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Yes you do keep saying this. The same argument is used by the anti-EV lobby as well. How fast do you want this change, and how much are you will to contribute to it. Are you willing to help stop some of the perpetual myths about renewable energy. What societal changes are you willing to put up to reach these goals. The 'renewables' industry is not a single pressure group, it is many dispersed groups ranging from individuals spouting their hobby horses i.e. me and Chris Packham, farmers, local councils, to government departments i.e. Department of Energy and Climate Change. They all have different motivations and aims. Why I keep to the same story that combustion technology is a bad thing and using less primary energy is a good thing. As for renewables being built, it is happening quite fast, could be faster with a clean up of planning laws and stopping this pandering to local opposition groups. Environmental stewardship is not about standing still or changing nothing, it is about, using the best evidence available to improving the environment into the future. Just yesterday, on the Radio, here and here, highlights the problems nicely, it highlights that a lot of people genuinely believe that the problems of renewable energy delivery is either insurmountable, or too expensive, or relies on some magic storage, or a tidal barrage between Devon and Wales. What gets my goat about the whole climate change/ energy debate is the polarisation. Wind Turbines get heavily criticised because the old blades get sent to landfill (which is only partly true), PV gets criticised because of the 'toxic chemicals' used in manufacturing. It is as if the no other manufacturing industry has these problems, farming is the worlds largest polluter, should we all stop eating? What really needs to happen is that we have to accept that to improve the environment i.e. less pollution of all sorts has to happen. Then let the engineers, technicians and scientists find good ways to sole the problems, then the politicians, pressure groups and individuals have to sell it to the public. Sell is the important part as it implies a price. Just what price people will accept.

Thanks for all the comments, I ended up painting the ceiling with Tikkurila Anti Reflex 2 and it looks so much better!

The market for renewable generation is there already. Even with no more heat pumps. There is a market for more renewable generation until we are not burning any fossil fuels for electricity generation. It should not be left to market forces, there should be a plan stating how much renewable generation is needed and by when and then everyone know how it will happen and when rather than guessing and I suspect hoping.

Yes nearly certain it's horsetail from that pic. And yes v difficult to get rid off using the usual methods. Best way and most permanent is usually to make the soil less hospitable to it (horsetail loves acidic soil).....so if you can access the soil layer (poss through the side water table), you can introduce lime to increase the pH and permanently get rid of the stuff. I've spent too much time talking about this annoying weed with farmers/ecologists. Glyphosate doesn't really do a great job of getting to the roots but it will certainly weaken it if you pull surface weeds and glypho the green shoots religiously. But would really think about tackling it more fundamentally if poss and adjust that pH in the soil...as Joe says the roots go down the metres. Sarah

Exactly Been in the air force and oil and gas industry, but went to a big electrical suppliers factory, fire alarm went off (not a practice) everyone just sat there, until they smelt the smoke - real fire. One one injured but was taken aback by the piss poor attitude.

I have a pumping station - about 2.5m deep with inlet at 1.0m. The pump just raised the effluent to an adjacent drain. It has a single DAB FEKA VS 550 pump. It is the least powerful ‘professional’ pump I could find since the lift is quite small and I was conscious of energy use if the pump was over sized. Though the sales folk advised not to undercook the pump lest blockages result. As it happens the pump rate is so high it only needs to pump for 5s every 45 mins for our complete 4 person household needs, so energy is negligible anyway. It has been installed just over a year and there have been no problems whatsoever. Building regs specificy the size of buffer needed in case of power cut. (Part H if I remember rightly). That may determine how deep you have to go beneath the inlet to the chamber. I didn’t quite meet the requirement but when I mentioned it to the BCO they were fine with it (seemed I knew more about the regs than they did). Digging a very deep hole near to your foundations would need the consideration of a structural engineer I suggest.

Put some washing up liquid in the weedkiller. Helps get it past the waxy coating on mares-tail. You might also try walking on it to crack the stems. Let the weedkiller do its thing for a few days before cutting..

Nordan NTech 3G. Clear lacquered. They won’t be painted. The wood and finish is nice. They feel very solidly made too. Alu clad on the outside in RAL7016.

Yes I thought mares tail as well, roots go down meters apparently, I had it in a cottage in Shropshire, a right mare (🤣) to get rid of but spraying as you say repeatedly is you best bet I recon.

.....fan the flames by supplying fresh oxygenated air in abundance! For preservation of the fabric of a dwelling, you'd discover the fire and close that compartment off as best as possible (close the doors) and get the hell out of there, and then raise the alarm. If the meter is outside then yank the fuse to the house to shut off the MVHR. MVHR would not evacuate smoke, no chance. Dedicated smoke evacuation fans for stairwells etc move huge amounts of air, whereas MVHR at trickle is like a squirrel coughing. You may be asked to install intumescent air valves (ceiling diffusers) but most are just happy with fire-rated spots. This will soon change I believe, as a ceiling should be 30 mins FR throughout. You can buy a self-adhesive intumescent strip to apply to the internal bore but you'd need prior approval from your BCO before assuming it's fine to go with that.

Not in a domestic build, no.

I said "let's stop here" to avoid taking the piss / wasting any more of their time if they wouldn't install an unvented to my main. Broadly though they have a recipe to work to. Everything must meet the specs in a backside covering way; for both the equipment AND the piping/emitters. He warned that they'd NEVER accept microbore and would want to repipe the lot even if the 10 mm was only the drops behind the plasterboard etc. I wouldn't expect anything remotely complex from them.

Just saw these on bpc's website. Intumescent and adjustable flow. They have different sizes and other fire products too: https://www.bpcventilation.com/metal-fire-protection-valve-supply

We have only two options. Do it quickly and fairly painfully, or do it slowly/when we are forced to, but even more painfully, quite possibly fatally so and with societal consequences that make today's 'problems' look like nothing. The option to do it slowly with little pain was passed up by us decades ago. Politicians need to be honest with the public that this is the situation. Then the choice becomes obvious. Probability of that?

People say "we can't switch over quickly" - yet ignore the fact we we phased out coal in a decade.

I keep saying this so apologies for repeating it. There is no point switching to heat pumps for every house until there is enough green energy to power them. If the whole of London switched to heat pumps tomorrow I bet a few mothballed coal power stations would be brought back on line to power them. When are the environmental lot going to start talking about a properly planned progressive move to renewable heating at a rate that matches our ability to to build and bring on line more renewable electricity generation and update the grid to transport that extra power? If there was such a well thought out plan, I would give them a lot more credability than I do now. The other problem of course is one I have thought for a long time (and voted with my feet) that if you all choose to live together crammed into such cities with such high population densities, then ANYTHING you do is going to reduce your air quality. But I do accept we can't all live in low density rural housing.

Really comes down to combustion technology is a bad thing. How different the world would be if electricity was the primary energy source and not carbon//hydrocarbon energy. There was this in my comic this week about timber, not all is rosy there, but we knew that. Comes down to two thing, resource management and what is measured. Building things with wood may not be as climate-friendly as thought Wood is a versatile construction material that could be used to replace carbon-intensive steel and concrete in construction, however the emissions involved may have been underestimated By James Dinneen 25 July 2023 Wood can be turned into sturdy replacements for steel and concrete Shutterstock/Kletr Using more wood for construction has been touted as a lower-emissions alternative to carbon-intensive steel and concrete but it may not be as carbon friendly as thought. “It would be very convenient if wood were a better solution,” says Tim Searchinger at Princeton University. Wood is, in theory, a renewable resource and any wood used in buildings acts as long-term carbon storage. The advent of sturdy engineered-wood products like cross-laminated timber has also made it more versatile. Past research has found using wood for construction instead of concrete and steel can reduce emissions. But Searchinger says many of these studies are based on the false premise that harvesting wood is carbon neutral. “Only a small percentage of the wood gets into a timber product, and a fraction of that gets into a timber product that can replace concrete and steel in a building,” he says. Efficiencies vary in different countries, but significant amounts of a harvested tree are left to decompose, used in short-lived products like paper or burned for energy, all of which generate emissions. Many of those emissions may eventually be returned if forests are replanted or they grow elsewhere. But Searchinger says that won’t fly when we need CO2 out of the atmosphere now. “Over a long enough period of time you get a greenhouse gas reduction,” he says. “But in the interim you’ve increased warming.” Searchinger and his colleagues modelled how using more wood for construction would affect emissions between 2010 and 2050, accounting for the emissions from harvesting the wood. They considered different types of forests and how different fractions of wood going towards construction would change the calculus. They also factored in the emissions savings from replacing concrete and steel. In some scenarios – such as in fast-growing plantations in Brazil – the researchers found significant emissions reductions. But each of those cases required what they considered an unrealistic portion of the wood going towards construction, as well as rapid growth only seen in warmer places. Growing more trees might help, but they found land for such plantations isn’t available, and clearing existing forests would make the problem worse. Sign up to our Fix the Planet newsletter Get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter In general, they found a large increase in global demand for wood would probably lead to rising emissions for decades. Accounting for emissions in this way, the researchers report in a related paper that increasing forest harvests between 2010 and 2050 would add emissions equivalent to roughly 10 per cent of total annual emissions.

there are technologies in vehicles and in industry to deal with NOx

Definitely PVA, I prefer Titebond but that just because of drying time. Fibrous nature of MDF requires glue rubbing into the end ‘grain’ and coating both surfaces before bringing together. Biscuits or dowels if joints are likely to be stressed

MDF can be a bit tricky, some seems to glue up easily, other stuff seems to not glue up at all. PVA is usually pretty good. PU adhesives can work well on most substrates.

Out of interest does the Sunsynk provide the full 5.5kW to the house in a blackout or have you had to compromise with only a few circuits on the EPS output? I think if you put the CT on the grid side of the tee to the outbuilding the Sunsynk will manage the installation as one.

I asked MCS that question and they eventually answered that the PD rules were written by, the and the text of MCS-020 approved by, dluhc. So basically they are denying that it's deliberate on their part. I have submitted an foi to dluhc requesting the approval letter, the text to which it refers and some other documents. I await a response which should, if they meet the statutory deadline, come within the next 3 weeks. Meanwhile I have written to my MP (Conservative) asking her how the government defends creating a closed shop which stifles innovation and restricts supply, and other related but less 'loaded' questions. I await the response. I will summarise both on the ashp forum when and if I get them. It would be good if others do likewise.

Not sure about german regs but a bit of googling found.. https://www.rehau.com/downloads/1273612/awadukt-sewer-pipe-system.pdf

+2 Most underground pipe is brown/orange and stronger, more rigid than the grey indoor pipe. Might explain the dent?

+1.

I still think your choice of heat pump is overkill. Looking at your SAP and compared to mine. Your Jan heat loss is 2388W, mine with the same average temp is 2979W. But at -9 Outside, our heating system draws 3.5kW - This being measured by a certified heat meter and tying in exactly with gas consumption (gas boiler at that time). When the heat season starts and most of the winter you are pulling just under to just over 1kW. Extreme days are not the norm. If you look at your graph and extent the lines left to the 1 to 3kW area things start to look very different. Both the Samsung and Midea are falling in efficiency.

It's a bodge. I'm not even sure that that grey pipe is underground rated, it's normally orange/brown. I'd take it all out.

Here's a diagram of mine.. And a Pic. Things I would change..... On @Nickfromwales advice avoid compression fixings of Hep2o pipes although I've had no issues yet. The Multiblock heats via convention from the thermostatic control valve (screwed directly onto the top of the tank) as it is higher than the top of the tank. This should be lower. Note the hot manifold and the 10mm pipes with the first draw off. It is preheated via convection and there's super speedy hot water to the basin taps. I only insulated the hot manifold as the Hep pipes contain almost no water and it cools instantly once switched off in any case with or without insulation. I should have tanked the floor and put in a floor drain too. I could have ran 10mm cold to the W/C cisterns and the basin taps too but fittings and manifolds were cheaper for the 15mm.

Agree with @Conor the whole section looks pretty poor so you mayas well do it right, I would also be replacing the next section as a minimum, guessing the hole is from a pick.

Manifold looks like this, main stop cock at lower right corner, to the left is the pipe and isolator outside tap, bigger white pipe takes water up to plant room

You should put an inspection chamber at that bend and get rid of that vertical pipe, whatever it's doing there.

Onto window sealing. It’s been my favourite task to do so far albeit I am very slow at it. Making up the corners is oddly satisfying.

It should already be bedded on/in pea gravel. I would lift that section and a further 100-150mm down. Compact any loose ground using something like a fence post to pound it down. Fill with gravel raked to give you the required fall. Fit pipe and pour more gravel to cover it. https://www.pavingexpert.com/drain02

I'm sure all of us have learnt something just eavesdropping on someone's question and the replies. I know I have.

The traditional way to to do this and keep the post and dampness separate would be by using a padstone of course.

PS In case not obvious the gasket doesn't form any part of the pipe sealing. There are big clearance holes in it for the pipes. I made mine oversize, taped it to the wall, fitted WC and trimmed back with a razor blade.

I bought a load of Intello plus and tescon tapes direct from https://www.daemmstoffhandel.de/Shop_neu/gx2/en/. I don't remember the duty costs but I am certain it was cheaper than buying in the UK! although, @ToughButterCup's contact might be cheaper than you can find online in the UK.

Yes. Don't buy from Germany direct. Bought a pair of work trousers (Swedish I think) : my God what a fuss and massive delay. VAT rate - forgotten but it was noted on the Quittung (receipt). There's (was?) a place just north of Carlisle that imports (ed?) and stocks Tescon stuff - just off the M6 immediately after the second turn for Carlisle (old airfield) . I bought my Tescon things from there. I'll dig out our VAT return - the supplier might be listed there. Nice group of Polish lads running the office. Winder if they are still there..... PS The address is Kingsmoore Park Enterprise Area. - in haste - I'll have another look this p.m. Ian

I repaired our acrylic bath a few weeks ago using an epoxy kit that I bought online for about £30, after it was cracked and chipped in several places by the glass shower screen falling into it. The repairs are almost invisible, and the bath seems to be absolutely fine. Top tip is to make a v shaped groove along the crack to better allow the epoxy into it. I'm now absolutely up for picking up a fancy looking but massively reduced price bath in need of repair, for our new house. I used one from www.bathtubrepair.co.uk (other brands are available!)

You need to establish a consistent fall from the start of the pipe run, all the way to the next chamber. If it is just at a pipe joint, you might get away with excavating a couple metres either side, cutting the pipe and inserting a new section. Other than that, there's no way to adjust a buried pipe unless you excavate the entire length. You can simply lift one end and fill underneath it.

How did you discover the reverse fall? CCTV? Unless you have already done so check the available fall to next inspection point or manhole (should it be personhole now?)

Lift the pipe to create a suitable fall then pour pea gravel in the ditch. The gravel will naturally fill beneath the pipe and prevent it falling back. Further fill over the pipe with gravel to about 150mm above the pipe then put back the top soil to ground level. The gravel serves to allow some natural movement as the earth swells and dries through the seasons and also prevents sharp stones that may otherwise be in the back-fill damaging the pipe.

It should have gravel under it, but you could also put concrete under it to stop it moving.

+1 for moving the wildlife on for a while. We cleared the site before the planners descended. No conditions were imposed but we have installed bird and bat boxes, wild planting and planning to dig a pond. New houses and gardens can actually increase the diversity of wildlife … after a brief disruption to habitats during the build.

I have used these for pressure treated soft wood fence posts but they are messy. When you use a heat gun to shrink the sleeve you get black gloop squeeze out. OK for fence posts but perhaps not for this? Edit: I suppose you could wrap the post with clingfilm or tape to protect it and keep the exposed section clean. +1 I suppose the L shape might allow fittings like these but I'm not sure about the side loads. https://www.amazon.co.uk/support-bracket-adjustable-Terminal-90X130X8/dp/B01LZGXEPV/ref=asc_df_B01LZGXEPV/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=446856026572&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1467536357360235964&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9044886&hvtargid=pla-750585532533&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=103463556386&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=446856026572&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1467536357360235964&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9044886&hvtargid=pla-750585532533

At least Dick Turpin wore a mask

If I was fussed, I could see using cement board or stainless (or even standard) steel sheet, the former (plastered and?) painted the latter powder coated. FWIW I fired up the damn thing to max for a few hours after it was installed and measured the temperatures on all the nearest points - there's 'meets the regs' and there's 'should be safe' - not necessarily the same thing. That also, kept the BCO happy - don't think he had even seen an installer do that before. FYI we used a nest smoke/CO detector rather than one of the crappy battery operated things.

When I was planning my cassette stove an installer quoted Kemwell board to surround the stove. I haven't done any further research on it so I don't know what can or cant be done with it, but may be a starter for 10...

These are the sort of distances you're looking at, both for the 'rules' and for practical safety, but as others have said ... you need to check both the BC rules and those for the stove you're thinking of selecting. This drawing clip is for a Rais Viva 100L: p.s. plasterboard, in these calcs is not a 'combustible', wood for instance is.

For anyone who is wondering I have used LTP Forrex diluted 1/3 and it's has removed the stains within 2 hrs 👍👍👍🎉🎉🎉🎉