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Got our new address confirmation yesterday from the street naming team and confirmation from the Royal Mail it’s been registered. Nice way to finish the week. I might post myself something and see what happens to it 😂

Neff induction hob in black granite island worktop. installed 13 years ago. Works for us. The granite was CNC-cut based on a CAD provided by Neff.

@Kelvin @Thorfun I'm actually working on some loxone designs and doing installations for a couple other people now, taking my first steps to see if this is something I want to go into in a much bigger way. (Full disclosure: VAT registered company already setup for this, as that's fairly necessary for anyone providing services to new-builds, but I'm a good way from it being a serious profit making enterprise) So there's a few different ways I may be able help out. Certainly happy to share pointers on here, as I've learnt so much from it. (And I generally need to level up my documentation game). I'm also curious if there's scope for skills trading. If anyone here is good at pipework and plumbing, I have a bunch of modifications to my ASHP install I really need to make before summer but I'm just to chicken to drain down the system and do them. (And seems impossible to find someone I can pay that I would trust to do it). If anyone is in the South East (ish) and would like to spend a day helping me with that, I'd be more than happy to spend a day or two on your site helping with cabling or any of the fiddly aspects of getting LXN installed or programmed.

Been on about this for a while now, probably 20 years. Last night, Inside Science asked what the world may be like with unlimited energy. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hx4x Environment 2000-watt challenge: How to reduce your energy use and still live well In theory, it’s possible to live well while using energy at a rate of just 2000 watts – a quarter of the average for people in the US. Our environment reporter took on the challenge. Here’s what he discovered 7 February 2023 Listen to this article By James Dinneen The 2000-watt challenge requires you to lower your energy use Jason Ford THE first thing I did was turn off the lights. Then I unplugged everything. On reflection, I reconnected my fridge. Next, I made a list of all the other ways I consume energy. Gas-powered boilers heat my apartment and water. I cook on a gas stove. I take the New York City subway to work. For longer trips, I drive or hail a ride, and I fly. Then there’s the fridge, washing machine and dryer, elevators, a computer, phone, even my toothbrush. I add to the list anything I buy that requires energy to make and transport. Plus the food I consume or throw away. Nearly everything I do requires energy. Energy is a hot topic right now. Rocketing fuel prices precipitated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the transition to renewable sources to limit global warming have focused people and governments on reducing consumption. With this in mind, I wanted to see whether I could drastically cut my energy use. I had read that, in the 1990s, Swiss researchers calculated that just 2000 watts per person would be enough for everyone to live sustainably and still have a good quality of life. So that became my target. This was the first day of a personal, month-long “2000-watt challenge”. I used an online calculator – once I got the Wi-Fi back on – to estimate my current energy use. In the US, each person consumes energy at a rate of 8600 watts on average. I didn’t think my lifestyle was particularly extravagant, so I was surprised to find I use even more than that. Clearly, I had a long way to go. Online calculators can help you calculate your daily energy consumption Jason Ford A watt is a measure of power or, put another way, the rate of energy transfer (see “What’s watt”). For much of human history, people consumed little more energy than that which was embodied in the food they ate. On a per person basis, “that’s perhaps 90 watts on average”, says Sascha Nick at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. Fuel for cooking and heating added more watts, as did animal power for agriculture and transport: 1 horsepower, a unit coined by inventor James Watt (after whom the watt is named) to promote his improved steam engine, is equivalent to 746 watts. Complex societies with construction, metalworking and pottery added a few hundred more. “The Roman Empire had a consumption of perhaps 500 watts,” says Nick. “And it didn’t use electricity at all.” Today, industrialised societies use vastly more energy, exploiting mainly fossil fuels to power the global economy. The average total, or “primary”, energy consumption per person is highest in Iceland coming in at 17,000 watts in 2021. The US, at 8600 watts, was number 11. By comparison, per-person energy use was around 4200 watts on average in the European Union, 3400 watts in China and 3300 watts in the UK. But there is massive inequality globally: people in India used 800 watts and in Bangladesh they used just 310 watts. The International Energy Agency estimates that more than 2.5 billion people worldwide lack access to enough energy for basic needs such as cooking and cooling. Unplugging electrical items can help reduce your energy bills Jason Ford The unprecedented increase in energy consumption in high-income countries – and the environmental consequences it entails – has prompted energy researchers to ask: when energy becomes available far beyond the minimum needed, what is sufficient to live well? It is a question worthy of Socrates. What constitutes enough? What is a good life? So it is hardly surprising that there is no consensus among economists or energy experts. “I’m not confident yet to define an actual threshold of sufficiency of material consumption,” says energy researcher Narasimha Rao at Yale University. “But I know it’s well below the maximum that you see in many countries.” Two-thousand watts is one answer. Back in the 1990s, it was the amount of energy available to each person on Earth if all the energy produced was divided equally. Based on this and on studies that found diminishing returns to quality of life beyond this level of consumption, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich calculated that using energy at a rate of 2000 watts – equivalent to using 48 kilowatt-hours per day – was sufficient for each person in Switzerland to consume without sacrificing their enviably high standards of living. The team also concluded that aiming for the ambitious but feasible 2000-watt target would be a means of helping Switzerland reduce its greenhouse gas emissions (see “Energy sources and their emissions”). Home energy use I first read about the 2000-watt society in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future, which was published in 2020. From a not-too-distant future where Switzerland has achieved this goal, a chipper character points to the country as an example of the wisdom of using less: “It took paying attention to energy use, but the resulting life was by no means a form of suffering; it was even reported to feel more stylish and meaningful to those who undertook the experiment.” This notion that living at 2000 watts wouldn’t be so hard stayed with me and, when the price of energy jumped last year, I thought I would try it for myself. Your home energy use can contribute significantly to your total energy consumption Jason Ford The first thing to do was to estimate my total usage – which anyone can do with an online calculator. This also helped me see how my energy usage breaks down into different areas. Transportation accounted for about half, due almost entirely to flying. Food and other things I bought accounted for about a third, while home heating and electricity made up the rest. Probably because I live in a small apartment, this footprint was a bit different from the average US resident whose living and office space tends to make up the largest proportion of energy use, followed by transportation (especially by car), food and consumer items, electricity and finally their share of public infrastructure. In Europe, living and office space also make up the greatest share on average, but food and consumer items tend to use more energy than transportation. In total, my energy use was running at 9400 watts. I was definitely going to need help if I were to have any hope of meeting the challenge. First, I consulted Amory Lovins, a professor at Stanford University in California and founder of a sustainability think tank called the Rocky Mountain Institute. He is perhaps the world’s best-known energy efficiency guru and he walks the talk. He lives in a beautiful home he built in Colorado that features every energy efficiency hack imaginable. “It’s actually 6000-year-old passive Chinese solar architecture,” says Lovins. “I just updated the technologies.” His house has a rooftop tank that heats water with sunlight. Multi-paned windows improve insulation. The property was built facing south to get more heat from the sun, using materials selected for their small energy footprint. A greenhouse serves to both help heat the house and grow a crop of banana plants. All this means Lovins maintains a high standard of living while his home generates enough power to charge his electric vehicles and export some electricity to the grid. Read more: Solar panels that work at night produce enough power to charge a phone With the right technology, the amount of energy needed to maintain a high standard of living is “probably under 2 kilowatts”, says Lovins, maybe even as low as 1000 watts. However, for most people, such technologies aren’t in reach yet. What’s more, those that are available don’t necessarily reduce our energy usage in the long term. That is because of the rebound effect, a well-known phenomenon by which people use the savings gained from efficiency to consume more. For example, as car engines have become more efficient, we have bought larger cars that require more fuel to power them. Besides, adopting energy efficient technologies wasn’t going to help with my hastily organised 2000-watt challenge because I had just a month and no budget. So I decided to focus on the other approach to reducing energy consumption: altering my behaviour. There were practical changes I could make straight away. For instance, I made sure nothing in my apartment was on or plugged in unless someone was using it. I air-dried clothes in the stairwell instead of using the dryer. I shared data from my electricity meter with a company called OhmConnect, which sent me a text when electrical demand was high and gave me an incentive to use less – in the form of “watt points” I could exchange for prizes – if I cut my use during that period. I found I could temporarily save around 150 watts by unplugging the fridge for an hour without opening the door. Cycling can help to reduce your energy use outside of the home Jason Ford All this certainly helped me save energy. But at best I had only reduced my usage by around 1000 watts. In fact, the online calculator had shown that electricity accounted for only about 5 per cent of my total, so I could have used none and still ended up far above 2000 watts. I would need to make other changes. So I took shorter showers and used cold water to wash dishes. I continued to bike whenever the weather permitted and took the subway when it didn’t. I bought more of my groceries from the farmers’ market down the street than from the supermarket. And I ate more vegetarian meals. Reducing energy waste All this only took me down to 5700 watts according to the calculator, with many of those savings coming from not flying. One big problem was the aging gas boiler heating my poorly insulated 120-year-old apartment. It was a major cause of my surprisingly high energy use – but also beyond my control. As in many old buildings in New York, my radiators are controlled by my landlord, who also lives in the building and likes it hot. In winter, the only way to cool down is to leave windows open. In summer, cooling requires inefficient window air conditioners. Reducing those watts would require retrofitting the building with energy efficient heat pumps and improving the insulation. But as a renter, I couldn’t do that, even if I had the means. The point here isn’t to complain about my radiators. What the story illustrates is that it is very difficult to live at 2000 watts unless you live in a 2000-watt society. “You start to get to a point that the society around you, the environment you live in, prevents you going beyond,” says Stephan Tanner, an architect who specialises in efficient buildings at the design firm Intep and a long-time proponent of making the US a 2000-watt society. What those limits are depends largely on where you live and how much money you have. For me, living in New York, walking or taking public transport is relatively easy. But in many other places, especially elsewhere in the US, people have no choice but to drive to work or to the grocery store. The changes required to address that aren’t something that an individual can manage. “Much of what we do in society and life is a matter of how we organise society,” says Nick. He has been consuming 2000 watts or less for more than a decade, but living in Switzerland helps. In 2017, the government there committed to achieving a 2000-watt society by 2050. To that end, Swiss cities are boosting public transport infrastructure and making car use less attractive. They have also built energy efficient hospitals and retirement homes. From an average of about 6000 watts in 2000, per-person energy usage in Switzerland is now 4030 watts. Read more: Over 100 cities have made public transport free – others should follow Beyond Switzerland, few other societies have adopted the 2000-watt target. But countries are focusing more on reducing demand for energy. Policies like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US, REPowerEU in the European Union and Japan’sGreen Transformation have put hundreds of billions of dollars towards energy efficiency measures, such as retrofitting buildings and promoting the use of electric vehicles. Countries have rolled out energy awareness campaigns too, including It All Adds Up in the UK. The fuel crisis is one motivation. “That might be what will start to expand our consciousness,” says Christina Hoicka at the University of Victoria in Canada. Improved energy efficiency has already paid off: the International Energy Agency estimates that such enhancements saved at least $680 billion in energy costs among its member countries in 2022. Using less energy also cuts greenhouse gas emissions directly and makes decarbonisation easier to achieve. “If we electrify everything, we have to massively increase the size of our renewable energy system,” says Hoicka. That will be far easier if there is less demand. One widely cited study found that reducing energy demand through efficiency and changes like urbanisation and digitalisation could limit global warming to 1.5°C without the need for unproven carbon capture and storage technologies and without sacrificing economic growth in higher or lower-income countries. Using no electricity at all may only decrease your total energy use by a small amount Jason Ford As for my own humble 2000-watt challenge, I regret to say that it failed miserably, at least by its main measure. For now, inefficient buildings and infrastructure make it very difficult to consume at a rate of 2000 watts and maintain a high standard of living in the US without making a major investment in energy efficiency – and it isn’t much easier elsewhere. Read more: High-tech wood filled with air cavities could insulate your home But I did learn a lot (see “Six ways to use less energy”). And I don’t plan to stop trying to achieve 2000 watts just because this challenge is over. For instance, it is clearer to me that decisions about what I eat and how I get around are much more important than how long I leave the lights on. And next time I choose somewhere to live, I will be thinking more about how it is heated, how well it is insulated and how energy efficient the appliances are. That way, I can focus more on small actions that produce sizeable energy-efficiency gains. This experience has left me more mindful about where the energy I use is coming from too. I feel less disconnected from the infrastructure and industrial activities that support my way of life. I am also more cognisant of the overabundance of energy available to me – and the unfairness that so many people don’t have enough. “Enough should be a human right, a floor below which no one can fall; also a ceiling above which no one can rise,” according to Robinson’s character from the future. “Enough is as good as a feast – or better.” New Scientist audio You can now listen to many articles – look for the headphones icon in our app newscientist.com/app What’s watt? The watt is the unit of power used to describe the rate at which energy flows: 1 watt is equivalent to 1 joule per second. A 20-watt light bulb left on for an hour uses 20-watt-hours. Your electricity bill will show how many kilowatt-hours you have used (1 kilowatt is 1000 watts). Dividing that by the number of hours during the billing period will give your average continuous supply of electricity in kilowatts. The 2000-watt target – which can also be seen as 48 kilowatt-hours per day – refers not just to electricity, but to your total average primary energy consumption. In other words, it includes all sources of energy (things like gas, wind and wood), any energy used to produce those sources and the energy lost due to inefficiencies of conversion and transmission. To meet the challenge, this must not exceed an average of 2 kilowatts. Energy sources and their emissions Different energy sources produce different levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Coal burned to generate electricity creates more than burning natural gas, for example. And solar creates none. And there are also sources of emissions unrelated to energy such as food rotting in landfills. In the 1990s, when Swiss researchers first envisioned a 2000-watt society, it included a target for emissions equivalent to 1 tonne of carbon dioxide per person. Back then, there was more concern about running out of oil than about climate change. However, that target was revised to net zero in 2015, following the Paris Agreement, which committed countries to limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. To try to achieve this, Switzerland has aggressively invested in renewable energy in parallel with its work on energy efficiency. Since 2000, emissions resulting directly from energy use have decreased from 8.5 to 5.6 tonnes per person. However, emissions associated with imported goods have increased during that period. The emissions target is still much more challenging than the energy target. Six ways to use less energy Turn down the thermostat: We all have to keep warm, but staying a few degrees colder can save up to 10 per cent of energy for heating. Potential savings depend on many factors, such as the weather where you live. Use less hot water: Heating water accounts for around 20 per cent of home energy use on average. Reduce this by using cold water to wash clothes, making sure the dishwasher is full and taking shorter showers. Walk, cycle and use public transport: One study found that public transportation use in the US saved the equivalent of 4.2 billion gallons of petrol in a year. Use efficient appliances: Electric induction stoves are about three times more energy efficient than gas stoves. Search for labels on appliances that rate their efficiency. Eat more vegetables, preferably locally grown: Vegetarian diets use approximately a quarter less energy than diets that include meat. Retrofit your home: Improving home insulation and using an energy efficient heat pump rather than gas or oil heating are big investments, but making them can cut energy use by more than 40 per cent, depending on where you live. James Dinneen is an environment reporter for New Scientist based in New York

No, absolutely not fine! But depressingly common. I have had a contractor tell me the same thing, but being told it is fine does not make the insulation value any better. If the 2nd (under-side) layer is not completely tight to the first (between-rafter) layer, and the ventilation is working as it should, then you may even get thermal by-pass - cold ventilation air getting between the layers of the sandwich and effectively negating the effect of the between-rafter layer.

You don't normally expect UFH to be warm to the touch. The whole point it is a large area heating the room so only needs to be a little above room temperature. Anything less than about 37 degrees does not "feel warm"

Two things there that would make me walk away. "eco-houses" "going forward"

On Channel 5 last night. Interesting prefab build, on a spectacular site with nice finishing details. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11732091/amp/Couple-spend-1-1million-building-dream-Scandinavian-home-Scotland.html

Willow burn as most of the trees are Willow and the burn passes through the garden. But one deciding factor from the shortlist of names, was a reasonable domain name was available for this choice.

Thanks. I'll get that on the fix list along with replacing all the missing ones. At least I know to call then weep hole caps now instead of wee plastic thingies. Every days a school day 😁

Yup. Weep holes. The bottom of them is open to allow rainwater to escape from the frame where it gets in when it's raining. Paint scratched down to the primer above that cracked weep cap.

Be very careful with the agent you chose (companies house checks/contact previous jobs they claim to have done etc). Our first hand experience is that the Polish manufacturer/supplier will simply wash their hands of you, saying it's between us and the agent to sort out the mess. Red flags all over the place.

The VMZinc is £175/m2 including matching zinc rainwater goods.

The black caps are covers for the frame drains. Or they let the water out if it gets in. It also looks like the paint finish is damaged in that photo?

Cromar Vent 3. But any good brand should be fine. Just avoid any that are sheets of plastic with holes punched in them.

🤐

Definitely take you up on that offer. I’ll send a pm with my number and we can maybe have a call to discuss?

Thankfully haven't got them to do anything else as the rest we pretty much DIY

Unfortunately rigid insulation isn't rodent proof either. Best to keep them out altogether, or install a cat. That's good, it'll soon be a long forgotten memory. A diligent amateur would surely take up the task if offered a few ££. Just retain the cost from the builder and document all the poor workmanship to ensure they have no comeback. Don't cheap out on the foam either. Something that remains flexible and doesn't shrink.

Which link, will see what I can do. Maybe worth pointing out to the academics that if the information they 'discover' was open for public scrutiny, messages may be though faster. Was it this one? Climate targets at risk as green tech triggers higher energy demands ENVIRONMENT 2 March 2021 By Adam Vaughan Efficiency improvements in the technology at steel plants can lead to a greater demand for steel Sebastian Kahnert/EPA/Shutterstock The world is failing to account for a “rebound effect” that could wipe out more than half of the savings from energy efficiency improvements like cleaner cars, making the goals of the Paris Agreement even harder to hit. Improvements to energy efficiency, from LED lights to better steel-making arc furnaces, are seen by many authorities as a top priority for cutting carbon emissions. Yet a growing body of research suggests that human behaviour and economics mean a major chunk of anticipated efficiency savings are lost. A team led by Paul Brockway at the University of Leeds, UK, looked at 33 studies on the economy-wide impact of a phenomenon known as the rebound effect. First comes the direct rebound: for instance, when someone buys a more efficient car, they may take advantage of that by driving it further. Then comes the indirect rebound: fuel savings leave the owner with more money to spend elsewhere in the economy, consuming energy. This contributes to the macro effect of growing the overall economy. Although the 33 studies used different methods to model the rebound effect, they produced very consistent estimates of its impact, leading Brockway and his colleagues to conclude that the effect erodes, on average, 63 per cent of the anticipated energy savings. “We’re not saying energy efficiency doesn’t work. What we’re saying is rebound needs to be taken more seriously,” says Brockway. The idea that increased efficiency may not deliver the hoped-for savings dates back to the Jevons paradox, named after the economist William Stanley Jevons who, in 1865, observed that more efficient coal use was leading to more demand for coal. The last review of the economy-wide rebound effect was in 2007. The new analysis is the first to pull together the explosion of research since. Worryingly, the influential energy models that governments and companies rely on to examine how future emissions and energy demand may unfold aren’t good at capturing the rebound effect. The team looked at 17 scenarios from energy models, including ones used by the International Energy Agency, the UN climate science panel, BP, Shell and Greenpeace. “Most of the models missed out large numbers of the channels which contribute to rebound effects,” says Steve Sorrell at the University of Sussex, UK, a co-author of the new study. One scenario assumed a rebound effect of just 10 per cent. “The message is these rebound effects do definitely need to be incorporated in any scenarios. If they haven’t been incorporated, emissions are likely to be even greater,” says Roger Fouquet at the London School of Economics. If the rebound effect does prove to be as big as suggested, it means future global energy demand will be higher than expected and the world will need far more wind and solar power and carbon-capture technology than is currently being planned for. “It’s fair to say it will make it harder to meet the Paris targets if we don’t properly account for rebound effects in modelling and policy,” says Brockway. But that doesn’t mean nothing can be done to limit the rebound effect. One answer is to double down on energy efficiency and do twice as much to achieve the same effect, says co-author Gregor Semieniuk at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Sorrell says more carbon pricing, as well as more ways to capture the financial savings from efficiency and force them into investment in green technology, could also help us tame the rebound effect. Journal reference: Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2021.110781

This is one reason why I am not a fan of rigid insulation, it needs to be detailed WELL. Rockwool / frametherm /batts type insulation cut slightly over sized and squashed to be a snug fit is less hard to mess up like this. Tell the builder ALL the joints want foaming and taping, ALL of them, at their expense.

If you've time it's easily DIYable. We did all our insulation ourselves for this reason - knew trades would be half-arsed and have no attention to detail. Nothing a bit of foam and some foil tape won't sort.

I did my VAT claim on a temporary habitation certificate and they paid out. At that point it was NOT complete by building control and one supply and fit supplier had no problem zero rating it. I did not even mention that I had done my VAT clam, just that it was not signed off as complete by building control.

Sadly the vast majority. I'm asking for some back (yeah wish me luck) but I will threaten to go all over their social media and trustatrader etc accounts with pictures if they don't cough up.

You’re right. Builders are wrong. They either know they are wrong and fobbing you off or they don’t understand how insulation works.

I am afraid that's what the general public think and need a is simple Tag to associate low running cost houses with. To some people it will mean looking like it is made from timber, other may think it means it has a wood burner, some may say as it is old, it has low energy cost as it has been around for decades. Another may say that they grow their own vegetables, or it has a green roof. Probably the most environmentally friendly housing is city centre, very high rise, flats. Try putting an "eco" tag on those.

Dead right there. While watching last nights "dream homes" a friend of SWMBO sent a message along the lines "Are you watching this? ..... It's just made of wood, no brick anywhere, it must be freezing"

I am afraid that's what the general public think and need a is simple Tag to associate low running cost houses with. Passivhaus - what's that, very small group of people have heard of them and understand them, most no clue, if they have heard of them they're airtight and must be stuffy and mouldy. That was the feedback I had from people I spoke to when I was building our near Passivhaus. Building education is very low in this country, with the general public and building professionals. Picking up on another thread, Tado sell smart thermostats to rest of the world, they degrade them for this country to on/off thermostats

I think the 15mm sections are strangling the supply to the mixer.

Are the heating flow and return plumbed to the correct ports on the mixer? What size of pipe is that at the front left of the mixer?Please tell me it's *not* 15mm...

lol fair enough. It's still useful though as I've noted it and if it ever changes then at least I'll know that the installer updated it.

Ignore Capt. Yellowgrout. You won't need to remove them. They go in and stay in, then you move onto the next problem.

Well I think you know the answer here. The design needs to fit better into the local vernacular. It’s seems you’ll have to work with them to meet somewhere in the middle unfortunately.

You need to be very careful Someone I worked with installed one on a canal boat which went badly wrong He survived but his wife and children didn’t He worked as a gas engineer

I’ve (re)painted many rooms whilst having to avoid existing papered walls etc. Never had any issue whatsoever, and in fact I think it’s easier to keep paint off adjacent wallpaper than it is to keep wallpaper paste off adjacent paint. i think I’d take their suggestions as simply their preference given the choice, but certainly not something that should pose them any issues at all. I suppose it does depend how good they are, and if I’ve learnt one thing about professionals over the years it’s that the title really does refer to getting paid for it and not necessarily being any good!

Is this going in an extension? How tall is the rest of the house? A more serious problem can occur if the flue is lower than some parts of the building. In some wind directions you get a down draught in the wind shadow of the building. The normal recommendation is 1m or so taller than the highest roof if possible (rarely is).

Oh dear, I seem to have started something...

2.5m above the roof will be unstable , so you would need 3 guy lines fixed to the roof. I agree with Conor. The amount of heat is what will restore smooth flow. I hadn't heard of the 5 x dia rule of thumb to return to stable flow, but it seems right based on drainage observations. I would fit what you need for building regs. If it doesnt work you can later add to the top. There are cowls to assist flow and prevent back-draughts, and i would have that rather than the very long pipe.

Not "advice" but the little WBS in our static caravan worked fine with a total of 3 metres of flue, two 45 degree bends right next to the stove.

It takes approx 3 to 5x the diameter of a pipe for a fluid (or gas) to return to its stable (laminar) condition after a restriction. So if it's a 150mm flue, then allowing 500mm for flow to settle is bang on. BUT it's not strictly cumulative... If you have two or three bends / restrictions you still just need the 3-5x, (maybe up to 10x to be safe) diameter length to "settle" after the last point.

I am going to guess, based on logic taken from plumbing and ventilation, that for each 45° bend you are adding a restriction in the flue, a restriction which I assume slows the passage of combustion gases, therefore adding more height allows a good tall straight run to create some vertical acceleration of the gases and thus create a good draw. Having seen plenty of stoves in cottages with all sorts of bends and joints, and terminating just above roof level, I cannot see that the extra 3.5m is really needed, but maybe on paper that is indeed what you need - ask them for the flue calcs and get them to show you the workings of it all. I also find a lot of these so called "experts" have misread regs and guides or want to sell you more than you need sadly. As an M&E consultant myself I see it all the time.

Never one to miss an opportunity for analysis:

Did you get a price from baskil( Munster joinery) using their triple glazed Passiv frames as they would be suitable for your 0.80W/m2K standard.

Fakro are a respected Polish company. No reason to think other Polish companies are poor quality either.

Yes. https://ekookna.co.uk/

Well, to pick up on this topic, I've now had enough of Tado and I gave the product a chance. Here's why: A customer contacted me to ask if would install a Tado on their s-plan system. I said I'd be happy to help. Boiler was a Vaillant and I recommended they use Vaillant's own system but they insisted on Tado. So, I called Tado installer technical department and told them what i wanted to do. Yes the technical support said, all you need to do is: 1. buy the wired thermostat 2. buy the add-on receiver from the professional store. Big caveat was that despite saying their system supports digital control, they told me they do not guarantee that it will work with Vaillant's ebus. Okay, customer still happy to have a go. So, on this advice customer orders all the kit and today I go to install it all only to find out that the add-on receiver does NOT support low voltage digital control but 230v relay only. I call the installer technical department to ask WTF only to be told that no, it is not possible to have a wireless modulating control with an s-plan using Tado reciever to control ch and dhw valves, not even Opentherm. I kind of went through what I'd been told and received a rather unhelpful re-assertion that the product I'm after doesn't exist. So what is the real story?????? Of course I can't phone their installer technical helpline to check now can I??? All I can say is a total load of (expletive deleted) rubbish. And then don't even get me started on the smart trvs with plastic adapters trying to get them to properly attach to existing 'heritage' trv threads and not fall off.... Clearly Tado and I have not got off to a good start. Meanwhile my Honeywell evohome ticks away, modulating my boiler nicely and reliably and provides easily accessible control to each zone doing everything it said on the box.

It’s called ducting, certainly nothing new.

Prompted by @haddock's query here: and my few charts to show what has happened in my house, I have finally got all my data together and after looking at dozens of charts, have reduced it to two that show the most useful information about my house cooling, or heating. Initially thinking that the difference between internal and external temperatures was the best base to chart against, I soon realised that it shows hard to understand results i.e. a larger number, the colder it is. Then it struck me that as I was looking at the slope of the data points for °C/hour change in internal temperature, temperature difference was built in i.e. colder outside, the faster the house cools. Real scientists would be talking about 'energy forcing' which cover all energy inputs because of the Conservation of Energy: Energy cannot be created, only change its form. But enough of that, the rest is statistics. Without going into too much detail about data error checking, rounding and discarding data, the data points for the last 4 years were reduced to about 500,000 from about 300,000,000. Or basically data collected every 6 seconds reduced to data for every hour. The data eventually used was Year, Month, Hour, External Temperature, Internal Temperature, Power and Zero Power. Other fields were created i.e. Week Number and Maximum Power, but these remain unused at the moment. From that data it was quite easy to create hourly temperature slopes [°C/h], just take the last hours temperature away from the current hours temperature. If it is positive, it has got warmer, negative, colder. Power data was averaged (mean) over each hour. If there was an error because of missing data, or misreported data, then that was filtered out and will show up in a lower data point count but can be corrected with the Standard Error of the Mean. This left 139,165 usable data point out of 140,268, not perfect, but quite usable. There was one other set of derived data that was discarded, and this was extreme temperature slope values. Generally, the majority of the data points for the temperature slope was between -0.4°C/h and 0.4°C/h. Occasionally a slope that was into the major integers appeared. Now it is very possible to get cooling of 2°C/hour by leaving the window open, similarly a large increase in room temperature could be caused by letting a cake cool under the temperature data collector (I actually did this and wondered why the room temperature was reported as 27°C, in November). This data was therefore filtered to exclude anything outside of the range of >=-0.5°C/h and <=0.5°C/h. Again, this can be justified as the Sample Count and the Standard Error can be used to adjust the results. Other descriptive statistics were used to help explain what is happening. Minimums, Maximums, Standard Deviation, Skew and Slope were calculated on the relevant data ranges. External Temperature Distribution, as a percentage, was calculated as a Normal Distribution as well as empirically from the data. This was done as a data check but also highlights the variations in the temperatures and the associated skew i.e. long tail to the left [negative skew], the modelled data shows no skew. Now that the dull bit is over, some charts. The first chart is all months and all hours for the years 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. As expected, the mean slope, the actual change in rate of the house warming up and cooling down, is very close to 0°C/h. It also shows that at very low external temperatures, the house cools faster i.e. -0.3°C/hour when it is -3°C outside. Around the mean external temperature of 12°C there is house cooling of -0.06°C/h, which is basically no change. The house does not start to warm up, until the external temperature is 23°C, but as the Temperature Distributions show, that does not happen very often down here in Cornwall, less than 1% of the time after rounding. This does not mean that the house does not get hot, at one stage, it was at 29.43°C, a proper temperature and one I can easily get used. Taking the internal temperature standard deviation into account, 90% of the time, the house temperature is 20°C ±4°C. Lower temperatures were probably when I was away, higher temperatures were probably during the two severe heat warnings we have had down here. Power usage, which is a bit peculiar in a house with storage heaters, often show a warmer temperature in the mornings and it being cooler in the evenings. As the data can be filtered by hour, the next three charts will show all times over the last four years, then after the heating has finished during the first two months of the year, up to near enough local noon, then local 14:00 to 19:00. The x-axis is Internal Temperature Slope, the °C/h. The above chart shows that as the internal temperature change reduces, less overall energy is needed to keep the house a a stable temperature. This is backed up by the times the house is using Zero Energy. The Zero Power outlier on the left corresponds with an almost zero energy usage, and a greater temperature drop of just over -0.3°C/h, so the house was probably empty then. The 7AM up to 1PM [6 hours] chart during January and February which are known heating months. This shows a very different picture. The mean power is now 0.1 kW [100W], down from 0.5 kW [500W] because there is no heating input, but the house is hardly changing in temperature with most of the data points clustered between -0.02 to 0.05°C/h. The outliers on the right are probably oven usage. The 2PM to 7PM [6 hours] chart for the same period. As the storage heaters have now not been recharged for at least 8 Hours and up to 14 hours, it is unsurprising that the house is starting to cool a bit more, with the energy inputs stretched out a bit more between -0.28 to 0.2°C/h, clustering between -0.18 to 0.07°C/h. This is highlighted better on the next two charts which cover the same time periods. 7AM to 1PM [6 hours] chart. As the temperature slope is negative, it shows that the house is cooling at a rate of -0.003°C/h, which is basically stable and shows that the storage heaters are keeping the place warm, 19.8°C, with a greater warming affect the colder the outside temperature is. The 2PM to 7PM [6 hours] chart As mentioned above, because the storage heaters have not been charged up for many hours [between 8 and 14 hours], it is not a surprise that the house is cooling. What is a surprise is that the relative cooling is so low at 0.015°C/h. Part of this will be because the internal temperature has risen slightly to 20°C [my target temperature]. Allowing for the increase in the Standard Deviation of 1.32°C, up from 1.29°C in the morning, there is, in reality, no temperature change, and certainty not one that is noticeable. Now that is all over, I am going to show four charts that highlight what adding secondary glazing and fixing the leaky back door have done. These are for December. The first two are the temperature slope, second two are the power usage. December 2019, 2020, 2021 Temperature Slope chart. December 2022 Temperature Slope chart. Pre improvements was cooler in the house even though the mean external temperature was 8.3°C as opposed to 5.8°C in December 2022. The range of temperatures where much greater as well in December 2022. December 2019, 2020, 2021 Power Usage chart. December 2022 Power Usage chart. Mean power is now 0.85 kW, down from 1.28kW, a reduction of 0.43 kW or 320 kWh for the month. The slope, on these power charts, shows the change in power needed for every °C change in external temperature. That has gone from 100W/°C to 60W/°C. Airtightness and insulation really work, and I am still getting the benefit of those improvements.

Yeah I think more likely passing on other people's guessed explanation than coming up with his own, but certainly JG Speedfit is not guaranteed for use in secondary return applications, like hep2o, it's excluded by the MIs. Our plumber was an absolute stickler for keeping within MIs. https://www.johnguest.com/sites/jg/files/2022-01/RWC11339_JG-Speedfit-Technical-Specs-Guide_v11.pdf "Speedfit products must not be used on any continuously operated re-circulating systems as they are not approved under the current version of these standards."

It's a conspiracy by "big concrete"