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Trying to use as much as we can of the bits and pieces to save on skip cost. 1 cannibalised gabion......some offcuts of blocks and rubble.......a pile of slate chips......some leftover cladding.........voila a bespoke garden bench!

Not done anything else since last night when I finished the 2nd mist coat but got in tonight (after a double shift) and took a couple of pics. Well pleased! Minor filling will have to wait until Sunday as working again today. At least I'll miss the football!

That is around the size of our house and it has worked fine for us but it hasn't been tested for a long cold spell. Our house has a very low space heating requirement but a PH could have a higher requirement and still be a PH so taking that into account I wouldn't like to recommend it for a PH larger than ours.

Most of us are European, I think. Apart from the UK and NI members, we have members from Poland, RoI, and one or two other European states I think.

Ha! Now I know why the council got their knickers in a twist - I've just received a letter from the VOA notifying me that the property has been deleted from the valuation list, effective on 31st May. So, as I understand it, the council have no say and can ask for all the evidence they want, but it's the VOA decision that rides. Happy days.

That's Okay, I have a reserve. My dad was Polish so I can have one of their passports, too, but I reckon the Poles would leave before the Irish.

This is what I did. (this might not be "advice") Take down EVERYTHING that can fall off. Make sure the jack legs are sitting on large enough pads, I was using offcuts of construction timber. Hit each leg in turn with a sledge hammer. It will move about half an inch. Work your way along both sides. Keep repeating, and in no time the whole lot will have walked over 6" Just because I did it and got away with it is not suggesting anybody else does it.

That's it....I'm putting a fence up.

Another day at the office . Have a glass of red ....medicinal oil for the cogs .

You must have a better class of scrote, round here the hoody draw string is tightened and the scrotes became bolder and don’t give a dam who watches.

Out of interest, which thread was this? I've been trying to find it without much success, really to try and see if there was a way it could be resurrected and used as a basis for realistic costing.

@Onoff tested the 6A receiver (part number QUR303) with the dimming 2 gang switch (part number QUD12W) and found that it worked and got around the switch changing up/down sense after a power cut. Today I received a couple of the same QUD12W 2 gang dimmer switches but, because I'm switching switched mode low voltage power supplies for our LED lights, that probably have a high turn on surge current, I opted to buy the 16A non-dimming receivers, (part number QUR305). I've just done an ad hoc test and these work fine together, with a pretty long range as far as I've been able to test so far. I'll get them installed this week, to replace the pretty useless Byron/Homeeasy units I have fitted at the moment and see how they go. Thanks to @Onoff for finding out that the dimming switches work fine with the non-dimming receivers, as that makes things a lot simpler.

A very nice idea.

On Potton Plans? Well nothing ....just a Void with a C shape where they "presume" the fireplace is going ...but no internal makeup see attached from Architect Drawings...but cant see anything on the Key to indicate what the hatched areas are ... so I too "presumed" it was laid out for a REAL fire ..so the inner layer would be suitable for that ...and the brick outer would be a skin ..like the rest of the house ... looking at the cavity as it is represented ..it SEEMS to be exactly the same visually as the cavity around the rest of the house ....which is 50mm You (and others) have scared me enough ...I think I will spec and price up ...Plan B If i go away from the chimney liner terracotta option (which seems costly)...I think Dunbrik look good ..I will send them an email see if they are more helpful than the stove people

Thanks Red! that a lovely crisp roof on there too! how are you facing the dorma's ? ....render?

@PeterStarck, why do you say "in a PH larger than 130m2"? Wow, Peter, you have really got me thinking! I am thinking whether I really need wet UFH. How about simple electric UFH instead across the whole house as you also reminded me of something @TerryE said a while ago. Until your comment my plan was wet UFH and SunAmp eDual with E7/E10. But @TerryE's reasoning, which I have just remembered, is (to invent a quote) "don't store heat energy in a Sunamp and later transfer it into the slab. For a Passive House, where the diurnal temperature fluctuation is minor so the time of day of heating doesn't matter much, just put the heat straight into the slab according to the E7/E10 timetable, the slab will release the heat gradually in to your home." Thus, if I went with electric UFH then this would make my system even simpler. Just E7/E10, a SunAmp for DHW, and electric UFH for space heating. Simple as can be. Like you, I like simple. (However, with no wet UFH I would lose the chance to add an ASHP later if my heating demand turned out to be higher than I expected.) (Mine will be 117m2 TFA Passive House*. I can't have PV because its behind a huge tree . I am currently at the stage of PHPP modelling.) * hopefully certified, am working on it.

We don't have PV yet but hopefully will later this year. The larger of the Combi 185s the LS, in my view, would struggle to provide space heating in a PH larger than around 130m2. My view has always been to keep all aspects of the build as simple as possible. So in a PH larger than 130m2, without wet UFH, I would use electric UFH run on E7 or E10. In the Genvex the DHW can be set to anything between 0C and 55C with an optional weekly immersion boost of up to 65C if wanted. We keep the DHW at 45C because to heat it higher than is needed is a waste of energy and 45C works well for us. I'm not sure a Sunamp and Genvex are the best combination and wouldn't be my choice, but then as I said I like things simple and try not to make my head hurt if I can help it .

Our ASHP requires antifreeze that can protect the external pipework and PHE down to at least -15 deg C, so it uses a combined inhibitor/glycol mixture.

Excellent idea.

Glycol in GSHP is used to transfer the heat - it is a more suitable medium for low grade heat transfer as you are talking about changing the liquid temperature from 6-8c repeatedly. ASHP fluid run at higher temperatures and usually only require the standard antifreeze levels although the short lengths of pipe properly insulated shouldn’t need antifreeze. The units themselves potentially need protection however using a frost programme to fire pumps would solve that anyway.

It's not something we have noticed nor has it affected us. There are two of us in the house, the tank is 185l and it's a low water usage house. We heat the water to 45C and there has always been plenty of hot water, with the tank reheating quickly after a shower. It will be interesting to see the first years electricity bill.

Being in the cheap seats here I've mulled attaching white pvc mini trunking to our white upvc windows to make insect screens / frames. I bought a roll of black alumunium mesh screen to dabble with a zero pass solar air heater. Unsurprisingly I've not started it! https://www.manomano.co.uk/mosquito-insect-screen-2352?

They remove them then 'tamp' the liquid down with a piece of tube with some handles. It has to be tamped a bit - nothing self levels except for water!

We're really impressed with our very first generation, pre-production, SunampPV. It's performance is really very good indeed, and most impressively the heat losses from it are negligible - the case doesn't even feel warm when it's fully charged. It's made a tremendous difference to the temperature in our services room. When we had a thermal store in there it used to get exceptionally hot, hot enough to damage the oak door, and that was with loads of additional insulation around the store to try and stop it wasting heat. Now the services room is barely warmer than the rest of the house, and that's all down to the very low heat losses from the SunampPV. Bearing in mind that our SunampPV is "old technology" compared to the current versions; we were most definitely early adopters (I think the first on here to get one). I have no doubt that the performance has improved a great deal since our unit was made, which bodes well for anyone thinking of getting one now.

The leaflet says 30m indoor, 160m outdoors - presumably line of sight. That's their lab test distances. I know with the Bluetooth speakers just fitted I only really have to go out of the bathroom with the phone and the signal gets choppy. Probably because walls, floor and ceiling are lined with foil faces pir. 1' solid walls don't help.

I've just purchased some Quinetic gear after confirming something that had been bugging me for a while but I've now figured. The Quinetic 2-gang wireless dimmer switch (QUD12W) bumpf says it needs to be paired with the appropriate dimming receiver (QUR301). It DOESN'T. The dimmer switch will operate the standard 6A receiver (QUR303) to give on / off, no dimming function. I went into TLC earlier and they didn't know but were happy to open boxes and we wired it up on the bench. So it works that one gang of the dimmer will control / dim the downlights via the dimmer receiver. The other gang of the dimmer will do the ambient, non dimmable lighting, LED strip and Bluetooth receiver via a standard 6A receiver. Guessing they just assume you will want to use dimmable kit with a dimmer switch so highlight the need for a dimmer receiver and don't mention it will also work with the standard receiver.