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Wendy thinks we should all hire a charabanc and go up there so we can pass the spanners, make tea etc and see the action in real time. We wouldn't be able to offer any useful advice just moral support.

@SteamyTea I ve just caught up myself - I had to go to bed before the climax. Can’t wait for the next episode, in a nutshell I think we re going to be crowdfunding @Nickfromwales to be parachuted into Scotland to go on his mission. I would imagine he s also going to need a little Snatch Land Rover dropped in with his tools and some vodka. Episode 3 will be based around @Nickfromwales buying his new suit and going to meet Carol Vorderman at the Pride of Britain Awards.

Just as a point of interest, I live in a rural location similar to yours (I came to your home during an open day), although mine is slightly more open, on the side of a hill, where every house has a log burner including my own. For the last 2 years I have a particulate monitor (PM1.0, PM2.5, PM10) and latterly a VAX Pure Air 300 Air Purifier which automatically reduces internal air pollution in the house (fan speed varies automatically depending on PM levels). What I have noticed 1) prior to having the air purifier PMs in the room with the log burner would often run above 100 ug/m3 when the log burner was running, often when I was struggling to get the burner to start and draw properly, and this would often last for 1 to 2 hours 2) after installing the VAX, it is rare to get anywhere near 50ug/m3 if the WB is struggling to light and draw, and if it does the VAX gets it quickly down to under 5 ug.m3 within 5 minutes, typical levels when the burner is in use and the VAX on is under 2 ug/m3; I now also use a hand held gas burner to light the stove rather than matches as it minimises the time the boiler doors are open 3) so a combination of the VAX and the PM monitor lets me keep the house internally at reasonable levels of PMs most of the time, and certainly better than it was before 4) where I struggle with internal PMs, is very still days, like today, which happens perhaps 10 times during the winter, where my neighbours log burners create high PM levels outside. today it ranged between 60 and 100 ug/m3, at which point even with my own log burner off, the house internally was 30 ug to 50 ug most of the day, until I mpved the VAX to the centre of the house and turned the VAX on which brought down ambient levels within the house to about 10ug, but even on max I couldn't get it much lower (I live in a reasonably air permeable ( 7m3/m3/hr @ 50Pa) 1970s house. So my conclusions, narrowly relating to PMs (not NOX, VOCs or anything else) are: 1. log burners are a health problem internally unless you manage them carefully and use an air purifier (or MVHR) 2. internally, PMs can be quite high, even if you have an external air feed, largely because max PMs are caused when the doors are open however briefly when lighting the stove 3. externally log burners, rurally, seem to be a problem only on still days, for neighbours It would be difficult to persuade neighbours to stop using wood for heating, as for many its a free local source, and it part and parcel of the culture of rural life. From recollection there are word burners starting to come onto the market with catalysts for treating the smoke going up the chimney, don't know anything about them. Personally I think wood burners are acceptable in rural non-bowl exposed locations where most of the time smoke can be dispersed away from neighbouring homes. I am making no comments on burners in urban locations. I wouldn't be surprised in locations like Jeremy's, in rural valley bowl locations if high levels of ambient PMs persist for much of the winter?

If not quite Apollo 13

Lot more compelling that 'The Non-Adventures of Rollo'.

Just had a read myself - awesome!

This our 44mm2 tiny home, built at a cost of £30k

Just did my 'house clearance fund' accounts... £900 left!.... Still have upstairs to do which will be at least 6 of the £225 8 yard skips we have been getting.... need a miracle or a win! So.... We called a local void clearance guy and he came today to give us some quotes.... all still too pricey but we came to an agreement... He will drop off a load of skip bags, I will fill them on the drive, leave wood in one area, paper/books in another, metal in another (standard stuff really) and he will arrive with his 12 yard equivalent truck and vanish it all for no more than £180 !!!! Yes he is legit Considering the cheapest 12 yard here is £300 I am very very happy! I've got the rest of the Library to empty, 4 large double bedrooms, the ironing/sewing room, the dressing room and the bathroom to empty upstairs.... although my old bedroom is done apart from furniture so will be empty in half an hour + axe One of the rooms is mainly clothes, lots and lots and lots of clothes so they will all go to the clothes trade-in for 60p a kilo thank you! haha.. I'm thinking... hoping! That we can empty the rest of the house in 4 truck loads... so around £720 *crosses fingers*

This conversation went in an interesting direction. TBH I've had a lot to catch up I feel totally fine being called 'girl' it sounds friendly (doesn't feel like reference to stupid or lowering the tone in this context). Respect!

This is design dependent so your SE will tell you if the internal floors are in any way structural as they may well be.

I find tradesmen can be quite territorial & are more than ready to diss each others work & try to score points. I never thought it would be this way. It is very tiresome.

Comforting in a way to know it is not just us girls that have this problem.

More Team America I think

Well, mostly I let her have my way..... takes a while, but I'll stop digging now

Mines called Faye, Shes the one with the patience, Truckloads of patience........amongst other things obviously also Welcome to the forum Marie,

A great partner at your side is an asset, mine is called a Debbie, she’s the one with the common sense, the design flair and project management qualifications and she’s just saved £150 on our self Build insurance because of them!

Welcome ! as you can tell from my avatar - I’m all man ?

One year on from first install, I set about servicing my MVHR today. Aside from cleaning and replacing the filters, this is the first action I've undertaken with the MVHR. First off, the front cover is secured in place by a series of screws with a mortorq head. Quite why they have used these rather than the Philips head used elsewhere, I'm not quite sure. Fortunately, I had the appropriate bit, but unfortunately, the screw heads are that soft that one of them stripped. Gravity came, in a way, to the rescue. Whilst I was considering how to proceed, the cover fell forward and broke the flimsy plastic fixing through which the screw secures the cover to the body. So, with front cover now off, I pulled out the heat exchange core ( its a very snug fit so needs a firm pull). I anticipated that there would be some residual water / condensation in the core as it wasn't long after morning shower time. Best advice is therefore to keep the core level until you are somewhere safe to drain any water out. I washed out the core using the shower, and there was a bit of dust / gunk etc that came out of it. To dry, I left it outside and the wind did the rest. Aside from the water / condensation in the core, there was some black mould growth where any water would normally drain out of the core into the condensate drain. Bleach and a toothbrush dealt with that particular issue. Having dealt with the core, I wiped down all of the internal MVHR core housing and duct outlet surfaces. Generally speaking they were pretty clean. The summer bypass, which consists of plastic louvered fins, required a bit more cleaning, as the fins all had a coating of dust that had stuck on. Likewise, the extract fan impeller blades were covered in a coating of dust that had stuck on. I'm guessing that in both cases, the moisture present in the extracted air made the fins and impeller blades damp enough for the dust to stick such that it wouldn't simply brush off. The dust deposit did however, wipe off fairly easily. Finally, I checked the condensate drain, making sure it was free of blockages. After cleaning the two general filters, I slotted the heat exchange core back in, replaced the filters then refitted the front panel. Fortunately, despite the damage described earlier, there were sufficient screws left to secure the front panel and seal the heat exchange area. In summary, easy enough to self service, just be wary of the screws securing the front panel.

Hey folks, I just wanted to express my admiration to all of you part of this community. It's good to know that there is a place where you can find honest and professional advice. About me - the typical housewife, trying convince my stubborn husband I'm right , even when it's about man's job.

Yes but able to afford to leave a 24Kw boiler on all day!

Yes you can, easily. Earl Grey always tastes like someone put washing up liquid in it.

The tea is very good up here! Can't beat a nice cup of earl grey.

This post is better than the latest box set! Glad to see the BH gang are coming to the rescue and am keeping my fingers crossed that it all gets sorted soon. What a nightmare and a lesson to us all to keep it simple as suggested by many on this forum!

Great to see the meters and the Teleswitch (Which is the thing that tells your 'system' that cheap rate electricity is available.) The difference between the boiler output temperature and the TS temperature - 20 deg loss seems high and is interesting, It will be good to see the temperatures of things when you get the thermometer tomorrow, as this this will clear up loads of details. PS was the TS temperature rising, even very slowly above the 45 / 50 or was it dead stable?

Ok, so what you have is a 5u pre filter, plus a refillable phosphate dosing water treatment cartridge. Phosphate dosing is a way of preventing limescale from sticking to anything, It doesn't actually soften the water, but if you live in a hard water area it does help to stop limescale sticking to hard surfaces. Whether it's worth using depends entirely whether there are any carbonates in your water. The two main culprits for scale formation are calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate, bot of which are dissolved out of limestone and chalk by slightly acid rainfall. If your water supply doesn't come from a hard water source, which is very unlikely, as the major outcrops of limestone in Scotland are in the far North West, most of Scotland gets water that is free of carbonates and slightly acidic, then I'm not convinced that you need to phosphate dose the water. We used to live in South West Scotland, and the water there was very soft, with no carbonates in the water at all.

The A38 I only bought because I needed to be tiling in a couple of days. If you dont need that, ahem, level of urgency ( ) then just cement it.

You could build it to full BR house standards for that money although I doubt they are. Having spent a while on BH, I am quite sure that something shed like can easily be achieved (mostly self built) for not much money. I am looking for something closer to house standard and I don’t intend on spending much more.

Cannot really help yet @JamesP as we are still not in residence. All i can say is to back up what others are saying that if you are building to a high insulation standard like am MBC twin stud wall etc your heat load will be very low. It was -5.5 last night and our house with no heat only dropped 1 deg from 16 to 15. that is with two 6 " holes in the walls and drains not connected. As for Earthsave Products equipment. I use them as they are local to me and have been utterly reliable. We have an ecocent and heatpump from them in our current house and have bought all the parts from them for my current house. I am in the process of fitting them at present and am impressed with the quality and ease of fitting

I thought we were getting leery of hi-tech and Les Grands Complications. This is more like it, perhaps, for us non-pros like me. (They seem to be sensitive about actual recordings.)

Our house is well-insulated, airtight, triple glazed and 130m2 net internal floor area. Worst case heating requirement to keep the house at 21 deg C when it's -10 deg C outside is 1.6 kW. I can't imagine how big a well insulated house needs to be to need more than 10 times as much heat, and strongly suspect that there may be an issue with the heat loss assessment being massively in error. The spreadsheet I knocked up ages ago does a pretty reasonable job of calculating this, good enough to size a heating system: http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Fabric-and-ventilation-heat-loss-calculator-Master.xls

Waste pipes are fine as they contain very little plasticiser. It’s the cover on cable that has the issue - the plasticiser is leached from the cable covering making the cover brittle.

Epic. Don’t you just love this forum! I have a feeling it won’t be long before the system is working as it should. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait twelve months for the next instalment.

Scotland's lovely this time of year @Nickfromwales...

Bought enough cheap tools in my life!

Just had quotes back from ESP. Seems mixed feelings from this thread. Suggested 17kW ASHP + Ecocent. Any progress reports much appreciated from a similar system in daily use. Our self build is timber frame, EWI, heaps of insulation, VCL etc, triple glazed, mvhr. @Mikey_1980 @dogman I don't expect many replies tonight......

I was thinking of having an early night, but this is getting as good as the real Apollo 13 mission . https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/AS13_CM.PDF

Had a BIG barney with the missus years ago and punched a door in frustration. Even bigger row ensued! Still fuming off I went to Wickes to get a replacement. I took the front passenger seat headrest off to get the cheap sapele door in the back of the car. Driving too fast I took a sharp left hand turn and the door slid across, pinning me against the driver's window by the neck. I couldn't steer so carried on into the hedge!

I started out making the systems in our house like this, with custom microcontrollers looking after stuff. A year or so later, I realised that if I wasn't around, no one would be able to work out how on earth anything worked. I spent a lot of time converting everything back to standard off the shelf parts and drawing up complete manuals for everything that wasn't covered by a product manual. I still have the temptation to add more sophisticated and complex controls, but I rein it in. I'm gradually coming around to the old aircraft designers motto "Simplificate and add lightness"...............

It happens a lot, I recently heard of a company client rep, who happened to be a lady, being effectively ignored by a male client. Shocked me to hear it, even as a bloke, but then my father was hopeless at anything practical, and it was my mother that always did all the repairs and decorating, even overseeing building work on the house. I still clearly remember her giving me lessons on everything from how to prepare a surface for painting and applying paint though to how to wire a plug or replace a fuse in the fuse box. My father never even learned to drive, she did, and did all the car maintenance as well.

OH yes I know that feeling so well!

Hi @Marie Turner. You are most welcome. I'm all for a female perspective on stuff. The OH is off this week, helping me scaffold. And mostly, she's right. Which is annoying, but can be fun.

Welcome Maria Everyone talks down to me as I am a pygmy

This girl is happy to be called a girl

Hi Marie and welcome. Great place this - all these lovely chaps help us girls through the maze of self build conundrums.

I Have the Dewalt cordless version which is great, lasts forever on one charge. https://www.howetools.co.uk/dewalt-dcs355n-18v-multi-function-tool?utm_source=google_shopping&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-fHY4_a32QIVo7ztCh2Q9w5kEAQYASABEgJEUfD_BwE

We used Assent Building Control on the recommendation of a builder/developer contact. My BCO was based in Dorset but seemed to work all over the southern counties. He was good and I was able to communicate with him regularly by email and photos of progress. Strangely enough and after we completed, i noticed there was an Assent Office in Sunninghill, just a couple of miles away from my build. I have no idea if that office would have been easier or more efficient???

@Ed_MK if you don’t get any recommendations from the forum you could try the Milton Keynes branch office of an Approved Inspector called Assent Building Control. I’ve worked a lot with the guy that runs their Cheshire office who Is excellent but I have no direct experience with any of their other offices so can’t say how good they are. Address: Regus House Fairborne Drive Atterbury Milton Keynes MK10 9RG [Edit. Make sure you tell them how far you got with the LABC appointment paperwork and the fact that you haven’t paid them anything yet. The appointment process of an Approved Inspector is strictly governed and there are rules they have to follow]

Both! On the good side: As a very powerful oxidising agent it's probably one of, if not the, best way to disinfect water, as it kills pretty much all bugs, cysts etc in seconds, much more quickly that chlorine, and best of all it has no harmful breakdown products. The main alternative, chlorine stays in sealed water systems and also produces harmful breakdown and reaction products, like chloramines. As a means of removing odours, when used at very low concentrations, it is safe and useful, again because it leaves no harmful residuals behind. As a bleaching agent (from oxidation) ozone has the same advantages as it does for water disinfection, but the concentration needed is greater. As a means of disinfecting sealed rooms and both removing persistent odours and killing pretty much anything in the room (bugs etc) then it can be very effective, as it breaks down quickly (in around 30 mins) to oxygen when the ozone generator is turned off, This makes it safer in most respect than other forms of fumigation. As a protective layer in the upper atmosphere it allows life to survive on our planet, by being one of the major filters against harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. On the bad side: It causes irritation to our nose, eyes, lungs etc at quite low concentrations - as a general rule if you can smell it the concentration is bordering on that which may cause irritation. The irritation from low concentrations goes away, with no lasting damage, soon after the source of exposure is removed. At high concentrations it can very quickly cause serious damage to any mucous membrane it is exposed to, and may lead to long-lasting damage to the nose, airways, lungs and eyes in particular. At a high enough concentration it can kill, mainly as a consequence of this sort of damage. On balance: If used carefully it can be very useful as a chemical free disinfectant, that leaves no residuals behind, and can also be very useful in removing volatile odour molecules. You can smell it at concentrations that are below those that cause harm, so that makes it hard to accidentally suffer the harmful effects. In general I think that, used sensibly, ozone has a place in disinfection, bleaching and odour control and some types of fumigation.

We owned a house that had a beautiful spiral staircase It looked amazing Totally impractical to live with