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I have a particular dislike for most window firms and their fitters. They deliberately under measure so they can get in and out as quick as. They do not want to be getting the grinder out and making the hole bigger. This from experience. My windows have similar issues. Mitre bonded ("super glued") trim covering similar gaps. This is my lounge window at the top, the foam is Illbrück FM330 where I've started to address the gaps. With the glued on plastic trim removed to reveal huge gaps: One of my old windows where I chipped off the render to exactly measure the old frame: The new window went in with like a 5mm gap from memory: Inside there's no massive gap. Not great that all my windows are flush with the outer skin. For the most part there are no cavity closers either.

thanks guys that advice was helpful. so most HP have a fixed flow rate. HP all vary flow temperature based on how far off from the set target flow temperature weather compensation will auto adjust target flow temperature based on inside/outside temperatures based on some selected algorithm (graph)? think i got it.

What a great piece of advice from @Alan Ambrose Now the next question is how do you find the right SE / Architect / Designer. I'm an SE / Architectural designer, to be honest I started out as a local builder, went to uni.. learnt about SE stuff. When I look back my education gave me the tools to teach myself.. and that changed my life.

Octupus not available im my area 😞 I only get 7hrs E7 at 14p. Export at 10p so i try to consume myself before exporting. Iwill do a cost benifit calculation to see if HX is worth it. But my gut says not

Much appreciated. Your post is a mine of infomation. So that is a big thanks from me!

I see, that's unfortunate. How do I determine the actual seasonal COP? I want to be sure I'm getting the performance quoted Thank you!

It states above, "Without PWM signal, the pump runs at maximum speed" so if there isn't another cable plugged into the pump PWM socket and it looks like there isnt, then that pump will be running at a 7M head so can't be set to one of its other heads down to 4 or 5M?. These UPM type pumps seem popular with UFH systems, wonder why, as all the normal type can run in all the different modes/settings. most don't have this PWM socket but its very rarely needed.

Thanks for the explanation Mike, useful. So the parge coat primary deals with internal born moisture issues. It stops moisture transportation (by airtightness), limiting internal born moisture being drawn into the wall build up? The preference of mineral wool/fibre insulations over PIR, is primarily associated with external born moisture issues. Mineral wool/fibre insulation's provide better drying to inside of any external borne moisture that makes its way to the interface of internal face of the brickwork and insulation layer? Am I on the right track with thinking those are the principals?

Hope this helps a bit.. but when we want to create a void above the wall head level the forces in the roof members change a lot . The following is very simplistic but intended to give folks an insight into some of the things we design for and hopefully give you all some ideas. Below is a standard fink truss. This fink truss is triagulated, very economic an importantly the loads at the supports are downwards.. and upwards when you get wind uplift. A lot of roofs can be "uplifted".. Below is what we call a raised tie truss. Here we have an extended leg. The ceiling tie and wall support create a lever arm... like having a long spanner to take off a wheel nut on your car. This type of truss depending on the length between the ceiling tie and the wall support causes other forces / sideways movement which can grow exponentially with a small increase in length. An important one is that this kind of truss can push the wall outwards (sideways movement).. so you often need to have "special" sliding truss clips at the wall head or a very strong wall.. and if you have a very strong wall then there are other options! Now the above truss generates some nasty forces at the connection between the ceiling tie and the sloping rafter. Timber connections can be quite weak and they are hard to design economically / buildability wise once you reach a tipping point.. which can be quite early on.. this can be a hard lesson for a Graduate Engineer / self builder. Below is a scissor truss Here you can see that the sloping ceiling tie stops the forces that want to spread the walls outwards as the bottom of the scissor is conneceted to the wall head. Often when we design timber roofs one of the problems is not the size of the timber but having enough timber to make the connections work ok. If you have an old house with a traditionally cut roof you'll see that the ceiling ties and soldiers (the short upright bits) are 1/3 to 1/4 checked. Below is a screenshot of one of my drawings that shows this. The dark green bit is the rafter, light green the soldier/ ceiling tie framing in. But there are only three nails! The one shown here is later detailed as having only 3 no 90x 3.1 mm dia Passlode ring shank galv nails. The three nails are there just to hold the soldier in place when there is say snow / access and roof self weight on the roof. The check in the timber allows for direct bearing.. timber to timber contact... much "stronger" than a few nails! Also we need to watch out for nail spacing and edge distance.. to many nails / to close to the timber edge and we weaken the timber so folks bear that in mind. The three nails are enough to hold the connection together when the wind is trying to suck the roof outwards. To sum up. Timber roof design is a bit of an art.. but hope the above gives some insight into what it is all about. The key thing is that often its the connections that govern the design rather than raw timber size. A good starting point is to go into some old buildings/ terraced houses and see how the roof is put together. @ProDave If you want to chew the fat then would be delighted to hear from you, mind you I'll want to pick your brains too so no free lunch!

Hi people so he came over the owner. He said one inch gap is acceptable . He said for him to change the end frame he will have to take the entire window out. I thought he could just remove the end frame which is screwed in to the metal support pole and wall ?????

A parge coat is used to make the wall airtight, for three reasons. First, it stops stop cold outside air from reaching the insulation, which would degrade the effectiveness of the insulation and potentially lower the temperature within the insulation to the point where condensation forms - which is why it needs to be on the outside of the insulation. Second, it stops the wind from blowing outside air in and drawing inside air out. Thirdly, it stops air escaping due to the 'stack effect' - that is, even on a day without wind, warm moist internal air is more buoyant than the outside air, so will rise and escape through any gaps, drawing outside air in as it does so. If the building is airtight, the air pressure inside the house and inside the insulation will be more-or-less identical, so there's nothing to drive that warm moisture laden into the insulation. So, in answer to your question, no, it won't. That leaves only differentials in relative humidity as the means by which moisture (moisture vapour) can move through the materials and into / out of the insulation. Which is why, if one has been specified, a vapour control layer will always be on the the warm side of the insulation (or at least not more than 1/3 of the way into the insulation, according to a well-known rule of thumb).

Interesting stuff!

Welcome to the forum. Sounds like you have researched it well, it’s easy enough to self install. You will need to insulate the unit, ducts & manifolds in the attic. I can’t help with the calculations but others certainly will.

Please do :) It's good to have an update and to see what you've been up to!

Quite the journey you are on there, great to get an update. What's the fun of air tighting an old build like. Our new build is very good, house went up 1 degree as I worked in it today but here, in millstone Manor, it went down 4 degrees while I was out - so I need to get it more air tight. Done some windows and door resealing need to start on the upper works now! Its brick built 50mm cavity with insulation in places. Any tips?

If your Water Law (WC) with no adjustment was, for example, set as:- Outside 15>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> -2 deg C Flow 35>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>50 deg C your adjustment of +5 to the flow temp takes effect across the whole range, so the Water Law becomes:- Outside 15>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> -2 deg C Flow 40>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>55 deg C so either you should be feeling a lot warmer, or your room stat cuts the heating sooner, or both.

@Iceverge I'm trying to get my head around the parge coat, specifically its position in your build-up. Isn't it "cold side" of the insulation layer and therefore internally borne, warm moisture laden air can past through the mineral wool and potentially condense behind the mineral wool on the relatively cold surface of the parge coat/brickwork? Or perhaps the ideas is the breathable mineral wool allows that condensate to evaporate back into the room?

We are in the process of going for a Dan-wood house on a plot in our current back garden. Great to read this feedback on the process. We are about to submit our stage-2 technical planning application having got planning in principle approval for a self-build. I was inspired by @kandgmitchell to get in touch with Greenraft today for a raft foundation and they came back straightaway with an outline quote. Would be interested to know about the spec that Dan-wood were happy with (eg is 150mm concrete sufficient). And whether it is worth exploring AACM as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to Portland cement as we won’t need a construction warranty for mortgage purposes.

Our calculated heat demand triples from 10 Deg average temp outside and 0 average outside. By the time it's -5 the heat demand is around 4 times that used on a 10 deg average day. But in reality it's more than that. As background heating from fridge and general stuff proportionally gets way smaller. So at 10 degs if you needed 1kW of heating and general stuff in the house gave you 200W you only need to supply 800W of heating, on day where you need 4kW, the general stuff still gives you 200W, so you need to supply 3.8kW. So 4.75 the heating input is required. The more heat leaky the house, the steeper the heating curve. We are are on an average daily temp of -0.5, our coldest so far. But looks to dropping to -6 on Friday

My proposal is to ditch the concrete blocks actually in this scenario. 20mm vertical cladding. 38*50mm battens across the wall 38*50mm battens up the wall at 600cc. Breather membrane 220*42mm studs at 600cc infilled with blown in cellulose. Airtight membrane. 45*50mm studs for insulated service cavity at 400cc. Plasterboard and skim. U value 0.16.

It would likely be much cheaper to use your local authority's pre-app service compared to the £1,000 appraisal

Ok, whats the plan something like this? 20mm vertical cladding boards. 35*50mm battens across the wall 38*50mm battens up the wall @ 400cc You'd need at least 8 fixings per m2 at a guess. 30p per fixing. 95mm wafer head screw and rawlplug. 215mm cavity block wall. 120mm PIR foamed to the internal walls. Internal face of boards taped. 20*70mm vertical battening for service cavity @ 400cc fixed at 400mm vertical spacing or 6 per m2. 60p per fixing 200mm wafer headed screw and rawlplug. Plasterboard ands skim. U value 0.18 You have 8 fixings externally so £2.40/m2. 6 internally but longer screws so £3.60/m2. Total £6/m2 and 14 holes. Add some extra for openings and waste £7/m2 and 16 holes. Assume your house is a quite small external wall of 200m2 thats £1400 on fixings, not too bad sounding actually. However you would have to drill 3200 holes into cavity blocks! At least 10% of them would pull out and fail because they're awful to fix into I think 3500 is still conservative. 20 fixings per hr say. 175hrs at a cheap labour rate of £25/hr. £4375 for labour of drilling and 5 weeks of absolute torture.

I return... nearly 18 months later. The project is still ongoing, but I thought it was worth updating everyone on our experiences so far. I admit we've probably made a few mistakes but as a first attempt at a big project I'm pretty happy how we've dealt with issues and moved on; every day is a school day! If any of this helps anyone else then it's worth it even if I look a bit daft during it! So - onto the project. We started by demolishing the old extensions since the foundations for them wouldn't be up to supporting a floor above them, plus they were built inadequately for our needs (solid walls, weird floor buildups, even weirder roofs). There was plenty of advice on this site around the existing foundations and how to proceed with them which we really appreciated, but in the end we were led by the structural engineers and underpinned the property for peace of mind to avoid any differential movement. The extension foundations are piled down to about 8-9m and the existing property was cantilever underpinned using piles too. Overall we're pretty confident the house won't be going anywhere (we now have 36 piles!) We've then wrapped a fair chunk of the house in a new extension to better use the space, and put the poorer performing old external walls further into the property. Cavity is 200mm with 190mm PIR made up in two layers incl interlocking boards and tape, and the flooring is 240mm EPS insulation in the new areas, whilst we've just finished digging the old flooring out of the house which should be insulated to 170mm. I'd like more here but we're restricted by the depth of existing foundations which is a shame. The old electricity supply has gone from overhead to a nice new underground supply, complete with 3ph up to the DNO supply head so we're future-proofed (still only 1ph currently) and I'm waiting for a response to my request for a new water supply. Wet UFH is throughout, with the oil boiler gone and an ASHP to replace it (When I can get an installer on the BUS grant that won't rinse me). Spent a fair bit of time playing with Heatpunk and Jeremy's spreadsheet for heat loss predictions which is fun when half the property is 200mm cavity and the other is 50mm. I really wish here that we'd stepped the walls outwards and then EWI'd the older walls but I didn't think about this until it was too late - a good reminder to plan ahead here. I'm also scheming for 10kWp of PV to go on since we're having a new roof fitted. The savings in tiles & labour lets me man-maths my way into some GSE trays and panels 😁 My current focus is looking at the air tightness, not as much of an issue in the new section but the older part of the house is good fun, so I guess there will be updates on this part from time to time as I'd love to get MVHR fitted as well. Words can be boring sometimes, so the tl;dr is: should we have listened to you all knocked it all down and started from scratch? In hindsight, Yes 😂 Did we? No... (Be gentle 😳) time to learn from it and make the best of it! And the pictures: Steel reinforcement for ringbeams in place after piling at the back Starting the build to DPC Second lift and on the way to wall plate. Will maybe dump a few more before & after shots in the coming days or a specific focus on parts if anyone is interested. Poor house has been battered about a bit - for the greater good I hope!

Only thinking not Matt as initial flow seems good. I did take the shower head off last night and the filter/ gauze was about 1/4 clogged with plumbers mate type residue. Its had a water softener from new but maybe the head is slightly blocked?

I've never seen a trench block...