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I’m very close to first fix with my ICF build. I have already procured a hot knife, KD-7H. Here is a picture from the Thermohouse manual. This is what I was going to copy. @FM2015 Any advice appreciated, my sparks has no prior ICF experience so we are on this journey together.

Can you bung me £10k so I can redo my biggest deck in composite? Did a small one outside the living room one 25 years using Douglas Fir and it's still mint. About 15 years later I built a 12m x 3m one at the southern end of the garden using B&Q deck boards and it's completely shot through.🙄

Been a good day. My Mother is vastly improved, saw her cousin (similar age), had a reasonable journey back (only 1 accident blocking roads today), now parked up looking at the sea, in sunshine.

Michael Heseltine privatised the BRE back in 1997. Call me a cynic but I would expect there to be a string or two still attached.

The question here really is WHY are new houses still allowed to be built with such poor insulation levels? It means the main mass market house builders are still allowed to build what most on here regard as poor houses. Having just finished self building a house that exceeds even this new value for extensions, I can say it does not add much to the cost and it is really nice living in a house that is always warm and costs to little to heat.

Yes you right. Most of the time the ones I've done have been over grass so a bit of a problem because they have dug down.

can always block the ends with decking upstands so access by any creature not possible .

I absolutely would not recommend doing this, it will seriously compromise your plot and cause no end of hassle. If a property developer owned next door and wanted to do it, how much would you charge them? Think of this number and are you willing to just give this amount of money to your neighbours?

No. Effloresence is caused by salts coming out of masonry or mortar, and will only appear on the outer face, and wash off. A gap would fill with all sorts of crud as well as all the water running down the wall.

Sorry i meant (2) and have edited it. It needs to be tied to the blockwork too. I would rather see the top brick inset into the block, otherwise rain runs down onto a mortar joint constantly.

I only have data for the last winter, but my fairly unshaded 5kWp array on a 3.68kWp inverter generated 85kWh in Dec for an average of 2.5kWh per day. November was 185kWh and Jan was 205kWh. So it was only really deepest darkest Dec when I wasn’t getting much output.

It is simplistic to suggest it's just conservative ideology (as from a political context, the current government isn't really functioning like conservatives), but unfortunately the problems we see ourselves faced with are down to ideology; it's ideology that's started the war in Ukraine; it's ideology that has caused the huge hike in energy prices (because energy price is market based thus price is affected by influences other than merely supply & demand; we're seeing a similar thing happening with food as so much of it is also market based and controlled by a small number of mega private companies. Our current government are as blinded by over financialised, market based economics, mixed in with a scewed view of meritocracy and individualism, that allows them to blame each individual for their circumstances and are thus ideologically opposed to helping the disadvantaged. Add into this the effect the implementation of this ideology has had very much since the 1980s and you get the current convergence of businesses running their finances based on value extraction - high debt fueled by low interest rates that funds share buy back and generous dividend payments to shareholders while reducing/ceasing investment and R & D (since Steve Jobs diesd, even Apple has started to lean in this direction). Then you have the current government acting in exactly the same way with public funds - distributing vast amounds of public money to private entities that operate less efficiently and shovel the returns into the pockets of their shareholders rather than back to the public. Perfect storm....because the inaction is down to willful blindness of these fundamental problems. Goodness, that's not actually meant to sound like a monumental rant..... I'll get my coat....😁😁

They say in stock and then call you once you have ordered to say how long the delay is going to be....try to get you on the hook. Our appliances from Appliance City came 5 months after ordering - still a couple of months early but better than the other way around.

Lidl has them every now and again. https://www.lidl.co.uk/p/kitchen-essentials/livarno-home-kitchen-mixer-tap/p52066 25 quid

I had an old garden retaining wall which was damp and I painted it with Durbocem and it has worked extremely well. I do have drainage holes at the bottom though, but I guess you could drill some drainage holes in yours. https://andrewscoatings.co.uk/shop/interior-exterior-walls/damp-mould/durbocem/

Whichever heating system is installed, if you reduce the house's thermal losses, then you have a system that is cheaper to run. The reason for this is that you save on two points: You can run the system less time i.e. only when the outside air temperature is below 6°C. You need to put less energy in i.e. 6 kW as opposed to 9 kW dMEV is an admission of failure, get the airtightness sorted out properly and you can fit MVHR, does the same and scavenges some waste energy. Have you checked with your DNO that you can connect 5.46 kWp of PV. That amount of PV is capable of supplying most of your DHW, though during the winter it will only help a little bit.

My experience of various people that have ever done any of this kind of work for me tells me this guy has no idea what he's doing. If you've paid him nowt to date, then you are set to bin him and find an alternative. I would categorically not listen to anything he has to offer by way of excuses. Those who know how it's done know how to avoid these problems. Be firm, and good luck in sorting it.

I would say no. Yes foil can reflect signals but its very unlikely to make the overall signal strength any higher. To do that you need a carefully designed aerial (take a look at a TV aerial, they aren't just flat bits of foil). Even then they make the signal stronger in one direction but at the expense of a reduced signal strength in every other direction.

This pansy was looking at me earlier.

Yup, woodfiber/sheepswool or hemp may add to the decrement delay and be nicer to work with but with 220mm cellulose between the rafters, it's not critical. If I could have personal control over the build quality myself, and could ensure the airtight membrane would be perfectly continuous, I would be happy to omit the ventilation from the flat/pitched roof junction and allow continuous ventilation from eave to eave. The 90mm void as drawn with ventilation at both ends should be fairly idiot proof. We had an airtight membrane below roof trusses and achieved 0.31 ACH. That part was pretty straightforward really. Much easier than the window taping for example. We battened and counter battened to leave an 88mm void for the 75mm MVHR ducting, me being totally paranoid about breaching the airtight layer. Awkwardly this also involved pre cutting the battens along the route of the ducting. Also with no nail gun it was probably 1200 screws! Typical self builder over thinking everything and putting zero value on my own time!! With the benefit of hindsight, next time I would happily run the MVHR ducting into the attic through the membrane and back inside at the plenums provided I was the one taping the holes. (Ducting all buried under the 400mm of blown cellulose of course). Then battened underneath with 22*50 or 22*57mm strapping for plasterboard. Also I would upgrade to at least 15mm plasterboard if not 12.5 x 2 or 15mm Sound block as the house is almost completely silent otherwise. Here is a pic of how we ran cables into the attic. 2 x outside lights, 1 x 5g router, 2 x TV antenna/dish. A scrap piece of ply ( hence the irregular shape) screwed from below and then taped from above. Each cable got it's own hole and then were sealed with a flexible airtight sealant from both sides.

Short answer is Yes You can go to a solicitor and draw up what ever you want But be careful While neither of you intend moving anytime soon You don’t know what’s around the corner We often hear on here the term forever home No such thing We did a similar thing to you Many years back and gave our neighbor a strip of land so they could get around the back of there house Two years on they split up and we ended up with a caravan parked opposite our kitchen window I would draw up a very one sided agreement Assuming you may be dealing with strangers sometime down the line

As always Nick Spot on The preparation work on something like this is key The whole surface must have several coats of R10 K sealer Around £40 a tub So not cheap As already pointed out A fibre mesh should also be applied Then 10-15 mil of top coat Unfortunately It will all have to be knocked Sorry

If the water is not hard, then you’ll be fine. Don’t bother with the non salt water ‘conditioners’, as it’s been well discussed on here that they are found on the shelf next to the snake oil and magic beans

Out of skepticism I thought I’d give the 4YourHome HT500 sit on top fan a try. Turns out it’s imported by Qualtex who supply appliance parts, hence sales by ‘white goods spares’ shops. It’s a centrifugal fan along the whole 500mm length, rather than some others which just have computer fans every 300mm or so. Probably 50mm diameter of the cylinder. The cylinder has a bit of wobble in it, possibly it’s not fixed perfectly on axis. Some pictures below. A quick test measured 32dBA at one metre with the unit off (NIOSH SLM app, iPhone 8+), 40dBA on speed 1 and 43dBA on speed 2. The noise appears to be directed out the front, with a whiny component: can’t decide if it’s resonance of the cylinder or coming from the motor/far end bearing. I think it might be the blades buffeting air against the plastic grille at certain speeds. At that distance you can’t really feel the draught, but you can closer in. I don’t have a good feel for airflow, but probably ‘not a lot’. The air does feel cooler, being drawn past a radiator full of water that hasn’t been on, compared with ambient air which is about 20C at the moment. Will have to wait for a hot day and radiator cooling to see how it performs.

The good news is that the 60% threshold rule has been dropped (except for Northern Ireland) so what i'm doing is putting all the insulation works on our house through my (VAT registered) limited company as supply and fit. There's some corp tax to pay on the nominal labour element that I'll have to pay the company but it's still negligible compared to paying 20% VAT.

Insulation (supply only) is 20% not 5%. Reduced from 5% to 0% recently for Supply & Install , or just Install.

Our last house, built nearly 20 years ago to ordinary standards of the time had wet UFH upstairs and down and it needed it and it generally worked very well. The present house we finished lat year is built to much higher standards, close to passive house, nice and air tight and well insulated. This one we did not fit any heating upstairs apart from UFH in the bathrooms to take the chill off a tiled floor. This had proved entirely satisfactory even up here in a cold Highland winter, the bedrooms are always warm enough. In fact at times I get the complaint that the bathroom floors are cold and "it is not working" That is because the bathrooms are up to temperature and the UFH has shut off and the floor cooled down.

+1 for pavingexpert site. Bounded edges. Geotextile. 150 mm sub base in two layers compacted "to refusal" with something big enough to settle it: https://www.speedyservices.com/18_0104-h-wacker-neuson-dpu2540h-400mm-reversible-plate-compactor-diesel-160kg Make sure the sub-base is level and create the falls in the sub base. Your sand layer (~40 mm loose raked/30 mm after one pass) will eventually compact "to refusal" with cars etc going over it. If it varies in thickness then your blocks will vary in height. Rake sand level and give it one pass with the compactor. Lay blocks. Run over these with the biggest thing that won't smash the blocks. One of these over a sheet of 6 mm OSB if you can't get a rubber mat: https://www.speedyservices.com/18_0112-h-altrad-belle-pclx320-streetworks-320mm-plate-compactor-petrol-65kg Then kiln dried sand in the gaps to lock the blocks in place with friction. Don't power wash it all out again. (that will let the blocks move) That won't then move.

So true. It's a small mercy they didn't restrict 0% VAT on tampons to supply & install too.