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Is it already used for access?! Difficult to argue against if so

With two layers you can stagger the joins, you can also flip one over to counteract and bends in the sheets. Not being able to get 150mm has probably done you a favour.

I have a 5m high glass gable like this in my design. I added a 3m canopy to ours, simply because I wanted to be able to sit out in the rain (West coast of Scotland - so it's wet a lot). But the canopy I am hoping will remove the solar gain in summer with the high sun, but allow the winter sun in to heat the place. Hopefully

I was expecting one night a couple of weeks ago as it was advertised in my telly paper and then it didn’t come on! Had a look online and it was saying starts in May?

We have some TF buidings going up just a short walk from us. These are for social housing by a developer. You can see the poor quality & shoddy workmanship here just like in the US. That said, the TF house my wife & I built in the mid 70's is still standing!!

I think the thinnest concrete floor you might get away with would be.. 60mm reinforced screed 80mm Insulation (check u-value is ok with BCO) DPM sheet 25mm sand blind 100mm compacted hardcore. However you would need to do a good job of levelling and compacting the ground and hardcore with a vibrating wacker plate. Do it in several layers. See what others say. Some may suggest a bit thinner screed or more hardcore.

A few Google finds. Not used them myself ... 200mm.. https://www.bodleeds.co.uk/roman-haven-8mm-glass-flipper-hinged-return-panel-200mm-x-2000mm-132912-p.asp https://www.plumbworld.co.uk/mira-ascend-200mm-hinged-deflector-return-panel-8mm-glass-11862209-530-1255948?utm_source=GoogleBase&utm_medium=GB&utm_campaign=GoogleBase&gclid=Cj0KCQjwmcWDBhCOARIsALgJ2Qc1mC39ZPUKSkRcpyx9Ql02HofIinvEyMoDaj38dTr89s9LNF6iIsEaAqupEALw_wcB https://www.fountaindirect.co.uk/kohler-composed-hinged-return-panel.html#id=66970 Google hinged return panel 200mm

I would not worry about the lime fir the second coat as the first had none, it does make the mix a bit more easy to use but you could add a little plasticiser to it to do the same job.

Bloody hell @AliG we try not to stereotype Scots for being tight but your mum is not helping!

Garden length is 60 72 foot from the new extension

Perfect, that pretty much says it all. If I take the measurement from the Yorkstone that formed the floor of the outbuilding we took down (build in 1886) then the measurement is under 240mm.

Updated drawings, hope this is now classed as an outbuilding as looking to start getting quotes now…

In a single dwelling you don't need airtightness between the floors, just between inside and outside. Air will travel up the stairs. Keeping the doors closed will help.

No - your water hammer is because there is no expansion anywhere in the system. What I would also have checked (first...) is that the Megaflo expansion tank is at 3 bar. Very rare to get water hammer in a sealed system as there is usually a route to expansion somewhere. Has the tank and reducer been checked or serviced recently ..??

Firstly, as this is my first post since joining the forum a few years ago, a big thank you for all the invaluable info your debates have provided. I ended up here again while doing research to confirm my MVHR design. Most of what I want to say has been said in this thread already - I just want to say it my way! After years of struggling with planning authorities I am finally half way through an extensive bungalow extension/refurb for my parents, not the original plan for my whole family but that's life, compromise had to be made, we keep their draughty old house! The plan is also to divide off a previously built side extension to provide a separate rentable property to help pay back the mortgage quickly. As for the current topic; a term I have not seen mentioned so far, and one which provides the best argument against the thread title, is cost/benefit ratio. Many purchases are unjustified on pure cost alone (House/Car/TV/Weddings/Holidays/Eating out/Drinking/Pets/Kids! etc) but the ultimate goal in life surely must be to live happy and content. In a world that increasingly seems to be run by accountantcy principles, I think the value of the latter is often sadly overlooked. As these will be kept as my own properties but not occupied by me, I will concentrate on the cost/benefit to me regarding my investment. On one hand, I can justify an MVHR system in the house my parents will occupy as it will contribute to keeping the house fresh (I can relate to all of joe90's comments about his parents - and to add: my mother's cooking odours make the whole house unbearable and she often forgets to turn the hood on!). Without this, chances are I will be spending more on a refresh when I eventually get my house back. Also, there is a small possibility I may want to move here after my parents so the personal comfort benefit is coming into play to justify this investment. In the second rentable property, I have opted to splash out on UFH as I believe the general public is now beginning to recognise this as a 'love to have' comfort feature and the benefit to me is a more desirable property. The MVHR would be wasted on this property as I can see no benefit to outweigh the installation/maintenance cost. I don't think the general public are aware of the comfort benefits yet so I don't believe it will affect the value of the property. To sum up, MVHR certainly has undeniable benefits but the ROI is debatable, so if on a tight budget and you worry about your life's pot of cash running out before your end then there are cheaper options to keep you happy. On pure cost/ROI, the OP has made a very good argument, but the title of the thread is very misleading and aggravating to those who are realising it's benefits, it is not a bogus technology which should be dismissed. It's like saying buying Mercedes cars for lifetime cost is bogus because several budget cars will do the same job cheaper, I'm sure there are strong arguments both ways for efficient ROI, but bottom line is: if you can afford it then the feelgood factor from the extra comfort is undeniable. I know a few individuals who, despite having a generous income, constantly debate ROI without giving equal importance to quality of life/environment, all come across as boring miserable people. Whoops! I have a habit of writing too much then editing bits out to make it less of a novel to read. Just realised I need to get ready for work very quickly so posting as is before I lose it all. Sorry

Jeremy soon found out that KISS works best.

So fit a hammer arrestor on the incoming cold water. A 2 litre potable expansion vessel is change of £30, it’s less than an hour to fit. What water pressure do you have incoming to the house as whilst you’re cutting into cold supplies, a variable pressure reducer would also help somewhat and you can set it so you can retain a decent pressure. £100 should get you sorted and stop the problems across the house.

@Birk57 this isn’t an issue of trust, it is straight line contract assurance so it is relatively simple to sort. 1. check the company out, look at the history on companies house and the directors. Any significant change in the past 18 months would make me wary. 2. as @Bitpipe said - pay the deposit on credit card. Even if it’s £100, it covers you for default. It won’t help you recover consequential loss but it’s something. Make sure the contract for SIPs is in the same name and address as the card holder and the card address. 3. Consider the build choice carefully. Why SIPs..? What are you trying to achieve with that route as you will need to be in control as they need specific contractors, cranage, scaffold etc. First build with this and you’re taking on something that could need a lot of management. 4. You got planning yesterday ... with the best will in the world, unless you have a ground works contractor signed up and ready now, you won’t be out of the ground in 14 weeks, never mind ready for SIPs. Trades are maxed out, I would only push the button on a SIPs or frame order when everything is lined up and work is starting in the next 4 weeks as you will hit issues. Hope that helps.

@Adsibob agreed. We have the Brink Flair 400. We wanted a good spec but overall we wanted a quiet unit as it is in the loft right above our bedroom. It's still running its factory default settings because I haven't had the time to have a good play with it yet. The factory default has it running at 200m3/hr ramping up to 300m3/hr for a couple of hours in the morning and again in the early evening. At 200m3/hr it is basically inaudible even stood right next to the unit, at 300m3/hr you can hear it and at the maximum 400m3/hr you can tell it's doing its job. Outside of its little cupboard in the loft you can only really hear the unit when it is on its maximum setting. In all rooms (apart from our bedroom) it is inaudible at 200m3/hr. At 300m3/hr you can hear airflow to some of the extracts but it's not obtrusive and if you didn't know what to listen for you probably wouldn't hear it. In our bedroom which has the shortest duct run (4.4m) you can just about hear airflow through the supply air vent at 200m3/hr, and of course it becomes more and more obvious the faster the unit runs. There is zero noise from the unit itself and zero vibration. Our unit is sat on an offcut of EPS from our slab which was a temporary measure that I think will now become permanent. In a nutshell, we're very pleased with it but have nothing to compare it with so have no idea if a less expensive unit would be any better or worse for sound transmission.

The Carel controller on our ASHP is cascadeable

It is a good think. You can extract about 4 times as much energy out of water than dry ground. GSHP are really water source heat pumps with the water heated by solar energy.

Two different things. It’s either PD or would require Planning However, I do think you now understand but just to be clear... - Attached to the house would be deemed as an extension and would require Planning (as you’re a corner plot). - Detached from the house would be deemed as an outbuilding and would constitute PD.

Yes, unless they vanished in the last month. https://www.gshp.org.uk/RHI_Domestic.html

75mm is so much easier to cut and deal with than 150mm would be my first choice given the option.

I prefer this way. Get double the amount of 75mm

Land is land; we describe it by its current use, but that's just a temporary convenience. Where most of us live was once 'agricultural', or 'woodland' or something other than housing. I wouldn't want an industrial unit built opposite me, but to object you need to find valid planning reasons surely? I can only really speak for fresh produce, but we only import what we can't grow economically viably in the UK. I imagine the laws of economics apply to other agricultural outputs too.

I’d be running a 2,000 litre buffer at max 45°C from the heat pumps and use it as a primary source to a 400 litre UVC. Then put the UVC immersions on an overnight tariff and as the primary dump load to 70°C for the PV. Buffer needs a pair of stats on it that kick one ASHP in at say 42°C then the next at 38°C. Simple switch over will mean that they get equal use and you’ll always have redundancy. Use something like a Finder 72.42 Priority relay. Solar coils and immersion dump loads can also go into the buffer and just put a differential controller so the buffer heats the main house UVC whenever it’s hotter by 5°C etc. Pair of 8kW ASHP will give you plenty of grunt but also allow you to have some redundancy if needed.

I do not have a single screw anchoring my stud walls in place. All held down with a generous tube or two of PU adhesive. I needed to adjust one and dismantled the stud wall, I had to use a crowbar to get the sole plate up, and it actually pulled lumps out of the screed rather than coming unstuck.

SOLVED - The surveyor amended the construction to traditional brick. Thank you all for your kind help and advice. Take care

People use a planning advisor to obtain planning. Why not get the neighbours together and employ one to assist in rejecting it.

Just done one with Warmstar mat, cheap thermostat but the control is by a contactor driven by a decent programmable time clock that is part of a pair - one doing ASHP UFH and DHW, the other does E7 boosting of DHW tank and UFH mats and electric towel rails in the bathrooms. Not difficult to do and puts all in the same place for control purposes.

I have a cheap heating mat from Ebay, think its the one mentioned earlier. Connected to a therostat and sensor buried in the tile cement. I never turn it off, stays on 24/7 at 22 degrees.

Is what worth it? What are you measuring? Money? Comfort? The smile on your partner's face? The non-slipiness of the dry patch? The cat's comfort? Yes, you guessed correctly: The bath mat is over an unheated area, Sid (never heard him hiss yet) is on the warm area. This is our downstairs wet room. Upstairs exactly the same arrangement Exactly right. The psychological effect of warmth in a wet room is greater there than anywhere else because most of us shower with no clothes on. It takes a day for ther floor to heat up fully: switch it on for just an hour as you suggest, and we would feel nearly no benefit. You can feel a slight temperature difference where the mat ends ( or begins) I'm willing to pay a lot more for the comfort glow that a really warm wetroom floor gives. It's not just about money.

I'm puting wet UF in our bathroom refurb. As.. I does get cold up here, I don't want a shock in the morning..ideally the bathroom should just be as warm as the bed you just got out of. I can leave a towel on the floor and it will dry.. if it's too hot I can open the window. I think it dries out the shower tray too so it gets less mouldy so don't need to clean it "that way", also it's really good to step into a warm shower tray, I have delicate feet. Practically UF in the bathroom avoids condensation, keeps the water vapour as a gas and you can vent this via a fan or window.. for me it keeps my talc dry which I like to keep on the bottom shelf of my "vanity unit" near the floor. Lastly if you feel that your heating bills are a bit high then you can just turn that UF circiut off.

Yes the headline is moronic. BUT it actually discusses the issue faced with swapping every house from a gas boiler to a heat pump, highlighting that in most cases it is a LOT more than just swap the boiler for a heat pump. Unless we get this discussion and understanding, there are going to be a lot of houses with poor heat pump systems and they really will have houses that cannot get warm enough in very cold weather. Those of us with modern well insulated houses successfully being heated by small ASHP's even in cold climates show it can be done, but the elephant in the room is such a huge amount of the UK housing stock is anything but well insulated and airtight, and that is where the serious money needs to be spent to address that. But how. I often feel a 21st century "slum clearance" is needed to flatten and rebuild some of the worst housing, but I can't see it happening. Instead we will bumble along carefully avoiding that elephant and thus not making so much of a difference to energy use and CO2 emissions. And this quote Does not give me ANY confidence that a government run scheme will ever be able to solve the problem. We (the government) just seem incapable of managing such a thing.

I am too old and ugly to worry about any suppliers. I have brands which I have worked with for years, have full confidence in the product and I will not sell anything else unless I am offered a solid reason by someone else who can match what I have for a better price. I am waiting but I doubt if this exists. PM me and I will point you towards a few other products. Only you can decide if the 15-20% lower price is worth the drop in quality/detail/finish. Builders discount IMO is a load of nonsense as well. If a bag of cement is bought for a tenner and sold retail for 20 but to a builder for 15, the principle is that the builder gets the price because they but a truckload of it. This argument I can buy. In reality I would like to see if the same scale exists for kitchens. When Howdens offers 80% on its units for trade accounts, you have to ask what a reasonable markup is.

GBS used compacfoam 200 under the window and door thresholds on their Golcar passive house - fixed with threaded bar into the slab, to reduce thermal bridging. https://www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk/products/compacfoam-200/ I'm not linked to GBS in any way. Has anyone considered the thermal bridging of Velox metal ties?? They did talk about a ??basalt?? tie 12 months ago, but they dont seem to have developed this.

My late Mum, on top of/because of her mixed dementia, became doubly incontinent. To the point my kids wouldn't go up there. The smell had to be experienced to be believed. It was a care issue with my father insisting he could cope when he couldn't. Once we got (forced) carers in, the situation improved but at times it still wasn't good. An odd aside in her behaviour was that she took to barricading doors and windows on top of locking them. Add to that drawing all curtains tight shut. Then there's that as they get older they tend to clean less generally. I'm pretty sure that MVHR would have massively helped with both the smell and to keep down the mould that ensued from the general lack of ventilation/cleaning. "Mould" incidentally has also been indicated in some studies on the causes of dementia. A pretty sad way to go considering how houseproud she once was!

Wasn't it also an unventilated cupboard?

You could put some 400 mil dpc against the adjoining wall before compacting the hardcore It will isolate the patio from them Then crack on Remember neighbors are always expert on planing permission ?