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Heating is only one factor in keeping a home comfortable. If you are starting with an old cottage you should be considering which parts are worth keeping and which can be modernised. For example, solid masonry walls will lose 9 times as much heat as modern walls built to minimum standards...

From what I've read, there is no point changing the cooker supply from 32A for a 60cm cooker. Rings and ovens spend very little time on full power. An efficient modern oven uses very little electricity once it is warm. The thermal element in an MCB attempts to mimic the heating of the cable and...

Fuel is sold by volume but the energy is more to do with mass. Diesel is about 13% more dense than petrol so you have to knock 13% of the price of diesel before making the comparison, so diesel is much cheaper than petrol. Then diesel engines have a higher compression ratio and no throttle, both...

For an old house it is probably well worth installing gas-fired central heating. Use a boiler size calculator to figure out heating needs. http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/business/Business/Building-Professionals/Helpful-Tools/Whole-house-boiler-sizing-wizard...

I'm not a fan of putting gypsum plaster on solid walls. I've just been flicking off 20-year old plaster (judging by pages of The Sun in the holes) from one such wall. I've broken the 25% limit and the BCO is on my back so I'll be insulating. ⅝ of the wall is rendered and that is fine.

My guess is that their CB is correctly sized and that a 6mm² flex can be used to wire the cooker to the existing cooker control unit. A 32A supply is usually appropriate for household cookers up to 15kW plus a 13A socket.

How about changing the FCU to a 20A double-pole isolator switch above the counter feeding a double-gang socket below the counter?

That sounds like a feed for an electric shower. I suspect that you could have the MCB changed to 32A with RCD protection. Then run a radial circuit. Possibly in 6mm² from the switch location to the first socket then in 4mm² clipped direct to the surface or buried in plaster. The work on...

I think if you replace more than 25% of ANY layer in a thermal element (outside wall, floor or roof) you have to bring that element up to insulation building regs Part L. This includes replastering. The downside is you can lose about 70mm and you probably have to rework the door and window reveals.

Why not mount the boards on resilient bars? http://www.british-gypsum.com/pdf/SB07_GypWall_QUIET_SF_02.pdf

I think there is a strange anomaly in that adding sockets in ordinary locations (not kitchen or bathroom) to existing circuits is not notifiable. However, any new wiring has to conform to regulations. If new wiring is run on the surface, buried at least 50mm below the surface or protected by a...

It should be OK to run 4mm² through plaster and/or clipped direct to the surface to create a 32A radial circuit. Just keep at least 2 larger diameters between cables on the surface and one diameter in plaster. The work is notifiable so possibly cheaper to get it done professionally...

I did some experiments with a couple of kettles - one plastic and the other stainless steel. The SS kettle was considerably less efficient. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kettle

If you have much less than 2GB of RAM, your computer will use the swap file to hold information when it needs more memory space like when starting a new application. If the swap file is on the same disk as the application (i.e. C), that disk has to work hard to write old data to swap and read...

With a second HDD, you might want to move the swap to the second disk. Do that fairly soon to get it at the beginning of the disk where it is faster. With regard to Windows XP software, I use the Oracle/Sun free VirtualBox to run XP virtual machine. ClearType on LCD screens was the reason I...

If the room window faces west then evening sun will always be a problem. One solution is an external blind to keep out the sun. Solar film on the glass could help. A centrifugal extractor fan mounted in the loft will help remove the hottest air from the ceiling. My sister in Sweden has a fan...

I'd like to know why lighting circuits are limited to 3% voltage drop. It can't be to guarantee supply voltage as UK households are typically 4% percent above 230V and 9% above some Continental voltages. My guess is that it is to limit flicker as other devices are turned on and off. Given the...

Diversity has already been applied to each circuit. A normal 4 bedroom house supply would have 25mm² meter tails rated at over 100A for the main fuse. The voltage drop on typical meter tails is negligible. At 100A, the voltage drop over 50m of 25mm² would be 1.8 * 50 * 100 / 1000 = 9V. This is...

At 1.8 mV/A/m voltage drop for 25mm² cable, you should be able to supply 76A over 50m within the 3% voltage drop for lighting. I may be ignorant, but I'm a bit worried that the circuits required for a 4 bedroom cottage are going to total much more than 76A.32A cooker appliances 32A downstairs...

What odds can I get that 25mm² SWA is going to be the minimum accepted between buildings with meter and CU? I can't see the supply type. If it is TT, should the earth rod be local to the CU rather than local to the remote meter? I don't imagine this is worth DIY.