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Around ten or eleven years ago when we moved into the bungalow I saw some X10 home automation components being sold off cheap so I bought some with a view to using them in the bungalow. Of course they got dumped in a box and forgotten. Yesterday I dug them out and installed the X10 wireless PIR, switch micro module and transceiver so now my porch and outside lights come on when we walk up the path. It probably won’t be needed when the driveway is finished as there will be a security light then, but at least now we don’t have to scratch the paintwork trying to put the key in the lock. I’m amazed the X10 protocol is so simple and works.

No he needs to go to the local job centre and apply for his old job back at McDonald's ... If - and only if - he has resized the D2 to be 22/28mm based on his calcs to allow both the boiler and UVC to vent through the D2, then the boiler needs to run though a 15mm tundish with a cover on (Boiler regs, cover required due to potential for scalding non-potable water) and the initial D1 leg of the UVC needs a 15mm in / 22mm out tundish with no cover on (G3 UVC regs, cover not allowed due to risk of drawing non-potable water into the UVC). If he is certified to work on both gas and UVC (G3) then he would know all this... So whilst Billy McPenis has installed a tundish, he's installed the wrong type, in the wrong place, and in contravention of the regs....

The problem is that there are a lot of "qualified" people around who don't have a clue. I've ranted before about this with regard to an electrician who was registered as a competent person with one of the accreditation companies, but who was frankly bloody dangerous, and shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near an electrical installation. There's no way that most people are going to be able to spot whether work has been done to the standard required by regulations (which are often there to keep us safe), so the cowboys can carry on getting away with it. Programmes like Rogue Traders don't seem to have a problem finding cowboys, either, and some of the tales of woe on here seem to show that the problem is widespread. The shame of it is that we had a damned good apprenticeship system decades ago, and no one was able to call themselves a trades person unless they had served their time. There's no substitute for years of experience working under an apprentice master, IMHO, yet now virtually anyone can do a short course, get a bit of paper and pretend that they are fully competent to do a job properly and sign it off.

I reckon @Nickfromwales favourite word is PENIS !

"anyone seen my UVC ?"

When we designed our house we wanted a low energy usage, low maintenance house, and Wendy insisted on a KISS approach to operating it. So we have one simple control for water temperature and air temperature. Water is set at 45C and air at 23C and Wendy is happy that if I'm not around she is able to keep everything going. I'm hoping that we will be able to gradually reduce the air temperature as we get used to living in a PH. We had the thermostat set to 24C in the bungalow because of the cold spots that existed in there but as there are none in the house we should be able to get it down to 21C eventually without Wendy feeling uncomfortable.

Sorry to repeat already what's been said but even many moons ago when I was installing unvented cylinders you wouldn't consider not using a tundish. It even comes part of the installation kits so no need to be extra out of pocket.

Just for a bit of sanity, not ONE of my UVC install customers has EVER had a drip through their ceiling, and EVERY ONE has a tundish. Loads have been in attics btw I may go and spray some underpants with gold paint and give this guy the 2018............... “talking out of my arse” award. ?

Having got all my water issues out into the last post, it's time to move on to happier things and talk about other progress. Actually, that's a little unfair because there is a lot of work in all the flat roof stuff, far more than the pitched roof, and aside from the wet stuff it's going well. At the end of the penultimate post, the solar PV panels were just going on and the pitched roof was also still a work in progress. The building was still a shell with no power and plenty of work left for MBC to do, and outside was largely untouched apart from the buried mains cable that was terminating in the garage, into the meter moved by the meter fairies. Let's start at the top and work our way down. The solar panels are all in now and all the slates around them are done. All the velux windows are in and the ridges were done last week. We have a dry ridge system. I had to ask what this was and was told 'that means there's no gunk underneath the ridge tiles'. So technical that even I could understand it! Here's the stuff that they line it with. When they roll it out, it has a corrugated wave shape to it and each side is sticky - one for the roof ridge surface, the other for the ridge tiles. This is Mike, one of the roofers, bringing the final tiles right up to the ridge before putting the dry ridge stuff over it. And here's a view of the ridge tiles in situ, fixed to the sticky stuff and clipped together. We have 3 ridge lines on the roof, all meeting somewhere over the north east bedroom. A plate of good old school lead was shaped to cover the meeting point of the 3 ridges, creating a neat flashing for the centre. Here's Terence welding the lead to create the flaps going down each gully. Here's Terence putting it into position on the roof: And here's a close-up of the same thing. You can see the fixing for the dry ridge system unrolled next to it. Staying with jobs going on outside, there were some groundworks that week, too. I needed to get the electricity supply cable trench back-filled and whilst we had the plant on site I decided to get a few other jobs done. The Openreach guys turned up that week and the old redundant BT cable was removed, so that old electricity pole is all clear now. My neighbour has already bagsied it, so there's no problem with disposal. One of the groundworks jobs was to open up the ground between the garage and the lane. I'm not getting the driveway done quite yet but I did need to get it clear because my sunamps will live in the garage and it will be a lot easier to get them forklifted straight into the garage from the lane rather than trying to drag them all through the house. Keith got onto it, clearing around the side of the garage a little, too. There is an area of concrete there that used to have a shed on top of it. For the time being, I'm keeping that there as it's nice to have a surface that isn't clay. And then this is the view from the lane up to the garage. This is, in fact, where the pedestrian entrance to the old bungalow was, hence the gate that is still there. Once we've got rid of the scaffolding, we can clear the remaining few feet of the entrance and make the proper driveway. Keith will be doing most of the work on this, but I need to get someone with a ticket to do the dropped kerb between the lane and the verge. It's outrageously expensive for what it is - just for the 6m stretch of opening and 2m back, tarmac surface, that will be the princely sum of £1,200 plus £285 for the licence from the council. And that's the cheapest quote out of 3!!!! I will be continuing the tarmac for the driveway, and also around to the side of the garage so that there's hardstanding for a couple of vehicles next to it. And Keith's final job for that week whilst the plant was still on hire was to scrape the grass from what will be Paul's pond. I marked out the original perimeter and he took out the line for this but then I did that typically female thing and told him it was no good and I wanted it to be bigger. Naturally, he obliged. Not that we had much doubt, but for the sake of interest, Keith dug out a small trial pit within the pond perimeter, about 1m deep. It has filled up nicely with the subsequent rain and shows no sign of draining any time soon. I may have cursed our clay for its giving the need for piles, but we certainly won't need a pond liner. That's most of the outdoor stuff for the time being, so let's step inside and see what MBC have been up to this week as they've starting on the prep work prior to the airtight test. This is scheduled for next Tuesday, 20th November. The velux windows have all been boxed out and they've been drawing the airtight membrane up around the web joists forming the roof/ceiling. This will be the main/shared bathroom and it's only natural light source is the velux. It's rather nice to think I can lay in the bath looking at the stars. Assuming it's not raining. The green tubes on the far wall are for the MVHR. A close up of some of the MVHR tubes to show the careful taping around them where they come through the membrane. This is the main bedroom that has been battened out now. I've wedged some bits of timber under the membrane that's underneath the window to dry out the water that came in at the weekend after the tanked balcony incident. All the battens have been screwed on, much to the chagrin of Darren. It's probably not so necessary somewhere like a bedroom, but in bathrooms and the like where the weight of tiles and mirrors can be considerable, I wanted the peace of mind that the battens weren't going to move for anything and so requested screws rather than nails. This is the north east bedroom, below where the three ridges meet. The guy putting up the plasterboard will be cursing me here. Heading downstairs, the insulation changes a bit here. Instead of being all blown cellulose held behind the membrane, there is celotex in certain places. This is beneath the parapets and the balconies and it's been used here because less depth is required than for the cellulose, allowing the ceiling to be level throughout the ground floor. If blown cellulose had been used, the entire outer edge of the ground floor rooms would have had a step down to allow for this. That's pretty much it for now, but the next lot of work has been scheduled. The vertical slate cladding is booked in to start on 3rd December and this is being done by my roofers as it seemed logical given that they're using the same materials as on the roof. I'm nagging and cajoling them to see if they will do the stone board cladding on the stairwell walls as well; they may say no eventually, but I'm working on it as that will be pretty much all the stuff at height done other than rainwater goods. It would also protect the south west corner of the building nicely, as that's the direction for the prevailing weather. I'm aiming to get some more groundworks done in early December; at some point I need to get the sewage treatment system set in and also the rainwater storage tank. There is, of course, the rest of the pond to be dug out and that will need some muckaway. I'd rather get it done this side of the winter as we can then let it fill up with rainwater and see how it settles. Internally, there's some work on soil pipes and the MVHR, but no sign of the MVHR unit itself. Once MBC have completed their air test next week, we can really go at it with first fix, so I need to make decisions on external electrics. On order is the big brise soleil for the floor to roof window in front of the stairwell. The plans for this look great but I'm waiting on a production date at the moment as the framework is a first fix item. The wooden fins can go on any time after that. Similarly, I have a guy coming to measure up for the external motorised roller blinds for the other large south facing windows. As long as sufficient clearance is left with the cladding, these don't need to be installed as part of first fix so we're not so reliant on a production date for these. They have a lead time of 3 to 4 weeks. There's plenty that I've omitted, I'm sure, but it will all follow in due course. It will be great to get past the air test and make some good progress in doors. No aviation buzz this week, but the hunt was out today. I stood on the top lift of the scaffolding late this afternoon watching the horses and riders galloping over the distant fields down near the river and could hear the hounds baying and the horn being blown. I'm not sure what they were hunting but it all seemed very evocative on a late autumn afternoon and really brought home just how rural our place is.

Today our roof lights were installed. We are pleased with the finished product and how they fit. The blue sky and sunshine helps of course. Almost helped take the edge off the unexpected contract lift costs (£1380 in the end, but we have managed to avoid the additional VAT and we got him to lift some roof trusses off the scaffolding which saved a job). Their man on site today admitted that it had taken a long time to get to this point. Not wrong! The photos will hopefully do them justice. Already they make such a difference to the light inside the house. And the feature window (circular on the top, octagonal currently from inside) in the full height entrance hall is really fantastic. Any thoughts on how to get the internals finished on this octagonal light? I was wanting to make it circular (and the window company advises this so that we don't get any issues with condensation on the visible frame (which would be covered by the insulation if we did make it circular).

A tundish is there to provide two things. An air break in a potable supply, and a visual indication for a relief valve. If the tundish is sealed then there is no air break on a UVC between a waste pipe or discharge and the potable water in the UVC so if it did draw back it would potentially be contaminated. A boiler PRV is on the heating system side so is non-potable so it’s irrelevant if it pulls water back from the drain as it won’t contaminate the supply.

That's what he calls @PeterW so must be a term of endearment ..!!

No. You can dry install anything you like. It’s when you set it to work the liability instantly shifts completely on to the person who commissioned it. End of chat. Hes not allowed to do either. Fcuking course is like £180 and under so guys a penis.

Long and short is, he’s not qualified to work in unvented and therefore he cannot sign it off or register it. Simples.

I can taste blood now!

It's a shame this has happened over such a simple job.

^^ I would have added whoever spots the problem gets the job of putting it right.

He's gone. He's finished. I genuinely think he thinks he's done a good job ( bit like my rubber roofer! ). So I don't think he has any intent to de-fraud. I paid the builder the builder paid him. So I'll get this fixed and deduct from what I owe the builder.

I would be telling him to march AND refund my money he has taken fraudulently or it will end in court. Then get someone else who actually knows the rules to re do it all.

Jesus. This guys underpants are going TNT overnight so he gets them to wear tomorrow. I’ve never, in 23 years on the tools, seen someone cut into a boiler PRV to add D2. AND ALL IN 15mm !!!!? Needs to be 22mm to tundish from outside, as long as the hydruluc ( calculated ) run isn’t >12m. If you tee into the boiler PRV then that too would need a tundish / air break and the downstream pipe work upsized to prob 28 or 35mm. Scrotum.

Yep the bloke is a cowboy. As in my thread that @Nickfromwales linked to above is has to be 22mm minimum, then depending on the number of bends and total length it might need to go up to 28mm. Ask him for his calculations for the D2 pipe and post the answer. I used bends on mine formed in the bender rather than elbows as they offer less resistance to water flow, but I don't think the calculations differentiate. And post a picture of where the D2 pipe ends up discharging to. If you end up getting someone else to put it right, deduct the cost from his bill.

The reason it needs bigger pipe on D2 ( the open part of the tundish ) is because the 15mm D1 is forced out under pressure, whereas the D2 only has gravity to rely on for the water to drain away naturally. With the invert so close to the tundish, I'd have run that in 28mm. At the very least the first elbow after the tundish should have been a bend pulled in a pipe bending machine to give a nice radius. Its so easy to just do right, when you're already there with your tools out.

? No point me getting back to him on this . I’ll get it ‘serviced’ by another penis ? ; I can also see if the new guy picks up on that ....

Since we use SunAmps to provide DHW, we don't have any control on the HW setpoint other than the master TRV in the DHW manifold. As I commented above, we also keep or temp at around 23°C. At the moment, I set a configuration parameter in the the Database to change this, but I also have a browser dashboard that we can use to monitor the system and change it -- not that I want anyone to do so trivially, because it takes a few days for the house to settle down even if you want to change this by a degree. So functionally we do pretty much the same thing. My implementation is in software, but the advantage of having kids in the IT business is that this isn't an issue for us.

I'll check ours and get back to you, as I don't have a record of having ever changed parameter 106 on my crib sheet.

The specs for icynene shows that it does have a fairly high decrement delay for foam insulation, as far as I can see from the limited data available. It's certainly got a decrement delay that's maybe double that of PIR, just based on the published lambda and an assumed value for specific heat capacity based on similar spray foam materials.

Should be OK, as there's a slight ridge in the valley mouldings to catch any rain or snow that gets blown under the slates/tiles and I can't see an obvious reason why just trimming the panel side flashing to fit shouldn't work, although it is really designed to go underneath slates/tiles, rather than over them. The only problem to solve would be how to secure the flashing neatly. With slates/tiles, they sit over the top of the flashing fixings, the same as for the Kytun dry verge, so they stay hidden.

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My comments. 1 - Echoing @recoveringacademic, the main thing that could mislead you here is that you are looking at detailed things, before the more contextual questions about orientation on the plot, responding to nearby features, direction of sun etc have been considered. On this thread we cannot comment on the more fundamental things as eg we do not know which way is South. 2 - If you brief your architect with too much detail, then you stifle their possibly brilliant suggestions that you have not thought of. Give them space, and use what you have learnt on this thread as knowledge to resource the questions you ask about details and practicalities. See what happens if you keep your brief down to one page. 3 - I would deal with the offset door vs offset porch thing by adjusting the relative sizes of the two front rooms ie study vs lounge, and the ancillary rooms around them, so in effect it is your hallway and staircase which are offset internally, not the porch and front door. Though there's nothing wrong with an offset porch - it just means that 4 year olds will not get drawings of your house quite right. 4 - I think the downstairs loo needs to be off a communal area not a study or bedroom, though there could be an argument for 2 doors. I think a shower would be good in there for frail visitors or guests. Two things worth reading that are examples of the optimisation process: This thread This blog (all of it) - a well done, modest project Ferdinand

They perhaps would not mind if @pocster runs it well and communicates well. There is a fantastic HMO blogger called HMO Landlady, here - very straightforward and sensible providing tooms for Housing Benefit type and short term tenants, who did that. She wrote these posts about it: https://hmolandlady.com/2012/04/23/easter-break-in-an-update/ https://hmolandlady.com/2012/05/22/cctv-installed-but-theres-trouble/ https://hmolandlady.com/2012/06/20/cctv-babysits-while-hmo-landlady-goes-on-holiday/ Sadly the blog is silent for the last year or two, but is worth a read backwards. Housing Benefit Ts stopped being doable with restrictions to eg the lower 3 deciles of the local market rent and a multi-year cash freeze, so I suspect she moved into more pro-HMO lets. The last post s about a 1000 a month tax increase coming down the track from Mr Osborne. Here's a slightly old interview, which includes some interesting asides, and talks about HMOs, and a bit of self-promotion. Ferdinand

My slightly bluff parlance for Harrogate, York and such places is "a bit of the South, Up North". Totally unjustified, I am sure . We really need to get all those hips of marble off our shoulders. Ferdinand

No and fcuking NO! This guys a total prick. He’s admitting going around making installations lethal. FM! The picture he’s sent you clearly shows water has been running OVER that tundish not THROUGH it. We’ve got a real live one here Im stuck for words, and that is some achievement I can tell you. I woukd 1000% be getting an independent inspection done by someone not known to either you or the fitter. You’ll soon see the rap sheet filling up. Still love to know if he’s done the balanced feeds. I’ll bet my spare ribs he hasn’t. If you ring Telford they’ll give you the number of a local G3 installation agent that they use for maintenance / repairs etc. My mate went through a divorce and let his lapse on a big job so I rang Telford and it cost about £160 to get a guy out to G3 it all. He went through every last nut and bolt. You need this looking at so deffo hold some money back. Guys a tosser.

you cant get a sulphur stat?!

I had to re do my kitchen roof over the Christmas holidays a couple of years ago, so definitely not a good time what I did was to go and buy a big blowtorch, the sort roofers use to stick down the torch on membranes it was the type of torch that has a big fluffy type of flame not a skinny brazing type flame. I got on the roof first thing in the morning with a leaf blower and gave it a really hard blow, and then heated the entire surface until it was steaming, I wanted every drop of moisture out, cup of tea and then warm it all up again until the osb was really nice and warm, allow it to cool while you cut your matting to size and your ready to go. Mine came out superb, it was a bit of a bodge job as it’s on a house I want to knock down so didn’t bother with fanciful details. one thing I will strongly recommend if you have a drip edge into a gutter, then router this edge into your osb as it creates a lip that water sits behind, most of the instructions I have seen say water will flow over this lip as it’s only 1.5mm high. Which it does when in full flow it’s the little showers that sit behind it.

I don't like this thread anymore. Can't we talk about defunct walk on glass or leaky underground house roofs like before......?

Oh, and best not to forget that the discharge only happens when there is a fault, so the longer that goes unnoticed.......... ”This message ( and your luxury HMO ) will self-destruct in 5 seconds”

Not too much I’m sorry...... If you had a catastrophic failure and the cylinder hasn’t been installed to the MI’s then your insurance could refuse to payout. I’ve heard that in a block of flats with around £30k worth of ( uninsured ) damage done. Next issue is if there is no integral air break on D1 then the downstream discharge pipe can freeze and block solid, then you have a bomb in your rental property. This really is not just a bad job but it’s very, very dangerous, especially with it going into winter. There is no ‘drip’ from a correctly fitted tundish. Water can pass through at nigh on full wallop if it’s been fitted with the correct size and length of pipe above and below ( D1 & D2 ) so a bit of scaremongering there. FYI, there are two intentional points of visibility for identifying problematic discharge from the tundish; 1) The chuffing tundish being alongside the UVC for periodic owner / self inspection / alert 2) G3 stipulates that the end of D2 terminates where it is visible, and that it terminates 100mm above outside finished floor level. The intention is the same with the old overflows from attic tanks where the overflow gives you a shower when it’s operating, eg so you do something about it sharpish. Reason being is that is potable drinking water that is being discharged so the water bylaws state that that cannot be happening ‘behind the scenes’, hence the open tundish inside the dwelling at the UVC and the external overflow discharging where it’s continued operation wouldn’t go unnoticed. The regs are there to be followed, so no slack for your guy from me, sorry. ? If everybody started putting ‘their spin’ on things then regs would be pointless. FYI #2, the Hotun tundishes have clear click on covers so can prevent your mans dreaded splashing if he’s that bothered. The only thing that make the tundish splash is not enough pipe above it and the same below / invert to close so it backfills. Nah, the more I type the less slack they get. It’s needs sorting. If your happy to be relaxed about it then that’s up to you. If you rang the governing body up and told them how it’s fitted they’d tell you to turn it off immediately. Your call pal ?

AFAICS, Passivhaus and UFH are two quite separate issues: a Passivhaus should need very little heating to the point where UFH is not needed, after all the idea is that you can heat it just by heating the supply air from the MVHR so a couple of electric convector heaters or towel rails should do. In a way fitting UFH is an admission of lack of confidence. However, there are two reasons you might choose to use UFH. One is that it's a pleasant way to heat the house and likely reasonably efficient as its radiant heat probably allows a slightly lower indoor air temperature which will reduce the (already small) ventilation heat losses a bit. The other is that it's a good way of using the output of an ASHP as it allows the heat pump to operate at a much lower temperature than it would with, for example, radiators so it'll operate more efficiently. Whether it's worth having an ASHP purely for space heating in a Passivhaus is debatable (there are a few on here who choose to only heat with direct electrical resistance heating) but as you also need DHW it's much more likely worthwhile. Still not absolutely clear cut, though. AFAICS - as far as I can see. UFH - underfloor heating. MVHR - mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. ASHP - air source heat pump. DHW - domestic hot water.

Disappointing week. I've been waiting three months on a decision by the bank about splitting the property folio and allowing me to sell the old house but keep the side garden to build on. They are concerned if I don't sell the house they are taking a risk as the LTV would then exceeds the Central Bank limits. The reduced property value post split plus the fact I've only a year paid down on the mortgage plays into this. I thought they would hold the side garden as security but it doesn't work like that.... I've been talking to a few banks and my solicitor about options but the clearest to date is either to split the property at time of sale or wait a year, pay down the mortgage to get it below the 80% LTV threshold (depending on the valuation), then in a year ask the same question. I'm all ready to go to tender - have builders lined up and the tender package written but without the bank's approval I can't proceed. I'll wait to see if any other options emerge but getting access to the garden has been an issue from the start. I tried to buy directly off the previous owner but the banks didn't play ball, and now again I'm hitting institutions that we bailed out calling ME a risk! Anyway, rant over. Turns out nothing is simple. I can only ask the questions, the replies sometimes confound me! Let's see where we are in 12 months......

So last Tuesday saw us eventually getting the track inspection passed and we were told 5-10 days for connection.This morning I decided to phone to see if they had a date for us and was told 19th November but could be earlier.Half an hour later Scottish Water draw up so I go to see what’s happening, well I was here to make your connection but I won’t be doing it, firstly the hole is full of water- oh really well we did warn you this would happen! Secondly you have to get a chapter 8 - you can then imagine the explosion that happened mostly by me as hubby seems to be able to keep his temper better than me, so he goes back to his van and I go into the caravan to phone them, a lot of good that did me, as far as that department was concerned they’d done their bit and passed it! I was exasperated where do you go from there,? However mr jobsworth had been phoning his gaffer and came back to tell us if we got road signage etc he would come back and do it, even gave us his phone number to phone him, admitted it was a 10 min job , I was actually pondering giving him a backhander just to do it but considering SW have had over a thousand pounds from us for doing nothing I reconsidered. The signs are ordered and hopefully he will come back by the end of the week to do it. The other problem of the staircase rumbles on, we told the kit company we couldn’t and wouldn’t pay any more for it since it was the architect who made the mistake and he refused to pay. He then came back out and a new plan was put together for a reposition of the staircase with the architect agreeing to pay for extra balustrade since it was no longer beside the wall, he had been going to pay for the cantilever which would have been needed if we’d gone with the first plan. Today I was given the new over cost which is £1100 which I duly sent over to the architect who then back tracks and decides he’ll only pay the amount that the cantilever was going to cost and it was going to be a sidey from a friend of his.Tomorrow someone has to take responsibility or I’m afraid it’s going into the hands of our solicitor.