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Good comments. Unfortunately you are likely to get some shadow lines or partial shadow lines from the ceiling downlights though. Their light beam gets cut off by the wall cabinets at an angle according to their distance across the ceiling. Difficult to match lumens and colour temp exactly between ceiling downlights and under wall cupboard lights. If you are having a hob extractor (e.g. integrated) then one challenge is to find one with lights to match what you put under the wall cabinets, and to integrate control with the undercabinet lights. IMO manufacturers should be building in smart home protocol control of apppliance lighting. When using LED puck lights brightness still seems to be a limitation - watch out for the lumen output figures - amazing how some don't even state it - honestly how can you sell a light without stating its light output - but some do.

*Account permanently banned* Good job you have a personal AI supercomputer on your desk to run local models eh?

I did . Guess future models aren’t allowed to be trained on my language… which is basically (expletive deleted)ing tough !

Seen the new T&Cs? No more being sweary at the AI. They don't want you hurting it's feelings.

Hi all, I'm a long-time BuildHub lurker and stealer of others' good tips. I started a loft conversion in April this year and I've been meaning to start a BuildHub diary for a while, partly because I've found the forum enormously useful both prior to and while doing it, and partly because I've ended up learning more about loft conversions than I ever intended to and it may help others in future. This isn't necessarily going to be a 'look what I built' thread (albeit I'll happily pepper it with photos where appropriate). There are plenty of those and, while they're very useful, I think my personal experience on this project is potentially more valuable in documenting the decisions, problems and compromises that happened between the drawing and the finished building. One of the biggest things I've learned is that you can plan a project to death and still have absolutely no idea what you're going to find when you start cutting holes in it. The project We have a detached house, built in 2001 on a typical family housing estate, with a Fink truss roof and the project is a loft conversion with a full-width rear dormer. I wrote and submitted the full plans Building Regulations application myself, mostly because I have been the primary builder and so I wanted to design something that I was comfortable actually building. Just on me briefly - I'm not a professional builder, but it's something I've been doing for a long time and I come from a proud lineage of stubborn people who would rather mess something up themselves and learn from it than pay someone else to do it. It's a dangerous mindset to inherit. The loft conversion structure itself is based on the EcoTrus light gauge steel system, rather than the conventional approach of using steel beams and timber joists. I chose this for a number of reasons, which I'll detail in a later post, but the primary one was because it was a system that I could build largely by myself with minimal heavy plant and additional hands. There was also quite a lot going on around the LSG structure: external wood-fibre insulation, mineral wool, a warm-roof approach but with a ventilation layer, a full-width dormer, new rooflights, new stairs, fire protection, upgraded acoustic performance, ventilation and a new bathroom downstairs. The application therefore became a fairly substantial document covering everything from structure and fire safety through to thermal performance, ventilation, drainage and electrical work. I took several months to put it together and was quite pleased with it when it was done, and it passed inspection without any clarifications. I genuinely thought I'd worked through most of the major construction issues before I'd even got started... The illusion that you can plan everything Glibness aside, I'm not trying to say the planning wasn't worthwhile - it absolutely was. I think it has genuinely saved me enormous amounts of time and money so far. The Building Regulations drawings gave me something to work from. The structural calculations gave me a defined structural solution. The thermal details established how the insulation and airtightness strategy was supposed to work. The roof details dealt with things like ventilation, membranes, flashings and the dormer and the interfaces between them. But the fundamental problem with trying to design an alteration to an existing building to the finest degree is that you don't actually know what you're dealing with until you expose it. I drew multiple scaled CAD illustrations, but ultimately there are parts of the building that haven't been visible since the day it was constructed. A good example of this was the cavity wall and the height offset between the wall plate and the brick outer skin - that relatively small piece of unknown geometry suddenly has consequences for several other things. Where does the fascia go? Where does the soffit finish? How does the gutter sit? How does that affect the external insulation plane? How do the various layers meet? How do you deal with the junction without creating an ugly or unnecessarily complicated detail? Those aren't really Building Regulations questions. They're 'you're standing on a scaffold looking at an actual building, what are you going to do now?' questions. The value of my time Over the last six months, I've often found myself weighing up several possible solutions to an unexpected problem and often spending far too long chasing the neatest or most technically elegant answer, particularly because it is my own house. I'm gradually learning that the perfect solution isn't always worth the extra time and complexity. My time has value too. Sometimes a straightforward solution that works well is better than spending hours trying to make everything perfect. I'd like this diary to cover both sides of the project: what I planned, using my Building Regulations application as the starting point, and what actually happened during construction. I'll cover the EcoTrus structure, insulation, roofing, windows and all the inevitable surprises along the way. If I waffle too much, please tell me! Hopefully, it'll be useful to others considering a loft conversion, and an honest record of what happens when detailed plans meet the reality of an existing house. I've added a few illustrations of the project to date to set the scene.

Oh bum ! Perspex diffuser fits but it’s so flimsy it bows which makes the led backlights look crap . Told Claude off ! . Now we’ve got to 3d print support columns with a magnet in them 🙄

I think Nick is thinking health and safety. If you are going to be having big guys carrying a load of concrete blocks and mortar up them day in day out you need to consider the risks. Are you moving them inside before that work starts ? Are they attached to the scaffold & did the scaffolders put them in for you ? There are regs around scaffolding I believe, I think it is supposed to be checked and logged as ok on a very regular basis. Probably very often in breach, but if someone has an accident - it is your site and... they could come for you. If you need to modify or add to scaffolding I suspect you should be going back to the scaffold company. One of our carpenters had a friend that fell through a rooflight and ended up in a wheelchair. Inspection: construction platforms from which a person could fall 2 metres or more require inspection before use and at intervals no longer than 7 days, with further inspection after events liable to affect safety. A competent person must make the required report. Tags: a tag system can communicate inspection status, but tags are not themselves a legal requirement and do not replace inspection reports.

It doesn't look like a philips or posi, (seems square cut) but it's v difficult to see. I'll ask a young pair of eyes to look. If it is posi then great, I've got a set of unused heads. So far I was just investigating which tap was dripping, and will turn both off at the flexi before the proper go.

8 months later ? Don't think Fisnik has been posting either.

Must admit I hate S and Y plan as all it does is add inefficiency as you have to run one flow temperature. Not a fan of zones either, and you are creating 3. But you boiler is pretty old I take it being a back boiler. Circulation pump and heating system doesn't care if pump is on flow or return so either is fine, making it accessable is best. Why I don't like zones, you are generating areas of no flow for the boiler, it then has nowhere to dump it's heat, so if one zone is only open you drive the boiler into an inefficient zone, where it switches on and off a lot, rather than settling into a slow steady run mode. You have said you have TRV on radiators so they will look after room temps, so why not a single thermostat in the hall to demand heat or switch it off, then have one 2 port for all CH and one for DHW heating. Less to go wrong less to buy, less to install and happier boiler

Moving the pump and valves somewhere accessible is the right call. That will pay for itself the first time anything fails. Fit the magnetic filter on the return just before the boiler. Give the UFH its own zone valve with a blending valve so it can run at its lower temperature without dragging the radiator circuit down with it.

Those little tap head screws are nearly always Phillips or Pozidriv and a standard flat screwdriver will just chew the head out. Get a proper matching driver and press hard down into the screw while you turn it. That downward pressure matters more than anything else. And make sure the water is isolated before you go any further, since it sounds like the tap is already moving.

yep - 18mm chipboard floor screwed down to joists - 400 centres (was previously nailed) then 3.6mm ply stapled with 22mm staples - no glue. (Previously it was nailed to the chipboard) Never had an issue with any grout cracking or popping out in 20 plus years so same again seems logical. Only difference is this time I'm tiling wall to wall instead of to the plinth of the floor unit

What an interesting way of measuring you have! What's it taste like? ;)

You will always get better purchase on a screw if you use the right matching driver (type and size). There are two types of cross head Philips and Pozi. Use the wrong one and you get much less grip. Pozi is Fig 3. Go out and by a set with a decent handle and you'll be much better placed to deal with future issues. Get a set that includes Torx and other types too as Torx is increasingly common. Traditional straight head screws are really not used much any more. Whether getting the right driver solves your problem I don't know but it would be the first step.

This is basic stuff I'm failing at. I'm attempting to change a washer in a dripping tap, and failing at the first fence. I can't get the screw out. It is a cross shape ( a plus) and it won't budge with a standard screwdriver. Does it need a plus shaped screwdriver head? I don't have such a thing. I've wd40'd it but that isn't guaranteed because the tap is a horizontal thing so it runs out. I'm nervous about simply increasing force as it may be made of Chinesium (credit to the the originator of the term), and if i wreck the head, then I'll be totally...stuck, and mocked. I may have induced a tiny movement because the lever slackened a tad, and a drip started behind it, presumably from the hot tap which I haven't turned off beneath.

So did you simply staple that down with no glue? Id be worried about movement with expansion or vibration from the washing machine. Saying that if it held firm since the early 90s then it sounds like it's solid enough. Enjoy your Sunday fella, your back will be broken be 5pm.

Can't give you a name for your area either, but a few things will make any review quicker and cheaper. Before anyone visits, pull together the MCS certificate, the room by room heat loss calculation, the design flow temperature, the emitter schedule showing each radiator's output at that flow temperature, the pipe sizes and the commissioning sheet. A lot of compliance problems show up on paper first: emitters too small for the design flow temp, no proper heat loss done, or a unit sized off a rule of thumb. If your system has a monitoring app, a week or two of flow temps, run times and electricity use tells a reviewer more than a one hour visit. When you ring round, ask for an independent heating engineer or heat pump consultant who does design and commissioning reviews and isn't trying to sell you a replacement system. Ask them to report against MCS MIS 3005 so the findings line up with your complaint. On the complaint side, if your installer was signed up to RECC or HIES as part of their MCS registration, that consumer code's dispute process can often go further than MCS itself, and an independent report gives it some teeth. What are you actually seeing, high bills, cold rooms, short cycling or noise? That would help people here point you at the likely cause.

Seems very peculiar positioning of the doors too, they seem to be sitting on the outer edge of the outer leaf of brickwork. External doors normally sit on the inner part of the outer leaf and any thermal break in the frame positioned appropriately. I think you will end up needing to rework and reposition the whole threshold arrangement when you change the doors. Door fitters, as opposed to botched DIY, would normally put DPM under the door threshold. You might want to take account of this future rework requirement in deciding on the immediate repair, you won't want to make it too difficult to rip it all out when you change the doors. Also keep some spare flooring tiles etc so the floor can be invisibly patched too. It may be a good time to at least get a door quote and then the guy that comes out might tell you what needs to be reworked before any doors could be fitted anyway. And does the hardstanding area outside actually slope slightly away from the threshold as it should ? Water could actually be coming in under the ''outer cill''.

Floor now ready for SBR Bond

Maybe with a bit of development you may have invented a diesel engine that runs in water.

I used it neat, creates a nice ‘rubbery’ surface

They don't have mid support. Yes, the angle is too shallow, but will be fine when they are put inside where the actual stairwell is going.

Thanks

Do you dilute it or apply neat?