ProDave

It will be now as the EWI will have blocked the weep vents and I see no sign of any new vents being fitted.

I'll let you know when I try it. Planning 150mm long 6mm screws (because I have plenty) into the brick. got to first buy a longer 6mm SDS bit

I believe it's EON. It's a timber framed bungalow, but an old one when they only built with 100mm frames, and not much insulation in the frame, then a 50mm cavity then the blockwork. Adding the EPS will improve it but who know by how much. Who says it has to meet any particular target U value? surely just the fact it's improving it is the target?

Had an interesting one today. Had a call to go and do some electrical work in a bit of a hurry. The story is , the customers energy supplier is paying for external wall insulation, for free, on a standard bungalow. This was aparently the 4th time they had applied and much to their surprise they were accepted. So the bungalow is being clad in 80mm EPS (or is it XPS I can't tell the difference) and then being rendered. The reason for the panic call to me as an electrician, is they were simply going to cut the stuff around a couple of external 13A sockets which would have left them rendered in place in a recess and unservicable. so my job was disconnect them, extend the cable and leave just a cable to be threaded through a hole and then rendered, and to go back when it's all done to re fit them. Also had an outside light and a couple of PIR sensors, who know what concoction they would have dreamed up had I not removed those. The insulation is cut round the external oil fired boiler, and also cut round a stack pipe that's tight to the wall. Also where a fence panel joined the wall, they have taken the fence panel off but left the post that was screwed to the house. It looks like they will render around, this fence post then put the fence back!!!!! It will be interesting to see what the finished thing looks like and how much difference it makes.

Pictures. We like pictures.

I would just plant the hedge and buy mature plants so it is fairly well established quickly.

The video shows it all. Except in your case all the nuts will be very tight because they won't have been off for years so you will need a big adjustable spanner.

It was common to have a gate valve on the feed to a header tank, in the airing cupboard below perhaps. can you post a picture of your ballcock valve and we might suggest how to dismantle it, but don't try until you have turned the water off somehow.

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.