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OK...whoever said it'd look better with grout might have had a point. From a distance that is... Just the bath to do now, tiling wise.

I revise my "next job" estimate to 2021

Optimist....

Im paying £6k for the removal of a steading site at the moment that's a bit bigger than 230M. I got in touch with a slate reclaim yard and they are coming to remove all my slates, and paying me £900 for the slate (i also have bats). Might be worth seeing if anyone local will come and buy the tiles and take them down.

Just sounds so wrong...

I was meant to clad in larch . But it did colours and needs maintenance. Not idea in my view - want less work not more ! So went for cladding - looks great

Certainly not SWMBO.

We're on oil and have someone home in the daytime. Most of our stats are on 4 time periods. Something like.. 5am-8am 20C 8am-4pm 18c (some rooms 16C which is effectively off unless it's very cold weather) 4pm to 10pm 21C (Bedrooms 18-20C depending on occupant) 10pm -5am 16C (effectively off unless it's very cold weather). Bathrooms are on their own stat to warm the floors at certain times of the day depending on season. Some rooms have slightly different timings at weekends - for example kids bedroom.

I put the thinest bead of silicone around my shower plate. Have had to take it off twice in 4 years to clean out the gauze and change the thermostatic valve.

I more lurch from one crisis to the next and then manage it to death. What colour, like I know or care!

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Next year you mean?

I’m quoting for large jobs 15 months in advance As Dave pointed out there is a big difference between a quote and a estimate Most of my materials come via Gysum So I know when there is a price increase and how much and factor it in You are right to request a breakdown of any quote I’m not a big fan of the online estimators But perhaps I’m set in my ways With all the Brexit uncertainty it is difficult to product material rises But any quote should be firm Shen it comes to labour I would sit down with the third chap Seperate his laboure cost and ask him to breakdown his material quote including his 10% supply charge and agree to stand material price increases Then everyone knows exactly where they stand Also it is worth getting everything down on paper There will be some extras It’s difficult to estimate how deep foundation will go Propblems with drains etc There nothing worse than feeling like your being cheated for you or your builder

Some people don't have the sense they are born with I'm sure!

Oh we’ve been there ! luckily with geniushub and say a heater in a room the graph does a nice linear line - so you know there’s an issue . Also suspicious when room is set at 20 degrees ; rads off but rooms at 24 degrees . i know all their tricks !

I've had positive outcomes dealing with both PSW Trade and Heating-Instal. You'll find them both on Ebay and elsewhere and they are very competitive. I've also chanced buying some pipe from one of the Chinese shopfronts on Ebay, it arrived quickly and is (most likely) the same product everyone else is flogging anyway...

Somewhat off topic as it's about a much less well insulated and more leaky house but I did some experiments in November and December which seemed to say that running the heating continuously rather than timed for when I'm about did increase the heating bill a bit but nothing like as much as you might expect from the hours involved. Write up https://edavies.me.uk/2019/01/continuous/ with additional notes in the preceding and following posts. Extrapolating excessively, I doubt you'd save much fiddling with the heating hours.

I will just add my tuppence about thermostats. Plain old mechanical ones are fine as long as you connect a neutral to them, they have a built in "accelerator heater" to overcome the otherwise inherent hysteresis with a mechanical thermostat. Mine are working just fine and giving good control of room temperature. Not to everyones taste if you want fancy digital things but don't feel you have to. Don't bother heating internal corridors (other than incidental heating by pipes passing through to get to their destination) Our first build I let a "professional" designer design the UFH system. The hall and landing loops never came on and were a waste of pipe and effort. I bought all my kit from ebay. The only caution I would say with that approach was there are a lot of manifolds on the bay that come with IBO pumps. They are as noisy as hell. I have already changed one to a Wilo pump and will be changing the other one shortly.

FWIW, I've changed our heating so that it only comes on during the E7 period, between 11:30 and 06:30 at the moment. This seems to work fine for us, as it just charges up the concrete slab using off-peak electricity (not a great saving as the ASHP rarely draws more than about 800 W) and the slab seems to still be plenty warm enough to keep the house warm in the evening. The room stat will almost certainly not start to call for heat until the early hours, I suspect, as I've yet to see it calling for heat by the time I've gone to bed, and I would guess that the house doesn't cool down enough for the stat to switch the UFH on until maybe a couple of hours or so before dawn.

Errr ... in terms of absolute efficiency and ignoring any loss through walls/windows/doors, it doesn’t matter and the input heat required to raise the temperature by a degree is the same. Some of the “self learning” thermostats calculate the average delta change by time and then are supposed to be able to calculate the optimal start time for the heating to ensure its xC by xx:xx etc. I’ve never seen one do it accurately yet ..! Staggering the times may mean the lounge / dining gets a slightly higher flow temperature but that is pretty unlikely to affect it.

Probably like chicken ...

All the PEX/Al/PEX and PERT/AL/PERT stuff has the same build up - a pair of plastic pipes bonded to an aluminium layer. It’s all 16x2 which is near enough a 1mm plastic sandwich either side of a layer of aluminum foil a few microns thick to create the oxygen impermeable layer. Target prices are around 42-45p/m ex VAT if you shop around.

No, it's definitely around 50%, for sure, as I've tested this many times now. Our usage pattern means that we draw around 3 kWh to 4 kWh from the Sunamp very soon after the early morning boost, when it is fully charged. I then expect it to be ready to accept charge from excess PV generation during the day, but 9 times out of 10 it won't be, as it doesn't think it's discharged to 50% (and to be fair, it almost certainly isn't). If I power the controller off and then on again immediately after the last morning shower it always, without fail, switches on and starts to accept charge from the PV when it becomes available. If I don't switch the power off and then on again the Sunamp will go the whole day without using any of our PV generated energy at all, which rather defeats the main reason I have the thing. What's worse, is that if I don't do this reset procedure, then there is a good chance that the Sunamp controller still won't enable any charge for the next early morning boost period. We've run out of hot water because of this, because although it may start to deliver hot water for the first shower the next morning, if that's longer than normal then the second shower will run cold (we've had this happen). Resetting the controller by turning the power off and then on again always works, and for as long as I remember to do this every morning the Sunamp works extremely well indeed. Today is a good example. At around 07:30 I did the reset procedure and by around 11:30 this morning the Sunamp was fully charged from excess PV generation (my car is currently charging at around 3.5 kW from excess PV right now, too - it's a nice, cold, clear day here). Had I not reset the Sunamp this morning then it would be sat there doing sod all, and we'd either have had to pay to charge up from the grid in the early hours tomorrow or we may well have ended up with a cold second shower tomorrow.

You’d be surprised. I’ve put a 6 zone manifold in a cupboard with no issues. The problem starts though when you have doorways that need 2 zones through them as a 200mm spacing needs at least 800mm clear otherwise you do get hot spots. LoopCad helps with this and will make your life a lot easier.

Never tried welsh before.

Whilst a couple of people have shopped around for bits to save a few quid, I know of a number of issues where one or two pieces haven’t worked and it’s difficult to get to the root cause of the issue. For the sake of £100 or so which is normally the difference, buy all the manifold components - that’s manifolds, blenders, actuators, pumps etc from the same supplier as you have one throat to choke. Pex pipe is standardised so you can get that pretty much anywhere.

Warm up will supply and design Pretty easy to deal with also

@newhome I have just replied sending him this exert from the manual:- Controller type: UniQ_SBC_01 (Electric storage water heater) • Heating from bottom to top • Cooling from top to bottom • Option 1 on: demand signal generated when battery is approx. 90% depleted • Option 1 off: demand signal generated when battery is approx. 50% depleted Not much ambiguity in the above.

Design ...?? DIY, download loopcad free for 30 days. Bits ..? WundaTrade are good, save the hassle and go with the Wunda self adjusting heads and only play with the flow temp.

All mine came from Wunda but I think others have shopped around on a mix and match basis to get the best price.

YOu could actually do a roof terrace on part of the roof, perhaps with obscuring walls ... which would give you an Art Space outdoors for your studio. Very glam. Here is an example from Grand Designs for the Slip House or Ice Cube House in Brixton, also In a terrace. THe buggers found a site that ran right through between 2 streets, so got a bundled building plot. Photo of the roof terrace half way down. They used translucent glass for privacy. https://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/home-garden/interiors/brixtons-ice-cube-house-futuristic-and-super-energyefficient-31438.html It reminds me of an American Sculptor I used to know when I lived in the City of London. HE lived in a Warehouse near the Regents Canal, and had a patio by his studio with a track onto the patio. He would roll the current project out every so often through the French doors to get an evaluation in natural light. IT would work with a surrounding wall, as skylight is much more powerful than side light. He was like a 6" shorter version of KRis Kristofferson, and would walk along muttering numbers as if practising for Countdown, when he was actually evaluating the passing talent out of 10. A character, and the first person I ever actually knew who charged more than 5k for his artworks. Ferdinand

ASk them explicitly why they have a problem with obscured windows; they might not have noticed. And consider a mansard roof, or a Dutch Barn roof. AS I see it, a Mansard would actually give you more space inside, even were you to make it mansard with parapet .. like a squared off cottage loaf. You could even try a set back mansard with a balcony at the front. If they still have kittens about side looking windows on your mansard, it depends whether it is overlooking or appearance. YOu could potentially use a blank or two to keep an interesting appearance if you have to look at that facade ... like Hawksmoor on the LHS of St Mary Woolnoth. Ferdinand

Hi Sue great to meet with you as well. Thanks for the offer of keeping me informed re the Poole build; I would welcome the opportunity of popping down to be there while they pour. If you could ask that would be much appreciated. Thanks again and good luck with your project. Tom

Ja.

Back on the subject of washing...... Consider mounting your washer and dryer higher up if you have the room. Makes it so much easier on the back! You need to design the carcass/units well as it’s subject to a fair amount of vibration if you’ve got your big pants on a 1400 spin Heres mine and I don’t think I could go back to ground mounted.....

We will be making sure our shower controls are far away from our shower head, no more wet arm turning it on in the morning.

- I've to solder that lead to the LED strip that goes up in the long pocket. - Fit & test the extra plinth lights along the side and decide on ones on the end or not. - Fit bath end panel - Grout bath - Silicone where wall and floor meet. Got a Mapei grey. - Colour match silicone (white) any gaps at the various trims - Run a cold mains supply to the basin up in the loft. Could be an issue as I've a single hole mixer tap and the hot is gravity fed. - Shower plate to go on. Do I silicone between the back of the plate and the tiles? Presumably I don't use CT1? - Shower handset / riser to go on. - Wall drain cover to fit - Flush plate to go on - Wall mount WC to go on. Plenty of questions coming! - Paint that wall. SWMBO likes a colour in Wilkinsons of all places but it's not "bathroom" paint. Do any of the sheds make up bathroom paint if I get a Wilko match pot? Etc, etc Roll on Easter!