All Activity

Yes. The same reason I’ve been in Jewsons twice in as many decades. Also you’re looking at too big a lintel You don’t need a 6x4” as a 4x3” (100x65) is plenty for a doorway in single skin in most situations. You mount this in portrait orientation, not landscape, btw.

This is the kitchen/diner, with the snug beyond. A stud wall will eventually separate the two rooms between the two doorways you can see on the right. The other half of the building is similar. Although the first floor is in, the roof is still under construction so that puddle isn't going anywhere, but it does show the dip rather well. Slab was poured 9th December so it's about 2 months old. Finish is currently tamped concrete, target finished floor is 25mm higher than the high spot with a premium vinyl tile.

I knocked through a block cavity wall, on my bungalow, a couple of years ago and fitted 1500 x 100 x 65mm lintels and they were about £15 each from the local builders merchants.

My flat is fed from a 32mm OD (25mm ID???) MDPE pipe. Today the water maintenance company were here to disinfect the tank on the roof and as part of that isolated the supply. When the supply came back on the right angle MDPE fitting in my ceiling started letting a lot of water out of it. Seems like the fitting loses its seal when the pressure is off and then is at risk of blowing off the pipe when the pressure comes back. Managed to isolate at the meter and with extra hands reintroduced pressure while holding the fitting in place and now pressure is back on with no leaks. However, my confidence in these fittings is now shot and I want to replace them. I assume I need to get compression type fittings. Should I favour any specific brand? Any gotchas I should look out for?

How did you control it.

How do you control it

New to this, but a friend recommended your expertise! Have a basement floor about 2m below ground. Victorian terrace. It is going to be 1 room and I have got wet underfloor heating system on it's way. As you can see there are two sections, one is an existing concrete slab the other area is currently 150mm lower compacted sand over hardcore which I have been drying out. Because we have existing partial slab, I have chosen the routed thermrite boards for the whole room. For the area in the picture my plan was as follows Lay waterprroof membrane - although not expecting much ground water as it is a well drained chalk area. Loose lay 150mm celotex to bring up to same level as slab, using small bits of harbooard if necessary to adjust any levelling (although it is pretty level) Then use an adhesive (not sure what, but hopefully the retailer will tell me ) to adhere the thermrite boards in place Plumber seemed concerned about doing this without a poured concrete layer under the Thermrite, am I right in thinking it shouldn't be an issue? The retailer didn't seem to be concerned! Second question - I had the same friend suggest as a nice, mess free way of preparing for the final finish (oak parquet) just using cement boards - which sound a lot easier than pouring a screed (someone who has never laid screed before). This sounded to me like a good idea and would provide thermal mass. Any reason not to do this other than it is possibly more expensive in materials. I figured it will also facilitate me doing the project in two stages as the kitchen is in one area and the idea was to finish a section, then move the kitchen into it, whilst we finish the rest of the floor, whereas poured surface will be harder to do this way. Final thing - got a couple of manholes one at front and one towards back of property - any tips regarding these and the underfloor. Obviously I will have to avoid putting pipes directly over them and somehow indicate where they are, but any tips for the build up (especially where the new celotex build up will be going? Many thanks in advance. Adrian

I think this is going to be a problem in my build as well. The floor area is small, even before I deduct the space taken up by the shower, toilet, handbasin etc. Probably it will just be a case of as much UFH pipe as will fit and add some extra heat with an electric towel rail when needed. As long as the floor doesn't feel cold to walk on, it should be acceptable... Actually, I'd like to get some UFH pipe under the walk-in shower, but that might be ambitious! Interesting! I am planning to use the SG capability to soak up any spare solar power, either by putting more heat into the slab, or pushing the DHW temp up a degree or two. But this is just a concept at this stage, I suspect it'll take at least the first year of actually living in the house to understand the trade-offs between putting solar power into the battery, or the ASHP, or selling it back to the grid. For now, I'm just making sure that these options are possible i.e. the necessary capability/connectivity is there.

But as has been pointed out continually - the prices remain pegged to gas because of the auction structure. If we had a magic electric generator that produced 25GW 24h a day for a penny year, that would provide nearly 70% of the UK annual electric demand for 1p yet the wholesale price of electricity would have remained the same under the auctions system and people would be claiming that magic electric generators increaced our bills. We do need to come up with a new market mechanism that allows the savings of cheaper generation to be passed on to consumers whilst also maintain investment and reliability. That is a separate issue from "Net zero". But fundamental to coming up with that solution *is having the cheaper generation capacity in the first place*

BCO have clairfied that they expect any wall ties to have sufficient slope towards the external wall or have a drip in them. We intend to use the below type combined with DPC which hopefully gets their approval.

Me to with an older section of the house having 8mm micropore drops down the walls to the rads. Set on the slowest speed it pulls a steady indicated 10 watts. An easy way to retrofit a HP to small bore pipework:)

Council meetings are open to the public. Parish, town, district, county, national. The meetings themselves may be tedious, and for the councillors too, but you learn and see that some councillors are there for party or their own purposes, and others are trying to make things fairer.... and up against the party machines. Also some get constant grief from the voters, whatever they do. I recommend going along to a committee that is of interest.. budget, planning, whatever.

What material did you use for this? How the metalised finish holding up?

Apologises, I didn't mean thickness either side. I mean thickness of the lintel itself. I've seen one from jewsons with the measurements of 1200 x 140 x 100mm. Would that be standard spec? https://www.jewson.co.uk/p/supreme-concrete-prestressed-lintel-r15120-1200-x-140-x-100mm-LNBRN155 The DIY one you shared is £18. The Jewson one is £68. Any reason for such a big difference? Thanks.

Looks interesting. Wonder how their multizone stuff works with building regs.

Titon HRV also sold by Beam under a different badge and lower price point. You can get enthalpy exchangers if you want

We can do this.

Great question -- and one which I've been pondering a lot, so any input is welcome! The main benefit of the enthalpy exchanger, besides not drying the air out, is that there's no convenient drain point right now, so it felt worth the extra price. While the main house drain passes directly beneath the MVHR cupboard, there are two concrete floors in between them, and that was putting me off it last summer! But adding a condensate drain doesn't feel too difficult now I've discovered those drill-patch-pipe things that just clamp on. The enthalpy exchanger options I've found are mostly Zehnder, a few units in the confusingly broad ComfoAir range, which are a few hundred euros more expensive than the Brink we have. The Q350 for example. The main down-side of the Q350 is the size, it's got a maximum airflow of 350 m3/h, which is much larger than we need, and so the unit is physically larger, although I think would just about fit in the MVHR cupboard with maybe 15cm space on each side. It's also a lot heavier at 48kg, so I'd be tempted to get an installer to fit it. The upside of that unit is that, as our top airflow is 180 m3/h, and we typically run it around 70 m3/h, we'd always be running it very slowly, which should mean it's super-efficient. For non-enthalpy units, having looked at other brands, Zehnder is of also a popular choice there, and they have options which cost less than the Brink we have now. I also quite like the look of the Duco Energy Comfort units, they've just introduced a 250 m3/h unit which would fit the bill, although I can't find it listed for sale yet. https://www.duco.eu/uk-ie/products/mechanical-ventilation/ventilation-units/ducobox-energy-comfort

This is about energy prices, not council tax. If you want to get things changed, go into politics.

And my council tax is £1000 more than that, but unlike energy bills, I can't reduce it by switching "supplier" or making improvements to my house.

Does have temperature but says don't rely on it. If you haven't seen the intro video it's worth a watch. Really like the Home Assistant integration UI + zone configurator.

Average domestic household energy bills (~£1750) are still around 5% of average household earnings (~£36,700).

Yeah I prefer a "everything in" sensor. I've not installed any custom - got way too many other things to play with. But again to date been 100% reliable. I did have a slight fringe case if you sat like you were dead infant the projector. So I installed another one. Changed the logic so that both must say "no human" before lights are triggered off. So now a true 100% success rate ( until next failure ). Best sensors I've found though.

So what are you replacing it with? Enthalpy or normal heat exchanger?

And neither is the claim that prices will come down as we have more renewable capacity. That has also been proved to be incorrect. It is a great shame it is our MP's that are still telling us these untruths.