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As a longtime harvester of forum knowledge for a boat build I completed a while ago I am familiar with the bizarre ecosystem of online forums and the need to pan for the nuggets of gold amongst the crazy gravel and try and ignore (or resist the urge to participate in) the aggy clashes between dogmatic keyboard-pounders foaming at the mouth in dark rooms sometimes half a world away from each other. I was therefore very surprised when I found ebuild which seemed to be an oasis of informed and good-natured conversation populated largely by apparently pleasant people - with an added sprinkling of Obi Wan Kenobi build-gurus sporting almost laughable levels of in-depth knowledge. I was sad to see ebuild die, hope this place will be as good. The signs are positive. I'm building a small (not tiny) house in West Wales, solid wall with EWI. We are off-grid electrically already with PV and a small wind turbine (live on site in a caravan). We intend to have an unecessarily deep bath. We might not have a woodburning stove now (partly seeing sense, mostly seeing the price of decent room-sealed stoves). Our windows are going to be bigger than is wise. We don't really know what we're doing.

Some have asked before about getting some feature stained glass for their projects. I went on a make your own workshop yesterday and made this in six hours. It's not too difficult and had a real good time doing this with Keny Drew in his studio in Crail in Fife.

Would anyone capable of removing their own compliant flow regulator not do so before BC had reached the end of the road?

As I mentioned earlier, B&Q sell brass tube that's 6mm OD and about 5mm ID and a DS18B20 is a nice snug fit inside. The tube is best cut with a pipe cutter, as it has a very thin wall. I can't remember the price, but a 1m length is enough to make sleeves for around 40 sensors. The brass makes for a reasonably good thermal path between the sensor and the outside world, not that this matters too much for the sort of slow temperature changes in a house.

This is what Nick is trying to describe If the wall was boarded with plasterboard, then the soil pipe will just be touching the wall. Likewise the cistern screws directly through the plasterboard into a dwang fitted there to catch the screws. A simple cheap bent pan connector fits perfectly. Same will apply to Barney's horizontal run waste pipe.

As I had a couple of hours free yesterday and my 9 DS18B20s had been running a couple of days, I thought I would look at how precise the readings where. I cannot really check accuracy as I do not have a calibrated thermometer to check them against. So what I did was to create a range of temperatures that are imaginary true ones. Then look at the spread of readings in each bin range. This is pretty easy in a spreadsheet, just list a range of temperatures (I rounded down to 1 decimal point the lowest temperature then incremented up by 0.1°C). Then I looked at means between the the bin below and the bin above i.e. Temp bin below < DS18B20 reading > Temp bin above. This makes for a very quick visual comparison in a spreadsheet as the DS18B20 mean should be pretty close to the "imaginary" temperature. Some numbers are going to follow now. If I take the minimum temperatures recorded by all sensors first. 14.6°C (Imaginary), 14.72, 14.71, 14.69, 14.70, 14.75, 14.71, 14.75, 14.75, 14.70 Then the maxium 24.4°C (Imaginary), 24.50, 24.51, 24.50, 24.51, 24.51, 24.47, 24.47, 24.47, 24.52 Then the highest overall count (this gets really nerdy). Sensor 1, Count 528, Imaginary Temp 18.3, Mean Temp 18.30 Sensor 2, Count 517, Imaginary Temp 18.2, Mean Temp 18.20 Sensor 3, Count 480, Imaginary Temp 18.2, Mean Temp 18.19 Sensor 4, Count 526, Imaginary Temp 18.2, Mean Temp 18.19 Sensor 5, Count 542, Imaginary Temp 18.2, Mean Temp 18.19 Sensor 6, Count 559, Imaginary Temp 18.0, Mean Temp 18.01 Sensor 7, Count 579, Imaginary Temp 18.4, Mean Temp 18.37 Sensor 8, Count 579, Imaginary Temp 18.4, Mean Temp 18.37 Sensor 9, Count 638, Imaginary Temp 18.0, Mean Temp 18.01 So it seems that these cheap DS18B20s are pretty precise in the temperature range I have so far tested, not more than 0.15°C out, which is neither her nor there for what we are using them for. I have also not had any errors in the 11,166 readings I have taken over the last couple of days. I am sampling every 13.59 seconds overall. I also had a look at the standard error of the mean, but that is really so low that it is not worth mentioning, but I will anyway 0.03°C max. Now to really go overboard with the stats, I also looked at the median and modal values. The biggest difference from the imaginary temperature was 0.1°C on the modal values (as expected as there are not many readings, but not counted them.) The main thing here is that all the values are very close together, between -0.09 and 0.10°C over a range of 10.2° shows that the logged temperatures are pretty well normally distributed. This is a good thing when testing, as more accurate assumption can be drawn. Not sure what conclusion can be drawn from this, apart from the precision of these very cheap sensors is plenty good enough for me.

Take a look at IdealCombi windows https://idealcombi.com/ Triple glazed/aluminium clad & PUR, with slim 53mm profile. Triple glazed one has U value of 0.79. Here they are on our house in December last year (which is why it's so grey!)

I also got the 230 V side signed off with just switched outlets for things like the ASHP, heating controls, MVHR and water heating, so that it was then OK for me to add stuff after the switched outlet without falling foul of Part P. For switching power I've used SSRs pretty much everywhere, rather than relays. The advantage for high current stuff is that they zero volt switch, so there's no hefty switching current or spikes and they are optoisolated and easily driven directly by a microcontroller pin (the ones I used are typically around 10 mA at 5V). I've used 25 A ones in the main, really just to have a bit of headroom. The other advantage of using these is that you get an LED indicator built in, rather than having to add it to a DIN rail relay. I did use relays for the heating controls, but that was only so I could use some simple relay/diode logic, and avoid using a microcontroller, plus it made it easier to control the dry contact operated ASHP. They are the Finder DIN rail ones, with the extra LED module to show which relay is on.

You write a certificate with a lot on LIM or N/A and they accept it because all they want is a bit of paper that nobody ever reads or understands.

Hi @jamiehamy, very useful. I'm looking at a glazed S facing gable end & overheating will be an issue so really useful to have this.

Discount Programmes with Hospital Cash Plans eg Westfield Health This thread has been quiet for a bit, but I have a good new one. For some time I have gone green when employees talk about the savings on their staff reward programmes (iirc via "RewardGateway and similar) at various retailers. I seem to recall figures of 5-10%, whereas the rest of us are at about 3% on Quidco. I have been looking for something for self-employed and not-employed-due-to-building-a-house. Anyhoo, Hospital Cash Plans seem to offer similar programmes. These are those plans where you pay £x per month, and get a grant when you buy glasses, a grant when you buy teeth, a sum for each inpatient day hospital etc. Examples are Westfield Health and NHSF (formerly Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund). Usually you get nearly 100% back by just claiming the common grants (there must be a tax shelter or subsidy in there somewhere). Westfield Health offer for example Westfield Rewards, a programme which gives discounts on 600 retailers, including: Boots -15% Sainsbury -4% B&Q -10% Wickes -10% Halfords -10% M&S -7.5% etc It operates via a preloaded cashcard where you get a 10% discount on face value when topping up. So that should stack with topping up using Reward Credit Cards etc. So you may not want to have too many of them as it seems to be a card per retailer, but for the ones where much is spent it looks like a good opportunity. Feedback on other Hospital Cash Plan providers would be useful. I am also looking for a way for non-employees to access the Easy Cash Saver card, which is similar to the above but gives a single card for umpteen retailers saving 7.5%. It is usually a perk in Employee Benefits programmes. Ferdinand

Every. Single. Time. And sometimes even when you ask! BM pricing is beyond random. We mostly ended up at our local TP because we found they generally gave us better prices than Jewsons, but on some things they were randomly way more expensive and wouldn't/couldn't budge. The Housebuilder's Bible is actually quite good for this, as it gives you an idea of what sorts of materials/products are likely to have a lot of potential movement off the list price.

I have been using limestone tile sealer on grout in my rental properties for years and it works a treat.

Some people used to laugh at the level of details in my quotes for building work but it paid off as there was no ambiguity on what was covered and who paid for what. A mate of mine was useless, his quotes were very thin on detail and he always ended up falling out with customers over the bill.. P.S. I hate ambiguity.

Join the club. My screen name hints at my past, but I'm now retired Ha! Every day I get up and go about jobs related to our house build. And one of those jobs is networking - because I don't know the answer to most of the problems I face. Just like you. So there's a natural push to lurk and ferret information out - reassurance that you're not the only eejit who has put a window in upside down, or had to post 7 meter steels through a living room window (my son's place last night..... don't ask) That's the power of a community like this, everyone's keen to do a sensible job at a fair price, almost within their budget. Ever found anyone coming in under budget? No, neither have I. I have heard of people who did that, but never met them. But, for me it's the massive reassurance of coming up against some form of knotty problem and suddenly thinking.... I'll ask about that on buildhub, and almost guarantee an answer.