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Generally on waste. I was in a contractors' discussion group once (before it became a 'thing') where we swapped ideas, even when we were in competition. A few points arising. This is for new build not demo. 1. Skips cost about £2,000 each. £250 for the hire and the rest for the stuff you should not have bought' only to throw it in a skip. 2. Subcontractors and trades don't care when it is your material. 3. Site managers only care when they are completely bought into the principle, which is rare. 4. Cautious or non-joined-up design causes more waste (material used needlessly) than disposed of waste. Some designers will be interested while others don't like to be told to try again. 5. The chairperson offered a site visit, and reported back that he could not improve on our methods or quantity. 1. Air is very expensive. All boxes to be flattened and stored separately. Timber ditto. There should be no useful stuff in the skip. Bricks and blocks used or expensive hardcore. 2. They have to be made to care, knowing you are watching. using aggregate bags by material instead of skips makes it obvious and big stuff doesn't fit. (example tile battten offuts taken back up to use or cut to fit a hipp bag...maight as well use them...10% improvement on batten purchasing.) Tell them there is hardly any spare material so don't waste it. Emptying and refilling concentrates the mind and saves half a skip. 3.We (the group) devised a form where the site manager had to list the approx contents of the skip, and report on what we could do better . It was easier to do better than fill in the form. Some were known to use diggers to squash the contents, ie achieving reduced number of skips but not of waste. A competitor said his managers starting using grab lorries to keep the number of skips down. 4. Understand costs. tell the designer what it really costs to, for example, use a 600mm tench instead of 450mm. 5. Yes, he was the well meaning expert for a waste quango, but was learning from us contractors. Other contractors perhaps cared less. The above can be worth about 20% of a project cost. especially number 4, which is the invisible one.

@LSB I did exactly as your lower drawing, (DPM dips under door frame) the patio slopes slightly to help rain run off and prevent puddling, and no drain, even with driving rain no problem.

I have worked for our local Council as a tree inspector and Japanese Knotweed adviser and treatment coordinator in the Housing Department also dealing with boundary issues but now nearing retirement. Claire and I started looking for land 4 years ago and picked up a corner plot in a quiet village near the Preseli hills, thankfully not in Pembrokeshire national Park. We have a budget of £250k for the build and 3 years along the road with planning permission taking 18 months but it's a difficult site to develop due to seasonal springs, high water table, split level and made-up ground. Wish us luck because we will need it. Going for a Hemp build with MVHR 4Kw air sourced heat pump, and underfloor heating. Solar and battery was planned but as other costs increase some of the 'would like' things are being crossed off the list. The log burner was crossed off yesterday after reading this forum. I hope I can contribute to the forum and share what knowledge I have as well as learn from your experiences.

Working through ideas for our retrofit and looking for advice on whether there are any benefits in keeping the heat source for the heating and hot water separate...? Here's my thinking - we currently have an old gas fired warm air heating system which is coming out; we have a newer vented hot water cylinder heated by a solar assisted heat pump ("thermodynamic panel"). The question is whether we leave this in when we update the system - because it's only 6 years old and cost the old owner c.£7k to install - or whether we just put everything through the new ASHP we are planning on installing. In my mind, if we left it then it should mean a cheaper/ simpler install for the heating system, needing a smaller ASHP. Also, are some of the installation problem people experience due to the added complexity of running heat and hot water concurrently - with different flow temperatures etc? Maybe I've got this wrong...? The downside with leaving it are that the SAHP "Magic Box" we have was installed by a company that are no longer trading. There's very little uk information about these systems generally and my concern is what we do to get it serviced or when it breaks completely. If it costs another £7k to replace it would be ridiculous. Sort of leaning towards leaving it in with the option of fitting a combined hot water cylinder/heat pump in the future. I didn't even know these existed until stumbling across them on this forum! Any advice or thoughts welcomed. Cheers.

I think what you need to provide is a "protected escape route" from the loft to an outside door. So all the walls and doors that lead off that escape route need to meet the 30min Fire/FD30. Normally this is your main staircase so every door off the stairs and hall needs to comply. Also need linked smoke alarms.. https://labcfrontdoor.co.uk/projects/loft-conversions/what-are-the-fire-regulations-for-a-loft-conversion

I am planning an extension at the back of my house and from research here I intend to go down the insulated slab route with no screed, so the UFH would be in the concrete slab and then the slab is the finished floor level. The existing first floor has a concrete slab (I suspect it’s uninsulated as was built in 1950s) which I plan to dig up and then lay using same lay up as extension. I plan to lay the slabs separately as my intention is to live in the old house whilst the extension is built, then move into it and redo the old part. The only joining point of the two slabs is a doorway which I would want to have continuous flooring through (LVT). How possible is it to lay two concrete slabs with the same floor level?

Not quite what you want. If you set up your top CU as that picture I copied from the linked website, you just need an additional 2 prong bit of busbar A bit of this You could buy a length and cut it down, but any electircian worth his salt will have odd bits of it lurking somwhere.

Yes you can Ian You can even tack it in place with a clout nail at either corner then render on top of it

So far as I know they are all reversible because that's how they do defrost. Vaillant require a 'key' to operate in cooling mode, costing £200, it's a 5,p resistor in a 20p plastic case, others may have an installer setting disabling cooling mode. But cooling is not just about the hp, the emitter and distribution system needs to be suitable too. I don't think the government wants to or should encourage the routine use of Aircon hence the BUS conditions.

L jumper Live Jumper. This page explains it well https://www.consumerunitworld.co.uk/what-is-a-high-integrity-consumer-unit-and-how-to-populate-it-331-c.asp You already have the high integrity neutral configuration with the 3 neutral bars. you just need to space it out as shown on that page. The "High integrity" circuit (just one in this case) will be a single MCB right next to the main switch, so you need just a 2 prong busbar to link the L out of the main switch to this single MCB. That will be the one that feeds to the bottom CU. Then the 2 RCD's each have a multi prong busbar feeding their MCB's. The bottom CU could have an RCD after it's main switch (or even instead of) or a row or rcbo's. Picture from that linked site:

Admittedly I don't have any heating upstairs, but this is very much not my experience in winter. It's always 2-3 degrees cooler upstairs than down in winter. We're just at the time of year where that changes. In summer it's a lot warmer upstairs, and maybe a central extract upstairs would help when the MVHR is in summer bypass mode.

Sucking up warm air and passing it through a heat exchanger which isn't 100% efficient, surely leaving the warm air where it is, displace it with filtered cool air with recovered heat would be more efficient overall? The humidity helps with the heat exchange too, so by pulling from hallway you would be drying that air somewhat, and reducing efficiency? Maybe i'm wrong here, i'm no expert, just doesn't necessarily seem sensible

I have not heard that heat grab idea before - I wonder how it really works as apart from the immediately obvious it will have the effect of extracting in a place where you would naturally want to be supplying so the air from the bedrooms will now go out of the hallway and bathroom extracts and it may suck air up the stairs feels odd but has the whiff of right about it.

Assuming you need MCS you will likely be limited by what the installers will agree to, see (many) other discussions on this forum. The MCS rules come close to requiring a replacement (they don't actually go that far, but they come fairly close) and many MCS installers, particularly in the South East, want to fit pre-plumbed cylinders provided by the HP system manufacturer, because its dead simple. DHW and Heating do not run concurrently, its either/or. Opinions will differ on whether replacing DHW is necessary/a good idea/silly. In your case I imagine that you get solar heating of your DHW for half the year or more and losing this seems like a bad deal, but as I say you might not have a choice and of course if you are concerned about reliability then submitting to general view that a new unvented cylinder with a big coil (3sq m) is the way to go that may be enough to persuade you. Others may well comment in a more opinionated fashion, personally I would recommend reading a few related threads and forming your own ideas of the trade-offs (feel free to test them here but be warned some have very strong opinions). I would also recommend not being too committed to any particular solution if you need MCS, because you will quite likely not get the option! Apologies if this wasn't the definitive answer you were hoping for.

Repeat the experiment 20 times. Then run a chi square and a student T test on the results. I suspect the it is a combination of turbulence in the cylinder and thermometer/element/thermostat position.

@Gone West Thanks for pointing this out! My error, it should be "...supply valves 1x in each bedroom". Sorry for the confusion.

Morning all. I've got 3 phase coming into my property. However, only One phase is in use. The other Two come into the head but are not in use. If i wanted this upgraded so i could make use of all 3 phases, ie, electric car charger etc, would it be a costly job ? Do you then end up paying 3 standing charges ? Finally, if i was to have some PV, would it be of any benefit to have the 3 phases ? Thanks in advance as usual.

Yes, potentially helpful for a PV installation. You would be allowed 16amps export on each phase, if you can get that much on your roof, without requiring special permission from the DNO, so more than 10kWp. If you install your PV on a single phase, any exports net off against any imports on the other 2 phases at the time. Same standing charges etc. as single phase.

That's right, have a look at "Permitted Development Rights for Householders" - Technical Guidance - issued by the goverment. Page 15 illustrates your situation i.e a stepped "principal elevation" (front isn't used). You can't extend beyond the walls forming the principal elevation and that includes the wall forming the set back.

EDF confirmed same standing charge, same rates and tariffs when I asked them about our upcoming 3ph install

Remove your Downpipe Cut a 30 mil deep Chanel inline with the one you’ve already cut bend the of a square of lead 25 mil at 90 degrees Do the same at the r hand side as you look at it You will have to snip the top at 45 degrees to allow you to fold around the corner Tap the other lead over The dress the new lead over the Facia I usually took under the Facia

Similar here, only a single standing charge, paid 125+VAT to have the DNO put fuses in the carriers, then contacted EDF for a 3ph smart meter, they took about 4 weeks to install.

No you pay VAT on the land survey but if you get the setting out done as part of the groundwork package they can zero rate it. The land survey is part of your due diligence before you buy the land generally so none of that is claimable.

Yes on the land survey. My setting out was part of the total groundwork package so was zero rated. Broadly I’ve tried to get as much as possible zero rated as it’s better for cash flow and reduces the amount you need to reclaim.

For the UK it would be 150mm I think but LABC says 125mm

My Accountant (Wife) has been very clear about what I claim for regarding VAT. HMRC has a web page devoted to self build VAT reclaim but the short version (Rules of thumb), you can claim for items that form the fabric of the building. So nails and screws but not sandpaper or tools, you can't claim VAT on labour so if you buy a "package" it's a single item but if you employ a builder you can only reclaim the materials. Ask for any bills to split the materials and labour so you can reclaim part of the cost. There's lots of information on the self build magazines or HMRC itself but you will need an interpreter 🤣

This is one of my favourite houses for inspiration a similarly tight site. The layout would need to be different for your situation. It's a passivhaus too but it'd be economical to build due to the simple shape. https://www.annethornearchitects.com/#/meetinghouselane/ More details at. https://passivehouse-database.org/index.php?lang=en#d_5319

Our 1100mm shelves are sagging. Fully loaded with booze. My solution was to start drinking more of it. Still sagging. I'm a lightweight.

18mm Marine play won't bend much over that distance and you can stop that by putting a bead of aluminium angle along the front.

Same problem going on here. I like the ''sagulator"

How far is it from your house to the pole? Do they want to put another pole in? I think what I would do is similar to what we did.... Ask them to quote for just a phone line (overhead). Before they send engineers out to install it, run your own cable in a duct to the bottom of the pole with enough coiled up to reach the top and a few yards spare. When the engineers arrive show them your coil of wire and ask them if they can use that. In our case they had to make changes to the wires from the top of the pole to the nearest cabinet. Once they did that they forgot to send someone to actually install our line. When the Engineers finally did come to do that they were more than happy to just run our wire up the pole rather than overhead to the house. I would put both BT cable and a 3/8" poly draw rope in the duct. https://www.powerandcables.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Cable-Laying-A-Cable-Duct-Laying-Guide-From-BT-Openreach.pdf There are various numbers for the BT cable. I think CW1128 (4 twisted pair) is the basic outdoor cable for use in ducts or CW1128/1198 is armoured.

The 1st 2 images are pipes in the concrete slab, cable tied to the steel mesh, and the 3rd image is of pipes laid on a slab which then got screeded over.

Not any close ups but you can see them in the full-house shot in the thread I linked to.

I cast my own cills in situ last week, which looked very similar in dimensions. You could; - knock off all the loose stuff - screw a few short lengths of steel bar into the broken section, using epoxy resin - build a mould around the cill (I just used a length of 4x2 for the base and 3x2 for the sides and stuck a length of draught excluder in the mould to act as a drip groove) - mix up concrete, pour and float. Cover with something overnight and you should be good to knock off the mould in the morning. No idea how much it would cost to get someone in to fix it. I struggled to find anyone, possibly because I was changing windows too, but I suspect many these days would be trying to persuade you to take the window out and replace the whole cill.

I'm not advocating hemp as the best building material, I chose it because it has a lower carbon footprint and that is important to my family. Like all build systems it has advantages and disadvantages, I here to to learn from other peoples experiences and share some of my own.🖖

Working in Housing Development for the local Council I see a lot of older housing sites being cleared for new homes and the waste is horrible. The plastics and foam are sent to land fill or incinerated and I don't want to leave that mess for our children to deal with in the future. Since the start of the incinerator in Cardiff a new brown.orange layer hangs over the city and especially visible in the late evening. Even on the new new builds the amount of waste is huge with skips full of cut bricks and blocks all of which represent waste energy and mineral resources. With Hemp if you spill some you just put it the next mix so no waste.😊

We don't have batteries. Just because you can't get export payments doesn't automatically mean youll get batteries.

That's correct, IF you choose to get export payments. If you dont want export payments then no MCS needed for PV install.

Agree it would be better to deal with the water behind the wall than try to hide it. Is it too late to put in a land drain behind? Some form of waterproofing membrane on the back face would give the best result.

I'm with Mr Punter the crack doesn't look to damaging so a repair is a do'er . Concrete cills prone to movement in that type of shape so a flexible pointing {like a silicone tube} wouldn't go a miss and a decent masonry paint i.e : Sandtex or Dulux weather shield . Days work for a tradesman to mess around with. Good luck with your project.

The crack looks fairly minor. Some sand cement to match existing carefully filling the crack and maybe some matching aggregate pushed in. Point up the joints in the cills and a lick of paint.

That is not perfectly correct. It does allow a hybrid system to be used and installed. But the heat pump should be designed to match the design temp. The design temp our house is -3, but we had a few weeks this year, where for long periods it dropped to -9 or below. So for this circumstance hybrid is ok. There is also a whole section talking about hybrid controls. You can't get the £5k grant with a hybrid system but MSC allows a hybrid, within the design criteria. Here is the wording from MCS heat pump guide. Heat pumps should be selected as closely as possible to the design heat demands. MCS Standard MIS 3005, requires the unit to achieve 100% of the duty at an external temperature condition exceeded for 99.6% of the year, if reasonably practicable. It also stipulates that supplementary heat is not permitted from direct electric at external temperatures above the design external temperature (“bi‐valent point” or “balance point”), but other alternative auxiliary sources of heat are permitted where this is not reasonable practicable in which case the system becomes a ‘hybrid’ system. Although additional supplementary heat may be required when the external temperature drops below the bi‐valent/balance point, this will occur for very short periods of the year and therefore does not significantly affect overall seasonal efficiency even when direct electric heat is utilised. Therefore, heat pumps should be selected as closely as possible to the design demands.

The spurious bit @JamesPa is that on the one hand you complain about the general standards of work and the companies providing the services, and then complain that they propose too much work and replacing what you think is unnecessary, yet at the same time want to attract these very trades on a large scale into the heatpump installation market space by reducing regulatory requirements and watering down a simple regulatory mechanism that ensures installation accountability (even with shite installers). When your 10 quotes came through the door, did you stop to ask why that work was being proposed? For me,and those I know doing this job, we actually aim to do the minimum needed to satisfy a job requirement.There is so much work out there that there is no need to work churn. The reason work is proposed is because experience has told us so we can leave knowing the system works and you don't get call backs! I'm not confusing standards with regulation, I think this thread has it confused because regulations often drive standards and frankly standards are, as has been acknowledged here, below par in this service industry. Are you really, seriously suggesting, well by the looks of it you are because you suggested earlier it would somehow magically improve standards and innovation, that relaxing the regulations to allow more people in is somehow going to resolve the problem without a serious proposal to change the culture and train the industry better? But as normal this becomes a tagline, while it is the major problem. It becomes a tagline because it's a complex problem to solve which would be helped by adding practical vocational training in schools in parallel and on a par with GCSEs to start with. At the same time you're essentially proposing to chuck in the heatpumps with fingers crossed that they'll work to customer's satisfaction and within manufacturer's specification at a low price that doesn't cost the earth in terms of resources or energy use, and doesn't make the customer broke because it ends up running at a cop of maybe 2 or 2.8 if you're lucky, and you need 15 call backs to balance system and correctly set the weather comp curve. I think @JohnMo admitted it took him a year to get his own system right? When you're commissioning several heating systems a month and trying to get them relatively well balanced, it's an entirely different proposition - the balancing theory is very different from the reality of how these systems actually work, especially in retrofit. And to my still limited knowledge of heatpumps, they're more sensitive to this balancing act than your typical gas boiler. In some ways what you've proposed in terms of getting the wholesome middle aged local plumber into more work is reminiscent to me of one of those Tory ministers who brazenly suggested that those who had decided to retire early were lazy and they needed to get back to work for their country all the while ignoring the structural problems largely underpinned by government policy. One of the main ones being education. Isn't it rather telling when you see an advert for a gas training organisation specifically target 16 year olds that had failed all their GCSEs that they should train to become a gas fitter? That's the state of this industry right now..... However much you try to repeat it, the fact is that currently the regulations don't stop or exclude anyone as all they need to do is complete the necessary training and demonstrate a minimum standard. That costs some time, effort and money. What we should be doing is increasing the standards of training and professional registration by setting the bar higher and creating an industry that is valued, well trained and well paid. It may also mean that whether we like it of not, we have to pay a reasonable amount of money to those providing the service, otherwise we're taking a step back to lets import loads of cheap labour, which in the end undermines the whole industry and society as whole. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this way but as you might have gathered by now, the current strawman is way off base in changing the mindset for a mass retrofit.

That's unkind and unhelpful. It's the sort of reaction that pushes these discussions out of mainstream consciousness and keeps people from making sensible and informed decisions. I evidenced the COP figure of 2.5 based on 60C flow temp. We're trying to achieve the same goal, less CO2 output. But sometimes burn gas locally results in less CO2. I've never claimed not to be a fool.

You do realize that facts make you look like a fool? COP's.pdf

The table below is for an Ecodan ASHP. At a follow temp of 60C, the outside temperature needs to be above +7C for the COP to be above 2.5 and for the ASHP to be more environmentally friendly than gas central heating. Considering all the heat demand that will occur below +7C outside temperature, a 60C flow temp is worse for the environment that gas central heating. That's even before you consider coal!

Not clear cut info, it refers only to noise. Generally permitted but with limitations, I don't know about enforceability. Noise requirements for heat pumps and air conditioners are being tightened News item | 23-03-2021 | 11:13 As of April 1, 2021, new noise requirements will be imposed on (newly placed) installations for heat or cold generation installed outside. This concerns heat pumps and air conditioners that are used in homes and residential buildings. These installations may not cause more than 40 dB noise to the neighbours. With this national noise standard, neighbors are better protected against noise from heat pumps and the development of quieter heat pumps is promoted. The heat pump market shows continued strong growth in numbers and in heat production. This noise requirement will help the heat pump in its further advance, and also accelerate the development of new quieter heat pumps. Sales are expected to continue to grow in the near future. The determination method for the new noise requirements has been laid down in the 2012 Building Decree Regulation (Government Gazette 2020, 62676), which will enter into force at the same time. This determination method is a noise measurement on location. However, on the basis of acoustic calculations, it can be made plausible in advance that the noise requirement will be met. The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations has commissioned a calculation tool (ODS file) and an associated manual for these calculations. The noise requirements do not apply to the heat pump itself (from the factory), but to an installation placed near a home. The heat pump itself generally does not meet the 40 dB requirement. This means that the installation must be placed at a sufficient distance from the neighbors or must be shielded so that the 40dB is not exceeded. The National Government. For the Netherlands This is just for laughs

No issues as long as you leave an expansion joint around the perimeter and where the two slabs join 25 mil insulation board

The weight will be a huge problem. Most floating shelves are hollow, with strategic timber ( usually ply or pine ) inserts to accept the fixings. The reason for the thickness is that the brackets usually feature a dowel of 16-18mm, or thicker dependant on projection, so need a depth of thickness / cavity to allow these to be integrated. Move away from MDF, as it's not the right product for this instance Where are these to be located? What purpose? How heavy the loads?

@IanR - it's like this: 17m x 9, plus single storey 5m x 5m. Ridge height 8.8m.