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Turn the membrane upwards against the outer side of the outer leaf of blockwork, then lay your driveway up against it.

I bought mine from Outsourced Energy, not sure if they still sell them. Hep2O do them. Also a quick search https://www.google.com/search?q=valved+water+manifold&client=ms-android-oneplus-terr2-rso3&hs=auXV&sca_esv=3b84e253abc71a61&sxsrf=APpeQnuZRlilx-yilcXRHpmgyLjX5DCNig%3A1783403463600&ei=x5NMarudJImchbIPtaSIsAI&biw=360&bih=664&oq=valved+water+manifold&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIhV2YWx2ZWQgd2F0ZXIgbWFuaWZvbGQyBxAjGLACGCcyCBAAGAUYDRgeMggQABgFGA0YHjIIEAAYBRgNGB4yCBAAGAUYDRgeMggQABgFGA0YHjIIEAAYBRgNGB4yCBAAGAUYDRgeSIkuUNAiWMokcAF4AZABAJgBgAKgAaIEqgEFMC4yLjG4AQPIAQD4AQGYAgOgAsQCwgIEEAAYR5gDAOIDBRIBMSBAiAYBkAYEkgcDMS4yoAeyEbIHAzAuMrgHuwLCBwUyLTEuMsgHHYAIAA&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp

Thanks @JohnMo any recommendations on where to source manifolds for this in uk? I can find lots of ufh manifolds but struggling with domestic water distribution. Thanks

Very true. A 3x MPPT hybrid inverter may be a better solution. Assuming a DC battery. If AC coupled battery any 2x MPPT inverter in addition to the existing inverter would be fine. Just need to manage the export limit.

Chat GPT... (Gonna be above that every afternoon from Wed through to the middle of next week. FFS. How long does it take to lay a floor ? About 6 months. 2 Weeks work and 5.5 months playing the hokey cokey.)

Yes Have a laugh at the pic. NASA operation sun screen - see pic - £10 off Amazon but too flimsy to tape to the outside in the breeze. Not sure it was doing that much but today was cooler. A bit like that foil they wrap round people with hypothermia.

Guy just said 'I am not doing that'. Seems difficult to square with Amtico recommending dry laying and the contractor being an Amtico Premier partner. You would have thought he could at least say, 'it will take longer to lay that way so there will have to be a price increase'. It would have helped if he had at least said something like, these planks vary a lot, do you want to have a look before and as I start laying ? When I raised it he said 'I can't take these up again'. Once his boss came to look at the manufacturing faults they had spotted (but only mentioned to their boss and not to me). The boss said these will all have to come up - and come up they did. Kitchen fitter called today too, saying he intends to come early. Tomorrow I am calling the kitchen company to bend their ear. I have had to wait 6 weeks for them to get missing parts. I sent them a gantt chart showing the earliest 2nd fit date. They are supposed to be coming later not now. I am not having it. They insisted on being paid 100% on delivery. Now I have 90% of a kitchen, they couldn't even be bothered to tell me when the parts had arrived, and they want me to renegotiate dates with their sub contract fitter. As ever, once people have your money they take their eye off the ball. This job isn't running to other people's convenience, it is running to a sequenced plan.

I am told Amtico have agreed to replace the whole order with new packs from a different batch number which will be quality checked before despatch and should be with us on Wednesday. Slightly makes we wonder a bit... Why would you need to quality check something that should be quality checked at the factory ? What is happening to the original packs now ? Who actually bears the cost of 2 wasted man days due to supposed premier manufacturer shipping out defective product ? I also wonder the original packs were about 50/50 plainish vs featured. Could I sensibly take say 10% of featured planks and leave them out of the mix ? If the colour match is good could I take selected non-defective planks from the original batch to mix in ? I believe the Amtico is manufactured in wider sheets with a single photographic image, then cut into strips and boxed. I had a couple of sample planks from one box and they did seem to match if you placed them along side each other. No doubt you can't lay them that way as they need to have staggered joins and you would end up with one large scale repeating pattern.

Tell him to (expletive deleted) off. I think you need to remind him you're paying the bills and it’s your house. The tail doesn’t wag the dog!!! Agree to pay him the downtime as an extra, an hour or two at his 10hr day divided by 10 x 2hrs, and take control of how this gets laid. Will the replacement 20% be the same batch / variant? If not guaranteed, then they need throwing in here and there to camouflage them.

We've recently had a similar amount of amtico laid. Not planks but a figured/textured design. Our fitter did lay out section by section then fit.

Just re read it and understand how they've split the arrays....as you say. I'm not sure how valid that paper is with today's kit. The paper seems to be from 2013 when panels were a fraction of the wattage/current than they are today. For a single inverter/MPPT system they say the E/W arrays must be wired in parallel which will significantly increase the current over that of a single E or W array. Back in 2013 the combined current would still be quite low and likely manageable by a single inverter/MPPT. With modern panels the current is significantly higher than those from 2013. Put 2 modern arrays in parallel and you could go over a single inverter/MPPT limit?? With figures plucked off the Web you've got a max 15A DC input for a solis 5kw inverter and Longi 450watt panels with a max 11A output. Put 2 longi strings in parallel and I'd be pretty sure your going to exceed the inverters 15A input limit??

Who in their right mind designs structural support over a drain?🙈……the extension isn’t really worth doing!

I would have done a design for free!

Infinite worlds of infinite size. GPU 100% maxed due to fill rate. FPS 60. About to break the green/brown/yellow realistic vibe and go other worldly. Then plan for procedural vegetation (not like early voxel efforts) and indeed procedureal creatures complete with paths for them to inhabit and physics engine. Amazing stuff! - not looked at 1 line of code still!

The colour I need is Buckingham Green, like the lighter colour on the photo. Hammerite only make it as "garage door paint". There isn't much said about it's properties so I'm guessing the name sells it to the diy shopper and it sticks to primer or gloss. So I'll try that but with rust converter first.

That's great. We can see so.much more now. My immediate comments are . 1. This is a small fiddly job, all edges and no middle. So it really needs to be by a general builder who does the lot. 2. I see and understand the drain now. I was thinking of it being beneath the canopy, not beneath footings, but OK. It's a hand dig. Structurally this isn't difficult but will be adapted on site and the Engineer will inspect the excavations and possibly revise to suit. Is the drain just yours or serving other properties? But permissions-wise is a concern if it is on the ownership/ control of the drainage company. What has your Architect said? If it needs permissions then that should have been dealt with as a priority. 3. It's a small job. The fees seem steep unless you have been changing your mind a lot. I wonder if this discussion can be moved to its own place.

I could show some pics of installs, ducting like tumble drier hose, held up (strangled) with cable ties, and other such very 1st year apprentice stuff. Looked like fed up teenagers fitted it as part of community service. Just worse than bread & butter stuff, and failures of whole house systems which needed total gut out by replacement suppliers and installers. As said, avoid. Or don’t.

Sorry, but what are kerb units?

It depends on your build method. We had Timber Frame - all payable before it even arrived on site so it was a bit touch and go at times - but we had a fair buffer to start with! A traditional build would be a lot easier.

I've posted a couple of extracts below. Thanks for all the responses so far. It seems the general consensus is to now find some good builders myself, pass them the plans and structural calculations produced so far, and get them to come back with quotes...? Then when I find one, the builder will get me to sign a contract (which I may not fully understand, so will have to get advice on, I suspect), and everything will proceed from there? So if I do that, how much further involvement need the current architect have? They have this "CDM Principal Designer" role, is that still relevant once the design is finalised? When construction has commenced, I guess building control need to be involved to inspect things - does any other inspection process independent of the builder need to be carried out? The structural engineer originally planned to set back the supporting posts so that they were not over the sewer. However I wasn't that happy with that idea - it would look strange, and I was planning the main route to the new 'porch' formed by the extension to be from the side. Engineer queried depth of sewer, which I estimated as "From the 'lip' where the manhole cover sits (ie the level of the underside of the thick concrete cover) to the top of the pipe is 66cm, to the base of the pipe is 80cm". He then worked his figures based on having the posts at the corners. But I suppose if this is refused, then the earlier idea can be returned to...

The rock is pushed up, the rock rolls down. Some LVT went down, some LVT was taken up again - manufacturing fault affecting 20% of the planks. Apply shoulder to rock - attempt to push. We have chosen LVT planks with a featured wood design. Some planks are fairly plain, some are heavily featured/knotted. So how do we decide how to lay them out. I had a concern that the contractor was not laying them randomly and seemed to have laid more heavily featured ones than plain ones. They said we open 2 or 3 packs then lay them as they come. Amtico said loose lay them and then swap planks around until you are happy, then stick down. Contractor not happy with that approach. I appreciate the PITA of loose laying them first, especially with a total area of 50sqm (could only really loose lay a section at a time) but it is going to be down for 20 years. Experiences, thoughts and comments...?

Yes, it may not be ready yet, but I think things are very much moving towards making it possible at some point in the future. I always find it interesting to wonder why we do things in a particular way and how they could change. I guess it is analagous to always on lighting circuits. I can turn the circuit on/off remotely at the Sonoff module now, not just at the consumer unit. And, well, the physical light switch may have little to do with the circuit power status. Mr ChatGPT says...

I've stopped mine short before and used kerb units on edge for the final bit. I don't think it matters massively

We are having a Radon membrane (but I suspect the same applies for a simple DPM) and am just about to put my order in for pre formed Visqueen units. As the floor slab protrudes across the 350mm wide inner leaf/cavity and outer leaf, I am confused as how you stop the slab getting damp from rain water falling on the outer part of the slab which sits outside the garage door, which then creeps internally inside the garage. Below is an image of the pre formed corners, but even if you did not have pre formed corners and cut and taped the DPM around the opening, you still have the issue of the slab running continuously through the opening and outside. Do you simple cast the slab in two sections and have a dpm upstand on the inside and have rebar mesh poking through to the 350mm wide opening section?

What i saw at the show when i looked inside their unit. Cheap looking bent tin and electronics that looked like a 4th form GCSE project using an Arduino. Untidy & cheap looking. Their summer by-pass was an extra cost add on, dont like that. Rega vents design was a branched idea as well which i expressly did not want.