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Hi All. Got our planning permission today after 9 months of work and about £8K in fees and dispersements, first time through, did a pre planning session with the council, only 6 conditions, 2 Normal, 3 easy, and one interesting - means we have to obscure a couple of landing windows so we cannot see the neighbours or perhaps they cannot see us! Anyway as soon as other half gets home from the opening of the new Tate extension we will crack a bottle of bubbly!

I've tried for a year not to post this image. I just couldn't take the pressure any more. Goggle and weep. This where I get my hardcore - and a lot more. A lot more The keys are in the ignition, there's a copy of the Daily Mirror on the dash. Please don't tell anyone.

Respectfully disagree with some of the above. Rated output is not maximum output. e.g. a 4kW stove may actually produce 5kW flat out. Secondly, running any stove too low is a bad idea- just as it is a bad idea to run a IC engine on idle for prolonged periods. Running a stove very low means lower temperature combustion, therefore incomplete and inefficient combustion with volatiles deposited up the chimney instead of burned off. Higher risk of CO production, more ash, much more sooting up of the stove glass. One of the commonest mistakes people make is to specify too large a stove and then try to run it throttled down.

Ages ago I wrote a spreadsheet for doing what-if comparisons to see whether it was better to invest in more insulation in the walls, roof, floor, fit better windows and doors, or fit a better MVHR system. Others have found it useful and I've been reminded that I've not re-posted it over here, so here's the latest version. It should be self-explanatory, you fill in the cells with your wall, roof/ceiling and floor areas, add the areas of each door and window, put in the U values for each and, if you can, get hold of the met data from the met office for your area (the data in there is for West Wiltshire, right on the border with Dorset). This isn't a thorough modelling tool, it just looks at heat loss fairly accurately but doesn't take into account heat gains, although there is a crude way of doing that by drawing a line across the seasonal plot at the point where you don't use heating and you can very roughly assume that anything above that line will be heating. Please feel free to ask any questions, but bear in mind I wrote it back when I was designing our house and haven't used it for a couple of years. so I may be a bit rusty. Heat loss calculator - Master.xls [edited to add latest version of the spreadsheet]

Well, the good news is, once we got past the hurdle of actually getting a reply to phone or email, appointment was made and man came. Clearly knows his stuff. Found some stuff i really did need to know too. or may that should be

Couldn't (wouldn't? ) have done it without you lot. It's not for nothing I wake up screaming "KNOCK DOWN REBUILD!" when I dream of having to do similar to every room in the house! At least I'll be able to retreat to a luxurious WARM bathroom.

Have a look at my epic. I excavated (personally), by HAND, down to a similar depth and basically stopped when I hit firm clay/chalk. Whatever, it was solid and I was peed off digging. I knocked in a few pegs and then compacted (5kN electric wacker) down a minimum 50mm of homemade Type 1 - basically hardcore I graded through a 40mm mesh. I then levelled it with sharp sand and it was flatter than a flat thing. Immediately over that went 25mm of EPS to protect the following DPM from and sharp bit s of the Type 1 poking through. My thin depth of hardcore was another reason for the mesh as in it's a floating "raft" almost. And just for any new fans out there: The original floor 60mm higher than the rest of the house to start with: Not too bad once I got going: The original floor level was where the white painted wall stops: Levelling pegs: Home made Type 1 going down: My purchase off of Preloved when I abandoned making my own electric wacker (watch this space 'cos it's back on the cards): Quite satisfying. The missus said "It makes it look bigger!": Like a billiard table: I think at one point I may have laid naked on this and kept putting the level on it and smiling: The moral is to do better at school so you can pay some other **** to do it for you!

Thanks Martin, they switched on all the units today (ASHP, MVHR and the Ecocent) with our electrician today and everything worked fine they are back over the course of the next week to clean the UFH loops and refill with water/glycol, adjust the flow rates on the MVHR and hopefully we will be good to go. We are hoping to be in by 2nd July.

Don't spill it!!

Wood burning can be tricky. A few tips for anyone trying to run a smaller fire : Make sure the fire gets up to a proper temperature when lighting. Don't limit the airflow until it's burning nice and hot. Get a flue thermometer and an IR gun and obsess over them :). Make sure the flue/chimney has enough draught. You can get a fan installed to help it if not. Make sure the logs are properly seasoned - this means something like 15-20% moisture content. Most of the logs you buy from garages etc are rubbish - I've seen them at 35% moisture which is very hard to burn and will cause all kinds of problems. Its easier to burn 2 or 3 small logs than one bigger log - so if you want to only burn a limited amount of wood it's easier if you split your logs into smaller chunks Dont wait too long before refueling - e.g. don't wait until the fire is nearly out and has cooled down before putting on another log - do it when its still burning hot - so it will keep that temperature up.

Not a football loving bone in my body. I'd rather peel my eyes with a potato peeler. Just fitted a bunch of toilets and urinals in a pub refurb and now off to second fix a kitchen. "Show me the money"

As Billy Connolly once said the desire to be a politician should prevent you from ever being one!

Good design does not have to take any more time. I think the trouble is that people look for complicated and 'artistic' solutions to simple problems. Ken Tyrrell, of Formula 1 fame, once said, "an engineer is only someone that can make something for 10p what any damn fool can make for a pound".

Hi, I came across Hwam stoves a while ago. They have a wireless temperature sensor that can be used to automatically control the stove output. You can see them at www.hwam.com. I have no experience of the stoves apart from reading about them on the web.

Great news. Well done Mike, your planning costs are more than my build! Have a nice celebration?

As above, I found Nu-Heat incompetent and Wunda very good. FWIW, the Wunda manifold, thermostatic valve and pump set that I bought happens to work very well for a low temperature UFH system, so if you're only looking for a low heat output, the thermostatic valve supplied with the Wunda pump set (this one: http://www.wundatrade.co.uk/manifolds-pump-stations/401-standard-pumpset-grundfos-eup-pump.html ) works OK down to about 24 deg C flow temperature. I tried to get a three port TMV on another system to work at a low temperature and even removing the stop found that it wouldn't regulate below about 28 deg C. This may be significant if, like us, you're using a low temperature slab approach. I can also verify that this pump set and thermostatic valve has no problem when pumping cold water through it to cool the floor, if anyone is thinking of floor cooling for solar gain reduction.