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Apple have brought out the iHammer

Yesterday was air tightness test day and MBC's final day on site getting everything prepped for the final test and then finishing off a few details. For those not so familiar with this kind of thing, a few details of the process follow. Our house isn't a passive house as it hasn't been designed with that in mind - it was the design first and then build to passive standards, so no accreditation or anything like that. That said, I wanted a low energy house and hence the choice of the passive system offered by MBC. Part of this system is that as well as the building and foundation being highly insulated, it also leaks very little air, as this is one of the major sources of heat loss in buildings and houses. The leakiness of a house is measured in terms of the number of times the volume of air contained by the building passes out of all the various gaps in one hour. As mentioned on this forum elsewhere, a modern well-built house without any special air tight measures would probably change its volume of air between 3 and 5 times per hour. The final part of MBC's construction method is to tape over anywhere there is likely to be a gap and make the building as air tight as possible; the target is to have 0.6 or less air changes per hour. One exterior door into the house is chosen as the point of measurement and this is where all the kit goes. Note that the air tight test is testing the quality of MBC's work and whilst it will highlight gaps elsewhere, it's not MBC's remit to correct leaks caused by others, only themselves. The point of measurement for my house is the door between the garage and the utility room, where the FD30 rated door was recently installed. The door is sealed up with a membrane that's supported and held in place by an adjustable frame: The hands are those of Steve, of Melin Consultants, who carry out most of MBC's air tests. This is the frame/shield being put in place in the doorway. I really did try and get a photo without builder's/air tester's bum, but to no avail. Those with delicate sensibilities should look away now and skip the next photo. After the frame, the fan is put into the hole in the shield, drawn tight and any gaps between the frame and door frame are temporarily sealed up. The rate of air flow into and out of the building is altered by both the speed of the fan and the number of vents that are opened up on the fan. The building is de-pressurised first, then re-pressurised and the readings taken. Because of environmental factors such as wind, this is done 10 times to get a data set and the average is taken for the final result. When this test was done yesterday, it was a windy day with the wind coming from the north east, the direction that the garage door faces. As the test progressed, it became clear that the house is well sealed and so it needed a smaller fan. The red shield was swapped over and the smaller fan put in place. The rest of the readings were taken and we got our final reading. Darren and his MBC crew aced it - with a target of 0.6 ac/h it came in at 0.25. Brilliant. Darren is a calm chap under all sorts of pressures but the air test was about the only time I've seen him display (slight) signs of nerves. He was equally understated in his satisfaction with the result even though it turns out that this is one of the lowest numbers they've had in 7 years. Well done, Darren and crew. If you're wondering what all that foam is doing on the floor, that's left over from work on the foul wastes over the weekend and foaming them in before putting air tight tape around them to make sure it wasn't detrimental to the air test result. We have a few very minor leaks, mostly gaps between the panels in the windows that have several sections. No surprise and these are due to be siliconed once we've finished most of the pretty stuff. There is also a bit of air flow through the keyholes but I've been advised that a good coating of vaseline on the key and in and out of the lock a few times should seal it up well enough. I daresay that would seal most things. The gaps were temporarily sealed up with a bit of low tack plastic for the air test, so the result assumes this has been done. All the battens are in now and the downstairs was finished off yesterday, and concrete was put into the remaining recess that had been formed for the lift and slide doors to get a level threshold. I am, of course, delighted with the air tight result and really pleased for MBC as well, as they have worked really hard and whenever there has been a problem, come up with solutions. I know that others have had varied experiences but for my own, I have found MBC to be a pleasure to work with right from the start. At the design stage, David worked his socks off liaising with my architect to get all the details right and to work out how to build the design using their system, and this has been the case with any third parties I've asked them to speak with directly. The communication from Trish has been great - I've always know what was going to happen and when and been kept informed when timings have had to change. The guys on the ground have worked like machines; I'm astonished at how hard they work, to be frank, and throughout the whole time I've never heard any rows or arguments. That's not to say that there haven't been any, but if there have, they didn't take place in front of me. For me, this has been a really good experience. What next? There's still plenty to do but the next main contractor is largely doing all of the internal systems, plumbing and wiring (note - I'm no longer giving details of this as I can't recommend due to unfinished work). The MVHR ducting and manifolds have been worked on but will kick off in earnest on 3rd December once the cellulose has been blown in upstairs. The cellulose is arriving on Friday 30th, along with Gordon, who will put it into the walls and ceiling. All 520 bags of it! Before then, my Ryterna garage door is due to be installed next week so I'll report back on that. That's being supplied and installed by Joe from Dorset Garage Doors Ltd, just up the road from me in Lydlinch. There's a lot of work to be done outside, too, but I'll be thinking through that today and get my plan of action together. Whatever else happens, some gentle heat will be put into the slab this week, using a couple of Willis heaters. It's getting pretty chilly on site now and it will be nice to get the house drying out properly and check that side of things is working properly. A good week and, hopefully, more to come.

I did this, but bought two short staircases and built the half landing myself, originally it was two quarter landing with a step between them but this was expensive and difficult to build, making my own half landing in situ was easy and fitting two short staircases to it a doddle.

My daughter asked what I was upto I told her Is was boarding the gates with Idigbo She asked if he was foreign I replied yes from the Amazon rain forest

It'd be excess carbon dioxide (or other trace gases) rather than lack of oxygen you'd notice. Two reasons: 1) there's quite a lot of oxygen in the air compared with other gases, except nitrogen, so respiration will make a huge proportional increase in CO₂ for a tiny proportional reduction in oxygen (e.g., the human race has increased the proportion of CO₂ in the Earth's atmosphere by forty something percent but only made a barely measurable decrease in the amount of oxygen present) and 2) human bodies are very poor at detecting a lack of oxygen anyway; we just didn't evolve the need for it. The feeling of gasping for breath when holding your breath is due to excess CO₂ in the blood and lungs, not lack of oxygen. The second of these is why anoxia on aircraft or up mountains is so insidious; it causes no real sensation other than that you do silly things, fall asleep then die. There are secondary clues like fingernails turning blue but you'll probably miss those because anoxia is interfering with your judgement to start with. It's why they say to put your oxygen mask on first before helping others in an aircraft depressurisation (“pick your favourite”) as otherwise you're likely to not help the other person or yourself while still thinking you're doing OK.

Tbh this may be one where you just walk over to the table lamp and switch it on with, say, your hand

Mine would use around 1.5t a year. How much pellets you burn will depend on how big your water tank and how much hot water your build needs to heat it and your DHW needs. The price hasn't really changed much in 4 years. Maybe an increase of £60 a ton. So do you have a large store and get them blown in, delivered in tonne bags or 10kg bags?? Mine will burn flat out till it reaches its set point then slowly decrease until its barely ticking over. If the ufh needs heat or you take a long shower and take heat from the tank and its temp drops then the stove will quickly fire up until the tank is back up to temp then dies of again. I have mine set that it doesn't turn on its self if heat is called for. We just use the range of timed programs and have it come on at 6am. It will then fire up and heat the tank and any ufh zone calling for heat takes it. The floor will take heat and the stove replace it. By 8am the floors should be hot enough and my rad circuit will come in for 30mins to warm the kids bedrooms. The stove then turns off at 9 and will maybe have burned 15kg of pellets. If no ufh zones needed heat then it won't burn as much. We use this setup from nov/ Dec to feb/March depending how cold it is. Some days if the house doesn't need heat it will use very little pellets. Haven't it programmed yet as it's still not cold enough so just give it a blast if and when it's needed.

Our blockwork started three weeks ago. This was always going to be weather dependent and it was mixed for the first two weeks in November but since then we have had a really good weather window where its been calm, sunny and not too cold which allowed the remaining work to be completed. Our brickie was fitted a temporary gutter which could be taken off when required. This gable end is where the prevailing wind comes down off the mountains, we have shelter belt here but its nice to know that we now have a solid concrete wall. Next on the list is fitting the concrete windows cills which should be next week. The sections that don't have blockwork will be fitted with the remaining Siberian larch cladding in early December.

Hi, thanks for the welcome. Yes Ferdinand, keeping the style with few external changes. Love the tv show, very apt! I'm very much looking forward to having locks on my doors tho! Here's a few mid-stage photos from July/Aug time -

I have the wired system in mine. Not much to say other than it works.

The plug in receiver adapter is unfortunately discontinued. I wonder if the plug in bleeper (bleeps for 5 seconds?) could be adapted to latch a relay for the light.

Our last house (1950s which had no special water efficiency measures) was detached with garden and occupied us - a family of 4. The water company would regularly send a bill with usage information that we were using the equiv of 2 people in a 1 bed flat. Maybe we just lack personal hygiene.

I have been puzzled as to why the forum collectively has little enthusiasm with regard to water conservation but chasing small incremental gains in thermal performance is not questioned.

A Mainslink transmitter getting it's live from the existing wall switch would do that end: https://cpc.farnell.com/rf-solutions/mainslink/remote-mains-control-system/dp/RF00336? Then feed the matching receiver with a permanent live from the 13A socket adjacent to the light you want to come on. Throw the existing switch, existing 2A circuit lights come on, Mainslink TX gets 230V at the same time. Receiver picks up and switches lamp on. Page 2: 2176070.pdf Deep pockets?

So when it's -18 outside, your house will need 18.6KW of continuous heat input, which your heat pump will not be able to deliver. My house is not as well insulated as @JSHarris but at that temperature will need 2Kw of heat, which my 5Kw ASHP will easily deliver. You would probably do better if you fitted high capacity low temperature radiators, the lower temperature water the ASHP has to heat, the better it's efficiency will be.

You can't assume with a TF. You really do need to design. The frame needs to be able to carry its design load without buckling. It also needs to have adequate sheer stiffness to avoid collapsing by scissoring under the maximum design wind speeds. The BIsnp should expect to see all of these design details approved by a "competent person" -- in this case a qualified structural engineer.

I was thinking that using Sonoff units would work as they can create a lab IFTTT mesh that would trigger others in the group ..?

@JSHarris we also have switched lighting sockets in our house (ours are 5 amp) and we have two places where we wished we had installed them so if you do find an off the shelf solution my wife will be very gratefull ?.

What about a WiFi enabled light bulb. You can use your phone /tablet to turn it on or one of the Google home/alexa type units.

Thanks, you're right, it's a passive house, so barely needs any heating. The thermostat is set to 20.5 deg C, which seems comfortable enough.

If you new to tiling and getting stressed --then i suggest you think of using a tile levelling system --lots of different ones --heres a vid to show how some work definately takes the stress out of tiling

I think I might have a copy of Microsoft Project 2000 kicking around come to think of it...

Middle ground! Window reveal Fit 3 large soffit tiles Fit 3 small soffit tiles Fit 5 large LH tiles Fit 5 small LH tiles Fit 5 large RH tiles Fit 5 small RH tiles Have a beer ? I don't think you need to include any 'waiting' in your list - your modus operandi appears to factor that in effortlessly

Heating is on! Suddenly it started to flow on Friday night and all is now well with the world! But my god can that pellet stove eat those pellets! we were told we would use 1and a half to two tons a year but I can’t see that happening, installer has said it will use a lot until the house is heated up and then settle down, I really hope so or I’d have been as well with oil. It’s a funny piece of kit, set the water temperature to70degrees and it burns away at the top setting until it gets to about 68 then gradually cuts down its rate of burning till it eventually goes very slowly, you then see the temperature drop gradually and when it’s down about 50 degrees it starts working it’s burn rate up again but this can take quite a while and I do wonder why it gets so low before ramping up again, I’m just not sure of it yet but I suppose time will tell, hope it’s not been an expensive mistake.

It's supposed to be motivational! There is something quite cathartic about ticking things off the list and seeing it get shorter

He finishes on the 14th so then or that weekend. No worries. Such is the life of a jetsetting Sunamp guy! Just debating digging a channel across the floor of the stairs room to the eventual manifolds final resting place. That's going to go down a storm... Snagging list is a good shout. I'll do one later and depress myself! Presumably everyone's seen the "Alexa play Dad's favourite song!" ad when the homesick girl's at uni ? I messaged him the other day; "Alexa, cover the place in dust and lay some random pipes on the floor I can keep tripping over!" Not impressed!

Or, perhaps, run it in reverse in a small, well-sealed, cupboard. You could call it a "refrigerator"... ?

come on @PeterW, trying to promote best practise on this forum, HSE will be visiting you when posting photos like that!

It's Lego...

IFTTT - if this then that..! Basically they are simple WiFi switches that can work with either the app or by some other means. Temperature switch is one, they can turn something on or off etc but also make another unit do something else too ..