ProDave

Mine is in it's own compartment in the top of the unit. It really is a simple job to take the pump out, recondition it and put it back. No need even for gloves. You do not need to get involved in the "contents"

Buy a system scaffold like Kwikstage, Cuplock or I am sure there are a few others which are really a scaffold tower system with infinite possibilities from a single tower to a long run of scaffold. I would not for DIY buy conventional plain tubes and clamps.

My hatred of anything involving BT or OR. The most lousy backwards looking, awkward to deal with inflexible pair I have encountered. If you have an alternative, I would go for it (I did when one became available)

Our stairs are just like that. And we have a nice tall window to look out of. I often think a chair would go nicely there.......

The whole coverage thing with mobile signals is a very complicated subject and one that is hard to get full information on. The new EE mast "near" us is in fact about 3 miles away, would be line of sight if some trees were cut down (a whole forest of them) However not all providers offer the same service. My main phone provided by 1P Mobile used the "full" EE network, and that gets a good signal at home and gives 4G and voice no problem. Network Cell info is a handy app to have on your phone, and this tells me it is getting it's signal on "Band 20" one of the lower 800MHz bands hence it goes further. I also have an "activity phone" Not usually used as a phone but rather as a small tablet it has mostly navigation and walking apps. To enable it to access a bit of data, it has a bargain basement sim with RWG, another provider that "uses the EE network" But, being a bargain basement service it does not offer either WiFi calling, or VoLTE (voice on the 4G network) The result of not using the full EE service is that phone does not operate on band 20 so rarely gets a signal at home, and then it is very weak. So that service would be woefully inadequate as my main phone All that is a long winded way of saying you really don't know what you will get until you try it.

I would have guessed Plockton from the choice of user name.

BT gave us one of those when we had a line fault. It never worked for us. There was so little diagnostic available on the thing I still have no idea if it was lack of signal or it was not enabled or set up properly. At that time I know we got almost no signal from EE which is the network I believe it uses. Only some time later did EE build a new mast closer to us that gives us a better signal, but even that is not brilliant.

If you are getting an adequate speed from the 4G / 5G network, I would not even entertain anything involving BT or OR and just seek out the best deal you can get from any of the mobile providers. But do check the mobile provider with the best deal does cover your address, e.g. three seem to offer the best deals but their signal is non existent here.

A straight stair ending near the back wall of the house is only an issue if like us you have room in roof with restricted eaves height. I thought your plan has full height upstairs so you will have no problem at the top. A compromise might be a quarter landing near the top, 90 degree turn for the last 2 steps?

With one bedroom and 1 bathroom downstairs make it Jack and Jill so it can be directly accessed from the bedroom as an en-suite or from the corridor.

That is an old and very common way of bracing the joists to stop them twisting. More commonly done with solid noggins now. Why not replace with solid noggins with large round holes drilled in them for the mvhr ducts to pass through?

Comfort in use is largely a case of what you are used to. The going of our stairs is a lot more than the minimum. I can get my size 9's flat on the stairs entirely on the stair. Contrast that to many older houses, built before modern building regs where the going of the very short stairs is only about 3/4 the length of my foot. That now seems an insane design to me, but as a younger man used to stairs like that, I thought nothing of it.

Our house is 7M deep so only a bit more than yours and especially if you are having room in roof or 1.5 storey, as you say you may get into head height issues. For this sort of house a stair split into 2 with a half landing works well. In our case up 6 stairs to the half landing, turn 180 degrees and up another 7 stairs and you arrive on the upstairs landing at almost the highest point of the roof structure and no worries whatsoever about head height. I then took the available space we had, constrained by doorways downstairs and upstairs, and made the going as long as it could possibly be and I think we arrived at about 40 degrees. All easy to do with the Stairbox on line tools and that is who supplied ours. The challenge will be to design a two flight stair as a floating stair, I leave that for someone with more imagination than me.

You need to make the place a bit more upmarket. A new mirror will help them see what they are doing. I have found just the one.

Link gives me 502 Bad Gateway.

One more reason not to be a LL.

Get a quote for the electricity supply, then you will know for certain where it actually has to connect to. Then see if once you have accepted the quote they can issue the cable for you to bury in the field. It does not have to be in duct is is usually suitable for direct burying. If you do go for duct, put large diameter twin wall flexible with gentle bends, don't put elbows. Then never contemplate using the provided drawstring, use that just to pull through a larger bit of rope as your drawstring.

When I was building my house, I too did not believe it would require so little heat. So I did a test. Once the building was complete, insulated and all windows in I put a simple electric convector heater on 24/7 in the middle of the downstairs, for a week, and took daily internal and external temperature measurements, and confirmed the difference was in line with what you would expect with that much heat input thus proving Jeremy's spreadsheet was bang on. I then had the confidence to buy a heat pump.

-10 IS realistic as an outside temperature up here but not for many places in the UK. Bet even at -10 my heat loss was about 2.5kW so a 5kW ashp, about the smallest you can buy, would only spend half it's time heating the house, so plenty of time to heat the DHW.

This ASHP is about 10 years old, well outside guarantee and this is the first time there has been a failure.

I was back today. I confirmed the 300V dc and 15V dc supplies to the motor are present, and when the compressor starts, the other 2 (exact function not determined) connections have variable voltages present. One will be the speed demand. So the motor is dead. The list price appears to be just over £400 plus VAT plus postage. That is a criminally high price in my opinion. Anyway I found one listed on ebay for £200 so that has been bought an on it's way.

For what it is worth, I previously owned a property in a similar situation. I briefly thought about trying for permission for a separate dwelling, but soon concluded, even if it was possible, it would leave the original small house with little garden, the new house would also have a tiny garden, and they would have to share the same road entrance and parking making it even more awkward. I ended up instead extending the original house making it nearly double the size and that met with no opposition and was a better use of the space.

There is a "building" shown in the corner of the existing plot. Is that a garage for the existing house built right up to the road? If so that will be in your favour as the building line and visibility is already breached. Where will the existing house park? I expect both would have to share the same entrance as I doubt a new one would be allowed closer to the corner. Make an offer "subject to planning" and submit a planning in principle application. If that is rejected you can walk away with little cost. A suitably anonymised streetview screen grab might help.

I would question what that meter is actually reading and is it true? for a sanity check, I would read the dial on your electricity meter (not any in home display if you have a smart meter). If you know the time of the sterilisation cycle you can read your meter before and after the cycle and see how much electricity it is really using. Try and not use any other big loads in the house during that time to get an accurate reading.

My plumber up the road called me today. His Mitsubishi ASHP has stopped working. Model number PUHZ-W85VHA2 Symptoms. It just does not work. No errors shown on the in house display panel. Went outside took the cover off the control panel on the outside unit. Gave it a heat demand and watched. After a short while the compressor started, but the fan motor did not start. After a minute or so the compressor stopped and the on board 2 digit 7 segment LED display showed the code U8 which means fan failure. The fain looks very similar but not identical to my fan motor in my LG ASHP. It has an inbuilt variable speed controller. It is supplied with 320V dc (rectified 230V ac) and has a few low voltage control inputs. Unlike my motor, it does not identify on the label what wire does what. So testing today was somewhat limited, other to confirm the 320V dc is pesent. The motor has the part number RG61V143H35 on it. What I have done so far: I have found the service manual, it can be downloaded here https://www.manualslib.com/manual/769585/Mitsubishi-Electric-Puhz-W85vha2.html#manual And the Mitsubishi parts list is here http://www.mitsubishitech.co.uk/Data/Ecodan/Air/Monoblock/Outdoor/PUHZ-W/2012/PUHZ-W85VHA2_SP_OCB465A.pdf From that I have determined the Mitsubishi part number for this fan motor is S70E10763 Next steps: The service manual tells you how to check the 320V and 15V supplies to the motor, so I will go back and do that. There are no test points on the control pcb and the connector does not lend itself to meter probes, so I will splice some test points into the motor lead before going back to do more tests. The only 2 fault conditions identified in the service manual are faulty motor - replace (list price about £400) or replace control PCB (no idea how much that would be) I think the chance of repairing the motor is nill, as far as I can tell all the electronics inside the motor are encapsulated in a plastic moulding. More to come I am sure.....