ProDave

You normally start at the bottom and work up. If he has left the bottom row until last, then they won't be nailed, you simply cannot get in there to nail them. They may feel solid, but never under estimate the power of wind in a storm. I recall as a child a storm that stripped a whole lot of tiles off the roof of our house. My dad just went up the next day and put them back (replacing the broken ones) none were nailed. If they had been, they probably would have stayed.

I would not be happy with this job. More importantly will your BCO be happy with it? The nail holes are not only for "vertical tiles" they are to hold them down in a storm. Someone mentioned nailing every third row is normal practice and it certainly does not hurt to nail every row. The clips at the bottom edge that clip them to the batten below are to stop the wing getting under and lifting them.

If I am understanding that statement, and the pictures, then ALL the joints of all rows are in line, and no tiles are nailed? Oh dear. All mine have "coursed" joints, each tile nailed at the top and clipped to the batten at the bottom. And the bottom row of riles overhanging the gutter seems to me missing. I guess they will just be slotted in with no fixings either? Sorry to say you could have done a better job yourself.

If the armature was a permanent magnet, it would shuttle back and forth at 50Hz with just a simple coil energising the armature. I would have thought they would have designed the mechanics to be resonant at 50Hz so it would shuttle back and forth at 50Hz very efficiently. Any other mechanical resonant frequency and it will need more power to force it to move at an unnatural frequency.

Not sure how a diode halves the frequency? the waveform is still 50Hz but now somewhat lumpy. I can see it as a crude way to reduce power, not one the electricity suppliers would like.

Alternatively:They have said you can discharge to the watercourse via a "partial soakaway" Is not this open ditch your "partial soakaway"? If it were filled with a perforated pipe and covered, there would be no question. I have gone the "partial soakaway" route as that's what SEPA stipulated. Like you in winter I expect my partial soakaway will act in reverse as a land drain helping to lower the water table, but certainly all summer it has been working and actual discharge from the pipe at the other end into the burn is not very much at all in the summer. Here SEPA wanted to know flow rates of the burn in the summer to work out dilution rates etc. I guess the partial soakaway does work as it ensures in summer when the flow is lower, so too is the amount of discharge into the burn. In winter if the water table gets high enough that it does become a land drain, then the flow rate in the burn will be very much higher so should still have a good dilution rate.

Re a road crossing for services. That is up to YOU to be well organised. I had to cross the road for water, electricity and telephone. As you say, there is no way you will get all 3 out on the same day. So as it happens, Scottish water gave the cheapest price for the road crossing, so they were the ones that did it. So while the trench was open for the water pipe, as it got filled back in again I installed a duct for telephone and another duct for electricity, at the approporiate depths, so when the other utilities turned up, the duct was already under the road for them.

Re noise of ASHP's For a start a well insulated house with triple glazing won't hear much outside noise for a start. So a monoblock ASHP will have all the "noisy" bits outside and quite apart from the fact they don't make much noise, what little noise they do make is outside the house. Compare that to a GSHP where the circulating pump and the heat pump itself is inside the house. Even though that is not particularly noisy, the noise it does make is inside the house, so more likely to trouble someone who is sensitive.

Don't do what I heard of. A bloke tied the rope to his car, that was big and heavy. Didn't keep the keys in his pocket and didn't tell anyone else in the house not to use the car.......

I missed this post so late answer. You have your verge cloaks on upside down, the fat end goes at the bottom. L for left, R for right. Each one fits over a single tile end. The one above slots into the lower one to locate the bottom end, and the top end nails or screws in place. I don't see what your sheet of OSB hung over a tile batten is trying to achieve, other than a slide to ensure you do fall off the roof. As already mentioned, use the tile battens as steps. Of course with the Scottish system of a sarking board, you can't put your foot through the membrane. If you are afraid of heights, do not be afraid to get a harness and clip yourself on. It suddenly makes a scary situation a whole lot less scary if you know you will only fall a short distance. As for getting from the scaffold to the roof, raise the scaffold higher? Or failing that I just used a baby 2 step ladder. Your hop up looks fine for the job.

Then I would not have described it as a "lane" but a "path"

Am internal meter box can be anything. Does not even need to be a "box" A bit of chipboard, mdf pr ply on the wall seems to be accepted (at least by the Scottish bit of SSE)

But what about when someone wants to drive a car along it?

Try and get more insulation under the UFH otherwise some of your heat just heats up the ground under your extension. Do you need a SAP assesment for an extension? if so that should tell you the heating demand. Without that it's hard so size a system. That's a big extension, bigger than some people's entire house. I am going to be using an air source heat pump, probably a colder but less windy location to you. Search around for a bargain and you will buy the heat pump quite cheap, then it's just plumbing and some wiring. If it's only running the low temperature UFH then it should work very well. I would suggest fitting a buffer tank to avoid the heat pump short cycling.

Long shot, but look up "woofers" Usually East Europenans, travelling, will do almost anything in return for board and lodging. Very common source of short term labour on farms, and a near neigbour "employed" one to help re landscape their garden. Also the passive house builder up here, in their early days employed them as building labourers.

They don't "need" to be 50mm back, it's just that if they are less than 50mm, the circuit must be protected by an rcd.

My only gripe is nobody else apart from electricians knows about safe zones. I am not convinced they are entirely well thought out. I have seen it before, someone wants to hang a picture on a wall. There is a socket below it. So to make it "look right" out comes the tape measure to ensure the picture is exactly centred on the location of the socket........

+1 to running horizontally from socket to socket. I had a stand up finger wagging argument last year with the joiner building a house I was wiring, he was trying to tell me you can't do that and must take the cables up above the ceiling across and back down again And yes that left hand run looks to be more than 150mm down from the ceiling.

1978 for me, at the age if 15

"liftt" is just how many platforms. e.g with Kwikstage, you can put a platform at 50cm intervals. So for my gable wall, the first platform was 2 metres above ground, the next 2 metres above that, etc. I had 4 platforms to reach the gable so "4 lifts" My guess is it stems from the process of "lifting" planks up to the next stage. Someone will come along and explain that much better than I have.

I don't know what house prices and plot prices are where you are looking, but few of us would advise a self build as a way to get a cheaper house, unless you can do a lot of the work yourself. Rather it is a way to get the house that you want, built to the standards that you want, rather than a builders off the peg standard box. You don't need to jump through all the hoops and pay fees for a house certified as a PH. Many of us are just building very well insulated, well sealed houses that we know will be very energy eficcient without having them certified as such.

The thread would not be complete without a mention of the system scaffolds like Kwikstage and cuplock. I have a load of Kwikstage that has done my whole house right up to 4 lifts high for the end gables. While it is normally 2.4 metre by 1.2 metre (5 planks wide) I also have a few short transoms that make a narrow 3 board wide section, and a few shorter ledgers and planks that make 6ft long bays instead of the usual 8ft.

I have said before, just buy a heat pump and any plumber can install it (okay monoblock only, needs a specialist to gas a split system) All I have seen from packages systems is big price tags. Do you have any SAP calculations or anything else to actually tell you what your heat input requirements will be? Without that you are guessing what size unit to fit.

I do the same with a 25mm packer (offcut of tile batten) taped to a 1M level.

Here is a close up of one of the frames. That's an opening window, I like the crisp clean unfussy lines. That's a smooth "pebble grey" finish. I think you can have any RAL colour you like and a textured paint is an option. I never did directly compare the cost of ali clad Vs just wood so can't comment on the extra cost.