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Assuming the tiles will be fairly large format then you need a good solid slab that will not move. Build up similar to a house footing but you dont need the insulation. Plenty of well compacted stone/hardcore, blind if not crusher run, concrete with starter bars into the existing slab to prevent movement at the door threshold

No, given: i) pipes conduct heat very well. (they are for UFH after all) ii) slab temperature changes slowly, so any very minor lag from heating any air between pipe/sensor is absolutely nothing in comparison.

@PeterTweeter I stick built my new build as it was feasible with my limited experience, a pleasure todo though a little niche. I cannot imagine large house building companies doing the same. Takes along time to be water tight. Also fitted a Tata Steel roof. Work in progress.

You could argue that the work is closely connected to the construction of the building as defined in VAT Notice 708. I would go back to the council and state that as the work is for a new build can they reissue the invoice with zero rating, and send in the relevant section from VAT Notice 708. Has to be worth a go surely? https://www.gov.uk/guidance/buildings-and-construction-vat-notice-708#section3

Over the last month we've spent our time removing bits from the barn that will either be returned, replaced or disposed of depending on there condition and the LPA requirements. This means that the yard is filling up so deliveries and other storage is now being put in the fields. That's okay with a very dry April, might be more tedious if we have a very wet spell. I removed the roof from the barns where there was a low ridge height, but that also included the insulation (lucky piggies), rafters, joists, wall plates, lintels (angle iron), gutters and fascia boards. This resulted in a number of bruises from hammers, crow bars and wood. All when they moved unexpectedly, luckily being a weak woman the crowbar was not much bigger than a pencil so only gave me a small bruise. If it had been one of the big ones I would possibly have ended up in A&E. I don't think I've ever seen so many nails. Being rural we've been able to burn wormy wood and the rest I have chopped up for the wood store, the insulation has been stacked along with the roof sheets ready for the future workshops and garages. Once hubby has a dry and insulated workshop he will never come in the house ? I'm also very glad of my work factory boots with steel toecaps with the number of times I've dropped things. It certainly looks very different now, lovely and light. We have left the shed at the end intact as we are going to use if for secure storage and tea room for as long as possible. Ultimately that will be our utility / plant room so we won't do anything until we have to. The back of the barn had an overhang which has been removed, this was pretty low so although it was included in the dwelling dimensions we decided not to bother as we were not allow to increase the ridge height enough to make it useful. This is where all the drainage is going to go, the internal walls have been set up to fit with the current window openings, not always central in the room, but good enough and easy and meets the LPA requirements. We do need to create one more window opening for the family bathroom. This back wall is to go up 1 block to allow for lintels, although the first window is quite small so the lintel is only the thickness of a brick so it will be pushed up so that the top of the window is as high as possible. This side of the barn is the south side, unfortunately, as it faces a 45 degree 12' bank then the end of our land so it doesn't have an exciting view. I'm planning on gabions, but at 24m long the cost might be prohibitive for now, a future project. In the meantime I'm clearing the bank of weeds, dead trees, shrubs, rubble and a number of tennis balls lost there over the years. Hubby has been working on the L part of the barn which had a cement fibre roof, which possibly contained a small amount of asbestos, and a metal frame. The roof sheets are now cleared, double wrapped and stacked ready for the company to collect. The metal frame had to be cut up in situ as it was fixed so firmly, but that is now down, cut up and gradually going to the tip. It is much easier to destroy things with crow bars, saws and grinders, when we rebuild we shall have to be much more careful. During May our plan is to start work on rebuilding the external of the ensuite / wardrobe room. We will level the existing blocks, then add another block to the top as well as the window lintel. As we won't be replacing the roof for a while we will leave the wall flat until we can measure the new pitch accurately. The unwanted internal wall will be removed and the floor dug out. This will be done in 2 stages, firstly the floating floor to level with the rest of the barn floor then the lower floor. The floating floor is all we are doing at the moment as the whole barn floor needs to be dug down to install insulation and UFH and we will do that dig out in one stage when we are ready. We will then follow the same process with each 'room' on the low side of the barn. How long this will take really depends on all the other demands on our time. Once this side is done and all unwanted walls knocked down then we will start on the other side and follow the process all over again. So far progress has been pretty obvious, and as we have a nearby footpath we have provided lockdown entertainment for many of the locals who like to question us and comment on what we are doing. Since last week and less restrictions the number of people has reduced by 90%, something that I'm pretty glad about. I've had problems with images today so I've just added them all together. I'm still chasing for Building Regulation drawings, something that will soon become more urgent. Thanks for looking and feel free to ask questions. Jill

In my caravan the gas boiler packed up and I installed one of these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/274474218804?hash=item3fe7f03534:g:5XUAAOSwFGRfR~dx it fed the shower as well (but won’t supply taps and showers at the same time, dead cheap and easy to instal ?

No need to saddle sniff, Newly is close.

I did think about this but the obvious route is under the stairs and as I'm not sure what the stairs will be or how they'll be fixed to the floor (if at all) I didn't want to take the risk of pipe penetration. there's an MVHR extract in the comms room anyway so that should help to remove most of any heat produced. but I'll definitely see if I can figure something out.

I'm using all 3 wires, read that it helps with reliability. Also making sure i connect ground from end-to-end (this is easier if you make sure you buy a cable with drain wire). You can connect behind light switches, but if light switch is 1m high that limits length in slab or makes your branches longer. I personally recommend a dedicated 1-wire bus that is not mixed with tree cabling. It means you can keep it as short as possible just going point-to-point where you have 1-wire sensors, can keep branches as short as possible, and also means that your tree cabling topology can be different and not a strict bus which can come in very handy. Doing this is still a good idea, regardless of it you do/don't use dedicated 1-wire bus.

If you can separate the non EPS component, I know a guy who puts the EPS component through a garden shredder. Great for insulating some of the hard to reach, enclosed places. All in non dwelling type buildings. I'm not sure what the HSE would think of this!

It is illegal to burn treated timber. Ignorance is no defence.

You will need diamond disks anyway to grind a large flat surface

I cant see any reason as the roof pitch will be steep and water should fall off without any problem

If the linear drain is going full length this is how I would do it.. Set up the linear drain on the hardcore with some cement first. Then next day when that's set up use it and a shuttering board to level the main concrete to the right fall. Its basically the same way you level a slab for a shed but with a slope.

That is better looking. Last two day I have been using 8 kWh/day, which is a bit higher than I like, but was washing days.

No you definitely need an electric one. Like this https://www.hss.com/hire/p/htc-gl270-grinder or https://www.hirestation.co.uk/tool-hire/Building/Floor-Grinder-Hire/130040/

The pipe the sensor is in is burried in the slab, the tube and air in it will be at the same temp as the slab. sensor doesnt have to be in contact with the concrete or screed

@SteamyTea just for you . Spike gone ! What was it ? . I forgot I had a tiny floor area ( 6 sq m ) permanently on low for ufh ( to avoid condensation around my HA stuff ) . Off now ?

So the loxone one is a 3 wire which @Dan F has said is essentially a DS18S20. You can get them with 10m extensions off eBay. NTC/PTC thermistors are ok but can suffer with long cables.

Sounds a bit savage. I did ours with an electric rotary sander (hired for £50 from the screeders). It's not a particularly quick job, so I wouldn't want to be working with the noise and fumes of a petrol engine tbh.

Normally the cls comes untreated but I asked for it treated so my timber merchant sent the whole lot off to get treated before devliery. I think a lot of merchants will supply to you treated or untreated.

Nice, I bet that was fun! I loved the framing part of my house.

If you use 16mm pipes for conduits for the probes, fit proper cap ends so they don’t back fill with the concrete slurry

Did they do a noise survey at the property? if so make sure they account for the skew that Covid is having on traffic flows at the minute. When you say it goes over 1m, do you mean over a metre high? You shouldn't need planning as its replacing existing fencing https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects/20/fences_gates_and_garden_walls

Also, iirc, Wunda don’t do the uber low temp pump and blending set atm. Therefore, if you buy now, I doubt if that kit will cope with the intended application. Totally agree; pipes now, cap them off with self-amalgamating tape, not cap ends, and leave for now. No. Just a few 16mm elbows to daisy chain the loops one to the next, put cold mains on the first pipe, and a pressure gauge on the last one.

My suggestion is to pay the £400 for pipe now and only spend on the manifold, pump later when you decide to commission it in first fix. Very easy to over spend at this stage of the build, you may want that £400 later on

Anything over 12"x12" type size should be snapped up on Freecycle. The rest makes excellent lightweight backfill material otherwise fill old bulk bags and take it to a trade waste place which will be cheap to tip as will be based on weight. Hope this helps

This is where I fall short you see. My dad, struggled to change a bulb. Mum better, she could wire a plug if pushed to. I was a poor occasional diy'er only, up until 3 yrs ago when I had to get somone in to fix a bit of door frame to a wall ( bc those frame screws bewildered me!!) he looked at me like an idiot. Which prompted me to find build hub. Quite proud of how far Ive come tbh!

Probably because it encompasses a number of little tricks and tips that are DIY 101 to most people who dabble. Most here learnt their skills I imagine well before the internet was a thing. Probably forgotten more than they know. All my mates and I grew up with dads (a novelty in itself nowadays ?) who just "did" DIY.

OT : Saw a white Tesla today and thought the reg was something like TE55 1AA but it doesnt show up on the MOT data base.

I've heard of people using decorative stones on the exposed faces of the gabion and something cheaper in the middle.

Hi Dragster Driver. @DragsterDriver "waiting on planning permission and then turnaround time on a slab design and delivery could be financially crippling- I really do need to ‘hit the ground running’. I have easy access to plant and groundworkers/bricklayers who owe me favours" Is there more to this? just had a scan at your drawing. Seems like you have a simple raft but a suspended floor over. What do you know about the ground? It may be that your SE does not know that you have these construction contacts and this may have swayed them towards the raft as the most economic based on the info available to them. It could be that if you can call in favours that suit, you can excavate deep strips, get the muck away cheep, do a trench fill strip found all over and cart on?

Just above “nose height” ?

Hi Puntloos. That living room is a chunk of space. Here are my thoughts on the layout you have provided. Much of this is SE related but I hope it gives you some pointers. You have a pretty clear main rear elevation. If you look at the right side of the drawing you have a small return on the masonry, then a pier between W-05 and D-03, the access to the dining area and a long wall up the left side of the drawing. SE wise this flags up how to stop the building moving from side to side in the plane of the rear elevation. Call this lateral stability. Next you have this masonry pier between the two doors in the living room. Now, to make first floor economic over the living room it makes sense to span the joists from the internal masonry wall to the rear elevation. But in doing so you are going to add a lot of load to the pier as some of the first floor load will be carried by the lintels over the doors D-03 and W-05. You may well have some roof loads too and the weight of the second storey walls on the lintels. From an SE view that pier is one of the key elements and I would have my doubts about the capacity of it. Another thing that flags up is the length of the masonry wall on the left of the drawing. There are some stability issues here (as it looks like a long wall) and also at this size of house you'll need to detail and position the movement joints in the masonry to stop cracking. Good for cracking but not so good for strength as you introduce a discontinuity (weak spot) in the masonry which needs to be dealt with. In summary there looks like a lack of "meat" in the masonry in terms of lateral stability and the pier capacity to carry the vertical loads. It could all turn complicated and nasty (expensive to build)) when you get down to the detailed calcs. In SE terms there are a number of ways to design this but here are two concepts. Based on the drawing above. Concept 1. In a couple of places you introduce two flat steel portal frames ie a double goal post. I would do these in the living room rear elevation as this keeps a clean line along the left elevation wall. These goal posts stop the building from moving sideways while also carrying the load from above. As an aside this would let you muck about with the door widths in the living room.. they may look good being symmetric? Before progressing you maybe want to have a look at your budget and just how much you are able to spend on the acoustics. Maybe a reasonable compromise is in order here? If you still want the full monty then I would look at a structural steel deck. Have a look at Kingspan Multi Deck for ideas. Here you get loads of mass for acoustics, fire protection. Also they are great for generating what we call "diaphragm action". Option 2. To explain "diaphragm action" in laymans terms. Imagine you get two carboard boxes and tape up all the sides. Put one on top of the other and tape them together. Now cut out the face (your living room doors) of the bottom box and tape the whole lot down to the kitchen worktop. Push it perpendicular to the cut door openings. just like your big living room doors. Look closely and you will see it stays up. The reason for this is that the uncut "gable" sides act to stabalise the boxes. The gables act in what we call "complimentary" shear, the uncut bottom wall of the box acts as a traditional "shear wall"... that would be your wall between the living room and the rooms at the bottom of the drawing. Once you get a handle on the carboard boxes you could maybe use the metal deck as a diaphragm to transfer the shear loads to the wall at the bottom of the drawing and this wall will work with the gable walls... that is option 2 but the masonry will probably need to be 140 ~ 215 mm thick at least... looks like 215mm on your drawing anyway. I hope this helps. Once you get a feel for how the thing stays up then you are well on your way. I would look to see if you can make you floors a bit thinner over all, add ceiling height thus value to the property. If you are building flats say and can make the floors thinner then at some point you can get an extra storey in while keeping the planners happy! Big bucks if in London. The same may apply to you but on a smaller scale. Although I started out with an SE view hopefully this has a spin off on how you can go about getting the best for your money. Lastly, all the best Puntloos.. the main thing is to keep asking questions, mull it over and enjoy the journey. Often you need to work out what you don't want as this helps narrow things down. Oh and it's worth a punt doing the box thing as it may get the kids interested, engaged and consider exploring Engineering as a career. But if not you could alway propose they invest in the build (a cut in the pocket money) if they want to upgrade the acoustics in their own room?

I normally buy the 70-100 mil mesh on a roll and tack it on with clout nails

1. The lounge is very long at 7m, would you actually use all that space. If not, I would try and shorten it and add the space to the sitting room which is comparatively small. The siting room is actually the study. The study could be bigger, will see what it looks like. 2. The WC is extremely small relative to the house. If you take the idea above to make the sitting room larger I would then make the WC larger. Not overly concerned with the size of the WC, to make it bigger forces to move the wall with the stairs back which eats into the dining room width, which we do not want to make narrower as it will be difficult to navigate around the table and chairs. 3. I would think hard about the kitchen layout. It looks like it is set so that the kitchen units will be where you walk in, then a dining and sitting area at the back. Imagine you are cooking for guests, would you want to take them in past your cooking to the table. Hadn't considered this, discussion with wife needed.... 4. We have a larger room than you have there as a gym and it never seems big enough, but we often have three people there at once. I would look to steal space from the laundry/utility area and add to the gym. You need a surprising amount of space for some exercises, especially when on the floor. Our current gym is around the same size but a more useful rectangle shape, agree it needs to be bigger. 5. The laundry/utility area is too large. I cannot think what you would possibly do with all that space. I would probably take the plant room a little bigger and rein the space making the gym larger. You won't hang out in those space so they really only need to be as large as needed for their functions. The utility area will be our main kitchen during the build, as we will move in before the main kitchen is fitted. We also plan to use the utility as a kitchen. 6. Upstairs I would make the two small ensuites at least 1.2M wide. 1M is very small especially compared to the size of the house. I would also make the wardrobes in those two rooms larger, probably moving them to the righthand walls of the rooms. All the bathrooms upstairs need work. Beds 2 and 3 are for our sons, they rarely use the wardrobes they have as most clothes are folded, shelves, The rear of these wardrobes will be a duct for the MHVR piping as well, so probably should be bigger. 7. I think the suggestion to model the house in 3d to see what it looks like is a good one. I am less of a style expert. I might consider rendering the part where the front door is and having more glass above the front door. Will discuss with the architect, I agree it would be helpful. 8. Counting the steps on your stairs, is the ground floor only 2.4M high? It really should be 2.7M in this size of house. At the moment you cannot have a longer stair which would prevent this. My wife wanted a split stair, but I persuaded her to go for one really nice stair, we have a curved stair. It looks like the stair has a combination of half landing and winders. It seems a bit fussy and I am not sure it will flow well. I think one stair along the wall where the kitchen door is then turning left would be a much nicer stair to use and then you could have a double door not the kitchen with a sightline right through from the front door. I believe the stairs are missing one additional tread on the lowest part towards the front door, the lower treads would also be slightly wider than shown.

The first week of the build is over and I've collated our time-lapse footage for the week and made a 2 minute video, hosted on Vimeo we're a little disappointed at the speed of the dig but the boss has only given us one driver to do the digging/dumping/lorry loading so a lot of his time is spent moving the spoil around. but I've been told that more hands might be on-site next week and a bigger excavator so fingers crossed that happens and we see more progress next week. The basement contractors are due in a week so they need to get moving if they want to hit that deadline! Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video.

How large are your hands.

We offered ours for free and had 3 different people take a vanload each, the rest we put in the slab for the garage.

I buried all my off cuts in a small retaining area against the side of the house. Was really time consuming but I thought as I'd paid for the insulation I may as well experience the benefit of it.

Trade waste centre as general waste by weight got to be cheapest legitimate disposal. Skips are all about volume.

I did advertise the off cuts for free . Only a few bits were taken though . Other ‘bits’ I did stick inside the timber frame and foam between them . Looks a mess but better than wasting - very slow build jigsaw though ?

what door style do you want? I have the J-pull handle less ones, I looked at all the big DIY sheds and wren etc.. and found that a lot of the door had edging strip on them, had hinge recesses on each side, or were really orange peely in texture. in the end I got an Ultima one from DIY kitchens and it is nice. I did have some issues with damaged stuff arriving but it was near the start of lockdown so could see they were just trying to rush orders out. the delivery drivers are decent guys, they have a fleet of smaller vans that deliver small orders that drop off replacement stuff, longest I had to wait was 2 weeks for redelivery. all their stuff comes premade so get thiings like cooker,fridge,corner and sink units dry assembled

It's been a while since we obtained planning permission and my last blog entry but we've not been idle. it seems that the last 3 months or so have been a constant stream of decisions that need to be made to get this project started. It's also been a period where money seems to be going out but we don't have much to show for it! The majority of the decisions have stemmed from the architects needing to get the detailed BC drawings finished. here's a nice summary of our decisions so far (although I've probably missed and forgotten a few) Timber Frame Company This was a one of the biggest decisions for us (windows and doors was the other) and was the one that had to happen as soon as possible after getting planning permission so that we could get the timber frame designed and the BC drawings created. We previously had quotes from 9 on the original plans before we had to make changes to get through planning. Of these one was discounted as they never got back to me about changing their set specifications, one because they wouldn't use metal web joists insisting that they only used I-joists, another due to extortionate costs and one more because of costs although not as excessive the ones that made the shortlist but just enough for us to make an easy decision not to include them. That left 5 for us to get updated quotes on the approved planning documents. We are going for an open panel system and I will be fitting the insulation to help reduce costs; even though this will extend the build time the savings are substantial enough to justify it. With those quotes we discounted another due to their location and narrowed it down to 3 local companies and MBC. MBC were by far the most expensive for an open-panel TF but they get such good reviews on here and we have friends that are using them we couldn't discount them out of hand, but in the end we couldn't justify the extra cost when we weren't getting from them what they excel at, i.e. factory fitted insulation and promised air tightness levels. to give them credit they were completely upfront about it and completely understood the decision. So that left just 3 local-ish companies to choose from. We visited sites from each company to see their work and after that, although it wasn't easy, there was one clear winner and that was Flight Timber (https://flighttimber.com) based in Essex. We were very impressed with the quality of the build we visited and are very happy with how they've conducted themselves during the negotiations. So we signed the contract and paid a deposit. Since then they've been doing great work in getting the TF design done and liaising with the architects to finalise everything. That has now been completed and it's all with the structural engineer to do the basement/foundation calculations and drawings. Structural Engineer For the structural engineer we had 3 quotes from firms that the architects use, one from a friend of a friend and 2 from recommendations from the buildhub hive mind. We are having a basement and so this was a consideration and needed someone who could provide us what we needed. One of those requirements was an insulated slab foundation under the basement and the arms of the house. There was quite a discrepancy on costs between the 6 quotes and a couple were easy to discount as they were so much more than the others. So from the remaining 4 and after much consideration and communication we decided to go with TSD as they have a great reputation for insulated slabs, are highly recommended by many on here and their price was very competitive! So far, they've only been working on the design since the start of the week, I've been very impressed with the communications and their open-mindedness to my ideas and requirements. I made a decision (doesn't really require it's own heading) to ditch the idea of using block and beam for the lid of the basement and will be using hollow core precast slabs. Sadly though, after the SE spoke to a supplier it was obvious that they wouldn't span our basement at a reasonable thickness without internal structural walls (which we were trying to do without) and so we've resigned ourselves to having load bearing walls in the basement, otherwise costs could easily have gotten out of hand by going for thicker precast slabs, thicker foundations and thicker external basement walls to all accommodate the extra weight of the thicker slabs. so be it, I'm sure it's not the last concession we'll need to make to save money. Civil Engineer we are creating a new entrance to our plot from the road that will go over a ditch and so requires a culvert. so we decided to hire a civil engineer to plan and manage that, the drainage, driveway levels and water course discharge. we only got 3 quotes (it's my magic number for quotes) all from companies that the architects deal with and simply chose the one that wrote the best proposal and the costs were reasonable trusting that the architect's recommendation for each company was good enough for us. Windows and Doors This was a huge decision for us and caused a lot of brain power to try and work out who best to go for with spreadsheets being created to compare the various companies. We have a lot of glazing (about 120m2) and we want triple glazed alu-clad units. We approached 7 companies initially, visited lots of self-build shows to get a feel of the windows to help us to decide. We did consider IdealCombi for full alu windows but in the end our desire to have timber internally won and we didn't proceed with them. We discounted a few others due to costs and in the end it came down to Internorm and Norrsken. Internorm windows are so nice but they are so expensive; despite this we thought we could potentially justify the extra cost but the reviews of the supplier on here put a dampener on them as the last thing we wanted was to pay a load of extra money for windows that we didn't get any sort of support for when things go wrong. We visited the Norrsken showroom in Poole and were very impressed with the windows, doors and sliders and I couldn't find any bad reviews on here for them. The price was very good and so we signed on the dotted line and paid our deposit. We are very happy with our decision and the money we saved over going with Internorm will pretty much pay for our kitchen! External Blinds With all the windows we are having I was worried about overheating, especially after reading some of the issues other forum members have had with solar gain. We needed to make a decision on these before the TF design was completed so that they could be built in to the frame and are then hidden from view. So, external blinds were on the cards and needed to be researched and a decision made posthaste. I've posted elsewhere about my experiences with Roma blinds so I won't repeat that here. In the end I came across Warema blinds which look good and seem to do what we would need them to and found 2 London based Warema suppliers to get quotes from. Both were so similar in price it was hard to choose between them. In the end, after my company house checks (which I do on all people I wish to do business with) it looked like one of the companies had grown their business really well over the last 5 years when looking at their accounts that I decided to take a punt on the smaller guy and went with Corner Star Aluminium. Only time will tell if I made the right decision on that one. MVHR This is a subject that I have done a ton of reading on here in the forums and also posted a few times on the subject. the whole 1 or 2 unit debate is real but I really would like a single unit solution. I got 5 quotes (one through the architect and 4 off my own research). BPC wouldn't do a single unit saying that the largest unit they do is for a 350m2 house but our house is 450m2 and so we need 2 units. I felt that they're just sizing on Part F calculations and the manufacturers own statements regarding house size for unit size and didn't take running at Passivhaus levels that most on here feel that running their MVHR units at is fine. Also, they do sell bigger units, e.g. the Airflow DV245, so they could do a single unit but I just got the feeling that they couldn't be bothered to consider another option. so they're not getting my business. CVC were just too expensive and I didn't trust the company the architects asked to quote as they didn't give any details as to the ducting etc that they'd use (and also were selling a 2 unit solution). so it came down to PAUL Scotland and Enhabit, both of which were offering a single unit solution (Zehnder Q600 with 90mm ducting). Pricing was very similar so in the end it came down to location again (although a price reduction did help!) and Enhabit won. the deposit will be going over today and then they can crack on with the design. Others I'm sure there are loads of other smaller decisions we've made, like external finishes for the discharge of planning conditions etc, and I know there will be hundreds more to come as we move forward with the build including ASHP, Solar PV, UFH, DHW, RWH, floor coverings, tiles, lighting, home automation and so on. The next big decision will be the groundworks company to do the culvert, driveway, foundations and basement. Once I have the SE plans and designs I can approach the companies I've shortlisted to get detailed quotes and can carry on with the decision making. I have ended up having to make a list of decisions to be made there are so many. that way I can tick them off when they get done as it was getting to the point that it seemed they were never ending. at least this way I can see what has already been done and can see the list getting smaller as we progress. thanks for reading. ?

Now you know why I left!!,!!!!

I have a gym in basement. Running machine, rower and free weights. Used to use the running machine a lot until I transitioned to outside running. Was like Bikram Yoga but I figured it wouldn't do me any harm

Given your username, are you sure it's a golf club?

We invented technology. Wireless, telephony, radar tracking, high pressure steam, pasty, missile guidence, safety lamps, oxygen, surfing, rebranding pilchards to sardines, Fleetwood Mac, Kristin Scott Thomas and seagulls. And cute blonde Celts and want to meet people that they are not related to. What has Bristol invented, apart from slavery, obesity and diabetes.

@canalsiderenovation Hey on the upside you're in now. Suggest two diagnostic approaches. 1/ Ask everyone .. again, if they have "done something they should not have done" in the shower.." Explain that you have been on BH and unless they come clean you will find out and make it public... if that fails..(and it probably will as I bet you have already explored this) then option 2. 2/ Buy a plunger, one of the ones that act like a bike pump may be the thing. Get a big drum of warm water (not boiling as you may crack the tray) pour it into the tray to get a head of water say 50m m in the tray. Plunge like your life depends on it. Report results here.