pension starts to pay. If I stop work then, I will be able to draw most of what's left effectively tax free. In other words I plan to use this to fill the gap between retiring at 60, and reaching state pension age (at which point I will have plenty)

I just thought I would resurrect this old thread to say finances have unlocked. I am still awaiting the small nest egg I was anticipating when I started this thread. That is still locked up in legal and technical bureaucracy and the sheer inefficiency and ineptitude of the solicitors dealing with that astounds me. I get the feeling a conclusion to that is still months away, and it pains me to think of the fees they will be charging for the "service" (sic) they have given. Anyway the unlocking comes from the fact a few days ago I attained the magic age of 55. That is the age you can unlock and start doing things with your pension money. So on my birthday I arranged for one small pension fund (the only defined contribution fund I have) to be transferred to a flexible drawdown account and I have taken the tax free 25% lump sum from that. The rest remains in my drawdown account to be drawn later as I need it, but will be taxable as income should I need to draw on it. That was not a particularly straightforward process as the provider the fund was with did not offer what I wanted so I had to first transfer it to a different provider, a process I started in January to ensure everything was in place to action it on my birthday. I always thought this was going to be the last source of funding to be unlocked and it still irks me that I had to wait until a specific birthday to access my own money. Ar least now we can start spending again (actually we started spending in February trusting nothing would go wrong and we would have the funds to settle the bills later this month)

I found the SAP assesment particularly unhelpful. It gives me the total energy used in a year, but not the very much more useful heat input required at any particular condition. For that I found @JSHarris heat loss spreadsheet far more useful. With all the data for my house input into that, it tells me the peak heat input to the house will be a little under 2.5Kw when it is +20 inside and -10 outside. That should comfortably be met by my 5Kw ASHP driving under floor heating and should leave it plenty of time for heating DHW as well That is the figure you need to size a heat pump for a particular house.

XP is quite happy with NTFS which should comfortably do 128GB

From a building regs point of view you only need an air in provision for a stove of 5KW or more. For use with mvhr I would still get one that has ducted air in straight to the stove so it does not draw air from the room.

I assume by rear you mean the master bedroom that is at the bottom in the floor layout plans? Is No 37 an ordinary bungallow or does it have dormers or windows in it's roof The issue no doubt will be one of overlooking No 37. If you try for instance putting in a dormer in the master bedroom I feel that would be rejected because it would overlook No 37 I would at least try for a window in the end wall of the master bedroom. At the moment you just have that little window in the 45 degree bit. There is certainly room to get a reasonable window in the rear where there is currently a blank wall. Why has it been proposed like that? I think you need to read the full planning file to see if there was an objection from the house behind that stopped there being a proper window in that end wall.

Have you done a SAP assesment or otherwise calculated the maximum heap input requirement? That is quite crucial to the outcome. What size ASHP did you have specified that was going to cost £11.5K? (mine cost just under £500 and I will be self installing it) Are you SURE mains gas will arrive and what will the connection cost be? I am not a fan of LPG for heating Your 2 options are a bulk tank, or a bank of 47Kg cylinders on a changeover regulator. The bulk tank will have an install cost, and a removal cost, check also you are not tied into a long contract. Asking them what the cost of removal will be "should you wish to change fuel" may ring alarm bells with the supplier. A bank of 47Kg cylinders is probably the short term solution, but the gas is more expensive. The only install cost is a changeover regulator and set of hoses, you can usually blag free cylinder hire as they know you will be a regular user (at least for 2 years) Make sure you keep the mains gas jets for the boiler safe for the mains conversion later. Re the PV, that dictates a hot water tank really (so not a combi boiler), but if having a stove with a back boiler as well you will be having a hot water tank (probably a thermal store) in any case.

Ridge beam hung roof will solve all your woes.

Try the "minimise memory usage" button on that page. FWIW my old version of pale moon is using about 600K of memory, has been on all day with 12 tabs open.

^^^ Yes that is the point. If you are trying to make the house truly air tight, hen there is a LOT of work sealing all that insulation and sealing around every timber that makes up the trusses.