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Drama broke out earlier today with the discovery of our water pipe. Discovered by the digger going though it.... A few months ago in the absence of locating our internal stop tap (likely because it's somewhere behind the fitted kitchen units) the water company came out to try and locate the external one. Three house after they arrived.... No.such.luck They did say it's somewhere between the houses the other side of the bridge and us - but there is a canal and bridge in between us and them and they couldn't locate it. Strange but true. They did say if the builders found it they could then come out and try and track it from the pipe so Severn Trent are back again Friday. So just over a week in and we have partly dug out footings for the kitchen extension, office and Airbnb bedroom/ensuite. After 2 years of seeing everything on plans it's all very exciting actually seeing the space.

Glosford Timber Solutions

The one I went with @£2k sounds similar to your first option. Will post the work that was actually done when I get the report.

Hire a wet bench instead. Will make short work of the bricks too - and could get them all uniform in thickness. Stone will take some practice and may need to flip them over as some look pretty big, but all do-able...

Yeh I've got a few bungs 6" and 4" always like to test drainage to 1m. To be fair though I've never had a bad pvc underground joint. Sometimes I've had an air bubble/lock in a temporary fitting or something which can play tricks on you

Seen a fair bit of this - and it is why I only pay weekly but pay monday for work to previous friday on invoice

A post heater fits inline after the MVHR unit in the "air into the house" ducting (supply ducting). So "post" as in "after" as opposed to "pre" as in "before". The post heater adds a little extra heat if required to the incoming air. So the air flow would be from the outside:- OUTSIDE AIR -> DUCT -> MVHR -> POST HEATER -> DUCTING INTO HOUSE

Both hot and cold to my basins are fed from the PRV that came with the unvented cylinder. The water pressure at the basin is just fine, at full tilt it does not spill out of the basin.

OK so have a look at stacked stone slips

https://mybrickwall.co.uk/products/bedford-antique-red-brick-slips?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=Google Shopping

Think this is the sort of thing we have, it's a standard pressure reduction valve. https://www.screwfix.com/c/heating-plumbing/pressure-reducing-valves/cat3830010 They usually come preset to 3bar but there is a screw for adjustment, sometimes hidden under a warranty sticker. I find they do need adjusting to increase flow rate a bit every few years. Perhaps because filter gets scaled up? Honeywell is probably the best make.

Sometimes it is handy to be able to get a mop bucket under the tap, so size height accordingly.

See here 3 mins in. Compares ordinary MK grid and Quinetic grid. Not exactly the same feel but you'll have to accept that. Don't forget you can also get a dimmer receiver, a wifi enabled receiver or a wifi + dimmer receiver so you can control from your phone.

I used celotex in a 140mm timber frame - it took a long time. Next time its going to be a similar build as @ProDave. I used plastic sheets & tape to make it all air tight - thats Q quick tbh (need two pople to install - one to hold the sheet & one to staple it in place raedy for taping. Good luck

thats the point ,you need to make them good fit -time consuming, or they will loose insualtion value as well as being leaky which is why alot go for bats as they more tolerant of fit any holes in membrane need to be sealed as would electrical boxs etc --any penetration of membrane

I was considering the quarry as a fish farm + holiday chalets --that would cut it and then build another house at top of quarry as "managers house". with same views as my one lots of ideas --just not enough time and money

yep

I'd like to see the people who want to farm on a small scale for their own self sufficiency and profit be able to do that without draconian planning legislation assuming that they are there to build a secret mansion in the countryside. We could really energise rural communities with thriving local markets and local deliveries that rival the big supermarkets.

oil is only for tools. Plenty of places run un-oiled air, with the guys putting a drop or two into the end of the tool when plugging in. Or not... Your problem is probably that the air isn't getting a chance to drop the water out in the tank as the tank volume is small. A moisture trap will certainly help. Remember that big setups use a refrigerated dryer.

and that statment shows how much you know of farming in all but the flat lands of england like to see you automate sheep and live stock famring in the hills -or fruit and veg picking -they would have already done it if it were possible not to mention the animal and wildlife deserts that automated 100acre field type of farming causes

however, a common complaint is that Young farm workers and people already living and working in rural area,s Can’t afford local housing.

Point out that many local services are under used. Take schools, 36 weeks a year for a few hours, five days a week, 6 hours a day. About 12% of the time. Doctor's surgeries are similar, but higher at 35% of the time. Until recently, my local Tesco was running at around 85%. The supply chain runs 100% of the time. We really under utilise many public assets. Take the water system in the SW, it is about 4 times larger than it needs to be, just so it can cope with 8 to 12 weeks of the year. Electrical grids are the same. 60% of the time I draw nothing from the grid. Environmentally we don't want isolated housing, we need to expand towns and cities, but properly, rather than just cram people into small properties, we need to increase the urbanisation land area (currently about 2% for housing and 10% urbanisation). There was a bit in the papers about people wanting to move to rural areas because of the COVID-19. Noticed that the estate agent across the road from work only has the very expensive houses in his window, not the cheaper, ordinary ones, he has hidden them.

It’s the flow rate that the ASHP needs to see on the primary side eg the flow to and from the unit itself. To ensure that is always met on low energy builds I design in a low loss header for most instances, basically just a tiny buffer tank, to achieve hydraulic separation between the ASHP and the load. That allows the pump of the ASHP ( primary side ) and the UFH pump(s) on the secondary side to never ‘meet’ hydraulically, therefore the primary side is nigh on free-flowing. You then just set the primary pump to the desired flow rate, eg the rate that satisfies the minimum unit flow rate requirement, and then it doesn’t get affected by changes with downstream loops opening / closing etc. Plumbers usually follow the MI’s, so if they’re at all worried you’ll probably end up with them wanting to fit a buffer tank.

Put a Quinetic receiver where the existing switch is. Standard or dimming. You have L&N there coming in then switched live out? You just need L&N into the receiver then from the output, switched live and neutral to your light(s). https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/tcl/search?query=Quinetic+receiver+&Submit=Search Then for your remote switch pick a grid module as close as to your other switches. (Assuming you won't want the big, standard, Quinetic switches): https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Manufacturers/Quinetic/

Is this mesh the rolls of expanded metal lath? You can also get some stuff that looks a bit like train track that goes in the mortar bed. You can use it to make brickwork act like a beam or lintel.

in scotland you must have full walls to where the roof would fix and then it is possible to ask to rebuild it with out full walls it is unlikely you will get a simple PP -to rebuild If it still has a roof as well then maybe only building warrant is needed ther are lots of other things they will throw at you . and of course all must be to latest build codes has the ruin returned to nature -eg trees growing up inside it --that will be a big problem if it has --so trying to rebuild something that was last in use 200years ago --will not happen usually ,unless it is of historic interest --don,t go there when was it last habitated? mine was last lived in in 1966 and had a roof till 1975 -there is a cut off point inscotland -not sure of date --about 1960 I think --but check If it is listed, as my other one i have for sale is then you can make it wind and watertight without any permission ,as that is deemed as protecting the fabric -then you would start with PP +BC about what you wish to do One thing I did find out is that if it was built before 1947 ,then you can apply to double the footprint of the building . I certainlty don,t want to make mine bigger --pprobably will be smaller --but remember once you give up foot print you cannot get the unused bit back without more planning and maybe not then and once you have permission to rebuild it --you can then apply for a different build in a different spot within the curtiledge of the the exsisting plot - thats when planning really get involved and the arguments start with them none of above has anything to do with services being avaialbale or in working order . If it could at a strecth it could be classed as habitable --then its only building control -building warrant you need to rebuild whats there to current building spec there wil be lots more things ,so i would always suggest you take professional advice right at the begiining of buying an old ruin -money spent then will be well spent this is all info I have gleened from my chase of this property over the years starting point when was it last lived in ,does it have full sound walls ,got a good access to a road. I know of a nice ruin ,but its old track comes down to the main road A75 ,but there is no actual opening toa75 from the track there cos it was so long ago it was used --and its on a bend no chance of getting a new entrance onto this main road -so you would need to make your own road through farmers field s and then get permission to join a "u" road --so not viable in my view

On the definition, I think it is down to something being defensible as a "repair" not a "rebuild" (which revolves around eg there being a demonstrable amount of former fabric in existence before and afterwards - of proof of such), and proof of use, as the things to focus on. I am sure there will be a definition in Planning or Case Law somewhere, or decisions which will build a jigsaw of such a definition, but I do not know it offhand. and https://www.farminguk.com/news/derelict-farm-buildings-at-risk-of-being-considered-abandoned-_47695.html F

It's a spectrum and will depend on a number of factors, the location and the precise circumstances. May be useful background: As a family we used to live in a Listed House. There was a stable block, in use for storage, and the former site of two staff cottages, which had been demolished decades ago and all walls removed. The ground was still very hard, and something like a ground survey would find evidence. Plus we had photos of the cottages. The Council were very clear that they could not be rebuilt, but that the stables would be able to be turned into residential. OTOH there are plenty of places where restoration has been permitted. I think you need 2 things: 1 - That a building is still there are can be repaired (as opposed to rebuilt). 2 - That there is credible proof of the residential use. With those two I think you could do it. Beyond that it may be possible, but then you are more reliant of circumstances to weigh in the balance of benefit in planning terms ... eg things like supporting affordable for locals, or being from a local family and supporting a local job etc. F

If you Google hand held window sampler you get a pic of me having a fun day at a power station in Derry.

I went with a "keep it simple" approach to zoning and control. Been meaning to do proper write-up but want to get through a winter and still experimenting a bit. approx 2,000m of UFH buried into our slab, split across 3 manifolds (and I think about 15 loops) manifolds do not have any pumps or blending valves. Each loop is generally at max flow to reduce resistance in the circuit - have throttled a couple of loops a bit to prevent overheat (e.g. in the basement) 7kW ASHP with onboard compensation controller linked to intelligent thermostats from the ASHP supplier i have created 2 zones as we wanted separate control in the annexe, to permit warmer room temps. Zone 1 covers 60m2, zone 2 covers 160m2. No UFH upstairs, we use direct electric towel rails in bathrooms and I have a 1kW heat coil in the upstairs MVHR as a backup.. each zone has a room stat, pump and valve to operate it. Pump running at lowest speed. small 50l buffer for space heating - I do not consider this to be essential as we have 2,000m of pipe but put it in anyway - if zone 2 switches off then we have less than 500m in circuit the buffer is heated direct from the ASHP, and flow from buffer to UFH is direct as well - no heat exchanger or coils One of my objectives is to run the flow at the lowest temperature possible as this has a big impact on COP - so there are no blending valves or heat exchangers in the system. I think compensation control is a must for max COP - the flow temperature adjusts according to outside temperature (and hence heat loss from building). e.g. external temp of 10C gives flow of about 24C and external 0C gives flow of about 30C. The ASHP controller and intelligent thermostat work well together to calculate the optimum flow given the room setting, room and external temperatures. The ASHP modulates to meet the flow temp. I generally see a return temperature 2-3C lower than flow. I keep heating on 24x7. The ASHP seems to run mostly at the lowest setting (I think approx 2 to 3kW heat output), when very cold outside it ramps up and in these warmer months it switches on and off as it cannot modulate so low - the 50l buffer must help in reducing the cycling, but I have no way of telling for sure. Have set the controller to turn off the space heating completely at 16C external temperature - too early to tell if this is OK. Blending valves are a compromise, in my view, as you would set them for a static temperature (e.g. 35C based on a very cold day) and hence rely on cycling on/off to maintain the correct room temp. Asking the ASHP to heat to 35C is inefficient if your flow needs to be at 25C. Same with heat exchangers - you heat the water about 3-4C warmer to maintain the same UFH flow temperature.

This is why your ASHP is cycling. In essence there are two broad strategies for heating the slab. If you want to put a chunk of ΔQ joules of heat into the slab in a controlled fashion you can either: limit the power going into the slab, and you do this by limiting the ΔT of the heating water and hence you can allow the heat to be added over an extended period. If you do this and run your ASHP at a higher power output, then this heat has to go somewhere and that's the buffer tank. You heat up the buffer tank at a quicker rate and then trickle flow this heat into the slab. limit the energy going into the slab, and you do this by allowing the dynamics of the heat transfer dictate the ΔT as I explained in my modelling topic. You don't actively control the ΔT at all, except that you might want to set the maximum blend temperature as a safety stop. If you aren't controlling the ΔT then instead you need to control the Δt for which this power is applied. You compute this and apply the heat as single "chunk" (or possibly two chunks) per day. In the case of my electric heater, putting in a known ΔQ is easy since the power output of the heating element is known and fixed. In the case of an ASHP, even if I don't know the exact power response of the ASHP, it doesn't really matter since where ΔT is the temperature difference across the manifolds, cpthe specific heat of water and s the flow rate through the UFH. In other words since s and cp are fixed, the only thing that you need to control on is the integral of ΔT. For example measure the ΔT once per minute and add these up. Turn off the ASHP once this total exceeds some preset N Ks (degree seconds). This is easy if you are willing to use one of these instead of one of these . But even if you don't want to use an embedded server to carry out control, then simple alternative asynchronous control strategies could be used for example: Simply run the ASHP for a fixed but settable time period. This will heat the slab by some overall temperature increment. Keep the pump running but then have a dead window to allow the slab temperature to even out. Say 4 hours. Trigger the next heating cycle when the water return temperature from the slab drops below some fixed but settable temperature threshold. Say 21.5°C By a process of trimming set the ASHP on-period (as per the first bullet) so that the heat pump only cycles one or twice a day. I realise that my whole approach has been documented as a set of evolving discussions on various topics, some of which includes maths which will lose some readers. But my core approach is that it seems sensible avoiding having to buy and install a 100 ltr buffer tank when I already have a 10 tonne slab that I can use for this purpose. Let me do a summary write up as a blog post.

My guess is that with that sort of volume of water you may well be OK without a buffer, as our buffer is only 70 litres, and our UFH is about the same as Terry's, 3 loops of 100m each.

Not that easy, I'm afraid. Anything lower than about 30 deg C causes the heat pump to cycle too much and it will probably go into anti-short cycle mode, staying off for 15 to 20 mins even when there's a call for heat. Heat pump life is closely related to the number of start cycles, rather than the run time, too, so excessive cycling is quite likely to cause early failure. I tried to run ours into the UFH only and ran in to this problem, which is why the logic in our control system now automatically turns the valve to the buffer tank on whenever there is a call for heat. I think it's probably good practice to treat heat pumps like boilers, and try to arrange to run them for as long a period of time as possible when they turn on, and then leave them off as long as possible. Our 6 kW to 7 kW ASHP will modulate down to about 1.5 kW output, minimum, and that is usually far more than the UFH needs.

@TerryE I have but there are a couple of differences : - we are not passive slab - heat losses are slightly higher due to conversion / extension rather than air tight new build. The ASHP needs a minimum flow so whilst I could just plumb direct into the UFH it would stop every time the DHW called for heat. We also have most of the solar gain in a morning (in fact we gained 0.8 bar in water pressure on Monday just from the sun before we cast the slab) so there are benefits from running the pumps independently. Final benefit for me is running everything on the heat pump side at around 1 bar (as per @JSHarris design ) then I only have limited need for antifreeze and inhibitor as it's the ASHP circuit only rather than the whole system.

@dogman, you've got an MBC frame and slab. You will need to put maybe 1kW of heat on average into the slab in the coldest and darkest months. By all means use 3 or 5 pumps but why? Likewise you can pump heat from zone to zone or you can take the simple path of running all loops in one zone at a comfortable temperature. Yes, you can make you heating design complex, or you can make it very simple. Your choice. @PeterW did you follow my Boffin's corner topic? I can see why a buffer tank will work, but I don't understand why you need one.

The problem with doing away with a buffer - as I am finding - is that the heat pump has to push all of its heat into the water. They tend to have a minimum flow rate on the circulation pump so that dictates your floor flow too - with that you will also have to use the HP to control the water temperature and not directly the floor temperature so any solar gains in one area may skew the temperatures I plan to use a cheap indirect copper cylinder as a buffer and heat that to 35c and then let the floor draw off that as and when needed with the HP controlled by a tank stat half way down. This means there is a bulk of water for the HP to work on, and with using W Plan it allows the HP to concentrate on hot water if needed and have the backup of around 1.6KwH stored in that (if I did the maths correctly..) which should be fine.

No he meant what he said...

It is well worth buying a couple of drainage plugs for testing and isolating. https://www.screwfix.com/p/bailey-steel-drain-test-plug-100mm-2-pack/62513 The expanding foam was a bit mental.

But you've now screwed the pipe up, you can't use foam eater to clean it as it will damage the pipe, and there is a very good chance the foam will leave a residue on the nice shiny pipe that will trap crud and other sliding items...

Can't believe you didn't have a [...] plug that size!

Why have you had to foam that in? It should be a proper push fit into a sealed port.