ProDave

Cat5 and phone in separate duct at least 300mm apart. In practice, you will be digging at least a 300mm wide trench so one each side before you back fill. SWA does not need a duct, use 3 core and then you have an earth core as well as the armour, and buy it from the right place and it's the correct colours. But personally I am just using the armour. You will need an 80A switch fuse to feed a 16mm SWA and check your max load and volt drop to check 16mm is okay. (mine is okay at 25 metres)

I would not be sure about the fuse rating. We were only offered a 12KVA supply yet it has exactly the same 100A fuse as any other house in the street. The reason in our case was the number of houses sharing the same 100KVA transformer, and no doubt if we had asked for more, there would have been a capital cost to upgrade that transformer.

Personally I can't abide rolling credit fixed monthly payments, but accept that may be the bribe you have to take to get the best deal. But are you not looking at this from the wrong angle? It's not the monthly price you need to look at, but the unit costs for the energy. Anyone could set the monthly payment low to make them look cheaper, only to find they have under estimated your usage and you get a correcting bill. Or am I being to cynical?

I was going to nominate my pallet shed for the "reuse" category but I think OnOff has just won that one. Triassic definitely wins the best aesthetic design category.

Another advantage of the Scottish system of sarking the entire roof with some form of solid board.

So the Scottish regs require a continuous ventlation rate of 0.5 ACPH My kitchen / dining room is 4.8 metres by 6.8 metres and 2.4 metres tall so a volume of 78336 litres. So we need to change half of that per hour = 39168 litres per hour which works out at 10.88 litres per second for the whole kitchen which will be via at least 2 mvhr extract vents. So not much ventilation needed only 5.4 l/s per vent terminal. Plus the ability to boost at 50% (I am sure our boost will be more like 100%)

I'm not sure I see your question yet, but I can't see why a poly tunnel can't be discussed like any other garden building. Not sure how you find the room for a poly tunnel with no garden, I presume some arrangement with the land owner?

Doesn't that depend how many beers he's had?

Let's turn this into a "spot the fault" I'll start with pitch leaking from the head. 951 clamp on the earth (that can crush the cable resulting in a very big bang) and a SWA cable exiting the bottom of the CU with the armour not clamped at all. EICR fail for me.

I lost a friend and "good customer" just over a year ago to bowel cancer. It was picked up in his early 50's as part of the screening process up here for anyone over 50. He had an operation, Kemo etc then had the all clear. (at the time he kept this all quiet, all I knew was he spent a lot of time in Glasgow for a while) then 2 years ago it came back, it had spread, was inoperable and terminal. He died December 2015. In fact it was only his wife who actually told me what was "wrong" he just told me he had some "health issues"

I am miss understanding something here, can you clarify please, are you worried about planning permission or building control sign off? I would have thought this small extension would be permitted development, so I assume it's building control you are concerned about? And since they have approved the foundations I would take that as acceptance.

the tiny amount of DC power a router needs, connect it to a battery..

Ah the old "portable earth" A classic case of having a very slight idea of what you should do, but without understanding how it might work, and how that one definitely won't. But seriously, if your DNO can provide a genny that can power your whole house free of charge, and installed the same day, I would not bother.If yours is an isolated failure (i.e your neighbours still have power) then it's probably a cable fault. the only times we get a power cut is during a storm when trees come down (all overhead here) and then the outages are measured in thousands of homes (then there's not enough DNO generators to go round) the longest we were off was 3 days, and we just kept the WBS goiong 24/7 for heat, cooked on gas, and used the camping gaz lights. Frankly I would not want a generator thundering away and having to keep re fueling it for several days.

I spent about half an hour on my boat in a thunder storm. I was never sure what I should do, but in a plastic boat, floating on the sea, with a big metal pole sticking up in the middle I decided it would be a good idea not to touch that or the stainless steel stays that support it.

I would add to Jeremy's point above. If you know one panel is subject to daily shading and the rest are not, then that one battery that it charges will consistently get less charge than the others, effectively limiting the capacity of the whole system.

.... stood off from the wall on porcelain insulators so a leak, and water running down the wall would not get into the meter and supply head. Oh how standards have slipped.

All the new builds I do seem to use whatever bit of MDF / Ply / Chipboard the joiners happened to have kicking about / rescued from a skip, and the DNO (SSE here) have never questioned it. All they seem to want is something they can fit a wood screw into.

A bit late actually since I finished this a few weeks ago, but that's all the roof insulated and lined. Blog at the usual place http://www.willowburn.net/ Look for the entry "Insulating the roof"

A tip for some that may help.. When I ordered our garage window from Rationel as a single window, I thought I would make it as "cheap as possible" by specifying two fixed panes. When it came in more expensive than I thought it should, I queried it and found in fact the cheapest option was the "standard" one fixed pane and one opening pane.

A "normal " fan is an "axial" fan (think of a fan blade on an axle) A Radial, or Centrifugal fan generates a lot more pressure and can cope with longer runs of ducting. Here's one: http://www.screwfix.com/p/manrose-in-line-centrifugal-shower-fan-kit-chrome-100mm/41379

You want a radial fan, not an axial fan

I've seen "front doors" at the back of a house, but that was a clear example of taking an off the peg design and turning it around to ensure the living room got the sun and that's just where the door ended up.

If it's for your own use then I can see no reason not to use 240V lamps. You will need to change the plug or make an adaptor (and UNMAKE it when you are done so nobody uses it to plug any real 110V equipment into 240V)

We went back to BT after the nightmare with Talk Talk. Basically I just could not get them to fix a broadband fault. They were afraid to actually pass on the fault to Open Reach for fear they would get charged for fixing the fault, so chose to do nothing but keep sending me yet another new router because that must be the problem. I ended up escalating it to their management and I parted mid contract with a refund for all the BB charges I had paid. Switched to BT, immediately reported the same fault and they fixed it. The overwhelming lesson from that is it's not worth saving a few £ if the customer service is so utterly disfunctional. That has put me off trying other re sellers.

Nope. BT unlimited broadband "helpfully" tells you that you have no limit so there's no point in showing you how much you have used. (i'll bet they know, just don't want to tell you)