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I'd use flexible tile adhesive and a full bed at that under the tray. As I'm slow I wouldn't use rapid set, just leave it for a couple of days. Not sure on the depth of the "recess" under the tray. If "deep" you can save on adhesive by bonding a cement board down first to take up some of the gap. You can get Aqua Panel for instance in 6mm. You'd have to cut it to go around the trap of course. Stick that down then more on top followed by the tray. Only what I've learnt on here. Standing on the shoulders of giants etc.

If you want meaningful cooling, and you should, 100% split system aircon. Only way, the rest are compromised. We did across 5 rooms powered from 3 external units and love it. The world is only getting warmer, and with your solar panels mean it'll be free to run when you need it, so you can go nuts with it. Premium feature for the home and massively impactful to your comfort on hot nights and if WFH on hot days. Installation for me was the lowest point of out build due to original firm not joining (crimping) the joints on the longer run, but only being found after they'd gone bust (with our money) and after 2nd fix.... Not fun. But utterly worth it now!!

My parents have a spring-fed system with UV sterilisation under the kitchen sink. Annual testing keeps an eye on the level of nasties in the water (which are pretty low). Waste water is via a Klargester and soakaway. Saves a fortune in mains bills. When the summer is exceptionally dry it can cause shortages, but not out and out failure of the system. Could you not simply rely on the spring and jettison mains?

I think you would do better to regularise it into either a standard U shape or an L shape. Also consider going up into the attic space to fit additional bedrooms so that you don’t have to compromise your plot space. I reckon three stories in a simple L shape would yield more space and less cost.

I think it also takes the ΔT between the flow and return into account. So it is really measuring two temperatures, and adjusting the flow rates/output temperatures to govern the power. I may be wrong on that though.

Agreed But then some plumber will turn up (or there will be some flashy TV or Facebook ad) explaining how fitting Hive (or the like) will mean that they can control the heating remotely and save a fortune, and so they will buy Hive. Perhaps less likely in a rental property, but in an owner-occupier situation the industry has done an absolutely fantastic job of selling us over-hyped 'smart' controllers of various which don't (and cant) save anything like as much as claimed whilst failing to sell us weather compensation for gas boilers which would and which would improve our comfort levels. I'm sorry for my cynicism!

You've got it :) Unlikely - it's a standard construction.

Don’t be a plonker. you will end up with something you don’t want. take the purchase price, add on £12000 and pretend it has planning for exactly what you want. happy now or still pissed off. the system is shit, but so are most things in England. all my reports and fighting cost me £14600 I know the figure to the penny. felt like giving up a few times. if it was easy all the gutless dreamers would be doing it.

When I googled home assistant the first thing I saw was a Raspberry Pi so I freaked and took another tablet. On my second look I’ve found a home assistant green which looks like it’s a hive home hub equivalent. Is it?

I’ve paid for a full plans approval, but because we anticipated difficult ground conditions later in the year, I agreed with BC, we were going to do the digging & get up to the B&B level before winter came, then complete the drawings & get these approved before any more work is done. This plan has not worked well, & I hope others will benefit from my explanation of how badly things are working out for me. I have already had one "serious chat" with him, & from a week ago he has been receiving emails from me, gently reminding him of his shortcomings, & suggesting a better way of working together.

I have a number of these re-usable zip ties donated to me by a friend. Today I found a new use as a third hand. Yes, it is a well used spirit level 🙂

I normally would, but I wanted to show off 😁

I would set that so it's only 2 degs below normal day time setting, otherwise being a low temperature system, it will take a long time to recover. If it recovers quickly you have the flow temperature set way too high. The way Grant do things from what I read, normal gas engineers install the heat pumps, Grant Corporate Engineer does the commissioning.

I said it before going to say it again you need to stop work and get a set of drawings showing what you are actually building you should have a block n beam diagram showing the location of all the beams, they should have been designed to allow any load bearing walls to come up and through the floor. they will also have been designed to avoid any soil pipes coming upwards. I think a bit of cold bridging is the least of your problems stop now make a plan and work to it, or charge on with no plans and find out what sort of cock up you end up with.

https://globepanels.com/insulation-products/globe-wall-mineral-ei/ This may be a solution.

Photo taken before levelling! 😄

OK so it won't be left like that. Also, note how Nod's cut blocks are not at the perimeter, but one block in. That's good but uncommon.

Hi - long time casual reader, first time feeling I have something to contribute... We had a similar issue with the same machine - turned out that it was drawing so much air through the drain that it was stopping water from draining. For us the drain was initially running into tall pipe with a trap at the bottom that also served the washing machine. Loads of air getting sucked through becoming bubbling and gurgling once the weather got cold (holding in enough water just to fill the inside a few times). Fixed the noises with a water-less trap - but the suction was sufficient to hold the trap closed, the machine filled up and started leaking. Have now got the trap fitted fully vertical a decent way below the machine so the pipe holds sufficient volume to push the diaphragm open. No noises or leaking since.

Not being rude - but an architect should come up with something better for your needs .

If you want a 😬story, you're welcome to our list. Some background: we're in a Conservation Area in a National Park with a Listed Building nearby. Planning on the hardest setting. There's a derelict building on site which we'd like to remove and put up a two-storey detached building. There is a lovely old house ("non-listed heritage asset") immediately to the north (so we have an impact on their light). Ready? Planning Consultant £3000 - the National Park has a LOT of policies and they love rejecting applications as far as we can see and we will automatically be referred to the Planning Committee and probably go to appeal so we thought it best to invest early - if going to appeal, inspectors can only go on what was submitted in the planning application, so we wanted to ensure we were properly ready for that. Heritage Consultant £3500 - the number one reason we'll get refused is on heritage grounds, so we are opting for a very tight argument here and I see this as money well spent. Ecologist £1575 - I think we were scheduling this at the busiest time of year so paid more than perhaps we would have if we had planned it in earlier. Who required a... Bat survey £1300 - as above, but we did shop around for this. Daylighting Assessment £1700 - we assume the neighbours will object on daylight grounds so we have opted to do all the calculations up front (we got a 50% discount on this). Ground Investigation £3175 - we're on a hill and we know there will be questions around party walls etc. Hope to make this back in appropriately-engineered foundations! So yeah, it's been eye watering to get this far. Don't forget to add VAT! It's a labour of love and while we might not get PP, we're doing everything we can to tip the scales in our favour. I know there will be plenty of folks here who are in an easier planning context and for that reason probably can do a lot themselves, but we're not in that fortunate position and so some professional help was needed. Hoping to apply for PP this side of Christmas. Will report back.

Ditto, most requests for various repirts are driven by the Council's validation lists for applications. That becomes a tick box exercise in most cases with admin officers not registering the application without the appropriate specialist reports being supplied. You can try arguing these aren't needed again but usually their resistance just wears you down. By all means try but don't be surprised if "the computer says no".

Yeah, I really wouldn't be surprised if double-height goes, we're still very much in dream land around concepts. Central support makes a lot of sense, great shout. Not even a compromise, nice feature.

Yes, I'm expecting this as part of the architect's work but I just want to make sure I'm happy in my own mind before him and the builder start trying to bamboozle me! Good point ref power for the sewage - had missed that one.

This. The floor supplier should have been sent drawings showing the foundation & the position of the piers, and the supplier should have sent back a plan showing where each beam should be positioned. And your contractor should be following that plan.

I struggle with the concept of this hybrid arrangement. The basic reason for wanting a hybrid appears to be you have small high temperature radiators and a heat pump can't heat the water hot enough for them. So you add a heat pump to a system with a boiler. I can see in the shoulder months you might be able to run it heat pump only and have lower temperature in the radiators that would work at a time of low heat demand, and add the boiler to the mix when it gets colder. I could see that working with a changeover either / or situation. But that scheme above with the heat pump pre heating the return to the boiler, assumes the return temperature is low enough for the heat pump to add any meaningful heat to it. Most boiler fuelled central heating I see the radiators are run too hot to touch, and I very much doubt the return temperature to the boiler is less than 50 degrees. I just can't see this working in a completely automated fashion to add anything of value to the customer. I doubt the heat pump will ever produce heat cheaper than the boiler. Why would a customer want something expensive and complicated that saves no or little money? It really sounds like a "box ticking" exercise to get more heat pumps in use, but in a way that is almost guaranteed to get them a bad reputation.

Re the big gable end glass wall. That is where you will probably need steels. But all can be avoided if you compromise a little. This is our "gable end glass" wall in our sun room. By breaking it down into 2 windows with a central support, that supports the ridge beam and it is all done in timber.

Resale values especially remote islands will be hard to justify. House prices are a lot lower. Our build was on a tight budget, and we have achieved a great performing house. If we had used contractors I'm sure the build costs would have exceeded market value. I understand the double height ceiling concept but with this brings the issues as @ProDave mentions and also complexity with steel, wind bracing etc. these complexities will cost considerably more due to location. We built all on the ground floor so made the house bigger (longer ) than necessary,this was due to future planning, no stairs etc for our older age, I'm only leaving this house in a box, or because I cant remember my name. Structurally the engineers were much happier using trusses. If we would have wanted cut roof and steels I'm convinced there would have been even more reinforcement on the walls( we used around 1.8kM of rebar), also we would have had to use cast in anchors for the wall plates these were ridiculous cost. Our build was 13m long, 2 bed simple design. We could have shrunk that if we went for rooms in the roof. I blogged my build on here look for #thewindyroost. Good luck

Make it clear you like it but have options. Have a big area of floor and other tiles. Try another topps if one isn't discounting enough. Be lucky with whether they are pushing for sales at the time. I would have to ask the team which tile it is. BUT crucially for me there are 18 (?) patterns x 2 ways round, so ( with attention) there is no visible repetition.

would the two capped-off valves that just need a flexi fitted between them not be a good start?

PIR sandwiches panels (Kingspan) have their place. I'm just not sure its in areas that require strict fire controls. I would be of the mind to pursue a methodology that didn't involve them. What about a standard cavity block wall with Rockwool (or similar) full fill insulation.

When I priced it 6 years ago it was very expensive. More than double the cost of a wide cavity wall. It requires a hire of specialised bracing. It needs to be externally clad or rendered like EWI. Synthetic renders were 3 times the price of sand/cement when I looked.amd I wouldn't consider them as durable as sand and cement over blocks in a wet location. You typically need a concrete skip and crane/excavator or a concrete pump on site to pour the walls. Off the shelf ICF blocks are often just about there regarding U values and often need additional insulation. Lots of steel is needed for the walls. As the ICF blocks are a specialised material the option of just popping to a local merchant for an extra one isn't there. More if a problem if you live in a more remote area. To be balanced I did say there were advantages. Good airtighess. Excellent thermal bridging. Quick in the right hands. Very strong. Somewhat diy-able Can work well for awkward shapes.

Why not posi rafters? Then either in fill or insulation on top.

Don't be shy, the last M&E spec I delivered had about 17 different ducts for everything. Makes life soooo much easier at 1st fix etc, and for any alterations you may want to make downstream.

I wonder if this means *all* the materials.... I suspect so. Not if my supposition above is correct. I don't know the spec of the Kingspan panels - they could be phenolic (lambda 0.019ish W/mK) or PIR (lambda 0.022ish). Min wool at 0.036 ain't so good, but it's good at keeping the fire at bay. What U value are you trying to achieve? Could you just use the requisite amount of mineral wool?

Do not forget insulation size on the pipes!! We had a nightmare of a job pulling 4 x AC pipes through together with the insulation on. 110mm duct was stupidly ambitious, but narrowly managed to make it work. Also bends disproportionately add to the resistance pulling things through.

Power out for sewage treatment plant if you have one. don’t mix power and internet. don’t worry about multiple ducts, if you need them that’s it, you need them. all power in and power out can come up below the consumer unit, I have about 6 ducts there, then 3-4 more in the plant room for water in and ASHP in and out. you will need power out to the ASHP plus maybe cat 6 to control it. Do a sketch of the house and some lines on it of every device inside and out and how each device will get either power or water to it or from it or both. I wouldn’t be surprised if you end up with 20 odd penetrations in the slab, don’t worry just get them in, and run a spare just in case.

I'd say it's a good thing. The most basic hybrid system just tees the HP into where the boiler F/R pipes with some non-return valves. A control box to fire either the HP or the boiler is then needed. All you need is the HP, probably only a small model 5kw or so. No other changes needed. Boiler handles the DHW via existing cylinder or combi. From a customer perspective there is no risk of the system costing more to run than the gas boiler or performing worse than the gas boiler as their existing system is still in place. If their rads are undersized so the gas boiler has to kick in at a higher temp then they are still saving money, albeit less than they would otherwise. It then creates an incentive - "oh if you swap out these 3 rads, your HP can run more days". They do that and they use less gas. Thry upgrade a few more, maybe a bit more insulation and then the boiler fires only a few times a year. One day it does and they decide to spend the money of the last few rads and a new cylinder and there we go a heatpump house. The onky down side is the capital cost. Appropriate HPs can be a few grand. But if there was a (say) £3.5k grant it coukd end up being nearly free. The remaining 4k could be for the DHW switch if needed. You coukd even imagine the scheme buying back the smaller 4/5/6 kw units with a few years on them when you exchange for the "final" 8/9/10kw units. Then reselling them at a discount for incoming "hybrid" switches.

We didn't need to use British Gas as when Octopus rang, we explained that National Grid should be fitting the supply on the 12th of December. The man from Octopus replied that there was an appointment for the 13th if that would work for us. So hopefully we should have a supply in 3 weeks. Thanks for your help Sometimes I just worry too much!

need to slacken the right nut to let the fitting rotate, tighten the brass fitting, then nip the nut up again

Thanks. We had a TPO slapped on all the trees at the front of our house while we were in the process of buying it. From memory, we didn't become aware of it until we'd exchanged or perhaps even later. The buyer who beat us when we initially tried to buy the property was a developer. One possibility is that they approached the council for planning advice (it's an oddly shaped block with an unusual level change across the back garden), which triggered the intervention of the tree guy at the council. Alternatively, one of the neighbours might have said something to the council when they realised developers were sniffing around. There'd been all sorts of nastiness during attempts by our neighbour to get planning so it's possible someone wanted to get some constraints in place. All speculation of course, but the previous owners had lived there since the early 1950s, and the trees are probably even older than that, so the timing of the TPO is suspicious. I do wish we'd appealed at the time. We subsequently had a tree survey done. Turns out most of the trees subject to the TPO were of very low quality and arguably should not have had TPOs on them. We were completely ignorant of what it all meant, plus had too much else on at the time to properly look into it. The result was that the front half of the house couldn't extend beyond the original footprint of the bungalow we knocked down. We could really have used even an extra metre widthwise, and the garage/workshop could have been made a more useful size. As I still say (nearly 9 years after moving in) when I spot something I wish I'd done differently: "Next house".

Yeah the biodiversity stuff is more work. I'd suggest trying to find one from a similar application.

The wording of the condition involves quite a lot more than a marked up site plan.

Ask anyone from St. Awful to smile. Then duck out the way.

Can you get them covered in pink fur?

On a copper pipe? How much iron is in your water?