Leaderboard

So a quick recap - back in December 2023, what may be my last ever employer decided to ask me to leave. I had mixed feelings about this. I took several weeks to think about next steps and actually get around to writing a father of the bride speech which I'd been putting off. After the wedding in March (a great day and a great speech!) I started to look more seriously for a new job, but being the wrong side of 60 now, the IT industry is not a good place to be looking especially when so many other people have been let go as well. Coming up to the end of May, we sat down and took some tough decisions; we bought a static van on a site about 3 miles from the plot, I stopped looking for a new job, SWMBO did an internal job transfer, we rented out our current house (instead of our original plan to sell up) to three newly qualified doctors (our niece and two others on their first F1 rotations in our local hospital so that worked out well), and we spent 6 weeks decluttering, and moved down SE Cornwall (Kernow) at the end of July. In the last blog entry I ended with a list: Finish ventilation system Finish insulating the GWW Finish backfilling Electrics Floors Walls ASHP and HWC Kitchen Bathrooms The remaining plumbing Outer wall coverings This is how it looks today Finish ventilation system Finish insulating the GWW (Great West Wall) Finish backfilling (on the back burner) Electrics (first fix) Floors (now on the back burner) Walls (En suite partition walls to be done) ASHP and HWC (being done in January) Kitchen (planned for January or February) Bathrooms (temporary loo and basin installed, cold water only, temp bathroom planned for January) The remaining plumbing Outer wall coverings (rendering done, stone cladding starting next week) What I missed off the list, and has taken most of our time: Sound insulation (R35 rockwool and resilient bars) Plasterboarding So a few photos are required I think: MVHR unit in place (since removed as plant room walls have been put in and waiting to be plastered inside) Ventilation distribution boxes and pipes fitted: Plaster board arrived (in May): My cold water manifold has pipes attached for the first time (one now being used for the temporary toilet and basin), no picture of it but just to the right is the hot water equivalent: We powered up the sewage treatment plant for the first time (nearly 4 years after it was first installed!): We started plasterboarding, first a large room into which we moved all our stuff that was in storage so saving a hefty wedge per month on storage fees, and then the much larger and more complex open living area: We took some time off in early October and went sailing for a week, and when we got back some kind fellows had installed some scaffold (first time on this build), and in the following few weeks we had the renderers in thanks to the Kernow weather gods: Meanwhile back inside, we finished plasterboarding the large living area, and during this last week the plastering started (kitchen area first!). We set off a couple of insect smoke bombs as we had a cluster fly infestation and wanted rid before plastering started 🙂 : Dare I add a what's next list 🙂 ? Well, here goes .... Plastering finished in the open plan area this coming week (by others) Remainder of stone cladding arrives and work begins to get the most inaccessible (high) parts put up before the scaffold gets taken away - this means cladding two 7m x 2m wide walls Plumbing pipework ready for ASHP installation Gabion basket and pad for ASHP to be installed on Mist coat and first coat on plaster (SWMBO is at the ready) Begin fitting upstairs UFH Front door being fitted (January) by others Take 3-4 days off for Xmas ASHP installation (January) by others, that will allow for hot water and the downstairs UFH to be available ... Fit a temporary bathroom ... Fit out utility room as temp kitchen ... ... and this is why - Move out of static van for the month of February (rules is rules!) and decamp to the house Well, I'll let you know how it all goes 🙂

He’s being unreasonable he’s added an extra £30 a m go and ask him what extra work he feels he will need to do.

Here is a video showing how best to split flow temperature. https://youtu.be/LL6YhT_HkIY?si=gMktTxr_SCWROGSW to

Come on, don’t be negative, we all started somewhere. Everyday is a school day 👍

I am not sure now, lithium has reduced a lot in price, but a few years ago, they were by far the cheapest. They are the most mature technology though, well understood, and easily recyclable. Thermal storage is still the cheapest and most reliable. At 7p/kWh (if you can get that rate) there is price parity with natural gas, with much simpler technology.

Use two beams.

I will send a picture first and ask them if they want anything more. i think I’m going to follow your advise and hope for the best. many many thanks

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/property-home/article/cavity-wall-insulation-issues-problems-extraction-cost-nx56r36pz Tangential to the article, I thought spray foam was closed cell, so if water passes through the outer leaf the only way it's to go is back out? Snots or debris let it bridge across, but wouldn't the foam keep that very localised?

That's the main issue, all spray foam is just used a blanket term and all are classed as bad as the other. So two types closed and open cell. Ours is. So anything wet can find it's way back out again via a breather membrane. Daft thing is PIR insulation is just another type of spray (expanding) foam, just made into sheets in a factory and covered with aluminium to make sure it completely moisture tight. Cowboy firms and a dumb press are is all I have to say.

You don't need a buffer with UFH, especially so on a single zone. UFH (cooling mode) will not have any condensation issues, as long as you keep flow temp sensible. Sorry that price is bonkers. Priced up the materials for mine the other day (192m2 worth) well less than £1k, took me on my own two days to install. You need 16mm Per-Al-Pert pipe, pipe clips and a manifold for each floor, you should be able to drive the whole lot from you heat pump, circulation pump. If you don't want to go to bother of balancing or paying someone to do it, install Salus Auto balancing actuators and connect so they are all powered all the time. Once you get well insulated and especially with UFH 22 deg starts to get uncomfortably hot - that's anywhere in the house. Fan coils alter output by varying the fan speed, they have a fixed throughput of water, so keeps the heat source happy. So not comparable with a normal UFH where the circuit is either on or off. We started with a thermostat in every room, it just made the system so expensive to run. At the time we were on a boiler and its gas consumption was double what it should have been due to short cycling. Slowely removing the thermostats go us to calculated gas consumption. In the end we had one thermostat. Have single wireless thermostat, so you can move once you move in to best location. Do not accept a thermostat that does not have a 0.1 deg hysteresis option. Computherm Q20RF are nice and do cooling and heating and drive multiple receivers if needed Your certainly being taken for ride on pricing.

Ah yes - I remember this now... Getting old, memory not what it was. Doesn't work for DIY installs though, you have to have a supplier do the install to reclaim the VAT - or, I guess, have a friendly sparky that will do the paperwork for you.

I sent samples, the brick company gave me brick slips of the type I wanted to use so the council could see actual rather than pictures (which often don’t match reality or give texture.) there was a thread here years ago where the council specified a very expensive slate and named the quarry it came from, the chap here found a much cheaper slate that looked identical, wrote the quarry name on the back of the sample slate and the council accepted it 🤷‍♂️

We hope to camp out in Feb as expressed towards the end 🙂

Yes, I realised that when he finally admitted, after a great deal of research & effort on my part, he'd overcharged me £7,000 for the extra work the BCO had requested. When I first told him he'd overcharged, he told me he hadn't. After receiving my first email, explaining my reasoning, he admitted to an overcharge of c£370. After I did a load of QS work & wrote a second, lengthy email, he admitted to overcharging £7,000. Thanks very much for the responses. It's good to hear some BH experts' opinions. It gives me the confidence to tell him how things are going to be done/redone when he starts telling me, "I've been doing this for 35 years...".

Yes carpets. It's fine with harder floors, but with ufh being so slow you can bedrooms way to warm or cool not really a happy medium. We just have just opted to have the bedrooms cool, open the door at 6pm, then it's fine for sleeping - not too hot or cold. We are long thin single storey so can two slightly different temps, from one end of the house to the other.

Friends found one of those - he managed to set things up so that they never seemed to use any Solar and the battery never discharged - not sure how he managed to do that. DIY is pretty simple if you are competent and trust yourself - and AFAIK, doesn't need a sparkies sign off, if everything is connected to an existing properly rated spur that has been signed off. Someone will be along in a bit to either confirm this or tell me I'm wrong. The Sunsynk inverter above, may not be man enough for many homes, ideally you want one that can supply enough power for a couple of big white goods needs, so something closer to 6kW. Also, look at the Sunsynk batteries. The last time I checked these were cheaper than Frogstar. And in terms of battery sizing, you need to match the amount you might need to cover at the higher rates, if you're installation isn't big enough, you'll still be using expensive electricity. There are a couple of other good sites TradeSparky and ITS Technologies with products from many suppliers. We bought and installed a Sunsynk 5kW hybrid inverter and 3 5kWh batteries from ITS for £5k inc VAT. Works very well for us with the 6.5kW Solar array. Loading everything at night on the 6 hours of Int. Octopus Go, means we very rarely use any full price electricity, it's all at the 7p night rate. One thing to think about, is that Solar installs can be zero rated VAT, if done by a sparky (not sure if it has to be an MCS sparky). So you could 'install' 1 panel and get the VAT back on the whole installation. Also, not many systems can cover you during a power outage - Telsa and some others can - if this is important, then make sure you've checked this.

Is there an option to lift the floor and run that cable underneath?

I’d need check back on my notes but when I was researching windows the Solarlux SL97 bi-fold was advertised as having triple seals and an air permeability of class 3 (highest being 4) and met the requirements for passive house. I’m pretty sure I got that information from here or a link from here.

The premise is wrong, every rad will have a different ΔT depending on the surface area of the rad, with an overall average ΔT of 5°C

Ideally you need an enthusiastic sole trader sparky.

would avoid this totally you don,t know what will happen in future and with other peole if it goes wrong trying to get other parties to fund an upgrade will be near impossible as already said price house with cost to have own system you know its the only sensible and future proof option

1. I can't use a chaser, because it won't be able to make full contact with the wall due to the skirting board, making dust collection moot. It also doesn't chase internal corners, nor will it be able to chase the wall where the two central heating pipes are. 2. The dust is easily remedied by properly sealing the room, having adequate ventilation, and wearing the proper PPE. The job is not one anyone would want to do, but it's not quite the nightmare you're suggesting. It's a 4m chase 30mm deep, 25mm of which is lime render that cuts like butter.

The dust is something I'm absolutely dreading. I can't believe how much the grinder spits out the moment it touched a brick. I'm going to fashion a slightly bigger extraction end out of a large bottle in the hope I can at least grab a decent chunk of it. Beyond that, I'm going to partition the entire room floor to ceiling with plastic and have the windows open. I know it's going to be a nightmare though, with that inevitable bit when I get halfway through and wish I'd just used trunking!

is it time to improve insulation as well at this time ? no chasing to do of any kind then build stud walls inside and leave gap for rewiring etc if victorian probalbly can afford to loose a litle area in rooms yes you will need to remove skirtings ,but just think about it maybe time to do it in one go easy to do in sections while still living there a it drastic for what your asking ,but worth thinking about

That is almost always the case. But if that was part of the decision process, you would buy or do nothing. In some cases that may be the best option. My decision was easy, I'm earning, won't be earning as much in a couple of years and would like cheaper ongoing bills would there is less income. For less than the price of a holiday, I have cheaper electric bills for the foreseeable future. We pay less each month compared to no battery. When the battery fails we will replace with a newer, cheaper technology. Just like a computer.

He’s taking the mik Your only difference is he will need to sort through the natural slate But if you get a good quality slate 6-8 mil variation in thickness There’s not that much grading One person could easily grade 45 m2 in an afternoon Fixing is the same Get an A grade slate I used Estillo slate last time Over 300 m2 Hardly any waste My wife spent an hour per crate grading

Factoring in only your own use may undersell the financial case. If you're on a true ToU tariff such as Octopus Agile, my understanding is that the best option is to discharge when the grid is paying the most (typically early evening in winter), rather than solely maximising your own self-consumption. This approach can offer better financial results, albeit at the cost of additional complexity.

Shared isn’t ideal Its unlikely that the tank will be compliant Unless you can get the discharge into a sewer Ballpark Suppling a 9 pop treatment plant seams to be around 10k at the moment Quite a bit less for self install But you would need a very large TP and probably most of the drains replacing Id probably look at installing two The onus is on the seller to knock money off Or sort this out themselves Id ask for 12k reduction to sort your property out We built five years ago on a garden plot Moved the neighbors tank and drains Had to instal a TP for the new build Something I had never done before We agreed to stand the cost of the neighbors septic tank But offered to upgrade them to a TP for a £1000 They declined Five years on They have had two sales fall through due to the tank not being compliant In my opinion it is But the solicitors seem to call the shots with these things You always need one eye on resale

Sorry for not picking this up earlier. The thread got a bit hijacked and I must have skipped it. Ok. I'll do my best, you'll have to widen the wall slightly but it'll save you thousand's and perform much better. 1. Standard MVHR. 2. Monoblock ASHP to UFH ground floor only. Cooling if possible. 3. UVC as you say is ok. Bigger is better. 4. UFH on ground floor is good. 5. I don't like fan coils. Unnecessary complexity in my opinion. Provide space for A2A is easier in my opinion. 6. Don't know. 7. No wet UFH upstairs just UFH electric under tiles. On ground floor bathrooms too. 8. Include an electric spur for towel rads if you want them . ASHP runs too cold to do much with them. 9. Don't know. 10. No thermostats in individual rooms. Build well and the house will all be similar temp. Architect is talking nonsense and spitting out Celotex's imaginary U values from their sales book. Floor 0.13W/m²K 65mm screed. Separation layer. 200mm of PIR or 300mm of EPS insulation DPM Block beam. Walls. 0.18w/m²K Sand cement Render. Dense concrete blocks. (13N preferably) 200mm cavity full fill with EPS beads or mineral wool batts. Stainless steel wall ties. Dense concrete blocks. Wet plaster Skim Pitched roof. U value 0.12 Roof tiles. 38*50mm tile batten. 25*50 batten up the rafters. Glidevale vp300/400 membrane taped at all joints and sealed to outer wall woth render over expanded mesh over membrane. 11mm OSB sheathing 220mm rafters full fill with blown cellulose insulation or mineral wool. Airtighess membrane 50mm or 75mm or 100mm battened service cavity insulated with mineral wool. 2 x 12.5mm plasterboard and skim. Pitched roof with insulation at ceiling level. U value 0.12 Roof tiles. 25*38mm tile batten. 25*50 batten up the rafters. Glidevale vp300/400 membrane taped at all joints and sealed to outer wall render with render over expanded mesh over membrane. 11mm OSB sheathing. 150mm rafters. Invented loft space. 22mm Caberdeck or OSB flooring. 450mm blown cellulose or mineral wool insulation. Airtighess membrane. 22*70mm service cavity 2*12.5mm plasterboard and skim. Flat roof Construction U value 0.11. GRP 18mm OSB deck. 38*50 batten across the rafters. 25mm x 50mm battens up the rafters. To create 63mm ventilated space. Breather membrane 11mm OSB sheathing. 220mm full fill rafters installed with 1:40 fall with cellulose/mineral wool. Airtight membrane. 100mm service cavity full fill with cellulose/mineral wool. 2 x 12.5mm plasterboard.

Payback calculations are, in my experience, often very difficult to nail down to a high level of confidence. And payback is only break even. An investment decision usually wants to see profit in return for the risk. The risk of future ToU tariffs having a smaller differential (which is what I think of as your ‘less generous’) ‘feels’ small to me. Growing national solar capacity must be driving an ever increasing differential in generation cost and ToU is all about demand shifting. In this instance though I think there is significant technology related risk. 9 years is a long time for a battery. That’s over 3,000 days, so presumably at least 3,000 charge/discharge cycles and some ToU tariffs have three low periods a day. How does a 9 year old electric car perform? Are there many that last that long? Those that do won’t have the same range they started with. How reliable are the charge/discharge efficiency figures you are using? Is it something like 100Wh in for 90Wh out? What’s your cost of capital? Current deposit rates are circa 3% so that’s a minimum I guess. The ToU tariffs I’ve looked at charge more than standard for some periods, which also needs to be factored in. What is the probability of the system working without needing costly repair for the time needed to payback, (let alone profit). How much will a battery system be in the future? Say two years time? I’m guessing less. But…. often a good way to kill an idea is to assume perfect everything, and if the results are either crap or borderline then no further work required as it’ll all be downhill from there. A sub 9 year payback requires 16kWh totally battery provided (there are multiple cheap rate periods and usage is perfectly distributed so battery never runs flat) at 100% efficiency, and zero cost of capital and no repairs. I think in reality it’s an unlikely best case break even over 15+ years unless ToU tariffs significantly increase their differential. Sorry. However, it’s still ok to do it if it feels good. Maybe power cut cover appeals (which it does to me) or you accept you are gambling on future tariffs being more advantageous. For me it’s a ‘wire up ready but wait till prices drop’ thing. Though I keep watch.

This is the key. You will likely do well in heating season, through the winter, but does this hold out in the summer, when presumably your heat pump is working a lot less hard? You can shift some/most hot water to off-peak tariffs anyway, so perhaps not so much saved there? I suggest looking at how your electricity demand varies month by month and see how many months of the year you would get 13.5kWh of benefits. That might extend your payback calculation a lot?

Could be worse

We want more info on the Interceptor 🙂

Hi all Early 30s and just bought a 1970s mid terrace build which I’m looking to gut and renovate. Look forward to sharing my story and learning from you all.

I've used a lot of Blowerproof - but it's not a decorating paint. As @Sparrowhawk says it's more like a liquid plastic/resin which cures semi-hard and is flexible to movement, unlike decorating paint. You can get it in white and it can be overpainted or plastered. It's ideal for narrower spaces and where taping might be difficult e.g. around pipe penetrations. It's a lot more forgiving to install.

For the benefit of anyone who comes to this forum with the same question as I posted, I have now successfully used metal rawl plugs (aka metal "worms") to attach the board of a coat-rack to the back of a modern hollow-wood door. I discovered that the veneer of the moulded door, being made of hard-pressed "dust", responds in much the same way as plasterboard does when it is drilled by a metal rawl plug. Before screwing in the rawl-plugs I used a gauge to measure the thickness of the veneer and was surprised to find that it was 10mm, which is thick enough to accommodate a complete circle, or even two, of the rawl-plug's thread, thus ensuring a firm fitting. 1. mark where the rawl plugs need to be inserted. 2. drill holes to allow the end of the rawl-plug to be comfortably inserted into the holes. 3. coat the rawl plugs with a little bit of lubricating jelly. 4. screw the rawl plugs into the veneer of the door, making sure you press against the rawl plug with your full body-weight while you are turning the screw (to make sure the veneer is not pulled outwards). 5. attach felt-pads with adhesive stickers on them to the top rear and bottom rear of the coat-rack (to make up for the head of the rawl-plug which will otherwise cause the coat-rack board to "rock") 6. screw the coat-rack securely to the rawl-plugs. 7. ensure that the board of the rack is firm and unmoving (otherwise increase the thickness or number of the felt-pads on the rear surface). 8. treat the coat-rack with care, and don't lumber it with very heavy things clothes or other items.

Why? It may well pull plaster from the wall, cut it flush and fit new board tight with a bead of caulk to cover the join. If your new window board is thicker than what’s there it won’t fit the gap anyway 🤷‍♂️

I did nearly exactly the same. Not BnB, but increased insulation to 200mm and slab above that to 100mm concrete instead of screed.

Not that precious https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm28mg3zkmxo And the misnamed rare earths. They are 'rare' because they were hard to isolate because of the similar atomic sizes. Or for context, as rare as lead and copper.

50mm isover acoustic insulation

Hi, how did you get on with this project? We’re looking to replace a 12 year old Johnson and starley gas warm air unit and keep looking at air to air units. It would save a lot of hassle with fitting all the radiators!

How about the upfront price to build, the MWh price of delivered energy, the relatively small lack of power modulation, with the associated slow ramp up and down. Then there is the security of supply of the fuel, there has not been a mine open in Cornwall since the 1998, and I don't think there is much uranium ore there, that comes from South Terras, near St. Stephens, and they are all a bit angry over that way, probably because the mine closed in 1930. Then we have to agree where we are going to bury the waste. It will be in Cumbria, they just want a lot of cash to do it. There is also the skill set needed to build and run a modern reactor, skills the UK does not have at the moment as there are only 3 EPR PWR in Europe, and I don't think any are working right yet. Then there is the planning system to negotiate, at lest ten years of horse trading. And solar and wind are cheaper, even after adding storage. We can build a GW of offshore wind in 18 months, not the 20+ years a new reactor takes to not be build.

Shall I bring my LEGOJ back pack over for you? It only weighs 7.5kg.

Use the unique id number on the back, see if that works.

As I am sure you know, a lot of things have a key for security. I can generate them on my raspberry pi, usually built in to the OS. Can you just generate one of the right type and try it out?

Very neat block work and carpentry. Appeals to my OCD 🙂