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I remember when my Viessmann Gas Boiler was being installed and the "heating engineer" explained the weather compensation curve - he didn't understand it at all and got very flustered when I explained it to him as clearly a customer shouldn't have more understanding than a heating engineer..... But I should have realised when I got an S Plan set up and not DHWP (X-Plan) which I'd asked for (He did rectify that once I pointed out what he'd agreed to) It's quite sad...........

Thanks. I'll look those up. I take it you DIY'd it all yourself?

I have a £100 k budget but I only need 1 acre to set up a micro plant based food garden , more acres means more maintenance unless it is woodland that mostly takes care of itself. I'm just looking for that ideal plot, must not be overlooked by neighbours, must have a source of water and must not have any main road or other noise pollution but has minor road or track access for deliveries, tucked away in the countryside where it can be forgotten .

Possibly - not sure on what advantage that would give me?

If you are putting a new floor deck down, would ply be a better option than chip?

What is that or should I google?

Thanks for the ideas. Not easy to get a suitable sprayer it turns out. Fortunately the part has gone on much better, for some reason yesterday's old roller (stored airtight) which doesn't roll so well anymore seemed to do the trick!

Consider a decoupling mat, even if to rule out.

interesting point thanks for that - current tiles have been down since 1994 - never re-grouted in that time and none was missing till I started lifting sections - floor joists are less than 400 mm centres with 18mm T&G chipboard. I'm a bit hesitant to increase over-boarding thickness because it will create a step at the threshold between rooms and adjoining hallway

This is very clever and elegant by @JpManning. To do this you need to maintain absolute strict control over the workmanship. A highly competent Contractor who understands the principles is the basic minimum. It's generally not suited to self build. You have to work closely with the fixing supplier.

Good point and good idea. Yes for the likes of a garage by all means set the joists on a slight slope to avoid firring pieces. Mind the underside of the joists also slope! They often need a birds mouth at top and bottom so they rest properly on the supports. Agree for long timber joists. Short spanning heavily loaded timbers used as lintels for example tend to be driven by strength design, both bending, shear and end bearing checks are essential. Just as an aside. One way we control deflection is to really prevent and twisting of the timbers. We want to tightly fit dwangs (noggings) and make sure our sarking / ply on top is well fixed down at close centres to the tops of the joists. Now you could keep the same timber depth, but go for 300mm centres. But here we need more dwangs (noggings), more joist hangers etc, all adds up to extra material and labour cost, all looks a bit congested not least. Occasionally when I can't increase the joist depth (say due to a height / detailing constraint) I'll have a look at the economics of using a thicker joist. Traditionally using imperial sizes these would be 63 mm thick, but here is one at 220 x 70mm in C24 at 6.0m long. https://greenbarntimbers.co.uk/shop/timber/carcassing-c24-c16/c24-joists-9x3-70mm-x-220mm-6m/ Now these are harder to source, no doubt, in fact these are show out of stock, they cost more but then when you offset the labour / joist hanger cost / extra dwangs, it's worth considering, even if just to rule out for your project. The upside is with a thicker joist you get more bearing and edge distance for your boarding nails, that is good! Agree. The Engineer can be expected to provide this information without quibble.

Tiling on a chipboard floor i think needs more then that 3.5mm for over boarding, closely to 10mm screwed every 150 I think is best practise. Most modern homes with tiles installed, it's not long before you spot the cracks along the joint lines where they haven't removed the flex in the subfloor.

Hi all, just thought I would share a video I made earlier in our build which details the window cill build up I used. May be of some help to future builders. Cill build up

Background Back in 1991 when we moved in the utility room, kitchen and conservatory had hard vinyl tiles on the floors - they were stuck down with some bitumen type adhesive - took me a good week to get them all up (they chipped and cracked and only came up in little bits) and then getting what was left of the floor involved some fairly aggressive solvents. Mrs Alien wanted ceramic tiles for all of them (so I bought enough grey square ceramic floor tiles to do all of them) so after making good the floor I over boarded with 3.5 mm ply nailed to the chipboard and then tile adhesive and tiles. My reason for the over-boarding was if she ever wanted to change the tiles I could lift both tile and ply up in sections and not have to scrape/chip/grind tile adhesive off the chipboard. Now my one big error was not doing wall to wall tiling in both rooms - I did in the conservatory but I did that one first (Hindsight is wonderful) and I only did the floor area in the kitchen up to the kick board and the same in the utility. The downside is it creates a weir if you have any water leaks under the cupboards and you don't notice the leak until it's been happening for a while. (water softener I'm looking at you now) So right now I'm embarking on re-doing the utility (kitchen is next as I'm transferring some of the wall and floor units to the utility before the new kitchen arrives in Nov/Dec) it's a 2m x 2m room that is now empty and I'm replacing most of the floor because it wasn't great last time I tiled it (think floor areas under units that looked like dried out wheatabix) I spent Saturday lifting the tiles and over-boarding - once I'd got a start point a decent pry bar, claw hammer and bolster meant it lifted fairly easily in small sections. I could then take outside and with tile face down fold the ply to break it on the grout lines and I ended up with a half full wheelie bin So the current plan is new chipboard floor - 3.5mm ply over-boarding (stapled) and then wall to wall tiled and grouted before units are moved in. Am I missing an alternative method - neither kitchen or Utility are a wet room but both have wet services!!

I have a German basement company on site right now and I know they spray on a similar substance.

Thanks both

My understanding is the BUS Grant doesn't mean you have to give up gas cooking - when I looked into ASHP rather than replace the gas boiler (Mains Gas) we would be able to keep the gas hob (albeit with the standing charge cost issue for a very small amount of annual gas usage) So unless things have changed you should be able to keep your LPG gas cylinders but I think 4 would probably be over kill for the usage so drop down to two as @ProDave suggests

Yeh I have before as well. Just wondered if its the done thing. Last time was a 3m ish garage roof just set one side 75mm higher than the other. I've done a double garage for a guy who wanted them level with firing strips as was looking to extend in future. Also anything occupied with ceiling below probably wants to be level.

I bought 2x Titon HRV. Both came from eBay super cheap, very well made. I had a issue with one motor on start up (maybe why it ended up on eBay), issue diagnosed on the phone, parts dispatched same day. Ran flawlessly for 5 years so far

Thought they came back some years ago, and said it does. I like it that only pay 2-3p per kWh, compared to gas at about 10p after efficiency hit, by the same for using S and Y plan plumbing, plus you pay another standing charge. I started looking for an ASHP immediately after the completion cert was issued, self installed soon after. Mine lives behind the shed.

Permission to be outspoken? That's because they don't know much*. Plumbers dont generally know much about it. The ones who do claim to be expert mostly get the designs done via their merchant who in turn go to their supplier. The ones who rightly don't say they are skilled in it.... are too busy plumbing to go on courses. That leaves the ones who fancy the work and the grants, and can still charge a lot in an overheated market. * I have discussed with plenty. Some bluff and perhaps exaggerate the little they do know, but some honestly say what they know and what they don't. But others talk the buzz words without actually understanding. In such discussions they generally assume I am an ignorant punter, and so I let them do their thing for a while. What I want is them to be able to join the pipes up and commission it. A large part of the builder population also think that Engineers, Architects, Building Inspectors ....and so on.... don't know what they are doing and over/ wrongly design. (ditto me being the ignorant client)

Hi again. I'm getting to the point where I'm going to buy a unit. The three manufacturers I'm looking at at Envirovent, Vent axia, and KAWA vent. Are these any good? If not then which brand would you buy? Cheers.

Yes. No reason why not when the slope is shallow.

In my case with a box profile roof, the joists go perpendicular to the fall. so each joist is level, but a little lower than it's neigbbour.

I'm one who chose not to go down the heat pump route even with the £7.5k. For a few reasons, though cost was one of the largest drivers: 1. I didn't want an ugly box sitting in my garden/rear patio ruining the view. 2. To put it anywhere else would have meant paying through the nose for a noise assessment to appease the council and check a box - even if I was going to get acoustic screening etc. Wasn't enough - computer says assessment needed! 3. The huge markup applied by virtually every installer. I distinctly remember these being a lot cheaper in 2020-2021 when I first started looking at them. Don't know the exact date when the BUS grant started (mid 2022 maybe?) but the prices jumped magically overnight to be more expensive than before - even after taking the grant into account! I could never wrap my head around that and the greed/profiteering/market economics of the whole situation put me off massively! 4. Jury is still out whether heat pumps are as effective as gas boilers at keeping your house warm. I know this site has an over representation of people who have one and can geek out over the details - a large part of the builder/plumber population still don't seem to rate them very highly. The advice from my builder was why go for one when it's potentially not as good and more expensive to install. We did the next best thing - i.e. put in the pipework for a future swap out to be easier. Hopefully in 10 years time, tech has advanced enough and costs have come down to a level where it's going to be comparable to a boiler replacement. At that point, I may go for one.