ProDave

We had one in our last house for an otherwise dark landing. It worked very well indeed. But if I had a £ for every time a visitor said they could not find the switch to turn the landing light off.

Interested in the straw bale idea. I worked on one straw bale house and I recall the biggest issue was firstly finding anyone with a working small baler, and then finding a weather window to cut it, dry it and bale it then a barn to store it dry until ready to build. It was certainly not a cheap solution and you end up with thick walls for an insulation level you could achieve other ways with a much thinner structure.

If you want to switch to Octopus for a better service PM me for a referal code.

Yes well done, a result anyone would be well pleased with.

Local planning restriction "windows should have a vertical form" Most of our windows were 2 panes side by side, but this one smaller window we thought it a good idea to split it with the centre bar to make it in keeping with the others. No technical reason whatsoever.

Rationel 3G window with centre bar The only way you can tell it is one pane, is in the corners, the filler bars bend round the corner. The centre bar just butts up to the others.

All I can think of is that is some kind of home made wet battery?

This thread is just showing how individual houses differ. My 5kW heat pump copes with heating our house at +20 indoors and -10 outside. -10 for a week or more is quite normal here in winter with high pressure and no wind to bring warmer air. When you hear on the weather forecast "colder in some sheltered glens" that is us. It rarely defrosts at -10, there is just too little moisture in the air by then. A few degrees either side of 0 is when defrosting is more likely. My LG heat pump seems incredably quick at it's defrost cycle, the compressor and fan stop. You hear the 4 way valve change over. the compressor starts but not the fan. When the evaporator warms up and melts the ice, only then does the fan start and blow away all the now melted ice in a puff of "steam". Then the compressor and fan stop the 4 way valve changes back and normal operation resumes. That takes about 2-3 minutes in total. Another feature of our house is it will not heat up or cool down quickly. Nothing to do with thermal mass but everything to do with low decrement delay insulation. Perhaps that is why the WBS does not overheat our house but others have that problem?

We keep on having this WBS debate, it is a Marmite subject and nobody is going to convince the "other side" that they are wrong. I have one because we have trees which properly managed produce wood so I burn it. If I had to buy wood to burn, I would not bother. But the WBS is a good second source of heat, even a passive house will loose it's temperature when it's well below 0 and the the power is off for several days because we are a low priority after a storm. The over heating myth. Yes if we crank the stove up full and shut the doors to the room it is in (largest room in the house) it would quickly get very hot in there, but leave all the downstairs doors open and the heat can get to all the house without overheating any one room. Perhaps that is down to design that we wanted double doors to the main downstairs rooms to open it all up when we want to. I will start to give the environmental arguments against a WBS just a little credence when there is a public admission that burning wood in DRAX on an industrial scale was a bad idea and should never have been done and it has been closed with immediate effect. In the mean time some of the electrons powering my ASHP may well have come from there.

Speak to your neighbour 2 doors to the right in your aerial picture. It looks like he has done what you are proposing (with a flat roof) Ask if it was PD or needed planning permission and if it needed PP was it easy or difficult.

But if you fit 20 in a big kitchen and a few years later a couple blow, and you can't buy replacements that match, you DO worry. That is why I advise people if you are buying fittings with no replaceable bulbs, buy a load of spares now, while you can.

If it is in a grass verge and there is no tarmac pavement involved I would have no hesitation digging it up to have a look. Just have some kind of barrier ready to place around the hole if it is going to be left open.

What boiler? assume gas or oil. You need to measure the flow temperature coming out of the boiler, it sounds like the boiler thermostat has failed and the burner is running continuously and overheating the water. Turn the boiler on and watch while measuring the flow temp, does the burner shut off after a while of just keep on going and going?

I think the LED GU10's I have were Screwfix cheap ones (probably LAP) sold in boxes of 10 for about £1 per lamp. Only 2 failed so far in nearly 5 years.

That's one of those "because I can" projects. We all know it would be a whole lot easier to drive four 7 segment LED displays from the Arduino........

Then they need to supply parts at a reasonable price. There are 2 headlights in a car (sometimes more) I simply do not believe at manufacture time they cost £1600 which would have been more than 5% of the cost of the car (possibly a lot more)

That is criminal, I thought things had to be "repairable" now? That's one more thing on the list to check next time I buy a car.

Under the insulation is fine. It's when it is buried within the insulation you need to worry about derating cables.

No, 2.5mm And for the period it was an incomplete ring, the two ends were each fed from their own 16A MCB which was changed to a single 32A MCB when the ring was completed.

At least you had the sense to fit light fittings where you can change the bulb. There is a growing trend for downlighters to have non replaceable bulbs. If anyone asks me to fit some (I would not buy them) I advise them to go and buy a box of spares, on the basis when one fails in a few years time, you probably won't be able to buy identical replacements.

Why was there a gap between the wall and stringer? There are not in my house (but I fitted the stairs)

As above. Why would I want a split unit that requires an F gas engineer, so I could not fit it myself, and why would i want the noisy bit with the compressor inside the house?

My house had a full as built SAP done to get the as built EPC. The energy input that predicted in spite of having all the correct data is about 3 times as much as it actually uses. Jeremy's spreadsheet gives a far more accurate prediction.

Or better still start a new thread in the appropriate section. This is the place we welcome new members.

Can you explain your problem please? Do you actually have a problem with something not working? Or a theoretical problem because something has been done in practice in a way that differs from how you think it it should have been done?