ProDave

I did send that email, and he has tried to help, but to be honest, all he is able to do is keep me informed with what is going on, and from today's episode even he does not know what is going on. He doesn't seem able to do anything to hasten things along.

Based on a recent experience, do NOT do a single thing to a property to sell it. You might as well push boulders up a hill. We had a recent viewing (a rare thing in itself). they seemed to like everything EXCEPT the fact the house has wooden windows and he does not want the maintenance of periodically re painting or varnishing them. They are on good condition and just sanded and re varnished last autumn. If you think I am going to try and predict fickle requirements like that, and pre empt it by ripping out perfectly good windows and fitting plastic ones just so this buyer might have bought it, forget it.

This gets more rediculous So I had previously been told the job has been delayed until WB 27th March Today (remember today was supposed to be my connection day) I had not long got home when SWMBO tells me there's an Open Reach van driving up and down the road. Sure enough he's looking for the new house. He's fitted the socket inside the house. Dug a hole in the grass verge and located the cable we need to join to. He told me it should be a simple job, just enlarge the connection pit and make the connection, then make a connection in the joint box up the road. Then the bombshell. Because the joint box at the top of the road is right next to the road, it needs traffic lights. He will have to put in a request which will need a traffic light permit and that usually takes 2 weeks. FFS the guy that came on 1st March must have known that is where they would have to do the work. Surely it would not have been beyond the whit of man to order the traffic lights in advance? And what happened to all the complications that "delayed" the job? And this is from a "communication" company.

A "loophole" up here means we are not charged for building water. Up here water is charged with your council tax, No house = no council tax = no building water bill.

I don't understand what's going on with our EBICO supply at the moment. I have had three letters now. The first selling me it was transferring to Robin Hod energy and the price was not going up and fixed for 12 months. Then a letter to say it's going up. Then another letter telling me nothing is changing except the name. A bit of a shambles and if I was staying with that I would be phoning them to ask what the b%^$£%$ hell is going on. Ebico served us well when we were using almost no electricity to save paying a standing charge but it's now time to move to a proper arrangement so I will let you know how it goes with IRESA. I suspect all will be well until we get a problem...... We are still in the "cooling off period"

This is an interesting one. So BR day they are happy for combustion air to be drawn from under a ventilated floor but HETAS say not. How will that change if you are installing a little 3KW stove. BR for that say you don't need to make any provision for combustion air. Would HETAS agree with that? If so would HETAS also agree that even if you don't need to make provision for combustion air, they would not object to you drawing it from under the floor?

The total control is a good system if you have it. It has three separate CU's (usually two of them in one box) a normal "house" cu that gets cheap or peak rate according to time. An off peak CU that just gets energised at the off peak times for storage heaters, and the "total control" CU that gets metered at the cheap rate and is powered 24/7 This is only for heating appliances like panel heaters, water heaters, showers etc. If you have this tariff it's worth leeping it for the availability of the 24/7 cheap rate, but do check the standing charges and rates to make sure it remains competetive. E7 and E10 are identical apart from the settings int the DNO's time clock.

Lighting will be 6A (they stopped doing 5A mcb's a long time ago) and will be a radial circuit not a ring. 32A usually for hob an oven but check the manufacturers ratings, you might be having a 5 ring induction hob for all we know. The E7 usually has it's own smaller CU, but it can be done with one CU and two main switches but the CU has to be designed for that and is less common. If the tank has two immersion heaters use the top one for a timed boost from the normal circuits and the bottom one connected to the off peak circuits. If it only has one, use a Horstman (or similar) boost controller. Total control is an old tariff that's no longer available, it will be plain old E7 or E10 for the new house. Seriously look at E10.The off peak times work well for a morning warm up at cheap rate, and late afternoon worm up. It's really only the evening period when you are stuck with the peak rate. Have you found a local electrician yet?

My advice is do it the Scottish way, cover the roof with a solid sarking board (osb or ply) then a non tenting breathable membrane. Far better than the English way of just stretching felt over the gap. then it's battens and tiles.

Hi Ali and welcome to the forum. To give you a bit of encouragement, if you managed to sell your old house, then that's one respect you are doing better than us. 2 years and 4 months on the market.....

First thought is why are the brackets not fixed? what holds the windows in? Funny enough this is a similar detail that that I have been working on recently. It's a bit different in my case as it's TF, but the window reveals are clad in Kingspan and the windows then fixed with brackets. The "complication" in my case was twofold, one the brackets were individually packed with little squares of plywood, so that left an uneven surface to fix plasterboard to. and secondly the screws through the brackets, the heads sat so proud of the bracket. My solution, was replace the individual packing pieces with a continuous sheet of ply on the inside of the window reveal. This then just leaves the fixing plates a little proud of the plywood and it's thickness is pretty insignificant. And to solve the screw issue, countersink the holes in the fixing plate and replace the screws. In my case I can fix with long plasterboard screws through the kingspan into the timber frame. I am not sure what you would screw into, so some form of adhesive might be the way to secure the window end.

One needs a good view from ones throne.

This thread is starting to go down the pan.

MAN1 looks pretty central. 12 zones seems a lot? 1 per bedroom, one for bathroom and wc, one for kitchen and 3 for living sopace would probably be plenty.Even saying 2 for kitchen and 3 for living space, that's only 10 zones. I would not have a zone for the hall. We have and it never comes on. There's so little outside wall to loose heat and so much internal wall to gain heat, plus you will have incidental heat from pipes running under it. If you can find a way to route pipes under the wall from the study to the lounge it would make pipe runs easier. 200mm pipe spacing works well for us on a house with ordinary levels of insulation so I would say 150mm is too close.

Well I have initiated my switch to Iresa. Only afterwards did I see all the bad reports of their customer service. Let's hope it goes smoothly.

cheap pillar drill if anyone is feeling brave http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rotary-Pillar-Drill-Drilling-Press-Bench-Machine-Table-3-YEAR-WARRANTY-/322455677341?hash=item4b13db299d:g:BLMAAOSwWxNYzJwA So cheap I think it must be a scam, or a mistake, so if you give it a try pay with paypal so you will at least get your money back.

just buy a new thermostat. Make sure the bit that goes in the pocket is no longer than the one you have.

Hi and welcome to the forum Sounds an interesting project and hope we can help you.

Do you have a multimeter? If the element has gone, then to be honest I would get a new tank, it will not cost a lot more, will be better insulated, and will have standard cheaper elements for next time.

Ours is rendered using the Baumit.com render system. I will warn you their website is next to useless to find anything. We used the MC55W base coat which is a lime based render mixed from a powder, and their Silicon Top top coat that is available in a range of colours and textures, that comes ready mixed in a tub. A fibrerglass mesh is applied from a roll into the base coat for extra strength.

I assume it's a tracking system, hence the unusual shape? Not that the website wants to tell me any useful information like that. It just wants to show me a silly video of how you can plug in a light in the daytime to use your solar power. I gave up after about 2 minutes realising that website would not tell me anything useful.

Thanks, that would be most appreciated.

Well I thought it was going too well. This morning I had a text message saying the "delay management" team would phone me in a few minuted. I waited and no call. When I got home, SWMBO said she had a call that she ignored because she wasn't expecting so she ignored it (so they texted my phone to say they were going to call, then made the call to a different number. This is a communications establishment.) They then sent a message to her phone saying there was a delay until WB 27th March. I sent an email with the reference they provided to the email they provided delay.management@bt.com asking what was the issue. That bounced back immediately "this email is no longer in use" I then spent the best part of an hour to find out what was going on. Half of that was trying to get to speak to the right person, including I am sure many people from foreign places. Eventually I got through to a lady in Aberdeen who finally I could understand and tried very hard to help me. Even then she could not give me the full story. After putting me on hold to find the right person, that person would not talk to me. So the best I have is on 27th March someone from "network solutions" will visit to see what needs to be one. Then after they have solved the network there is then some routing work then finally the collection. Nobody seems able to tell me the whole story. At the moment my best guess is they have suddenly realised there are no more spare pairs in the existing cable to our road, so they have to do some network upgrading? but that is pure speculation. All highly annoying a I now have no idea how long it is all going to take.

Another plus point

Wow that's a good price. I'm stuck on the sign up as I need my meter serial number and I can't be bothered to walk up to the plot in the rain with my head torch to find it. It will wait until the morning.