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I have been hearing that all my adult life, numbers don't back it up though.

Love the idea of earthen floors. A far more human material than concrete. An old shed is my total experience with it though. We have a single A2A into for our passive class house. Measuerd 17kWh/annum/m2 space heating demand. It lives in the hall downstairs. The house is comfortable. It needs to run maybe 9-12hrs per day at a low level to achieve this mid winter. Dryness hasn't been an issue. House plants can actually help dryness though transpiration. You cannot bank heat like a slab does with UFH so often use it outside TOU tariffs. It would be annoying in a bedroom re noise as the house is so quiet otherwise. It is simple to use. App on my phone and simple to install apart from here F Gas requirement. Ours cost €1200 from ebay and €300 for install. I drilled holes and did the mounting Daikin Ftxm-25r. If we needed it for cooling I would put another unit on the upstairs landing I think as cool air descends and warm rises. I have never needed it to cool yet but will update when I do. The bathrooms need a fast boost for a shower. Having tried a few types of heater pull chord fan heaters are the fastest and cheapest and work best for a short blast of heat. TLDR. 1. Do a single or possibly double central unit for the absolute cheapest lifetime heating and cooling costs including install cost. 2. If you go down the route of ducting every room or individual wall units for every bedroom you're probable better off going UFH + cheap mono block A2W with slab cooling and electric under tile heating for the bathrooms. It'll be quieter, cheaper to run (banking TOU heat in the slab) and more comfortable (no moving air or noise) .

Top class. That's a pucker job. Keep the pics coming.

Well I have a new HW tank to fit soon but I've been trying to optimise the HW a little more - Average consumption is 4kWh per day to do the water heating for two people occupancy. Flow temp is typically 66 Deg C return temp peaks at 61 Deg C, 115 Litre tank and 30 Min Cycle with the tank ending up at 52 Deg C (I've tried the lower and slower approach and to be honest it actually uses more gas but I think that's because of overshooting the target temp when I did it) However because of the X plan set up it does mean even in the summer I put a slug of 68 deg water into the rads straight after the HW cycle is finished. In winter no issues - it helps make up for the HW cycle time out of CH - summer it contribute to heat gain in the house...... I decided to do an experiment.......... If I run the HW for 30 mins and ten kill the boiler and continue to circulate the HW system with no boiler activity I can get an increase in the tank temp of 2 deg C and the water hitting the rads is down to 50 deg C I'm now thinking about putting a delay timer on the HW valve closing 10 mins after HW cycle is completed to extract the last bit of energy out of boiler and circuit Mad idea?

I will have a look at self compacting concrete. When you say someone to help finish the slab, will a bull float suffice?

I am aware that some manufacturers have had issues with condensation in the walls of their machines it may just be that. Why not look at a dry the panels out solution - drill a pluggable hole, connect a pipe to the hole and a tub of silica gel and see how much moisture you can draw out that way. You can get Silica Gel in volume: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quart-Replacement-Desiccant-Indicating-Silica/dp/B013L31PQ0 that one is indicating - it changes colour as it gets wet and is likely to be toxic if swallowed - IIRC normal, non indicating, silica gel is harmless though

We’ll see how the trials go Some resins are pretty grim and I wouldn’t entertain using them in the house, but for this we’re using a solvent-free polyurethane 👍

Screwfix No Nonsense remover worked for me.

Good, point, but NIMBY's aren't a good solution either. They just cost a load of tax payers money and everything takes an age. Leading to a great deal stagnation - Just as the UK is at present, slowly turning into a mess.

If you can't see or smell damp or mould, what makes you think the structure has got wet? A well designed caravan / motorhome will be built with all joints lapped the correct way so water does not enter and the sealant is for good measure only. The one exception to this was an ABI we had in the 90's that when investigating damp (it really was damp and showing) I found to my horror and disbelief the wall to roof joint was lapped the wrong way so it was only the sealant stopping water entering. If there really is water getting in, I am not sure I would be ripping it all apart from the inside, it is the external joints that need investigating and re sealing, mostly roof to walls, and wall external corners.

I've got some old sealant that I should have thrown away because it was never much good. I will see if solvents are mentioned.

And good for who (whom?) . like in trickle down theory / jam tomorrow / Brexit.

I'll give these a try. I do recall WD40 being good for sealant removal. 😊 I guess it may be a case of trial and error and a steady hand with a sharp chisel.

Utilitarianism has some fundamental downsides I think such as how do you assess greater good anyway. It it how all the people see it or just a few who say "this will be for the greater good" alternatively is it for the greater good now or later - hard to know!

You forgot Snibbo.

Off topic. You are excused not knowing this history. It was not a shortage, (The Irish Potato famine was) :but greed of the ruling classes. As perhaps is the Chinese case. It was after the Union of Parliaments, and many of the Highland Chieftains/ lords, now resident in London, became readily persuaded that they'd be rich if they abandoned the community / clan system, evicted the people and put sheep on the land. The people were loaded on ships with few belongings. Hence the very large numbers of Highland names in NE US and Canada. Some Lords were brutal, others less so. "Such a parcel of rogues in a nation" by Burns refers to Scots not English Lords.

There will be a solvent that works, but unless you know which adhesive was used, it will be trial and error. Start with the easy solvents. White Spirit, Methylated Spirit, Acetone, gasoline and WD40. Don't convince yourself that with a bit of solvent and a huge amount of elbow grease that it is working. A solvent should make it dead easy to remove. If none of them work, then it is a case of internet shopping for things like Dichloromethane, my favourite and Xylene (my least favourite), or even Toluene. I think it was @Onoff that found a cleaner in Lidl that seemed to remove most things, so maybe trip there on Thursday.

This is very interesting and although a year later, I am keen what approach you went with. I too have been banging my head against a brick wall on this topic. We are having a ground bearing slab and level thresholds. My plan is to simply follow the detailing for the block and beam Radon barrier protection. If you swap out the block and beam for a ground bearing slab then why would it not work. From what I can see, water / damp cannot migrate through the ground into the dwelling and the cavity tray captures any moisture from the cavity and will surely help mitigate and water that did try to breach the cavity. Can anyone see any reason why that detailing could not be used for membrane above a ground bearing slab? I want to go membrane above slab, for the simple reason that service penetrations are quite high and to get a decent damp / Radon seal below the 150mm slab will be a complete dog's dinner.

Sounds like you had a gall stone in your bile duct which was painful until you eventually passed it. Same thing happened to my wife and she went back to a normal diet. Inevitably it came back a year later when another stone popped out of her gall bladder and blocked the duct again. At that point, they took her gall bladder out by key hole surgery. She had complications though so that moved it up the priority list. The consultant who did the surgery told her that with no gall bladder, she needed to change to an essentially fat free diet, but she’s now eating pretty much what she ate before and the side effects seem to be manageable. Crack on with your build. You’ll be fine!

Not building related, but i am hoping for advice from the forum on how to remove sealant on motorhome joints. We have just discovered that our 17 year old motorhome has quite bad damp, within the walls, that really needs sorting. However, this involves removing all internal units, cutting away the interior walls, removing the damp insulation inside the walls, and then replacing everything! We have been told it will cost over £10k as it will take 4 weeks. About 60% of that is labour. Our motorhome is only worth about £15k yet it is perfect for us and we did not want to replace it for another few years. Internally, there appears to be no mould within the living quarters. it all seems to be within the walls, and so far, we have never smelt or seen mould. Financially, it is just not worth us having the work done. It is highly likely that water has entered via the external sealant, now 17 years old. It is all very dry and cracked. So our thoughts are to just remove and reseal the external joints with Sikaflex 522 ourselves. And keep it going till we can afford to replace it in a few years or until the damp starts to show in the living area. Any advice on the best way of removing as much old sealant as i can before I reseal with new? I've done quite a bit of sealant applications in the past but not sure about how best to remove the old stuff. Thanks.

I do wonder if we really have, or maybe polarisation is human nature when resources get scarce.

Wiping out or evicting the natives whose land they required. That's a very extreme opposite of nimbyism. It happened here with the Highland Clearances, but we've evolved a bit since then.

Or send kids to private schools. Never more than 12 in my class. Was great.

I have 3 smallish access hatches in my suspended floor which is otherwise fixed down with u/floor heating pipes in. 1/ one hatch will be under the sink unit, not visible and inaccessible without removing the whole worktop and then the sink unit - access hopefully very unlikely 2/ one hatch will be under the washing machine, not visible, accessible by pulling machines out and removing a divider panel - access hopefully very unlikely 3/ one hatch in an alcove//cupboard area, visible when sliding door open - access very likely if any wires need pulling to the AV/network cupboard Floor is going to have leveller then LVT. Not sure how best to handle these hatches... Bury under the leveller/LVT floor and forget ? Create some kind of position template/measurements, then just bury under the leveller/LVT floor ? Create some kind of enduring hatch by having a break in the leveller and LVT and a hatch that can be lifted somehow ? By removing screws ? By using a sucker to lift the hatch ? By putting holes or slots in the floor and using some kind of lifting handle ? Anyone had or done similar ? Suggestions or advice ?

Slimline, I guess so. Innocuous, I’d say not. ours look over the back garden and can’t really be seen easily from anywhere. This is from a few years ago when everything was fresh, clean and unfinished.