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Rip it off and plasterboard. If you have ANY electrical alterations to do, your electrician will hate you for keeping the lath and plaster. Just my preference.

Walls have been stripped of wallpaper back to original plaster (lime I presume?). Assuming it is still sound what would people recommend for skimming onto it? 1. bluegrit 2. PVA till tacky (with one coat before?) 3. pink SBR wait till fully dry Got a whole house to do so quite like the idea of something you can get on and leave to dry cheers

@Conor is correct. We have MVHR in an airtight* new build. It's great, works a treat in the background. Just the extract and supply in a 60sqm kitchen / dining room, again not an issue. Personally, If I did it again I would fit kitchen extract to vent outside but inaccessible ducting could be an issue. Recirculating hob should be enough and wood burner needs its own sealed air supply. * Draughty catflap.

It's possible I suppose. Of course, all of this assumes Iran agrees to back down, or is incapacitated, and I don't see either of those happening in the short term. Insurance or not, would you agree to take a ship through the state of Hormuz when the Iranians have been laying mines and are threatening to blow up shipping?

Long long ago, I designed, and then my employer built, a very large concrete tank for water storage at a coal mine. Only later did I learn that this was part of what was called Scargill-proofing.... doubling all resources at pits. My apologies to the pit communities that soon closed. So it reminds me that stockpiling is more than a big pile of stuff. It would be very expensive.

Sigenergy batteries (which we are considering) do have inbuilt fire suppression. I do not know how common this is.

Only 4.5 kWh/kg. So after conversion, about 1.5 to 2 kWh. So a lot of tonnes.

Talking a 90 day reserve. Drax currently burns it but not sure what else. Assume we would be wanting a reserve that could be burned for 90 days with Drax flat out and likely some other plants also. Agree.

It is imported in vast quantities from Canada. A stockpile wouldn't last long and with stock rotation won't rot. Whether this biomass is properly sustainable is another matter.

The bco can't be an expert on everything, especially with changing technology. The regulations require safety, so I think it is fair that he asks for a formal proposal with references and risk assessment.

I’ve been asked numerous times to explain the residual pump curves published in some Vaillant Ecotec Boilers MIs, I’ve looked at them several times but afraid I can’t make any sense of them. Someone on here might explain them or/and post similar curves from their (Vaillant) HP circ pump curves, if available. The first screenshot shows my calcs based on a typical 7M circ pump, second screenshot is the Vaillants and the third is unknown but does make sense. The Vaillant’s constant pressure residual default setting is 250mB, 2.5M. At this setting, mine shows a flowrate of 1200LPH (20.0LPM), unknown’s 1300LPH & vaillant’s 1230LPH, much of a much. At 70% pump speed (72% for unknown’s but won’t have any big effect vs 70%) mine = 540LPH (9.0LPM), unknown = 620LPH (10.3LPM), again not hughely different and probably explained by pump differences but Vaillant = 1150LPH (19.2LPM), can’t figure this out but one would think Vaillant have some basis for publishing these figures??. Residual Head.docx

I think when we shut down our coal plants a significant proportion of the coal they were burning was imported. Not sure this would add up to much, and if you are paying to have electricity generation as part of the incinerator plant then you are generating energy during normal operation. Edit to add: and non-incinerator plants don't have the filtering to clean up the emissions from waste. Best backup we have available to us easily is to reopen gas storage facilities. We could have 80-90 days storage of gas available if we wanted to at reasonable cost. We aren't far off from not needing fossil fuels during the summer months. Lot further to go during the winter months. But still as we deploy more renewables the amount of time that the same amount of gas storage buys increases. None of this helps with short term spikes caused by the current crisis. But at least it is happening as we are coming into spring where our need for gas/heating oil is limited. Edit to add: if you want non-gas, burnable storage, maybe store a stockpile of wood/biomass. You'd have to store it in a way that won't rot down over time (woodchips not a great way to do that) but seems quite doable.

About 10 TWh/year is turned into electricity. We use about 320 TWh/year. But I like the idea for storage. (Some of the above will be land fill gas)

The only way I can see the gas plan working would be if the "company" (nationalised) owned the gas fields, storage, transport and power plants - basically farm to for for electricity. Not impossible but there are probably any number of pitfalls. As for coal, we wpiod need to open mines and I don't think we have the expertise. I did wonder if we use waste incinerator plants as our "dark and still weeks" backup. Basically I'm not sure how much plastic actually gets recycled but we do need virgin plastic for alot of things eg medical and food packaging. So why not store the shredded waste for burning when we need it. Yes it would release carbon but the amounts would be much smaller and we wouldnhabe less plastic waste in the enviroment.

We were told the MVHR (Venti Fluxo) was to be by the log burner on the opposite side of the room just to recirculate air and if it needs to draw from the room, also a generally good feature to recirculate what will be a well used room. This was on the basis of the log burner being under 5kw without air supply, but since meeting with a HETAS supplier and fitter for the burner, they said they would fit it with its own air supply due to the room having an extractor of some sort (hob) anyway, not sure if this then makes the venti fluxo redundant and unnecessary? The concern with a recirculating was it just isnt as efficient removing grease/moisture as a recirculating.

To add to the above - I have G3 cone filters in the extract terminals, have not need to change an extract filter in the MVHR they come out clean and are reinserted. The cone filters are now hoovered every 6 months and replaced yearly. The intake filter really depends on season and location. Generally I hoover 6 months and replaced annually, but depends on what I see when I take them out. Bearing in 5 years none so far. Service costs about £30 a year for 2x units. Running costs as above but reduced as I have battery and plenty of solar. Heating costs reduced by a bigger margin. MVHR was mandatory due to airtight score in Scotland. So zero options on to install or not.

This is the huge saving vs Gus' estimates. DIY bearing replacement rather than replacing either the whole unit (which seems excessive but might happen if parts unavailable) or replacing the whole fan using a professional likely adds up to a saving of £500+ each time. Important that you choose an MHVR with a fan whose bearings can be replaced. From reading hear some fan units are very difficult to service like this forcing a whole fan unit replacement.

The opening post was about being told by a BCO that 120 minutes fire resistance was needed for battery storage. Since the purpose of the regulations is to secure the health, safety and welfare of persons using the building (extended somewhat by mission creep to Parts L, S, R etc.) then being required by using statutory powers to go beyond the usual 30 minutes FR for two storey dwellings would seem excessive without the authority to do so. The occupants should have evacuated and fire fighters would not have to be inside. However, that is not to say that the OP shouldn't consider upgrading the fire resistance for their own property protection but that is entirely up to them, not the whim of the BCO who may personally think it's a good idea (and I'm not necessarily arguing that it isn't).

I’m up against this constantly. My attempts to steer folk away from expensive and time consuming misadventures is often rebuffed at first, then it’s an 11th hr dash to douse the flames with dampened £50 notes.

With some waht impeccable timing the UK climate change committee has released a report that (amongst other things) looks at the costs of "Net zero" vs the costs of staying as we are today. https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/supplementary-analysis-of-the-seventh-carbon-budget/ The TLDR is that the cost of NZ is about £4bn a year or £100bn to 2050. The cost of a single oil crisis (eg the 2022 one) is £40bn to treasury (fuel bill support) and an estimated similar amount to households and businesses. All in all they conclude the cost of NZ is about equal to a single oil crisis and we are on our second this decade. Again this is an argument for NZ that makes no reference to climate change.

Are you happy with it - in terms of the service it delivers, air quality etc?

I've had MVHR 5 years now. I take it apart and clean it every 2 years. 2hrs DIY. I did the fan bearings after 4 years. €8 and again about 2hrs labour. I change the filters every 6 months €40. 2 mins. I vacuum them out about every 3. 2 mins. I reckon 40w fan draw so at 20c/unit maybe €70/year. Our MVHR unit lives in the Utility above the washing machine so it's nice and accessible. This is important. Anyone putting one a pokey corner of an attic is daft. If I was to pay someone for the bigger services I would say it might cost €250 a year to run so far. Time will tell how often a motor needs replacing or the entire unit.

Recirculating kit if you have an MVHR. I don't know who has been advising you, but they would be against the current consensus. For the floor, put in 100mm insulation with 50mm liquid screed. I'd say 100mm sheets are easier to come by and cheaper than 90mm anyway. I assume the wood burner is room sealed with it's own air supply?

We are currently renovating our ground floor and adding an extension on. We currently have a thick concrete sub floor in the existing house as was built in the 80's, with no insulation, that we are taking down to then build back up, adding celotex 90mm and 65mm screed with UFH too which will match the new extension that the room will be part of. We have been advised its best to duct the hob fumes/moisture out of the house, rather than recirculating, due to also having a wood log burner in the room and a MVHR, but have seen a lot of reading around the best way to do it. My two main questions are (but will take any extra advice!)l 1. What happens to the moisture that condenses and can 'pool' in the duct if we're going vertically down through the island, through the floor under the island (beneath screed and insulation), underneath the floor to the external wall (approx 3 metres from duct entry) and vertically back up and out of the external wall? 2. Does the duct run under block wall and up through the cavity (then out the brick wall below DPC) or behind what will be tall kitchen cabinets?

It’s not just the cost, it’s the security of supply. There’s also a benefit for the treasury in the amount of tax that can be taken from producing it at home. And what’s to stop new licenses for exploration being granted to a state run company (other than them no doubt f’ing it up). Or the state could take a stake and leave operations to someone who knows what they are doing. Perhaps we need to start thinking about burning coal in the short term again until we can finish a transition away from FF. I’m seriously worried about the economy. Tax/costs are already at unsustainable levels for business, making the product unaffordable for the average consumer, yet the treasury is still going to need more of our money as it’s still bleeding cash. This is before the impact of this new war. We need to do something fairly drastic imo.