Leaderboard

To a certain extent it is. And how many people think that spending 5K extra on a kitchen will save them that on not eating out. What is the payback on a £800 bath compared to a £200 bath? Or a £1000 kitchen tap that boils water compared to a £50 one and a tenner for a kettle.

My testies have grown a bit today

The Dupont Tyvek UV Facade membrane is excellent. A matt black finish.

How can you know that? You are making some very broad brush assumptions to arrive at such a conclusion. Do you know what will happen to energy prices over that 15yr period as that will have a material impact on the repayment timeline? Or do you assume today's prices will apply in 15yrs time? Do you know how much they will generate or is this an assumption again? Do you know how much they will use out of what is generated? I'm not having a go at you, I'm taking aim at how this is not a binary decision. It is too complex to just divide the cost by the assumed energy produced and then compare that to todays energy prices to arrive at the answer. My own view is that the climate is going tits up, energy prices will most certainly rise - we are already scraping the barrel for being able to produce enough of it, power plants are getting older, new ones will cost a load of cash which will no doubt get passed on to the consumer. If the summer temperatures get more extreme will air con in the home become the norm for this country like others overseas? If so, the PV will pay the bill for that use. There are lots of tangential arguments as to why PV is worth doing but they tend to get overlooked/dominated by the financial argument. Yes its a high outlay, but if you're in the house for the long haul then at some point it will be worth that initial bank balance hit.

Welcome I understand that you are in a very expensive area for plots, good luck anyway you never know

During our final site inspection our BCO checked .. Every pane of window glass for a coating with some sort of meter. Every pane of glass that should be safety glass for standards marks (etched in a corner). Watched our builder pressure test the drains. Checked opening windows for clear opening width. Asked about ventilation for our wood burner.

The areas of loft that the MVHR is in are cold. The MVHR units have their own insulation, you can see the polystyrene when you open them up. The external air doesn't spend a lot of time inside the actual MVHR unit on its way through so I don't think it would make any difference. I certainly haven't noticed it. The issue is that the outside air isn't usually that much colder and they don't move enough air to have a serious cooling impact in bypass mode. TBH opening a window will have a much bigger effect if it is that warm. That is where your multi split will come in.

I had the same concerns but needn't have worried. Our MVHR unit is in an uninsulated loft and we have temperature sensors inside every port on the unit and one in the loft itself. I've seen the loft temperature rise to 40-45c with no obvious effect on the supply air temperature. Note that on the hottest of days the unit will likely *not* activate the summer bypass as the outside air is often hotter than that being extracted hence keeping the heat exchanger 'in circuit' can cool the incoming air (heat transfer always occurs hot-to-cold regardless of direction). In such scanarios I've seen a degree or two drop. It's not air conditioning, but it has reassured me that the loft temperature hasn't been an issue. I wouldn't expect an MVHR unit to overheat in a loft as the heat-generating items are the fans and they sit within the air flow.

Ditto, my master en suite is larger than the main bathroom (the guest en suites are smaller). The master has 2 basins too, and a larger bath and shower. Ironically I use the bath in the main bathroom as the one in my en suite is really too large ?.

Yes to the packers and it may be worth running flooring under washing machine, dishwasher and other floor standing appliances so you do not get a 12mm lip when removing them. We always floor throughout and have never had an issue. Mainly use engineered wood glued down. I have seen a floating floor lift where it is fitted without a perimeter expansion gap.

No problem adding packs under cabinet legs, much better than taking flooring under the cabinets. If you need piece of mind, stick a small screw through the foot into the ply. Also go a bit over on ply thickness to give yourself a bit extra adjustment.

He would have drawn it up in CAD and marked each tile on the wall. Are you employing the technique of bathing in tile adhesive and throwing yourself at the wall? It does look good but maybe try to keep stuff cleaner if possible. Are those levelling things reusable? Anyway, pull your finger out and get the rest of that wall on, leaving the rips for later. Chop Chop!

MVHR will only contribute to cooling when the external temperature is below the internal temperature. But you still need to change the air. So this may change the rate at which you change the internal air when you need cooling i.e. a lot at night, none during the day. 72W x 500m3 = 36 kW (Ah, that was at 3 ACH, a third of that would be 12 kW) This seems very high to me, so I may have made an error somewhere. Thing is that this is the worse case, and it only happens very infrequently, and then for a relatively short time. Consider you would start cooling well before the temperature reaches your desired maximum, the peak power needed would be smaller. I would have to knock up a spreadsheet to work it out properly. Wall area, but minus window aperture. This is affected by the insulation levels as they slow the passage of heat into the dwelling. Windows can be considered the same as floor area as the light passes though and hits something, and starts to heat that. That implies that it is 8.8 times oversized, which sounds odd. I think you are on the right track to sorting it out, just needs the details filling in.

As you're installing an MVHR too, put it near the supply valves (or at least in the room with supply valves) so it naturally spreads from there through all the areas as it percolates towards the extract values.

I think most users are delighted if they achieve 0.5 ACH on a new build. For a refurb, 1 ACH is a typical (e.g. Enerphit) top-tier goal, and more realistically (e.g. AECB) people shoot for 1.5 To get any of these, you need to more than simply expect it, it has to be a very intentional goal. If you're doing everything via a main contractor, you need to make it a requirement of the specification you issue them. If you're handling sub contractors yourself, you need to be on top of every single one ensuring they don't ruin it. A single pipe or electrical cable could wreak havoc to achieving the goal. As an analogy, no one says the expect their roof will be fairly watertight: they damn well require it as an absolute must! And in many ways airtightness is harder than that...

I went for Enhabit for the MVHR, Wunda for the UFH & a couple of local-ish (within 2hrs) companies for solar & the ASHP. The ASHP company uses a local fitter who is also doing my plumbing. Being a mile away from lands end limits my choices somewhat vs a more central location! The supply of available skilled labour is another major issue, amplified by the surge in work following the lockdown. So far no major issues, but I will only be able to give a definitive opinion once we have been in for a while, a state of affairs that is a few months away. It is worth re-emphasising the value of references from customers who have had work completed. In my case I paid too much attention to a contractors internet presence & the views of someone who had had their work started, but not completed & nothing had yet hit the fan (it eventually did, they wound up in court & got a CCJ in their favour). I lost a few hundred pounds, other less ‘fortunate’ individuals either lost or spent a lot of time & emotional energy chasing thousands.

Yep - just stops the sand and cement ending up between the boards.

+1 If plain tiles are used the bottom layer must also slope down.. https://chandlermaterials.co.uk/media/wysiwyg/Creasing-Tiles-Leaflet.pdf

fitting PV is more about reducing demand on the network and reducing the carbon footprint of your lifestyle.... e.g. timing your heat pump, car charging, washing machine etc to make use of PV electric to reduce usage from the carbon intense network. it depends if that is important to you or not. As above, payback is usually in the 10-15 year bracket. I'm going for a 6pkW system split over three roofs with a 4kw inverter. It's coming in a shade under £5k. Excludes wiring and commissioning.

Apart from the missing drip groove, the tiles in the photo are correctly fitted with staggered gaps to prevent (or at least make it extremely difficult) water getting down in the joints between. The cill bricks rely on the mortar joint remaining intact otherwise water is allowed to enter.

The cill tile has a drip groove in the bottom which must be set forward of the wall. The picture, made from plain tiles does not have that drip groove detail so water may track back into the brickwork.

In case it is useful to anyone in future, know that today I will go ahead and order Internorm with the SKN176II grade glass upstairs on east and south elevantions, and keep to regular triple glazing downstairs. While the screens look nice, they are relatively expensive, the SKN176II on the upstairs is relatively cheaper with no maintenance / operation required, the risk being a dull day seeming a little more gloomy when you wake up first thing in the morning, and loss of some amount of useful solar gain on a sunny winter day. The numbers from @Dan F showing that SKN176II only has 1% less light transmittance than normal 3g has me less worried about the potential gloominess, not that I have a feel for 1% light transmittance feels like in real life: Typical Triple Glazing: 71% Light Transmittance, 0.5 g-value SKN 176 II Coating Triple Glazed: 70% Light Transmittance, 0.37 g-value

Ever since we moved in we have always been asked "is it two bungalows or one?" Weirdly it was designed exactly like the main picture (which was the start of our build as they were doing the footings). I think it was all a bit of a ploy. Roll back to early 70s when it was some sort of large vegetable patch. Planning permission was refused for two bungalows, various amendments and someone designed the bungalow as it is today, one bungalow suspiciously looking like two bungalows separated by a flat roof. I think they planned to build it and then attempt to get it split into two bungalows but it never happened. We have always wanted to somehow 'connect' up the roof and to be honest it's all been a bit vague on how this would be achieved. Mid build architect and builder got together, another £200 for some more beam calcs and over yesterday and today it is all looking a bit more like one bungalow. This pic is from the scaffolding and you can finally see the roof joining with the large flat roof extension. From the canal/bridge it now looks far more connected though this pic doesn't do it much justice (yesterday). And from the garden looking into our kitchen: What we really like is our ensuite, which, in the absence of any external walls will have a nice fixed rooflight on the flat roof just above our toilet/sink vanity unit which will be slightly raised from the ceiling (not the best pic).

You won’t drill flint - it will shatter. Hydraulic lime added to a standard mix will be fine - 5:1:1/2 sand cement lime.

It's important to periodically change your water / empty your tray I think or you're just trying to pump slurry eventually.

Yeah , sometimes it seems to like that . It’s like a woman . You can’t be quite sure what to do but you can bet it will be wrong .

Yes but then it's a lot easier to hide the f@ck ups with massive, textured tiles!

Or both ....

Perhaps a change of diet or put away the porn.