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Something I have been wanting to do for a while is see how air tight I have managed to make the house, but without paying £hundreds for an official test. So take one old desk fan. Some bits of wood. A large piece of cardboard and a roll of duct tape. The first thing was just to run the fan on full speed and go around the house looking for leaks. I found a leak under the front door where it was not sealed to the floor properly. A leak in the loft at a tricky detail between the ridge beam and the OSB cladding, and a leak around where the mains comes in and cables go out under the floor. All fixed with a bit more tape and detailing. So now I have a house where there is no perceivable leaks coming in anywhere. The flow going out of the fan seems very small, and it's certainly holding a good pressure (if you open a door you can feel the rush of air enter, and hear the fan note change as it is no longer working hard) Time to try and measure something? Firstly the pressure. Normally an air tightness test is done at 50Pa. It was only when I looked up the conversion I realised that's a tiny pressure, about 2mm water gauge. So I set up my manometer, one side connected to "outside" the other side vented to the room. It's very hard to accurately measure 2mm on a U tube manometer, but I am sure it was somewhere between 2 and 3mm. So in the right order. How to measure the airflow? Simple. Just measure the air flow rate through the fan. Well my little anemometer would not register the wind speed entering the fan, it was too low to get it's impeller turning. So I had to do something to increase, the airflow. Decrease the area, AKA the "flower pot" principle. I didn't have a 15" flower pot, so I made one. The hole in the "top" is 110mm (because a bit of drain pipe was handy to draw around) Now the air flow was high enough to measure. 2.9 metres per second. A 110mm diameter hole has an area of 0.038 M2 So that gives a volumetric flow of 0.11M3 per second That's 6.6 M3 per minute or 396M3 per hour. Now my house has a volume of 480 M3 So that equates to 0.825 Air changes per hour. I'm actually a little disappointed with that. I had hoped for better. But let's not kid ourselves that this was in any way an accurate measurement. At least it enabled me to find and fix a couple of air leaks, and I am now reasonably certain there are no air leaks of significance. Feel free to tear the method or results to pieces.

Hello Everyone, Here is a little video update: Thanks again to everyone from e-build and this website for all your advice and guidance! The project would definitely not be to the same standard if I hadn't taken everyones advice and pushed the standards of the build.

Get me 200 Marlboro and I will be around in no time

I found the technique to combat nail bounce was change the way you swing the hammer. Instead of the normal "hit and withdraw" try for "hit and hold". It deadens the bounce and helps drive the nails in. The only real problems was when there was a knot just where you wanted to drive the nail in. I then went to plan B and fitted those few with a screw instead of a nail.

Just went round feeling for them, a very long and tedious process. I was checking all joints, corners, windows, doors, cable and pipe entries. It is surprising how sensitive an almost bald head is at detecting a very small leak. Although the pressure difference seems small, you get a very noticable draught through even a small hole and in the case of a window, if you open the trickle vent in a roof window you get a howling gale that you can hear and feel easily, yet with the vent closed you can't feel or hear a thing. My main concern was to ensure that all the membrane and joints that are soon to be covered with plasterboard were leak free. In many places the membrane between the battens was blown up, inwards, showing an air leak in the fabric of the building that the air tight membrane was catching.

Long shot, but just in case it helps someone, Herts police are looking to reunite recovered stolen goods with their rightful owners. Full story here: http://www.hertsad.co.uk/news/power-tools-stole-from-vans-hertfordshire-1-5086989

This is one of my current jobs. Tiles straight onto MR PB and the trims fitted prior to skimming. I purposely fitted 12mm trims where I could have got away with 10mm, and I set the tiles an extra 2mm off the walls so the skim didn't eat too far into the visible trim. I'll post a pic tomw of the skimmed and painted job, ( one I skimmed myself to make sure the trims didn't get 'dinked' by the trowel ).

Never, EVER, paint where tiles are going . New plaster gets sized with a 50/50 mix of primer, then a coat of neat primer, then two or three coats of tanking, then tiles. Fyi, with tanked areas, also NEVER use acrylic ( ready made ) tile adhesive. It has to be cementitious, powder adhesive. With painted walls, the water in the adhesive reconstitutes the paint and then the lot just separates and any bond ( purchase ) goes with it. A customer of mine once "helped out" by painting everywhere, including every INCH of the bastard bathroom and the kitchen splash back areas, prior to me turning up to tile......( all of which I then had to scrape back with a Jack saw, at his expense ). Edit to add : tiling directly onto the plasterboard is my favoured method tbh, but I know you've had the place skimmed so I'll keep that to myself

Many thanks for the additional advice and experience. I I've got some sawn planks (40 mm x 90 mm x 3600mm) that were actually used for making a ramp to get a mini digger onto the plot, which I'm thinking of using to make tamping rails. I'm planning to run the rails along the shorter sides of the slab so allowing me to tamp more than once if required. An alternative would be to run them along the longer side but I would have to fill and tamp as I go (so just the once). This orientation would make a board system for trowelling possible (shorter boards between the rails). I have a builder friend working with me who is very competent at troweling! The mix is being made by a local company and I can vary the mix to my requirements so a dryer mix would be possible if this helps to get a good surface. It has a 10mm aggregate in it, plus fibre and a retarder. I've (hopefully!) attached some pictures from today. They don't show the first block course, unfortunately as this is the next task after the hardcore/scalpings/sand layering. The back wall of the ground floor plus window and door will come out and the small kitchen/diner behind will be incorporated into one room.

If you have 3 phase, then I'd run a hefty 3 phase feed to where you think you may want a charge point. Few EVs can charge from 3 phase at the moment, but there are 3 phase to DC fast charge points around, and a 32A 3 phase supply would allow the fitting of one of these. No need for a socket, as the EVSE will have to be hard wired, so just run a suitable 3 phase cable to a junction box, near to where you think you may want a charge point fitted. You may want to think about having two charge points, depending on the layout of your parking areas. I have a 15A EVSE at one end of the drive and a 30A one by the garage. This makes it easier to plug in wherever I happen to park..

Looks like I ran the test at too low pressure. I did lookup the conversion some time ago on a web based converter and I am sure it told me 2mm not 5. So my test was probably only at half the required pressure for an official test. I was surprised that this little fan could generate enough pressure, it is far smaller than those used on proper blower door test rigs. That in itself I thought was a good sign. It now looks as though that fan would not get to 5mm so a bigger fan would be needed. To try this with an mvhr you would have to block either the inlet or outlet to try that test, otherwise even with one fan stopped the air would pass through the stationary fan. I still think it was a useful test even if no meaningful figures can be taken from it. I never got a Blue Peter badge as a boy. I wonder if This now qualifies me for one?

Another one lined up for later after watering the garden. It is actually quite mild after a Fog Cutter. It would be nice doing a Culprit Fey with full units of Cointreau, Creme de Menthe, Gin, Pournot and Cream rather than half-units, mind. Paint situation now resolved, though. Dulux Diamond Eggshell for the kitchen, and a selection of Dulux Easycares for the rooms which will suffer from children. F

Poor old Ferdinand obviously still suffering from last evening imbibing of 'the' cocktail...

Can't see how that will help as the centre will still bounce as much as the thickened area will only be 50x50. It may also create valleys in the membrane but they will be filled by the batten. Isn't your roof counterbattened ..?

5 mins on the naught step. ?

And what if you don't 'do' Facebook ?

The link brings up this error for me: You do not have the necessary permission for the specified Page to perform the requested action.

I had a look for cordless router videos then came across this and forgot all about it:

Looks like a Luxair Anzi extractor without enough space to fit it flush, so trimmed with architrave.

After two years of fighting the council and my bully boy neighbour for planning ( the neighbour has now sold up as he went bankrupt ?) And finally getting approval from an appeal to the Secretary of State I have had nothing but good comments from passers by and even heard on the grapevine the build was complimented by a group in the local pub. Even though I said it was a " modest" build I do think it looks bigger than I thought it would. Still chuffed to bits with how it's going and looking forward to spending Christmas in it ( hopefully 2017 ?).

Interesting '....eg a view over fields...' I occasionally employ a teenager whose dad is one of the biggest estate agents in the North West. I was discussing this topic (he reads BH as a guest he tells me) with him the other day. "Biggest mistake people make on buying a property is to think they have also bought the view. If they want to protect view, they need to buy it." Made me think, did that. He's right.

Did anybody read this? If this is true then Building standards are meaningless, NHBC may have some rather large problems and the Construction industry as a whole is going to need defibrillation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40418266