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After a couple of weeks of a bit here and a bit there, the turf has finally been finished. Such a difference.

Hi all We have recently moved into our new house, but I would like to try to reduce our oil usage. We have a traditional system with an oil burner, radiators, a hot water cylinder in the hot press, and a header tank the in attic. In the hot press there is also something like an immersion heater in a very small tank that can heat water on demand but also heats the water in the cylinder (a willis heater). The problem is the heating controls are very basic, just one timeswitch on the wall in the utility room that turns the boiler on/off and a cylinder thermostat the operates a valve on the pipe to the hot water cylinder coil. There is no room thermostat anywhere. I was thinking of just changing the timeswitch in the utility for a time/temperature controller but unfortunately the utilitly room faces south and is one of the warmest rooms in the house. I'm wary that having the thermostat here would turn the heating off while the rest of the house is sill cold. Also with the current setup we have no way of heating the hot water for taps/showers without having the heating on too, other than using the immersion. Any ideas on what we can use? Is using the immersion heater when we need hot water without heating the best option for us?

If a design, planning drawings and application has been completed by one architect (timber frame company) how do you stand to have the warrant and any subsequent build work carried out a different company ? The design and planning work has been paid for in full but how would the copyright work out in that case ?

I doubt the planning officers who come up with these conditions are aware of SAP, it’s outputs and SAP ratings. From past experience they only look as far as Appr Doc L1A and the CO2 emission rate (DER) - get this to zero or less and box ticked. Would be interesting to see the exact wording of the condition.

spot on.

Council. Don't think too many go private in NI.

I think you should collect Angel Fish, and make a very thin fish tank.

I’d likely chop my hand off with it so nae chance of me buying one. Might be pretty ‘armless afterwards I guess ?.

I got a special price thanks to @Onoff.... You can’t have it unless you buy some ‘certain’ glazing I have ....

Looks just fantastic. Well done

My neff is in the open plan kitchen and it is silent. It is built in though. In the Utility I have a freestanding american style side by side which I bought for the rented property I didnt pay a huge amount and it is a really great piece of kit and very quiet I’m so impressed with it. Brand is Haier

Beautiful house. ?

I hereby give up the @onoffcrownfor makingitupasyougoalong to @pocster! ????????????????

J33 M6. Anyone can come and take mine down, polish it, and put it back up again. I'll buy a deckchair so I can watch in comfort.

One of my 2 fridge freezers (built in) is making a terrible whining noise off and on so I imagine there is something wrong with the compressor. Anyone know if these days it’s worth getting that sort of thing fixed or just bite the bullet and replace? Sorry to hijack your thread @Dreadnaught but you are right to be concerned as some nights I could put a brick through it!

Making a hole in the fabric is nothing to worry about, as long as the person making it is good at their job Sealing a duct in first, with a slightly larger diameter than the flue, is what I do. Then you can tape from the internal bore of the duct to the airtight layer far more effectively. The flue then simply gets pushed through ( with an equal gap all around between it and the duct ) and intumescent foam injected all round to form a mechanical and airtight fix. When cured, cut the foam back half inch either side and finish the seal with CT1 / similar to protect the foam from insect / rodent attack. I turned @vivienz‘s airtight layer into Swiss cheese to get various services in / out, and after I put that right it got an AT test result of 0.25ach. ? Its not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog

So is he the tenant? you said rental property? Shouldn't the landlord be sorting this?

When I renovated a cottage in Shropshire a friend said their friends were thinking of doing the same so I lent them my scrapbook of photos showing the work involved (it was very derelict and I lived in a caravan), last I heard they put a deposit down on a new house ?

It’s just binary, on or off. A TRV operates proportionally so offers smoother heating curves. I’ve done one house as you’re proposing, but tbh I wouldn’t do another like that as the room is hostage to the hysteresis of the stat. That’s fine for a centrally mounted room stat with a decent reference of the ambient, but not so great for a room with say 3 outside walls and big windows etc where a finer degree of control ( TRV ) would perform better. I don’t have links, but a bit of searching on here will dig up info on what others have used. Heatmiser gets a few mentions, but Honeywell, Nest and Hive etc seem quite robust solutions, just I’m not familiar with them as I’m mostly now servicing passive ( ish ) clientele on single central stats.

What a sorry state. Condensation and mould heaven. It looks like a very poorly insulated very poorly ventilated bathroom. Is the property occupied? (I hope not for the tenants sake) First thing is ventilate well and use a dehumidifier to dry the whole lot out. While you are doing that scrape and scrub that lousy ceiling to get back to something sold and clean as apart from the tiles you will be renovating that ceiling. If it dries out okay and remains dry go ahead and re tile after making good any rotten plaster. If it remains damp you really have to find the problem. And ensure the place is heated and ventilated properly. The only times we had issues was when the tenant was too tight to turn the heating on, and turned the fan off. Tip: Rental properties should NEVER have a fan isolator switch, that just invites the tenant to turn it off. If it is a problem room due to poor insulation consider a single room mvhr.

As long as you've been assigned the right to use the design and drawings to build your house, then it's fine for that house. Problems arise when a right to use a copyright design hasn't been assigned, for example when someone gets something drawn up by an architect (or anyone else) and then decides not to continue to use the services of that architect, but to go elsewhere. In that case, the copyright holder has to consent to the use of their design, drawings, etc and may want a fee to allow this. if the design and planning work has been paid for in full, then I would guess that there's already an assignment to use the design and drawings, but it would be worth checking to be sure. Copyright is, I believe, implicit, and doesn't need to be specifically stated on any document (although often it is) in order to apply. In this case, even if you are assigned a right to use copyright material, it would usually remain the intellectual property of the author.

I have a dustbin full of short 200mmm wooden batten 50x25mm off cuts that I always use to hold the sheets in place as I go. These are screwed in about every 3- 400mm and are left on until the foam has fully sealed. Take them off, cut back the foam and re foam any gaps before taping. When I am over-sheeting the joists and foaming the back of the boards I use full lengths of battens to hold it all tight and space them out at about 3-400mm you can see the short stubby bits of wood holding the 50mm insulation that’s been inserted between the joists and the longer ones at the face of the joists holding in the 120mm insulation. I then put 25mm insulation sheets over the top using the long batten system.

I have this to do next week 10570 long just under 600kg got to go up 3.6 m in the air we intend sliding it on rollers made of scaffolding tube through the door, pushing it with the digger, we will then use two of the gennie lifts to lift it up, we will build a steel scaffolding tower under the beam as we lift it, installing a new lift every 600mm we lift it up, just in case of any mishaps. But I consider mine easy, House is not built, access is huge, and I have done this many times if you have limited experience with this I would find somebody to help you with the relevant experience who has half a dozen mates to help.

Okay I can see how this system achieves a higher temperature than an air to water heat pump. BUT I cannot see the claim it can achieve the same COP in winter as in summer? What about defrosting? As regards different way to do the same job. Well yes it is, but with the big drawback of needing more complex and robust plumbing and an F gas engineer to pipe it, check it and then charge it with gas. It would be interesting to see a proper comparison, The extra eficciency and energy saving Vs the cost of the install and gassing, and see what the payback time of the extra expense really is.

The only guy he would recommend is booked up until October!

Wow, you must be so pleased, mine still looks like the Somme ?.