ProDave

200m2 of matting? you have more bathroom area than my entire house.

No, it was merely shown on the planning as "ground mount solar PV" and that is what I built, with no design input. I just put some poles in the ground and started bolting bits of framing to them and that is how it turned out. Standing room in the middle but it gets a bit low in the eaves.

That started just as a ground mount PV, then I thought it would be madness not to enclose the sides. It is only as a rough storage shed in this case, firewood, bikes, and things like cement mixer etc. Just a load of pallets for the floor. If I was going to make it as a proper shed / hut I would make it a bit higher, and build the shed but a lot lot better.

This would be a raw sewage pump if I understand correctly, as it would be pumping from the house up INTO the treatment plant? I would really try and avoid that if you can. A pumped system needs a holding tank. Does that not have the same distance constraints as a TP? i.e. if you can fir a pump station there, you can fit a TP there? Care to post a site layout plan? if you can get a gravity option, I would.

I suspect we might not be your target audience here. "Soft Landing" is not a policy we ever discuss and is certainly not anything i have heard of.

Use all your big appliances, WM, TD, Dishwasher etc close to mid day, preferably one at a time. Time your ASHP to only do it's DHW heating after 11AM, the sun should be up by then and most of what it uses will come from the PV on a sunny day. Fit a PV diverter to send excess PV to the immersion heater. That just about covers it for us. BUT if I install any more PV then that will have to have batteries, otherwise it would just be too much to use real time.

Can I assume if, like me, you included the ground mount PV panels on the planning for my house, that I have not therefore yet used any of my permitted development allowance so I could still add another 12 square metres of permitted development PV? Alternatively is like mine ended up, with PV forming the roof of a shed, you could carry on building as many sheds as PD allows each with solar PV covered roofs.

I would say no Picture from here (first google link that found the picture I wanted) https://www.e-lindsey.gov.uk/media/4257/050-Unvented-hot-water-storage-systems/pdf/050Unventedhotwaterstoragesystems.pdf You are supposed to have 500mm of straight pipe below the tundish. Yours appears to go straight into what I think is a waterless trap. Whether that will cause a problem I could not say. You could try manually operating the over pressure or over temperature relief valve and see how the water flows?

I did some work as a subcontractor for a local modular building company here. Their houses were not cheap but they were addressing the almost passive house end of the market making very well insulated houses. Building them as pre wired and pre plumbed modules gave the problem of how to join the wiring together at the joints between the modules. We never got any better than a junction box full of wagos that then got hidden. I parted company with them, amicably because they wanted a full time electrician but I did not want full time work. They since went bust.

I would probably enclose part of the side garden, up to the bin store area or the window in the end wall (still keeping 1M from the low fence) Once enclosed, that little corner would be a perfect place for a shed, without taking up any room in the main bit of garden. Planning law is a lot more lenient now with the "adjacent" description, which should allow you to fence in most of it. Previously it was any fence anywhere between the wall of the house and the highway needed PP if over 1M high.

I know them well. My BIL used to live in one, until they were forced out when they were all being dismantled (he ended up buying his AERE house in Wantage) They were very cold, and no doubt contained a lot of asbestos in their construction. I often said, and I believe the residents committee argued for selling them to the tenants as individual building plots, but the authority had other ideas. Half the Diamond project sits on one of the prefab sites now.

Put up a 2M fence, 1M in from your existing low fence. That should meet the argument of not being adjacent to the highway. That won't enclose all your garden, but most of it. Then in that gap between the tall fence and low fence plant a nice hedge (NOT Leylandii) and when the hedge should reach maturity about the same time as the 2M fence is ready to fall down. I have a relative in a similar layout estate and his entire garden is surrounded by a nice mature Beech hedge.

And, if you build the house well enough, with enough insulation and air tightness, then as many of us have proved (even up here in the Highlands) then you way well not need any heating upstairs, just UFH downstairs.

@Crofter as your name suggests you are on a croft are you not? I have been told several times that it is generally accepted a Croft can have 3 "caravans" on it. I don't know if that means without planning permission, or that is is expected that planning will be granted. If that is the case, your "hut" could be built under the caravan rules that you are familliar with, which would actually allow a larger hut than 30 square metres.

The USP of a sun amp has always been it's vacuum insulation panels and so a lower heat loss than a conventional cylinder. And a smaller volume for the same heat storage capacity, though it's form factor favours those who are restricted with height, they take up as much if not more floor space than a normal cylinder. Has anyone actually worked out how much you save due to the reduced heat loss of the sunamp and if that is it's only tangible benefit, what is the payback time of that saving?

It's pointless looking at graphs and doing sums. Just try it, and aim to run it at the slowest (quietest) speed that will achieve the flow rate that you want. Good pumps those nice and quiet.

Yes but it did sometimes result in "that smell" of rotting dead mouse somewhere.

Very hard in an "ordinary" house. A normal build with all the ventilation requirements leaves plenty of mouse sized holes everywhere. Mice in the cold loft was a big problem at the last house. They could climb straight up the rendered walls, and in through the soffit vents that must be there to meet building regs. Remember if a hole is big enough for a biro pen to fit through, so can a mouse. This is the first mouse free house we have ever had. Achieved by making it air tight, and with a warm roof, so the air tight layer follows the roof and the loft space is warm, dry, inside the air tight envelope, and mouse free. We only once had a mouse in, entered through an open velux overnight.

Thank you for that, I might have a word and see if they can offer something for us.

I don't have a very high opinion of SEPA as they showed complete disinterest when I raised a complaint about how treatment plants were registered. They don't want ANY details whatsoever about what you install so of course they don't check it.

I would read all the threads on here about sunamps and then ask yourself, why do I want to pay a lot more for a complicated magic box that claims wonderful things but comes with limitations and complications, where a traditional, dependable and reliable unvented hot water cylinder will do all I want without the complications. In my mind you need to have a VERY good reason not to use an UVC. What is your good reason?

Makes a stair lift look good value. At a cost of £20K I would be tempted to DIY something, purely for my own use, it would have no approvals of course.

Did they honour their free delivery or was there a charge? I am tempted to buy some of these currently cheap panels from City, they are so cheap, even compared to others they have, part of me thinks it might be a mistake.

Very true. There was a house approved here, the end of a field fenced off. The plot was sold and the house built. Then they tried for a second plot. It was obvious they intended to just keep going and slice up the field one plot at a time. The second one was refused, went to appeal and was refused and the appeal inspector said the first one should never have been granted permission. It was a good job that one was built because if the planning had lapsed, it might not be reinstated.

My plasterer used a couple of plastic milk crates (remember them) No tags. Seen plenty using upturned buckets.