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Update So, it looks like I've been accepted through the first stage of the Octopus no-MCS. However... "The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has informed us that we are not to offer the regulated SEG tariff to anyone who does not have an MCS certified install. We are only able to offer our own export tariffs." I need to do a bit more reading on what this actually means for me, but on the surface of things it means a much much cheaper solar installation and still having the ability to sell at least something back. There's a load of terms and conditions sent over that I'll filter through this weekend as I want to move fast on this. In other news I had a typical follow up phone call from one of the MCS approved installers I had a quote from. I was honest and explained the reason why I hadn't made a decision yet. After explaining to him how I was exploring the DIY/Octopus route, it completely blew his mind. I could hear the cogs winding around in his head trying to comprehend what I'd just said to him and how this would effect his business. I felt bad at the time, but in hindsight now, if he's an expert in this field surely he should understand quite relevant news regarding it?!

An approach which is more insulated from interest rates is to save loads by living on site in a static, and go slowly, ‘ build as you earn’ in effect. By trying to stay out of debt and avoiding loans if possible, you can take your time researching prices and doing as much as possible yourself. This approach is tough and isn’t for everyone and depends on your income and ability to rough it.

You get hardly any movement on a flow screed I screeded the one pictured myself with 35 tons of readymix But still have movement cracks As a tiling business flo screed is a god send Hardy any prep work and a week drying time prior to tiles

No wonder you are confused, I do this from time to time as the day job and suffer also. Bear with me.. The way I get my head round this is to think about how a speaker works.. an old one say one up from an Amstrad... take a step back and imagine yourself in flaired trousers.. listening to Santana you may not have been born then but.. there are pros and cons to that too.. the old days were not that great at times.. so be glad you missed it! Anyway at the bottom you had the "woofer".. a big speaker that provided the base.. If you took the cover off you could see it moving... to be able to move it had to move lots of air but realtively slowly. In the middle was a middle size speaker, you can't see this moving but it provided the middle frequencies. It moved less air back and forth but more quickly. At the top was the tweater that was a small speaker. It delivered the high frequency so moved the air a little but quickly. A light weight partition wall works in at least three basic ways. The big and low frequency air movement caused by the woofer, in the modern world equal to you having a low frequency " wind episode from your bottom" is resisted by the weight of the plaster board. The air gap takes out the high frequency and the glass wool the medium. All three layers act together to dampen their frequency response so it almost impossible to separate out each layers and tie that into the stiffness of the wal studs. As soon as you change the stud spacing (and length) any calculations need to be revised as the studs change the frequency response of everything that is attached to them.. As a starting point I would not look to save on the insulation thickness.. go for the 75mm as the labour cost to install is the same. Medium density wool will work fine at 75 mm. Go for at least a plaster board of 10kg/m^2.. but you'll find that standard 12.5mm plaster board just falls short, if in Scotland. To get round this you can use Gyproc Wall TEN or often just skim coat the standard 12.5mm plasterboard.. gives you a much better job than Ames taping. The critical thing is to stop flanking sound transmission. If you can pack the top and bottom of the wall so the sound does not get around it that will really deliver results. Just remember that if you keep making the partition more heavy it may overstress the structure holding it up. If you spend time on the workmanship this will deliver the best result. Ideally this is something you want to do yourself (fitting the insulation) as you will take the time to do it right... few builders take the time to do this the right way.. unfortunately. Lastly if you have wall sockets make sure they are not transmitting sound so insulate behind them. But before you adopt a solution just check with the spark that they are happy and don't have to uprate the cables.. Hope this helps.. keep your head up.

Aside the 8way for cat6 I pretty much only use the Loxone/Weidmueller 2+E and 3+E blocks https://shop.loxone.com/enuk/installation-terminal-block-aitb.html https://shop.loxone.com/enuk/terminal-3-e-50pcs.html

Builders? Not really except the developers like an easy ride and country location. If contaminated then the ground is an issue, but most brownfield isn't. If an area us dirty then it can be designed around. Mostly it is about whether a child might get a mouthful of nasty earth or we eat vegerables from it. But it is an overstated problem. If either 1. it was a warehouse and car park, so is clean, or 2. If dirty you cover it with concrete or tarmac again, eg the new shopping centre or surgery.

Spaghetti Detective app allows you to keep a constant camera eye on your print and messages you if it goes awry.

In theory the bed and workpiece cool down and contract at different rates. As the bed cools you might hear a light cracking sound as the workpiece detaches. The Anycubic Ultrabase is really good for this with no extra adhesion promoter required. It's Teflon or similar coated. One reason for getting the borosilicate glass top was so that we can use other adhesion promoters, tapes etc and lever, use a sharpened scraper etc to encourage things to come off. All without damaging the Ultrabase. If printing a run of PLA the glass comes off. Sometimes it's easier to print and let the workpiece cool fully. Then heat the bed up so the bottom layer softens a bit and you can pull it off. PETG tends to stick really well.

Well done, considering your £200 budget, was it secondhand or for spares/repair?

@Super_Paulie appreciate your help . P1s ordered . I’ll leave you in peace now until I’ve done my first print ! 😊

I take mine off as soon as the cooldown procedure is finished on the Ultimaker but it's basically as soon as you can touch the bed without losing finger prints... Sometimes they just pop off, most times I use a Stanley blade as a lever and once the vacuum is broken it lifts away.

Been there, done that, got the tee shirt, I could write a book on it.

or, we saved about 75% of the expected build cost before and also do build as you earn for the rest. At least that way we get to live in our house, which although old and cold is paid for totally and is more comfortable than a static. We have been lucky with inheritance from both sides of the family to get this amount. We also have a mortgage at 1.34% where I make the minimum payments with the rest saved at a higher interest rate. When my fixed rate ends in 4 yrs then I'll pay it off. HID is building it DIY and is therefore slower than we can spend, so higher interest rates is good for us. We have been somewhat shot in the foot by rising material costs, but it took us many years to get planning to convert our barn so we couldn't start any earlier and DIY was always our plan.

I used worktop express for oak worktops. Seemed a good price and quality. I cut them to size on site (just in case their tape measure is different from mine!) but probably didn't need to worry as the 3m and 4m lengths supplied were within 2mm and spot on 635mm width. Occasionally there's a small knot or bit of filler in one of the timber pieces which can be exposed when a cut is made, which is presumably what the disclaimer is about. I never hit one, and the cut edges when coated with oil look exaclty like the pre-coated edges originally supplied. If the cut edge is against a wall it doesn't matter anyway. If you're using the cutting service don't forget to allow expansion gaps against walls/cabinets in your measurements.

Some may have, but that is generally only replacing the older existing schemes. Similar to my idea of putting solar panels next to major roads. Near Taunton, next to the M5, they are building houses. I assume for deaf people. They should have very low heating bills as all the EVs will be catching alight.

ABS won't stick to glass unless you heat the plate and add an agent of some sort. Hairspray, glue or a slurry made from abs and acetone all work. The easiest and best way for me is to float on kapton and then squeegee out the water. Then heat it until it's dry and then wipe it over with acetone after every job. Sticks no problem but the tape will lift if you run large flat jobs and let it cool while still attached.

I've just realised it's simple. Build more ring roads. Infill with housing, including compulsory purchase of inferior industrial estates*. Town takes most of the uplift profit. Neighbourhood facilities included. Reduce shop rates in the town to encourage a resurgence. Lots of buses. Existing tired towns become thriving hubs again. Better than new towns? Sorted. * and in the tradition of streets being named after the countryside they destroyed, we can have "scrapyard mews", "sidings street" etc

One extreme end of the cost ranges we see on here. The other is getting it done by professionals and main contractors....but that isn't really self build. And all variations in-between. Are we saying £1k to £4k per m2? The other thing about diy is that payments to builders are out of your already taxed income. But there is so much to learn. I've been in many aspects of construcion all my career (and before) and am still learning a lot.

I pretty much exclusively use ABS for it's resistance to heat and it's sanding and polishing potential. You can sand it and then polish it up with just friction, I've got a carpet tile attached to a board that I use to generate the friction. You can't do that with pla, you'd be sick of your life. Horses for courses really, depends on what you're doing, it's all experience. With ABS i print on kapton tape on the glass plate on the Ultimaker, it's the best surface I've tried and I've tried them all. For pla I use a glue stick or salted water. Don't use pla often as it's sh1te.

Exactly what we're doing. I realise that we are over-privileged in self build terms: all I've done for the last eight years is get up and try to get on with the build. We've had some horrible lows - but some very heady moments too. It takes focus, persistence and a rock-solid partnership. There comes a stage when you are so committed to the project (sunk costs, emotional and financial) that you just can't stop.

Heat pump of various kinds are on here, including A2A. https://www.eurovent-certification.com/en/ I stated looking into it, see attached MoreDetailPerformance2.xlsx

You may already know this but if you didn’t Ikea also do cut to measure / shape worktops. I’ve personally had good experiences with their worktops. I’ve always found their worktops far better than their cabinets.

Helpful post , thanks. Before I built my house we had to remove an SSEN pole that also carried a telephone line. Openreach were appalling to deal with, whereas SSEN were superb. I always felt that SSEN saw me as a customer who they were obliged to provide a good service to, whereas Openreach were more arrogant in their responsibilities and took a mightier than thou approach. They (Openreach) also spouted legal mumbo jumbo and tried to charge me for removing the SSEN pole. SSEN basically just told them it’s their pole on their customers land, and he’s told us to remove that pole, and therefore you need to reroute your line. Dealing with Openreach was the only major frustration in my project. Anyone dealing with them my advice would be do not trust them.

ABS or ASA is probably best externally. ABS nicely colour fast too. Saying that we've done some PLA, in shaded areas, some primed and painted, some not that's all been fine. ABS then is notorious for warping hence an enclosure with fume control / extraction is essential. We've not been able to successfully print ABS yet but must tweak the enclosure / extraction and try again. Hugely susceptible to draughts. I know lads and it's all they use for printing. ASA is a bit more forgiving warping wise but again needs extraction. Fume control can be either by direct venting to outside or through say charcoal etc filters. You get adhesion promoters of various forms. With Anycubic they have a special dimpled bed that is magic for PLA. It adheres when printing like sh!t to a blanket. When the bed cools the part just releases. PLA loves printing in the cold, we often leave the window open. ABS needs a warm cabinet. You can add a borosilicate glass plate atop your print bed. On that you can paint ABS slurry, Kapton tape, blue masking tape, hairspray, 3D-Lac, Pritt Stick etc etc. I imagine most of your prints will be in TPU.

It was the initial SE recommendation, after questioning the SE stated we can reduce.

Good pointer. To expand. I think you are jumping the gun here. Before you get into the nitty gritty of loops, zones etc you need to understand how the wall fit on the floors, the solum structure and the founds below. You are introducing insulation so changing the dew point location. To be brief you could have a house with masonry walls, the internal leaf may have booby traps as it could sit on a built in timberwall plate. You may have a timber frame and indavetantly cause it to rot at the main structural supports.. that will result in disaster.. I kid you not. Post what you know about the floor zone.. if you know little.. stop what you are doing and find out! I like what you are doing have experimented myself on different houses with my own designed UF systems.. in all sort of floors, suspended etc so have been there and worn the shirt.. but the protection of the structure comes first then we get to play with the fun bit.... manifolds, pipe sizes etc. Play safe an get stuck into investigating the underbuilding. Also if you can post a floor plan of the whole house this would help.. you can have a mixture of solid and suspended floors. I have and got round this on ocasion by ducting while appreciating the prevailing wind and what is round about. It may sound like hard work but.. best to put effort in early as if you get it wrong it can be very expensive.

Used this exact service for standard walnut, no issues at all, it looks great.

As the boards are made up from timber fingers they just cover themselves incase when cut into, or put a curve on the end, you might encounter a really light or dark bit of grain, which is common with Walnut.

Ditra is brilliant and protects the tiles from cracking I use it every week But not on liquid screeds There’s no need

Cordless anything makes life easier.

Note how most NIMBYs are adequately housed. Trying to stop those who aren't.

I've got a certificate. On the Fire Engineering course 20+ years ago,it was clearly stated that serial explosions only happen in Hollywood. Mostly because fuel tanks, made of steel, don't catch fire. Plus open sides allow heat to vent and keep the temperature down. Since then, fuel tanks have changed to plastic. If the rules haven't changed then that is not clever. Another fundamental is that big open spaces are good design. Very heavy steel beams last longer, unprotected, before failure. The Luton design appears to have lots of small sections for economy before convenience. Neither do they appear to be boxed in. Why the floors collapsed is another issue. Not concrete, I'm guessing. Twitter seemed to jump on it being an electric car. Rumours supported by big oil, behind the scenes?

Why EVs? The Luton fire was apparently started in a diesel powered vehicle. The data shows EVs to be less likely to suffer fires than ICE vehicles, (0.001% chance of a fire insurance claim for EVs, 0.011% for diesel vehicles - from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1168956/covered-car-parks-fire-safety-guidance-for-electric-vehicles.pdf p22, although there are a few caveats about that data. The energy released in a car fire is about the same for EVs as ICE vehicles. It's interesting that the regulations for car park fire safety were set in 1968 and haven't been updated, although they're under review. The 1968 guidance was based on research which showed that, at the time, fire wouldn't spread between vehicles. Of course vehicles were much smaller then, made with less flammable materials and used metal fuel tanks. Apparently melting fuel tanks are responsible for a lot of the fire spread in car park fires. (I wouldn't choose to live over a car park either!

Not really, just that you have separate loops confined to each area. Not much a fan of zones. That's them wanting to sell product, not what's correct for your wallet. Physics doesn't change, conduction heat flow will always try to move from a warm area to one at lower temperature. So unless you restrict that with insulation, the heat will flow downwards more than upwards. The issue is with different U values, due to different amounts of heat flow downwards, you can need very different flow temperatures to heat the different areas to similar temperatures.

I'd say get rid of the suspended floor and replace with insulated concrete, or glaspor or whatever you fancy. Reason for this is that I suspect your under-floor cross-ventilation will be sub-optimal and (UFH loops notwithstanding) I would not be certain of the long-term 'health' of your floor. Also what would you do where the pipes must cross joists? I have seen a tendency towards 'over-notching', though it does tend to depend a bit on the age/joist depth.

Main thing I can think of is make sure the loops are confined to a different floor buildup. So kitchen has loops that stay in the kitchen and don't overlap into green or blue area. Reason, the heating properties will be different, so you can fine tune each area with adjusting the flow to those loops. The other thing is insulation - more is better, you need a finished U value of 0.15 or better. If not running costs will be high and you would be better sticking with radiators, if you want something smaller than a normal radiator fan assisted are pretty small with a good output.

the coloured ones are not usually painted they are just thick solid plastic sheets stuck over the inside material, the cheap ones are foam filled and the expensive ones are wood inside. then you get metal ones which are handy if you sell drugs. if you go looking in the showroom look at the bottom of the door to see if you can see the wood where they have just cut the slab to height. coloured frames are foil wrapped not the door itself. ive seen some of the lesser ones with mushrooms growing out them where water has got inside. mine is prostitute red and expands and sticks in the sunlight. don't buy an open outwards as they are wild when its windy and you bash all the delivery drivers. mine is just from Eurocell and was about £650 pre covid.

A neighbour was advised by the company that fitted his Composite Front Door not to have a dark colour as the front of the house gets full sun for most of the morning....due to fading of colour and heat expansion. However he chose to ignore the advice at his own risk....the door does stick in the frame during high temperatures and after 4 or 5 years the dark grey colour (almost black) is beginning to fade a little. From memory I think the door make was:- Door-Stop International. A friend had an Endurance composite door fiited as the brochure/website spec seemed to suggest it was less likely to warp than the similar Solidor composite door due to the different method of construction. It has not warped out of tolerance so far but the outer shell cracked after 2 years for no reason, the company that installed it had gone out of business but Endurance did eventually agree to replace it under their warranty.

We took some time to see as many doors as we could from several suppliers. We saw some truly deadful doors that were stiles and rails with foam filled cavities. If you open and close these doors next to their solidly-built equivalents. We went for a solidor in the end, primarily for one of the same concerns that you raised - scratch resistance. What we were told (assuming true) is that solidor's outer shell is through-coloured and very tough (described by one salesman as the same as a lego brick. This was a major consideration when we selected what turned out to be a quite expensive door Regards Tet

I two will be interested in low u value doors and windows …. Best bang for your buck recommendations

It’s the little things. When we were setting everything out, which feels like a lifetime ago, we mulled over whether to set the garage and house perfectly in line or set the garage back. The debate was it either has to be bang on or the garage purposely set back enough so that it looks intentional as if it was marginally out it would long wrong. It took a bit of mocking up both structures to get it right. It’s spot on which always makes me smile because it’s only me (and the groundwork guy) that cared about it as we stood there in the rain and cold with a line and some timber.

Yeah yeah Mr. 🦄

Sites that are almost certainly contaminated: Car breakers, gas works, livestock handling area (abattoirs, railway sidings). Of course landfill. And with apologies to the Black Country......Smethwick anywhere. I once did a drain survey, to tender for replacing a drain (theclay pipes and manholes of which had eroded). My tape immediately lost all its markings and yellow paint when dipped in the running liquid.... which outflew by tipping into a redundant mine shaft. I don't blame the local authorities really. Some of these sites and businesses had interesting owners.