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I'm not quibbling with that as a general principle, but it was my N-facing one which 'died', not the W-facing one installed at the same time which gets extremely hot in the afternoon sun (even as I type, in early March).

It's not that uncommon to be honest, even the larger suppliers will only give approx. 2 years on parts, 5 years on glass and is about standard in all honesty. I'm not shocked at those. Manufacturers can only give the warranty for the periods the parts from the suppliers are warrantied to them for. The actual window construction (corner joints, lamination, etc. will be a longer 15/25 year period). It's really unfortunate that the glass has failed, it happens, it's a pain (excuse the pun) in the a**e but I wouldn't be blaming Nordvest on this occasion. As long as the complaint is accepted and a new glass unit supplied but that is down to the glass manufacturer and they have stringent rules they follow for this. I'm presuming the installer and son were German? If yes, they know their stuff, I've known them for years.

The south facing units are the ones that die quickest.

Dunno if it's in the spirit of the forum to disclose company names? @Buildhub Moderators can delete if required. These are windows from NordVest. Have checked warranty detail. 2 years parts & labour, 5 years glazing & labour; further 5 years glazing but no labour....just shows how variable warranty can be. Perhaps I should have looked into this in more detail when choosing a supplier. But the headline "10 year warranty" seemed comparable with others. Doesn't fill me with joy for the long term.

And some will be bolts.

Have you asked them what about the project makes them unwilling? How have you determined they're incapable? I'd try and answer those questions before shopping around too much further or burning bridges with anyone already approached.

@Gus Potteris very knowledgeable and practical. I use him because I've forgotten so much structural theory. But possibly too far away from you. I can see he has seen this post but hasn't volunteered... because this isn't a marketing space. You could PM. In that case I can't help further. The market has slowed slightly so there should be capacity. Thus i suspect it is location, budget or something you aren't telling us.

We're still 4, two teenage boys who disappear for an eternity when they have showers! But, with DHW there is actually a detailed calculation method which should be more accurate, but I doubt a lot of designers will spend the time completing those calcs. Now, for a moment I was about to respond on your question about the rethink, but I then wonder whether the industry really is that responsive? It's only taken them 9 years to implement a hybrid version of the 2017 standards....and even then they still haven't ratified the national annexes to the standard, so you can still, according to MCS just use BS EN 1283-1:2017 for your heat loss calcs, for example, and ignore the new CIBSE guide because MCS only require calcs to be to that standard. So still a bit of a mess, but a step in the right direction. It'll be interesting to see what the fallout will be because if I now update a design just completed for a customer, the airing cupboard is not going to fit a 400l cylinder!

How many of you are living there now? Is this a case where they are designing to be plenty for a fully occupied house but most houses are occupied a fair bit below their theoretical maximum. I'd guess flats are often occupied much closer to their theorectical maximum given house sharing and property costs in cities. So maybe there have been some problems in those types of properties leading to a rethink.

I've just got my hands on a copy of the new edition of the domestic heating design guide and it's a major revision. Totally different approach to calculating ventilation heat losses, comprehensive tables for calculating floor perimeter to area ratios and then applying those with fabrics of up to 400mm insulation. And even new guidance on DHW cylinder sizing, which is probably the easiest to illustrate here. Typically the DHW cylinder size calcs use for heat pump training courses is either 45 x number of rooms + 40, or 45 x number of occupants x 40, so in our house we have 4 x 45+4= 220l so we had a 250l cylinder installed. The new CIBSE guide suggests that for our house/occupancy/bathrooms and storage temperature of 50 we should now, with 4 × bedrooms, 2 × bathrooms or 5 × bedrooms, 1 × bathroom (maximum occupants, 6 persons)according to their table have a minimum size of 577l. Now, we have no problem at all with hot water provision, but is this new sizing table taking things too far?

@Gus Potter of this forum is a structural engineer. You could pm him and see what he suggests. I have not used him but he is based in Scotland.

Thanks, but I'd rather not over complicate things. I was just wondering if anybody might like to recommend (or, indeed, otherwise) someone thay had experience of, as an alternative to me just pulling names out of the Yellow Pages or Google. PM me if you don't want to name names in public.

Modern plastic aka push fit pipe just doesn’t suffer like copper does regarding condensation. Quite an odd thing.

Data is so useful, so much better than guesswork. I am quite impressed with the efficiencies, what are the two different methods you use?

Thank you As I will need to redo the battening / shelves / rail etc. given the change in configuration, what did you use to fix through the insulated PB? I guess you could use those corefix fittings or (as I have done with dot and dab elsewhere) drive the plug into the brick wall behind and put a second in place within the PB and then use a long screw.

I self installed and commissioned and the BCO wasn't even interested in seeing the paperwork, but that was eight years ago.

Ours was 99% done and all he wanted at that stage was all the certificates. We had a permanent ramp but it wasn't connected to the parking area as the bungalow hadn't been demolished, but he let that go.

They are mural shower panels from Showerscape: https://www.showerscape.co.uk

When I started my build, I was getting 25x50 battens that looked like any other treated timber. They were fine. At that size, you expect a few splits especially near the ends, but overall they behaved ok. At some point the supplier switched and began selling me those godawful blue stained battens. Apparently the colour is there so that BCO can glance up at the roof and tick a box as he knows that they are approved battens. Or so I was told. Anyway, they are utterly awful. The blue staining comes off in the rain and stains your hands. And they split at the mere sight of a screw, let alone a nail.

When I changed my glazing units, the supplier offer a 1 year warrantee with timber frames (which I have) and 5 years with plastic frames, 7 years in they installed them. Most now need changing after 20 years, so may go and see if he is still in business.

Yes, was a while back, so they may have started to inject them. One can usually tell by the trimmed edges and any 'swirl' patterns on them. Would need a very large injection moulding machine. The formula is F = A x P x SF Where F is ton A is area P is injection Pressure SF is safety factor A flat sheet would need a huge machine compared to a similar amount of material injected into a a thicker, but smaller area area i.e. a plastic bin shape. There is also the speed that it can be injected, though multipoint injection alleviates this a bit, but these are niche mouldings, so would be hard to justify the costs of machinery and tooling for a few thousand parts per year, vacuum forming would be much cheaper. So they may well be injection moulded, but I would be surprised. I was only peripherally involved in the injection moulding side, but my Mathematics Lecturer in the early 1980s was John Dunhill, of the cigarette family, who worked on the Topper Dingy design back in the mid 1970s. The Topper was, at the time, the largest single moulding every made and was only possible because it was a development project, backed by industrial (ICI and Rolinex) and some government money, Ian Proctor could never have afforded to develop it and would have stuck to the cheaper GRP mouldings, which I seem to remember were lighter. Was a long time ago in my personal history, but interesting times.

Wet work (screed) can cause the lacquer to react and it looks like the finish is compromised. It does settle back down but primarily it can cause swelling to the timber. Which is why it is better to wait until that is done. As for the vents, that’s BS. It depends on the type of vent used and which way they are facing. I would suggest that they are cheap vents.

Great to hear - thank you. Our ASHP installer is complying with the MCS requirements (which doesn't allow MVHR to be taken into account, and only goes down to 35deg flow temp), however, he knows exactly what we want and, importantly, he has done exactly the same in his own house, so there's making sure it can achieve the MCS sign-off, but able to modulate down low enough to run efficiently as very low flow temp. They even audited his house as luck would have it and it still met the requirements for the BUS grant, so after being initially frustrated at the MCS / BUS restrictions, I'm happy I've found an installer who understands how to comply with it whilst delivering what we want.

High probabilty of a failed glazing unit, unfortunately this happens but should be covered by warranty. Do you mind me asking system/supplier? Glazing can be anywhere between 1 ((ulikely, usually minimum is 5) to 10 year warranty. It’s down to the warranty the manufacturer receives from the glass supplier. Just like hardware (handles for example) it is down to what the supplier of the hardware supplies as to the manufacturers warranty. You should be covered though for new glass unit.

When we were getting quote, cost difference between 2g and 3g was about 10% from the same manufacturer in my case. Much smaller than expected.