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Fit a second stat for her on the wall .... just don’t wire it into anything ....

We prefer to store it up and then when it reaches an explosive level vent it in the direction of an injudicious comment from a male!

Today we said our farewells to Thomas, it was a very nice service and we had friends/colleagues/customers from all over the UK and EU attend. The window business is a very small world and representatives from Internorm, Solarlux, Zyle Fenster (Lithuania), EcoAluClad (Ireland) and more attended. Although some are competitors, we are also friends and was nice to see. It was also a rather interesting day with installers, suppliers and manufacturers sitting talking for a good 6 hours after the service on different things. Thought provoking for suppliers and manufacturers on technical aspects/improvements on products for easier deliveries/installation/service etc. It doesn’t happen often and we all went away with ideas. Just unfortunate it was on such a sad occasion. I did the airport runs yesterday and a group went out for a meal last night and Lorraine (Toms wife) attended and had a fantastic evening out. The family appreciates all the kind words as do we at Ecowin. It’s been a tough couple of weeks but projects and work continue. We are pretty much back to business as normal next week and we are making a priority on pending installations and service work. We would like to thank all customers for their patience and understanding over the past couple of weeks.

Can't find anything about the height of my Christmas tree above the top of the scaffolding...can I have IP69 lights like doing it and also flashing? BC officer says if you ask me that again I'll come around there and fecking smash your head with hammers Now, I can cope with enthusiastic types but I think she has taken 'advice and guidance' just a tad too far... should I complain to the ombudsmen or just, well, get the lights out annoy the feck out of the whole neighborhood?

I take the view that having the house heated to female ambient temperature will be a subtle but effective means of encouraging OH to go outdoors and continue with the garden and landscaping.

So the plumber is wrong ...! The constant temperature under the slab is around 8c. All year round. So anything above that will lose heat due to the differential temperature. Walls will fluctuate from -5 to +25 in reality, so losses are variable. Run the numbers through @JSHarris spreadsheet and change the uValue for the floor and look at the differences.

This is mine. I have been know to fetch firewood in it. That had the rear springs down on the stops.

How apt! adjective showing very poor judgement; unwise. "I took a few injudicious swigs of potent cider"

I would categorise it more as radiant than convective heat. Besides, with all that beer and cider consumption on your side of things, I'm surprised that you haven't yet tried to hook yourself up to a natural gas burner.

I’ve had the same problem with an accommodation block on a Scout camp site. Occupants would turn the wall stat up to maximum out of habit. After months of trying to set a nice temperature, only to find someone had fiddled with the room stat yet again, we disconnected it and fitted a hidden stat to control the temperature. The upshot was we never got complaints about being cold and the occupants could fiddle with the room stat to their hearts content.

In my last post we were waiting on two items arriving from our suppliers: Velux flashing kits and a metal roof to be fitted at the back. The velux flashings arrived first and we were able to make good progress and finish this side. Our joiner then came back on site to fit the metal roof. Unfortunately as mentioned in my Terrible Thursday post the flashing arrived at the incorrect angle, the plan was then to use the lead, but thankfully we decided not to and we managed to get a replacement flashing sourced quickly, which allowed the rest of the slating to be done. Last bit. And then finally ridge tiles. To be honest the roof was a bit harder than I thought. Various different materials, which can all take a while to arrive on site. If one supplier delivers late or supplies an incorrect part it can hold up the entire roof fitting. As with the entire build, except the blocks and concrete the materials are all organised by us, so perhaps it would have been less stressful to leave it to a single contractor. We had a great roofer who did the work in all conditions and a joiner who came on site quickly when we needed him.

I've got a Toyota Hiace. Selection was basically the smallest van you can get an 8x4 in. They go diagonally on a side which limits the number which can be carried but I got 6 9mm sheets in with plenty of room the other day. Much more and I'd get it delivered anyway.

EDPM roofing material is far superior to the felt roofs of old, however, i have fitted many torch on felt roofs and found it to be a good product. i did burn the felt to the osb as opposed to sticking basic felt to the roof by pouring hot tar over the osb and then torching felt to that. 'but that's the way we've done it for years'.............

I tried the mist coat thing once and it didn't work. Still needed 2 more coats of neat paint to cover. Now I just do 2 coats of Wickes cheapest mat white contractors emulsion and then it's good for a top coat of your choice. Just wait until the plaster has dried to a light pink all over with no dark patches and you are good to paint. In the summer when out last lot of plaster was done, that was 3 days.

The Timber Frame company has been on site today carrying out a final measure of my DIY insulated slab foundation, I got the impression they thought I couldn’t use a tape measure, mind you the foundation is L shaped and includes a sunken basement section with three sets of patio doors opening onto a sunken lawned area. Thankfully everything was in order and the frame goes into production next week, with errection starting in eight weeks. Best get the slates, render board, Cedral boards, gutters, windows etc ordered.

Things have moved on since the days of a bit of plywood, a layer of roofing felt and a lot of hope. I would not even have felt of a shed roof today. Useless stuff.

I really miss my van (I was a Builder before I retired) kept it for a while to shift stuff to Devon. I keep saying I am going to get a trailer but frankly our builders merchant deliver anything I want and have not needed one. I would however get a trailer in your position, old caravan like crofter is a very good idea.

Trailers are great. Mine was originally a caravan, I bought it for under £100 and used some scrap wood to turn it into a decent little flatbed. Axle is rated at 800kg but for long loads like timber and sheet materials it was perfect. The remnants of the caravan also provided lots of useful materials (or 'that bloody junk' as my wife calls it). Now that I'm finished, it's sitting taking up space but I can't quite bring myself to get rid of it! To say I got my money's worth out of it would be a massive understatement. On the car vs van/pickup question, I think a lot of us have looked at this and decided that the tax, vat, and insurance make it far less attractive than it might seem. An old people carrier is probably the way to go- things like Picassos are really quite cheap, maybe not a paragon of reliability but consider it a disposable site car that you don't expect to last beyond it's MOT date.

Anyone who judges you by what car you drive isn't worth worrying about . And I'm sure that they didn't care anyway. BuildHubbers aren't like that in general IMO.

I looked at a pickup, but for insurance these and vans are classed as Light Goods Vehicles and cost a lot more. I second the view, buy a trailer, or an older estate car. Focus, Passat or Skoda are all good and cheap. I had a 10 year old escort diesel, it was a real workhorse. Having an old banger is good for when you go to haggle for materials or services, they think you are poor and take pity!

Bought my MK1 Focus estate off a mate as pure workhorse. Ghia spec so a bit of comfort on long runs and a not too shabby 138bhp. Roof rack on top, sorted the suspension and it did masses of work. Had to retire it due to tin worm. Got the new sills etc and it's on the to do list some time after the bathroom!

Okay of you really want a second vehicle, my off the wall suggestion is a >40 year old Series Landrover, probably LWB truck cab. £0 historic road tax, MOT exempt and cheap classic car insurance. And if you don't break it, you should be able to sell it for what you paid, if not more. Take out the mats (if it has any) from the cab. Drive it in your muddy boots, and hose it down inside from time to time (yes seriously)

Definitely a trailer, anything used and cheap will be a gamble, you will sell a good trailer for what you paid for it, they just seem to hold a good second hand value

The trouble with a second vehicle is the extra road tax and insurance. The insurance might be more than you think as you need to earn the NCD independantly for a second car. How about roof bars and a trailer? I carry 8 by 4 sheets or any long planks on the roof. The trailer you will probably find is such a handy thing to have you will keep it forever. Or just get the builders merchant to deliver everything?

The other thing that I really like about the induction hob is that the energy is converted into heat in the pan itself, and hence the thermal spill below is minimal and managed by a small fan internal to the low profile unit. This low profile means that we have a 900mm draw unit directly under the 4+2 hob set up, with a large 900 cutlery draw and two pretty deep utensil and pan drawers directly under the unit. Ergonomically, this is brilliant.

Check what the UFH controller wants. IF the UFH controller is expecting a switched L then you can use that thermostat, Terminal 4 will be the switched L and just ignore terminal 3. IF the UFH controller is expecting a low voltage or volt free contact, you cannot use that thermostat.

I think I've hit the manopause...

As a Husband, you will learn in due course what a "Hot Flush" is.

I’m with you there. I could never understand how the hubby could shower in stupidly lukewarm water. Unless it’s hot it doesn’t work for me. I always have to override the safety thing on the controls and click it above the level that’s supposed to be considered safe. That’s cold!

My wife puts her hand on a radiator and if it doesn't blister her hand it means that the house is cold and the heating isn't working, so she winds the stat up. Also if I go in the shower after her or my daughter and don't check the temp control, its like being blasted by scalding needles.

You are a bad person @PeterW!!! Karma gonna get ya! I’m sure Mrs @joe90‘s contact details must be somewhere! ?

It is a bit annoying they didn't use 1:60 firrings but it won't make any difference to you. The roof will leak if the membrane fails, whether the fall is correct or not. Correct membrane install and upstand detailing is what is important here, not fall.

And that turning a room stat up to higher temperature will make the room heat up faster. I've given up trying to explain that to my family.

No. They are more expensive.

Brickwork often works out a much cheaper option for external skin.

I think you'll find that it's the clients that preceded you that have given them this impression, not you!

Solar Edge Fill the roof up and export only 3.8kW ? Remember you should use this to mitigate against costly uplift caused by mandatory DNO infrastructure improvements. Fit a solar edge and tell them to FO. Aside from that the SE inverter is also attractive because it uses dry capacitors and comes with a 12 year warranty. Happy days.

No, the inverter will just take less current from the panels so their voltage will rise. The inverter will always be able to withstand the full open-circuit voltage of the panels in any half-competently designed system so no harm will be done. The extra power will just be dissipated as heat in the panels, something like the panels being 14% efficient rather than 18% efficient so instead of 82% of the sunlight turning into heat it'll be 86%. Considering that the panels are quite safe in sunshine with nothing connected to the output so 100% of the sunlight becoming heat this isn't a problem. Yeah, OK, some of the sunlight is reflected. Depending on how the system is configured you might not have the option to use extra power between 3.8 kW and a peak of, say, 5 kW in the house anyway. Normally inverter limiting will be on the output of the inverter itself. I'm a bit behind the times on this sort of thing so maybe there are inverters which have a current clamp on the meter tails which limits the house export but you'd need to check with the DNO that they're OK with that. Direct limiting totally within the inverter is quite robust but having a bit of wire trailing down to the meter tails is a bit more fragile and they frowned a bit on that, or used to. The point of having more panels than the inverter can deal with is that most of the time the panels are not producing nominal power anyway. Even with a 3.8 kW inverter and 5 kW of panels you'll only be losing power for a few hours around midday on a few dozen summer days. Days you'll be producing lots of energy anyway so the loss doesn't really matter.

Thanks Tyke2. It's not too late - we are still going through planning permission at the moment, with a hopeful decision date at the beginning of next month! We've had a structural engineer look at it and he discovered the floor inside is 30cm higher than the actual base of the walls, so that's good to know. We're going to dig down to at least the bottom of those walls and then insulate etc and see where we're at. We're looking forward to getting started and doing bits of it ourselves, whilst working with same list of skilled tradespeople you mentioned. How did you insulate yours? Space is at a great premium for us.

Slightly off topic but some are still concerned at heat pumps and point to "faulty" design. I saw one such on a job this morning. I noted a house I have worked at previously had just had a new Air source heat pump fitted. I also noted that the heating medium appeared to be conventional sized wall hung radiators which will need to run hot. This seems to be one such poorly designed system where I feel near certain the results are going to disappoint and this will be yet another person saying how bad heat pumps are.

I raised that issue recently in a thread of my own, and the conclusion was it was near impossible for legionella to be present in the cold water mains supply, and with an unvented hot water tank there was no way for it to enter other than in the supply water, so heating it hotter was pointless.

Terry, very interesting. When we were discussing heating options a couple of years ago, it was the control mechanism, i.e. how you would determine how long to pump heat into the slab for that had me concerned, and that was really based on my experience with storage heaters which needed frequent adjustment to prevent either under or overshoot in relation to the ambient temperature forecasts (and even then still resulted in cold or overly warm rooms). Now that you have your data set, you can create what I assume is a fairly simple set of control parameters. Perhaps a difficult question to answer, but could a novice, someone with little or no programming experience, replicate your (intended) autonomous control system? Can you say how much time you have spent developing your control system? Is there an off the shelf alternative that would work for your system (providing autonomous control)? As you know I went for an off the shelf system firstly for ease, secondly my good lady wouldn't have put up with anything that required input beyond pressing a button, and thirdly because we needed a responsive element to deal with solar gain spikes, but also Atlantic gale battering. There is of course a price to be paid for this, in that the controller isn't cheap, and we are tied into the manufacturer if anything goes wrong / bang.

I too am keeping it simple Standard UFH manifolds, standard room thermostats. Room stats set at 20 degrees, so what if there is 1 degree hysterises, that's well within the comfort zone limits. I am starting out without a buffer tank and will see how the ASHP deals with driving the UFH directly, I will only add a buffer tank if I find something does not work with this simple approach. The bit that irked me is i wanted to use a standard central heating control timer to set the heating and hot water on and off times, a 3 channel one so I can have the upstairs heating on at different times to downstairs if I want to. But the ASHP designers had other ideas and just wanted you to use their fiendishly complicated controller, so it was a challenge finding a way to integrate the two, most notably now to turn hot water on or off externally to the heat pump. Now I have cracked that, the heat pump's controller is just for setting parameters if I want to tweak something, not for day to day use.

Like Terry above I do think you have to see how your house behaves before making firm decisions, saying that, installing UFH is a must for heating or cooling. We don’t have PV, electric only, and a cheap Ebay ASHP (not working yet) we moved in about 4 months ago and have not needed any heating and DHW is using Imersions. I confess I do not understand a lot of the complicated control systems that some talk about, I am also a bit of a Luddite, KISS works for me (and is easy to repair) I like the idea of setting a thermostat to a set comfortable temp then letting the system self regulate.

guys, one more question. Looks like we have sorted the slab design now that the Structural Engineer is happy with. Just wondered whether the base insulation above the compacted hardcore is better at 100mm or 200mm ? Despite the old adage of Insulation, Insulation and more Insulation, the Plumber seemed to think extra insulation there wouldn't make much difference as there is very little loss of heat in that direction compared to the walls, etc, so if i can get away with 100mm I will, any thoughts?