Leaderboard

Don’t know either but ours arrived last week and it’s excellent for the money and as good or better than kitchen units at twice the cost from elsewhere. Time will tell in use but on first inspection I’m really impressed.

Oh yes I totally relate to that. I had to run around after my sparky taping up the holes he'd cut in the membrane. He actually said he didn't like the idea of having a membrane (between the insulation and the plasterboard) 'because it would sweat'. And he wasn't exactly new to the trade. Good sparky, but clueless about other aspects of building. Don't assume that people know anything outside of their own specialism. Anything remotely modern or unusual will likely be treated with suspicion.

Haha absolutely, and working off a ladder is what they did. Seems to have done the trick and a fair price so all is well.

I also was just a DIY er, but after getting some stupid quotes, decided I would do the PM role and lots of other roles. First have a step by step plan. Dates not that important but the logical build sequence is. Mine a little different from some people Foundation, floor installation, UFH pipes, concrete floor, all done prior to walls getting in the way. While that was happening I got all services to site, including a water borehole. Build walls etc... You have to be on site, at any time you have trades there. Coming and going just doesn't work. Doing it and a normal day job a big no. You have to be able to make decisions and not dither about. These will range from that dimension doesn't work, what do you want me to do, to putting a light there looks stupid, are you certain it goes there? Scaffold will likely need to moved about for different trades, so you need to on top of that etc. You have to be at least two steps ahead of everyone else on site, they are there to one scope. Ask the trades on site for recommendations for the next trade you need. They will have people they like to work with, and more importantly don't want to work with. Be prepared to get your hand dirty, fill skips, tell people that's how I want it done. If you are going airtight you have to reinforce the message to every trade most days. Try to get fixed prices for scopes, way less stressful, nothing worse than seeing someone in the van on their phone, when you are paying by the hour - on a fixed price, that's someone else's issue.

I’ve found the PMing quite hard at times and I’m an experienced PM. It’s not to be under estimated how hard it can be managing all the individual trades especially when you run into problems. What’s made it hard is I know nothing about building so it’s been a baptism of fire.

What great posts from all, you all get a "like from me". I used to say when I was a main contractor. If you PM on a self build and work hard you can save 10 - 15% on the build cost. The posts above are great as they show you how you have to adapt and wear lots of hats.. build relationships, network, learn to deal with suppliers, getting let down and go through a big technical learing curve so you know that what you see getting built is right and complaint. There is no free lunch, it takes hard work. However if you put your back into it big savings can be made that are tax free. One big thing is you can do overtime at work, earn extra, save and pay someone else to do it all. But you get whacked for income tax on your extra earnings. Or you can spend less time at work and work on your build.. you'll actually have to work much harder.. but it's for you so you don't log the hours spent, the personal sense of achievement can't often be quantified in monetary terms. The main thing is that you get that quite satisfaction of doing it yourself.. few folk in the UK ever experience this so grab the opportunity and go for it. There is an old saying .. folk that work hard often get lucky!

or am I just wasting my time as the windows are old and house isn’t airtight? You've already proved the benifits of your setup because you've got less condensate on the windows. What you have to consider is that the level of damp in your house is also in the plaster, the furniture, your clothes and anything that's absorbs moisture, it will take weeks to dry out, but it will. You won't get perfect results because you don't have air tightness, but if your system is balanced you'll achieve more than some say. Think about it, if you have more supply than extract then that positive pressure will push out through whatever is leaking. If you have more extract than supply then the slight vacuum will suck cold air from outside through the same leaky bits, and you'll feel that as a draft. Keep the system as balanced as reasonably possible.

I have fitted about 20 DIY kitchens in the last 2 years. Nothing wrong with them, and good value for the money.

Tile adhesive is perfect for setting shower trays Put a bed on the floor and on the back of the tray and level up once set it will never move

The tray would have a fall built into it,

The good news is I included A2A in my planning application for the garage so we’re covered there should I decide to do it

I mean the crawl space under the ground floor.

I took a video of it, think I posted it up here somewhere. There is a topic about making a DIY blower in here. It is basically just a fan fitted to a board, then fitted in a window opening.

I’d need to check my calcs from loopcad, don’t recall them off the top of my head. 2.5l/min at 33 flow rings a bell. 16mm @ 150 ish centres in 100mm concrete, on 200 pir. 2 loops, 50m each. 15m2 floor area in a new extension.

You can put them all on the same ‘profile’ in the app - so you can use only one schedule.

A main contractor will spend a lot of time organising. Also he is taking risk off you, more or less according to what you agree. If they supply all the plant and materials then they are at more risk and have cash flow to contend with. 30% oncost may be about right, and may be good value.

I assume this is an extension and that is an existing drain? Looks like a wide opening for a 110mm pipe?

22 = (-)2 + 20 Buy new, mine was brand new, still in manufacturer box. Cooling you need UFH or fan coils, doesn't work with rads. Mine is as simple as it gets, ASHP, piped to 3 way diverter. One way goes to the cylinder, the other to UFH. Have a single thermostat to start stop the ASHP. Buts runs 24/7, on weather compensation. UFH has no pump, mixer or actuators. But go into the plumbing and ASHP sections, on the forum and have a read up. You need to do loads of reading up and decide what may work for you and ask questions.

First of all the builder will need to work his levels out from DPC down. This will determine what size block / brick goes on then concrete. We normally use 7 kn blocks below ground cutting these is not a problem. Any bricklayer worth his salt should be used to dealing with the difference in levels. I think you are overthinking this and should let the guys get on with it. It’s very rare that we get a perfectly level concrete foundation and we are used to using several methods to get the blockwork level before it comes out of the ground. The worst foundation I ever had was over 400 mm out of level. It still wasn’t a problem to get the masonry level.

This isn't quite what I was looking for as it's basically battery to house, but it's done with a Leaf battery and is quite interesting.

Sorry if you are connected to the CH system, that will have corrosion inhibitors in it ,so you don't need to add anything. If it was electric only you would.

The problem with bard and other chatbots is they produce something that sounds plausible but is not necessarily true. So if you feed it a bunch of inputs from sales brochures it will simply come up with something that could plausibly be a sales brochure for heatpumps. Little things like the accuracy of numbers quoted are less important than numbers being quoted. All things being equal, R290 can achieve higher water temps than r32 and operate at lower external temps. The efficiencies are similar with system design being more important than the refrigerant. The downside of r290 is it's very flammable, whilst r32 is only mildly. R290 needs special attention to what could happen if it leaks from a fire/explosion perspective. R32 much less so. The downside of r32 is it has a global warming potential in the many hundreds (better than told stuff that was in the thousands tho). If you let the r32 escape from a typical monobloc it it the equivalent of about 1t of co2. R290 has negligible GWP. The r290 from a typical heatpump is equivalent to a few kg of co2.

If it's below ground it's not an issue. A cut block flat with a chunky mortar joint will be 113 mm. This would be built around concrete B which would then bring it level with concrete A.

Yes I was surprised at how little any of the trades understood airtightness and how it works. I had an audience of the joiner, plumber, and electrician watch me fit a pro clima duct seal. They’d never seen anyone ever seal up a wall penetration before. It seemed odd to me to have to explain how a lot of little holes add up to one quite big hole so when I said it would be the equivalent of not fitting a window or a door they finally got it.

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, even a large meter box has less board space than they want for an internal cut-out. I'll crack on wth my current plan and make a boxed in area at the front door as wide as I can. It will back onto the living room wall so I'll line it with cement board. Just for reference, can the cable duct run through the solum? The path of least resistance would be to route the duct into the solum at the closest point to the service cable.

@JohnMo better?

I would run around the wall, but it will need to be insulated, not in conduit. Use 25mm wall thickness insulation.

That would turn it into a hybrid roof, which can be risky. You would need to do a u-value calculation & condensation risk analysis to make sure that the joists & OSB stay warm enough to avoid any condensation within them. A small bit of extra insulation may be ok, but I'd want to be confident I had a good undamaged VCL below the joists was not punctured. If you were doing that and therefore adding a VCL below joists, I'd go with your idea B but you probably don't need to fuss about taking it up the joists a bit and the extra staple holes that will create. Just let it drape down when fixing so you have enough slack to push it upwards to sit on services/downlights where needed. Assuming you pre-cut downlight holes before the plasterboards go up and use LEDs / a cap to prevent heat damage to the membrane. If you go that route, just take services up and down the joist gaps and go across at the top of the wall if needed, to avoid having to notch anything.

I never considered that. I have brought some ducts flush with the timber frame and other flush with the cement board/render. The flush one are where we will have timber cladding. I have not capped the ducts yet but will soon. Internally I am using Proclima gaskets and also externally in the main. Not yet sure about insulating - I certainly wont be using foam as I hate it so currently thinking I may stuff in some rockwool. I am thinking of using butyl tape to squeeze into external ends as a final airtightness measure.

Welcome Gaz Can't help you much at all in making a decision about PMing or no. But regarding the trade networks, just last night I fell asleep listening to this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r1fy It is about networks and how the are interconnected and react, well worth 15 minutes of your time. Seems that in some projects/companies, those at the top have no interaction with those at the bottom. I am was a dreadful manager as I assume everyone lese has the same vision, but they don't. Just yesterday I explained something to a work colleague, why it had to be done, how it needed to be done and how long it would take, then watched them, while I am still there, totally ignore the instructions and carry on doing what they always did. (expletive deleted)ing twats, the term efficiency often gets confused with rushing.

+1, my test showed up a number of “leaks” I was not aware of and enabled me to work on them prior to finishing. 👍

The other lesson I’ve learnt is use products that the local to you trades are familiar with so you have a choice of installers. I’ve had a really hard time with the Alwitra flat roof membrane. Had I gone with Sarnafil I’d have had a choice of installers in the area whereas nobody up here had heard of it let alone fitted it.

We got completion in England with.. No kitchen fitted Two bathrooms without 2nd fix (no bath, shower, loo or basin). Lots of missing wall lights (just a chocbox wrapped in tape). One wood burner not installed. This is what I remember our BCO wanted to do on our final inspection: Checked outstanding issues from previous visits had been done. Checked the electrics were signed off. Witnessed our builder pressure testing the drains (required me to cap off some pipes waste pipes with plastic bags and tape). Inspected all glass that needed to be toughened (eg infill panels on stairs, low height windows etc). The BCO said he was looking for the "kite mark". He couldn't find it on some because they were faint. I had to find them for him while he carried on. if there is ever a next time I would find out where the marks are in advance. Tested all coated glass in windows with a resistance tester? That showed we had some panes the wrong way around but it didn't bother the BCO. Checked the height of all window sills and the clear opening width. Failures allowed: He noticed lack of air brick in the room where the wood burner was going. I pointed to a MVHR vent in the ceiling and said we had an air vent system. He thought about it for a moment or too and moved on. He discovered two upstairs window sills were too low by 1-2cm but signed us off on the understanding I would fit window restrictors to prevent people falling out. This was in 2007 so they may want more stuff now? Air tightness tests?

A quick look at a data sheet shows a 1kW turbine at 8m/s produces 2500kWh per year, so is you stained 8m/s wind speed all year you may get 2500 / 365, 7kWh per day, nearly half what you are claiming. Good dent but not a 12kWh dent. But the turbine and pole is £4k, not £1k.

I'd suggest that the other challenge is integrating suppliers who are not contractually connected, then working outdoors, in all weather. It's not like a factory or an office But I reckon you'd be even better at it next time.

We're likely to sell our V2H unit at some point. It's always worked fine for us, it's got several settings available on the Indra Portal - unfortunately I think this portal is only available in the trial and I doubt you could persuade them to allow it off grid - they don't generally even offer 2nd hand unit support. I think the unit will carry on working in that mode; but it might want to "phone home" at some point - it normally connects over the internet. I've tried it several times without the internet - I've never known it not work like that, but it may get upset eventually, who knows. The most likely useful setting for Square Feet would be "Load match" the whole time - with a CT on a grid forming inverter, then the car will push or pull up to 4kW (it is a 6kW unit, ours is locked to 4kW for dno reasons) in or out of a grid forming hybrid inverter system. Eg a Sunsynk inverter + battery system creating a grid, the car bolstering it if there - Sunsynk could then manually be triggered to pull power from the car. While I can't see why it wouldn't work, until somebody tried you'd never be sure the inverters didn't get upset. The grid forming stuff would cost anything from rock bottom £6k (3.6kW + 15kWh(see Seplos Mason EVE 280 kits) + 4kWp PV, all DIY) upwards - personally if space I'd go for a bigger unit and loads more PV. You can always parallel up Sunsynks - other inverters are available. As suggested above, a genny would get you out of trouble!

Oh Lord not my strong point!! Both are fairly easy, at the level needed here. Think of Physics as what you already know, intuitively. There are only 3 'units' to remember, the kilogram (kg), the metre (m) and time (s). Just about everything comes from those 3. So you know, from experience, that catching a small ball, gently thrown towards you is easy, Say that ball has a velocity of 2 metres per second and a mass of 0.1 kg as you catch it (this is momentum and has the unit p, for pellere, which means push, or drive). The momentum is p = kg.v, so p = 0.1 x 2, p = 0.2 kg.m.s-1. When you catch it, the equation changes to the energy equation, 1/2 mass times velocity squared, E = 1/2.kg.(m.s)2, E = 0.1 x (2)2, E = 0.1 x 4, E = 0.4. Energy what is called a derived unit, the joule (J), this is important as ANY energy, be it a moving mass, electrical energy, thermal energy stored energy, gravitational energy, can me expressed in joules. The main thing is to remember that a joule is very small, the force needed to move a mass. This force is known as a newton (N) and is equal, in everyday life a mass (kg) x acceleration (m.s2). As you can see, those basic units of kg, m and s, keep appearing. As a J is a very small unit, we tend to multiply them by 1,000,000 and talk in mega joules (MJ). An MJ is still quite small, and in the domestic setting, we talk about kilo watt hour (kWh). The kWh is a dreadful unit and causes lots of problems, but can easily be broken down into the base International System of Units (SI). So let's try it. k = 1000 W = J.s-1 (joule per second) h = hour, which is 3,600 s. Multiply that lot together 1000 x 1 x 3,600 = 3,600,000 J So there are 3.6 MJ in a kWh. Say you buy 2 kWh of electricity. That will be, 1000 x 2 x 3600 = 7,200,000 J, or 7.2 MJ. As a J is mass times acceleration, and if we assume, for simple arithmetic that we start with that ball of mass 0.1 kg, then to get to 7,200,000 we have to throw it quite fast. E = 7,200,000 (J) 7,200,000 = 0.1 (kg) x ?2 (m.s-1) (we normally use x where I have used ? to save confusion with the multiply sign, which is normally a period, .). Let us rearrange so that ? becomes the subject (as they say in arithmetic lessons). 7,200,000 / 0.1 = ?2 72,000,000 = ?2 72,000,0000.5 = ?, which is 8485.28 m.s-1, which is really fast, about 19,000 MPH. If you are wondering how I went from ?2 to 72,000,0000.5, 0.5 is the same a taking the square root. The Economics bit is really just accountancy, if your 2 kWh of energy cost you 30p/kWh (electricity price), then that is 60p, but if 'passed though' a heat pump, you should on average, get 3 times the amount of thermal energy out, at the temperature that you want, so 6 kWh of hot water or warm air in your house. If it is gas, and it cost 10p/kWh, you will only get, on average, about 0.9 kWh out (this does depend on the efficiency and usage of the boiler, you can get close to 1.1 kWh out on a condensing boiler). So a heat pump would work out at 60 (p) / 6 (kWh) = 10p/kWh. Gas 10 (p) / 0.9 (kWh) = 11.1p/kWh and 10 (p) / 1.1 (kWh) = 9.1p/kWh. The real Economics bit is double guessing where the electricity and gas prices will be in a few years times, and how they are impacted by not only supply and demand (we have good historic data on that side) and government intervention (currently electricity is priced by the gas price). If there is one thing that is certain, it is that government intervention is unreliable and inconsistent. I hope that helps explain what Energy actually is, and from it you can quite easily work out the energy to heat things up, move things, change things etc. Just think of it as a mass moving and going from moving to rest, quickly. (disclaimer, it is late and I have had a busy day, and it is strange for me to work during the day and do the fun stuff on here in the evening, had 15 years of having the day free and working the evenings, so may have made an arithmetic error.)

Just a small detail in regards to gable flashing onto timber cladding, I have found that leaving a small gap between the roof flashing and the timber stops water running down the timber, not sure if this is standard practice but I had one which was tight fitting and water was tracking onto the timber was causing unnecessary dampness and staining. On my glorified shed I stood the flashing off by 10mm+ and the water now tracks harmlessly down the lower side of the flashing and drips away. Small detail for a very specific application but may be of help to some. I used a small strip if wood tacked into the top of the timber cladding and under the flashing as a spacer to get a consistent gap.

Normally bedded down on mortar. Just make sure it has a slight fall towards the trap, as power and drench showers can produce large amounts of water fast. Hope your trap size is big enough to take the volume, as lots of modern trays only have a small upstand.

Amen to that .

does anyone use Bard? It suits a lazy git like me from having to wade through tons of confusing google sources... R32 is capable of higher heat pump flow temperature than R290. R32 has a maximum flow temperature of 65°C, while R290 has a maximum flow temperature of 60°C. This is because R32 has a higher critical temperature than R290. Critical temperature is the temperature above which a gas cannot be liquefied by increasing the pressure. A higher critical temperature means that a refrigerant can be used at higher temperatures. R32 is also a more efficient refrigerant than R290 at higher temperatures. This is because R32 has a higher latent heat of vaporization. Latent heat of vaporization is the amount of energy required to convert a liquid to a gas at a constant temperature. A higher latent heat of vaporization means that a refrigerant can absorb more heat from the surrounding environment. In general, R32 is a good choice for heat pumps that need to supply hot water at high temperatures, such as for radiant heating systems. R290 is a good choice for heat pumps that need to supply hot water at medium temperatures, such as for domestic hot water systems. However, it is important to note that R290 is a flammable refrigerant, while R32 is a mildly flammable refrigerant. This means that R290 heat pumps must be installed and serviced by qualified professionals. Is it right though?

Had a lot of similar comments, with that and mould related comments, and wasting your money insulating the slab, because heat rises - it doesn't go down.