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My experience has been that expansion tanks need checking annually. We have a few here, including three big ones (two 300 litre and a 100 litre) in the water system. I noticed that the water pump was cycling on and off more rapidly than it should, checked and found all three tanks very low on air pressure. At a guess I've not checked them for maybe three years, and during that time they've gradually lost charge. One thing I noticed on the UFH expansion tank was that the Schrader valve didn't always seal as it should. I changed it for a new one, and as an additional precaution fitted a metal valve cap with a rubber seal. I remember reading somewhere, years ago, that a Schrader valve was only considered to be a secondary seal, and that the primary seal is the dust cap. I'm going to pick up some new metal dust caps this weekend and go around replacing the plastic ones, on the tanks, in the hope that it may help them maintain pressure for longer.

Yes Peter I use quite a bit of Fernacell Mainly render I’ve D&D with them also But they still need to be mechanically fixed I normally lay a three mil coat of car lite bonding on with 10% board finish mixed in Then render mesh laid on and flattened in and skimmed with multi the same day This method gives a 100% guarantee against cracking or blowing and leaves no trace of the knock ins Hope this helps Peter

Good grief, that's 100A on a single appliance. What sort of grid connection do you have? Nit: 48 kWh

Have a word with the warden? Maybe a relative of another occupant is having similar worries or whatever.

I spent a happy hour draining down our water system accumulators (which are really just the same as very large expansion vessels) this afternoon, and refilling them with air to the right pressure. When doing this I noticed that the label on one mentions the need to check the pre-charge (air) pressure at least every six months. One of the big ones had lost a lot of air, and it took my little 1 1/2hp compressor about ten minutes to get it back up to the 2 bar pre-charge pressure. It looks as if the Schrader valve may well have a very slow leak, so I'm going to replace them all with new ones as well as fit some metal dust caps, with decent rubber seals. I'd not checked these for about 3 years, so it's my fault they have lost a fair bit of air, but it did make me wonder what the recommendations were for checking the expansion vessel on a UVC were. The answer seems to be that all the UK UVC manufacturers I could find, that published servicing details, mandate that their products be serviced annually. Many also make it clear that this annual servicing is required in order for the extended warranty to be valid. My guess is that one of the main things checked during a service will be the expansion vessel pre-charge.

@nod That's obviously toughened glass. The most common cause of it failing is contamination by nickel sulphide inclusions in the glass. For commercial clients and in areas where safety is critical (eg overhead glass) we always recommend specifying that toughened glass be heat-soaked which gets rid of most of the glass which has nickel sulphide inclusions. https://technical.iqglassuk.com/technical-advice/nickel-sulphide-inclusion/ Typically (non heat-soaked) toughened glass which has nickel sulphide inclusions will experience increasing rates of failure the older it gets. We've had them failing after 10+ years.

Whilst it could be random, it is also quite common for it to be pseudo-random based on a hash of the requesting client's MAC address. This gives greater stability to allocations and thus helps with logging, avoiding problems by badly behaved DHCP clients (e.g. waiting for the lease to expire before renewing or holding on to addresses after the lease has expired) etc.

Some pressure reducing valves do have a pressure gauge. The one I originally fitted (before I changed things around so it wasn't needed) had one. Looked like this:

I got some of these to quieten down my ubiquiti switch & router https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071J8CZP9/ Be sure to get the deepest ones that fit (e.g. 40x20mm not x10mm for the above size) as they'll move more air per rev hence can be run slower The switch likely won't have speed control either but you can get little PWM controllers to put in line with them to set at a low speed. Iirc PoE switches can run a fair bit warmer so check again after everything is hooked up.

by having it serviced ... insurance company may ask for the service history before they pay out too...

Where do we sneak in at the weekend and swap all the labels?

They make cylinders in "steel with vitreous enamel lining" and stainless steel.

UV stable and a bit tougher, having said that I have had a piece of internal CAT5 cable strung between 2 houses via a BT telegraph pole for about 10 years without any degradation of the cable that I can see so far.

If the expansion vessel loses its air charge, then the pressure inside the UVC can rise when it heats up. The expansion vessel is there to do as its name suggests, and allow for this expansion, as water is (as near as dammit) incompressible. Might also be worth checking that the pressure relief valve is fitted and working OK, as if the pressure in the UVC gets too high that is supposed to open to reduce the pressure to a safe level. It's there as a backup for the expansion vessel losing its charge, really, or, perhaps, if the pressure reducing valve on the inlet side fails.

1 done and tested . 49 to go ?

The outdoor stuff has a much stiffer and thicker outer sheath.

Spring loaded NRVs would be one way. But you need a comment from someone who knows more about balancing pipe runs than I do. Ferdinand

It is an Apple iPad translation of “to” . (Sorry) ?

It only uses 2 pairs, 1 x Tx pair 1 x Rx pair - on a crossover cable these two pairs are "crossed" so that PC can speak to PC - i.e. Tx into Rx. Some of the cheap free cables with modems only have 2 pairs in the cable!! Only pins 1-3 & 6 are used on a normal network connection which if I remember correctly tends to be orange and green, so you can strip out the blue and brown. You can pull out the 2 twisted pairs, and keeping them twisted crimp on 2 plugs, or if using a patch panel terminate them like that. I have a piece of Network cable here with about 48 pairs on it, it's designed for patching panels in comms rooms, I acquired about 8 foot of it and figured it may come in handy one day, so that is 24 connections down a single cable!

Yes I can see that, but depends if you want the border to continue down the sides, or just horizontally. The 450mm tile can be cut in half as it's a repeated pattern. Five and a half @450 plus two 225 would work

It can be blinking handy to convert a single RJ45 socket into a twin on a wall plate where only 1 cable exists.

Read the guidance @Stewpot posted.. 8m rear extensions have to follow slightly different procedure to 4m rear extensions.. ,

If it did work then cutting it into logs would be much harder when it was dry -- professioinals cut it down and block it at same time because of this , and more surface area ontheends of all the blocks make it dry quicker as well

You’d think so, wouldn’t you, apart from whilst I recognised pretty much all the words that @nod used, I don’t think I’ve seen them arranged in that order before! ??? I'm constantly amazed with how little I know.

@Russdl there is your answer ..! Thanks @nod

I am about a month behind the schedule in my mind. My signing-up with a timber-frame company was delayed as my favoured company moved their factory over Christmas. In the end I seriously considered no less than seven frame companies, met with five, and visited the factories of four. I have now chosen the company and will be signing on the dotted line soon. It is a local Cambridgeshire firm and represented for me the best balance between cost, their approach, and the personalities involved. Observations from the last month: Old Buildhub searches work well. I have text shortcut the throws the following in to a google search: "site:buildhub.org.uk". That enables effortless searching of the Buildhub archive for any string. For example, when thinking about which SE to use to design my slab, I threw "site:buildhub.org.uk Tanner" into Google a re-read the posts by @Alexphd1, @Triassic, @RichC and others, some of which were years old, arranged a call with Hilliard himself in Ireland, and all my problems went away. Same applied for bolstering my list of raft installers and a host of other subjects besides. I looked again at the make-up of my roof and foundations. My dwelling has a ridge height limit in its deeds and I want high, 3m, ceilings. I went around the houses on both subjects (thanks to you all for your contributions to my threads on the subjects). On the roof I ended up somewhere new, and flipped form a cold to a warm room, and saved about 200mm. On the floor, I ended up back where I started, with an insulated concrete raft attached to screw piles but, with the help of Hilliard Tanner, it will be a thinner 100mm raft, with strengthening ribs, and a 200mm ring beam. Because the raft will be tied-in to the screw piles the insulation beneath will not be load bearing. This means that PIR will work just as well as EPS as insulation. PIR is thinner for a given U-value so once again I will be saving about 200mm of thickness. Resolving the issues the ridge and front-door-threshold heights then enabled me dive deeply in to the levels. I have a small but complex plot and deciding levels took quite some head-scratching, especially as my site is supposedly "no-dig" because of previous tree roots. Levels are now done I think. With all the fundamental decisions about the build now resolved, the cavalcade of actions leading up to the start on site can now begin in earnest: frame design, engineering inputs, construction drawings; planning-conditions discharge (and maybe non-material amendment); tenders for groundworkers, screw-pile suppliers and installers, raft makers, rooflights, windows; site insurance, building control, warranty. Oh, and I have re-designed the façade once again. All systems go! Spirits are high.

If you are trying to make your new build energy efficient why not do the whole job and fit MVHR?

Thanks. I had actually already read that thread (as i have a similar issue) and discussed it with Salus tech (which has been pretty useless). Two of my loops are quite short, and, on one of them, the Salus actuator is totally throttling the flow - closing the valve completely. The result is that the heating effect stops for quite some time - up to 20 mins - before the actuator then overcompensates and opens the valve fully. Salus tech support said that the only way for them to check the firmware is for me to send them to them. WF support said this behaviour is typical on some shorter loops. If so, then that is surely an inherent flaw in the design, and makes these actuators pretty useless in practice.

I think before you part with any of your hard earned money you need to get your heat loss calculated. This will give you an idea of how much energy it's going to take to maintain your house at a nice temperature. You said you got a survey done. What info is in their results. Oil is fine now as your boiler fires up and heats the water to over 70 degrees which you then use to heat your rads. This just wont happen with a heat pump. It can't get the water in your tank to this high a temp and still run efficiently no matter what the heat pump guy says. Heat pumps work well with underfloor heating as this only needs water at 35-45 degrees depending on your heat loss. Then you have the issue with your DHW. Ask them how will the heat pump provide you with enough hot water for showers baths etc. Have you access to gas or even priced up just changing the oil boiler to a newer more efficient model. You could end up spending £15k on a system that can't provide you with enough heat or hot water without costing you a fortune in electric each year.

Sat there behind our South facing French doors and this happened on the inside pane

Yes, the fans are I think like 40mm, they are small, spin pretty fast and just wear out. Chances are it sat in a data-rack in an office for the last 10 years. I know I'd feel kinna rough if I was made to work flat out for 10 years! You can get them for a few pounds.

You put me to shame, I wired our place for network about 5 years ago and they are still all just hanging in the comms cupboard!

Gary, be honest, you were singing in the bath .....

Litter tray!

We're putting service voids on all external walls, and I was going to drop ducts with pull cords through it at regular intervals to make it easier to pull something new through in future. A colleague said he just dropped spare lengths of cheap cat5 instead. That way there's a reasonable chance he could just use that as is, and if not use it as a pull cord to pull whatever cable he actually wanted there instead. I expect I can get to 50 with those alone :-)