ProDave

That house would look right, with a little door in that gable end to give access to the light from the loft space

Why did it need to be that high. I would go no higher than you are comfortable with on a 2 section ladder. That 14M would probably need my 3 section ladder and it becomes harder.

In effect I did that on my build. For the whole of November I had a single electric convector heater on 24/7. There are no internal doors fitted yet. Each day I compared internal temperature and external temperature and concluded that the modest 700W of heat was maintaining the house temperature 10 degrees above outside temperature. You do need to tun this test over a long period as the house responds very slowly to changes in outside temperature. I did this test as I was doubting the insulation was as effective as it should be, but the test confirmed the heat loss was exactly as predicted using Jeremy's heat loss spreadsheet. So I know I am on track to have a maximum heat input requirement of 2500W when it's +20 inside and -10 outside. When I complete the new house, I will almost certainly buy an electricity watt hour meter and install that to just measure the power consumed by the ASHP so I will have a real measure of heating power separate from all other electricity usage. I didn't have any doubt about the type or amount of insulation fitted as I fitted it all myself.

Top one will give more even temperature. Bottom one might give a slight temperature gradient from one end of the room to the other.

If this rule applied to on the plot, then I would be in trouble. My water and drainage both run along the front of the house but in separate trenches, but they are only about 1 metre apart.

The 13l/s is with the mvhr on boost setting. The whole house rate is 29l/s with the mvhr on normal trickle rate.

But if they re collated screws in a screw gun, why are your fingers near them? Definitely a hazard when manually screwing. If so hold the screwdriver bit to steady things, not the screw.

Well anyone that uses a Royal Mail service will get the same rate. There are some cheeky buggers on ebay that advertise RM delivery then try and stick a surcharge on for H&I. There are also some firms that refuse to switch to a different courier to avoid paying extra. My Hermes, and Interparcel are some couriers that don't charge extra. I buy a fair bit lately from http://www.discount-electrical.co.uk/ Their free delivery comes via FedEx and is genuinely next day even up here and FedEx have their own fleet up here. A lot of the other couriers don't have any of their own vans up here so sub contract the last leg to a couple of local delivery companies. That adds an extra day and is probably the cause of the extra charges. I bought my flue pipes from https://www.flue-pipes.com/ Not only were they the cheapest I could find, they gave free delivery here. Likewise for building plastics and drainage http://www.plasticdrainage.co.uk/

Remember if you just have a vent on the wall or ceiling, it needs to be a higher extraction rate than if it were a cooker hood. My neighbour realised on the day of the cmpletion insprction he didn't have an extractor in the utility room, so he cut a hole in the PB and "fitted" one. It was not wired and there was no hole in the wall, but it passed. I do have some sympathy as that was the one extractor in our last house that we never ever used,. and being forced to have it just made a 4" hole in the wall for no practical reason.

Yes there must be a get out clause, or it will be "available" but at an astronomical cost to reflect the work needed? The cmmunity council here tried to get a private system installed, delivered to each home by wifi, but that has stalled because none of the suppliers tendered to install the system.

I noticed a pledge in yesterdays Scottish budget, for super fast broadband to all homes in something like 2 years. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

I know the heating requirements of the house. 2KW of heat input would have it comfortably warm. I used SJHarris's heat loss spreadsheet to work out the theoretical heat loss and did a test for a few weeks with a constant low heat input and verified the temperature it maintained matched the prediction. It's only cold now as there is no heating on as for a few weeks work has halted and it would just be a waste of electricity. It took quite a while to cool down to where it is at now, it's barely been above 0 for a week now and several nights down to -10

This should go in the boffins corner. But not for the first time I have a scrap lcd tv with a broken screen. The LED backlights and all the difusers from it would make a pretty good lighting lcd flat panel. If only I could make it not look like a scrap tv stuck to the ceiling......

I thought in England and Wales you needed part P sign off for electrics. In Scotland you just need an EIC from the electrician. At my last house BC were okay with a DIY oil boiler install, but I had to get an OFTEC engineer to "commission" the boiler later in order for the manufacturer to honour a warranty claim and give the 5 year warranty (needed a complete replacement boiler due to a leak inside the boiler) BC here usually want to witness a pressure test on the drains.

Oh how I wish we could have an accurate weather forecast. Yesterday it got to +1 degrees and the ice started melting, first time above 0 for a week . I swept as much snow and ice as I could off the drive but by 4pm it was frozen again. Last nights forecast was for -1. I thought it felt chilly this morning, and yes, it was another -11 night. Inside the new house, with no heating it has slowly dropped to 6 degrees.

If you do the NC500 to do it justice you need to do it slowly, hence I suggested the stag. Make sure you have breakdown cover with recovery. At times you would be a long way from help.

I would do the North coast 500 in the stag if it were me.

If the beam was in the centre and both sides are the same angle, the front and rear wall plates would be at the same height. I am sure the angles are the same, so that means if the right hand wall plate needs to be higher, then the ridge beam is too far to the right as seen in the picture. Raising the wall plate is no doubt the easiest fix if you can live with it looking odd from the gable end. I accept moving the ridge beam is not trivial.

Some might say I have a bit of OCD so bear with me. Looking again, the REAL problem is that dirt great big steel ridge beam is too far up the roof. It's not in the middle of the small section of roof. Your "fix" is to raise the wall plate on the right hand side. But now when viewed from the gable end it will be obvious the roof is now asymetrical. The proper fix is move the ridge beam. Sorry, I'll get my coat.

Raise the wall plate. If you don't want to lay more blocks, then a second wall plate above the first wall plate with timber spacers between them. We did this on our garage to raise the roof slightly so it did not cut across a door opening.

Sometime officialdom bureaucracy just makes you feel like you are banging your head against a brick wall.

A bypass valve goes between flow and return as far away from the boiler as you can get it (in the airing cupboard in our case) Normally it is shut. But if all circuits are shut and there is still a boiler demand, it opens and gives the boiler somewhere to pump to. In practice, the only time it opens is when (note when, not if) the microswitch in one of the motorised valves fails, so it is calling for heat even though the motorised valve is shut

Okay I will ask the daft question. If you have no plans for the basement, then why build one? it's not as though it is cheap additional pace is it?

You start by detailing the design of the construction method for the house, working out how much and what type of insulation you are using, U values of windows and doors etc. From that you can work out the worst case heating input requirement and then size your heat pump to match. e.g in my case when it's -10 outside and +20 inside I will need a little over 2Kw of heat input so I have bought a 5KW ASHP which will heat the house via under floor heating. Others on here have houses with an even lower heat requirement. JSHarris has made a spreadsheet which you can download from here http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Fabric-and-ventilation-heat-loss-calculator-Master.xls Enter the value for your own house and see what heat demand it gives you.

Didn't he ought to finish the bathroom first? Then they can live in that during the renovation