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I asked ChatGPT about this.... Highlights...

@Super_Paulie I just noticed that you come from a dodgy area. I worked in A&P Tyne for years, both Hebburn and Wallsend, on RFA contracts. All hail the stotty! Many a curry consumed down Whitley Bay.

You select this to your advantage, to balance floor levels from room to room, sir. 6mm is plenty, just make sure to glue and screw it down to the P5, and you will be triumphant.

For a bit of fun lets have a peak behind the curtain. Take your case at 1.8m and you are just seeking rebuild insurance.. just that. How would you get to the stage when you need rebuild insurance alone? This would mean that every other policy has failed to offer cover (which is normally standard) and Protek are offering this as independent cover as a one off and have nothing to do with the warranty. As I said in a previous post I have met with them and engaged. The problem they seem to have is that their computer says no and some of their coms systems are a bit shite, this lets them down. It can be really frustrating for Clients and myself. It's not that they are offering a bad product or are infested with chancers. Once you get up the chain a bit I've found them very reasonable to deal with. It could be that you are splitting out the Protek offer and seeing 4.0k as an item. But that is not how business works.. their itemisation is likely based on them securing the warranty and turning stuff into a bundle packaged up. Go back and look at what information you have given them and have another go. There is probably a bit more to this? Do you have a back story you want to share?

Ahh good to know - I tried various methods and none seemed to work (As a registered user) OK I get you but for me heat emitters are all about surface area (especially at low flow temps), flow rate and volume of water Take my 1800 x 578 vertical it has a volume of water of 10 Litres 10 litres divided by 0.578m width = 17.3 l/m 10 litres divided by 1.8 height = 5.5 l/m Compare that to my K33 1400 x 700 with a capacity of 14 Litres 14 litres divided by 1.4 = 10 l/m 14 litres divided by 0.7 = 20 l/m OK now I bloody get it - ignore me I'm stupid - it's basically looking at how much volume you have per m as a factor and you need to always use the width................... You've clearly put a lot of effort into it - it seems quite polished already - I do like the "not to current regs" pointers (I've got an 80's house - extended in naughties so stand no chance of being to current regs but I've improved it where I can

Warranty providers are insurance companies.. who just happen to underwrite self builds. Many just sub contract out all the inspections, plans and SE checks! That is backed up with a nice bit of marketing, sales staff etc which is what you see. I do battle with warranty providers on claims stuff so get to see what is behind the curtain. There is no way you could know this unless you do a bit of this stuff as a day job.

Not sure about the Tikkurila, but you can definitely get Johnstone's tinted. Our local Johnstone's definitely used to have the F&B codes for mixing.

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Thanks for letting me know. That's my fault. I was playing around with users and authorisation earlier to create the new beta engineer test and in doing so seemed to break how radiators are saved to specific users - it was saving fine for anonymous but not any registered users! Anyway, it should be fixed now 😊 Yeah, the width is actually termed length in catalogues so you always have dimensions = height by length e.g. 600x1200 or 1800x445 Glad to hear you're getting on with it okay!

I don't really want anything other than the right colour. In the past, like many people decorating a room, have just gone down to somewhere like B&Q bought Dulux from brand recognition, and the feeling that anything that says 'Trade' means made to a budget price point that suits traders and allows them to maximise their profit. Trade = basic utilitarian. Roller dulux onto the wall, job done, never a problem. SWMBO saw an F&B shop and had a design chat and decided she liked F&B. Whilst expensive, the extra cost is a rounding error in the overall spend, and if it makes her happy fine. We did have a painter's quote, accepted it, paid the deposit, they started the job with a bit of mist coating, then the timeline slipped, then they magically took on 6 months work without telling us and binned our 'contract'. I'd take them to court just to teach them a lesson but I'm too busy trying to get this shitshow complete before we both die.

email sent - to be honest adding rads has been my biggest issue - doesn't seem to want to save them! I know all my rads are pretty much spot on size wise for flow temps I'm using and house heat loss - I've made all the mistakes and learnt from it - I'll use two column So even with a vertical rad that is 1800 mm high you divide the volume by the width? I get that for a panel rad it would work that way but thanks - good learning point Ahh this makes sense now - thank you I'll do that next time I'm back at it That was my approach after I screwed up the first room and didn't know which external wall I was adding a window too As I said - I like it and I haven't broke it yet which is what I'm normally paid to do

Just about to order my sub floor for this, @Nickfromwales would you recommend 6, 9 or 12mm ply over the 22mm P5? Got my spreader plates at the ready.

I have 2 coats of Wickes Trade matt white emulsion on my kitchen ceiling. Never been a problem, goes on well, covers well and lasts. Why do you want a specialist expensive paint?

Just to update, I did eventually buy a fairly cheap robot mower... can't quite remember the model off hand. It was rated for something like a 40⁰ slope so I thought it would get up to the job. Well, it turned out to be a lemon. For my lawn anyway. I suppose it was too much to expect that what into recently was a field full of sheep would be flat enough for this to work. The ground clearance on the mower is very small, and the slightest bump or hollow would have it spinning round on the spot, or even worse, just getting stuck. I put a fair bit of effort in to levelling up the perimeter so that it could always make its way home, but it never once managed to complete a full lap, let alone actually cut the main part of the lawn. I think the longest it would run without problems was about ten minutes. So in my experience, you really do need a billiard table of a lawn for this to work. But it's possible that some of the more expensive models are much better than mine.

It's not yet painful enough. The 70's Oil Crisis was painful and did, briefly, prompt Government action in the UK, even if it didn't turn out well - another expansion of nuclear followed by dependence on gas...

Any radiators you add go into your own 'company' radiator database linked to you as a user, so if you had several projects, you'd build up your own database of radiators. Nobody else has access to those or can edit/change them, they're yours. In the wider version for managing several projects, there's even a project settings page where you can add edit and delete you own database. If you want access to this wider version with multi-project capability, ping me your registered email address and I'll change your settings to 'beta' test engineer in the system. I'll add flat tube radiators to the type as a system addition, but for now, two column would work fine - the type doesn't really matter that much, it's more for your own reference. The important bits are output at DT50 and water volume really. And then size if you're putting a new one into a space... Not at all, I've done that to check volume on existing rads myself, but luckily most rad manufacturers now provide l/m figures in the tech spec. Stelrad actually even provide Kv. To get the l/m min take your total measure volume and divide by length in meters - so in your case the 0.578m Best thing to do in the workflow is add all your standard elements into the U-value tab and create your U-value library. Do this especially for all your floor U-values by using the Floor U-value calculator as floor U-values vary according to the Perimeter/Area ratio. Once that's in you'll get an automatic drop down when you add an element in the rooms tab. These will then auto-populate and add the thermal bridging addition. I've been back and forth on the editing of value directly in the room as if you skip creating the U-value library and you're working on a large project, inputing into individual room elements gets very tedious, which is partyl why I locked it to force users back to the U-value library. I ought to put a user hint in there about this. The other bit to bear in mind here is that if you add a door or window to the room, you'll get another automatic drop-down where you can select which element area this door or window needs to be subtracted from. So if you have an external wall added, this will be listed in the dropdown and you just apply it. The reason to do this is because this will apply the correct calculation for fabric loss, but at the same time used the full external element area for the ventilation & infiltration calculation. To make things easier to follow, I tend to add the wall element, then add any corresponding window or door to that element and subtract it. Then move onto the next element. Then in the elements also remember to change any internal element's Design Delta T (e.g.partition wall) to the difference between the two adjacent internal spaces and not leave it at default. Elements roof, ground floor suspended, external wall are all automatically added to exposed envelope so if you have a ceiling that is the external envelope, then you need to add this to exposed area by selecting Exp. I have on my to do list a load of videos to walk new users through the tool. If you spend a lot of time inputing this stuff, it follows pretty much a normal design workflow but it's not obvious at all for someone not in the industry.

Don't have a source but I'm pretty sure I remember the last government had to implement various incentives for the last big round to go ahead. Things like reducing the provisions that need to be made to clean up after the rigs are done, tax breaks. I'm not sure what the current situation is but while I don't have huge problems with new licences if they are purely at the companies risk I would have problem with any sort of subsidy direct or indirect. Any public funds put into energy independence should go on renewables as that is the most cost effective option at this point.

The problem you have is you are trying to to do two different things you want a shiny paint with no pores open to stop moisture getting to it because it’s a kitchen, but then you want a flat mat paint to hide the plasterers sins. ive just painted a shower room in zinzer permanent white and it looks really good, however it has no windows in there so I cannot vouch for its hiding properties. but definitely something I will use in wet areas again. in a kitchen i would go with one of the flat ones we mentioned as it shouldn’t get damp, if you have kitchen extraction then it’s not going to affect it. rubbing it all down oooh that’s the question I wouldn’t because you then make it dusty and will then need to hoover it and wash it. but I might be inclined to go over the f and b with a primer, maybe the Tikurila optiva primer then the Tikurila anti reflex. you could phone Tikurila technical help line.

This article from OEUK addresses several of the points discussed in this thread - how much O&G is left, what would be the benefit of extracting it, how quickly and easily can that be done. OK, it’s a trade body so be ready to fact check, but a lot of it makes sense. https://oeuk.org.uk/policy-versus-geology-new-report-reveals-165bn-choice-facing-north-sea-future/ My sense is that the way ahead should be: Don’t ban new O&G fields. Let the O&G companies take the risk whether they can make the economics work. They have a knack of finding new hydrocarbons and extracting them. New licences should be linked to contracts for O&G landed in the UK at a fixed price, not spot prices. Acknowledge that we have a climate emergency. But manage the progress to decarbonisation not by constricting the supply side but by demand side measures, I.e. carbon taxes and carbon border adjustment mechanism. The system costs of renewables need to be accounted for - their intermittency and required grid upgrades. It’s complicated though. I hope our politicians and civil servants have got their heads round all this, but I’m not sure they do. Other countries looking at us won’t see a clean energy superpower, leading the world. They’ll see our deindustrialisation and the cost to our economy, as evidence that our policies are not working.

We've had some success with Dulux super matt on ceilings, and diamond matt for the walls.

Yes, very useful. It's one thing that I wish we had here in France - instead we use regular sockets on a lighting circuit (2 maximum, unless a contactor or the like is used) & rely on intuition to distinguish them :(

Am I going to have to sand down the F&B modern emulsion lightly before repainting with something more matt ? (It is 38 sqm !) Is the Johnstone's and the Tukkurila going to be suitable for a room with a kitchen in it ? (i.e. given some moist air from opening oven doors, hob cooking etc will inevitably make it to ceiling level) Can you get these paints mixed to any colour to match the F&B 'All White' ? Don't know what to do with the walls now.

We have them in all rooms and use them most of the time instead of the overhead pendant lighting. Not another socket!

yep, young'un here was asking for a better photo to work from...

Well certainly. But normally a company claiming to be premium but producing a problematic product will rapidly go to the wall. Honestly I have had so much work researching all manner of stuff to put things right. So I left SWMBO to choose some paint and assumed F&B knew what they were doing. It is just paint and I have painted rooms albeit years ago without problem - usually dulux matt and stuff.