ProDave

All I know, is in out old house, on a cold but sunny winters day, you could turn the heating off (well the thermostat did that) and the house would heat up nicely from the sun. Stand in front of a window on a sunny day at the new house and you barely notice any sense of heat from the sun. Now I am sure overall that means on a dull grey wet cold day (or at night) , the new house is losing less heat out of the window than the old one,. so is overall beneficial. BUT what I am trying to achieve is a means to get extra solar gain "on demand" and perhaps by fitting "poor" glazing in the sun room, we will get that extra solar gain and open the doors to let the heat into the house. On those cold grey days (and at night), keep the doors to the sun room shut and who cares if it is cold an uninviting in there?.

Well done. You need the patience of a saint and a good sense of humour to build a house and deal with "officialdom"

Used a lot in offices with suspended ceilings. The lighting panels plug into the Klick units. Each "socket" on the Klick unit has N, E, L and 2 possible switched L outputs so you can configure exactly what you have by rewiring the plug, ordinary light, emergency light, switched from circuit A or B. It allows an office to be adaptable easilly. Unless you are planning a suspended ceiling tile system I would not even give it consideration for a domestiic build.

Just musing about our sun room., that some time in the dim and distant future might get completed. (unable to do much at all at the moment) So we have Rationel windows and doors all tripple glazed. Of all the window quotes we had, these had the second best UW values, only beaten very slightly by Internorm. Now good windows and good 3G glass units means not much heat loss. BUT it also seems not much solar gain either. Given our colder climate than many parts of the UK I would LIKE a lot more solar gain please. Now we can't do anything about the windows we have, but there is the "sun room" yet to be finished. This will have a lot of glass on 3 sides but a solid roof (apparently it's an Orangery so I am told!!!) The sun room is joined to the house with a pair of Rationel French doors. Because this is essentially in internal door, I didn't have this one aluminium clad and only chose 2G glass units with a slightly less good UW value. Now my thinking, when we eventually get the doors and windows for the sun room, I want something that gives a LOT more solar gain. I don't mind if we get too ,much solar gain in the summer, that's why windows open. If it's too hot or too cold it can be closed off from the house. It won't be heated and I won't go overboard with the air tightness detail. So how can I make the sun room have a lot more solar gain. I want it to get hot on a sunny winters day so we can open the doors and let heat into the house. I assume I want 2G glazing with no coating at all on the glass units?

I have a tap like that on my standpipe. SW would not accept it, it had to be a separate non return valve. Have I ever mentioned there is a NRV in SW's toby. Then a NRV in my own toby. Then the in line NRV. Then the NRV in the tap. I suspect no water will ever flow backwards

Simple answer is the total load would dictate a 50A circuit breaker which is way over the size you can use for a 6mm cable. Also the Manufacturers Instructions for the oven probably say to use a 16A circuit breaker If you really cannot re cable to the consumer unit, then it would be acceptable to feed the 10mm cable with a 50A mcb, then fit a mini consumer unit where the junction box is, with a 32A circuit to the hob and a 16A circuit to the oven.

I would be running a 10mm all the way to the hob, and 6mm all the way to the oven, on their own circuits from the CU.

Yes you do need a double check valve, In my case it was checked by Scottish water before they would authorise a connection. To save digging it up, my check valve is just in line with the bit of pipe that runs up the post, above ground level, and then insulated as best I can.

Well I m once more going to be a stick in the mud. I am just back from a job where I have fitted some stick on LED strips as lights under a kitchen cupboard run. My honest opinion is what a stupid idea. I give it 6 months max before the steam from cooking and washing up gets to the adhesive and they start peeling off. Sorry, but give me a solid light fitting attached with screws. They might be okay on a horizontal surface where they shine upwards, such as lighting in a reveal where the adhesive just hold them still, but where the adhesive is preventing gravity doing what it wants to, I think it is completely bonkers.

Ah the old "turn the thermostat up" routine. Some people seem to think, if a room is cold, then turning the thermostat WELL beyond the point at which it goes "click" will heat the room quicker. We regularly found with the B&B people who must have thought "the heating is not working" (it was UFH so took a while to respond) and turned the thermostat all the way. You go in later to clean the room and it was up to 30 degrees!!!!!!! Yes, should have bought thermostats that would go no higher than 25

If it's a surface mount box then the entry will be rear left. Here's mine, I drilled a bigger hole to take the duct straight to the meter box.

Flush or surface mount box? Hockey sick on the surface or in the wall? Either way the hockey stick wants to come up in the left side of the meter box. You should see marks to guide you where to drill the hole. A flush mounted box, you can bring the hockey stick up within the wall and it enters near the back of the box. Alternatively it can come up the wall on the surface and enter within the flange of the box, you should see a marking of where to drill the hole, again towards the left. With that arrangement they put a sloping bit of wood in the box to fix the supply head to usually.

How about get a couple of 100mm thick sheets of wood fibre board. Cut into strips say 200 to 300mm wide and insert into the cavity. In effect an insulated cavity closer. Then render over that and the brick reveal to give the look you want. Might need something to stick the wood fibre if it's not an interference fit into the cavity.

The big thing to remember with UFH it takes a lot longer to heat up (and then later to cool down) than radiators. So what I found worked for me was to set the heating to come on 2 hours before you wanted it warm, so in my case that was 5:30AM. Then set it to go off at 9PM If you find as the room warms up, that it overshoots the set temperature, then you probably have the flow temperature at the manifold set too high, so turn that down until it no longer overshoots. Hot water stays hot in the tank a while and does not take as long to heat up, so that was set to come on 1 hour before first expected use in the morning, and to go off at 10pm

Can you think outside the box. Having (almost) knocked it down, could you rebuild as a detached house? It would mean pointing / rendering the party wall to leave it as an outside wall for the other house. But think of the advantages of detached, even if it's only detached by 6 inches, no noise from the neighbour, worth more, etc etc. The neighbour would not complain, his would also become detached.

I wired a straw bale house many years ago. There are many ways to use straw bales. In this case is was just as the insulation, not as a structural component. The bales were stacked up and the timber frame built around them, a bit like a larsen truss with a TF wall outside and inside the bales strapped together at intervals. Then the usual racking and air tightness layers. Apart from the thickness of the walls you would not know it was made of straw bales when finished. I recall they firstly had trouble finding a local farmer that still had a baler that made square bales. Then they had trouble finding a suitable weather window to cut dry and bale. Having really dry straw before it is baled is more important for something that is going to sit there for many many years. Then they had to rent a dry barn to store the bales until ready for incorporation into the build. As far as I can see, the only reason for using something like this is because you really really want to use something "natural" I cannot see it possibly being cheaper than using man made insulation.

What heating is in the en-suite and bedroom?

Another vote for wordpress. Look at my blog (in my signature) that's a standard off the peg wordpress blog. I chose the house name, partly because a reasonable domain name to match was available.

I am a bit of an old stick in the mud. I don't see much wrong with conventional controls. I have never felt the need to turn my heating on and off remotely (and even less so in the new house that uses so little heat) I once asked someone exactly why they wanted to do this. The slightly sarcastic reply went something like "It allows someone with the latest phone on an expensive monthly contract, to buy the latest expensive control system, so that when the train home from their long commute to their well paid job is late, they can turn the heating off to save a few pounds of gas."

I was thinking it will encourage people to just stick to conventional controls.

In Scotland, you can get a "certificate of temporary habitation" in a situation like yours and hmrc will accept that for a VAT claim.

I never worked it out. 150 square metre house, 1.5 storey, room in roof upstairs plus garage, all rendered.

OWL, the people that make energy monitors and smart heating controls have anounced they will start charging a subscription for the continued use of their products from 2018 I can't see an official anouncement, just hearsay on a forum at the moment. I wonder who will be next?

Our whole house and garage: Materials £4000 including the mesh and all the corner beads. Labour £4750 That was the Baumit.com render system applied to wood fibre external insulation board.

Hi and welcome to the forum. You could have joined earlier and would have been most welcome and might have got some help with the planning and appeal. Hopefully someone from Essex will be along soon with some local knowledge. There will be plenty of help and suggestions on how to build your house and what construction method etc. Remember there will be may different ways to achieve what you want so it's not as simple as what is right or wrong.