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There is an art to filing those threads square. I'm a dab hand at it! ? Brass splinters are 'orrible btw.

I only ever did that once when bodging a wrong fitting and it was for my own house.

Is this supply and exhaust for an MVHR? If so, this is very small diameter duct for a whole of house ventilation system. What is going in, and what is it doing?

September I believe

He's fitted another one today and siliconed it all, told us to leave it for now and he'll pop back tomorrow and check it's all fine. Got the part he took off so if old plumber starts kicking off and saying there was nothing up with it then I'll save it as 'evidence'. If he wants a fight he's picked the wrong person!

In the cloud? That's some serious upload bandwidth you'd need. Not practical for me.

Engineer

Use 160mm internal corrugated sewer pipe and foam in place and then foam the inlet and exhaust in place when you have it in your hand. Using 160mm corrugated is much stronger and will take the impact from the concrete pour.

I've found HikVision to be reliable, and very easy to set up. I have the DS-7716NI-K4 NVR, which is 4 years old now so may well have been replaced, and a range of 4Mb to 8Mb cameras. The 7700 Series NVR has space for 4 internal HDD. I think the 7600 is similar functionality, but only space for 2 HDD. It has an integral PoE Switch that makes the camera setup very plug-n-play. If you have any cameras over 100m from the NVR then you need a PoE Switch local to the camera. There's lots of options for viewing the cameras live and recorded, either directly off the NVR with an attached screen, from PC/laptop via a web browser or phone/tablet via a few different Apps. There's probably too much choice in HikVision cameras, until you start to tune in on their model numbers and what it means. Definitely worth doing a plan view drawing of the property and work out where to best place the cameras, and what focal length lens is best for each position. Get the right camera for each location, even if that means waiting because something is not in stock. I feel the IR distance is a bit optimistic, I suggest always going for the next up for what you think you need, ie go for the 80m if you want 50m of illumination and 50m if you want 30m. Don't expect too much out of movement detection from the outside cameras, shadows from clouds and leaves will constantly give false positives. Much better to put PIRs nearby and use the alarm function on the NVR to then send you images from certain cameras when the PIR gets pinged. I use the same PIRs for cameras an outside flood lights.

Whilst I don't have personal experience of your situation to draw upon I wouldn't consider anything but the 150mm outer duct option. It's only 12.5mm all the way round which seems ideal for the likes of expanding foam or similar, and of course gives you a bit of wriggle room for accommodating differences in nominal pipe sizes.

Has that been invented yet? Seriously though, we have discussed and considered this. But if/when our boiler dies on us we'd prefer to switch to combi, which is why we don't want to invest more than necessary in the current system. Thanks for the thought though.

To answer your original question I would measure 100mm out from the wall, or finish wall if possible to gauge where that will be. As another mentioned 200mm is quite satisfactory too, or anywhere inbetween. The reason for this is so that you avoid coving the pipe with the final buidup of the wall, or hit the pipe with carpet griper (I'd still glue these anyway) or anything else that is up against the wall, e.g. skirting. In otherwords it is to give you the perimeter around the edge to avoid pipes conflicting with structure and any fixings and heat isn't needed any closer than that, especially on a screeded floor as the screed spreads the heat out the best.

If you reverse your stairs it will give a nicer impression coming into the house, rather than walking down the hall and back on yourself. I’m assuming the house faces south and being elevated is it exposed to extremely of weather both sun and storms. If so best to have your main bedroom at back where extremities of weather won’t disrupt your sleep as much. Ideally have cooler rooms as bedrooms. I know this from my experience we have a large glazed south facing bedroom and it gets very hot. And I’m in Scotland, I know the temptation is to have bedroom with a best view but like I said your more likely to appreciate view from dining kitchen living space. just my opinion. Your house

CW glands = SWA ( steel wire armoured ) exterior type glands. You must use SWA for the backbone of this arrangement. Wiska is a make of good quality robust junction boxes. Wago connectors are modern replacements of choc block ( screw down terminal blocks ) as you aren’t supposed to have them anywhere where access to them is difficult or impossible. Wago’s are considered maintenance free. Stuffing glands are cable entry glands which you tighten up to make a weathertight ( not waterproof ) seal onto flexible cable. Use SWA to go box to box, then use as short as possible pieces of HO5 flex to go the actual fittings. Piranha nuts are larger nuts that the ones supplied with the SWA, and have an Allen head grub screw to make off the Earth cable to. That is often easier ( as it is more compact ) to use than ‘frying pans’ aka banjos which also come with the SWA gland pack. They need nuts and bolts through them to clamp onto a lug which is fitted to the Earth wire. Quite a convoluted method vs the piranha nuts. Google these things to see for yourself.

I'd have another Bernstein pan in a heartbeat. They offer what they term "NANO protection". https://bernstein-badshop.com/toilets/wall-mounted-wc

Hi Mark, Thanks for the reply Not below the footing, including the row you can see in the pic there is another below this and then it steps out again for another two deep and then that is on top of concrete which I can't confirm how deep it is but deeper than 6", although the house needs a lot of work where it has been neglected for so long it does seem very well built - was early 1900.

They are just electrical resistance heaters which don't heat the stuff you want warm. They rely on public ignorance of science.

Spookily enough one of our toilets (not expensive) has just developed a cracked glaze in the pan , I thought it just needed cleaning but the glaze has definitely cracked so it will need replacing at some time.

My worry is that's exactly what the plumber did last time to 'fix' it. A local guy has kindly offered to pop in to take a look FOC on his way home, someone who actually sorted out the 70s shower and toilet when we moved in to get it working whose details I lost and did a temporary fix for us who I wish we would have used for the whole house instead of going with this guy instead!

I am going to suggest there is no such thing as a grade 1 toilet and a grade 2, 3 etc. in terms of a marketable grading, maybe within a factory certainly. Perhaps it would be like saying a Clio is a grade 3 car and a BMW 5 series is a grade 1 - it doesn't really work that way but we all know a BMW is going to have far better build quality, will go on longer and is frankly a better car. So buy a £45 toilet in B&Q and you get what you pay for. What you notice about hotels and restaurants is they always use the likes or Armitage Shanks etc. I am sure if you called them up and explained what you are talking about they would be able to tell you the difference between the quality they make vs a £45 pan - however, like most of the better brands, they had to compete in the cheaper markets, BMW brought out their 1 series and Armitage Shanks probably does a budget cheap pan, so do your homework and shop about but don't listen to sales personnel!

I don't think there is a formal grading system, at least not that consumers can reference. I suppose some factories that make WC for several different brands may offer different grades to them.

If the ground conditions are suitable, 300mm depth of concrete would be fine. I think 200mm is regarded as the minimum acceptable but must be deep enough not to be affected by frost.

Okay, so with the bowl in place, run a tap continuously and look for exactly which of the several joints in the wast fitting is actually leaking, you only need to fix the one that is leaking.

A cut joint to the floor is also not great, first time it gets damp it will swell up. Unless they take time to properly seal it then clear silicon it to the floor with a very thin clean bead.

Trap doesn’t look to be straight ..!!

I did that at our last new build and it wasn't a problem.

Why not, I have two outside taps coming off before it enters the house.

Coincidence or not, but I’ve just mentioned Duravit. They do a coating called WundaGliss ( spelling may be wrong ) which does what you’re looking for. I would bet that other brands offer similar coatings / refinery. Some brands to consider would be Duravit, Geberit, HansGrohe, Grohe, Vado, V&B and possibly RAK.

Glaze is pretty smooth, the thickness may vary with quality. But a wipe of a good car polish inside the bowl will make even shiny glaze shinier and stop things from sticking

I don’t know of anything saying you can’t tee off before the main property …unless you were going before a meter.

You don't say what you are looking for eg 2g, 3g, upvc, ally frames, ally covered wood etc. If cost is a driver then eg dark grey upvc is surprisingly good. If you are looking locally then at least go and talk to Eurocell, who are based in the Midlands near where I live. There are also very local / regional suppliers everywhere, if cost is a real driver. F

We all f’up tbh but it’s not about the f’ups (although we’d all like for them not to happen) but how they’re dealt with that tells the story.

House? Roof trusses at 600 centres? No attic conversion? Mostly to keep bedrooms at a sane sleeping temperature and knock the edge off living room temperature? With the benefit of hindsight: I'd get a single split with a compact ceiling cassette. Stick that in the upstairs landing ceiling. Refrigerant pipework runs through attic and down an outside wall. Condensate drain runs up a little (they have lift pumps inside them) then drops down into the bathroom or tees into an outside soil stack. Doors open upstairs during the day. A/C cools the bedrooms. Doors closed at night. A/C will cool the staircase and rooms off it.if it didn't already do so during the day. Works best with an open plan downstairs. You don't want, or need, individual coolers in each room in a UK climate. They're overkill. They're also noisy and bulky and draining the condensate is a pain. (no lift pumps so you're almost guaranteed to be running it outside) Also blinds. Also a pergola and some grape vines for downstairs. There's a reason all southern grandads have vines. I have an a2a split with wall mounted indoor unit downstairs because attic conversion and because there wasn't a neat route for the lines to get to a wall mounted unit in the upstairs landing in my place and I'd just renovated before deciding that I wanted one. I'll may end up reinstalling to the upstairs landing anyway and surface running the pipework. Or sleeping in the living room on the very worst nights!

You are correct the VB needs to return down the walls It’s to keep you airtight I definitely wouldn’t use polythene Ive stripped so many ceilings out that have sweated because of using Polythene I always use DuPont Airguard Control Unless instructed otherwise More expensive at £100 a roll

Well we finally started on 23rd of June and the groundworks are done ✔waste and water drains are in and quite a bit of (un budgeted) stone everywhere, brickies start tomorrow morning . I know many who have had ,and those who are having issues with builders ( and you have my sympathy) are quite right to call them out on this forum but i would like to say so far the trades have been spot on so credit where credit is due .

I used wickes once, the customers choice, but quite a few items were missing or wrong, took them ages to replace (took the customer quite a few phone calls/not a stock item!). Howdens kept everything in stock and never questioned mistakes/damage and prompt replacement. They did the same fir me in another town, perhaps I was lucky, can only speak as I find! I did a mates kitchen in Hereford last year (as a favour as I am retired), when I unwrapped the fridge it had a little dent in the door, I rang the depot, they had to get one from another town but it was delivered the next day. Young chap was taking the old one away, I offered to help and pointed out I had cut the box/straps , as he picked it up it fell out of the box onto the concrete drive breaking the door hinges and an even a bigger set of dents ?. Oops

Oh yes, my local branch was really good to me, I used another once as it was nearer my customer and they could not give a sh1t!!!

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A screw through the air tight layer is okay. If by chance it misses the stud, do bot remove it, leave it there filling the hole and just fit another one. Pre drill the studs at 450mm and 1150mm above finished floor level to allow for cables, or leave small gaps in the studs at that height.

I wondered if the pipe is (also?) a tad too high, i.e the hole through the wall should have been drilled a bit lower? (Just like the one in my kitchen that slopes uphill a tad...don't know who did that... ?).

I’m tempted to say B&Q toilets are shit? But like most things You get what you pay for Villeroy and Bosch being one of the better and more expensive