Leaderboard

If the restriction is the device ( outlet ) then whatever pipe you fit, as long as it provides the minimum amount of water or more, will suffice. 15mm or 22mm will only deliver the potential available at the mains, after the stopcock / NRV etc, so a little academic imo. Fwiw, I have never piped a shower in 22mm pipework, ever, and have done more high-end / “luxury” bathroom installations than I can remember. Pretty much every one of those reported “fantastic” showers as an upgrade from either electric, gravity mixer, or pumped mixers. The only time I can say that this potential arrived at the shower head was when I installed customer supplied free standing steam / shower units ( cheap Chinese junk on a good day ) or again anything produced outside of the EU where there was little or no attenuation built in by design. These resulted in horrible, coarse, almost unpleasant jets of water flying out of the shower heads / sprays etc and the handsets become so violent that they tipped backwards in their holsters or came out of them altogether. And guess what? I had to install online flow restriction to calm than back down Also, that amount of cow makes the shower very noisy, in both the emitted water bouncing off walls and floors, but also when it’s travelling ( squeezing its way ) through the cheapy outlet. I’ve got shower runs in in a good few new builds where the runs are all 15mm, with good quality outlets ( Vado / Hans Grohe / Bristan etc ) and zero problems - zero complaints, and some on runs in excess of 25m, some longer. One of the big advantages of running Hep2o from manifold to outlet is the ability to run with long swept bends in one continuous run, thus making these runs the least resistive / convoluted runs possible, with the only acute bends / connections being at the outlet itself.

No. Use another bracket and rod, just bend the rod to the angle, will look loads better and offer more support. all round band is for fixing straight to walls and ceilings or pipe insulation touching structure.

You don’t need to solvent weld under there - just put a boss in with a rubber plug and it gives you some wriggle room on the joint. would also suggest running 50mm solvent to the island and a Y branch in the pipe just before a slow elbow and then put a screw cap on the branch so you can always rod from that end.

Kitchen sink tap was my only 15mm hot! (Just in case)

As I have discussed on earlier podcasts and various topics, I have a Willis-based configuration for heating our low energy house, and control is implemented with a dedicated Raspberry Pi using a custom NodeRED application for our underfloor heating and SunAMP-based hot water. This system logs a lot of instrumentation temperatures every half hour and also any significant events such as turning on and off pumps and the heater. Our electricity supplier has been OVO for the last 4 years, and because we have a smart meter, the control application also includes a script to log on to the OVO Portal and download the daily usage data into the MySQL database. Because these latest energy hikes, we have decided to revisit the issue of whether it would now be cost-effective to install an ASHP in order to save on monthly electricity costs for heating. Because I have been logging all relevant data for the past 4 years, I can base this decision on hard actuals rather than some generic planning assumptions. The next two graphs summarise these results. The first is an analysis of our daily energy use (we have an electricity only house). What I have done here is to aggregate the 4 years of data by calendar month and split these into three categories: Underfloor Heating (34% or ~4,000 kWh/yr). In practice, we only heat off-peak and use the thermal mass of the floor slab and the house itself to smooth out the overall background heat levels. As I have discussed in other topics, this results in a temperature ripple of about 1°C which is quite acceptable given the reduction in overall all heating costs. Other Off-peak use (25% or ~2,900 kWh/yr). We also use a couple of small oil-filled electric heaters on the first and second floors for the 4 cold winter months. These output roughly 1 kWh and run on a timer (actually controlled by my home automation system). We find that 3 or 4 hours is typically enough to keep the upstairs acceptably warm in the coldest month; this also means that the UFH on-time doesn't need to run over into peak periods. Our resistive load white goods (the washing machine, dishwasher, SunAmp DHW) are timed to come on in the off-peak period. General Peak Rate use (39% or ~4,500 kWh/yr). Pretty much all of our baseload and direct hands-on devices: fridges, freezers, cooking, computers lighting, etc. Note that the 2 retired (out of the 3) occupants of the house spend most of May, June, September, October abroad; hence the dip in this general use figure. I find the annual variation on this base load a little intriguing ,and I am not sure why it is so high. Our live-in son often has his radiator on in the evenings when he's at home, and we do spend more time indoors in the cold dark months. The simplest ASHP implementation would be for slab heating only and would give a CoP of ~4 (as the circulation temperature is under 35°C) hence saving perhaps 3 mWh p.a. @ 18.86p/kWh or roughly ~£560 p.a. at our currently quoted OVO night rate. Given that we would need to use an MCS certified installer to exploit a permitted development waiver, I would expect our installation to be £10K or higher, so I still don't have a viable cost benefit case to go this route. Yes, adding pre-heat for the SunAmps would increase this annual saving, but this would complicate the installation, and given our volume of DHW use this would in fact worsen the cost benefit case rather than improve it. Another interesting point is raised by the following graph which I pulled from a 2014 Thermal Design post. The bottom line is that thanks to entropy, pretty much all of the electrical energy that we use ultimately ends up as heat within the fabric and airspace of the house. Given this, the overall heat losses (if you take December for example) are pretty much double what we originally estimated. The following can account for the majority of variance, but not all. We had to drop the U-value for the warm roof to minimise ridgeline heights keep the planners happy We added 60° reveals to our fenestration to improve overall light levels given the planners putting hard limits on our window sizes, and these some limited thermal bridging Winter solar gain is almost non-existent for our window configurations. As discussed in an earlier post, we had a cock-up in our slab design which created a thermal bridge between the inner ring beam (this supports the frame) and the outer ring beam (supporting the stone skin). We could only partially mitigate this during slab pour. We estimated that MVHR would have a recovery efficiency of around 90%, but looking at the inlet temp vs room, I estimate the actual recovery is nearer to 80%, that is double the heat loss. We run the internal room temperatures a couple of degrees warmer than initially planned. However the house is built and well established so getting any convergence is now unlikely. So the house performs as a low-energy one, rather than a true zero-energy one. And we still only put ~20kWh into our slab in the coldest months.

There almost certainly has to be some sort of cartel. As with most forms of insulation, the price reflects the long-term value of heating energy saved divided by the relative bulk of the material - as opposed to raw material, manufacturing and marketing costs. In situations like this, there's a lot of latitude for undercutting the competition to gain market advantage. But I've yet to see any sign of this happening. Other types of products bearing inflated prices are either monopolised, niche or promoted through the kind of bullshit marketing that suckers fall for.

My advice is test as you go. You don't want to be finding out right at the end there is a leak somewhere, but you don't have the faintest idea where. So each time I added a bit more to the drainage piping, I would test it again to ensure the new bit does not have a leak. BC witnessed 3 tests on mine, one for all the outside underground drain runs, one for the bulk of the in house pipes, but before most of the bathrooms were fitted (blanked off ends pipe runs) and one on completion with everything connected.

There are certain plumbers who are on an approved persons list who can certificate a drains test in Scotland without BC supervision. They appear to be few and far between though and I suspect for most it is not worth the hasle. There is a list somewhere on a Scottish government building regs related website which I found a while back but I can't remember where. Something like 'list of approved verifiers of construction'. If you can I would consider doing it yourself and get BC to observe. If there are any problems I can see the approved persons route being expensive.

Sorry did we find out how far this willow is from the house ..? Also - if you’re on piles today then it’s for a reason.. I would be more concerned with this first

How will it fail ..? It’s not in contact with liquids, it’s not UV exposed so why would it fail..? All the sockets on your underground waste have seals made of the same stuff and we don’t worry about those for 50/60 years..?

I always determine the finished screed level then add the screed the insulation and the total B&B floor make up to determine the height of the bottom of the B&B. Sometimes this doesn't work courses but I make it work. From your sketch I see that you have 200 / 210 mm above the top of your 150 b&B this would leave your DPM approx 15 - 25 mm above the top of your screed. The skirting would cover this. your insulation would extend to the outer skin of brickwork at door openings or use a design like Temps above. To facilitate this you need to start forming the openings at the top of your trench blocks on the inner skin only. This would enable the insulation and screed to run up to the brickwork or rather to the thermal break that you install on the inside of the brickwork where the opening is. or to the back of the door cill like Temps design above. I hope this helps

Not sure I quite follow the problem but most level access Part M doors are done something like this... There is a concrete sill and the DPM/C is under that at the door. The DPC in the external leaf is higher. The DPC can be higher than 150mm above ground level.

If you look at litecast website there are several examples of beams with insulation infill maybe one of those will be for you. Without seeing photos / plans I’m confused as to what the issue is.

Installed MEV in my parents house in the upstair landing. Just extracting from one location. No measurements taken but it has reduced dampness and mould in the whole house . The house is very leaky. I figured it was the same as PIV in reverse but at least it wasn't dumping a single column it cold air on everyone and was giving the moist air a controlled path to outside rather then being pushed through the building fabric. So long as room doors get opened semi regularly I think it isn't too much of an issue not ducting every room.

We removed some hawthorn hedging and our bco made us dig extra deep footings to compensate for the change in the soil movement that he predicted would happen. If we had left the hedge he would probably made us dig extra deep to keep the roots out!

Get rid of the bend ..! Go straight to the corner, do not pass Go and do not collect £200…. Remove the brown fitting that looks like a standard coupling and replace with a proper boss - you have the issue that the socket is too high and you may need to dig some of the concrete out around it as that will have a double layer of fitting / pipe within it and you cannot solvent weld to poly. What is the pipe leading into the top..? Staying or going ..??

You are allowed to trade off insulation in the floor against the walls and roof. Not the best idea if you have UFH*, but worth thinking about if the depth us critical. * esp when the floor has cold air under it.

Yes, this willow has more growth away from the existing house. If we take the willow out next week, and achieve planning by next May, in theory the foundations will be in by July, and so on we go. The willow has to go, and the south side oaks stay. Thanks for your advice.

Similar floor buildup as what I've got in progress. Block and beam, 150mm of PIR, 60mm screed at the front door threshold - which is 15mm from memory. I just went with what the door manufacturer recommended, in reality I should have waited and perhaps specified a slighty larger threshold. When measured from the top of PIR to bottom of the door I have about 85mm so I've got a good 25mm for flooring depending on how flush I want the flooring to be. I've settled on recessing a mat at the door opening, and glue down bamboo flooring @ 14/15mm so should work out ok. Depending on thickness of mat I will grind out 5-10mm from the screed.

If the connection is in the insulation I would want a proper moulded or welded spigot connector. Also, have you thought about access in case of a blockage? 2 or 3 90 degree bends in 40mm pipe is likely to block at some point

Nope.. Why not consider using one of the insulated beam systems and then make your slab 100mm flowing concrete with the UFH inside it and that’s a finished surface to work from ..?? Jetfloor is one, think Tetris is another ..?

I was just thinking that in a non-airtight building, a single PIV loft type fan introducing filtered, warmed fresh air in a central hallway might be helpful. I know you don't have a loft as such but if one of your eaves spaces has room for the unit and access to the outside air, and the stairway (a lot of if's) then it's a relatively simple low cost exercise. In the heating season, the trade-off between introducing uncontrolled cold air from outside via a myriad of leaks and pushing out warmed air through a positive internal pressure is difficult to evaluate but having a system you can control should provide some advantage. Admittedly it would the kind of thing that would benefit from a degree of DIY electronics - monitoring CO2, temperature and humidity and developing a control algorithm. My own musings revolve around installing a fan unit in our loft feeding filtered air into the airing cupboard that houses our HW cylinder and venting out into our central hallway. The waste heat available would deplete quite rapidly on cold days (have to do some calcs) but a small resistive heater as a PV diverted load could cover some of the requirements.

For amenity value, it would be remove the willow and keep the oaks, as the willow ha a short lifetime and the oaks should last hundreds of years. Is there a survey indicating remaining lifespan? Also weeping willows have a habit of growing sideways substantially. F

*copied from an earlier post. We have now passed this phase of our build, the ground floor walls pour has been completed. In the end the UFH pipes were cable tied to the top of the reinforcement mesh in the middle of the raft. The raft was 150mm thick, the top of the UFH pipe in most places was at 80mm, with 70mm of clearance from the top surface. In some areas where there was 50mm ducting for water pipe runs, the reinforcement mesh was lifted and the UFH pipes were at 110mm with only 40mm of clearance. The wall props were 114cm long, and placed 120cm apart with fixings at 18cm and 1m. For the front fixing the builder used M10x70mm tapcon style bolts, we had no UFH pipe where there were front bolts fixings. For the rear bolt fixings we used M8x50mm tapcons, there was UFH pipe present for all these fixings. We ran an air pressure test during the prop fixing process and none of the UFH pipe work were compromised. The walls were poured with only one very minor incident and the props have now been taken down. Hopefully this helps anyone that is concerned with how ICF wall props work when you have an insulated raft with UFH.

Thanks for the comments. Additional PV is the other option I have so that might be the better route. I have 6.5kWp (on a 3 phase supply so still within the 3.6kWp per phase) split 50:50 on east/west facing roofs. I can potentially get some more panels on a south facing roof when we do the extension. Just debating if the council planning will have anything to say if the PV (or ST) goes on at the same time as doing the extension works. I'll go and trawl through the PV part of the forum next then!

@nod will give you a precise answer, but I think that shouldn’t take longer than a day to prime and tile and half a day to grout.

No. Once cut down, its effect on the ground will continue, as the ground becomes wet and the ground expands. Unless you can leave it a season to stabilise. Don't assume that the BCO understands this. It will be your problem, not theirs. I once had a bco walk round the site with me looking at founds. He had no comments about the differing depths , sometimes quite deep when close to large trees. On gentle questioning it became clear that he was unaware of the subject. But what are your ground conditions? Clay/rock/gravel/ an old landfill???

The problem is with big, deciduous trees on shrinkable ground such as clay. They drink the water in summer, the clay shrinks, and the building moves. Then is winter the tree is dormant and the ground expands again. The solution is deeper footings or piles, which you have. For a willow/oak etc on clay, the effect is up to 24m from the footings. At that distance a 0,9m deep footing may need to be 1m (approx from memory). But very near to the building it may require 4m deep foundations. If there is a stream between, or rock beneath, or multiple other variables' then this doesn't apply. It is important so check it out. NHBC is the easiest resource (online) for the guidelines, using the BS graphs for "Building Near Trees"

Looking good mate 👍

I think the general consensus is that solar thermal is at best marginal compared to PV. The latter has a much longer usable season, plus when the tank is completely hot, you can keep using surplus electricity for other things. If you're considering batteries, I think the maths is even more firmly in the PV camp. Perhaps the only potential issue is how much PV you have installed now, and whether your local network operator might object to you connecting more.

Actually the degree of modulation for most models seems (according to spec sheets) to be typically only about a factor of 3 (eg 12kW modulating down to 4kW or thereabouts). There are some exceptions of course, both worse and better. That's not enough, even if correctly sized, to cover say from 15C (5 deg C temp difference between outside and target temp) and -2C (22deg C temp diff between outside and target temp) without resorting to on/off modulation. Incidentally the useful measure of modulation for most sizing purposes is between maximum output at coldest ambient temperature (eg -2 down south) and minimum output at warmest ambient temperature at which you require heating (typically 15/16). That's a worse number than the manufacturers like to quote (if they quote it at all) because HPs are less efficient at low ambient and more efficient at high ambient. There is a separate thread on this subject and data is not easy to find. This is one reason why buffer tanks/volumisers are sometimes added to systems, to stop 'short cycling' (ie on/off modulation which happens too often in any time period). Oversizing the unit simply makes it more problematic.

I also have several trees close to my build, the BC wanted the oak tree removed but forgot about it and the foundation trench showed no roots so it’s still there. I would a/ wait till the founds are dug, b/ see what BC say. It would be a shame to loose trees if not required.

We have several willow trees. Most of them remained, the Structural engineer and building control did not raise an eyebrow. Digging the foundations almost no tree roots were found anywhere near the house footings. In our case it is probably because the willows are either side of the burn so I would suspect that is where you find their water and where most of their roots are concentrated.

I don’t use clips, I use all round band, black powder coated. For the HRC I use 25mm wall 22mm bore Climaflex and then a 50mm waste clip works perfectly.

good luck. I look forward to following your progress

Not at all. I like your approach and attitude to life. I did something similar a "while ago".. bought a field, build the garage and fitted a shower and second hand kitchen in it, bought a 14"caravan that we slept in so the planners could not kick us out. Then worked away building the house. Hope this helps. My thoughts from an SE point of view and looking at your photo are: Winter is coming so leave the soil dumplings between the strip founds where they are until you are ready. What we are trying to do here is not to let the frost into the ground and soften it. Let it flood as the water acts as an insulator. If a really hard winter is predicted (-18 C for two or more days) then chuck some stuff back over the strip founds say 200 -250 mm of soil.. this will give you a cover depth to the underside of the strip founds of about 450mm.. which is what BC recommend. Design wise I would say.. what is the finished floor level of the house to be then work down from there and see what solutions are viable. Ground bearing slabs are not that hard to design.. if you know what to look for and most folk don't so that is where the SE comes in. Why would they.. most folk have plenty other / better things to do. From an SE point of view most low rise (domestic structures) slabs (could be ICF) are designed on the basis that we have a number of elastic layers; the concrete slab, the insulation say and the ground below. Think of this as layers of a cake. Each layer working progressivly deeper has different properties. Now we also know that the ground is not uniform horizontally. In your case we have some strip founds (hard spots) intersperced with softer areas.. the dumplings. So now we have a 3D model! One design approach in your case is to ask.. what do we have under the strip found .. is there a uniform layer of say clay 3 -4 m down or do we have a number of different layers. We then look at for example how "elastic" and thick these layers under the founds you have are and how much they are likely to settle when we put a building on top. Next we look at what you are putting on top of the soil. Say some compacted hard core, then say EPS and a concrete slab. We then look at the most elastic layer.. which usually is the EPS and design for that. On a large project we may develop a more comprehensive model.. but that cost thousands as you need to use expensive software, have folk that know how to use it properly and a good comprehensive compatibale ground investigation that also cost a lot.. no point in trying to race an F1 car if the fuel is made by me in my garden shed. But we also look at the number of the soil layers and recognise that horizontally they will not be uniform so depending on the soil and number of layers we also design for the fact that there may be some soft spots under the EPS and we reinforce the concrete slab to span over these soft spots. That's a bit of one design approach. Your best bet here may to try and get your hands on some recycled aggregate.. some 6F2 lay that and roll it in with a 8 tonne roller. What you are looking to do here is pinch stuff from road design. Before you do that try and find a local SE that will come by the site and expand on what I have written. I'll not go into any great depth here but you can use a loaded concrete lorry to do a rolling proof test! Yes it's old school stuff but it works! Leave the strip found where they are as although they are a potential "hard spot" the EPS ect will easily mitigate. I would love to work with you but you need someone local who will be on tap you all the way through your journey. Hope this helps. Keep us posted as interested in your project. All the best.

Just find someone good at wrapping Christmas presents. After lowering the blocks I think I'd put something down to protect the DPM from the rough edges of the blocks. Perimeter insulation roll would probably do. Then run a strip of DPM through the doorway and use DPM/C jointing tape to seal.

This is what I was guided by:

So, I'm just planning my first fix pipe runs. Am I on the right lines? Im intending to use a manifold system as others have here as the ability to isolate is so useful. We have a about 3-4bar and 17 ish litres a minute flow. The furthest point is the kitchen which I estimate will be a 20-25m run of pipe. The bathrooms are both only circa 10-15m runs. All basin taps (hot and cold) - 10mm Toilets - 10mm Kitchen taps, utility taps, dishwasher, washing machine (hot and cold) - 15mm Showers (hot and cold) - 15mm Bath (hot and cold) - 22mm Flow and Return for UFH Manifold- 22mm Ta in advance!

Maybe try dialling a non urgent emergency number, like 111. That takes you through to an automated menu, so you wouldn’t be depriving anybody of the services of 999. Or, if you really want to test the functionality of calling 999, but don’t want to trouble them with a non-urgency, injure yourself, but in a non fatal or life changing way, and then call 999.

A mate of mine got a robot vacuum and a puppy about the same time. It was like a dirty protest 🤮

Wow ! What a kind offer ! Whilst you’re out @PeterW do you want to come and finish my job ? ?