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My kitchen is about 12 by 8 and I use a 3W LED from pendant. Fine for me. Up in Scotland, when it gets cold, I am told people sit around the table lamp. When it gets really cold, they turn it on.

The only thing to check is that the heat sink isn't full of cobwebs (seems to be a problem with ours - I have to vacuum it out once a year or so) and that it's still functioning. There are no serviceable parts, and I suspect that any "service" might be just a way to apply pressure to buy a replacement inverter. The life of an inverter is probably around 10 years or so on average, perhaps longer if it is in a cool location, shorter if it is in a warm location. Temperature is the biggest factor regarding life, as the most common parts to fail are the commutation capacitors, and these have a life that is very temperature dependent.

I wouldn’t worry about it. You know there are a few areas where you can improve and you haven’t artificially lowered the result by sealing everything to within an inch of its life only to remove the sealing afterwards. If yours is a figure in ‘ordinary use’ what’s not to like?

Let me check if I have anything in the office, might only be 15mm 7/12 that I have but can be doubled up.

Expanding foam... or pack it with sand and cement made from a damp mix of sand and rapid set.

TP600, 30mm width with expansion of 13mm to 24mm will do the job.

@joe90 well done, whichever way you look at it you have a high quality build.

One advantage of microinverters is that their commutation capacitors only need to handle modest currents, and so they can use non-electrolytic capacitors. These don't suffer anywhere near as badly as the long-life electrolytics used in much bigger inverters, so realistically I suspect their life could be many decades.

Enphase Micro Inverters have a 20 year warranty and are possibly what we will use if we decide to install PVs.

4:1 will be fine - just fill it slightly recessed so the mortar for the edgings has something to key into

I ran PHPP for my house design with air leakage results varying between 0.2 to 1.0 and there was very little difference in space heating requirement. I did it for a friend whose result was around 1.0 and was disappointed. I did put them on the AECB forum several years ago but can't find them at the moment.

As long as they are pressure treated and good quality (fairly knot free, straight, no splits) it does not matter. The BS ones are graded to ensure the safety of people working on the roof, as well as the ability to support the roof covering. You may find 38 x 50 less available as BS.

You could specify a fireman's switch. Get the gate automation and access control supplied and fitted by a professional as there is plenty to mess up and some crappy stuff on the market.

For horizontal cladding, fix 38 x 50 battens at min 600 (prefer 400) centres. If you find this will stick out too much, use 25 x 50 battens.

They did exactly that to us for the same reasons. We went back afterwards with an NMA to change to single ply membrane lead colour, got ok from neighbour too. We showed we could deal with run off water without overloading the drainage system, luckily we had a field and a ditch behind us to take the run off.

Probably very little, unless the house is in an exposed area. Although PHI set the air leakage rate at 0.6 ACH, and the target under building regs for a house with MVHR is 1m³/m²/hr, in reality I doubt that there's a massive benefit from getting much below about 1.5 ACH or so, especially if the house isn't in an exposed location. Wind seems to play a pretty significant part when it comes to heat loss, though, so any house in an exposed area is likely to have a higher heat loss than one in a sheltered area, and would probably benefit more from being well-sealed. Where we are it's very sheltered, so I suspect it's debatable whether our low air leakage really makes a massive difference in practice.

That's why I don't like PIV.

You probably won’t need it on a small amount We put a tablespoon full in a five bag mix

You'll be pushing warm moist air outwards, where it will condense at some point within whatever gaps it's moving through. Balanced pressure is better.

Ours did not even have a hex key you just turned a knob. They also had battery back up that would last for a fair number of open and close cycles. From memory you're also required to have some sort of safety mechanism if there is a crush risk.

This web has manuals and tech links for all makes you can crib from here I’m sure https://manuals.easygates.co.uk/

this is the you tube on how to open my gates (these are not my gates!)

When I had electric gates at my last house I put a door bell push switch round the back of the gate post in the hedge so I could open them in case the remote failed. Also the actuators had a hex key that disengaged the motor in case of power failure.

In some ways I am pleased, the warm loft showed no particular problem and the biggest area to seal properly (all that expanding glue, OSB and expanding foam was worth the effort). As per another thread I did ask the plasterers to put a stop bead before the timber windows so I could mastic the join which would have been flexible but they argued it was not worth it, I DID know better. All window and door seals appear to work well so apart from waiting till the end of summer so any timber shrinkage has maxed out then I can caulk all timber/plaster joins. It did go through my mind that if I slightly over pressurise the house when I balance the MVHR then any leakage would be outward not inward????.

We have the same situation as @Bitpipe a nut at the base of each gate which you undo with the key spanners provided. I think most swing gates have this, sliders have a slightly different variation but they have an emergency release too. If you go to a gate company website and look at motors you will probably find the tech docs showing this and you could use those for BCO.

@newhome exactly! @joe90 if the testers had not temporarily taped up my gaps I would have had a poor result I’m sure. They were tasked with achieving a result on the day and so they did all that temporary taping to get there. That was exactly my point last week. Its such a shame after all your hard work. Maybe the paperwork will reveal an anomaly as suggested above.

We have gates with Came motors. There is a hex nut at the base of each gate, inside and outside, that you can turn with a key to decouple the gate from the motorised hinge, the gate then swings feely open. Kind of renders them useless as a security feature but necessary if there is a power outage or emergency.

No You can simply skim over Its worth mixing a few handboards full and coating tapes and beads before you mix your skim

Oh dear oh dear, oh dear. Direct quote from SAP 2012 version 9.92 (October 2013) Page 7 Tin hats folks, tin hats.

Just as a general thought, currently I have: - Google Home stuff (home mini, JBL screen) - Nest hello, nest thermostat - Samsung Smartthings driving ikea tradfri - ewelink (sonoff) wifi power sockets Most of these still work or at least have basic functionality, even if internet is down. And most of these also support physical buttons

@Ferdinand , section 13, page 35 here - https://www.bre.co.uk/filelibrary/SAP/2012/SAP-2012_9-92.pdf

Slightly off topic, but I have finally managed to get my Fakro z-wave roof windows to link to my Vera management system. Strangely satisfying being able to open my windows via my phone 100 miles away from the house, even better it is intergrated with the Heatmiser thermostats, so automically opens the roof windows when the room gets too hot.

Make the joists narrower as 18mm is “just” enough when you use it at 400mm centres. Go to 300mm and you will be fine. In your situation I think that only adds 2 joists so not a lot of extra cost. The big gain is glueing the floor to the joists with a D4 polyurethane glue which basically makes the whole floor and joist structure one solid piece.

On BH, as soon as you say the magic word ' architect ' some of us (the nicer bunch ?) see your bank balance taking fire from a machine-gun. Others disagree. I wouldn't want your thread to be diverted into a common cul de sac. If you want an architect, get one. You might like to investigate what an Architectural Technician can do for you as well. Architects design - thats all (can you hear the howl from most architect's offices ?) . Doesn't matter all that much what the build system is. Yes, it would be just tickety boo if you got lucky and found an architect with both a sense of humility and humour who knew her way round an ICF block. Thing is, if she did, what would that change about the design? A little bit here and there maybe , but it wouldn't change the look, feel, essence, dare I say the soul of the place. At your stage of the planning phase I didn't know that architects rely heavily on Structural Engineers. They're the ones that do the hard sums - they are the ones who say whether its safe to (say) build a roof quite like the one you have always dreamed about, or how much rebar (reinforcement bars) the ICF needs. Hence the common sneer - architects are merely educated artists. Unjustified in my opinion. Here's the thing: our SE had no idea how much (in our case ; little) rebar our ICF (Dursiol) needs. However a specialist Dursiol SE did know. Result ; saved several thousand pounds. The original SE was brilliant at designing the foundations for our place - the Durisol SE had no idea how to design foundations. You know the design you want. Sure you need an architect? If bits of the design are ' interesting ' you'll need an SE. You may well find a hesitancy on the part of architects to merely rubber stamp your design. Here's a link to the official list of architects in the Abingdon area. Here's a checklist about briefing an architect Good luck! Ian

Hi Tim, apologies I was looking back through posts and don't think I answered one of your questions. Yes, we have looked at just about everything we could find on the market. Initially we were going to use larch or cedar but have seen so many badly weathered (or over treated) examples locally and on the mainland that we were put off. I would have happily used charred timber but with the anthracite Tata cladding the whole house would have been dark grey/black and we did not want that aesthetic. I did a number of tests charring larch and cedar at home with good success. I also looked at numerous composite products and the one we liked best, taking look, durability, fixing and corner/reveal profiles and ability to maintain into account was Trespa Pura. Formica also do a good product but not yet in a flush profile.

Continued to shop around and think we have Trespa at under £65 per m2, excluding the metal corner profiles and fixings. We are firming up on the quote but it looks by far the best quote we have had and is from a reputable supplier.

Price reduced here: https://www.ergonomicdesigns.co.uk/product/RKRFXGW~rak-feeling-slimline-90mm-shower-waste.html