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https://www.plasterers1stopshop.co.uk/product/plasterboard-pvc-edge-bead-12-5mm-x-2-5m/?srsltid=AfmBOorQvJbCIIUOacdScHTyybmkxk6-Reoj9fvgTCU_mV-xb9e_OQqU Buy a length of the above. Dry fit it first. Just to the right of your pencil line, "holy" side nearer the glass. Get some double sided tape and stick it in place exactly. Where you want it. Use some thin self tapping screws to screw the bead onto the frame. In the valley of the bead so to speak. Dry fit some plasterboard for your reveal. Squirt some FM330 foam (NOT TOO MUCH!) on the reveal, enough to ensure a full fill of all voids and a continuous seal all around the window. Not too much that it will expand and crack the plasterboard. Anywhere you fear a leak onto the frame you should mask it off first. Slide the plasterboard into the bead and then screw onto the reveal. You will be left with. 1. A board mechanicaly secured at both ends. 2. A thorough insuation job. 3. Arrow straight reveals following the line of the bead. 4. A good key to stop skim chipping off the board near the window frame. 5. Good air sealing at the reveal to window junction with the FM330. P.S I wouldn't be tempted to use a metal bead. The frame will be colder than the rest of the room and a metal bead will attract condensation and rust over time.

Worry is what gets me, worry and eating a meal too late. ( Supper ideally on a plate no later than 5hrs before sleep, snack later if needed) Self build is often battling to get something to a standard above the humdrum, hence conflict and hence, for me, worry. I would prefer to do it myself and take years and avoid the worry or ideally only work with reliable high standards people. Both are impractical in reality. To curb the worry I have tried to give up the things that trigger me negatively emotionally. The news was the top of the list. I still consume a lot of current affairs podcasts but limit them to ones that tackle the subject dispassionately. The FT does some good ones. Instagram got the chop, Snapchat, Facebook. Not deleted the app but eradicated my accounts. All in all you're not alone. I went to the beach with the family today. It cheered us all up after a very wet January here.

Will try and remember to post one tomorrow night. If only. If I had nothing on the build worrying me I’d worry about what I didn’t know about that I should be worrying about lol

…..made of solid brass…. Are you planning on any WWF slam down matches in the shower? Or just bathing as we do here; 2 adults, 4 very unsympathetic children now teens hammering these things. Still as good and functional as the day I put these in, 7 or 8 years ago now iirc. Cheap as chips shower arm (380mm long for my 800mm wide bath) and the rainfall head was £8.99 on eBay. Died after 6 years of use / abuse, another £8.99 one went on. Looks like a £100 one, so sue me https://ebay.us/m/b0q0qC More money left over for beer. Chill out, it’ll be perfectly fine Can we see a pic of the connections on the shower valve plz?

And?

The annoying thing is that it literally trebles the number of buried joints.

I did.........it's working still ....2 years later...... Or just listen to Nick.

Thank you Nick. So the PTFE tape amount is adjusted till the shower head is pointing vaguely downwards… Hmmm. That means all the weight is on that 1/2inch thread. Scary. But then, I am good at worrying about the wrong things.

Great progress as ever! The weather in Dorset, as you say, has been an absolute pain for some time now. It's making our progress slow to a crawl currently! As ever though - Onwards and Upwards

04:00. I’m so physically tired most nights that once my brain starts to switch off (read BBC news app then do a soduko then I crash out) I sleep till then. Typically I flake out between 23:30 and midnight. Unless something wakes me in the first hour of sleep. Then I start the 04:00 process early. Earlier in the build I’d then not get back to sleep till the circa 06:00 alarm. That’s improved a bit. Root cause is revolving thoughts. Usually things I can’t resolve by thinking them through. If I can work then out as I lay there (rarely) I then have a chance of finding sleep again. Being told not to stress or not to worry tends to irritate deeply, when I’ve the worries I can’t switch off. I’d love to. It’s a lot worse when I’m worrying about deadlines. So removing deadlines might help but isn’t an option. So I don’t think I can reduce the base stimuli. Instead I have two things I try, if things are bad I try both together. One is a mug of milk with a big heap of brown sugar, microzapped till nice and warm. Drunk slowly to savour it. I’ve not a clue if it’s getting up, getting cold, doing something, getting back in warm bed that helps or it’s the milk itself, I suspect it’s both. The second is to take off my mask (I’ve been using one for obstructive sleep apnoea for a decade) and lay on my side (I don’t have constricted airways if I do). God knows why but sometimes that gets me to sleep for an hour or so till my hips hurt but then I can often put the mask back on and go back to sleep. Again, I’m not sure why it works, maybe it’s just something else to focus on than my anxieties. I think it’s 04:00 as by then my tiredness will have reduced somewhat and thus dropped below that needed to overcome anxiety. Or it’s simply a weird facet of my natural rhythm. And when I’m worrying about a deadline nothing works. Whatever, At least it’s less than two hours to the alarm.

You use outside tap type angled backplates for the outlets to the handset and rainfall head https://www.screwfix.com/p/flomasta-brass-compression-adapting-90-wall-plate-elbow-15mm-x-1-2-/92934?tc=BT1&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=19822796606&gbraid=0AAAAAD8IdPyUGEfGZZmhJ90IDJw5JjdyE&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkPzLBhD4ARIsAGfah8hKcKRu6pms4b1EB6CpPB7-4xkBVO9bS-dQVLeJvDxI7Mgb0nVqyuAaAvBDEALw_wcB And.... Do exactly this (please). Not true of every single one I've ever fitted, and that's "more than one"

Crushed concrete. It usually comes with soil and other people's demo junk in it, but in your case a bit of earth won't matter.

Airtight build with MVHR. Structural wall panels were filled with 100 wood fibre, fitted together with expanding foam tape, Intello membrane, then cross-battened 50mm and filled with 50mm wood fibre. One or two needed a pulley to lift. Window reveals framed out and fitted with PIR, 25, 50, or 75mm depending on available space.

So, we are rabidly getting everything shoved into the walls to get ready for plasterboarding. The plumbing side of things is a simple ‘radial HEP2O, no joints in the walls’ type affair. Isn’t that just so simple (in theory). And then I open the box of the Aqualisa thermostatic shower gubbins. Last time I fitted such things was in ‘91, and they are still going (with a facelift on one and new cartridges on both, but still). So this time I discover that I have a 15mm compression joint on the control inlets. Q: Can I put 15mm HEP2O with an insert straight in? I’m sure I’ve done that before but is it a good idea? Is it better to convert to copper for the last few inches? Secondly, the outlets appear to be suited to installations where one has access to the back of the shower wall. Bugger. For fitting without access to the back of the wall the instructions just say put a 1/2 inch connector in the wall then later screw the shower hose bit into it with some PTFE tape. Sort of like an external tap connector. (See instructions below). Q: is that what people really do? Will that even work? Will I end up with a wobbly rain head pointing at the ceiling? Guidance very much appreciated folks.

https://www.dortechdirect.co.uk/faceshield-uv-membrane-1-5m-x-50m.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqoEF0dakba4-g2N6bQWWJldFY0_x-xl9EHV3bDlDYYmAein1TV We were going to do open screen but decided against it in the end. This stuff any good? 12mths fully uncovered according to the data sheet.

Indeed. Have you been there recently? The place is in almost as bad a state as we are, though at least they're now rebuilding, but last I saw it was causing some chaos.

Yes, absolutely. The Adia came to mind mostly because of the continuous monitoring and adapting of the heat pump output etc. as well as the additional pump. The customer wants monitoring of the system they can access and see. I'd sketched up a pipe system to first try it with the single pump and then if necessary switch to CCT with a small additional circulator should it be needed.

Count us out till we hand over the house (it is becoming more of a house by the day!) to the tackers, which will be middle of next month. Next year our availability will be much better. Honest.

@ToughButterCup your post really resonated. It’s 15 years since I worked nights. 3am was always the killer, lowest point on the circadian rhythm, the witching hour. Now we seem to take it in turns to wake between 1&3, then find it impossible to get back to sleep. We’ve just done a 22 hour weekend on top of full time jobs during the week, so it’s not because we’re not tired. There’s just no switching off. It’s the daytime grumpiness that’s so hard to deal with, both being grumpy and coping with someone else who’s grumpy too.

Out of curiosity earlier I changed the fan speeds to 40% intake and 30% exhaust and it made absolutely no difference at all, temperature stayed identical on all including the controller of the MVHR, I left it that way for a good two hours as well, have put it back to how it was previously now. still curious as to what other peoples MVHRs are showing temperature wise for comparison?

Week 36 When I posted the previous blog two weeks ago we were looking ahead to activity on the bathrooms and electrics, and also to making a start on the landscaping. Since then it’s been a fortnight of progress and challenges… Bathrooms My brother Chris made brilliant progress throughout the week he was with us. A toilet, basin and shower screen were fitted to finish the guest ensuite, a basin and shower screen fitted in the family bathroom to finish that room, and the bath, hand shower and basin were fitted in the master ensuite. It was all going really well. Too well. And sure enough disaster struck while fitting the wall-hung shower toilet in the master en-suite. We* were gently tightening the bolts that hold the toilet to the frame when there was a ‘ping’, then a crack appeared around one bolt boss, before replicating itself on the other boss, and then the whole pan came away from the frame in a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. Which was a bit disappointing, to say the least. (*Yes, I was 'helping' - that could be the true root-cause of the problem to be fair.) That white rectangle on the wall is a foam pad which is meant to cushion the pan against the wall to be trimmed away after fitting. We obviously never got that far. The actual cause proved to be a mismatch between the TECE wall frame instructions and those supplied with the GSI Ceramica WClean toilet. We followed both sets of instructions as closely as you ever can follow these modern 'pictogram', wordless instructions. Sadly, this led to the pan being inadequately supported directly behind the bolt bosses and the pan shattered as the bolts were tightened and the stresses rose in the ceramic. Here's the template the TECE frame instructions encourage you to cut out around. Which leaves you with an unfortunate void around the bolt holes. Of course, as soon as it happened we both kicked ourselves for not spotting the problem beforehand. At that point, I wished I had bought a Geberit frame and toilet as I originally intended rather than being persuaded by the bathroom showroom that these were better products. In fairness to the showroom (Island Bathrooms in Salisbury) they immediately agreed to supply a replacement pan, which arrived this week and we will have another attempt to fit it when my brother is back with us next week - first making sure that those bolt bosses are fully supported! Fingers-crossed! Notwithstanding that disappointment, as well as all the great bathroom progress Chris found time get the kitchen sink and Quooker tap, and the utility sink all plumbed in too! Landscaping Ashley Ralph, our landscaper, made a start on our external landscaping during the wettest January for years! (We had 259mm - over 10” - of rain in the month in our corner of Dorset.) Having temporarily turned our relatively tidy site into a recreation of the Battle of the Somme, he has quickly got a good covering of type 1 packed down and the site looks relatively tidy again. In fact tidier than it did before. To be fair, Ashley does keep things very tidy. Concrete pad for a future potential car port. The plan is to tarmac most of the front to make vehicle and wheelchair access nice and easy. We did consider a layer of hot-rolled grit over the top, which we did in our previous house and which looks attractive but when it’s not being walked into the house the grit collects dirt over time and becomes impossible to keep clean. So tarmac it is. Behind the house is more complicated with a fall of 1.6m over 17m of garden. To make that as wheelchair accessible as possible we have an intricate plan of terraces, ramps, dwarf retaining walls and planting beds which we’re hoping Ashley can install in our relatively compact garden. This mini-project could be running for some time! Cladding Alan, chippie No. 1, came in for a week and all the timber wall cladding is now done! All that remains now on the cladding front is for some of the soffits including those under the front and rear roof canopies, to be clad. The chippies may need to perfect the art of hovering above in-progress landscape works while they do that (!) Electrics Electricians seem to have become a bit scarce, which is a worry. To be fair we had two in the week before last, and a lot of lights were connected up but no significant milestones seem to have been reached. We still have a lot to get through to have a fully wired house before we move in on the 23rd February. And no electricians are planned on site until 9th Feb, so this is becoming a concern. Tiling We’ve also struggled to get our tiler in to finish off the porcelain skirtings - a couple of planned visits cancelled due to illness. Whilst we could move in with the skirtings as they are now it is obviously preferable not to be trying to finish them off with our furniture in the room. A ‘plan B’ is emerging to allow us to get this one over the line without relying on our principal tiler, who although good does not appear to be in great health right now. Internal joinery We have some further oak sections on order to give us enough material to finish the pocket door frames in oak rather than the primed MDF Eclisse supplied. Also since we have decided to opt for full width door stops to give a rebated door frame look, we are waiting for those to arrive so that they can be fitted. The oak door frames and architraves really do set the doors off well - we’re very pleased with them. Focus for the next three weeks: Electrics, still lots to do. Plumbing - that wall hung toilet! Landscaping - onwards and downwards. Packing - it has to be done , because… … we’re going to be moving in in three week’s time! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this past two weeks: 32 Contractor days on site since build start: 527 Budget: No change - over budget but within contingency. Plan: Moving in booked for 23rd February. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: N/A Current top issues and worries: Whether the electrics will be done in tome for our move. Hanging that toilet.

I’d like to see a test certificate for a 30 minute FR floor using insulated plasterboard below the floor joists.

Yep. We are not alone, thats for sure.

The same Germany whose economy is f@&£d due to high energy prices, due to idiotic policy?

You want to look at Germany, but according to their figures, there's not a whole lot of difference with the rest of the EU. Courtesy of Bundesbank June 2025: