ProDave

All scaffold will wobble and risk falling over if you push it to extremes. I bought a load of Kwikstage when building my house, and when I sold it, I kept enough to scaffold one wall of my house. the scaffold lives on a rack in my garden and the boards are stored dry in a custom made enclosure under a raised decking area outside the back door. Much more heavy and needs 2 to assemble it compared to a lightweight tower. But even that needs some bracing at height. You can see in this picture scaffold up the gable wall and the square frame sticking out towards you in this photograph exists just to give it some more bracing.

Is the 2 port normally open or normally closed? Is there any other source of heat e.g. a stove?

Most convert the 50Hz ac to variable frequency ac to power the compressor. I take it you are trying to get something working off grid with PV and dc batteries? Try looking at units made for caravans?

One of the panes is cracked and that has allowed moisture to get between the panes. The glass unit needs replacing.

Build the footings either side of the channel, and bridge the gap over the channel with reinforced concrete lintels. Build wall off the lintels. Why make it difficult?

I assume these are let as separate units or a hmo? It would be most unusual to have 2 separate flats sharing one supply. Who pays the bill? let alone a third unit sharing the same supply. Now you want to add a 4th. Forget lighting. It is the big loads that add up. If you are serious about this I would first shift everything that can be to gas. So gas hobs, gas water heating and showers running from gas HW. Then you are only looking at other stuff on the limited electricity supply. Why are you not doing this properly and getting a separate supply to each unit?

The point about electric panel heaters in bedrooms, is a well insulated air tight house with mvhr most of us find does not need any heating at all in the bedrooms, even up here in the Highlands. But a lot of people are not comfortable with no heating so installing electric points for panel heaters just in case you find you do need some bedroom heating, is a comfort blanket and cheaper to install a few cables that never get used, than a whole lot of upstairs UFH pipes that never get used. If you think you want upstairs cooling look at fan coil units that normally go in the ceiling and will do heating and cooling. The cost of them has put me off and so far we have only had one spell of weather when I might have liked them for cooling. Re the grant. I bought all the parts and installed my own ASHP for WAY less than £7.5K. You only have to look at posts on here on the subject of heat pumps and grants to see it does not seem to work in the customers favour. You might naively think the installer would charge a fair price for the materials and a fair price to install them, then deduct £7.5K leaving the customer with a very small or even zero bill. Sorry to say that optimism will soon be dashed when you start getting real quotes and one is left wondering how can they charge that much?

Actually I don't think that is the OV10 vent there, that is a mock up when working out how to do it. The builders fitted the counter battens not me, they cut them that length. Yes vent fixed through membrane and tray

This is what I did in a similar situation Eaves tray on first. Membrane lapped over eaves tray Counter battens than battens. OV10 over fascia vent on next Then tiles, bottom tile resting on OV10 vent. The OV10 vent is made for this job, it is in line, most other vents tend to "turn a corner" so the outlet would face downwards.

Don't throw it away. Easy repair. I was given 2 by a joiner, both "worn out" and replaced for free by Makita under guarantee. In both cases it was the front bearing of the motor that had worn out. I bought 2 replacement motors for about £20 each from ebay. Mine is still going strong, the other went back to it's original owner.

Not this build but previous one, first self build 20 years ago. First house with UFH upstairs and down. Had planned bathroom layout (3 bathrooms) with normal rectangular 900mm shower trays and laid UFH pipes accordingly. I even drew on the floor boards where the UFH pipes were. But we decided 900 by 1200 shower trays would fit much better. Cutting the hole in the floor panel for the shower trap, yes of course in a different place than it would for a 900mm square tray, I suddenly wondered why there was a fountain of water coming out of the floor.

I had similar flow rate issues with my ASHP (different make and model) when first installed, and the only way I solved it was to buy and install an in line flow meter so I could see what flow rate was being achieved regardless of what the sensor said. In my case it was only an on off sensor (enough flow or not enough flow) and I needed a real reading to see what was going. on. I solved it by adding a second external pump to increase the flow rate above what the inbuilt pump could achieve. The fact you have an actual measure and it has been decreasing, suggests there is an actual problem. Which again is where an independant flow meter would help.

I don't know the law, but I would have expected the unresponsive owner would have sought legal advice. To remain silent may not be his best plan.

Are these new ones the same in all respects to the old ones apart from 2 vs 3 bolts? Or are the new ones also smaller section material in places?

You need to take this up with the bench supplier. The reason for the failure is not your concern, though you may want to enter dialogue with them to help them improve their product and understand why it failed. And if they were sold for domestic use they may reject any claim. Where they sold knowing they were for commercial use?

This puzzles me. The neighbour has an end of terrace house. You want to join on to his wall and insert another house making his a mid terrace house and in so doing devalue his house? And you just expect him to say yes with no compensation for the fact he will have more neighbour noise and a lower value house? Or if you can't seek agreement bully it through somehow? I don't know what the law actually says, but I do know I would not want to own a house where a house wall is on the boundary and so could be subject so such devaluation.

Pictures would help. but I think this is describing something I questioned. Below ground wall build up was done as "block on flat" as above, no cavity. I get that bit. But the bricklayer laid a course of blocks on flat, then a second row of blocks of flat exactly on top of the first ones, i.e. no bond. Then the next row was staggered creating a bond followed by another row exactly on top with no bond. So in other words the blocks were staggered / bonded every other row. Now I questioned this. It would have been no more difficult to bond every single row of block on flat and surely that would have been stronger? so why did he not do that? His reply was that is how he was taught to do it. So it is a question for bricklayers please, why not bond every single row of block on flat? EDIT here is a picture of what I am trying to describe, block on flat courses bonded every other row.

T&E in conduit is fine with the added advantage of no junction when going from outside to inside.

Just see how it goes with the sockets. Try unplugging anything that is currently plugged in, That will rule out a faulty item plugged in.

The basement will certainly have to be structurally formed as a basement and waterproofed. Others who have done a basement will have to comment if the insulation can be left until later. I see no reason it cannot be left as an empty basement with no details finished initially. Other money saving tips might be dirt cheap kitchen and rip it out and fit what you really want later. Outbuildings like garages and sheds can wait until later as can a lot of the landscaping.

We built the size of house we wanted. Previous house was 5 bedrooms that we ran as a B&B and we wanted to exit that business and have a normal 3 bedroom house. But we wanted ample sized rooms and we knew what rooms we wanted. Even so our 150 square metre "ordinary" house was not in the end very much smaller than the previous 5 bedroom house. Our key requirements were accommodation to suit our needs, and to be flexible, lower council tax, and lower heating costs than the old house. The site and available space on it led the basic shape and orientation of the house and which way was south and which way had the views (not the same) dictated a lot about the layout. Don't fall into the trap of building a massive house because you can. I wired a new build like that and when I went back some time later to do the garage, after the first winter, he was bitterly regretting building such a big house that he struggled to keep warm and cost a fortune in heating bills. Cost per square metre can be hugely influenced by careful purchasing and doing a lot yourself. e.g. a Howdens kitchen with a good worktop can be every bit as good as some posh German or Italian bespoke kitchen. But that leads into you can only ever have any 2 of the following : Good, Cheap, Quick. If you think you are going to be short on cash and might want to pause the build part way, one option our neighbour did was build a dormer bungalow but did not do the upstairs straight away. It was built with attic trusses so the basic structure was there from the start, but it was initially completed, signed off and occupied as a simple bungalow. It was some years later he then finished the upstairs and added the extra rooms.

Definitely separate the ring N from the landing light and make that connection safe in some form of junction box. Do that first and confirm the socket circuit no longer trips when you put the bulb in. then you have to find a N from the downstairs light circuit. A downstairs light fitting may be an easier place to find that if, it really depends on the house layout and construction and where is the easiest place to get a new cable down to from the landing light. It could even go back directly to the CU if that is easier.

Yes those are temporary supports holding up the back wall while they insert that big steel beam then it looks like they are going to knock out all or part of the back wall downstairs to join through into the extension. A structural engineer would normally specify that.

This is what annoys me about the attitude if this "electrician". HE should be checking things like that and he should have done so at least at the time of the board change if not before. His attitude of wanting to charge the customer £90 per hour to sort this out is making my blood boil. A quick check would be look at all the cables going into each rcbo, and if you see two of different thicknesses going into the same terminal, that would ring alarm bells. Lighting cables would normally be 1mm and socket cables 2.5mm, clearly visible as different sizes.

It's a tricky one. It has taken probably over 100 years for that end joist to rot out. A quick solution would just be replace that end joist having given the new joust lots of coats of wood preservative. you have solved all the easy problems on your own land. To do anything with that retaining wall is going to need cooperation with your neighbour and work on their land.