Kelvin

£30k! Was that with one of the usual suspects or a local company? We have a similarly shaped space and a local cabinet maker said £10k and we thought that was a bit dear.

Keep all the doors open.

Zehnder do single room MVHR units called the Comfospot 50. https://zehnder.picturepark.com/service/download/ac23486cb6a946b4bddf3812bbb226a5

Looks terrific. Well done for taking it on. Renovations aren’t easy! How airtight is it realistically going to be? Do you have a target figure and a strategy to achieve it? Looks to be a challenge so you probably won’t need MVHR.

Insurance companies. They’ll do anything to wriggle out of paying. We don’t trust them and they don’t trust us. My step-sister works in the fraud side.

My step sister works in insurance. The reason there’s no discount is because loads of cars are damaged in garages from stuff falling on them to folk crashing them into the back wall apparently.

The issue our friends had was the cabling that went into the roof. Theirs was on roof. There was a fault in the cabling which set alight to the roof within the void. The fire damage wasn’t extensive as it was mostly within the roof but the smoke and water damage was extensive which effectively meant the house was rebuilt albeit the walls were deemed to be safe. PV isn’t fit and forget. The cabling and connections should be regularly inspected as a minimum when it’s on the roof it’s harder to do and therefore few folk do it. We have other friends who bought a house with an old PV system on the roof and when he checked the cabling it had become very brittle. The guide you posted was good enough to consider best practice. All of that said, as pointed out, it’s very rare and there are other items in your house that pose a greater risk.

It’s not necessarily a standard to use the duo insulated pipes it’s just a common and easy way to do it if going underground. It’s also used for community heating installations. Some folk on here have made their own by using pex pipework, 25mm insulation, then inserted into ducting (110mm) It would be better if it was 25mm closed cell pipe insulation like this stuff. This is same stuff they ought to be using to insulate the external pipes where it connects to the ASHP. https://pipelaggingonline.com/shop/armaflex-class-o/

Our flow/return pipes are the duo insulated pipe type which is run under the concrete slab (so basically in the ground) The insulation of these duo pipes isn’t much better than the stuff your installers have used other than it’s continuous. It’s not an uncommon way to do it. In your case chasing it into the insulation shouldn’t be too hard to redo. If they refuse to change it at least make sure the insulation lagging of the pipes is done well with no gaps and the joins are taped.

Insurance companies rarely give you a discount for fitting burglar alarms. If they do it will generally only be where the alarm is professionally fitted, is hard wired, and is monitored. In that case it’s likely they’ll have a clause specifically stating the alarm must be active etc. Not many home owners fit these kinds of alarms anymore. For any other installation how would the insurance company know if it wasn’t set? Unless your alarm records activity and the insurance company asked for it.

Do you have any pictures of what it all looked like before the installation?

Cowboy rip off merchants. Utter scumbags praying on the elderly. Phone them giving them the opportunity to refund most of the money. When they don’t report them to the Police (fraudulent) and contact trading standards. Some councils have a cowboy trader process on their website giving advice on what to do. Keep a note of any communication you have with them. https://www.merton.gov.uk/business-and-consumers/trading-standards/rogue-traders

Most of our work was paid in arrears.

This has been a challenge for me too. We wanted a tiled bath panel for that built in look but it’s not easy to make it removable so it isn’t but tiled in a way we could get it off without destroying the rest of the tiles and I have a spare pack of tiles. We have coomb space on the back wall behind the bath so I’ve convinced myself I could cut that wall out and gain access to the bath without destroying the bathroom. I’m a bit unconvinced by this but should the need ever arise that will be my first way in attempt. However I did speedfit the taps so they are easy to fix/replace assuming I could get the right spaced taps again (could be worth buying a spare tap set I guess). Therefore it minimises what could wrong under the bath. I took the same approach with the showers opting for a digital showers so all the mixer equipment is in the coomb so easy to get to. There’s nothing in the walls to go wrong with it being just plastic pipes and control cables and I ducted the control cables. I found all this the hardest bit of our build to plan for future maintenance.

😂

PV fires are clearly rare but not exceptional. There was a report in The Independent about them. There were 66 reported fires caused by roof PV systems in the first half of 2023 which was the same number as the whole of 2019. Likely a reflection on the number of new installations and ageing systems. Although it didn’t break the numbers down in that detail. Bit off topic so shall bow out.

The aesthetic is the draw here. Other than that it just seems all disadvantages to me. Panels can fail and need replacing. How easy is it to replace failed panels without compromising the roof especially years later. I opted to not fit PV to our roof at all as we have the garden space to hide them on the ground. The thing that sealed the deal for me was a friend built a house, moved in, and a few months later a cable fault in a PV panel set the roof on fire. Took another year to rebuild it.

It’s surprising how little sound transfer there is once a door is closed even when there’s a gap under the door. However, being low frequency, snoring can transfer between rooms even if you didn’t have much of a gap. Some info here https://www.acoustic-supplies.com/soundproof-and-do-not-let-snoring-become-an-issue/#:~:text=Room Soundproofing&text=Although the chances of snoring,bedroom than you previously had.

Firstly call them defects not snags. The important question to ask yourself is do you want them fixed or not? If they don’t fix them what will you do: leave them? Fix them yourself? Pay someone to fix them? Answering that question will determine what you do next. Personally I’d want them fixed although in reality I’d do it myself. Post up some pictures.

We have used our EV a few times during power cuts. It’s typically always around 50% charged and we have a portable induction camping stove. So we’d be able to cook and provide some heat from small rads. Plus I could power the water pump so we’d have water too albeit the drinking water tap provides reasonable flow from the small attenuation tank.

Bloody hell. What a waste of time. How can anything like this really take a year. I appreciate they are understaffed nevertheless.

I’m 57 and I don’t want to be doing it. I have a log splitter so it’s less effort but it’s still a chore that needs doing.

Your house won’t lose much heat in a few hours. Even over 24 hours it won’t lose much. Plus you have a battery backup which would likely see you through a few hours. We have a few power cuts here too that generally only last a few hours. It’d be baltic in no time in the rental so I get why they useful in older properties.

I’ve used a white tarp over the top of our chicken run mostly to keep it dry but it also helped control overheating of the coup inside the run.

How does your lender manage the financial risk with a timber kit. Generally the kit companies want the money up front paid in stages which they might have for several months before the kit is supplied. The kit company goes bust in the meantime and the money is most likely lost. This has happened. Is the lender expecting you to insure against this?