ProDave

If you have a header tank in the loft then that is a VENTED hot water system, not unvented. I suspect what has happened, is the cold water header tank will have been empty, so that will have been the first place the water went when restored as the ballcock will have been open. As you stated you ran the kitchen tap until the dirty water had gone, there was obviously a lot of mud etc in the pipes. So some of that will have gone and blocked the ballcock that feeds your header tank. You can usually dismantle them to clean the muck out (after you have turned the water off)

Okay test started. An initial indication, is that the "1000 pulses per KWH" light is flashing once every 45 seconds. So that will take 45,000 seconds to clock up 1KWh which is 750 minutes or 12.5 hours. So that would be 2KWh per day or an average of 83 watts continuous power, which is more like I would expect.

I don't have a PF meter and guessed that might be what's "wrong" hence my idea of a 24hr electricity meter test. The tank is full of clean water at the moment, having had no "input" yet so it's just blowing bubbles in clean water.

I have just today connected and comissioned the air blower on my Conder ASP6 treatment plant. According to the pump it's rated at "80W" so I am somewhat surprised and very disappointed when I measured the actual current it is drawing as 0.7 Amps, which at 240V is 168W. If that is true then that adds up to an astonishing 1471KWh per year or at £0.15 per unit, an annual running cost of £220. That is NOT what I expected. I guess the first thing I need to do is run it for exactly 24 hours, with nothing else whatsoever in use and see how many KWh the electricity meter actually clocks up. That will give a more true indication of the actual "cost" Anyway that's way to high so I want to look at other options, including replacing the pump with a lower power one, and an idea that has been discussed before of running the pump only part time.

When we got our water connected I had already run the water to the static 'van and installed the stopcock to feed off to the house, so the SW inspector checked all of that for depth etc and that's when he made me install the nrv's. He did say if all I had on site was a stand pipe right next to their boundary box, then that's all that would have been checked and nothing else ever would be.

+1 to that. We should have done that on a rental house we had. Every year, without fail, the tenant would not fill the oil tank until it actually ran out and the boiler stopped, and every year I had to go and bleed the pipe to get it working again.

I think you have to set it up for the size of tank. Mine came with the tank so was already set. The reading goes from F (full) then counts down from 9 (9/10 full) to 0 (empty) Of course having a big tank that lasts a whole year helps. it's usually down to 1 or 2 at the end of the heating season, and sits there hardly moving all summer until oil hits the usual summer low about August, when the tank gets filled.

The point is, my solar PV system I find adds no value to the house at all, so they are getting a money saving feature for nothing, and still they are not interested.

It's 900mm deep up here now (present house is 600 and has never frozen)

Why are they asking? We have bought and sold several properties and nobody has ever asked us where the money had come from.

Get a remote reading oil gauge. I only have to glance to the left to find I have 4/10 of a tank full.

I've been through the NRV thing with Scottish Water. Aparaently the NRV in their boundary box does not count as it's only a single NRV. Neither does the NRV in my own boundary box count as that too is only a single NRV. And neither did the NRV built into the tap on my stand pipe count, as that's only a single NRV. So before they would pass me for connection I had to fit an in line double NRV in the pipe to the stand pipe, the feed to the static caravan, and have a third one ready to connect in the feed to the house. Madness. ALL could be avoided if thy just supplied a boundary box with a double NRV built in instead of the apparently useless single one.

Your appointing a solicitor at stage 3 after planning, suggests you are buying a plot "subject to planning permission" There is nothing unusual in that, indeed that is exactly what we did. BUT you need the solicitor on board right at the first to draft a legally tight agreement to buy the plot if you get the planning. Solicitor is not normally needed for planning / build etc. A planning application will only confirm the principle that you can put a house that looks like that on the plot. It does NOT ,ean you can actually build the house. Ground conditions, a gas main right through the plot etc can easily prevent you physically being able to build the house, as can a lack of a drainage solution etc.

A very good example of people not caring in the slightest about running costs of a house is our Solar PV system. Most of you know we have been trying to sell our house. We have solar PV on the original (now >50p per KWH ) rate. the income from that just about pays for all our electricity used (even though it is only a small solar PV system) making the running cost of this house for the next 20 years very low. Not one of the people who have looked at the house have showed the slightest bit of interest in the solar PV and how it makes the running cost of the house so low. Not one.

Again that's the dinosaur in me. Certain things "should" have a stopcock not a ball valve. Ball valves will be used for local isolation of things like taps for maintenance.

I could use one of those and a 15/15 brass stopcock. I might go for that option. I guess that's another of my prejudices, I hadn't looked at pushfit stuff.

It's certainly true that energy is not the biggest cost in running a house so not the No 1 priority. It is still funny though now people will buy a better fridge to save £10 a year in electricity, but won't buy a better house? Take out the mortgage because by the time you retire that really should be history, and still by a LONG way, the biggest cost of a house is the council tax. No amount of insulation, tripple glazing, heat pumps or mvhr will do a thing to reduce that. Perhaps if air quality is seen as more important, then things like mvhr may become seen as desirable things to have in a new house? Surely unless you buy a really old house, people are not concerned with damp and mould these days are they? Even our modest 14 year old house built to normal standards of the time does not suffer from either of those, not in the slightest.

I am trying to avoid those mdpe to copper adapters. I have used one, once, and to be fair it sealed first time and never leaked. It just did not inspire confidence. It was a "rubber bung" in essence and when fitted you could flex the copper pipe where it fitted into the mdpe fitting. So on the present house I used brass stopcocks that take a 25mm mdpe in one end and a 22mm copper out the other, both secured and sealed with a compression ollive, that inspires confidence and gives a solid joint. The reason for mdpe to the outside taps (yes there are 2 of them) Well I have wood fibre and render cladding, and my philosophy is not to make penetrations in the external cladding that might be a source of water getting into the wood fibre. So in both cases the outside taps are piped in 20mm mdpe. One under the floor and into the garage, the other out through the blockwork wall under the sole plate and then back up the outside of the wall to the outside tap. Try that in copper and it would not last a winter. The best compromise I can find is a brass stopcock with two female 1/2" BSP fittings, then a 15mm to 1/2" BSP male on the input and 1/2" BSP male to 20mm mdpe on the output. That's 2 more fittings and 2 more joints than I would like if only I could find the correct stopcock.

A Laurel hedge is for the VERY patient gardener. We planted that along our front, 10 years ago, on the basis it was slow growing and therefore low maintenance. Well it is CERTAINLY slow growing. It was about 5 years before we even trimmed it the first time, and even now, it's barely a 2ft high "hedge" perhaps scraping 3ft high in places, but to look like a hedge it has to be trimmed to the height of the slowest growing bit. Will not be repeating. Perhaps we are just the wrong climate for it?

Perhaps it's a case of you can only have an appeal considered once? Initially they refused to consider his appeal because he had missed the time limit. Somehow he has managed to actually get them to consider the appeal this time around? so now he his having his ONE shot at an appeal?

Good news, so that's one more interpretation of what is and isn't "adjacent" to the highway.

I'm trying to order some pipe fittings to get some basic water services into the house. And I can't find the right stopcock I need. 25mm MDPE main in to copper services. That one is easy. A brass stopcock with 25mm in and 22mm out. But the one that has got me stumped is copper IN to 20mm mdpe OUT to an outside tap. If I use this one http://www.screwfix.com/p/poly-stop-cock-20mm-x-15mm/98486?_requestid=101742#product_additional_details_container The water will be going the wrong way and it probably won't work at all. I need copper IN (don't care what size but would choose 22mm if I had a choice) and 20mm mdpe OUT Surely I can't be the first to want to do that? Yes I know I can do it with equal mdpe in / out stopcock but I hate those horrible mdpe / copper insert things that go with them. I did this on my last house, 14 years ago, so I know it can be done, but I don't recall where I eventually found the right stopcock from. Tries BES, T'stn, and screweys so far.

I think all that has happened, is Scotland kept the old system as it always used to be in England, nice and clear (if slightly more restrictive) but England changed their rules to something much more open to different interpretations.

Hi Dee and welcome (back) We did try and contact as many of the old regulars as we could find contact details for and sorry you slipped through that net, but now you are here please carry on as before.

So it looks like in 1995 (my situation was before that) they replaced a perfectly clear guidance (between the house and the highway = 1M max permitted development) with an ambiguous guidance (adjacent = 1M max, not adjacent = 2M max) So now the guidance is so ambiguous that it is open to interpretation and there is no guarantee if what you are proposing is allowed under PD or not. Only a planning officer and / a court can now decide that. Assuming the edging stone you have laid marks the edge of the footpath, I would say you can touch your fence from the footpath so does not meet the situation in the example above. Get that hedge planted ASAP to reinforce your argument that the fence is not "adjacent" to the highway I am not trying to be awkward, but I still think a neighbour, particularly one who does not like what you are doing, would be justified in raising this with the council, who would have to investigate. They may or may not decide the fence is okay. but looking at the street, everyone else has a low wall, sometimes with a tall hedge behind it There is also the issue of when do Permitted development rights start? I thought it was not until the house was complete, so if that is the case, regardless of the height, you have no permitted development rights just yet anyway? Also check your visibilty splay requirements for the entrance. I had to have a certain visibility distance at a height of 1.02 metres, 2.4 metres back from the edge of the road. Or to put it another way, I would not be allowed to have a hedge or fence higher than 1.02 metres high, less than 2.4 metres from the road. Yours looks closer than that.