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Lovely to see how well it's going

For internal floor space up to 30m2, no building control required in England. Don't tell my friends about my uncalibrated tape measure.

Yeh ours is 5m x 5m at present but new house has been drawn 900mm off this. If i put a new roof on upto the house wall will be 6mx5m

Our max temp difference will be 35°C (ambient background temp min to max hot water temp). Long runs are bad news for hot water so to be avoided anyway. (Most of our sinks/basins are served by 10mm hep to get hot water PDQ, which is working well though it does mean the flow rate isn’t torrential). In practice I’ve only one straight section over a metre long and that’s to the garage through a 4.5m duct with bends either end. Do you really need long straight sections?

We bought a house once, the builder obviously didn't like to use a tape measure, as the garage was just over a metre longer than it should have been - it was great. Nice sized garage to build a kit car (Dax Rush)

No insulation means walls become cold with limited air movement, cold walls equals damp walls when you have very limited air movement caused by adding some furniture in close proximity to the wall. Adding some insulation leads to less cold walls, less damp, no mould A bigger air gap allows more ventilation, leading to less issues. Or just insulate the external walls, no mould less need for heating win, win. May not be a small task but as maybe doing loads anyway a good addition.

You don’t. there is absolutely no reason to be heating your water to that temp, so expansion is not a thing to worry about.

Both @G and J & @LSB called in recently. Nice to see them. Feel free if you’re near Sax. Preferably near the end of the working day - 3:30pm according to my carpenters

Cooled UFH with ASHP works v well according to some friends who just discovered their HP has that function. We’ve put in some 180mm back-up ducts for central AC, but expect not to have to use them.

Heat pump cylinder is more expensive, vented or unvented is a design choice doesn't matter how it's heated. Unvented runs the cylinder at approx 3 bar, vented has a tank in the loft to supply the pressure. Depends on size of immersion and size of heat pump and how it's set up. It doesn't, but with a heat pump you are EITHER heating house or cylinder, not both. So if cylinder takes a hour to heat in a 3 hour cheap period you only have 2 hours to heat house.

None, mine came with the install that's all.

Hi Susie, I’ve just come across your R-wall build blog and it’s very informative. Me and my wife are in the process of building an R-wall 1-1/2 storey house just outside North Tamerton and we’re close to the plasterboard/plastering stage and are debating whether we get plasterer’s in or do it ourselves with tapered edge joints like you have. Dave.

Are normal cylinders a lot cheaper than heat pump ones? Are they "vented" or "unvented" or doesn't this change with direct heating? Can an immersion heater recharge the water temperature as quick as a heat pump? Why would heat pump cylinder stop you heating it in cheap period?

Do you have to have regs or a warrant for that? What's the total size 6m wide by how long? What size timbers did you use? Im thinking of extending a garage from 5m wide to 6m and it's a bit of a can of worms. Think I might need to involve an SE. while it will only be 30m2 or just under I think if it joins a house it has to have b.regs in England?

The instructions say: A 10 metre run of 15mm pipe on a hot water circuit (ΔT = 55°C) will expand by approximately 72mm. Expansion must be accommodated with: Directional changes in pipework routing (natural offsets) Expansion loops where long straight runs cannot be avoided Proper use of fixed points (anchor brackets) and guide brackets to direct expansion into loops How do peeps handle that in practice?

Mira/Aqualisa digital shower could be a saviour. The control can be located outside the shower if you wish? But they are expensive in comparison to mixer valves.

So what advantages does MCS battery install bring over a competent electrician.

If you were to accurately account for man hours true renovations to a modern standard are rarely worth it vs the cost of rebuild. If you're not pushed about how far you improve it then obviously there's savings to be made. Much better plan to use a breather membrane than netting. No wicking if heat through the insulation then. I would lay T&G chipboard atop the joists. Foam glue all the joints and use a good quality expanding foam like FM330 at the perimeter of each room to seal them to the wall for an airtight floor. Draft sealing is the biggest cheapest win. Get some forced ventilation going too. A PIV or a central extract even would be fine to keep the place fresh and dry. Regarding windows I'm a big fan of quality white PVC 3g. Veka 72 in our house and I wouldn't swap them for equifilu timber or metal windows even if they weren't twice the price.

Caution with flue liners. A house near me sadly burnt down when an uninsulated liner happened to sit against a timber build into the chimney. When I did my parents house there was space to shove an insulated twinwall SS liner up the chimney from the bottom.

That is a very well designed and executed car port which looks like it will stand the test of time, as well as the Scottish climate. Nice job.

Airflow is paramount. Convection should be fine; air can get in the bottom (under the plinths) and out the top, in equal quantities. The thin styrofoam / EPS wallpaper stuff is a very good addition to this, which I’ve used myself with surprisingly good results, as it stops the very cold wall from having such a temperature differential to the internal (room) temp and humidity. If moisture can’t cool down it can’t then condense.

One example. I wish I took more pics of more jobs but I was always flat out from one to the next Client here was an ‘under tall’ person, needed armbands to use the stupidly massive bath. Nice deep niche, and all of the wet areas got tanked to death. Hope this helps.

Can't happen. It's in a corner with an external wall one side and stud wall the other, where "everything" will be. But the door is hinged right next to controls so that should avoid the cold splash issue by opening the door wide to turn on the controls.

NONE are right. The controls do not want to be on the same wall as the shower head or else your arm gets showered with cold water as you reach in to turn it on. The controls should be on one side wall, far enough along the wall you can turn it on without getting wet, and only step in when the hot water has reached the outlet.

Interested in opinions and experience tis all!