Leaderboard

Mix up some sand and cement at 8:1 and a splash of water so it clumps together and roughly level.

Not sure how much this was said in jest, but just FWIW achieving a good level of airtightness requires much more effort than choosing a build method and the crossing of the fingers.

Well it's arrived, and is the same size as a tin of filter coffee. And it seems Jeff Bezos thinks that a 3" speaker is a woofer. Presumably the chap is an enthusiast for Yorkshire Terriers. Will report back. As it happens I have to hoover out the coffee grinder this evening so I'll do it to the Java Jive played by Alexa. A slice of onion?

I'm a roofer and we do this on every strip and re-tile. You only strip off what you are able to felt again in the same day. Scaffolding tents aren't needed unless you are taking off all the trusses.

That will be a layer or laitance, caused by excess water or over floating normally. No I wouldnt bother, as long as its roughly flat so the boards done rock around. On my sub floor it was quite uneven so before laying the insulation I put down between 5-40mm of a sand cement screed so I had the correct depth on top for my flowing screed. Far cheaper than maybe for 2 or 3 extra cubic meters of screed.

Would making yours 6.3m make it deeper than the neighbours? If not then perhaps point that out and ask the planners if they will accept a it as a non-material amendment.

Seems it's a bit lower at 150l/day but depends how many people share a house.. https://www.statista.com/statistics/827278/liters-per-day-household-water-usage-united-kingdom-uk/

I haven't bought any yet, but these people list them (with prices) in their online catalogue (and happen to be local to me): https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/buy/sunamp-heat-batteries

If your painting it then I would have thought the durability rating would be less important. I would look at Siberian larch.

Open a window ? my architect hasn’t questioned any of it there’s extraction fans in kitchen/bathrooms etc. Each time I read something crops up so now guessing I best plan for this. Yes it’s additional and takes the uvalue down further sip info Kingspan TEK™ utilises Kingspan’s high performance, fibre-free rigid thermoset Urethane Insulation for the core of the SIP panels, which is autohesively* bonded and sandwiched between two sheets of oriented strand board (OSB/3).

In that recording they sound as if they need coffee ... of which I have just learnt from my neighbour how to make Middle Eastern.

The Wolseley, black, solvent weld: 36mm OD - (1 1/4" ID) 43mm OD - (1 1/2" ID) 56mm OD - (2" ID)

Yes it's your OCD. I would just grout the lower one first, break the grout at an angle (say 30degrees) then do the upper colour, any water will have to go uphill to get in the different layers. Or grout it all in the light colour, but leave very low on the darker area, then put a layer of dark over it where needed. Perhaps do a trial panel with scraps first......

I'm a classic petrol head, but EVs are the way forward no question. The biggest challenge to mass adoption is not the interior, how it looks, how it drives, performance, styling, or comfort levels. Its the infrastructure to charge them, especially on conventional terraced streets and flats. I also wonder whether there is enough Lithium and rare elements needed. Its going to be a slow long journey on that front IMO. The car is the easy bit.

In general, there is a bit of tolerance on dimensions allowed before planners will take either enforcement action. Our build was challenged by a neighbour (not 100% sure who) on the basis that it was too high. Luckily I had access to a Total Station and we still had a survey pin in the lane, so when the planning officer came around to check I could easily show that the ridge height was slightly lower than we had approval for. During the conversation with the planning officer I asked how much leeway they allowed on dimensions, and he said +/- 100mm. Based on that, I'd say that you're unlikely to get away with a ~300mm increase, although it would probably be at the discretion of your local planning department. Worst case is that they could get you to pull the extension down and rebuild it to the correct dimensions. Best case is that they might accept the change and just ask for another application (and fee) as a material amendment. It's anyone's guess as to what they might do, though.

You should build what you have planning permission for. If you build bigger you risk enforcement action which could mean you have to take it all down. If you want to go bigger, apply for planning for bigger.

No offence taken, you know me! What do you mean? Everything was pretty well considered tbh and done for a reason. As @ProDave will attest to, "50mm" doesn't necessarily mean the same thing with all makes of fitting especially on eBay. Mixing solvent weld and compression can be a mare. The Geberit wall drain waste was some weird, nominally 50mm bit of mdpe then the black solvent weld a bit different size wise. The 50mm can be inside diameter or outside. Got all my waste from the local Plumb Centre: https://www.wolseley.co.uk I didn't move without @Nickfromwalessay so!

Sugar tax is a joke. Let’s replace it with asparmatine and sucrolose. Give everyone autoimmune disorders and cancer.

One of the reasons Tesla chose Germany was because the pretty big German car industry means that logistic supply chains are already in place. Pretty much every second and third tier parts and components supplier already has a presence in Germany. Tesla also already use some German parts (notably Mercedes switch gear) too, so they already have a relationship with some of those suppliers. It wouldn't surprise me to find that Tesla are starting to impact on German car sales. One reason may well be performance. The Model 3 pretty easily out-performs a BMW M3, for example, and costs a bit less to buy. Not going to be long before all those who have been buying relatively fast BMWs and Audi's switch to Tesla's, if only because they get fed up with losing out at the traffic light grand prix. There aren't really many cars that can pull off the line like a dual motor Model 3, or Model S.

6 kW to 8 kW heat output seems about right, and that would draw around 2 kW to 2.8 kW from the grid when running flat out, less than an immersion heater. Most of the time it won't be running flat out, either, so the true power drawn will be a lot less.

Bath waste here is 50mm solvent. I've an accessible flexi waste from the trap onto solvent waste: The bath waste is 50mm solvent weld in the slab. There's a T coming up and the basin goes into that in 32mm solvent via a reducer. Anti siphon trap on the basin so the bath emptying doesn't make ths basin trap gurgle. Shower / wall drain waste goes from the mdpe waste on the Geberit wall drain to 50mm solvent via a compression coupler. Deep shit if that ever leaks!

All sorted, £140 for the 12 months, covers the field basically encase any idiot trips and falls over grass haha, thanks again to all for assistance. Mike

I know this is slightly off topic, but have you looked into log gasification boilers? There was a very decent looking quarterly payment for using them. Ideal if you have the space and no access to mains gas.

We have appealed twice and had the band reduced in both cases. It's a simple process, which they may well challenge, as they did with our first appeal. It went right to the line with them dropping out of the tribunal process with only a week to go before the hearing.

You would normally get someone technical involved with applying for an electricity connection. The DNO's are very worried about high starting currents which will cause a dip in voltage ad the unit starts up. So they ask for this information. imho they are being too worried. It is only old design heat pumps or some of the cheaper ones that use Direct On Line starting and have these very high inrush currents. A modern inverter driven heat pump does not.

We have used the water based 3 product / 6 coats / 10 year guarantee system from Dulux - any RAL is possible. It its a PITA to apply that number of coats but it is a lovely paint

Definitely Great for tiling on but you need the floor to be pretty even for flow screed With a typical semi dry screed on a floor of 150 m2 You will have 20 tons of screed flattening your insulation

We had an oil combi in our farmhouse I fitted about 15 years ago. Supplying a 200sqm building with traditional radiators and 2 bathrooms. It was fine for showers and wasn't to bad for baths, you just got used to running the hot in first incase it struggled. When we did our major renovation the last few years we swapped this out with a trad oil boiler feeding an unvented HW tank as @ProDave describes. This gave me a couple of advantages. As we had added a 3rd bathroom I wanted lots of HW capacity and so we had a HUGE unvented tank fitted, probably overkill but what the plumber recommended. Also having a tank meant we could add an immersion heater which is great for the times when i forget to order the oil in time and we then have no HW? The system is working really well for us and with oil at the lowest price it has been for over 10 years it is actually quite cheap heating. cheers, MM

@Mike_scotland Assuming the obvious that you're located in Scotland. I recently got a quote from SPEN (Scottish power energy networks)...and didnt get these questions. Is that who is asking? Similarly it is not something I would expect anyone to understand unless they had an engineering background. So I would question what they are asking and if you're getting the right quote. As above 1 would be your kW motor rating. 2 would be single phase. I would assume its DOL (direct on line)at these small sizes. 4 could be 5-10 times bigger than your base kW rating it's called 'inrush current'. Again I'd reiterate....doesn't seem like questions they should be asking domestic clients imo, so a little strange.

Thin flow screeds present a bigger problem because there is less weight pushing down on the insulation sheet.

Cavity closer.

Chucked some double glazing in today, and French doors. Let there be light

Greetings fellow builder bods, Having solved the problem of how to secure footer plates to a friable lime slab floor (with the marvellous help of you brilliant people) we have rocked on with putting the start of the stud walls up and dry lining the barn. Sheeps wool insulation (from Cosywool) will go between the uprights. We will also be studding out the roof rafters in order to give us the depth for the insulation we need to achieve building regs U-values and for our own warm home wishes, so we are holding off the internal partitions until we have done the first part of that so we don't have unnecessary scaffold faff. We have framed up all but one of the 9 windows, but still got 3 of the 4 doors to do. But not bad progress in one week especially when one of us was poorly and should have been in bed really. Self-build fun and games! Handling wood is SO much warmer than handling stone which is a welcome change in this weather! It sort of seems a shame to cover up the stone walls which represent a good few months work for me. But they aren't the prettiest of their type given that we have kept the old lime wash on in places where it was sound and didn't need attention, and we do want the house to be warm when all is said and done. If I want to see stones I'll have to go outside. ? We had to choose between setting the footer plate further out from the stone wall and losing more floor space but not needing to trim anything... or tailoring the uprights around the irregular lumps and bumps if they protruded too far. We picked the latter, of course, so the uprights are truly bespoke fitted in places! We did have one run of a few meters where we didn't have to use the jigsaw at all - we liked that bit. We are currently 2 years into this build and it is nice to be doing something so immediately visually obvious. Up until now we have mostly been altering/making good existing structures / features which isn't the same. I spent a fair chunk of a year repairing the stone walls (while the kids were at school mostly, so not the same work rate as a full time labourer would be able to do) and when I was done it didn't look a whole lot different (though structurally certainly was)! But now everything we are doing from this point is adding fresh new stuff and as such feels like more progress. If anyone is curious or thinks a question about any of this would be useful please feel free to ask. ?

In the village i lived in down south one cottage by the river regularly flooded, but only to a few inches deep when the river came up. They had made it resilient by quarry tiling the entire ground floor including quarry tile skirtings. All electrics were well up the wall. The kitchen units were on taller than normal legs. When the flood came, the furniture went up on blocks and the kitchen kick boards came off. When the flood went down it was a case of mop out and put everything back. Due to the location the tenant had to wear a pair of waders to get in and out, sometimes even when the cottage was not flooded. Oh and remember to park his car further away.

We have built near a river. The houses have brick and block ground floor, rigid insulation, electrics set above 1100 from ffl, suspended concrete ground floor, with flood proof airbricks and porcelain tile finish. Ground floor walls are rendered internally. Ground floor use non-habitable (store, gym, office etc. Bedrooms, kitchen etc. located on upper floors.) Skirtings and a few areas are sacrificial. We are also looking at adding some flood barriers for ground floor openings at a cost of about £2,200 per house.

What made me most annoyed was really bad communications with Sunamp, further complicated because they and our m&e consultants couldn’t agree on how to make them work with the ASHP for UFH. We eventually got new controllers for all three batteries so they now work, but now there’s not much justification for using the PCM34 ones just for pre-heating water for the PCM58 battery.

Having been through the process a few times with SEPA, that's my experience as well. They only seem to allow as a very last resort. The Biorock we had in our last house worked on this principle. A settlement tank then the separate treatment plant which relied on a constant supply of air being drawn through. I've related my experience of the Biorock before, but needless to say we had problems. I think these systems have to be very well installed and probably have a far lower % of tolerance from ideal conditions before they stop operating at there optimum. I think the electrically aerated systems many of us have or intend installing are far more forgiving in this respect and therefore should be less susceptible to such issues. When you look at the capital cost of these 'passive' systems, they cost a hell of a lot more than an aerated system. You have to ask yourself will you ever see the additional capital back in energy savings and is that worth the hassle / risk with a plant that by its nature requires a far tighter range of operating conditions than a cheaper electrically powered plant?

I'll hopefully confirm the servicing requirements of the Vortex tomorrow. Household under occupancy is an interesting one as building regs require us to install on a population basis which often bears no relation to the actual occupancy. Not sure what the answer to that is, the dual approach of the Vortex (intermittent running of air blower and ability to adjust air blower), replicating that approach by timing air blower operation and fitting a variable resistor to control blower output or simply using a smaller air blower.

Unfortunately, doesn't really help, as I'm paying per pallet space for that particular haulier. Just one of those purchases where I'll have to take the extra haulage hit.

Your description of the differences between the two matches what I've read, although there is reference in the Biopure installation guide, that in high water areas you can back fill around the base of the Biopure with concrete to anchor it. As my builders will be installing rather than DIY, I don't have exactly the same requirements in terms of installation - we have a loadall on site so keeping it in position while they backfill wouldn't really be an issue for us. Having made a few more enquiries, it's looking like it will be the Biopure, as they will deliver to me up here for an extra £120. No TP up here (nearest Thurso), and despite me referencing your order they want £1750 for the Conder and I still have to arrange the last leg of transportation. Tried the local BM's but all they want to sell (for a reasonable price) are Klargesters. Most of the other online sellers will happily deliver to Aberdeen for free, but the onward transport costs (priced per pallet space) push the final cost up to more than the Biopure. The lower running costs of the Biopure, circa £35 p.a. will start adding up over the air blowers life time.

Out of interest, why did you opt to remotely house the pump?

Good to know, thanks. Having previously paid a lot of money for something which really didn't work as advertised, I'm content that the two choices I've narrowed down to meet the simplicity / minimum moving parts test. An alarm unit is in hand, as are grease traps and as we have lived with off mains drainage for many years, the consistent and sensible use of the same detergent and cleaning products. The one thing on that list I wouldn't do is house an aeration pump inside the house. We had such a pump in a garage two houses ago and it was far too noisy for me to consider having one inside. For me, it's either in the dedicated space within the unit or a housing nearby.

I thought a Trannie was a van made by ford.

is that allowed? i'm sure someone, somewhere will take umbridge and start shouting at you

If you had OCD you'd get a f**king broom & Hoover out! ? Glad I didn't go white grout on the floor.

I would use one colour - probably some sort of lightish grey that you can get more of later. My bathroom man said that they normally use Jasmine. Better than white imo. If you use something really light you apparently need to use a Tile Grout Protector. Houzz says you need to get a "Grout Swatch" to help you work it out. https://www.houzz.com/magazine/what-grout-color-should-you-choose-for-your-tile-stsetivw-vs~89929909 (But if you were OCD *before* you read that article...)

Indeed, we have even discussed lining up the header courses with the external brick wall header courses. I wonder how many visiting brick bond nerds will spot that!