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I use ½ blanks between my contactors, but a couple of W in a steel CU isn't really an issue. I had probs with my DIN mounted SSRs especially as my sparky had used an abs box. Luckily it was in a large closed cupboard so I could leave the cover off. I prefer my current setup. The RH unit was my sparky's work. The LH contains: 24VDC power, <gap>, contactor 1, <½gap>, contactor 2, <flyback diodes>, contactor 3, <½gap>, contactor 4 The 24V Tasmota 4×relay module is below. The red /black switch loom is all 24V.

It doesn't, so I'll get myself some more; thanks for the heads-up! Yes, there is a recommendation to use no more than 2 adjacent contactors unless there's a gap between them for cooling. I'm populating the row with alternating breakers & contactors, which should help.

It depends. If the external wall is in good condition, free from penetrating rain and not very exposed, and provided the DPC is doing its job, then it's generally accepted that it's safe to apply internal wall insulation to a solid wall if the resulting wall u-value is at or above 0.5 W/m².K, pretty much irrespective of the method used. However there is significant research such as the Historic Scotland Refurbishment Case Study 4 where they went down to between 0.37 and 0.19 by using vapour-periable materials (important!) without using a vapour barrier, and without any concerns during their 18-month initial study (AFAIK they never published their promised follow-up report); it's worth downloading a copy. Since most of the research is on insulating solid walls I don't recall seeing anything about upgrading insulated cavity walls. Ideally you'd find someone to model the risk with software such as WUFI (though it isn't without problems - best to model the entire building, not just the walls). As mentioned in one of my earlier posts above, remove any gypsum plaster if there's a risk of any condensation against the existing wall - many materials can tolerate some moisture in winter temperatures provided they dry out again quickly enough in spring (so a Glaser analysis using a tool such as Ubakus isn't very useful), but gypsum holds the moisture and turns to slurry. For more reading, see the link to the other thread I posted above. You'll see there that I chose hemp insulation for my own IWI due to its good moisture handling abilities (plus good decrement delay). I wouldn't have been at all comfortable going as low with my u-values using mineral wool, or using a vapour-impermeable build-up. I'd probably choose cork.

@Mike, The power loss of SSRs is appalling IMO. The main issue is that the DIN rail form-factor ones get hot and this can cause oxidation on the power leads from the resistive heaters. Even with crimp covers the oxidation can cause probs. I haven't had any issues with the contactors. No you don't need snubbers on the resistive loads and I don't bother on the AC pump either as this only toggles ½doz times a day. No this issue is with your Shelly Pro 4PM which outputs 4 × wet 240 VAC signals for contactor coil switching. The inductance of the contactor coils is quite high so you can get field collapse arcing when they switch. I don't know if Shelley has internal snubbers, but this is something you need to check IMO

I had an SE do the calcs for the steels, but I'm confused as to what they mean. He has specified 254 * 102 * 22 UB. Whilst I understand a UB works for the inner steel, I don't see how you use a UB on the face brickwork side, or why it requires a UB as the load of the external face is much less as it's not supporting the roof or floor. Does anyone have any advice on what steel design you would normally use for a ground floor 4.4m sliding door. Estimators specified a Catnic https://condell-ltd.com/catnic-cx150-100-4800mm And I understand how that works as it is shaped for a cavity tray to easily be fitted and the exterior brickwork to have the required weep vents, but two parallel UB lintels would not work like that. 25578 - White Cattery Lane, RG26 5TN.pdf

Thank you Nick! Just to confirm - is this roughly correct? Red = 110mm Grey = 50mm Green = 32mm Blue = 40mm Yellow = 21.5mm On the other side of the wall, is this what you mean? One of the reasons I was going to get a plumber in for this was the mention of a trap in Approved Document H...is this necessary?

How would one go about improving the thermal insulation of skylights in winter nights? - One can get pleated blinds from the manufacturer - that's the easiest option, but their added R is relatively piddling (in the order of 0.25 m^2 K/W). - In principle, one could imagine some sort of thick, insulated plug to put in the skylights, but I have no idea of how to keep such a thing in place. - An intermediate (still DIY) option would be to have a kind of shade with a serious amount of wool insulation (several cm) or else the stuffing that goes into sleeping bags - while I'm about to do that for a metal door, I have no idea of how this would work in practice for a skylight. Surely something like this has been tried? I've seen listings online for insulator pillows for RV skylights - why does there seem to be no such thing for residential skylights? Would a foam pillow just not be stable in a larger skylight (say, 78x98)?

Thanks. I'll try out some caulking. This would likely work best if I can colour match it to the off white lime. I'll have a look for anyone that can do colour matched or a wider variety of colours than just grey. ?

Ah, thanks, ok got it. The cavity is already insulated.. They had some kind of fluff pumped in back in the 90's. I'm looking to improve the walls with internal wall insulation.

Almost ditto. I run 32mm down first vertical into a 32 to 40 collar and 40mm swept bend and pipe from there on. Also, always use swept bends the whole way.

https://www.instagroup.co.uk/our-products/insulation/cavity-wall/ Other suppliers are available.

Hi all, I want to add internal wall insulation to my 1970's block cavity walls. Pump the walls with insulation.

ETC, I'm not sure what you mean!??

Fry in butter.....Mmmmm!

Pump the cavity.

Yes. Or even if 25/50/75 mm etc below you can use a sacrificial layer of eps to bring you up to level. I say sacrificial but obvs would be part of your floor insulation.

Mike, I'm thinking of using 100mm mineral wool between studs .. Do you think that is too much, or OK due to the lower risk of condensation due to the walls being cavity, with the cavity already insulated? Also, I had the idea if using 45x45 treated studs/battens with 45mm spacers of some sort every 600mm or so, where the studs are screwed to the wall, giving me a 45mm space behind the studs to fill with insulation, then the regular 100mm batts fitted between the studs. I guess it's a kind of 'warm batten' design, cheaper on timber, but solid enough to fix plasterboard to. I have seen continuous insulating spacer strips used, only 10 or 20mm thick behind the studs ..but I'm wondering if my idea is a daft one, as I've not seen it done quite like that before!

The pipe off the 110mm should be 50mm up to where it heads in to the bath, turning in on a T with a rodding access (cleaning eye) for maintenance. From the 50mm T you reduce to 40mm to get to the bath T, and then the 40mm pipe continues to the boiler. That then terminates at a 40mm T with the centre of the T having a 40 > 21.5mm reducer in it for the boiler condensate, and a 40mm air admittance valve to complete the run. Absolutely ZERO need for a GSR plumber, this will just add wasted expense.

You live and you learn.

Curiosity? To see if I can do dot and dab. Also there was a bit in the cupboard that would’ve been a pain to use MF so I thought I’d give it a go.

Do you have a drawing to hand as I am struggling to understand how you do this? On reflection, is it just a simple case of making sure that the top level of your sand blinding coincides with the top of the block level for your sleeper walls?

The other option is to buy more ply boards cut them up into the correct size squares and slot them in under the kingspan PIR insulation but this would be more expensive and there is still the issue of rot/mould and is ply board totally rodent proof anyway? 🤔 I'm not sure.

No I am on about weld mesh with holes that are 1/4 inch (6.5mm) big which should keep mice out. The website I was looking at said it would in any case.

Hi everyone. It’s been four weeks since the last blog instalment and despite the Christmas and New Year break, quite a lot has happened. Apologies for a somewhat scattergun approach but I wanted to try to cover all the progress. Kitchen units and appliances Last time, just before Christmas, carpenter Chris was halfway through fitting our kitchen units. That work was completed during the first week of January in readiness for… Kitchen worktops Martin from Langford Stone came out to template the kitchen/pantry/utility units for our worktops. While he was at it, we also asked him to template for several granite surfaces for our master ensuite. A week later Langford’s team of four fitters arrived with some very large slabs of granite, which they duly fitted without issue and to a high standard. We’re very pleased with the results: Internal doors Chris and Alan fitted the four pocket doors to the sliding gear installed back in September, before plastering. They then fitted the oak door linings for the 8 conventional doors and hung those doors. The door linings required some thinking about because we originally opted for rebated linings but these have had to be reinforced with ply backing to give enough meat to confidently screw in hinges that can take the weight of the (44 kg!) doors. We hope still to get the rebated look by fixing full width door jams, which we’ve now ordered. The doors themselves are 33” Avon Oak fire doors from Todd doors. We opted to buy them unfinished because the factory finish doors felt a bit ‘plasticky’. Mrs P. has done a brilliant job with sealing them with Osmo Door oil and we are very pleased with the results - they have a lovely look and feel to them . The doors supplied were really good quality - no need for further sanding before oiling and no complaints from the carpenters (except about the weight!) Troy Pointer supervising operations: 2nd fix electrics After a pause at the beginning of January, Darren is now back with us and making good progress on the second fix electric. Skirtings Steve, our tiler came in to fix the porcelain skirting tiles and was able to make a start, but the rethink needed for the door linings meant we are not ready to fix all the architraves just yet. So he has promised to come in on a future Saturday to finish those off. The skirting tiles themselves are 900 mm long and have more of a bow in than we were expecting (well I was expecting them to be flat to be honest!). Steve was worried that they would not look great but in reality unless you look along the line of the wall you can’t really notice the bowing and we are happy to live with it (especially since we can’t think of any sensible alternative at this stage). Once grouted or caulked to the same colour as the walls we don’t think it will be an issue. Ensuite boxing-in I’ve been whiling away the odd hour here and there preparing the ensuite for final fix by my brother next week. There’s quite a lot of pipework which needs to be hidden - given the way the house design squeezes three bathrooms into a small space, the stud walls are just not wide enough to take it all. So my idea was to create some boxing-in using spare 4x2s to hide the pipes, provide some built-in cupboard space, and form a framework for timber cladding on the lower walls. Sure, I could have asked the chippies to do this and they’d have done a great job in no time... but where’s the fun in that? For the timber cladding itself we’re going be using some of the left over Brimstone heat treated ash we have used to clad the outside of the house. This time of course we'll seal it with Osmo oil. The quality of that Brimstone Ash is too good to waste solely on the outside. You will hopefully be able to see from future blogs whether this bathroom design idea has been successful or not but for now here's some 'boxing-in'. Moving in next month! I mentioned in the previous blog that we had brought forward our target moving in date to the end of February. We now have a removal date booked of 23rd February. - so only five weeks away! We should be fine, we could probably move in and camp now if needed. The main things we really need sorting are a fully working bathroom, electrics, and ideally smooth and solid access to the front of the property. Hopefully we can get all that done in the next five weeks. Council tax Mrs P. and I were wondering about bin collection and also how soon the council would want to start charging council tax, when lo and behold the man from the council turned up. He explained the process, gave us a form, and told us we could request bins (for which we have to pay a £81 one off charge - of course we do). Since we will be ceasing the council tax liability on our rented house, we are happy to start paying council tax on the new house. The council man said it could take three or four months to get a council tax valuation but they will backdate the charge to our move in date. Address After seven months(!) Royal Mail have finally got round to adding our address to their postcode checker database. They say on their website that they will only add it when you move in but as anyone who has self-built will know it’s really very difficult to arrange deliveries, service installs, etc. if your postcode is not on that Royal Mail database. My advice for anybody starting a self-build is get that address registered as early as possible. Fibre Another service that’s taken seven months from request to delivery is our full fibre to the house. Many of you will know this is a new build building control requirement for England, so we requested (and paid for it) back in June. It finally arrived last week. Unfortunately we didn’t get added to the Openreach fibre database straight away so no service providers could offer us a fibre service until that was resolved earlier this week. We’re hoping to get the broadband service up and running next week. Focus for the next two weeks: Electrics, still lots to do. We’re hoping to have two sparkies in for most of next week so they should make a lot of headway. Plumbing. My brother Chris is back for 4 days next week and will focus on getting our master ensuite up and running, the kitchen & utility sinks fully plumbed in, and then if there’s time progress on the family bathroom and guest ensuite. Landscaping. Ashley, our garden landscaper is making a start on the front landscaping from Monday. We’re really looking forward to seeing the crushed aggregate disappear under something more wheelchair-friendly. Dashboard: Contractor days on site this past four weeks: 47 Contractor days on site since build start: 495 Budget: No change - over budget but within contingency. Plan: Moving in booked for 23rd February. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: N/A Current top issues and worries: None.