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My intuitive feeling is that separate HPs for Space and Water heating. They are different things, at different times and at different temperatures. My thinking is that you can get a small, but better, modulating one for space heating and a non modulating one for water heating. The reasons being is that weather effects both the HPs performance and the house heating load, but water heating is generally quite fixed in the amount of energy needed. So you can find HPs that better suit the two separate tasks, rather than compromise. And you could divert, via a buffer tank the DHW HP to space heating during exceptionally cold spells. But if it is worth it financially, I am not so sure.

The simplicity of a simple switch. I understood how they worked when I was 3, and still understand how they work now. Purely out of interest, how many people here have had cataracts? Certainly made a difference on my view of lighting. I have a vision of a wise sage looking for water, using only rear stays from a bicycle.

Ok. This is embarrassing but here goes. After some considerable time I finally had an airtightness test done today. I wasn’t expecting a great result because it seemed almost impossible to impress upon the builder and architect what was required and working away during the week I just couldn’t be on site enough to see what was being done. Anyway the guy turned up today and we got a number just below 8. I did notice that we had missed dealing 3 of the MVHR vents so maybe the number would have been 7.5 if that was done. We tried sealing them by sealing the MVHR filters but that didn’t work. I was t expecting 1 as a result but expected a lot better than this. The weird thing is that I have sealed most of the obvious draughts and gone around with an IR camera. I keep a very close eye on our gas consumption. Hot water and the pool use 100kWh a day. When the temperature is around 8-11C outside we use 150kWh for heating and at the recent temps of around 3-4C that goes up to 250kWh. This is giving me gas consumption for heating of around 40,000kWh a year so £900. This is less than my last house which was half the size and 15 years old. So by no means high. So considering the gas consumption and no draught issues maybe I shouldn’t worry but we went around to find the worst draughts. A few things surprised me. The walls with stacks in them got very cold. After he left I check in the loft and the holes in the ceiling were not sealed. They go into a small area of cold loft. The insulation covered them and the loft is not ventilated so I can’t usually feel any air movement up there. But once we depressurised the house air was flowing and getting pulled in around the pipes. I can easily seal this. We also found one gap I had missed sealing in the eaves where there was a gale blowing. The other surprising thing is that we have wooden floors upstairs. When we moved in I checked everywhere for draughts. They were only in a couple of places and I sealed them. But again with the house depressurised it drew cold air through the join in loads of places there has never been an issue. The last big issue I think is two small areas of cold loft off our bedroom. I have been in one of these areas and it is the only place in the house where the top of the cavity is exposed and you can feel wind in the loft. I wonder if air was being drawn through the cavity then into walls and roof spaces connected to these areas. It might have accounted for a massive amount of the rest result. I will speak to the architect on Monday but I suspect that the top of these cavities should be closed irrespective of the impact on the test result. There is also one area where the WC is where I have had the builder take down the ceiling and seal stuff as there very obviously seems to be air getting in behind the walls but I have never beeen able to find the source. This was very obvious when we did the test So I have a poor result but yet heating bills are reasonable and there are no draughts. I will seal the stacks up next week and will have to mastic the skirting to the wooden floors which I had suspected would need done. But I think I need to get those cavities closed, annoyingly there is no access to one of the two areas. Moral of the story is do a test after the shell is built as it is quite difficult to fix now. I suspect I can get down to 4 or 5 but that will be it.

I think a few institutions, government agencies and architects have tried. None have worked as designed as the parasitic losses and large temperature differences in winter put a stop to this. But why try, get a HP and use energy that is already stored in the ground, water or air. My house needs around 25 kWh.day-1 in the depth of winter i.e. half of December, all off Jan and half of Feb. So around 1500 kWh. If I could store that in shortage heater bricks which have a SHC of around 2 kJ.kg-1.K-1 and charged them with solar thermal to 70°C, (actually does not matter how they are charged) but using a minimum draw off temperature of 40°C, I would need 90 tonnes of them. Around 30 m3. To reduce the losses to an average of 2 kWh.day-1, and assuming a cube for the store (3.1 m each side), the surface area would be a shade under 58 m2. Using a thermal conductivity of 0.02 W.m-1.K-1 for insulation, the insulation would need to be 0.62 m thick, that would increase the sides of the cube to 4.34 m, and the total volume to 82 m3. This would fill the ground floor of my house. And it would still not be enough in reality. So to store enough energy to run a house, you have to fill the house with storage.

Try being in a bungalow! ? I defaulted to "1" for mine, but moved it back to a mid point before linking to OP! & yes, this forum is a huge wealth of information. Always be mindful though, whilst this place is full of hugely knowledgeable & helpful people, kind enough to help & advise others... Don't forget most of them are also enthusiasts! Where their "normal" is a loooong step away from normal normal. I live my life on here trying to achieve better then normal, but accepting I am likely below average for buildhub!! ?

We also have a Grant Oil fired boiler although ours heats a TS which feeds UFH so it behaves differently. I don't think your boiler should shut down totally in the situation you describe. It should just cycle. Eg it should turn the flame off leaving the pump running until the flow temperature falls again. I wonder if the pump is turning off when it shouldnt? You could try turning down the dial on the boiler. This will make it cycle more but might avoid it getting so hot it locks up. Don't turn it down too much, you want it as high as possible without lockup occuring.

A good Architect can see things better in 3d, but surprisingly few can. Yes, I have been called a philistine many a time, for questioning how something is meant to be built...physics or funds not having being considered. Can you do this for 2/3 or half the cost of the quotes we have received? Yes but we have to start from scratch, and we will not work with the previous team who did this for you....pay them off. With Engineers there is more interest and willingness to discuss efficient ways of doing things (my contractor half of brain) BUT it is great working as a proper team with a skilled and interested Engineer and/or Architect. Challenges can become opportunities and still look good, or better.

Welcome. Sounds like you can tell us a lot from hands-on experience.

The design is yours. You commissioned and paid for it. Presumably you eventually got the drawings, but were they any use for the other parties? I (as Engineer and contractor) have had clients' architects erase all dimensions before handing over. Also many errors in both draughting and in being buildable. In any case we would always redraw in 3d as you have little idea if the drawings are correct. This was rightly an issue on our current 'Buildhub self-build'. Our appointed SE would not commit to using our Architect's drawings until seen. As they are Revit 3d he is now happy to do so, but I acknowledge his concerns. The whole point of detailed 3d designs is to share drawings and have one set of common information. The big companies do it and it works. Any consultant should be happy to share their drawings....it is a concern if they don't trust their own work.

Ours designed our previous build and has a few developments locally with multimillion pound homes Which he’s happy for us to look round and pinch ideas off Though we got on well with him the first time round and he always took our calls Even after we had paid him Probably the main reason for using him again

Trim it back flush IMO.

Has he listed everything included? If he is Chartered then this is likely to be a standard schedule by RIBA. Plus you would want some explanation of his thoughts on your project. Beware of 1. lots of other consultants he appoints and you pay for. (SE, QS, Planning) 2. choice of contractors, as his favoured ones might be great for him and expensive for you. but that also depends on his/your ability to schedule and manage. But if he is good at all aspects, including value, then the fee might be ok.

This is a useful tool to have a play around with. 100mm is actually 0.14, vs the build regs expectation of 0.25...which drops to 0.18 in next years uplift. So, in a nut shell...100mm is still very good & will give you a very warm house. 125mm is even better....150mm even better....etc etc....hardest point with all of this is when 'enough is enough'. Calculator (uvalue-calculator.co.uk)

Ok going from your pic in the other thread can you not just lift head height by a brick, 75mm. This will give you more than enough room for more insulation. You will have to go round and put a course of brick under any cills where the heights matter like if they are at a kitchen worktop area. Otherwise you can leave them as is and have slightly bigger Windows or build a course of brick to bring them up to the correct height. Or just leave it as it is and accept the higher heat loss into the ground.

Yep, I'm 100% in the same situation! And fully agree in terms of the impact only increasing long term with energy prices. We have 150mm specified (0.11) but there is a £4500 saving if we brought it down to 100mm....(0.18 I think).... we'll prob settle in the middle on 125mm for a £2000 saving for use in the countless other areas I want to try and put more money into. Especially more tangible areas like wanting vaulted ceilings, bigger windows, larger sliding doors etc etc. 100mm still achieves current building regs & in my research also looks like it will still exceed next year's building regs uplift as well. As ever more the merrier & I'd love to go uber insulated... But it becomes increasingly hard to convince myself & the wife when we look at the impacted value... Hence the "maybe another £10 cheaper per month!?" As we're a bungalow, we get hit even harder on sheer surface area to bleed heat through.... And cost to try and mitigate!

That's too much a black and white view. It may be wise to spend the £1000s now and be done with it. The £10s you're saving will only increase with time. You're insulating against more than heat loss, but energy price increases, shortages etc.

125mm should get you to 0.13, 150mm to get to 0.11. Reality is in this range of insulation your spending £1000s to save £10s.

The cheapest very-few-compromises setup they provide: Broadband router (not unifi, obviously) connected to the brains of the system: 1x https://eu.store.ui.com/products/udm-pro connected to a network switch https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-switching/products/usw-lite-16-poe which provides connection and power to 2x https://eu.store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-wireless/products/unifi-ap-6-lite

I submitted a section 80 to demolish a large disused garage on my plot. After 3 weeks I'd heard nothing from the council so I went ahead with the demolition as it was holding up progress & my groundworkers would have moved to another job otherwise. A week later received a response from the council asking when I intended to start the demolition. Sorry, already happened! But I did send them the demolition contractor's methodology statement & post-demolition report which showed everything was done properly. Never heard anything back from the council - my assumption is that they're too under-resourced to show much interest in my case.

Engineered wood is always more stable ?

Yes, but that is more to do with the energy input and the absorption. If you pump 800 W.m-2 into something that absorbs 95% of all the energy hitting it, it is going to get hot. Very different climates, why most of the studies are done in cloudless places. Go to undeveloped equatorial regions i.e. rain forests and the building style is very different. It is a balance, and non linear, between the heat capacity, shape, thermal conductivity, area exposed to energy inputs and outputs, it is not as simple as just mass. This is why there are no units for 'thermal mass'. Granite has a thermal conductivity of between 1.7 and 4 W.m-1.K-1 so yes, it does slow thermal transfer. But then Oak has a conductivity of 0.16 W.m-1.K-1. So it slows at least 10 times more. So even if, for the same raise in temperature stone stored the same amount of energy per unit mas or volume, which it does not, it also looses to the semi infinite heat sink that is the environment at a faster rate, leaving very little energy left to be transferred to the interior. Quite simply, if just adding mass to a building stabilised the temperature, we would all have been doing it for millennia. Part of the reasons that in the UK we think that adding mass helps is that we have an odd climate for our geographic location, stick the UK 1000km East and we would not be building in the same method. Find a low lying island 1000 km West and thing would be different again. There are also historic reasons that the UK likes 'brick', some go back 1800 years, other just 80.

Mine are engineered larch but Ali clad outside and remain fully dry.

I think mine moved because they were hard wood frames and all wood shrinks also expansion and contraction of different materials.

10mm masonry bit, cheap garden spray, box of gun foam and a decent gun and some patience ..! Drill holes about 150mm apart at probably 100mm from the timber line, then get the sprayer lance in the hole and give a decent squirt of water into the cavity. Follow with the foam gun and don’t be shy with the pressure and you’ll start to create an insulated line along the ridge as the foam creates a barrier. Other option is to get one of the blown bead installers to fill the whole wall - may not be that cheap though for such a small wall.

that is why I only went to80c -to restrict the evaporation of the water from both trays and as both had water the level in the trays at end of test were very much same as at beginning of test quoting you (thats Why storage heaters work.) which is why i know stone concrete are good heat store and will smooth out temp change

You likely have less extract vents than supply, so open them up a bit more! You also need to set the "Ckr Hood Supply" and 'Ckr Hood Extract" to 100%, even though you don't have that installed. (BPC advised me of this)

Unifi is their WiFi range: https://eu.store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-wireless Also available from a well known large on-line book store… We use an AP Lite on each floor of a concrete built house to allow WiFi continuity throughout.

Internals don’t count as planning doesn’t care. Back windows - if they are visible - may need full planning.

yeh they don’t - you can push it up tight and see if it will clip onto the outlet or just cut a short length of downpipe and solvent weld it to the running outlet and then fit the socket accordingly.

I think they want to see the drain runs, ie lines showing the pipes to and from the manholes and gullies.

Most of the commercial require a tap on stop bead That goes on the CUT edge of the board before it butts against the Ally window frame They are about £3 for a 3 mtre length

Mine never moved, no J beads, only used centre support in middle of 2400 wide windows and used dowels under those styles to take the weight but not on smaller windows. I did seal insulation used to close my cavities to rye frames and stuck the bound edges of plasterboard lining to the frame with decorators caulk. window frames are jointed together so should be strong in themselves none of my 1800 frames have moved, basically only screwed into the masonry , three each side

I forecast the exact same problem, cracks in plaster to window frame joint. I proposed using a stop bead and flexible caulk in the joint but was told it was not necessary, well they were wrong, nearly all windows cracked the plaster edge at this point and not only in a straight line. Sanding and filling followed on nearly all the windows. However when I built the porch I did use a stop bead on the plasterboard/window or door junction and had no problems. Even our Jeremy had the same problem with his windows. I fixed the stop bead to the plasterboard so the flexible caulk dealt with any movement.

when I was looking at solar thermal I did a test at home in the oven 2 containers one with water one with water and granite sand and 80c temp in oven the test was to see if I could use a large tank filled with water and rock to store a lot more heat -than water alone in same size tank-the down side was the limited heat input you could get from solar thermal -and then it also gives the heat out slower than just water -great if i had little geothermal vent to tap into or in arizona .LOL yes water heated up more and much quicker over the test period , a lot more but when i turned oven and then logged the temp drop the granite sand stayed well above ambient for along time compared to the water ,at least twice as long which is why I say concrete etc will act as a thermal store and level out temp changes in the building ,presuming its inside the insulated envelope ,which will make it also good in hot summers It also is why pass house designs often have an atrium with glass facing onto a solid wall to control big temp swings and I have seen some designs where they have holes this to me is why ICF buildings work as they slow the flow of heat in both directions all non poly systems have the insulation on the outside portion of the ICF wall for that reason and even poly types have the most of the insulation on the outside as well.

Hi @Pav cant help with re-mortgage with a PCC as we have not finished our build yet but our self build mortgage provider accepts them . As for price we have 11 inspections for £1500 + VAT , so just under 2k , we are on the Cams, Norfolk boarder.

I agree with most comments. Downlighters are getting a bit old-hat except for task lighting situations. Avoid the higher colour temps unless you're nostalgic about arc-welding. Make use of any natural overhang, hidden ledge etc. to run led strip. Consider embedding linear strip with diffuser in ceilings, corners etc. Use strips with tuneable colour for extra atmo. Also check out the larger format LED panels(e.g. 600mm x 600mm) for utility, garage, or 'big statement' lighting in kitchen. Lastly (and I really should kick myself for saying this) don't shy away from Chinese smart bulbs and strips using Smart Life (Tuya) as they often out-perform big brands at a fraction of the price. The trick is to buy one, give it try and if you don't like it - bin it and try a different one until you're happy. They're generally that cheap. I ❤️ Alexa (she lets me play around with her back-end)

My issue with the ones with non replacable lamps, is what happens in 5 years when one fails and identical replacements are not available? If you do go that route, buy plenty of spare fittings.

Same here. Our sparks were very keen on the non-replaceable ones. With your GU10s you can just swap out the lamp if you want it brighter / dimmable / new tech or higher efficiency.

OK, had my retest today. Improved from 7.9 to 5.55. I could probably have done the work to get below 5 given a bit more time and a lot more enthusiasm. The guy said that it was a surprisingly big improvement. From bad to mediocre! I found quite a few largish holes in places that were out of sight. I presume these were the main areas of improvement. I am not convinced it has actually made any material difference to gas usage. The one thing I did conclusively fix was the WC. It was consistently colder than the rest of the house and the heating ran a lot of the time in there during winter. Now the heating runs less than the adjacent hall.

The only LED failures I have had was several Philips LED Bayonet lights bulbs. considering they were a make I used to respect and were not cheap, very disappointing. I do NOT like the current trend to downlighters having non replacable lamps, and glad all of ours are GU10 fire rated fittings with LED lamps.

PIR sensor switch for downstairs loo. No more grotty pullcord!

What do I love about the lights here? When they're all off and I can't see the sh!t hole and amount of work needed!

i have been looking at the illbruck ME508 Duo tape (200mm) to be stuck onto the inside of the windows frames before they go in to the recess, like this best price i can find it for is here https://www.sealantsonline.co.uk/ProductGrp/illbruck-me508-duo-membrane-ew-f

I’m always amazed when “experts” tell you that you’re going to get damp coming into a building through an air gap, a beam and block floor and then 100mm of impervious insulation and finally into a screed later … Unless the floor is very uneven, the sand shouldn’t be required but should be on top of the beam and block and below the membrane. In reality if you sweep and clean the block surface there will be no issue. Should be : B&B DPM Insulation (with edge insulation) Slip membrane UFH Pipes Screed

I should have mentioned that, I reckon we use around 10% more gas on a windy day than a calm day, considering that around 40% of gas use is hot water/pool heating then that means heating is costing around 20% more. I am not sure I can get much more accurate a reading than that as the temperature might vary a bit etc, but we do definitely use more heat when it is windy. It is dot and dabbed (not what I wanted but I was told it would be too difficult to attach all the plasterboard to the Porortherm with screws), luckily the floors are concrete up and downstairs, so there are less paths for cold air. In the main it was coming out under the skirting on outside walls or walls that were attached directly to the outside walls, as you got further from the outside walls it diminished a lot. There was some air coming out from wall lights in the hall, but very small. All the sockets and light fittings seemed fine, however, I did notice that the sprinkler heads in the roof may be an issue, they are just in one room. We did use my FLIR camera to check the walls and ceilings after the blower had been on for 2.5 hours to see how much cold air was being sucked in behind. There were thankfully few issues where so much was being sucked in that the wall was getting cold. They tended to be right in the corner of rooms and not extend out(see pictures). The only exception to this is the kitchen, where even without a blower test I had noted that the corners of the square bays were cold above the ceiling using the IR camera before. This time the ceiling started to cool down and you could see the strapping. Here is the offending soil stack inside a wall in an ensuite, taken from both sides. As I say this has never been an issue. When I went up into the loft I had to remove a few hundred mils of rock wool to actually find the hold in the ceiling, so it may be that cold air doesn't get in at normal pressure levels. Also the cold isn't showing up over a large distance inside the wall, so it may be that air was getting drawn into the stack via plug holes and not actually via the roof. I suspect that in the kitchen I need to drill small hols in the corners of the ceiling and inject a little foam up behind the strapping if I can to seal the corners. I have been hoping not to have to do it as it will be messy.

We have polished concrete over a structural slab. We had to go for 65mm rather than the 75mm minimum suggested, and have ended up with a couple of cracks. I haven't tried filling them yet, but they aren't the end of the world. A few things: As I said, the minimum is 75mm - thicker is recommended. That's a lot of concrete if you already have a structural slab underneath, but hey, concrete looks cool! The polishers can only get so close to walls. We did ours before plaster and skirting boards. Even so, there's a clear region along every wall that was polished by hand tools rather than the big grinders, and this does look different, and in a few places is slightly undulating. If you're happy with this (we are - we think it adds character), it isn't an issue. If you aren't happy with a different-looking edge, then the pouring and polishing needs to be done before the frame goes up. That allows the whole surface to be polished, so you get edge to edge consistency. You then have the not-insignificant problem of protecting the floor for the rest of the build, including while the frame goes up. Whether you get polished concrete before or after the frame goes up, you will be protecting it for a long time. We used Correx throughout the ground floor. Even though we taped it at every edge, we can still see dark lines in some areas where the joins were, two years after moving in. Also, dirt and dust finds its way in, and can cause scratches. Polished concrete companies get their concrete from local suppliers. In our case, we wanted to see a small amount of exposed aggregate visible after polishing. We really didn't want black/dark aggregate, but the company couldn't/wouldn't make any guarantees about aggregate colour. Was fine in the end, but a risk, albeit slight (I've never seen black aggregate anywhere near where I live. We have numerous sand and gravel pits nearby and they all have light stone). Concrete can be tinted to whatever colour you like. We wanted something a little darker than one of the standard tints and the company was happy to come up with something custom. Again, it was to our risk whether we were happy with the colour when it was down - if the concrete had been yellower, for example, that would have changed the colour in a slightly browner direction, but in the end we got a nice warm dark grey along the lines we were expecting. Concrete is easy to keep clean, but even with a sealer it can stain. My wife accidentally left a bin bag on the floor overnight once, and some sort of fluid leaked out. We now have a large, permanent dark stain in the kitchen that's a bit unpleasant. I personally wouldn't have concrete in a kitchen again under any circumstances. Would I go for concrete again? Not sure. I suspect that large-format tiles are a hardier long-term solution, but let's face it, they aren't polished concrete! If I had my time again, I think I'd perhaps tile the kitchen and have concrete everywhere else. One thing I really like is how it feels underfoot in summer. Winter... less so, especially when the ASHP is on the fritz so the slab is unheated!

LOL I bought myself a QNAP tvs-672xt as a Christmas present and so far I hate pretty much everything about it. Everything seems unstable and half arsed. VM station, container station and QVR pro have all failed to setup several times. I think it's going back to the supplier, and I'll switch to proxmox on a broadberry Xeon 3U server as originally planned 18 months ago!

The cavity is what I call an ‘in house winter cooling system’, full of draughts, cold, allows convection and even if you seal the top, still very likely draughty and cold.

That is not so bad. If they were in Chinglish it would be worse. Or IKEA could have written them.