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Showing content with the highest reputation on 06/18/22 in all areas
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4 points
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You might find some useful information within Approved Document part A. If you are tying the blockwork to an inner course to create a cavity I would go 100mm standard. No need to block on flat if its tied.1 point
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6m doesn’t need a HWRC - if you had 15m runs to basins (again they can be 10mm) then it’s different.1 point
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we used 10mm Hep20 to all basins and sinks, some pipe runs will be 15-19m, as Peter W says, flow rate at 3 bar will be fine, people staying at ours comment how quick the hot comes through. Although I have to say, most people are happy to wash their hands in cold water. We used 15mm to utility sink and all showers, 22 to the bath. Hope that helps1 point
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General tip for getting grab handles from disabled suppliers who have raised their design game. I've been buying grab handles to make stairs and bathroom for comfortable for an elderly tenant. I looked into this in a lot of detail when I did a downstairs bathroom for my mum several years ago, when I found the best route to things that worked but did not look institutional was careful selection from Screwfix. A key decision is stainless steel or plastic or stainless steel with a grip sleeve in potentially wet areas. Mira also do nice ones, which cost an arm and a leg (£50-150). I now see that the specialist suppliers for disabled / elderly have raised their design game and are worth a look. And also that Screwfix etc have a smaller range of relatively inexpensive ones in stock. Here are a couple that I am just ordering - both around £20-30. https://www.completecareshop.co.uk/bathroom-aids/grab-rails/stainless-steel-grab-rails/spa-stainless-steel-grab-rail-curved?sku=P01341 https://www.completecareshop.co.uk/bathroom-aids/grab-rails/stainless-steel-grab-rails/spa-stainless-steel-grab-rail-straight?sku=P01316 https://www.completecareshop.co.uk/bathroom-aids/grab-rails/bathroom-grab-rails/circular-stainless-steel-grab-rail-with-soap-dish?sku=M66388 The other key point with anything like this is to have 60-75mm of screw in the solid wall eg the brick. You never know when a 120kg large bloke is going to need to grab it whilst falling. Ferdinand1 point
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Thank The last one was supposed to be a June start But ended up being November We would like to be watertight by Christmas But I may have to take time off work to do the roof and slating Also several hundred m2 of render When my wife decides which one to go far1 point
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You are doing well, this one’s flying up! Last time I looked you were in the trenches. Started thinking where the Christmas tree is going yet? 😉1 point
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3-4mm all round should be fine. When choosing your glue, as mentioned use a D4 but do make sure it's of the polyurethane type that has some natural expansion as this will fill small gaps and voids - as advised by @MikeSharp011 point
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Viessman on WC can still have a room influence if required. As has been stated, if you are well insulated and airtight, your whole house will have a fairly even temp, first floor circa 1,1.5deg higher than GF. Yes UFH in a screed is slow to react, but that is a benefit when in weather comp. The whole theory is gradual change, not on/off. You do not set the flow temps, the boiler does. Ours has never supplied higher than 29deg C to the ufh. You can set a legionella heating cycle from the boiler/app. Yes you can have multiple temps and times, yes you can have nighttime setback. Yes you can set an outdoor temp at which the whole system shuts off. There are a lot of variables you can adjust, once set up you shouldn’t have to touch it again, that is the beauty of it. Why would you want a wood burner if you have a correctly sized/set up, UFH? our cylinder is 300l, we have three beds and four showers and a bath. The tank is that size as we May holiday rent the place, and if six people come back after a day on the fells and all want a shower in quick succession then that is what I figured we needed. Our system has been in over a year and works exactly as expected.1 point
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we've got about the same length to the kitchen tap in 10mm here and I can assure you ther's plenty of flow.1 point
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You are mixing up engineering and woodwork here. You can have partially threaded wood screws.1 point
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You can also get noise attenuation wall vents1 point
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I you have MVHR, you may need to cut a slot under the door to allow air movement. Alternatively, if sound through that slot is a concern, you could do what I plan to do. Have a close fitting door withut the slot, which is much better for sound proofing. And instead install a small air vent of an appropriate size in another wall where sound is not a concern. In my case, the vent will lead to a quiet neighbouring corridor via a built-in wardrobe.1 point
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Nope you have to limit the water to less than 45°C (IIRC and nowhere near my regs books) at a bath tap but there is no limit on where you do it. If you do go the HWRC route too, no point circulating water at tank temp constantly. HWRC I would put on either a timer or proximity for a bathroom but just run kitchen and utility in 10mm as the losses are minimal then. I’d be storing at 48° from an ASHP boosted to 65°C via E7 if I wanted additional capacity or 85°C from solar via a dump controller.1 point
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Yes one thing I noticed, and have now fixed, was that the sub Woofer on our big system was plugged in to a socket away from the main unit so was left on standby all the time even though I was diligently turning off the main unit, DVD player etc. I only notices when I fell asleep one evening listening to some music, it was dark when I woke up and wondered what the dull green glow was coming from the far side of the room.1 point
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Been making mods to my DHW system. Combi boiler, but has a buffer with DHW coil upstream, with solar PV immersion. Plan was in summer no gas usage as the buffer would be hot enough and pre heated water would pass straight through the boiler. But that didn't work very well. Every time I opened a hot water tap, the cold slug of water between the buffer and combi would cause the combi to fire up, so was using a couple of kWh of gas every day even with a buffer at 60 degC. So installed on of these https://wattswater.eu/catalog/safety-control-accessories-for-heating/valves-for-solar-applications/thermostatic-kit-solarkit/ Now using no gas.1 point
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But you need an undercut of 10mm if you have MVHR or MEV for ventilation purposes. So they will never be great. Fire doors are solid so may have better accoustic properties. Fire seals will stop the noise transmission where you don't need gaps1 point
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If you run mechanical equipment in a steady state condition there is nothing to wear so the equipment lasts a very long time. Each time you stop or start mechanical equipment there is wear of the moving parts; as lube oil and mechanical tolerances get to their design conditions, the same is also true of stopping mechanical equipment.1 point
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I got a WiFi plug so I can check standby usage of different devices. A TV really should be using less than 1W on standby, I haven't seen one above that in a long time. However, audio equipment seems to be pretty poor in comparison. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the surround sound system, depending on how it is set up it may not go easily into a low power mode. Mine uses a lot of power. When I looked into it most amps only have around 50% efficiency, so it uses a crazy amount of power when it is running. More efficient amps are very very expensive. The other device that I found was heavy on standby consumption was an old Wii that we have, seems to use 10-20W on standby.1 point
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I don’t believe that MCS prevents you from using ASHP cooling in England. @joth discussed this a few times. There appear to be some aspects that make it a little more challenging.1 point
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RESPECT Thank you. World energy use per person is about 2 kW. 48 kWh a day. This is obviously too high because of our dominant combustion technologies. And household usage is only a small part of primary energy usage, though, along with personal transport, the ones we notice the most as we are directly paying for it. Come winter my usage will go up to a mean of 665 W, 16 kWh/day. Too high for my liking, so this years house modifications are to add 'winter' secondary glazing, fix the back door that has visible gaps (fixed the front door last year), and find how air is travelling to a socket in the living room (been throwing out 2 decades of 'loft rubbish). When I first moved here, and being used to a crappy combi gas boiler in my old Victorian house, I did not pay much attention to energy use (even though I was studying it at university). My first full year usage was ~11 MWh/year. Whittled that down to under 5 MWh quite easily, to get to under 4 MWh has been difficult, but getting rid of parasitic loads has made a major contribution to that. I would like to get down to 3 MWh/year without spending a fortune, and having a house that is comfortable enough. Interestingly my motoring has followed a similar path, going from an old petrol automatic what was dreadful on fuel around town ~30 MPG, to a turbo diesel manual that consistently does over 50 MPG around town, 65 MPG on an upcounry run. I am not too bothered about what sort of car I have, as long as it is reliable, so shall have to give that some thought as mine has done over 200kmile and is making strange knocking noises from the front suspension.1 point
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No.1 for me would be to fit self closers, an open door is useless! Next make sure they are very well fitted, minimal gaps and all round seals if you want to go that far. Have you thought about fire doors?1 point
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Define 'better' and then you have the answer Spiral: more uniform floor temperature, harder to plan laying but easier to execute (no 180deg bends except the very centre), and because of that lower flow resisitance Serpentine: gradient of floor temperature as the water gets colder, not much thinking of the layout but fight with the ends to not to kink the pipe and stop it from raising. The gradient is not necessarily bad thing, if the house requires low heat output (so what floor can give is not a limiting factor), having cold end of a loop running along the walls further reduces heat losses. And there is a 'better' of overlay boards: serpentine have constant spacing of linear channels, so you can have them ready made. Spiral requires constatly changing radius, so it would have to be custom Generally MVHR moves less heat than UFH can produce, so don't count on that1 point
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Seem like English, but not got a clue what you are talking about. I just water mine.1 point
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Only in commercial installs, not domestic. You don’t ..? You install one pretty much at the outlet from the UVC and blend down there.1 point
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You’re mad, but not for the reason I expected. I’ve been playing with 80mm fans on top of radiators with the ASHP on cooling. The problem was not condensation (which isn’t very bad) but limited surface area and lack of convection. They don’t really cool at all. The convection issue is the fatal flaw. In heating systems you feed the radiator with hot water at the bottom. The hot water rises and, at the other end the cold water sinks. The outlet from the radiator is the cold water from the bottom of the other end, resulting in the heat evenly distributed across the radiator. When you use the same setup for cooling, the cold water stays at the bottom, and the hot water stays at the top. Hence you get a strip of cold maybe 6” high at the bottom as the water passes from inlet to outlet and the rest is cool but not cold. Condensation only forms on that strip. When putting a fan on top you’re mostly passing air over the cool part, and the cold part is untouched. If you put the fan at the bottom the condensation drips on it. The radiator fins also aren’t very fine and so you’re mostly sucking air past the radiator (I can’t seal well enough to go from only the closed part of the fins). Result is a cold wet radiator but not troubling the room air very much at all. So unless you’re willing to turn your radiators upside down in the summer I don’t think they’re going to work.1 point
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WC, the circulation pump runs 24/7. Heat pump or boiler will kick in to manage the flow and return temp. Ours has a summer set point, so you set the outside temp you want the system not to heat. Ours allows three different set points, for temp, which really means the flow rate is reduced or increased. You can get different temperatures in different rooms by balancing the system, reduce the flow rate in the rooms you want cooler. Sun out or wood burner on, will affect the return temperature as not so much heat is being transferred to the room. So the higher return temp will tell the boiler it can switch off, the circulation pump stays on. I have made some mods to our heating system and started the heating up, the return temps from the floor at start up were 25 degC. Had the CH running for an hour boiler didn't fire up as the return temps were too hot. Had to increase the boiler set point much high to get the boiler to fire up.1 point
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graphite EPS is no dearer than normal and substantially better-performing so don't rule it out...1 point
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For those suffering insomnia and need something to send you to sleep, some of my figures: The readings I take each week go in columns B, C, D, K and M. The rest are calculated from those figures. The odd figures at the bottom in row 200 are the total of each of those columns for the last 12 months. It's that pesky stubborn 75kWh non heating use each week I need to work on, which goes up in winter probably because there's less PV to offset it.1 point
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Sheesh, my Elec bill was over £500 in January… 😞 that was before the price rises.1 point
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Not quite that bad. Up until April when our fixed rate tariff ended, those figures are 2.3 times more than we paid. However, the graph showing £700 for Jan would be true for our current tariff. Still, we actually paid £300 which is alarming enough. What didn't help was having a 2kW convector keeping my workshop at a constant 15C to measure then heat loss (as an experiment).1 point
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So you know what you must do, stay in the renovating phase for as long as possible and your bills will be cheap!1 point
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Just plant some it will be fine. A good lawn is more than the months you plant it.1 point
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Use a drill and drill a series of holes in the motar around a brick at each end plus one in the middle. With the holes all in a line use a cold chisel to remove the other bits and slide the bricks out. If you have an angle grinder it will be much easier to run the blade along the beds below and above the bricks. Use the stitch drill method on the perps and slide the bricks out.1 point
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Quite serious. I'll put a score in towards his piv fund. Intentionally unkind btw.1 point
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Take the plywood back and buy 22mm tongue and groove chipboard, your ply will have give in it over the gaps between joists, unless you noggin all of those. So much grief. Chipboard is actually very stiff, ply is a bit springy.0 points
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I missed this thread somehow . I think the biblical bathroom saga took my Will to live away . As I have now found this thread I’ll just post a pointless comment to help keep it moving for another few years .0 points