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Don't cheap out on the choice of unit Get everything else you need from begging / stealing / borrowing, but the beating heart should not be bean-counted. Remember this....you will switch the MVHR on, and then NEVER turn it back off again for the rest of your time in the dwelling. If you choose poorly here, it'll not pay dividends from day 1, plus it'll come back and bite you on the ass when it fails early. Also make sure you pay homage to box attenuators before the distribution manifolds, as noise needs addressing. If you buy a compact (cheaper) unit, it'll have inherent problems as 'size matters' here I'm afraid. Look for units which have pre-heaters as an integral feature, so the unit doesn't shut down when incoming air temp comes close to freezing the unit. Brink for me, great price for an excellent unit. Watch for grey imports as they are 'return to source' warranty only, and do not come with on board controls; you need to buy these as a bolt-on, and then all of a sudden it wasn't so cheap after all.

Oh interesting, so in simple terms its limiting to 400mbar because the boiler wont let it go higher? Knowing all this would the plan for adding the Wilo Yonos Pico as an extra external pump still be valid? as I was still planning to do that after the WB boiler guy takes another look. I dont want to over complicate the setup before they come back as in my experience that makes it easy for them to point to other things as a cause of the problem. Currently there's nothing external other than the mag filter and extra Expansion vessel.

They cancelled on me and are coming on the 6th Feb now to look at why its still overshooting etc.

Not so with the Ivar sets. Totally different beasts, have you used these before? How do you achieve disenable segregation of the GF and FF if there not two stats (and therefore 2 zones)? Not a stab btw, I'm still at school every day I'm concious. This... ....with this on top. When we know 'TOG' and anticipated floor coverings, plus the GF situation. Don't worry about it, but don't discount it quite yet, is my 2 cents. It would be a bugger if you design for x floor coverings, and then cannot have anything else, ever, in its place for eg.

Telling people they've done a good job, and that you appreciate it, goes a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way. Don't put that off

Hmmmmmmm. So, here's the facts Stud walls for bathrooms should be at 400mm cc, not 600mm. The weight per m2 is the concern, but if your tiles are that big then......so what? It's still exactly the same kg/m2 as you putting 100x100mm tiles on. If the tiles you bought are 30kg/m2, then so will tiles 25mm x 25mm be. It's physics. Where you apply the math is the board and the way its fixed, so you'd be going for 12.5mm MR PB (if I was doing it) and then screwing it to studs at 400mm cc, and having a screw into the PB at every 100mm max cc. Then you could patio slab the damn walls. If you have studs at 600mm cc then you (or I) would then be installing horizontal noggins to create 400mm cc horizontally. This would give you boxes of 600mm x 400mm which you'd then divide the installed weight of your BFO tiles, per that exact amount of area. You've not been reliably informed. I've been sticking BFO tiles to bathroom walls for 3 decades, and not one's fallen off....yet. I've always used plasterboard, and always gone bat-shit crazy on studs and screwing the MR PB to them. Then I tank the shit out of everything, to the point people think I need help, and the results speak for themselves. No need for fancy XPS boards, cement or tile backer boards, all just stuff introduced so it can be sold to folk to turn a profit. "No".

We keep them all well stocked in a bottomless supply of decent snacks, drinks, tea & coffee. But yes, there will be beer at some point.

Nope. This is spot on. The internal of the black cowl is sat atop the roof penetration 'top-hat', and that keeps the rain from getting down into that junction. It needs to be high enough to stave of splashing rain. Buy him a beer, and say "thanks", it looks very robust and a good job afaic.

Ahhhhhhh! I've seen this before, and I think we're in quite a predicament here, so sorry to be the bearer of bad news. How can I say this......I guess just come straight out with it I suppose........here goes........................................ Questionable rug.

Yes, have been speaking with the heating engineer. Looking at the options on HPs at present. @JohnMo thanks for the input. Direction is low power HP, reasonable cylinder size of 300l or so, wet U/F and as per @Iceverge electric u/f in bathrooms and electric towel rails. On the MHVR I am investigating options as I am very tempted to DIY as I believe I can probably do the lot for 4-5k in a week myself with a spare pair of hands from my wife.

Yes, you're right on the overheating. I am inclined to not commit to anything on that front as I would rather run the system for a year and see how we manage. If we find we have an issue then we would maybe consider split air in one of the main rooms. 1% over 25 degrees, I believe peak was 26 degrees. Not sure on the solar gain impact of the PV, I assume it is embedded in the PHPP methodology as the calculation takes input on the array size. Location is Bristol, non coastal.

I'd seen it initially when it was all loose (waiting for the EPDM seal to be installed) and just assumed the black section with the splay would go down to the floor, that was all.

It's been a while since I had to work nights, and had various instances of particularly long shifts to press through. I'm definitely finding that they have prepared me well for this 'experience'! Personally, offloading some questions into this forum helps me. I have the notepad and pencil (tick), copious use of the iPad and the 'Procreate' app to annotate over images and drawings, but I typically find it takes a while to wind down from the day job and then spool-up some motivation to try and articulate the issue/challenge of the day. Then, a bit of Buildhub research before posting allows me to get the question out into the ether and hope that the following day an answer or two has nudged me a little further along. Secondly, radio 4 comedy shows are an easy listen and by then I'm normally shattered. Just know you're not alone in the challenge @ToughButterCup! Thanks for starting this thread.

This all looks fine to me. What is your concern?

TBH, on mine, if I lean forwards and go over a bump when my main boom is fully retracted, I almost get head butted by mine. I've been meaning to get new pins & bushes but like you say @ProDave it stll works fine, just with a good few clunks sometimes.

Pressing the new bushings in should be straightforward using a threaded bar and a socket. I could be wrong and it requires way more force than I'm thinking it does.

The cement faced foam core boards can be skimmed, but you use a specific primer. definitely not pva.

My old digger had a LOT of play in it. It did not stop it working and it did not get any worse while I had it. I just used it and spent my time building, not fettling.

Very strange indeed but it's not entirely impossible there's a bad batch of seals or heat exchanger a floating around. It would be easy enough to set up a rig to pressurise one side of the unit and see if it leaks out. I'm thinking a couple of bungs, a Schrader valve and a bicycle pump. Pressurise the exhaust(or inlet) side and see if it leaks out immediately. Perhaps something as simple as a dab of sealant would be enough to cure it.

Self building is a bit like golf in that rather futile pursuit of perfection I suppose. Mind you I don't play golf.

Prior to the single ply seal being installed around the base of this soil vent I was expecting the splayed plastic section to be fitted to the bottom on top of the EPDM (not based on anything, just an assumption). It seems to be fixed in place now and I’m wondering if it is in fact to stop rain splashing upwards into the vent (just my best guess). I’ll ask my builder, but I like a second opinion from here. Scaffolding comes down this week, hence I don’t have much time to question it. in case you're wondering, no the window doesn’t open and yes it is far enough away from opening windows (laterally & height).

Our new build will have three bathrooms, each with a mixture of fully tiled walls, plastered walls, and part tiled part plastered walls. The very highly recommended chap doing our plastering has advised us not to try plaster on tile backer boards. So how do we do the part and part walls. We are using some big tiles (1200mm x 600mm) so plasterboard, we are reliably informed, isn’t strong enough. So do we have a split wall - plasterboard on the top half and tile backer on the bottom? If so is the join best placed under the top edge of the tiles? How do we ensure that the levels work? Any other suggestions? We can’t be the first people to do this!

@ToughButterCup, long time no speak, and I'm really sorry to read of your struggles. I don't have a magic solution for you, but I can tell you what has worked for me. Firstly, I remember going to visit my parents many years ago. My old man had just redecorated their lounge. It looks great, I said. He jumped up from his armchair and dragged its twin from the corner it always sat in. Angrily, he pointed at a tiny mis-allignment in the wallpaper join in the corner, a near invisible flaw that nobody would have noticed even if it wasn't hidden behind an armchair. He was so stressed that he'd not achieved HIS perfection. But what is perfection, and does it really matter if you don't achieve it? Whilst our build was largely complete when we moved in, some of the minor details are still a little rough 8 years later. Does that bug me? Sure it does. And the perfectionist in me still rears its head from time to time, and gives me a sleepless night or two worrying as to what my old man would have said about it had he lived long enough to see it. But, if you've read my earlier post, you'll appreciate that my number one objective was achieved. I've chosen to accept that is enough of a win - and certainly enough of one to overlook those less than perfect details - and to concentrate on living our best life (whilst we still can). I'm not sure where you are with your build, but try to focus and give yourself credit for what you've already achieved, rather than what you have left to complete. And whatever else you do, don't lose sight of life, and the importance of enjoying it.

Normally what you would do is design the heating system to do this naturally. Each room would have its ufh output designed for the specific heat load - this means you might have different pipe spacing etc. The problem with a manual mixing valve is that it only works reliably with fixed flow temperatures, and many of them only really work well with high flow temperatures. They don't work well when you have modulation from the heat source that you will get with weather compensation. Using an electronic mixer is not the same as zoning, because you are not cutting flow to the zone, think of it as a heat area instead. What you're doing is controlling the constant flow of heat to that area, appropriate to its heating requirements. So, for example, on a cold day you might need a flow of 45C but on a mild day, it might be as little as 27C, depending on the house heating co-efficient (W/K). Therefore the house is still being treated as a single thermal envelope. The issue with target temperature is down to the floor buildup. If you have a buildup that has a higher TOG value, you need a higher flow temperature - and this may still be the case, even if your target room temperature is lower. None of us can answer this question because we know so little about the house design conditions. The reason we're suggesting a mixed circuit as a possibility is because you already have the existing one in place and we don't know anything about its design other than it's at 150mm spacings. We also don't know about the proposed design for the FF - is it going to be using speader plates, or is it screed too? There are so many variables you need to consider and then put together your FF design that complements the existing GF, then you'll be able to decide whether you actually need to have a mixed circuit or not. I think the whole mixer circuit thing was suggested as the alternative to hydraulic separation, not as a dictate about your design. So at the moment, if you're going to attempt the design yourself, spend your time learning about the design and then complete that process, including reverse engineering your existing UFH installation and go from there. Don't spend your time right now worrying about mixers. That will come later.

what has Ireland got to do with it?