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This is the kind of hint people do or don’t get. Thank you. Nick, the data is the HUGE amount of effort that went into the last poxy Brexit thread, and that data has now received more input by this one needing the same effort. Read my last. Trolls and other persistent arseholes ‘rock the boat’ and we simply prefer plain sailing on calm waters. This is a volunteer operated forum, run for the benefit of its members, seed funded by the FMG and it’s also continuously maintained by the FMG in ‘our’ spare time. Any dents in the availability we have to give to the forum are frustrating and time-consuming, and these replies are such dents. Any more ridicule will be unwelcome, and the posts that bring such content will be deleted without further notice or explanation. For the benefit of our members, ongoing decisions are not made by any one individual. Behind the scenes we discuss such things at length and move only when we have arrived at an unanimous decision, as per our constitution. We act according to our own guidelines so as to ensure all ‘reviewed items’ are dealt with fairly. Thanks in advance for your cooperation. Mods.

I wonder if,on a politics forum,it ever kicks off big time with a contentious diy thread?

I’m not a mod either but it’s because the previous one turned into a pissing contest of opposing views, and shitloads of reported posts citing racist comments et al, which kept the mods continually busy trying to keep on top of before someone launched a counter attack, and this is a self build forum, not the Daily Mail comments section. Other ‘pointless’ threads as you put it tend to be easy going and report / mod free. None of the mods signed up to moderate political clashes, they are here to oversee self build posts and keep this forum free to use and spam free.

I'm simply not going to argue with you, as there's no merit to the forum community to do so. You have made your view clear, hopefully I've made my view clear. Others can decide which view, if either, to believe.

If you're used to a gas fire, they can look very realistic. The most recent one I saw was installed in an authentic looking Victorian cast fire place and I had no idea it was bioethanol until I was told. (The conversation started on how the chimney was sealed up, and I was shocked to see that the fire was still in use!) Others I've seen are more like an LED light-show sitting over hot pebbles in a glass box, very modern but nothing like what I associate with a "fire place". But neither looked like a "real" wood burning fire. I think the style the room and setting would make a huge difference to affect it achieves

Ha, yes exactly, we want the architect to do exactly what they are good at: - Imagining an actual living house that hits the right wishes, compromises, beauty and balances for the client - Getting to the things us newbies might not realise - Work within the seen and unseen limits I am not good and/or lack the experience of this creative stuff, and I lack the design skills, but I do know how I can nail down requirements, needs, stories, reasons why, etc. (kinda my dayjob) Our documents, are specific on what we want to do and why, but not on how it should look

But bevel the end first please and use silicon spray.....

If you cut an off cut of pipe neatly, then cut a slot in it you can use this as a template to mark a neat line all around it. Not it sure that makes sense, cut a piece of pipe 100mm long, then split it with a cut up its length so it is springy, you can then spread it and slide it over your other pipe and use it as a template, hope that makes sense. Or or else do as Declan said and use a 1mm disc in the grinder.

Cordless angle grinder is the tool you want.

That will be the glass ceiling then, well until it is shattered.

Without doing any research, I'd assume an open fire might be 10-100 times worse than a woodburner. The combustion process is less controlled/efficient, so you're likely to get more unpleasant combustion products, and a greater proportion of those products will escape into the room compared to a woodburner. Really, just don't do it. If you must have something "flamey", then Opti-myst electric fires are one option (there may be other brands).

Our house layout is square and on the 1st floor there is an equally sized bedroom in each corner, stairs/atrium in centre of floor. Architect had originally suggested back to back ensuites for all 4 bedrooms, however we changed this to give ourselves a dressing / wardrobe area and then the ensuite - stealing the ensuite space from the guest bedroom. We made the kids bathrooms open to the hall, not their rooms, so they are available to guests (one has a shower, one has a bath). Pocket sliding doors to all bathrooms which maximises the space in each. Works really well - we have a PIR proximity sensor in each bathroom which triggers the MVHR boost and DHW return loop pump - could have triggered the light also but we have low level LED lighting in the hall so felt unnecessary. The MVHR boost fan noise is only barely perceptible and goes off after 10 mins anyway. Didn't I read that the German building regs insist on a corridor (i.e. two doors) between any habitable space and a toilet? We seem to have achieved that by accident rather than intent. Anyway, bottom line is build what you want but probably give some thought to resell - if it's too quirky then you may struggle. One compromise is to terminate some first fix services (fouls and water supply) to an area that could be converted in future, such as a dressing room or corner of a bedroom and decide later. We did this to our rooms in roof, potential to have a shower room up there if we wanted. Also, we put the downstairs WC next to our study, with a view to converting this area to a bedroom / shower room should mobility ever become an issue for an occupant.

The triple glazed one is actually more expensive than the higher spec U6 window https://www.roofingsuperstore.co.uk/product/fttw-u605-white-centre-pivot-triple-glazed-window-78cm-x-98cm.html Is it possible to take a pine one and paint it white? https://www.roofingsuperstore.co.uk/product/ftp-r105-pine-centre-pivot-sound-reduction-window-78cm-x-98cm.html Actually here is the equivalent painted one £309. The FTW P2 the rep recommended and this the FTU R1 both use 6.8mm laminated glass, this partly explains the higher price. The P2 is listed as anti burglary and the R1as noise reduction. I don't know why he didn't recommend the noise reduction unit as it comes with no vent as standard so is cheaper. https://www.roofingsuperstore.co.uk/product/fakro-ftu-r1-05-white-centre-pivot-sound-reduction-glazed-window-78cm-x-98cm.html

Hey Vijay, when yer done, pop round and give ours a coat or two eh? A nice restrained greenish blue would be good.....

you can always pre drill but yes i understand that why good quality screws and driver with torque setting is important -also using in old beams where wood is dried out will increase the load --so if old beams maybe pre -- drill which is why i suggested the 8mm not 6mm type

Yep I would just personally drill say an 8mm hole in the bottom of the joist hanger and insert a wood screw through that into the wood to fix the top plate.

So you had TWO surveys? An air leakage test (blower door) and some looking around with a thermal imaging camera? What was the air test result? and can you post any of the thermal imaging pictures? Why did you have the survey? You must have either been concerned about damp, cold, or high heating bills?

Nail. Head. Bang on. Choosing 'an' SE nearly cost us a lot of money. Choosing the right one saved us many times his fee. (Passiv slab , Tanners). They in turn knew nowt about ICF, so we used the ICF manufacturers SE. Just go through the Due Diligence process with each. Fee proposal, References, examples of similar work .... Follow up references

What is the issue you have? Is it cold, damp, mouldy, high heating costs etc? The detailing of insulation / DPC / DPM gas membrane / insulation junctions can take many forms and there is not always a right or wrong, but some can be better than others. Because the house is complete any remedy suggested can only be applied to the as built, not to how it may have been better in the first place.

welcome to the Forum - I am sure someone will be along shortly who can help. ?

Some friends have an LCD screen installed inside a small wood burning stove that apparently looks very good. Next time I see them I'll try and find out what make it is.

A word of caution if cutting plastic pipe with a chop saw. Don't try and cut freezing cold pipe this way. I nearly lost an eye doing this - the pipe just shattered into loads of sharp fragments when the saw was part way through (yes, I should have been wearing eye protection...).

Chop saw and a flap wheel on the grinder is what I use. Still got all my digits ...

@pocster will likely buy one.

Yes after nearly losing my thumb (don’t ask) I have a lot less grip. The jig is good, my only comment is make the 2x4 , 2x5 and cut a square slot in it (like a mitre block) to get a square cut and line it with rubber mat to grip the pipe.

Use a fine tooth saw used for cutting laminate flooring, very sharp and fine, then use the pipe end bevelling tool to smooth end, look up my topic on it, or use a flap disc in an angle grinder.

I bet it does ! You can imagine .... a “ fecking Boris never uses dewalt “ b “ He does - always because it’s yellow and black “ a “ Not EU colours so he wouldn’t touch it “ b “ Anyway you still got that leaky Tory walk on glazing ? “

@JSHarris I was actually thinking that these could do the donkey work and something very low powered would sit on desk. It seems a shame to have loads of low power, but powerful computing and just run a simple task or two on them.

Worth noting that the heat output of many bioethanol fires is way over-stated, and there are lots around that only deliver about 1 kW. The key is to ignore the hype and look at the fuel consumption rate, as a rate of about 0.17 litre/hour is roughly equivalent to 1 kW. This bioethanol fire, for example: https://www.easyfire.co.uk/bioethanol-fire-burner/bio-ethanol-burner-small.html , states that it will burn for 3 hours on 0.4 litres, which equates to a heat output of about 1.3 kW. There are others around that are similar.

The NO1 noise you have to consider is the noise of the lavatory cistern re filling after you have flushed it. In out previous house we built back to back en-suite rooms without regard to that fact, and it created an issue that when the next door bedroom used their loo at night, the WC backed onto our bedroom wall so we heard the noise of the water flow to re fill the cistern after use. Keep the WC cistern away from any wall directly adjoining your bedroom and you will avoid that issue. Our en-suite design takes this into account. Re "smells" We must just have more control of our functions than some others because we never normally have need to do "that" function in the middle of a night, only ever a visit for a pee. So as long as the flush and refill is inaudible in the bedroom, there is no problem.

Going back on topic - we went a different way and produced a ton of detail on our brief. (both me and my wife are engineers...) But, of course, you need to 'dose it out' rather than overwhelm the Architect, although each and every architect we asked explicitly said they wanted as much detail as we could generate (it was one of our architect selection questions - 'what would you like to see from us regarding the brief') FWIW: we just selected our architect this weekend. We're meeting her this Wednesday to kick off ? We created: 1/ A full house design in 3D. While just playing around It was really eye-opening to see how a bunch of compromises just fall into place once you have a to-scale canvas of your plot, with locations of other houses, roads etc. "Oh, you want a 10x6 livingroom? I guess you don't want a garage then..." We do not intend to show, and limit the architect's thoughts with it until she produced a reasonable draft 2/ A cinemaroom design. Just the ideal locations of speakers, projectors etc 3/ Our "requirements" spreadsheet. This is the big one. 6 tabs: Rooms - Our descriptions for what we'd like to see in various rooms, including sizes, functionalities. 'houzz' column with houzz ideabook links Lifestyle - Various habits and situations described, "dinner party for 6 people", "bedtime routine" Ideas - Loose ideas around the house. A little outdated at this point Storage - mostly our current storage situation, extrapolated to 'ideal' Requirements - Individual items, classified by various criteria, rooms etc Brands - if we have specific ideas for devices/products we have seen and like, we've already jotted them down. Awnings by xyz 4/ The "one pager" brief, that indeed contains the high level idea of the house.

We took quite a while to select an architect. Our approach: A/ Get a good selection 1/ Recommendations, of course. Local facebook group, as well as asking some local builders who they worked with. 2/ Recommendations from RIBA - they have the find an architect service but #3 gave us the best results: 3/ Image Search Google for "riba architect oxfordshire" - and then pick images you like B/ Actual vetting 1/ Check their website, check houses they list etc etc 2/ Mail them, ask for rough pricing for your idea ("250m2 detached 2-story new build") 3/ Select a top 3, call them. They probably offer to come over. C/ Ask proper questions with them onsite. (can put our question list in another discussion if you want - this is getting too much off topic [edit: Quick note though: maybe I am misunderstanding but we provided architects with a "10 point, single pager brief" before/during stage C. This is not what I call a brief. Instead, to me a brief is the "human readable" description that the architect works off once she actually puts pen to paper. Effectively, to me, anything that's not in the brief will likely not make it into the house. (unless it's some small flourish of course)]

.

Above ground works normally refers to construction of walls etc. Demolition is preparatory works

We purchased a stack of 22mm quadrant beading and it arrived on Friday, so the week ahead is dedicated to laying it. Thanks for the heads up on Ron Currie - their prices have been great/

Could you reapply for two dwellings, and sell off a small plot? ?

That was my experience, in fact. The ATs I spoke to listened far more carefully to our desires for the build whereas the architects all told us what we should have. I explained that the rural site and potential for developing the gardens was a project my hubby had wanted to undertake for years; one of the architects said that he should also be allowed to design the garden, even though he wasn't a gardener and didn't have a clue what any of the trees or plants were called but knew what they should look like!

If the plot has OPP there may not be an uplift in value as much as a plot without PP anyway I guess.

You have a lock in agreement which gives exclusivity for a period of time, and have some mechanism for compensating the buyer .. an option agreement with an option fee attached. And some penalty should the seller welch on the deal. And some agreed way of dividing the uplift in value. F

only a small proprtion of the flow will manage to make it up the small pipe.

I'm pretty sure that installers have yet to pick up on this. AFAIK, it's probably only members of this forum that have discovered that floor cooling can be pretty effective in hot weather. Perhaps we're pioneers, in which case I suspect we might be collectively recognised as such when installers catch up with some of the things we are doing, in years to come.

Based on...?? ASHP can be self installed and had for change of £3k all in. Oil boiler and tank are Oftec install and a push for £3-4K. Oil boiler needs an annual service, ASHP does not. With a 150mm slab you have already created a big heat sink that is ideal for overnight or E7 heating. This should get your heat cost down to around 2p/kWh so ask your plumber to match that with oil and then see where it goes.

Hi Nick, Thank you for your reply. Correct, the cylinder is a EAHR. This is exactly the kind of information I am after, Dust, bugs, and the effect on the equipment for the high velocity air flow. Playing devils advocate the Cylinder has a cold to 60c time of around 4-6 hours at 23c (12 hours at -5) without immersion just using the EAHR. And this is generally only after holidays and on initial startup. I called Dimplex and they told me depending on the exhaust temperature, top up is usually only a few minutes up to 15 minutes at -5 degrees (this is not in the manual, this was a direct discussion with technical). being honest I don't know how often top up will occur - maybe another call to technical lol... I completely get the high velocity of air flow in the AV rack and around the components, and as you said dust is the biggest worry as dust and electronics are a no no. Because of the general short bursts of velocity Air intake would it still be so bad. most of the time the MVHR will be taking the heat at a much lower velocity (which I don't know yet). The Yamaha A2 is a fantastic amp with awesome sound and the KEFs are a much better fit, got to keep the neighbours happy! My SR7013 AV amp gets so hot you can just about touch it... its just the nature of the beasts! Thank you very much for the reply.

We designed our own house back in 2009. At the time there was a scheme called 'Architect in the House' where a participating architect would visit you at your home to go through your plans in return for a donation for Shelter. It worked well for us, picking his brains to improve our plans.

Another way to get away from overthinking / overimagining, is to get some data by keeping a lifestyle diary and "area of house use" diary for a week or two. Sarah Beeny has a delightful technique where she identifies unnecessary .underused areas of house by fitting people with a tracker and building up a breadcrumb trail / heat map.Room use diary would be similar.

All those have a place. If you think they do. Some may be best to help you reflect then summarise. You need something you can send to an A before a meeting, that they can understand your needs from immediately, and that you can then usefully discuss in your 45 minutes with them. It needs to reflect *you*, but the A needs a 3 minute brief, as well as some detail. This technique may help with working out / communicating your essentials. 1 - Boil it down to 1 page, of which the first 30 word para is an elevator summary. 2 - Give it to a competent friend / acquaintance for 5 minutes, on their own, with whom you have not previously talked in any detail. Work acquaintance would be ideal. Someone who has an activity or job which involves dealing with different things. 3 - Take it back. 4 - Ask them to give you a summary of your key requirements in 60 seconds in their own words. Cut them off at 60. 5 - If ithey can do so accurately, bingo. If not, your doc is not yet sharp enough. Rinse and repeat with somebody else. 6 - Use that as either the entirety, or with a 1-2 page supporting appendix. Once the A has got to grips with your essentials (and you need that to make sure that your details are hung on a balanced core requirements spec), then the A can ask you about your more general ideas and you can do your Blue Peter act.. At first you need to present the architect with a balanced-overall thing, otherwise it may skew the view around the sub-bits of the overall that you already know about. Do not forget your budget requirements, and potential flexibililty (or not). And do not forget to have some cash in your back pocket that you keep completely secret from everyone. Clearly there is more than this to choosing an A, but a clear understanding is a good place to start. Ferdinand

If you need an always-on PC, then there are some very low power, passively cooled ones about. We have two of these, one with a Core i7-7500U, one with a Core i7-8550U. Both sit at around 7 W most of the time, less than 1 W on standby, and never more than 15 W. One has 8Gb of RAM, the other 16Gb, and both are fitted with Samsung Evo SSDs. Although the Core i7-8550U is supposedly about twice as fast as the Core i7-7550U I can't say I've seen any difference at all between them. As these machines have turned out to be reliable, low power and have reasonable performance, I've been thinking about buying one of the same companies multiple Gigabit Ethernet port machines as a firewall/router. The company is Hystou, in China, and their basic kit seems very good, although best to get a barebones machine and fit decent RAM, SSD etc. Also their WiFi cards are not great, but I removed these and blanked the antenna holes, as we have no need of WiFi, and removing the WiFi card reduces the power very slightly.

That is about a third of what my whole house used yesterday.