Leaderboard

This is how I work with this type of system. I run more of the counter ( service ) battens horizontally, so they can be fixed side on thus not needing to fix through the membrane, and then the boxes get drilled and screwed up and down into the horizontal timbers. The Egger board was installed to take the wall mounted TV’s, so they could be fitted with the correct depth / length screws so again the membrane didn’t suffer damage from any such retrospectively installed equipment. Injecting 330 foam all round the Egger board would offer further insurance. The sparky should drop down and go through to the next room in the joist void imo, or create a penetration with a conduit which can be filled with Illbruck 330 foam and made airtight accordingly. As said, you must lead on this, as most trades still have little to no experience with airtightness disciplines / products etc, and you should be prepared to provide them with the correct foam / tape etc if you want this doing correctly.

Sharp sand and carry on …!

I can see logically why you'd do the east/west split, but practically, for me it would be the one manifold each for me, for no other reason than simplicity.

Fill the depression with sand, lay insulation, job done.

Nope. Its a 12mm (or 15mm) step. This or similar sketches can be found on the web.

We did a wooden ramp on our last one and moved after he had gone

Supplying all of your heating via MVHR will likely require a much larger volume of air than you would otherwise be exchanging with an MVHR system set up for just ventilation. The system design is quite different and you may need a much larger MVHR unit. Having worked in offers where heating was provided via the air conditioning ducts, I personally really don't like air as a heating method. If you aren't using an ASHP to provide the heat, what will you use? If resistive, then be prepared to pay 2.5-4 times as much per delivered unit of heat. And what will provide your hot water?

I learn from and enjoy contributors' progress reports. Not everything has to be a problem. So some progress from us. Our first batch of windows went in. The easy ones that are all rectangular and into new build. A lot of units, installed in 1.5 days by our joiner and his 2 employees. A few more doors and windows to come from the same supplier. Timber with aluminium facing. The upper area of the big gable feature, the other complex windows (arches) and anything in the same rooms will be aluminium from a different supplier, who can cope ( we hope) with non-rectangular shapes. BTW, that shed in the background is made of salvaged, reworked timber and corrugated cladding. All DIY and a satisfying project involving much of the family. It will house the water system, log store and perhaps a sauna one day.

Yes, supplied by @craig. The external textile screens are interesting too, we never considered them but I know of another project that used these. We used the standard motors and simply wired them back to 2 Loxone relays. Works really well. We could have upgraded to SMI motors and then done SMI->KNX->Loxone, but after looking at this I didn't feel it was going to add any practical value given Loxone already does a good job at controlling slat position. Early on I also debated using a shade actuator or tree relay close to the blinds to avoid wiring everything back to the Loxone cabinet or replaceding the supplied motors for the Loxone (Geiger) ones, but I ended up deciding simper was better and went for the dumb motors and loxone relays and don't regret it.

Brush only threshold products, should not be sold in the UK. They should be ashamed of themselves for supplying it. They should be ashamed for allowing the use of this threshold profile. If no other threshold profile exists, then they should not be supplying this product in this climate.

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.

Do what seems easiest ….

Difficult to be specific but the top pic looks much older than 70’s bottom pic def appears from that era.

Sikaflex

I got our numbers back from the estimators online last week. Also significantly lower than I was expecting and frankly I don’t believe it. I’ve set aside tomorrow to go through it in detail.

The water table where I used to live could vary by 2.5m over a year from ground level downwards. I had a borehole drilled and it was water bearing all the way down to the chalk which was also water bearing at 47m down.

Wedges and gripfill. Make sure it's well fixed on the adjoining walls and the roof above. We have one like that and it's solid.

Just checked mine for you . No washers ; but plenty of tape .

+1 for sand. 'tis what we did in our basement before insulation and screed. was actually recommended by the screed company to 'level' the dips.

Another vote for sand. You could do sand / cement or levelling compound but it is more work and money. It is probably about 4 wheelbarrows full.

We used reedbeds with our treatment plant at our last house and found them quite high maintenance.

A starting point might be local borehole details. https://www.bgs.ac.uk/information-hub/borehole-records/

Self levelling compound ?

Just got my quote back from estimators online, it is a lot less than I thought. A couple of things they have missed off and that I need to change, but no issue I can just add them on to the quote myself. I can't see anything for the kitchen, so assume that will need to be added on to the end. I just wonder how realistic this is I guess. If I can get anywhere near this then I will be laughing as it is about 40% under what I had estimated.

Building control are interested in you showing how you an maintain the system. A chamber on the outside gives access to rod or jet backwards, nowhere does it say you need access on both ends of the run, if that was the case every toilet connected to a rest bend would be incorrect and would need to be on a tee with a rodding eye, which doesn’t happen. So rest bend up to floor level then boss connection then a cap for maintenance, if you want, but don’t have to.

So it's resistive heating, which is currently several times the cost of gas (I guess 2-4 times the cost - not sure tbh) per unit of energy delivered. You say your house isn't going to be super-insulated/airtight. I think you'd really want to do your sums before committing to this approach. Your heating bills could be absolutely terrifying!

No rodding eye needed, but as a bit of belt n braces can you bring the 110 up into the kitchen in a cupboard unit and fit a connector to take 50mm from kitchen stuff, on top of this 110 in cupboard you can have a screw cap for emergencies, it will never be needed with today’s jetting equipment. Dont do the red line thing. Why are you worried about extra pipes coming from the building i currently have 9 110mm pipes coming out. If you are having block n beam , why are you under the foundation level, would you not be bringing pipes out on top of foundation through your first row of Nudura. Obviously I cannot see it but I remember your foundation pics recently.

Spend 100 quid and make yourself a blower. Make your life easy as you go along.

The bottom line is that a building can be designed to acheive a good level of air-tightness, however building to that standard is the tricky one. As has been said there are better types of construction material that lend themselves to air-tightness, and so yes you can design to a predicted level of air-tightness, however, once the building is though of as airtight it must be tested proving in my mind that nobody takes for granted that the designed air-tightness is automatically acheived. This leads to the cost comments above. As my brother says, it's not if it can be done, but how much it will cost. Good Luck M

Passivhaus say you can satisfy a heat demand of 15w/m2 based on their ventilation rates. Anything more ends up with a burning smell as dust carbonises. But you still need to heat the air from somewhere? So if your heat demand is below this, you could go this route. Other options could be A2A heat pump, heating cooling with a good CoP. Nothing is easy all have downsides. UFH doesn't need to be complex, we have 300mm centres, with 7 loops over 193m2. Manifold with pump and mixer. You need a buffer and heat pump, three way valve and hot water cylinder, a few other bits and bobs, but not a lot. Run on Weather Compensation, you don't even need thermostats.

It depends who you are. For most people it is enough for avoid blackout curtains, but it's just not quite enough for my wife! They are a significiantly better than most venetian blinds though. Look for "Roma CDL" on yourtube and you'll find some videos that show how the slat is different. Maybe, expect you can have blinds and shutters really and using shutters during the day in the summer to prevent overheating (and block out daylight) is far from ideal I think. Venentians have the ability to block direct light, but reflect indirect light up towards your ceiling internally so house is still nice and bright. It depends on the type of slats you use and the size of the windows. The Roma technical manual has all the wind tables. The CDL slats are quite good in wind house in most areas are fairly sheltered anyway, so we're never going to needto raise them due to wind speed. In the storm earlier in the week we had them down and they don't lift in any way at all, in stong winds they do make a little bit of noise though. If casual vandalism bends the think aluninum slats that's not good news as it'd be hard to bend them make and them be perfectly straight.

Some BC's will accept a wooden ramp on top of the tarmac as long as it is fixed in place. Ask him. Ours in Scotland did, which some say never happens.

Ours have holes for the strings and a small (few mm) gap either end of the slats. Together, these let in enough light that we find them unsuitable for bedrooms, especially those with east-facing windows. I'm sure some potential miscreants look at them from a distance and assume they're security blinds, but they're completely useless for that. You can easily lift them up in the rails with one hand. I imagine you could tear them off without too much trouble - they're only aluminium with plastic end guides in the rails. They do rattle a bit in heavy winds. There's a recommendation to raise them into the housing during strong winds, but we've no longer bother after never having had any damage even during the worse storms. Might be different if you lived in a windier area than us.

Yes. A roddable bend. 45 degrees better and has standard fittings. Or a chamber. Don't count on it. And hot oil will soon coagulate. Plus the flow can be slow. If the run is short then you can remove the U and get a snake along it.

As usual, there is misunderstandings around heat pumps. Sized correctly, and run as intended, they are compatible to gas heating on cost. With any system that uses UFH, plenty of insulation has to be fitted under the pipework. You would not put your radiators outside on the wall, so why would you, in effect, do the same with UFH.

Hmm, I was wrong. My blinds appear to be PH certified! https://database.passivehouse.com/en/components/details/shutter/romawiegand-modulo-p-0254rs03. Looks like this is about the window head detail more than anything else.

Looks busy, but the plumbing looks neat / well executed. Too much going on there to comment tbh. “Carry on!”.

If recently refurbished, do you know if they let the screed dry properly before the floor went down. A day per 1mm is the norm. Maybe they’ve put the floor down too soon and water is still evaporating. Either that or you’ve got a leak. Is it a sealed and pressurised heating system? If so, there should be a pressure gauge ( on the boiler perhaps ) that will tell you if the system pressure is staying in the system.

I.C is generally more likely with IWI. PIR is not used so much for EWI, although I know some have used it. Have you thought of using 70mm graphite EPS? The issue you could have is condensation on the inside of the outer skin, as you will have cooled it down with the 100 Rockwool. What you could end up with is the wall equivalent of a Hybrid Warm Roof (some insulation between the timbers and some on the outside). The rough rule-of-thumb with hybrid warm roofs is that 66% of the R value should be on the outside and 33% between the timbers. Your 100 Rockwool and 70 gEPS would not cut this particular mustard.

12t machine I bought last Xmas with a leaking drive hub, luckily bought it as a toy. Replacement drive hub £2200 but 11 months wait time so it might be running early next year. But worth keeping an eye on EBay earlier this year picked up a Sany 1.6t machine, full cab, 2017 and only 650hrs on it, as new condition with full paperwork for £12500 plus vat…. And it’s a great machine

I'm sure you can estimate ACH based on an airtightness strategy, but what you actually end up with depends on how well the strategy is implemented. It's all about attention to detail, and most trades struggle to get their heads round it. If you're on site every day and able to check every penetration and interface in your airtightness layer, spec good doors and windows and don't even consider open fire places/letter boxes/cat flaps, you'll be fine.

Hi and welcome

This may come in handy, a conversion sheet I put together some time ago.

Go on! We dare you

just for the record....I'm not digging up my screed, ufh and insulation just to swap the small amount of sand I used for sharp sand! 😉

yeah, I get that. but my house is pretty much a game of two halves! big vaulted entrance hall in the middle and 2 sides to the house. so all of the east side pipes will go off one way and the west side the other way. just seemed logical to split them up. but I'm leaning towards putting east and west together in attempt at unification of the waring factions.

I should have posted this one earlier. How to avoid the saniflow? Raise the WC to match the drain invert level

It might do as a urinal stall...... Alternatively put the bowl on the back wall and don't bother with the door. Just hope you don't live with anyone of delicate sensibilities.

They made and fitted it. Here I quote the owner of the company: Unfortunately the doors are a flush system brush sealed and in heavy wind and rain like Sunday you will often find that it is heavier than the weather rating (brush will only hold out so much water) In this weather the system is designed to not allow water past the inner most outer wall of frame. There is nothing I can do to rectify it as it is not something to be rectified. And as expected in those kind of conditions the brushes will only hold out so much water . Basically where the frame meets the tile there is just a simple brush stuck on the tile - it's not partocularly air or water tight as you can see. The runners for the frame end about 3 inches short of the end of the frame and then there is a little plastic end cap that 'finishes' off the runner to the end to maintain some form of airtightness. However there is a gap of about 4mm. There is zero adjustment that can be done. This is where the wind is bubbling in I think. However its so tight to the floor I just cannot get to it. Its just a cr**ping design and sloppy manufacturing, and fitting. The is the window https://www.cortizo.com/en/sistemas/ver/93/cor-vision-plus-sliding.html however the website it out of date with the latest design which we have. They have been a nightmare since day one, been back countless times to fix countless issues. I will have to bodge something it seems. Reading into the definition: A quite look at this https://www.thermosolar.sk/wp-content/uploads/download/certifikaty/protokoly/TS300-TS250-TS500/Windspeed-to-Pressure-conversion-chart-23.9.11.pdf would suggest the winds we had at the weekend was around 150-200pa, so given these failed after a couple of hours (or at least thats when we noticed it), I don't think I have a leg to stand on (they are class 7A) First time in my life I've had windows that let water in. I thought I'd done my research, but there you go...