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Will be leaving the technical speak to@Nickfromwales and @PeterW From my perspective: heating working in all rooms - tick! solar working - tick! rooms heating rapidly (as opposed to taking 24-36 hours to increase the temp by about 3 degrees) - tick! enough hot water to fill a bath / shower - (even the big bath) tick! extension connected up - tick! able to run hot water without the heating being on - tick! TS not emptying itself of hot water within about 30 mins without the boiler being on constantly - tick! Plus everything has been labelled to within an inch of its life. A magnaclean filter has been fitted, various new pumps etc have been installed. I have a new outside tap, the loo in bed 4 now works and various other things have been done, including them sorting through the endless pile of shite here helping me understand what I should keep vs things to throw away. Massive massive thanks to @PeterW and @Nickfromwales, and @PeterW‘s mini-me Will (who consumed his body weight in Tunnock’s tea cakes). I can’t believe that Nick and Peter have never met before as they seemed like guys who had worked together for years. These guys put in more hours to fix the things here than I could have imagined possible, fuelled by bacon, beer and coffee, and some good humour, with lots of banter. 7am and they are already up swapping some things over when they didn’t finish until gone midnight last night. And Will is going to come up again to finish the other bits and pieces here when I will finally be able to say that my build is completely finished. It’s been a pretty long haul after everything that happened here. Buildhub rocks! I could never have imagined when I initially posted about my vat claim 2 months ago that it would also be the key to sorting my heating woes and other unfinished bits and pieces.

A thread that literally leaves a nice warm feeling all round in every sense.

Of course, it helps greatly when, during a delivery this morning, the driver of the 20 tonner with a HIAB, from the local timber firm (PM for details - a large well known national company) mentions casually ............ "When we deliver yer wall plates on Wednesday, I'll pop that beam on the ridge for ya, mate" If there were an emoji for the Hallelujah Chorus I'd use it.

Off you go then, you could fix her epilator whilst you're there

Nothing sophisticated. I’ve got a testo anemometer, which links to iPad / iPhone. I’ve just prodded the sensor into various parts of the house to see if there is any airflow. In turn found a couple of spots that I think should be draft free that aren’t. At some point I’ll have to learn how to use it properly when I set up the mvhr.

Looks like a brilliant job all round, everybody learned something and @newhome can move on. To top it all given the Solar Thermal temp the sun must be shinning there, which just tells you that the sun does shine on the righteous, well some of them anyway. It is all somewhat tinged with sadness (not) by the fact that this thread will sort of slow down now and @Onoff's 'boxing in' thread will remain supreme, now at 55 pages I see. One might speculate if 'boxing in' will ever be overtaken for pages and while the job ain't finished it will continue to grow, for this thread we could look to use different metric and say that it has shown the measure of THE forum and didn't need, or take, 55 pages. Well done all.

Luck over skill every time ......... You deserve some luck and I hope it all goes well on Wednesday

Peter and Will didn't drink then?

@@@@ the solar thermal. I could sleep on an electric fence.

Much tidier now ....

Today we started on our foundations. It was snowing this morning on Skye and I took this one just before the digger arrived. Our brickie had pegged out the site a few days previously. The digger then arrived on site and the snow stopped and sun came out. I helped to mark out the foundation tracks and then wandered up the access to do a few hours at work. n I came back in the evening and the trenches were just about finished. After walking down to the site for the last million years, it took a bit of time to sink in, we are now building our home. Tomorrow the concrete wagon is booked and all being well we will have the trenches filled and can move onto blockwork next week.

Yesterday we completed the excavation of the trenches. I had a half day at work and came back to the site after lunch to get started on the pour. I was slightly worried about the heavy concrete wagon coming down our access and over the culvert, but the driver did a great job reversing and the road passed the test with flying colours. Our digger driver than used the bucket to spread the concrete as required. Half way through. All done. We now move onto the blockwork next week. It was a good day and I'm pleased to get this over and done with. Half a day for excavations and half a day for pouring.

Hi everyone. My names Adam and my wife and I have just bought a (new to us) 1930s semi-detatched house together. Well thats the boring bit over, the fun bit is that this house is a wreck, not the worst i've seen but not really liveable at the moment. We got it just before the cold snap and it had no heating, the wiring looks old with quite a few sockets around that only have two two pin holes, theres a hole in the roof and the shower has been disconnected because it leaked for so long that a timber behind it rotted to the point where, when I pushed my key in to it, i actually lost it. So......the shortened version of the plan is to fix it, extend it and rebuild part of it. Apart from some of the largest bits of it, most of the work will be done by myself. My experience is a bit limited, I renovated my last flat myself, but it was far easier than this. I want this house to be more than just comfortable, I want to know that at the end of it I did everything reasonably possible to make it energy efficient and low cost for the future. I intend on achieving this by insulating everything within reach, completely sealing up every air gap, using MVHR which will be in the loft and hopefully solar panels on the extension which will go to a battery unsure as to weather a heat battery or electrical one yet. Pictures should follow shortly showing what it currently looks like.

Modelling the performance of the house whilst it is still a drawing and easy to change, together with insulation, air-tightness and MVHR will go a long way to producing a comfortable house to live in. Keep things as simple as possible and bear in mind that anything Technology related is likely to dated in 5 yrs and obsolete in 10 years. Have a clear understanding of what your house requirements and budget are before you start.

As an engineer, always go for the solution with the least moving parts. Every time.

Thank you.... it's been a hard task and much more to come but now all the crap is going we can actually imagine living there again..... I'm actually excited!!!

What a great looking house and well done on all the clearing. Mammoth task!

You've an observatory.....cool as!

Long time no update! Question..... Do I have to have a TV license on the property in order to listen to the radio while I work? I said no as I can hear music on building sites but sine saying that I actually haven't heard any building sites playing radio music so perhaps rules are now tight! OK found the answer to above.. it's not a business so no I don't need to have a License... Phew.... I'd go mad just listening to my inner voice all day! Update is..... downstairs (apart from old Library) is now empty. We are now flitting from emptying upstairs and stripping back downstairs.. Downstairs vestibule, hall and stairs carpet and wallpaper free, Old Music room carpet and wallpaper free. Kitchen floor and walls naked and omg.... so much work needing to be done in there. Electrician came and gave us a basic quote... as in rewiring, new sockets in rooms, new fuseboard etc... £5k Plumber came in, saw the mess of the upstairs and went all shy on us and said he couldn't quote anything until the whole house was skinned naked... but did say a new boiler would be £3k fitted. OUCH!!!!!!!! Really???? Now the floors and walls are being exposed I am HAPPY to see that actually the old Queen Victoria is actually in good order mostly.... it's still the part of the house that suffered the burst pipe a few years ago that is yuck but the property developer who we have popping in and getting things priced up seems to think it's "not that bad actually Yzzy"... which really does make me feel much better. I managed to evict all the pigeons..... FOR A WEEK!!!.... So now have added more protection to the roof (until we can afford a repair) and am waiting for the remaining 7 bastards to fly downstairs so we can let them out the door with the others... The observatory is now pigeon free and proofed.... doesn't stop them all from sitting on the window ledges and complaining! Some photos... The one with the orange barrier in the windows is the observatory on top of the house, I was mid staple gunning that lot to the broken windows to stop the flappy gits getting back in!

You're probably right about the system stagnating, however the cylinder thermostats shouldn't have anything to do with it. The ST system should be controlled entirely by the Resol controller. The Resol controller should have a temperature sensor in the collector and one in the store. When the collector is some amount above the store temperature the solar pump will start and will continue to run until the collector temperature drops below the store temp or the store temperature exceeds some value which will be set in one of the controller parameters. The limit temperature looks to be set quite low to me; my system has got to 90C store temperature with several sunny days and no heating demand. However, my system is designed to cope with high temperatures (wood burning boiler) and has a mixing valve on the hot water feed to ensure that HW is always at a safe temperature (<50C). I guess that this system doesn't have HW mixing valves (although these days they seem to be a requirement) and that the store temperature is limited for safety reasons. However, as the store was up to 65C the other day, it might be worth a little experiment with the controller settings. (They aren't very user friendly 'though!)

Mine is hanging from the wall in the plant room (no roof space in my house). It has only been run for an hour or so pre commissioning but it seems very quiet...........when it was running I heard distant rumbling (I was at the other end of the house) I thought that it was MVHR rumbling and got worried, went to find out about noise and was pointed at the digger working outside LOL Gave them all a good laugh!

Re the Command Unit, I know that @joe90 got one 'from near Southampton. Carrier have an office in Leatherhead, so it may have been there. http://www.carrieraircon.co.uk/contact-us/ Just spent 5 minutes being shunted around a phone system. The man to talk to is down my way, almost. Michael Opie, Plymouth. 01752 753200 There seems to be some confusion as Carrier and now Carrier-Toshiba and the phone system is just dreadful. Good luck with it all.

Looks like the collector has stagnated at 127 deg C because the ST pump has turned off, and the ST pump has probably turned off because the stat has turned it off. My guess is that the stat that's set to 45 deg C may be the one that is controlling the ST, in which case it's satisfied, as the bottom of the tank is well over the 45 deg set point. It's not unusual to see pretty high collector temperatures in the ST system when it's turned off. Between 120 deg C and 140 deg C is about the normal max range in this condition, IIRC. When the experts have returned and recovered they will, I'm sure, be able to confirm or otherwise if this is the case.

What's the plan then? Fit them all with little harnesses and get them to help lift the beam in place?

What do you mean by "This contractor has registered his involvement"? Perhaps I'm wrong but I'm not aware of any registration process other than the normal VAT registration process that a business uses. In which case he should/must zero rate everything to you (eg materials and labor). Any VAT you pay whenyou buy stuff is reclaimed by you using form VAT431NB after completion but within three months. Download the form now and set up spreadsheets. Ask the contractor what he means.

You’re probably lucky they did not raid your stocks of the medicinal coke. Is not Kermit in a Blender the red one, if I recall my tasteless schoolyard jokes correctly? What is green and goes red at the touch of a button?

I don’t drink any soft drinks generally as I would rather drink plain water. I had no idea there were so many different types of coke so by the time I’d passed the peach, vanilla, cherry and zero cokes to get to diet (as requested!) I didn’t realise I had to factor caffeine in too! I had no idea at the start whether the guys would be veggie, vegan, or super health conscious so did buy a bright green lime and wheatgrass smoothie that I ended up drinking as ‘feck that’ was the response when it was offered, and @Nickfromwales called it Kermit in a blender .

24 cans of beer, 10 bottles of Stella, and a bottle of wine. Plus the pints in the pub some nights . Sunday morning was a bit rough all round and fuelled mainly by Lavazza. I was treated like the anti Christ when I arrived back with caffeine free Diet Coke . Fanta and Irn-Bru soon had the blood sugar levels topped back up though .

Brilliant job, guys, great to see the team effort that went in to fixing this. As @jack says, a summary of the problems and fixes would be very useful for others encountering stuff like this (although I sincerely hope no one ever does!).

Solar thermal is up to 33c already ...

Scored a couple of 3/4 size 18mm ply sheets (old site hoarding) ages ago. Nice close "grain" on it. Not like some of the falling apart crap I've come across on site. Not marine ply but beggars can't be etc: One side's painted blue but hey ho, that can go on the inside. Ripped to width with a 45deg edge each side: The Aquapanel will be Sikaflex'd (or something cheaper maybe) to this. Might get a bit of a sanding down: The vertical ply will only carry the shower hose slider and hose outlet. I'll make it so if I do need access the backplate there'll be a sacrificial tile! Edit: I've assumed an 8mm notched trowel for the walls bedding down to 4mm.

Like this one? http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Fabric-and-ventilation-heat-loss-calculator-Master.xls

I thought I would post my own take on a manifold hot water distribution system. Requirements: To provide a central distribution and isolation point for hot (and cold) water distribution. To minimise pipe length to hot taps. To minimise pipe usage and be as cheap as possible. The location proved interesting. There is no central cupboard to locate such a thing without making the hot pipe runs longer. So I put it under the floor. It is above the utility room, so when the ceiling is boarded a small "loft hatch" will be made that can be lifted out to gain access to the manifold. This would not have been acceptable had it been any other room. This is what I came up with: All just standard soldered fittings and ball valves. This feeds the bath and shower in the main bathroom. The basin and shower in the en-suite will be added later when that room is done. The basin in the main bathroom is on the wall backing onto the HW tank so gets a more direct feed straight from there with it's isolation points inside the vanity unit. The compression tee is the "I forgot that" hot water feed to the utility room (which will have it's isolator in the unit under it) and I decided it was a little busy there to solder more joints in situ. The kitchen will also have it's own feed from the HW tank as that will run in the opposite direction to all other HW points. Not as pretty as a bought "proper" manifold, but a damned site cheaper.

Have plenty of strong mates, and the beer ready for the topping out ceremony when it's in place.

He's just removing the rust from the stillsons so he can tighten up the bath waste.....

you have made such a nice job of that i recon you could turn your hand to almost anything....... have you considered fitting bathrooms?