ProDave

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.

We are both self employed. It can be full on, but it beats being away from the site. For me especially, it means whenever I get time in between paid jobs, I can use even just a few minutes of spare time doing something useful. Perhaps because we are doing so much of the work ourselves makes it better? If you were just employing a builder and sat in your 'van just watching it may not be such an advantage?

I think the depths are a minimum. I have never known a DNO refuse a connection because the trench is too deep. They WILL refuse a connection (as I have seen) if the "duct" you leave for them is a bit of blue water pipe.

Definitely board it, but no need to skim. Just tape and fill the joints below worktop level, and they don't even need to be done neatly.

I battled with the notion of what is a "plant room" and what should go in it. Some people put everything in there, which I think can be a mistake. My plant room houses the mnhr unit and the buffer tank for the UFH but it does NOT house the domestic hot water tank, that would put it too far away from the taps. In my case the mvhr is in the plant room above our garage. The inlet and outlet ductwork is short. These are the only ones that carry outside temperature air and so need to be insulated to prevent condensation, so it makes sense to keep these short. I can't see it matters if the duct runs along a wall or not, it is all inside the insulated building so makes no difference. The plenums and radial ducts then go from the plant room to all other rooms, some in the first floor void, some in the (warm) loft void.

Well the instructions do say the motor is 230V but I must admit if I were trying it, it would be via my variac.

Hi Conor I have split this post into a new thread as it was not really related to the existing thread you posted it in. My gut feeling is since most UFH uses plastic pipes, it is highly likely the pipes may have been heat damaged where they exit the floor slab into the manifold. A careful examination of that area, and if they look okay a pressure test will confirm their integrity.