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We'd need a few more roles of filament in this house...

And today the 433Mhz receiver arrived. It paired to my chosen transmitter code without problem. So now to add them to the PV dump controller. Watch this space.

Wet towel (it grips better) wrapped several turns and then gently with a pair of gland pliers.

So today applied Dulux Trade Quick Dry Gloss (water based) paint to panelled doors with a wood grain effect. Used a synthetic brush as it says on the tin. I would probably class myself as an average DIY painter so wasn't expecting to see my reflection. The paint went on easily, I wet the brush with water but didn't spray or wet the door as worried it may run too much after reading some comments. Yes the paint is thinner than normal oil based gloss. Best way I found was not to load too much paint on to the brush, this stopped the brush dripping. The finish is very good, not the shine you get with oil based gloss, but if you are a skilled painter I think with a bit more paint it would shine more but wanted to avoid runs. My main aim was to stop the yellowing that I found on a couple of doors that were painted around 3 months ago with Dulux Gloss. I found a little trick, if it is getting too tacky just go over the area with a paint free wet brush and then the paint loaded brush very gently. I use brushes as I just cannot get on with rollers but I am sure a roller would work well and obviously a lot quicker. Not sure if I could paint a flat door with a brush without getting brush strokes showing, but lucky I don't have any of these. Colin

@epsilonGreedy this is the current setup I’ve installed (minus the coil in the buffer) It is wired as W-Plan so the hot water always has priority if both come on together, but the buffer holds enough for around 60-70 mins of running and the thermostat which is 2/3rd down the buffer tank is what controls the ASHP in heating mode.

Nope... stays at 33c in and about 17c out when it first kicks in ... manifold blending valve basically takes the water at whatever temperature it comes in at from the buffer and blends with the return flow water. Excess flow goes back to the buffer tank, and over a period the amount of hot drawn from the buffer reduces.

The buffer needs to be sized to try and give the boiler as long a burn time as possible, but will always be a compromise, because of the space that's likely to be available. If you know your average heating demand in winter, then you can work out the buffer tank size needed to run the heating for a given time. For example, a 70 litre buffer, running between a boiler on temperature of 35°C and a boiler off temperature of 65°C, will store around 2.46 kWh of heat energy between those two temperatures, so would be able to run the heating for a bit over an hour at 2 kW between boiler firing periods. The boiler would be able to recharge the tank pretty quickly - a 25 kW boiler could do this in roughly 6 minutes, but would probably take a fair bit longer as it would almost certainly modulate down a fair bit. At a guess you might find that the boiler ran for around 10 to 15 minutes every hour. If just trying to run the UFH loops directly the chances are that it would cut out after a minute or two, due to the limited heat demand from the floor. We have a 70 litre buffer, and that can usually run our UFH for around 4 hours or so, without being re-heated, and we only run the buffer at 40°C, as it's heated by an ASHP.

I'm battling with mice at the moment, but in my workshop. On my desk in front of me right now are all the 3D printed parts for my multiple mouse live trap, complete with LCD activation counter, so I can glance at a display and see how many mice there are in the bucket...

Back to my neighbours plumbing. Leak No 2 found and fixed. This was hot feed to the two en-suites. Mouse 1: Pipe 0 I have never been a great fan of plastic pipe. The mouse would not have done that to a length of copper. It was squirting out a fine jet of water that was landing on the ceiling about 2 feet away. Leak No 1 is as yet unfound, but it has (for the time being?) stopped leaking. That is "ongoing" The heating system had lost pressure overnight, so I left it pressurised a bit higher to provoke the leak to show itself. At least the mystery of 2 simultaneous leaks is solved. There is a moose loose in the hoose.

It probably doesn’t have any at all ... oil boilers tend to be coils of steel pipe around the burner gallery or just a stack of baffles - some have the holding tank sat at the top. 3-4mm is not unusual for thickness hence why a long slow burn is better for heating up on an oil boiler. Gas boiler primary exchangers can be less than 1mm thick.

If you have mains water at sea level, then it will have enough pressure to get part way up the hill. You would need to measure the pressure to see how far. This is sounding like a house I worked on years ago in Glen Urquahart. The mains water went as far as it could up the hill and emptied into an underground break tank. From there it was pumped up with a borehole pump up to the house. You can't suck from the water main so it has to go via a break tank. You just need to see first if the mains pressure will get it high enough to do the second lift in one go with one pump.

I can see where the 16 bar is coming from, ~14 bar for the head plus 2 bar working pressure. Whether a half way option might work depends on the pressure in the main. It'd need to be over 7 bar to get half way, perhaps a bit higher as the water supplier won't want any suction on their main, so will need to ensure a bit of headroom. Even HDPE is normally only rated to 12.5 bar, though, so suspect you're going to have to use galvanised iron pipe. This is usually rated at 50 bar, so more than enough, it's just a bit of a PITA to lay.

That's like saying I only found Jessica Nigri's channel because I wanted to make cos play outfits but no one ever seems to belive me

Depends entirely on the heat demand from the UFH. Worst case for us, in really cold (-10°C) weather, would be a demand from the UFH of around 1.5 kW, so no boiler would really be able to modulate down that low. Our normal heating demand of maybe 400W or so would be way lower than any boiler could cope with. I believe that the lowest output that the Ecotec Plus range can modulate down to is around 3.5 kW (might be an idea to check with Vaillant if this is accurate - off the top of my head I think it was set by the d0 variable in the set up menu). That's probably too high for most UFH systems, I suspect, so a buffer tank would be needed to allow the boiler to run well without excessive short cycling (although the Ecotec Plus has an anti-short cycling time delay, so it would just shut down for a while under these conditions). In general, condensing boilers are a fair bit more efficient if they can run for a reasonable period of time. Although the spec gives a high efficiency figure of around 89%, this can only be achieved during a long burn. A series of short burns will bring this down to around 60% or so.

The chassis has three things swapped usually - heat exchanger, gas valve and system board (or firmware) That is how you get more gas into a bigger burner and then into the water. Some also change the burner assembly for one with more rails but that is less common.

Hook, Cat5 and sinker @pocster, hook Cat5 and sinker mate.

Girls, tech? More a Juicy M fan tbh:

Naomi Wu's channel is pretty interesting, if you can ignore the stuff where she 3D prints skimpy items of clothing and talks about her implants. She did a video with the South African guy, Winston, who's channel focusses on living in China as a Westerner that was fun.

Oh I knew who she was okay! Hails from Oxfordshire now and apparently holds events celebrating the lady part in question. But I digress....!

As @Declan52 says, the blender is set to 35c so the ASHP CoP is better.

I decide what wine to drink on a case by case basis.

They look very smart when done in a sympathetic manner. I always try to do them the size of one full tile missing from the wall. No more fruit punch for you tonight

I don't have deep pockets like some!

Afternoon All, To Ed, The Lindab guttering is steel is easier to recycle than standard plastic gutter with onger lenghts so little waste Jaga rads, low volume high heat to make best use of the thermal store , less rads , well made and will last even the values are well made the cat 8 means 1 cable to to multiple things instead of many cables (cat 5. sound, coax , tv, etc ) To Conor: The cable was left over from a IT fit out for a media company along with the fittings , I work in IT so use 10GB networking as even 10GB switches are cheap today To Bitpipe Idea of costs : Water £7 per month toilets off the rainwater havester using a pump to top up a tank in the loft Gas average £16 per month Gas is low due to the solar tubes heating the tank to provide around 66% heating and 80% of the water Electric £25 per month but 30% of this is the genvex a 315 vpc Build airtightness 1.34 m3/h.m2 at 50 Pa brick and block , Followed Mike holmes ideas for airtightness (Holmes on Homes ) Tank was 1500 liters linked to a gavity tank in the loft with a spliter so it can draw on mains if no water in the tank

It'll just be down to the difference in the restriction between the two sides. I think ours has about a 9% correction via the extract and supply fan speed adjustments. To minimise this difference the duct system really needs to be designed so that the total air flow resistance of each side is exactly equal, but this is pretty difficult to do in practice, as it's unlikely that duct lengths, number of bends etc will be that well matched, plus there will normally be more supply terminals than extract terminals, so the extract side often needs to work a bit harder to provide balanced airflow on both sides.

EWI is my system of choice, sounds like a similar house construction, if you are pretty handy, and it sounds like you are, you could do the majority of the work yourself and save yourself a fortune. Like me, you will have medium dense blocks, and the really thick galvanised wall ties they used to use back then, basically the perfect thermal store, in my case I'm planning on using it, but I don't have as much area to cover as im in a bungalow. EWI also has the added benefit of giving the exterior of your house a brand new facade, and giving projection from the elements, preserving your building, good if you are in it for the long run. As for the sills and heads, have you looked at foamstone? This may well fit with what you are looking for. Floors, I would say AVCL taped up the walls above where the finished floor line will be, 50mm PIR or Phenolic board, taped, and chipboard/osb laid over the top. Done a rough model above, hope I got the right materials, gone on what you said.

Someone has been collecting all our bees and now you have a bonnetful ! I agree that it is an excellent list of wants .. meaning that you have collected all the details that you have identified, and rationales etc, into a systematic form. An architect will need something higher level, as they will come in with concepts and ideas, a framework to hang the detail on. But they will start from the concept "forest", rather than a big list of individual trees. You now need to talk more about what sort of forest you eg dark and intimate or broadleaved with nuts to eat - pick up on concepts such as your love of light spaces etc, paths to the back (rather than a "1.1m path for diggers etc"). Two risks of supplying so much detail are firstly that that gets treated as all of it, so you have given an excuse if things you have missed get missed completely, and that you unintentionally limit the architect's creativity. So I would be planning to either supply more of a summary, and say that your supportive thinking is attached, or holding off slightly with the full information. Depends on the individual you are dealing with. In any case, you have an excellent checklist for practicality of design. Can't imagine living with only having one shelf for wineglasses, though. What about whisky and cocktails? F

Yes I can see that an overarching text / summary would be useful, but I have to say, I think that this is a well thought through list of requirements. I'm sure the architect will be more than happy with this type of approach and it will no doubt assist when it comes to discussing particular matters. Well done I say.

I think you will want a weather bar here as well i.e between the two windows: This just as an example, timber, aluminium, plastic all available. Will need to be siliconed on and pinned / screwed with stainless fixings ideally.

First time for everything.