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Really thought this thread was going to be about a fish paté recipe.

That's in. Just waiting for the CT1 to go off: Then I'll nut the tails and waste up:

Just crazy doing that with it any high vis on!!!

Hopefully you do not have a dew point in your timber frame! Dewpoint is 100%relative humidity and water condenses from the gas phase to a liquid on any solid material whose temperature is less than the dewpoint temperature. It can be acceptable for a dewpoint to occur in the exterior layer of a wall buildup if that layer is unaffected by liquid water and it cannot spread to water sensitive layers (e.g. masonry façade of a cavity wall)

And so almost another month has gone by but progress is still being made on the build and, just as importantly, hubby and I got away for a week's holiday in northern France just as the warm weather hit. After our abject failure at R&R over Christmas, it was wonderful to have a really relaxing break without illness or stress and come back refreshed for the final push on the build, which is just as well as there's a busy time to be had over the coming weeks. In the last blog entry, I detailed some of the painting and kitchen fitting that had been going on and there's been more of this recently. I've been getting the colour coats onto the walls upstairs but haven't managed to complete a room yet apart from the kitchen, but I'm generally pleased with the neutral colour choice. I say generally, though, because in the lounge, the different light in there makes the wall colour bring out the warm tones of the internal window frame finish which makes them look a slightly odd peach colour. It's not awful and I'm not going to change it now, but if we ever redecorate (hah!) it will be something I check before committing. For the more vertiginously challenged amongst you, you may wish to look away now, as here's a view from the top of my internal scaffold tower when I was putting the colour coat on up to the vaulted ceiling above the gable window in the guest bedroom. And here are the colour choices. The purple will be on one wall only. It looks a bit garish at the moment but once the room has its furniture and soft furnishings in, it should tone well and add a bit of life to the room. Cutting in and painting up to the high vault was a bit of a challenge, but I got there. I really didn't want to get any colour spatter onto the white ceiling so opted to use paint pads rather than a roller and I was pleased with the outcome. They give a good finish over the sprayed mist coat and are far less physically demanding than a roller. I was painting upstairs as the flooring guys were in downstairs putting in the karndean (same choice as upstairs) and it kept me productive but out of the way. Given all the work that went into making the dropped section of the ceiling in the lounge area, I wanted the floor to echo this but not in too obvious a fashion and so the team took a laser reference from the inner square of the lounge feature and reversed the direction of the planks, using a feature strip to create a subtle border. First, though, they had to screed the floor with a latex self levelling compound. In preparation for this, I needed to turn off the UFH a few days before they arrived to make sure the screed didn't go off too quickly due to the heat of the slab. I turned it off on a Friday afternoon and they started work on the following Tuesday and it was just about perfect. Once the screed was down, the floor was scraped to make sure it was completely level and then primed. After the priming, the planks were put down. Here is the snug - I went in the weekend before the flooring guys arrived to get the mist coats and ceiling painted as it's far easier to do when you only have to mask the windows and not worry about any other area. Here's the long view of the kitchen/lounge area: And here's a close up of the feature border underneath the ceiling feature: Moving on from the flooring and painting, my joiner, Harry has been busy at work on the kitchen. In particular, he was working on the large walnut work surface for the island. I decided months ago that I wanted solid walnut for the island but then, as I'm sure happens to many, I had a last minute dither and started looking at other materials instead. In the end, I decided that granite or other stones really didn't give the colour tones that I wanted and laminates weren't wide enough. I sourced the walnut from Worktop Express as they were very competitively priced for what I wanted, and delivery was quick. I looked at using their online template service, but it was just too tricky to get the different profiles right and, in the end, decided to get Harry to make up the island top on site. It was absolutely the right choice as he's done a lovely job on it. Here's a photo of the finished top with the induction hob surface mounted into it. A word on the hob. You can recess the work surface so that the hob is flush, but I preferred it to be surface mounted, sitting proud of the walnut, purely from a cleaning point of view and so I don't have to spend ages digging out crumbs and bits of food debris from around a flush recess. These are the two worktops as they arrived from the supplier, waiting to be joined together. Harry routed along their length, used a biscuit join and then glued and clamped. The worktops being clamped. They look and, indeed, are lighter in shade than the first photo as they come treated with one coat of Danish oil. Harry put a further two coats on once he had sanded the finished surface. The area where there appears to be a base unit missing and where the surface projects beyond is intended as a breakfast bar area. There will be a supporting leg on the near right hand corner. Because the kitchen and island are large, I didn't want anything to be too matchy-matchy and wanted to break up any monotonous areas. Also, I didn't fancy walnut as the worksurface leading off the sink as I think that's asking for trouble in the long run. So, I went hunting through laminate choices. Way back when I was first considering the kitchen, I had been thinking about using large format tiles with a metallic type finish as the splashback, but it was proving to be a gruelling and not very fruitful search. When I eventually revisited this part of the kitchen a couple of months ago, I came across some laminates with exactly that type of finish, nice long runs (I need a 4m run for the back work surface) and with matching splashbacks. I also wanted to line the recessed area under the island with the same material to make it more durable and give a contrast in materials and textures. I sourced the laminates from a firm called Rearo and dealt with their Newport branch. They were lovely to deal with and very helpful. Here's the splashback applied to the breakfast bar recess. Harry beefed it up and packed it out with some ply and then put the laminate edging onto the ends to give a substantial look. Whilst we were away on holiday, my splendid general builder and neighbour, Drew, got on with putting the rainwater goods up. I'd ordered in soffits and fascias from Fascia.com as they had the width I needed in anthracite grey to match the slates and windows, as well as vented soffits, which save a lot of bother and look much neater. The guttering is all deepflow and was mounted onto black fascia board. I looked at other colours of guttering, but none of them were quite right and black guttering is so ubiquitous that the eye kind of slides past it. Having it mounted on the fascia board also reduces the visual impact of the brackets that can look a bit clunky. Whilst he was up there, Drew also mounted our swift boxes and bat boxes. We were required as part of our bat licence conditions to put a bat box somewhere on site, but this is something that we had planned to do all along. Also, there has been a dramatic loss of habitat for swifts that migrate to the UK to breed in the summer and we wanted to make provision for these too, in the hope that we're lucky enough to attract them to our site. These fabulous birds migrate 6,000 miles to reach their summer breeding grounds and are the fastest birds in level flight. Once they have fledged, the only time they ever land again is to sleep and recover from their migration flight and to feed their young. They are the most fabulous birds and I would urge anyone to make provision for them wherever possible. If anyone wants details of where to buy some brilliant swift boxes, PM me and I'll send you the details. Here are the boxes, all sited on the western corner of the north facing wall. Finally, today marked a milestone in the house progress - the scaffolding is coming down. Our foul and surface water drainage works start on Wednesday and the site needs to be clear to allow access for that. Any remaining work at height can be done from ladders apart from the cladding, but I will hire a separate mobile tower of some sort for that work once I've had a chance to identify what will be most suitable. The stone cladding arrived a couple of weeks ago, ready to go up once the drainage work is done, more details of which will follow in the next post. Here's the south face gradually being revealed. The crates to the right of the picture are the stone cladding. Here's the east face slowly coming into view. And another view of the same. Work planned for this week is more plastering, more painting (if I get the chance as I'm the plasterer's labourer this week), groundworks and starting to move some young trees to the site that we've been nursing in pots at home for 12 months. Next week, the en-suite bathroom will be started, the kitchen finished and the utility room kitted out. Plenty to do yet. TTFN.

Condensation or residual moisture being drawn out through the crack. It's interesting no change with the score. Does suggest moisture permeating through. Remember concrete will still be drying (it will for a long time) so maybe that's l this is? Might be no harm in leaving it for the time being and see if it dries up of its own accord? Its no flowing and rain fall doesnt seem to directly affect. You could probably do with a break from it now!

You can get the active bit that generates cool mist for a few quid. You just drop it into a bowl of water, maybe in front of a fan They're much easier to clean than a proper humidifier. You can just drop the whole unit into a cup of mild disinfectant every couple of days while you clean the bowl. At that price they're disposable.

The concern over vaporisation of bugs into the air from a humidifier is valid, but bugs from outside water vapour being introduced from an uncontrolled source has to be orders of magnitude greater than filling a humidifier from clean drinking water every day or so, doesn't it? If you are getting CO2 levels as low as 400ppm, then you're very definitely over-ventilating, by a pretty significant amount. A level of C02 of around 600ppm would be realistic for a well ventilated home, as it should not normally be as low as the open air outside,

No problem, PM me your address and I'll stick it in the post next week. It needs mains power (but has a battery back up for short power cuts) and can be moved from room to room easily enough. It measures temperature, CO2 and relative humidity and logs the displayed data (along with date and time) as a .csv file to a µSD card every 6 minutes. The files on the µSD card can be loaded into a spreadsheet programme (LibreOfice Calc, Excel etc) directly, and then used to produce any plots you like.

I made both of mine, one's built in to the house monitoring system and the other's a portable unit that logs data to a µSD card. I've loaned the portable one out to a few people - you are welcome to borrow it for while. I've not looked at commercial models at all, but the best type of sensor is fairly expensive, and uses non-dispersive IR. Because of the cost of the sensors I suspect that decent commercial units may be a bit pricey. I've just had a quick look around, and it would seem that a reasonable unit might start at around £70 or so: https://www.co2meter.com/collections/indoor-air-quality

I just checked my Commissioning Report and I have misstated some of the settings iI detailed earlier in this post. So, for clarity: Setting 1 - the reduced/low setting , is set at 53% of the BR flow rates. This is the setting that we set for normal day to day operation with juts two of us in the house. Setting 2 - is set at the BR flow rates - we use this if we are drying clothes in the utility room or have a house full of family/friends Setting 3 - the boost flow rate , is at 140% of the BR flow rates and used when using the bathrooms & cloakroom or when doing some serious cooking in the kitchen, with lots of steam/fumes from pots & pans. This is the only setting wen there is any ventilation noise and then only from an extract grill in the family bathrooms.

Jim, all you need to do is a bit of research. Wikipedia is a good starting point for most uses, but always be willing to look at the debate on the associated talk pages or point check quoted sources if the topic is controversial. Take costs for global movement of goods, googling "shipping costs per tonne km" gives Wikipedia:Freight rate as its first link, so for example "bulk coal long-distance rates in America are approximately 1 cent/ton-mile" and the reference is a US Energy Information Administration article so this is going to pretty accurate. Bulk and container shipping costs are almost an order of magnitude cheaper: a fraction of a cent per tonne km, thanks to automation and scale of international shipping, so take your jumper example, another link gave this 2018 Overseas Cargo & Freight Costs From The UK reference, which gives the cost of moving a standard 40ft container from Bangladesh (Chittagong) to the UK as $1,874. Divide that by the number of jumpers you can fit in a standard container: 10s of cents. If you don't believe me then the sources are there for you to come up with your own figure. That's why everything is global these days; the shipping costs are in the noise. We have a passive-class house. The timber is Finnish grown CLS and OSB3, the skin is locally quarried stone, so no inner concrete block leaf and no bricks. Yes we have a raft slab, but the total concrete @ 10 m³ isn't much more than would have been used in conventional trench footings. Our LPA prevented us using PV, so I can't claim any 7-year payback period, but what is more relevant is the point at which the gross carbon cost falls below that of an equivalent conventional build and that is already true at day 0.

Just been in there asking about 20mm porcelain tiles on tile pedestals. ” Sir , i’ve Been here 14 years and never heard of such a system ; you need to stick them down and grout “ We left ....

Yep, but at least he s wearing a helmet. So it s 50% secure ?

The roof is OK as will be the skylights if they are correctly installed. Once you have the placed sealed up you will be able to see if you have an issue. You need to make sure all the junctions are completed and that DPCs, DPMs, flashings, copings etc are all correctly detailed and installed.

Hi @lizzie When our MVHR system is boosted by turning on a light switch in a bathroom ( or manually selecting the boost setting), the whole house airflow is boosted. This is fairly standard for whole house MVHR systems and it would add a lot of complexity/cost to only boost ventilation to individual rooms.

You may already know this but here are some basic principles of mortgages. - secured against a house, however, most lender support “cash out” mortgages. Meaning the cash is paid to you and not to another mortgage. That’s how many people fund businesses or buy second homes etc. I took out almost some cash and gave a flimsy reason (I just took the cash as thought I may need some money and was facing redundancy). HSBC said it was for their records of what typical cash out are used for. She was more disappointed I was not doing anything interesting like renovating, getting married or buying a new car. - your dad is ultimately responsible for you defaulting, the bank just see his house with equity. He has equity, but the bank will fund ONLY to his retirement age. Equity cash out for pensioners are very expensive and ill advised unless you know what you are doing (reduce inheritance tax etc) - once built, you can borrow against your property for the same reasons as in point 1 Then there is the big BUT. - Banks with manual underwriting process may take a view and refuse to lend if they don’t like the reasons. - if we hit a lending crises at the time of your house being completed. Banks can tighten lending - also, if you fall ill, or are out of work, you can’t borrow to repay 60% mortgages are under 1.6% for 2yrs. Self build are 5-6% and only on the drawn amount. You may find the real rate to be circa 3-4% once you are fully drawn 18mths down the line vs a fully drawn mortgage via your dad on day 1 If you wanted to be really cold, you could raise the point of asking your parent to advance you your inheritance via an equity release/mortgage option. Then your will need a proper tax lawyer to advise I am just a guy off the internet.

Lifted up the new cover with PIR as @jamiehamy suggested . Felt over lapping upstand bone dry .

We have an enthalpy heat exchanger, which was installed as part of the original installation 2/3 years ago - we have PAUL Novus MVHR. We installed the enthalpy HE because we have a relatively large house (340m2), there are only two of us normally living here. and it was recommended that a enthalpy HE would prevent the air getting too dry in this situation. It has worked well for us We do not have humidistats installed but control boost settings in bathrooms and downstairs cloakroom are initiated automatically when the lights are switched on in those rooms - the controller allows adjustment of the boost run time after the lights are turned off in those rooms (currently set at 15 minutes). If we require greater ventilation when cooking or drying clothes in the utility room, we simply use the boost setting on the remote controller, which is located outside the kitchen.utility room. As I respond to you, the house is sat at 23 C and 38% humidity on the low settings. Our system was set up with the BR values set as the 100% setting and the boost setting at 130% of BR values. We also have a reduced/low settings of 70% BR values, which is what the system usually operates at. We have remote controller for our MVHR in the hall and it is very easy to change all these values from this controller. The removal of the standard HE and installation of the new enthalpy HE should only be a 10 minute job, providing your MVHR unit is easily accessible. (our is in a plant room and we could change the HE it in 5 minutes...). There should be no need for any further adjustment of the system. We also have an F7 Filter on the inlet and G4 filter on the return. Again, we do not change any settings when using an F7 filter.

setcrete is really good quality stuff. It's actually a re-badged FBall product . The deep base is good, I used some just last week but it does have a grittier grain size and can be a bit harder to feather out thin. I would only use it for a deeper application. For 10mm or so, I would use the setcrete high performance levelling compound. This is good up to 15mm in a single application, is much less gritty and in my experience does flow and level slightly better. My theory is the deep base has a slightly gluey nature which is necessary to hold the aggreagete in suspension in a deeper fill. With setcrete you'll need to prime rather than wet the subfloor, read the prep guidance. Use the Fball/setcrete primer, it's green stuff, acrylic based. Adding a little extra water does help it flow but from memory it's recommend to use about 3.5l per bag, and I've added an extra 250mm to 350mm or so. Too much extra water and the suspension of the fine aggregates can be affected. I've used a fair bit of this over the years, just remember these are smoothing compounds which have self levelling properties to varying degrees, they don't self level all on their own! They all need a degree of trowelling out and careful pouring. A spiked roller brings it up to a lovely, pin hole free finish and removes trowel lines, but overkill for a one off job. one last tip - you can stick some window packers of appropriate size across the floor to guide your levels as your pour.

Agree. It’s at worst hugely fun, and it can be quite revealing in knowledgeable hands. If you are with Octopus the energy company, it’s free to use for a week. Expensive to rent otherwise. There are Chinese copies on eBay. But from my limited experience, it’s only as good as ther software it runs.

But, since I was six, I've been trained to do the opposite. Cos Carly Simon told me I'd be abducted by the bears (1.07). 4 tiles later, I unlearned the habit. Funny that innit?

Just wanted to say, I feel for you. What a pain in the butt. These things can be so frustrating. If you could figure out what is happening you would undoubtably be able to solve it.

Is it worth having PV panels facing east, south and west to get the optimum solar generation? I would consider two banks, one South West and the other South East

Is this the type of thing you had in mind https://www.iso-chemie.eu/en-GB/sealing-solutions/sealing-products/window-and-facade-sealing-films/iso-connect-hb-band/

Why can't u mix 2 lots at once

its not working properly I think it may be flow and return and/or pump settings plus I have some bit left over not fitted on manifold...... I wont go on L O L probably got it all wrong as per