ProDave

The last I heard was they were working on a unit with electric and water inputs. That would be very interesting as it would then be a true replacement for an UVC. If this unit is now in production, I am sure we would all be glad to hear the details.

I heard a novel way of dealing witb bats today. In a village not far from here has been an empty building. It used to be a pub and restaurant but has been empty for probably 20 years. In that time ne peril has befallen the empty building. Last week I drove by and saw demolition had started. Today I was there working across the road, and noticed demolition had stopped. That's because asbestos has been found and they are awaiting its removal. Then I noticed the exposed roof structure looked like there had been a fire recently. Ah yes says the man I was working for, they discovered bats in the roof. A week later the building caught fire. Some coincidence.

I have it on good authority the only reason Steptoe is thinking of moving, is his patio is "full"

I think I might need to start moderating this thread

... and lets hope your plasterer had got the wall behind the socket REALLY flat, otherwise you will have issues and they can end up looking rubbish.

Whether it's ring or radial, makes no difference to the question of single or double pole. It makes no difference how the electricity gets there. Some sparky's regard a ring circuit as old fashioned and prefer radial circuits. It all depends on the building and it's use. Neither is right or wrong. You can have a 32A radial circuit if you use the right cable.

The important thing is the horizontals must all be level with each other. The bricklayers will run strings between them at the outer edge of the blockwork, and drop down from that to check their position and height.

I keep telling you Steptoe, take the easy way out and buy my house up here in the Highlands. If you haven't already noticed, @OnOff is also here, pulling his house to bits and rebuilding it. slowly.

The two vertical sticks and horizontal stick are known as profiles. Make them as wide as the trench you are digging for the footings. The bricklayers will use them for setting out the blockwork. the horizontals should all be level with each other. For my footings I just marked on the ground with spray paint the centre of each trench to be dug as it's easy to dig to just a centreline.

Welcome to the forum Steptoe

So normal common law allows you to prune overhanging trees from a neighbour as long as you offer the cuttings back to them. So what if you didn't know they were protected by a TPO, why would you know? they are not your trees and not on your land? If you had a goat, and you parked say a vehicle on your land under the tree, the goat go on the roof and ate all it could reach, would the goat go to prison? All devils advocate of course

We had one round (wife let him make an appointment after a cold call) What he was selling was a "device" that would increase the yield of my existing solar PV system with claims of up to double the yield. He wanted about £3K for this device. There was no technical sales pitch, just "this is what it will do" After he had been swept out of the door I looked it up on their very long website name (part of the Everest group) what they were actually selling was a "voltage optimiser" and all it would do is prevent your inverter tripping out on over voltage at full production. Now I know for a fact mine never does that, so the sum total of what this device would do for me is zero. How are these people allowed to miss sell stuff like this that will only benefit a tiny minority who have such over voltage issues (and there are usually better ways to solve that over voltage issue anyway)

Interesting statement. We have several willow trees on our plot and we are building less than 10 metres from some of them. Contrary to popular belief we are building with just normal strip foundations. The Structural Engieer who made two site visits and witnessed me dig test holes to determine the soil conditions was not the least concerned about the closeness of the willow trees or the fact they might suck the site dry. We just have normal depth strip foundations. Perhaps there is a slight bit of "design" there in that he called for a strong concrete mix for the strip founds and reinforcing mesh in the concrete. Another factor may of course be the trees are right next to the burn so they are not exactly short of a water supply. Our site never dries completely and in winter can be quite wet with a very high water table. Also when digging the foundations we didn't encounter any significant tree roots.

4KW (or actually 16A) is the maximum they have to accept. Any more than that and they can refuse connection if their network cannot handle it.

In Scotland you need an EPC to let a property. There is a limit that it has to be better than, but I don't recall what it is. You also need an EICR for the electrical install, PA testing for all appliances, smoke heat and CO alarms, mains powered and interlinked. There is talk of introducing a legionairs test on the water system. Oh and you have to register as a landlord.

I was just giving the landlords perspective. I think storage heaters are an abysmal form of heating, but you have to admit from a landlords perspective what is not to like? they are relable, need no routine maintenance and rarely go wrong. An oil boiler is fine but needs an annual service. And lets hope your tenant fills the oil tank before it runs out. Mine never did. He always waited until the boiler stopped working. Got the bone dry tank filled. Then called me to come and bleed the air out of the oil line to get it running again. Every year, without fail. If the radiators were there and in god order that might be enough to sway it cost wise in favour of an oil boiler. Another off the peg idea is an electric boiler. Combined with an E10 tariff and a reasonably insulated house you can get most of your direct heating at the cheap rate. I forget the exact times but it's something like 4AM to 7AM so that's your morning warm up at cheap rate. Then 1PM to 4PM so a late afternoon warm up at cheap rate. Then again 8PM to midnight at cheap rate. So for most people, about the only time you might need to use peak rate to heat the boiler might be in the evening if it has cooled down too much after the late afternoon warm up. Electric boilers have the advantage of no regular servicing and pretty reliable. Combine that with a direct unvented water tank and that to gets topped up regularly at the cheap rate so plenty of cheap rate hot water.

How old is it? how well insulated? For simplicity for rental E10 and storage heaters (though I would not have them for my own house) virtually nothing to go wrong and no servicing or safety certificates needed. A tenant won't understand a heat pump. They struggle to understand things like why a bathroom fan operates (and then complain about the mould when they have disabled the fan) I would not personally let a tenant play with real fire in a house I owned.

My policy is via buildstore and it transfers to the remaining period of ordinary insurance upon completion. I would be inclined to renew the self build insurance a bit longer until you get completion. Whatever you do, renew or put a new policy in place before the old one expires. One member had difficulty when he let his self build insurance lapse and they then tried to treat it as a new policy with existing buildings and things got complicated.

And in inside stop valve to turn off the outside tap.

If there's any chance you have to undo it to make alterations I would go compression.

Ah gate valves. Work of the devil. Turn them off too hard and you can strip the thread, result, no matter how many times you wind the handle it does not open. Had to replace more than one that would not open. PITA I would not fit them.

The local earth thing is because you will be using power tools etc and with a PME earth, the earth might no exactly be at local potential. So for the site socket and e.g a static caravan you bang in your own earth rod. There is nothing stopping you connecting the DNO provided earth to the house when it is built.

So you just need to terminate the SWA direct into the CU at the house end. Choose your CU carefully. I fitted a Hager one recently (I used to like Hager) but was disappointed to find it only had square knock outs. I know if you chose a BG CU at the moment they have a good delection of round knock outs that should take the SWA gland directly into the CU. It baffles me that wholesalers don't advertise such important things like which CU has how many of what size and shape knock outs and where.

No special requirements for the wall, just an amendment 3 compliant CU No need for an isolator unless you want one. Is the meter going there or is that remote mounted somewhere else?

A friend of mine is looking at a similar hybrid system combining a heat pump and an outside oil boiler.