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Easy fil will be fine Ajay.

Thanks for the reply. Thoughts on the other points? What should I use to close the chase? Is it appropriate to use EasiFill 60, or would that impair the structural strength of the wall? Would it have a higher risk of causing cracks, etc.? As for the cable… okay - it’s a Samsung “Near-Invisible” One Connect Cable, which is officially *not* “in-wall” rated, so… yeah. But leaving that aside, I’d like to know more about the other aspects of doing a wall chase, and advice would be appreciated.

Should always chase horizontally or vertically between wall plates/entry/exit points - you will find the electrical safe zones defined on line. That way there is half a chance others won't drill into the cable. Even if it is safe, not actually power, as just a signal cable, nobody wants a severed aerial cable etc. How come you are not just going straight up the wall from subfloor ? What cable is it - Coax, HDMI, Network ?

This seems to me the sort of system plumbers should be using

DIY - nope too busy playing wack-a-mole with various other things. I do just have a plumber currently, maybe ok tbh, but a little frustrated with flow from a different tap he has plumbed in. It is a general problem with trades and differences of objectives between the trade and the customer. Many trades want to be in and out job done - pay me mucho money instantly etc. Most customers have no idea what the plumber is doing. Plumbing should last up to 50 years - that's a lot of people cursing a limited flow rate because a plumber couldn't be bothered to bend pipe etc. One came for a look, as soon as I said a few things about MLCP and connectors and flow rates I had measured, he said, you sound technical, I'll decide whether I want to quote, never seen again. Clearly that type like ignorant customers that never ask a question. Good people want to do a proper job, welcome questions, take some trouble - measure the system performance - leave things right - call customers up to come and fix anything temporary they do etc.

Wrote reply in notes on phone. Copy pasted. No idea why size is all over the place and cat see how to edit size

Home office and hobby room with all year round use. I’m aware it would have a deep profile. In terms of overall aesthetic, The walls are being insulated & clad from outside to protect and preserve the building. These interlocking cabins can be problematic with rain and this one’s certainly suffered. The building already needs a new roof with metal being my first choice. Even without insulation I’d be fixing the roof battens regardless. If I can resolve the fixing method it’s easier insulating continuously over the top than internally though I haven’t completely ruled it out. Inside there are effectively three rooms but only one is fully enclosed. Basically it’s open plan but with Partial internal walls to support the purlins. Insulating inside would be very bitty rather than continuous. Ventilation would possibly need to be mechanical and I’d need to cladd internally to cover it all.

Home office and hobby room with all year round use. I’m aware it would have a deep profile. In terms of overall aesthetic, The walls are being insulated & clad from outside to protect and preserve the building. These interlocking cabins can be problematic with rain and this one’s certainly suffered. The building already needs a new roof with metal being my first choice. Even without insulation I’d be fixing the roof battens regardless. If I can resolve the fixing method it’s easier insulating continuously over the top than internally though I haven’t completely ruled it out. Inside there are effectively three rooms but only one is fully enclosed. Basically it’s open plan but with Partial internal walls to support the purlins. Insulating inside would be very bitty rather than continuous. Ventilation would possibly need to be mechanical and I’d need to cladd internally to cover it all.

Could it be the drains ? Maybe lift the drain covers and check everything is free flowing. Have all the waste traps in the house got water in them ?

If you are struggling for a plumber locally, maybe it's time to ask here for recommendations for good plumbers who are willing to travel (if you are willing to pay). Get someone good in who can resolve everything in one go. Will likely cost a lot more than you are paying for crap plumbers but if you can avoid the callbacks/issues then still probably a win. Alternatively, DIY?

OK Garry, I see you are referring to the white plastic pipe to the outside tap. Sure that bit can be simplified, but really the whole caboodle from the mains pipe coming in forward needs to be reworked. I am wondering whether having the bypass valve mounted vertically would help.

Difficult to tell from the angle of the photo, and you may need to bend the pipe to get round the vertical stud, but the first logical thing to do (as you have one leg capped and not in use) would be to use that leg to feed the connection through the wall (bit of extra pipe required), and put the cap on the vertical rising leg. That would remove three 90 degree bends from the flow going through the wall and is something you could do yourself with push-fit fittings.

No windows steaming. Relative humidity is low enough in the house. only had how’s few days before laying flooring. So house had almost a year to dry out since slab way layed I think. it’s normal Egger lamainte click flooring mdf core. I was wondering that but it’s only in certain areas of the house.

Yes I had a flooring company do it. They used a foil faced membrane.

Im going to lift a few planks edge of room. Hopefully I can find the source

It is actually a right bu***** muddle at the moment under my stairs. (I have had a constant nightmare with plumbers that say they will quote but don't, say they will come but don't, pop in to do something temporary and then never come back, only seem interested in doing the fastest possible rush job using only what is on site/in the van, don't really seem to want to solve issues, and/or want to bill criminal charges.) See photo. If anyone can offer any suggestions for how this should be sorted I would be very grateful. (Sadly I have the electricity main, the gas main & meter, and the water main all coming into an understairs cupboard.) On the left front you can see a 32mm MDPE water main at sub floor ground level, which has been connected to 22mm copper. This runs around in a 90 degree arc out of picture to the left because it still connects to the out of use lead pipe with a stop tap there. Left middle in the photo there is then a 15mm tee down into a blue valve (off) and connector to 16mm MLCP - this MLCP runs as a mains water feed to my kitchen sink location. Next along another 15mm copper tee with blue valve (on) that feeds (1) the outside tap and (2) an MDPE pipe under the floor that runs down to the end of the garden 40m away. The connection to the garden MDPE pipe was made temporarily just to test for leaks - comes vertically down in copper with a blue lever valve (off). Then a bypass valve for a monarch water softener (never yet installed) - bypass valve badly needs moving to the left to make proper room to connect flexihoses to the water softener. Out of the bypass valve into a 25mm MLCP to the cylinder location 5m away (where it connects to 22mm copper to feed the pressure reducing valve). You can also see the mains cable front left, middle is the gas enters through the wall and feeds upward in copper through the meter above and back down to join the yellow gas feed off to the boiler. (Meter man can't touch the gas feed pipe, plumber can't touch the meter etc) Answer welcome for a beer should we ever meet and a donation to the forum.

As someone who has been flooded, please stop, now. Glossing over the rockwool in your cavity for now, the house as it stands can dry out post flooding. Your proposal, both the bitumen and the EWI will ensure in the event of another flood, that it cannot dry. Ever. Lots of problems will stem from that that dont need explaining! Yes, i know the thinking is keeping the water out means it wont be wet. This is utterly futile, it will get in, probably first through the void under the floor.. On my last house, if you accept the water is coming in no matter what, the question is what to do about it. My house was slightly diffrent in that it had a solid concrete floor, but what i did is: I created a sump in the lowest point (front room in my case) which would be in your ventilated void. In this sump i had two electric pumps which would pump water out through tubes in the wall higher than any flood would reach. Additionally, as we lost power during out flood, i also added a battery powered pump with a controller that switched on if the power went out. The simple theory was based on our flood experience. On the night in question, we found that 2 screwfix submersible pumps could remove water and pump it out faster than it came in . My final installed pumping capacity was 8 times that. So, in the event of a flood, yes, water will come in but as it will immediately be removed, your water depth is limited to a few mm. This massively reduces the damage a flood will do. Addtionally, i tiled all of the ground floor, and, as i observed during the flood, there were a few places water came in such as around waste water pipes through walls. The biggest was water coming up past the concrete base between the concrete and the walls. I sealed all this using a sika product they put in expansion joints on runways. So i significantly reduced water infiltration rate as well. Stuff like the newel post on the stairs, i cut 20mm off the floor and installed a stainless spacer bar. So the wood wont soak up water. During my time there, i admit, i never had to use it, but im 99% confident that it would have done as designed. My target was to be sitting on the sofa 4 hours after the last drop of water had left. 4 hours to mop of and clean up the silt etc. get a couple of dehumififiers for a few weeks and sorted. It was, because of the risk of flooding that i DIDNT insulate, in particlar the old part of the house that has solid walls. Whilst there would have been significant benefit in doing so, anything i did would increase drying time. In your case, the products will simply prevent it entirely. If you accept you cannot have a completely watertight house, and you cant, at least retrospectively, find a way to mitigate the inevitable. Im not saying my way is the only way, and clearly yours is complicated by the void, but please dont try to waterproof your walls.

Good to hear. We are about to go ahead and purchase lusso for all the bathrooms. Still no showroom, but I’ve heard plumbers recommend them. one thing I noted with the vanity units were marine grade ply vs moisture resistant mdf which even some of the top German /uk brands spec

I've seen much worse. I recently completed an unvented installation where I tested one of the outside taps and had barely 10l/m and it was only 2m from the rising main. There was another outside tap more than twice the distance giving me nearly 30l/m. It seems some plumbers have lots of excess fittings they want to get rid of and waste time making repeated visits to the local plumbing merchants counter. It also seems to be a rare thing that plumbers properly considers pressure drop. Really what you want to tell your plumber is to not use any fittings at all and plan the routes accordingly - use MLCP/copper with a bender or use cold forming bends with plastic push-fit as a priority. Your other problem appears to be that you've got 15mm off the 32mm MDPE, which really should be upgraded too.

If that's the plumbers handiwork, find a new plumber.

a plumber did that?

Hi @Iceverge what make of MVHR unit have you got? Interested how you learned how to self - maintain? Any good videos you can point to showing the procedures?

I agree with @Russell griffiths that this extra layer is just reducing surface contact with the pipes. Your vapour membrane is enough of a slip layer, allowing the screed and pipes to expand slightly together. An extra layer sounds like it'll do more harm than good, it's not the screed will then slide separately over the top of the pipes, so what can it achieve? How large is the area? You won't even get 0.5m2 per bag at that depth so will have your work cut out mixing quickly enough to ensure it ends up as a contiguous slab. Buy more than you need as you don't want to run out. Have you enquired with liquid screed companies? Some can be poured very thin and will give you a guaranteed result.

About a year ago we replaced our lead water pipe with a new 32mm MDPE connection. This resulted in the flow through our outside tap being good at 37 l/m - tap connected off the internal 22mm mains copper pipe using 15mm copper pipe. Since then the piping to the tap was changed as a temporary measure to plastic with various connectors. It now has 5 right angle elbows on the temporary pipe run (see pic). When I measure the water flow it is now 27 l/m - a 27% flow reduction. I therefore conclude that each elbow is reducing flow by about 2 l/m. My plumber has already fitted one 90 degree press fit elbow on another pipe run and the flow there seems lower than other internal taps. I presume I need to tell my plumber to stop using 90 elbows and to use only swept bends if I want to maximise flow ?

Thanks for response John. Yes this is the first creaking/groaning problem. Did the plumber de pressurise the UVC ? Not sure. I think the water was turned off at one point though, so perhaps. The UVC is Gledhill Stainless ES 250L, the expansion vessel is a Zilmet, nominal volume 22. The plumber's colleague has since returned. Said the noises were because of some kind of flutter/oscillation from the pressure reduction valve. He let some air out of the expansion vessel to reduce the pressure in it somewhat - didn't have a pressure meter - so not sure of expansion vessel pressure now. This has stopped the loud creaking/groaning noises whenever we ran the hot water. The system has had release through the tun dish on a regular basis over 3 months or so, relieved by running off hot water through the taps when spotted. The plumber is proposing to replace the pressure reduction valve (currently a Caleffi) with a new 28mm pressure reduction valve, having suggested this may help improve flow through the system. Mains pressure is about 3.5 bar.