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This blog is for me to look back over time to see how things have changed and to assure myself that we are making some progress, albeit very slow. I appreciate all help and friendly comments, but appreciated that this is not an exciting blog. Looking through my diary for the last month it seems to say, work / work / work and not on the conversion. Moving to a new factory seems to entail lots of extra hours. Good to add some OT to the budget, but by the time the taxman etc. have their cut it's not as much as hoped. Anyway, this weekend 7th / 8th August is the server move which means the rest of the office staff can move so one more busy week with them and it should slow down. The factory is a different story, but that's not my responsibility. Anyway, back to the conversion. After looking in more detail when replacing some blocks we realised that the crack in the middle of the long back wall went from top to bottom and was not level, but luckily hadn't cracked the somewhat limited existing foundations. Thanks to BH and advice we went from the plan to stitch to removing the whole section to replace. So, from this To this, and hopefully soon the gap will be no more. To provide access for drainage and just add more space on the back, which is south facing, we have been removing rotten sleepers and the steel girders which held them up. This picture is back before everything started growing, now the whole bank has been covered in bracken as you can see in the picture above. So again, from this To this, which will ultimately be retained by gabions and cleared the whole length. Getting out all the tree stumps, rotten sleepers and metal girders is quite a labour intensive task, thanks for diggers. As of 2019 this stretch was completely impossible to get through with lots of weeds and tree branches growing through what is now our windows. I didn't think at the time to take any pictures, but I'm beginning to become part of my children's generation and trying to remember to take photos daily of everything that does and doesn't move. Not something that was ever done when I was young. So, onwards to August, building up the gap, extending some internal walls and if we can get a floor saw then breaking more concrete, hopeful at an auction tomorrow. Good luck to everyone on their build and back at the end of August. Jill

Hi, just starting our self-build journey. We have an old 50's bungalow in the Brecon Beacons National Park which is in need of some serious refurbishment. Having discussed with a local architect & builder friend, it sounds as if we'd be better off knocking it down & building new!!! So, we've started investigating timber-framed houses etc. & getting slightly excited about the journey ahead.

Order drawerline units and then remove the tops carefully with a decent sharp fine tooth saw. You will need to reinforce the top of the frames with the bars you remove. Also worth stabilising the top of the chipboard with some epoxy resin or quick set araldite.

Looks like a nice tidy job they are making should look great when the scaffolding comes down.

Try Roofmaker in Leicester - imho much nicer than Velux as there's no weird bump along the top of the frame, they are effectively frameless. Simon

Most of the brink manufacturers have closed there books till next year Lots of other materials effected The large house building companies have preordered much of what is being manufactured Its something we will have to put up with for now If it wasn’t Covid it would be Something else When we started our first build five years ago The kingspan factory burnt down Prices doubled and lead time lengthened Then Brexit kicked in

Thanks for that I had been wondering. It's 5 to 10 seconds of hammer, unlikely to occur in the middle of the night but even then I doubt it will disturb. 63mm up and in to the inspection chamber which is just a couple of metres and then standard soil pipe down and away. Wouldn't like to open the I/C when the pump is running! 63mm MDPE is a beast to work with. Ended up capping and filling with boiling water to get it malleable enough to wrestle were I needed it to go.

It seems to be highly variable Becca. Definitely order stuff as early as you can, if you have space to save it. You would also be better off going for supply and fit contracts with people where possible... Esp timber, tiles, flooring, doors etc. People in the trade have better knowledge and get preferential treatment from builder's merchants

Nothing! Atmosphere will cause oxidation and UV can fade paint but Alu itself isn’t affected.

I was concerned you had already paid, tell him you will accept £200 for the shoddy job you need to put right

63mm is standard, you can get a 63 to 110 coupler.

How the fossil fuel era ends – and four possibilities for what follows Ever cheaper wind and solar power means the decline of coal, oil and gas is unstoppable. The trillion-dollar question is how, and how quickly, their demise comes about ENVIRONMENT 4 August 2021 By Graham Lawton David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images When will the fossil fuel era end? While we don’t know exactly how the energy transition will pan out, the fossil fuel age is ending as it began, as we learn to exploit a vast, cheap, easy-to-use energy resource that is self-evidently superior to the existing options. Now, it is wind and solar power. “The peak of the fossil fuel era is here or hereabouts,” says Kingsmill Bond, a strategist at energy think tank Carbon Tracker. “The plateau is going to last a bit, but then go off a cliff.” How high the cliff is and what is at the bottom depends on which of the scenarios available to us we choose. For the various fossil fuels, however, it will be first in, first out. “Coal is finished,” says Andreas Goldthau at the University of Erfurt in Germany. Regulatory pressure, changing economies and the competitiveness of renewables are doing for old king coal. Energy special How we can transform our energy system to achieve net-zero emissions Fatih Birol interview: Using energy isn’t evil – creating emissions is How to understand world energy use – in 10 graphs Even where governments have tried to prop up or revive coal, as in Poland and the US under President Trump, they have failed. “The question is not how coal ends,” says Goldthau. “It’s more about how we manage the transition to give workers and mining communities a smooth landing.” That’s especially relevant in China, India and Indonesia, the biggest remaining coal-burners. According to a road map by the International Energy Agency (IEA), often seen in the past as an apologist for fossil fuels, old-fashioned, dirty coal power should account for 1 per cent of global energy output at most by mid-century if we are to hit net zero. Oil will stick around for longer. “The reality is, the world is going to need oil for decades to come,” said Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub at the Climate Science and Investment Conference in New York in May. “There’s still going to be an oil market in 2050,” says Goldthau. “But it’s going to be much smaller.” The IEA forecasts a decline from 90 million barrels a day in 2019 to 24 million barrels a day in 2050, mostly driven by a switch to electric transport. This residual use of oil – to power some trucks, ships, planes and hard-to-decarbonise heavy industries, and to make petrochemicals and plastics – will be compatible with net-zero carbon emissions as long as we use carbon capture technology, says Goldthau. But even these uses will fall into the arms of the sun and air. “Slowly but surely, they are going to find alternatives to fossil fuels, though airplanes are going to be a massive headache and I think the last man standing is the plastics industry,” he says. Natural gas, now used extensively for domestic cooking and heating, electricity generation and in heavy industry, will follow the same declining trajectory as oil, albeit with a timeline that keeps it in the mix for even longer. According to the IEA road map, between now and 2050 gas demand will fall by just 55 per cent to 1750 billion cubic metres a day, replaced either by clean electricity or piped hydrogen gas. Exactly how and when the last drop of oil or whiff of gas is extracted is unknowable. But Carbon Tracker recently totted up the global potential of solar and wind and found that there is 100 times more renewable energy available than the world actually needs. Some 60 per cent of it can already be exploited economically, with that proportion rising to 100 per cent by 2030. Even big oil companies accept that their industry is slowly dying: Shell predicts an expiry date around 2070. Bond sees a day when people visit former oil refineries at the weekend, much as we now sip cappuccinos next to the gentrified canals and warehouses of a bygone industrial age. “Even the IEA, the great defender of the fossil fuel incumbency, is saying no new stuff, peak fossil fuel in 2019, decline from here on down,” he says. “If that isn’t the end of the fossil fuel era, I don’t know what is.” FOUR ENERGY FUTURES In 2019, Goldthau and his colleagues suggested four ways the energy transition could play out geopolitically – though, as ever, no one can say for certain which way things will go. 1. Big green deal A global consensus on the need for the energy transition leads to international agreement and close cooperation between nations. Clear policy signals encourage investors to take their money away from fossil fuels and put it in low-carbon technologies. Green finance deals help lower-income nations and petrostates with the transitions they need to make. This is the only scenario that hits net zero by 2050, the team concludes. 2. Dirty nationalism National energy security wins out over tackling climate change. Nations develop inward-looking policies that favour renewable energy sources where they are cheaply available, but also exploit whatever fossil-fuel resources there are. Global markets fragment, breaking the momentum towards a global green energy transition. Efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C fail. 3. Technology breakthrough There is significant progress towards net zero as wind and solar keep getting cheaper, aided by further breakthroughs in battery and grid technologies. But the two tech leaders, China and the US, increasingly vie for global supremacy through green tech. They refuse to share technology and key resources such as rare earth metals, dividing the world into blocs. Europe and Russia become increasingly marginalised. 4. Muddling through A lack of cooperation and planning mean the world fails to limit warming to 1.5°C. However, renewables do get cheaper and grow fast enough to bankrupt many big fossil fuel companies, causing financial chaos. Different parts of the world, such as the EU, the US and China, increasingly follow their own agendas, with existing economic, geopolitical and energy imbalances reinforced. Ash from fossil fuel burning seeps into waste water at a thermal power station in Belchatów, Poland Kacper Kowalski/Panos Pictures EFFICIENCY’S THE WORD The more that can be done to limit the amount of energy we use, the more feasible the task of converting the world’s energy systems to meet a target of net-zero emissions by 2050 will be. The International Energy Agency’s recent report on how to reach net zero envisages overall global energy use falling 8 per cent by 2050, despite serving a global economy twice as big and 2 billion more people than today. Achieving this will require a string of measures to improve efficiency and check demand. This means everything from insulating houses better, to reduce energy requirements during cold winters when there is less solar power available, to making appliances more efficient and encouraging people to drive less even if they have electric cars. The danger is that big increases in energy demand from some sectors, such as video streaming, cryptocurrencies, gaming and private jet flights, could cancel out any gains. Many companies justify using more energy because they get it from renewable sources. But if increased energy demand is met using existing renewable energy sources that could otherwise be displacing fossil fuel generation, it doesn’t get us any closer to net zero. To make progress, companies must build additional wind or solar projects. A few, such as Apple, are now doing this.

The regs in England don't specify a distance. Some you can install indoors!

Mine is approx 5 metres from the house and has been in for just over a year and is located in / under the lawn. I have never heard it running and there is absolutely no smell coming from it. The drain run is ventilated with a soil / vent pipe at the house. The holding tank is approx 1000 litres so it only pumps once about every 2 or 3 days. The 'contents' travel about 80 metres to a sewer connection. No specific sign off was required. (in England).

It is pretty much exactly the same information as it is in the app just presented in a slightly different way. You can still see monthly or daily use and tarrif etc.

I know the pain of balancing paid work and building all too well. It's never easy. You'll find there is progress but it will be everyone else that see it first. Good luck!

I have mine just 4 metres from the back door. Not ideal but that's the best I could do. I've never notice any smell coming from it although it is ventilated much further away. Practically silent when pumping, however when the pump stops there is some water hammer that reverberates through the soil pipes into the house. I'm hoping this will improve when soil pipes are properly insulated and toilets and water traps in place.

Yes, that is likely to have prevented it. I know we wrap our pipe in black wrap to prevent UV exposure and are able to store this outside for this reason.

Hello Lawrence If the AV system is a permanent fixture then I'd stop the pipework short and not heat under it. From an underfloor heating point of view all you do is save a little pipe, however you may need to tighten the spacing a little bit to put the amount of pipe needed in the room to sufficiently heat it, your designs should confirm this for you. If it isn't a permanent fixture or if it comes to you moving house, then not piping under it will leave a 50cm cold area of the floor. It will be waying up the benifits of not heating your AV system (I can't imagin this would be too bad for the AV system) vs having a cold area of floor if you decide to move the AV system or change anything down the line. Re the feet, if it is 10mm or less this will heat the AV cabinet a bit and will also act like a rug over the floor in terms of heat output in the area covered by the cabinet. If it is more than 10mm then this becomes significantly reduced the higher it is. Trust this Helps R.

I don't think they are shown. But crop burning and deforestation accounts for 7.7%. You can make an estimate if you know the area and type of growth there.

This is about where we are with global emissions. If you think shipping and flying is a problem, don't look at road transport.

Good to remember that there are rectangular ducts available and reduced size ( 75mm and 50mm ) round ducts too. CVC Direct supplied me with 225mm x 25mm for a project where we managed to hide the equivalent of 92mm round duct in the 35mm service void of an MBC TF build. Not a single bit of boxing in anywhere. They do supply only + design, or supply and fit and, I use them in both capacities with exceptionally good results. Great team and a fantastic pre / after sales support service too. @luz624 Just read that it's for a flat here, so without plans to show rooms vs outside walls etc it's a little tricky to offer much more advice. Do you have plans you can upload?

MVHR is a game changer in a flat - I have built 92 of then some with and some without. Never had a condensation whinge where we have installed it. Solarcrest have done our stuff (and are doing my house although a 3,000 sq. ft. house doesn't really call for it tbh). Solarcrest supply, install and commission the lot with a 7 year warranty. Others seem to supply and point to a installer - there have been issues for some who have gone down this route.

Hi. Why not go for individual MVHR units per room? link

A 'standard' mvhr system takes up a lot of space when you factor in the unit, manifolds, silencers and the fact that you need ducting between all the components. Maybe have a look at something like this: https://fresh-r.eu/en/ No idea if it works or what the cost is, but on paper might be a solution!

The osb will do a lot to stiffen this up but your SE would need to sign it off.

They look a lot like rebranded Sunamps? Same with Fisher Future Heat iirc.

Store at 45-48C, screw the legionella cycle, and go no thermostatic. Or ask the OEM to confirm approach temperature. If less than 5C you're fine (it'll do 41-43C at the outlet which is too hot to bear) unless you have shower pipework buried in a masonry wall (so it heats the wall and is cooled en route) Legionella dies from 45C+ by the way - it's just that kill time that varies. Provided that you keep the mains fed insulated cylinder sat on wood hot all the time - rather than filling a vented cylinder sat on cd concrete with legionella infested lukewarm water from an attic header tank at 37C and hoping to kill it before it gets used - you're fine. Guidance (there are no regs) caters for worst case scenario.

No such thing as a daft question, being daft is not asking! So you are a realist!. we are a nosy bunch but very interested so bring it on.

I think the best way to do the spots is to seal the insulation above and create a service cavity between it and the plasterboard. Alternatively you could seal the individual lights, I’d like to hear from someone who abs tried this though. At the sides I’d tape the PIR to the joists and make sure the plasterboard is sealed at the floor joint before you put down flooring or skirting boards.

Wall behind the bath . Nice flat screen tv that has a long multi jointed arm so you can bring it out and have it face you when in the bath ?

I think we are going to just paint the wall but then add some photos into acrylic from our travels. We have a few photos onto acrylic - they look amazing. My wife got this one printed for my birthday and it's in our cloaks bathroom. I took it in Colombia and the colours look great.

I got some a few years ago from Vastern Timber. May be worth getting a quote. It is quite splintery so wear gloves.

You can get it ready painted. I don't remember where we got ours from but 14 years later I've only just arranged for someone to repaint it. Edit: Buildbase sell ready painted but shop around.. https://www.buildbase.co.uk/timber-doors-sheet-material/pse-cladding/outdoor-cladding/pre-painted-sawn-featheredge-cladding-black-32x175mm-x-43m-100010914-2832383

The last six weeks have been a bit of a slog but have finely got the roof finished, PV fitted and first floor cladding and windows fitted. Scaffolding came down yesterday 3 weeks longer than planed big hole in wallet. First floor chipboard flooring down so will start on the ground floor windows and studwork. But now back to real work as well.

Welcome Keith SE Cornwall, you can smell Devon there. So what do you want to know about the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions and embodied energy of different building methods. It really breaks down into just two parts. The carbon dioxide equivalent emissions and embodied energy of the construction materials, divided by how long they will last, and the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of running the place. Then you will find that a stick built timber frame with lots of cellulose/wood fibre insulation is the best, and it is your skill set.

Invent time machine and don’t inform council of defects

There is a good chance that the UV exposure will have degraded the oxygen barrier in the pipe.

That family was the perfect customer : super polite, thoughtful, appreciative, perceptive.... ' Ahhh, well its not just the window cleaning we appreciate, with you we don't have to worry about security...' That was true, as was the following exchange during the post Christmas clean ... with a wink to her husband, a RN frigate captain, I said, "I see maam, we've both been passed over in the New Years Honors List ... again..." " Nay, nort quite, Ian, nort quite"... In with both feet again eh lad? I could have checked the list I suppose. Without prompting Mrs X would just have continued smiling quietly. "A GCMG for my husband ... better than my OBE by some margin, what? " I beamed , delighted but also puzzled; what the Hell was a GCMG? Reading my reaction, "God Calls Me God", she said helpfully. "But His authority does not extend to this hice, I can assure you. " Husband and I both winced and got on with it.

Same problem. When I’m in the bathroom sometimes I miss the toilet. - straight in the bath trap . Never dries out now ; but does smell a bit funny .