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My complaint to SEPA about their negligence has been sent. I will post any reply if I get one.

Appreciate its nit what you want to hear, but best to remove desk and have an empty room to lay flooring otherwise it will look shit

Treated 2*2s wrapped in DPC around your windows. Envirograf does the same but for about two-thirds of the cost of Tenmat.

Nitromors or the caustic peel strip stuff is the best - you reduce the risk of burning the underlying wood and having to sand down to remove damage.

Hello. Bit of a last minute thought to combine 3 functions. I've always known that in the future I was going to add a lean-to for rain cover over patio doors and to reduce solar gain. But a facebook ad caught my attention and seems a good idea to me to make the roof of said lean-to of solar panels. Mine will be a bit more modest, more like this construction - We're sorting out the patio build up this weekend, so need to put concrete pads in that can be attached to later on, they'll be buried under patio and not visible. My question is - how far out from the building should I lay the pads? Without solar as a consideration I was going to go for about 2.5m (with length of 5m along building, though this could be longer, up to 15m) But thinking there might be a 'sweet spot' on the eventual depth of the roof that is better for the solar panels?

Can I check, am I in the right place for the grumpy old men meeting?

A bit of dialogue between the Brickies & the renderers would’ve avoided this,but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I tend to ask the renderer how they want them,or leave them loose so they can be rendered around & then pushed flush to the finish. So long as they are free from mortar build up behind them,they should still perform their function as they are.

Save your money on Parge coat and spend it sealing around the door and window openings It’s also worth applying acoustic sealer around every edge of plasterboard that meets external brick or block I assume that your dry lining Give the fixers a bit more money to take care that all the edges are sealed By putting a Parge coat on You’ve already accepted that air will leak behind the plasterboard Parge is a diy thing Even the housing associations have given up on it The last Parge I applied for airtightness was for a self builder and the one before that also

My thinking is that answering the FOI request is work the planners would rather not have to do. If it turns out the info doesn't help your case you can leave it out of the application and they can't link the request to you.

You'll need another page showing what the item is with something linking the two, e.g. order number. We had our staircase rejected as the I voice didn't describe the items enough. So we resubmitted with the order co formation sheet that had it fully detailed and had the same order ref and our details on it. Still going through appeal.

I have clayworks clay plaster on my ceiling and it looks AMAZING. Our plasterer had never installed it before, but he watched a couple of videos and was able to learn on the job. I also have bejmat clay tiles on a large feature wall, and that looks pretty special too. I will see if I can find some pictures. I’m away at the moment.

The house I grew up in had had the original woodwork, throughout, painted when my parents and I moved in, my dad wanted it all stripped back and varnished, the old painter chap who undertook the mammoth task of stripping some 20 odd doors, all the balustrades, stair panelling, all the windows, fire places the works, the whole lot used original Nitro Mors and it left the wood in good condition. I must have been about 3 when it all kicked off as I can remember standing watching from a great distance as I was told the stuff would burn me. Looking at the wood work, to this day, it looks great and you would not know it had been once painted. I have however seen doors which were treated differently and damaged is present. So, +1 for the NitroMors - I would, remove all family from house, open all windows/doors, get a good mask with the right rated filter, 3M masks with the Kidney shaped filters are good, you then get the A1/A2 blah blah filter units which click in with a bayonet connection and can be stacked with FFP1/2/3 filters etc. or even other chemical/gas types.

Yep, Good point.

+1 for nitro mors and it burns nicely through the skin so gloves are a must . If its an old house you can bet lead paint is on there somewhere so a good mask also and one word of caution : if your looking for a natural looking finish beware all those years of dings and dents and scratches they will hold onto the paint for dear life and more often than not your finished surface will look like a tub of hundreds and thousands so expect some extra work .

We submitted plenty of Wickes type receipts that were accepted. Is that a paper receipt or Electronic. To be on the safe side add the delivery note, or confirmation email. or something with "sand" on, as it's description "custom item" is a little vague. Edit:- spelt Wickes right 🤔

The safety valve (actually two, over pressure and over temperature) are on the hot water cylinder . This is where the discharge pipe leads to, it is just an open end of pipe, in this case turned back to face the wall. If the blow of valves open, then it may be very hot water existing this pipe, so it is put behind a cage, and it must be somewhere visible.

That got me looking. It seems that the committee (BRAC) making changes is mostly of representatives of building inspector associations. Not expert in design. Plus 3 persons in total appointed by BRAC for England and BRAC for Wales, after consultation with the Secretary of State and Welsh ministers, to represent building users, construction sector clients, participants and/or consumers generally. Then they invite experts from the industry. I once met an ultimate (academic) expert in one aspect of construction and so also one document in the regulations. He was consulted but the opinions were opposed by the representative of a particular industry, and so the regulations were a compromise, wasting millions annually. BUT the green part of the regulations is what matters, and we can argue about the rest. And we self builders can do it right.

We have a burn through our garden. Occasionally the water flows a funny colour, almost milky white. So one day when it was like that I walked the burn upstream and found the source, a drain pipe entering the burn from under a farmers field. I took a picture of the milky white liquid exiting and notified SEPA with a photograph, the exact location of the pipe and the date and time. Their reply was "it looks like sediment" and did not even come and look. So agreed, they have no intention of actually dealing with pollution. Not fit for purpose, waste of tax payers money.

Yes it should be okay. I had a load of "receipts" from the likes of B&Q who won't give you anything more than a till receipt, even when you ask for a VAT receipt. It has the VAT number of the company so it should be okay.

Then they are not fit for purpose then are they? Building my new house, I had to jump through lots of hoops to get a CAR permit before building control would issue the building warrant. All good and correct. But they are also supposed to ensure pollution does not happen and deal with it where it does. If they don't even bother checking the basic details of old systems that they register then how can they be performing the most basic of checks to see if those are up to date and okay, or old and in need of upgrading? Quite shocking really at the total negligence I am seeing.

What stage is the roof at? Rafters and sheeting with membrane? Just rafters? Is it 8x2.9 per side or total? If you are at all handy, and the materials are lying there, you could have it finished by Sunday afternoon if you got the sheet on tonight, membrane, counters tomorrow night, batten it on Friday night/Sat morn and have it tiled by Sunday morning ready for verges and ridges on Sunday. Once I have more details on the actual roof make-up I will say how long for sure.

When we (well the wife really) stripped a stairs banister etc, she found various sizes and shapes of scrapper were best. You need to use the ones with replaceable carbide bits. Not a Stanley knife one.

I would be happy to work to a design knowing I’m not responsible for that part, all I have to worry about is my workmanship. find new trades that think differently

Have a look at the technical standards for cavity closers and speak to your local building control. I would see more cold bridging if the cavity insulation didn’t extend into the roof void

Your better adding timber pattress behind the radiators

I find burning paint off, with a flame, very relaxing. The fumes are worrying though.

I have just managed to persuade our BCO that cavity barriers pointless and not needed behind our open timber cladding for what it is worth. We are in Scotland.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2021-12/Feed%20in%20Tariffs_Consultation%20on%20the%20treatment%20of%20replacement%20generating%20equipment_Decision_13122021.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj9hZf-qp__AhWRoFwKHfltBqQQFnoECAkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0l46qMEQAdIwmJgw1ZmS1x

Or mass even. Weight should really be banned, mass and force should be the only terms used. Just think how much time I would save now if I had fallen asleep in my Physics lessons.

The company was small. The turbines were 4 or 5 kW. Not large, or worthwhile, but okay as turbines go, if on a hill or SW facing slope. But know what you mean. Electric generation requires large kit, even PV. Best left to the big boys to sort it out.

Number 10 screws or 5’s be fine

It's not really an appropriate refrigerant. CO2 operates transcritical. You need a large deltaT on the output side (e.g. 70C supply/30C return) to get meaningful performance with CO2. That's not useful for heating domestically. The output from radiators would be about the same as at 52/48C. The COP would be lower. It could be kinda useful for domestic hot water. But the much higher operating pressures and heavier components that result mean it's really not worth the effort vs straight propane. Communal heating schemes that operate at say 60/30C (to keep distribution pipe sizes low and to allow production of domestic hot water on demand via plate heat exchangers are another matter. Those play very nice with the operating temperatures of CO2. Bigger ones will just use ammonia though. It kicks butt as a refrigerant but isn't practical at small scale for safety reasons as much as anything else.

My favourite response to an efficiency suggestion to a subcontractor was ," if it was a good idea I would have thought of it years ago". It is now a standard method.

Yes and worth discussing for completeness. It is especially helpful when people can be steered away from hokum. Many, I am cautious about saying most, people don't understand " energy in = energy out".

Yeah,let’s get the kids primed for a lifetime of servitude before they’ve had a chance to start questioning things. Far better for Society as a whole to have an educated population who aren’t as susceptible to the triggers fed their way by the Mail et al. And how many innovations in our history have come about by people having a broad knowledge of things outside their particular discipline? Grammar schools in Sevenoaks are basing their intake exam on questions not yet covered by the pupils’ curriculum,so that tutors are required to stand a chance of gaining entry. So much for social mobility there. The ‘alphabet gender bollox’ is basically telling kids it’s not okay to be a dick to someone cos they’re different to you-how terrible for them. When my kids see the trans person on the till in a shop,it doesn’t confuse them,they just accept it. It’s me & my generation who do a double take because we weren’t brought up with this as a thing. Regarding the PV,doesn’t surprise me in slightest. I occasionally work on New Build sites (I did almost exclusively as an improved,& consequently had to unlearn many things) & the phrases ‘if it looks right,it is right’,’looks ok from my house’ & ‘Stevie Wonder would like to see it’ are commonplace. Hard to find a group of people less inclined to innovation & more resistant to change than the entire mass house building sector.

I'm using a Computherm Q7RF.

Search Google or Amazon for Decor Grates.. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Decor+Grates&i=diy&crid=1CBYXQIUJJCBN&sprefix=decor+grates%2Cdiy%2C311&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 They appear to be floor vents and come with a back box and no mesh? Might be possible to add mesh yourself.

I've just parted ways with a strong-minded client who stated the the idea of Heat & Chill Recovery "pleased him", but I didn't get the opportunity to tell him exactly how much of a ball-ache heat and chill recovery actually is, plus (as nothing is for nothing) just HOW MUCH heat / energy has to be created as waste, so it can be uneconomically collected an diverted elsewhere. This works well in other climates, mostly Oz and parts of the USA etc, but would do the square root of feck all in old Blighty I'm afraid. Sometimes you see a river bank with corpses of dead horses that refused to drink. @Jilly I looked into this for a client many moons ago, but the amount of energy you see as useful is actually too small to be viable to spend money on capturing and diverting.

And something similar where the cladding has a window in it?

Google found.. https://www.labcwarranty.co.uk/technical-blog/cavity-barriers-behind-decorative-cladding I have a small area of vertical hung tiles on battens so my house built in 2007 would no longer comply.

From here. You can get two half trays at 28.60, so £57.20

That NHBC guidance is incorrect as it does not include Note 3 from Table 5 of Approved Document A, which refers to cavities of over 175mm (of which this is) and a requirement for 125mm or 62.5mm embedment in each wall. Ancon have an easier to read version here and the full version is here on Page 23.

How old is the house? Could some of it be lead paint? Check the precautions required

It depends on the earthing scheme to a point as well. I'm on a TT earth so ended up with SWA and a 100mA RCD + 80A switch fuse box. (But my tails were a slightly silly 20 metres...) Suspect you are on TNCS earth so you'll only need SWA or RCD. I do have a blue book, but I left it on site - @Marvin happy to let you have a read of it and the on-site guide if you want since you're local to me. I might even have a spare length of 25mm2 SWA getting in the way, although it might be a fraction too short.

Not completely there is also the downward and upward heat transfer, how quickly the heat or cool is moved either upwards or downwards. Very good insulation below the pipes makes a difference. You would think so but, you also have to careful you stay a over condensation temperature. More cold water in floor equals a cold floor and risk of condensation. Plus your heat pump will alway manage the delta T between flow and return, get the floor too cold your heat pump permissive to start cooling again may not achieved, so your room go hot, cold,hot, cold.. it's all a balancing act. Ran my UFH on cooling today. Start temperature of the water in the floor was 20.5 degs. End of the day at 5pm when I turn off the system the water was returning at 17 degrees. Comparing the house temp today and yesterday in similar conditions, sun all day. Yesterday pumping the UFH around all day, but not cooling, living room was 27 degs, by this time, today cooling on 22, but feels cooler. Set ASHP with a 12 deg flow temp, (tried higher but delta T could not manage it) so ran once and didn't give a permission to restart. ASHP ran most of the day, switching of about a 10 times over a 9 hour period, living room 22 degrees, but felt cooler. That's with floor U value of 0.09 and 300mm spacing and circa 100mm concrete screed.

As I knew it was going to be painted I used 18mm thick water resistant mdf. The curved corners were Tulip wood dowels/cylinders from ebay cut into quadrants (I don't have a lathe). The doors are a frame of 18mm mdf with a 9mm mdf centre panel. The frame is jointed with pieces of 9mm mdf in slots. A technique I saw on YouTube. I made it myself in a small shed using a table saw, hand saw and drill for dowels and hinges. Dry assembled on living room carpet, glued up and painted in the bathroom. If I wasn't going to paint it (or wanted a stained finish) I'd would have had to use a different design and materials. For book shelves 18mm MDF isnt great unless carefully designed/braced. It tends to sag/curve over time.

Planning officers are not especially technical. They may welcome advice such as yours and change these rules. For example, I have explained to planners why their drainage hierarchy and strategy was flawed. A shocked silence was followed by realisation that this was suddenly obvious, then an invitation to present my own strategy with planning applications, with explanations.....and they always accepted these. I doubt that they alterered their guidance, but that would require the cost of consultants....the ones I was saying were wrong. But try, or tell them that you are substututing Am2 at B output, with Cm2 x D output. They will be happy. Seriously, they often welome sensible technical advice.

They nearly did. https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/a-brief-history-of-the-electric-car/ Probably failed because no one wanted to by a car from a yamyam called Parker. Should have stuck to pens and driving Lady Penelope about, 'My Lady'.

Spot on. To expand on the chat I was having with the manufacturer today. They said they needed 20000m ^2 trickle ventilation on a new build . The only way to achieve this was to add a head extension to the window and fit double vents and one at the hopper.. remember window frame looses more heat than a modern argon / filmed glass unit. For a bit of fun they did a hot box test and you had massive heat loss at the vents.. but does the window need to comply with or without vents? Most trickle vents in Upvc are formed by routering out the outside and inside, have yet to seen sleeved ones on the commonly installed windows .. every day is a school day. The outcome was they said to the developer.. will be cheeper and more Architecturally pleasing to fit MVHR.. problem goes away until each occupant say in a block of housing wants to live their own individual life. My grip is this. I do a bit of work on historic structures. I make the argument to BC that they leak air like sieves and say.. my Clients are grown up.. if the buiding gets stuffy they will open a window! If you ask for big trickle vents you need to justify why.. yes you are BC but I will challenge you on these techinical matters, in particular how to you justify the heat loss and environmental impact.. that gets them thinking. They stick to the regs but you can turn this against them at times.. by saying if you stick to this part of the regs you shoot yourself in the foot on energy conservation so "tell me what to do" I wonder.. why can we not just educate the public.. if your house feels damp, you are boiling up potaoes / drying a bit of washing inside.. open a window? My Mum does that and she is 91. If it is windy then the house will air quickly.. we need some common sense in the regs rather than this blanket prescribed approach that we need to conform to because some young polititians who are over paid for their talents decide that this is the best way to get re elected at our expense.

It is a requirement in Scotland (and probably elsewhere) when selling a property, you have to register any private waste treatment system with SEPA. I have often wondered how old systems with a septic tank discharging to a watercourse continue to get away with it and why SEPA does not enforce them being upgraded. Well now I know. I have just registered the septic tank at our old house with SEPA. This still complies with the general binding rules as it is a septic tank discharging to a land drain. Well upon submitting my registration, ALL I provided was the property address, my email address, tick a box to confirm it serves between 1 and 9 properties, and tick another box to confirm it has been in use for more than 2 years. Then give payment details so they can fleece me of £170. I then expected to have to provide some details about the system, where it discharged to for instance. but NO. My registration was approved immediately. So no wonder I continue to see old systems discharging straight to a watercourse, they don't even bother to seek ANY details of the system you are registering to confirm it complies with the general binding rules. Why do I feel this is incredibly poor value for the £170 I have just given them. If my blood has not stopped boiling by the end of the day I will be complaining to the head of SEPA.