All Activity

When installing hot and cold manifolds, is it good practice to install a board on the clockwork first, and if so what? Pipes are mlcp into plant room.

Thanks. It's all oil heating here in Northern Ireland so heat pumps are a bit of a challenge. Once we get inside the house then the plumbing should be the same as any other system so I'm trusting my plumber to do all that wet stuff with his eyes closed. One last question, do you have a link to an extended ball valve 22mm, I think they are all 28. Or maybe I run 28 mm to the end of the ball valves and then reduce down to 22 🤔

BC have shown no interest in my Cat6. I'm expecting to give them an electrical certification from my sparky when all is done- I can't see them second guessing that really. As far as I am aware there is no network certification required for domestic networks. Low voltage cables like Cat6, speaker cable, HDMI etc not supposed to share ducting with high voltage. There are some nice semi-autistic videos of tidy cabling into patch panels and racks on youtube.

Are you aware that you can look at resources like the British Gypsum 'white book' to see a variety of stud wall constructions and their expected sound performance, thickness etc... https://www.british-gypsum.com/specification/white-book-specification-selector/white-book-overview For our extension/refurb we have used Habito on some timber stud walls with 100mm acoustic rockwool infill - and don't forget to soundproof apertures like electrical sockets with acoustic putty pads. You might want to vary choice of construction somewhat depending on the requirements for the rooms in question and other factors. For example we have a wall with a pocket door where we wanted the wall to have decent sound resistance at the pocket and so have it double boarded with Habito then skimmed. Walls for a TV/music room potentially different requirement from other rooms etc. Consider dealing with noise sources at source - e.g. insulated soil pipe or acoustic wraps. For timber stud make sure to get good straight timber. Very best acoustic performance is normally from constructions where the two sides of the wall structure are isolated from each other - staggered stud construction, resilient bar etc. We wanted to also maximise room size on an existing footprint which took us away from staggered stud. We had a small area needing thermal insulation at minimal thickness and used an aerogel MgO board from Proctor - aerogel with a few mm MgO. It does tend to crack if you drill into it.

Wooden stud wall (you state you have carpentery skills). Insulated the gaps (a bit of noise absorption, but importantly limit room to room heat transfer) Double plaster board for noise absorption. Both sides if you want. Relatively quick, cheap, easy with help.

As suspected not all those parts are required for the supplied pan, only the threaded rod. To which we add these parts and these informative instructions (!), which don't match the provided pan and s/c seat! Which, when you work it out end up like this fitted to the pan. Threaded rod with metal bits on: (Muppet forget to take a photo) Pan fitted:

Man after my own heart!. All this is MUCH more fun!

Tell me about it. Downstairs I've got a partially finished bathroom and every time I walk in there, I'm thinking (expletive deleted) this is boring, I'll go and do something else instead. Having not been in tech developing systems for over 20 years, I'm really enjoying getting back into it, so yet another more fun distraction.

Stud wall in wood should just get a big tick.

But these emissions and others are in a worse place at high altitude, so in effect 3x times as bad as ground based pollutants. So now you have jumped to 2 Tonnes. I read 2.2, so we have different sources. But 4 in the family home is equal to 500kg if your playing the per person game. But for me one transatlantic flight per person is same as heating by gas for a year per person, but high altitude emissions are 3x as bad for the environment.

How_to_Lie_with_Statistics_-_Darrell_Huff.pdf

When we were on an old-style septic tank system it was fine but when we replaced it with a package plant it was recommended we stopped using it. Chances are it might have been ok but if the manufacturer advises against it and then there's an issue...

I just gave them a call and got some really useful answers abut the AT350: Learns your usage patterns and does the regen at a suitable time based on that Has a button for manual regen Full regen takes about an hour but they water bypasses (so gives you hard water) for about 20 minutes of that Regen output is at mains pressure Happily used with a 6 person house Low flow rates not likely to be an issue They are local(ish) to me which I like the thought of.

By not finishing the house 👍

Where do you find the time to squeeze all this in?

I'm actually quite worried about your plumber if he/she has been involved in spec. and supply of the components. Definitely insist on what you've ordered. The extended ball valves are a blessing as you want the valves fully insulated and accessible. It's possible to do it with the normal valves but not as neat - I don't know whether the cheapo ones you've receive are even full bore? Using bsp to compression fittings is not too much of a problem, but to me it's the unnecessary cost because the bsp valves plus fittings are always more expensive than just buying the compression ones and then you have the additional joints - and there's the additional time fitting them which can be quite significant. It may be a good idea to just sit down and draw your pipework section from heat pump to wherever the primary flow/returns are going and then map out exactly what fittings are going where and then sit down with the plumber and give the supplier a kick with the resulting list and exchanges. Good luck.

Statistical illiteracy writ large. Still, it got us to read the article. Instead, read How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff . Its been in print since the 1950s. Penguin Books is the publisher

It’s very DIY’able Height of what floor? Internal floor? You can adjust the height of the pedestals from ‘not many mm’ to ‘quite a lot of mm’. You could probably cover the manhole with the tiles, hiding it completely, and lift the tiles when access is required. It takes seconds to lift and replace the tiles. For the cill you could make little mini slabs, the size of the pedestal foot, that sit on the cill and hold the front of the tile. Added bonus’s: Free draining round the perimeter of every tile. No grout to fail. No place for weeds to grow If you change your mind re shape/layout it’s very easy to rearrange.

The average uk house with a gas boiler emiits 4-5t co2e a year. A full transatlantic return flight is about 650kg per person. So say 2 people and allow for lower average occupancy maybe 1t per person so 2t for your trip (4t if a family) You could swap to a HP, take your family on a trip to NY, and still be (a bit) lower carbon than staying at home and keeping your gas boiler. If you had an EV as well, you'd be well ahead.

I rarely fly, maybe 3x in the last decade, though I have flown to NZ once and the US a few times in my younger days. Incidentally my NZ trip took 24h all in. My grandfather visited NZ before the war to study farming techniques and other things. He went by boat. It took over a month. Without air travel International travel woill essentially become impossible for everyone but the super wealthy. If you focus on individual actions everything looks pointless. This is a variation on "the UK is 1% of emissions so why should we do anything". Say we wanted to cut our co2 emissions as a nation by 25%. We could totally ban flying. Nothing leaves the ground. No travel for business or pleasure. No fast cargo of goods. Nothing Can you imagine the public backlash. Holidays abroad, trips to visit friends and families, school exchange trips, sports tours, sports tournaments, academic conferences, specialist consultancy, music and arts tours etc all gone. And we would still need to do something else to reach the target. Or We could insulate our homes and swap to heatpumps. We would end up with warmer, cheaper to run homes that are less dependant on foreign fuels and easily meet our target. Or we could phase in EVs (and more rail) and have cleaner air in our cities, less noise pollution and also easily exceed our target Focusing first on air travel is like religiously turning off your TV at the wall each night to save energy whilst not insulating your loft.

I'm looking at different aspects (priorities), but they're ranked. As stated, cost is placed last. We don't have a lot of skills, mostly just carpentry, but we want to learn and prefer to do as much of the job ourselves as possible.

yes , the plan is to use hollowcore slabs

I really like the look of that as it's something I could actually do. (I'm for any job that doesn't have a clock on it for materials drying). The only issue I see with that other than maybe height of the floor is that I have a manhole in the middle of the space. I need to think about how I fix something down on the cill at the right height to provide that edge support. Thanks.

Kineticos are great.