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The weight of a roof tends to push the walls outwards. The main way of stopping this on a two storey house is to use joists to tie the bottom of the rafters together to form triangles. This design only needs a ridge board not a beam. Problem is you can't do this with a "room in the roof"/ 1.5 storey house because the joists would get in the way. A common alternative is to "hang" the rafters from a steel ridge beam and that's what your architect did. The ends of the beam are supported on pad stones in gable walls or chimneys which carry the load down to the ground. I believe the rafters should normally be strapped together above the ridge beam with metal straps.

Here Be Dragons (potentially). I sincerely hope my warning is unnecessary. The subject of SoftAndSmellyStuff in conjunction with joint ownership or responsibility has always been tricky for us. And in this case the tank is not on your land. A lot needs to be unraveled here. And that may in part explain the lack of interest by the companies you have contacted. Their approach to you might be more positive if you were able to say to them....Put this particular tank in that particular place and connect up the piping.

Hi folks, Just about to undertake a Velox (woodcrere) ICF build in South Wales… I expect I’ll have some questions in due course… good to see a few people here have already completed theirs… well done 👏 on some tidy looking work… Look forward to learning from the collective experience. Alex

You actually have volumisers not really a buffer. A2 valve isn't really needed. If A1 closes the flow entering FCU is stopped and so is reverse flow. Why will condensation be an issue, just pump the water around in cooling mode above dew point which will give you plenty of cooling power from the fan coils and no condensation issues. With a heat pump you have a minimum flow requirement, it is very unlikely you will get through a single radiator. My 6kW is 9L/min minimum flow not sure you will squeeze that through a bathroom radiator. From your info on the other thread your heat load is around 2kW, but you are planning 11 radiators and 4 FCUs - seems a lot, plus two volumisers. Think some simplification is needed somewhere. You're well insulated and you really don't need heat in every space or under every window to heat up drafts, that may exist in a more normal house.

That is more or less what I did with my electricity connection.

No. As @Temp mentioned, you could approach the applicant/owner to find out who they instructed to deal with the condition.

I don't think they are required to put absolutely all correspondence online. When we were going through planning way back in 2005 ish the planners had their own separate paper files as well. However back then you could go and see them. Initially that was as easy as dropping in to the Planning Office reception and asking to see the file but they did away with the reception. After that you had to go to the main Council reception desk in a totally different building and book an appointment. Things might have changed by now though. Might be easier to knock on the door of those houses, explain who you are and ask how they are getting on with their treatment plant and do they have soakaways etc

Very kind/generous of you sir but it's no good for me.........

We're in a similar position. I used a local planning consultant who was recommend by our EA - the one selling our house, not the one selling the plot were are buying. The planning consultant looked at the current PP, looked our our brief , and met with us for an hour to discuss our chances of getting what we want (which he rated as good). He did this for £250+VAT. Of course we cannot hold him to his opinion if we subsequently struggle to get the revised plans we want through, but it was enough to give us the confidence to proceed. We also to a good look at as many recent nearby planning applications as we could find, both granted and refused.

If I can provide any photos of my install or anything that might be useful for you, just let me know.

I have a Greenstar 24i system boiler. I have the instruction manual for the diverter kit and see the part you are referring too.

I have a WB Greenstar 30CDi Classic System boiler. If it's the integral diverter kit you are looking at, it needs to be fitted before the boiler is fixed to the wall so you need to take that into account. Download the instruction manual for the diverter and it will show you what's involved in fitting it.

Hi, Everyone; thank you for the replies! I will try to answer all the questions. The treatment plant sits in a field behind both houses, owned by a neighbour. Drainage from both houses flows down a shared access road into the field to the plant inlet. The soakaway is nothing more than a 20-year-old rubble drain; it’s end of life. It is also shared among four houses, two using the treatment plant and two others with individual septic tanks. The effluent exits the plant outflow through an 8-inch polypipe and down to the soakaway. The soakaway drains across the entrance to another field, then down a drainage ditch along the road to a wee burn at the bottom of the hill. This is the agreed route with SEPA. The house is self-built by the original owner, it had a 7-year architect certificate which has expired. The house was completed in 2017 and is only 7.5 years old. There is no factoring or agreement for shared maintenance of the plant between the two houses or all four for the drainage field. All the neighbours are friendly, and we have been discussing it together, but we’ve not got to the money aspect, so communication may break down. Marsh has been excellent. 3 visits to the site, lots of helpful advice. The plant has made it into the hall of shame and is used as an example of how not to do it! Fitting our own is an option, however, that leaves my neighbour literally “in the shit” and I would rather resolve together. This would also necessitate redoing all the civils under the access road and redirecting them, which may not be a viable option due to the location of a garage, underground gas tank and the house! I am in contact with the guy who built it and I know his new address, however, he built the houses using a “building company” which was c/o his families other business. I am discussing this with my lawyer presently. Paying for someone to visit is not an issue. However, others have come and gone, and they won’t even return my calls. I guess I lack confidence in the supposed “experts” who give their opinions rather than resolutions. I have been trying to resolve this since Jan 2023, when I first contacted SEPA for help. Turns out I have more info than them since they were hacked and lost loads of documents. I was looking for the percolation test results, but nobody has them. We have had the tank emptied several times since April this year to reduce the smell and outflow. I think that's everything. Sketch attached.

Don't ask them for a price. Tell them it doesn't work as designed and you want it fixed under warranty.

Your issue is, if it was used for real, you could have the pipe backup the fluid flow, the result hot water spilling out the tundish. Let us know if the valve fixes the issue.

I didn't manage to find a match on a brief look around Alibaba, but Megawave's radiator-style FCUs are a dead ringer for a kind of generic boxy FCU style (Megawave v random Alibaba example), and (for some reason) Chinese heat exchangers are often anodized in blue. So I'd guess they are Chinese, even if I can't pin down the ODM. You could ask Megawave for a datasheet? The thing that would bother me is the noise of the fan, which can vary depending on what kind of motor and controller they have (and is hard to picture the raw dB numbers without listening to it). If it is Chinese, they often have relatively simple electrical connections to the unit (valve on/off/bypass, temperature sensor/thermistor, fan speeds 1/2/3 via mains terminals or 0-10V if an electronically commutated variable-speed DC (EC-DC)) and the wifi module is a drop in third party module. Often on the Tuya smart platform, I wouldn't put a whole lot of store by these units (they are cheap), but at least you have access to the raw connections to do something better if you prefer that.

Radiator heat output calculator, yellow cells is what to alter, use a dT between flow and return of 5. Radiator Heat Output Calculator (1).xlsx

Fred Dibnah was on television several times filling his boiler from them and telling us it was illegal to do so. I wonder how many times he got fined?

My LPA has now gone the way of any many others and will now not have any discussion during the at planning application. They won't even tell you who the planning officer is and there's no way to contact them. It's made pre planning advice more or less compulsory. While I'd normally recommend a Planning Consultant, sounds like your position has already resolved the areas that they would help with. If your LPA will talk to you during the application I'd suggest going straight to a full Application, if not then use the pre-app advice service and hold your nose of the extra costs.

Some LPA’s will not even consider a Full application if you haven’t been through their Pre-app process. Have you checked to see how much a PC would charge for a site/scheme appraisal?

there's a base fitting with a drain hole in our Swift Air setup, I think Isokern should be the same? "Base stone with drain" is the item.

In haste: Forget the past Find another suitable patch to bury your own treatment plant Read the General Binding Rules Follow them to the letter Identify somewhere safe to discharge the treated liquor (General Binding Rules) Buy a digester Bury it : foul drainage and power as well (SWA electric cable only) Connect it all up Test it AND ONLY THEN Disconnect the other Flushed with your own success, sit and smile.

Thank you everyone for all the comments regarding this, very much appreciated. Some of it certainly went over my head though! The buffer tank was installed as part of the ASHP install as it was a completely new install, and there is a temp sensor on the buffer tank that feeds back to my ASHP controller After reading these comments my thoughts are now to set all my thermostats in house to the same temperature (20 degrees) and using the Octopus cosy tariff will set up my ASHP the following: 04.00 - 07.00: UFH Buffer tank and & hot water - ON 07.00 - 13.00: OFF 13.00 - 16.00: UFH Buffer tank and & hot water - ON 16.00 - 22.00 OFF 22.00 - 00.00: UFH Buffer tank - ON 00.00 - 04.00: OFF Would this seem sensible? Regarding my thermostats, would you put any time controls on them or is the energy used for the UFH pump negligible? @Andehh Yes please PM regarding octopus, I need to speak to EON first as typically I have just signed up for a year with them so need to talk about leaving etc.. As always as comments/advice must appreciated. I just want to try and make sure my system is set up correctly Many Thanks

Maybe you need a better connection detail to help them out. Your drawing looks to require the rafters to connect to the face of the steel but for it to still work like a ridge beam you would then need timber inside the flanges with hangers cut into the rafters. Or rafters cut into flanges and blocking between. It needs a zoomed in detail.

I use a Danfoss Sonometer heat meter, this is hooked up to a level 3 open energy monitor system. https://shop.openenergymonitor.com/level-3-heat-pump-monitoring-bundle-emonhp/ All the configuration work was done for me by open energy monitor, their service was great.

If you do the Inevitable and replace Dont share Do two separate TPs Shared is a nightmare I so the title and chuckled I’ve a TP to replace for a neighbor 8k He’s still clinging to the hope that he can simply upgrade I said right I’ve a friend who has been installing TPs for over 40 years I’ll get him down He looked at the inlet outlet Turned to him and said It’s Fu**ed Got in his pickup and went

The steel is necessary. Takes the load to the end walls. We used laminated timbers instead but the effect is the same. Without it you would need lots of diagonal truss bracing and would have an attic, not a room. Diagonal truss bracing stops the rafters from both bending and thrusting out. And relax.

I think your roofers have done you a favour by installing a timber above the steel and attaching the rafters to that timber. In doing so they have brought the steel further inside into the warm side of the loft instead of being a cold bridge resting on the inner leaf. I see no airtight membrane included in your roof buildup. Also, given this looks like a hybrid warm roof with 50/50 insulation on top / beneath the rafters, then have you done a condensation analysis?

Rafters need something to stop them splaying apart, normally a horizontal timber tie. An alternative would be to securely fix them at the ridge to some kind of beam, and that beam would need to support 50% of the weight of the roof. To remove the beam and the ties, the foot of the beams would need to be fixed so they couldn't move, and the wall would need to be strong enough to withstand the sideways load - for example by casting a concrete ring beam. In the drawing above, I can't see how the timbers could be properly secured as drawn, so the carpenter's solution is a good one. To dispense with the RSJ in that situation, the horizontal ties would need designing by a SE.

That steel is a ridge beam supporting the weight of the roof. If you took it away, then the weight of the roof would be supported on the timber rafters which would transfer the load to the walls, but in doing so would push outwards and the rood would spread. Those ties at the top are not enough to stop the roof spreading.

Yeah, reckon so - the only reason for the RSJ being there is to support a load. Are you sure that it's not and are you sure it was the architect that specified rather than an SE? Seems to be a common: this 'paper pushers don't know what they're doing, we, the builders have done it all before and are far smarter' thing. Apart from figuring out what really is happening load-wise and that there's nothing untoward going on, I wouldn't sweat it - unless there's a major problem, it's not going to be changed now, is it? You can always call the builder's bluff by asking for an as-built drawing and corresponding load calcs. And/or get the architect/SE in to check and confirm whether the as-built is good or bad.

I allways wonder why a PG is rarely if ever installed either on the cylinder or even the PRV, which would be very useful for trouble shooting, the EV is normally sized to 10% of the cylinder capacity so the final pressure after a full reheat to 65C should still only be 3.9bar, unlikely to cause noise while releasing the expanded volume of 3 to 5 litres while falling to 3.0bar, a leaking/passing PRV could easily increase the filling pressure to 4.2bar overnight, the final pressure will then be 5.8bar, far more likely, even though it shouldn't, to cause noise when a hot tap is opened, I wonder are these PRVs drop tight.

If that is the case, I cannot see. You need a check valve in the hot water outlet (top of cylinder) to prevent reverse flow, as cold water pressure could be higher than hot water cylinder pressure.

Can you do this? So long as it's opentherm you should be able to. https://www.ephcontrols.co.uk/section/pdhw/ Or as shown on this video. Cheap and should work.

Looking at that photo again, looks like that pipe is (correctly) the T in from the expansion vessel.

A few issues unrelated to the question The pipe exiting the tundish is supposed to have a continuous fall, to comply with G3. Yours goes horizontal which does not comply. If it's 22mm you are only allowed it to be a max of 9m less 0.8m for each elbow. There are a minimum of 3x elbows visible so max length allowed is 6.6m. not sure where the pipe goes off the edge of the photo. But maybe too long? Insulation has way to many gaps. This needs to be sorted, plus better corner joints. All joints should be tight. Plus if outside the heated envelope it looks like thicker insulation would help. As @John Carroll says cold water feed is not correct. The combined valve has a check valve within it, the balanced cold water feed is taken upstream of the check valve. In it's current location you are likely getting a reverse flow through the cylinder when both hot and colder water are asked for. 3 things to sort Connect cold to balanced port on combination valve. Sort tundish discharge pipe. Full instructions are in your cylinder manual. Sort insulation.

There seems to be a balanced cold teed off (incorrectly IMO) after the valve combination set, this should be taken from the PRV balanced cold port and before the check valve. If you open a (balanced) cold tap before drawing off any HW, do you get this noise?, if you dont, shut the isolating blue lever valve on the balanced cold before opening the HW after the next re heat and check for noise.

Sounds a similar situation to mine, though I steadfastly refuse to borrow so we are scraping along slowly. How finished is the house? If you can get it basically habitable (basically safe, working heating, a working kitchen and working bathroom) you can get a certificate of temporary habitation from building control. That will be taken as "complete" for the sake of getting normal buildings insurance, so would a lender also take that as "complete" for the sake of a small mortgage?

Yeah it is . You can game on it , home assistant- tbh it’s just what you need . As you state you are a bit behind the times and it is time to upgrade so clearly this is your lucky day ! Free insured postage . Ready for your PayPal payment …..

Just trying to help - I'm still on Windows 8.1 and that doesn't like newer hardware