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Your builder is certainly no slow coach! Great progress!

Brilliant. Super photos too.

Hi Grosey, Near Buckfastleigh between Exeter and Plymouth.

None what so ever!

Hi and welcome. It depends on complexity of connection - how far, how deep, transformers needed etc ..?? Do you have any info on what was requested ..?

Its gone up since I bought mine a few months ago. But still only £5sq mt. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FULL-10m-ROLL-only-65-Diamond-pattern-checker-plate-rubber-matting-1200mmx3mm-/112190153214?hash=item1a1f0de1fe:g:BmYAAOSwpRRWoQIl if I was buying again I'd go for the thicker 5/6mm stuff. Its a bit crap tbh.

That is something I have wondered about and will investigate when I get a system running. My thought if your heating demand is low, and you have all day to heat a tank of water, is in such conditions run the heat pump for say 20 minutes then off for say 40. That would have to be by an external timer. If doing that, and giving it time to defrost on it's own would avoid a defrost cycle then it would be worth doing. The other efficiency related thing i want to look at is separate the heating of the DHW tank and the heating of the buffer tank, so it only ever heats one at a time. When it is heating the buffer tank for the UFH then I would want to set point temperature of the heat pump set very much lower, than when it is heating the DHW tank. Again that will need some custom controls.

So, I've managed to sneak a couple of days off. Inside painted and finished. It's wall to wall MDF, Laurence Lewellyn Whatsit would be proud . I was far too tight to buy anything pre-made so everything (wall cladding, door linings, architrave etc) is all just cut and routed from sheets. Todays job is to lay the rubber flooring. It was some cheap stuff from evilbay. I have a feeling its not going to be fun to lay Then just the skirting to cut and fix. Then move onto to the sink unit, storage and other bits. Yes, and before someone says it. Its all overkill for a workshop but I'm keeping myself amused until we get planning sorted TTFN

What are the extra 2 minutes for? or is it best not to ask

What a different climate you live in. A couple of weeks in winter when the daytime temperature does not get above -10 is not unusual here. Re number of showers. Is that "man showers" or "woman showers" It takes me about 5 minutes to have a shower and wash everywhere and wash my hair (granted I don't have a lot of that left so that bit doesn't take long) It would be a "short" shower if SWMBO is out in less than 20 minutes.

Do you have long showers and full baths. I run my 200 lt DHW at 50°C (ish) and can get 4 showers out of it (or a half filled bath and 2 showers) usually. A couple of things may account for this. I have E7 and usually use the water within a couple of hours of the power going off. I have put a lot more insulation around the cylinder, reducing the losses from about 3 or more kWh/day down to about 1 kWh/day. There has been times in the past when my old lodger would stand under the shower until it goes cold, leaving me with a very luke warm shower at the end of the day, but generally that was the exception, not the norm. Are the modulating? If so, then, assuming the price difference is not ridiculous, go for the larger one. With regards to the efficiency differences of vented or unventilated, I fail to see the difference if everything else is equal i.e. insulation levels, surface areas, pipe lagging and run length. I may be missing something there (not being a plumber), but a small 'hole' to allow for ventilation is not going to account for much. Knowing what the weather is like down in Cornwall (he says sitting in a friends unheated house in North Shropshire), there are so few days when the temperature goes below 5°C in a year, and hardly any when it is below 0°C in a decade, you have to question the cost benefit of installing 'emergency weather heating'. Last year I only used a fan heater (was a mild year), this year was a little bit chillier, a little bit earlier, so the fan heater came out a week or two earlier, but it then warmed up again. I usually 'turn the heating on' when the daily mean temperature falls below 9°C.

It is possible for water to track across an overlap join so good to use the sealing strips

A previous rental property, when we got it back from the tenant, I found there was a leak in the roof above the bathroom (would have been nice if the tenant had told us the roof was leaking and dripping into the bath) I emptied that bit of the loft of the sodden insulation and just laid it out in a bedroom, expecting it to be scrap. But in the couple of weeks it took me to fix the leak and re board the bathroom ceiling, the insulation had all dried out, so i put the old insulation back.

My thoughts on the Thermals store Vs Unvented hot water tank. An unvented tank heated to 45 degrees, will deliver hot water at pretty much 45 degrees until the tank is empty, when it will go cold very quickly. A thermal store heated to 45 degrees will initially deliver water at 45 degrees but the delivered water temperature will start to fall off unless heat input can keep up with the rate of delivery. So for practical purposes, to achieve the same useful hot water delivery, a thermal store needs to run at a hotter temperature than an unvented cylinder. I did an experiment recently, I ran a kitchen sink full of water that was as hot as I could tolerate. It was on the verge of burning to keep your hands in it for more than a few seconds. I then measured the water temperature, and it was 45 degrees. So that indicates 45 degrees is plenty hot enough for dishwashing, hand washing etc (mixed with cold water) About the only "need" for water hotter than 45 degrees might be for thermal mixing showers. That is only because to achieve say a 40 degree operating temperature, they might not be abler to blend so far towards hot and maintain stability, so it may be necessary to have hot water for a shower hotter than 45 degrees, just so the mixer can blend it back down properly. That will only be found by experiment and is likely to vary from one shower mixer to another. Therefore my plan is deliver raw 45 degree tank water to all sinks and basins, and just have the in line boost heater for showers, if it proves necessary. Some experimenting will be needed. An obvious disadvantage of storing hot water at a lower temperature is there is less energy stored in the tank. So you will probably want a larger tank than would ordinarily be recommended for the usage. Re unvented tanks and sign off. I installed the last one myself. Building control were happy with that though they did check the discharge arrangements. There is also a guidance note from nhbc that explains how to use a waterless trap to take the discharge into a drain stack to avoid a vent pipe to the outside. that is what I will be doing, and referring building control to that document if the disagree. then arguing it up the chain if they still disagree. I have attached the nhbc waterless trap discharge note. NHBC_discharge_guidance.pdf

Looks great What I tidy site

My daughter works for an estate agent, I asked her if it was ever a problem with properties 10 years old and younger not having a warranty in place. She said that it happens quite regularly, the vendor then pays for an indemnity at around £125 - £150 and the mortgage applications and sale proceed without problems. If you are not intending selling, is a warranty worth paying for? or do you just pay up a much lesser amount should you decide to sell within 10 years?

Novice We used the aqua grade former with liquid screed in rest of house. The aqua grade can be adjusted easily to address any errors in the screed or finished floor level i made a major error in that my wife wanted large format tiles and in order to have a smooth transition from the tray we ended up with the wet-room floor about 15mm higher than planned I would use small mosaic tiles in any future wet rooms as working out the level is tricky Also used impey tanking which was easy but very very sticky so take time if using it to plan and make sure it fits before peeling off the backing Martin

A word of caution. I tried to run 10mm copper pipe (still have a big coil of it here) to our kitchen hot and cold feeds. There was no way whatsoever that I could feed it through Posijoist. The pipe snagged very badly on the Posijoist metal plates and try as I might I could not get it to feed off the coil cleanly. I ended up damaging two runs of 10mm copper then gave up and went and bought a roll of 15mm plastic. The plastic doesn't snag at all, I found. Admittedly part of the problem was me working on my own, but even with two I think it would have been a difficult job, as just the weight of the pipe after a few metres is enough to make it sag and then catch on the metal edges. Afterwards I did realise that if I'd put in some cheap 15mm plastic pipe I could probably have fed the 10mm copper through that to avoid the snagging problem. You may be able to arrange runs where this isn't an issue, but for me there was no easy way out of running all the pipes between the floors.