Leaderboard

We put our vat claim in a week ago Just over 43k They have just contacted me to ask me to check my figures as they get it to £60 more Requested 6 receipts Then will pay it Hernia op in two hours Then 3 weeks taking it easy Hopefully paid out by then

Firstly now have a 4G smart meter, commissioning time was about 10 mins. Spoke with Octopus just after commissioning to change tariff (16:00 on Friday) and am now on a smart tariff (Saturday 08:30). Octopus mini hub is also being delivered today. Decided to go Octopus Cosy. Super easy battery scheduling, should never run out of cheap rate electric, not super cheap but 12.65p per kWh, 2p cheaper than my E7 tariff. Have used Wonder Watt to schedule times. First cheap slot is setup as a smart schedule so it charges based on forecast generation of PV, second slot set to 90% SoC fixed target. 90% chosen so it does not interfere with immersion or heat pump diversion, and by this time, if the smart charge is ok the battery should already be above this level, so will only come in to play if forecast is wildly out etc. Final charge is set for a fixed 100% SoC. May need to tweak over the coming days, but will see how it pans out.

Was the title meant to be *pipe* clips and zip ties? I had assumed not and was waiting for an exposition on the myriad alternative uses for paper clips (apart from temp. replacement clips on split-link chains and repairing my reading glasses).

I'm no structural engineer but it looks fine to me. Taking that much out of the middle of the stringer would be a different matter As it's turned into share a picture of your home made stairs these are mine and are made of maple and cherry built around a central steel box

We had quotes for norrsken and kloeber as well as from our local aluminium window supplier who is a Smart Systems manufacturer. We are going with the latter, full measure, supply and fit. The cost was about 25 to 30% lower BUT the decision was based on the facts that 1. They are local with a good reputation 2. The can deliver the u value we "need" and all of the window door options we want in the same range (alitherm 400) 3. Both other quotes "bent" the truth ..." building regs say you must have 3G", " you can't have an outward opening front door and comply with pas 24", and both changed the size of at least 1 window opening to suit their range without mentioning it (double chk what the quote says) 4. Our suppliers order in the profile, spray to the ral colour we want, THEN measure the actual holes and manufacture in about 5 weeks, the others had timescales that meant windows would need to be surveyed off plan or would have a 10 to 14 week lead time. Our decision was also helped by the fact we actively did not want a wood finish inside and if necessary fitting could be done in more than one stage. Time will tell if we made the right decision.

Bro I made these 👊🏻

Thank you the op went well I’m home and up on my feet

Doesn’t the whole installation look a bit shit.

Hiya. If you click on the drawing that @Russdl has posted yesterday it takes you to his thread. There is a fair bit going on in the slab. Here is a bit of detail that works for a reasonable lightweight structure like this even with solid single story masonry walls above, which add a line load to the edge of the slab. Your pod will be pretty light but hopefully the below may give you some ideas as to how you can use Foamglass in other ways. If you are close to trees then you'll maybe have some swelling / shrinkage of the soil, thus you'll have some element of excavation to navigate around that. Rather than filling the excavation back up with say type one it sometimes works if you back fill with an insulating materail such as Geocell Foamglass. Below is a screen shot from a data sheet. On the odd ocasion if you have ground with a very poor bearing capacity you can make some headway by digging out the soil and replacing it with a lighter material. Just say the soil you dig out is 1800 kg/ m^3 and the Geocell Foamglass is 150 kg/m^3. Now stick a raft slab on top of that and you basically get some "free load". The excess load is then used in the settlement and bearing calculation.. you need to mindful of the water table for example as this can put a spanner in the works at times. On the drawing posted you'll notice that the slab is 150mm thick.. but it has an A252 mesh which has an 8.0mm bar size spaced at 200mm centres in both directions. It's not uncommon to use a thinner mesh, say A142, for a lightly loaded ground bearing floor slab, which has a 6.0mm thick bar. So why the A252? Using the thicker A252 mesh allows you to qualify the slab as a reinforced concrete slab. And now the mesh serves two purposes: 1/ It allows you to have less movement joints in the slab, within reason, depending on the slab size and it controls the drying shrinkage of the concrete more. 2/ The nuance is that if / when the wall loads induce too much bearing stress on the foamglass under the edge of the slab the A252 mesh starts to work by transferring some of the load back into the slab. This is a common technique used when we design raft founds for houses. You'll see that the mesh is bent down on site. This anchors the mesh which will be in tension. It's ok to bend this kind of low risk mesh on site provided you only bend it once (so as not to work harden the steel) and you must not have too tight a bend radius. In this case the bend radius is roughly twice the bar diameter. You can bend this mesh easily with a bit of steel 22 mm gas pipe offcut while applying some common sense. @mjc55 have fun exploring the pods design.

Gas costs you circa £100 for standing charge, just to have it connected. Not mention the report. No idea where they get a CoP of 2.8 (well I do, see below). A typical well thought out simple system will get to a CoP of 4.0 and beyond. A simple heat pump install is, no thermostats, single zone, run 24/7 on weather compensation. A 3 port diverter to switch between heating and DHW. Nothing else is needed. This will get you a cop of at least 4. Add into the mix the circulation pump switching off between compressor cycles gets closer to 5 on mild days. Running a heating circulation pump for a 180 days a year is around 70W x 24 x 180 = 302kWh or £75. This figure is never mentioned in the gas calculation, nor is any electrical running costs, associated with boiler. But is always included in ASHP CoP figure (or should be). So you now have a fixed cost of £175 to have gas (standing charge and circulation pump), not included in the gas costs comparison. So if you use 6000kWh of gas at 6p it will cost £360, plus £175 so £535. Your good boiler install is getting 95% efficiency, so of the 6000kWh consumption only 5700kWh energy delivery. So on a standard rate tariff you pay say £0.25 per kWh for electricity. Let's use the 2.8 CoP figure and see the cost. 5700kWh/2.8 is 2035 kWh electric. 2035 x 0.25 is £509. So even with a cr@p install you are beating an gas boiler on running cost. Now for a CoP of 4 1425kWh of electric needed 1425 x 0.25 is £356. A system designed with hydraulic separation, buffers, low loss headers, the additional pump(s) needed, mixer valves, not having a low temperature heating system, on/off heating timing could get you at 2.8 or worse. To get a decent efficiency from a gas boiler you need a low temperature heating system run on weather compensation, ideally a high gain cylinder run on priority demand. So one flow temp for heating and another to heat DHW. (Which is pretty much the same as a heat pump install). A boiler will yield 95% efficiency an ASHP around 400%. So heating system install is the same cost. Such a system will yield a gas efficiency of 95% and ASHP around 400 to 500%, not 280% mentioned. Then the cost of heat source A good boiler is more than a £1000. A high gain gas boiler cylinder and ASHP cylinder are basically the same cost. Now ignoring grants an ASHP could cost £4-5k, but you really don't have to pay that. I paid £1300, you could get a really good Panasonic for around £2k. So a heat pump is a little more expensive without any grants, but you do have a payback of 5 or less years which is a little different from the report which said never. Time of use tariff, even E7 will give you electricity at 6p to 14p. Add some PV, a battery changes the cost profile again. My cost for electric average this year is about 7p, so are now down to £100, compared £509. Can a boiler give you cooling if you need or want it - no. I voted with my feet today and had my gas disconnected. To summarize, reports like the one linked to, are uneducated drivel, biased against heat pumps, no proper analysis completed. Rubbish in rubbish out. A typical gas boiler installed on S or Y plan will getting closer to 85% efficiency, so now quite a bit more expensive than an ASHP. A new build, a simple ASHP install is a winner.

I just found a lovely use of a zip tie. Couldn't get the bottom screw of the pipe clip in ....

Intelligent go smarlty controls ev charging 24 hours a day but gives you a window of cheap rate leccy every night to use at your own pleasure - the window is actually slightly longer at night than with the dumb version go.

Well there's nothing for it : instead of talking about it, or counting dimples, I'm gonna have a to get off my Botticelli and do some laying. Nuvver steep learning curve on the way. 🫣

But at the moment you can get a better rate for exporting your solar electricity and heating your water with the heat pump (with a CoP of 2 or more). And it's even cheaper if you can use a night-rate/EV tariff when heating your water with the ASHP.

Long while no update. Messed about with hybrid (gas and ASHP) last winter and after doing the total running costs, decided I was approx £100 plus to have a hybrid system, mostly due to additional standing charges - so gas has to go. Meter being disconnected tomorrow, by Octopus at zero cost to me. Ignoring the hybrid settings, current settings are No thermostat, WC on heating and WC on cooling (very small amount of 0.5 Deg flow temp change). Change over (between heat and cool) by a single repurposed light switch. In addition to that I have a second set point which adds 3 degs to heating curve and 1 Deg is removed from cooling curve, this activated by a Shelly relay if I have excess solar PV. CoP when running has been great, high 4s to high 5s. When coupled with standby time it hasn't been the best (measuring all electrical input in the ASHP system and heat meter). So heating CoP overall was mid 3s. Cooling high 3s. However between heat pump cycles the circulation pump was kept on, with pump, valve, performance monitoring and other stuff drawing 117W during standby. Switching the pump off with everything else on, brings the standby down to 31W. So to fix the issue I have implemented the circulation pump to run in sniffer mode, so circulation pump runs for 4 mins after heat pump compressor has stopped and then stays off for 40 minutes, before starting again. If heat pump senses the return temp isn't within limits the heat starts again. Current running cooling and in the last 24 hrs including one DHW heat cycle at night (15 degs) the daily CoP has increased to 4.91. A similar average temp day a week ago the CoP was 3.88, with one DHW cycle in the day at 20 degs. So CoP has increased a full point. Rough calculation is a saving of about £50 per year.

@ProDave @Nickfromwales @TerryE My plumber came around today and was all geared up to swap the join but upon looking at it up close, was convinced this was only superficial corrosion caused by the plumber who installed this system not cleaning the flux off this join. He went as far to clean it up and it looks a lot better. Some other joins I showed him were also green around the joints (not as bad as this one) and he said he sees it all the time. He said it wouldn't worry him. Given how bad it looked before, it's clear that this corrosion hasn't seemingly eaten into the pipe. I was expecting it to all look very pitted / rotten etc. I was nervous when he was cleaning it, I must admit.

@flanagaj, this is an area where you could potentially save some money. You can get good u-values from 2g windows. For aesthetics we had to go with 2g, we wanted the crittall style look and steel windows are another level of expense. Our windows are only 1.3 u-value, but the coating on the inner leaf of the outer pane is what makes all the difference to how the window feels. This is a pretty standard thing to have and it helps reflects back your body heat. We have Smart Alitherm Heritage windows. A lot of companies use their systems but market them under different names like Duration and Cherwell. In the UK windows market you have system manufacturers, underneath them you have local fabricators, then you have installers/retailers. Sometimes the installer will also be the fabricator. The fabricators supply the local retailers. There are many exceptions to this. You could have the best window system, but be let down by the fabricator or installer or both. This website does good coverage of the aluminium windows market and will list a lot of system manufacturers. https://www.doorandwindowexperts.co.uk/aluminium-windows/who-makes-the-best-aluminium-windows/

Hi All - Just wanted to say hello before I start brain-dumping all the problems I've been losing sleep over for the last few months. I started my extension/renovations last year. Its been slow going and way more expensive than I could ever have imagined but starting to make progress now. That said it very much feels like one step forward and three back. Up until this I had zero experience in building so it's been a mega steep learning curve and only seems to be getting harder. Anyway, thanks in advance for any advice I get here. I've found it very hard to get good advice so far and most of the questions that I have found good answers to came from this forum. Paul

My answer, and I can say this with great confidence, is either, i.e. whichever side you prefer. Just make sure they are either: A) all the same way up, or B) if not all the same way up at least arrange them so they are in a pattern (e.g. checkerboard or stripes or chevrons or whatever). Do I get extra housepoints?

As @ProDave says they are probably OK, but I personally would (i) check immediately under the joins for any evidence of dripping / water damage, and if so bite the bullet and replace them. (ii) don't disturb them unless you are going to fix them properly. The last time I got burnt by a joint this bad was about 40 years ago (I am not a professional plumber but only have done the plumbing on my own houses). In this case I left it but the joint then failed after I replaced the CH pump. I couldn't resolder because it was at a low point and I couldn't drain it down. I ended up cutting out a section and managed to put in a small insert with two new end-feeds. When I got the failed bit out and looked I found that the plumber had never actually soldered one side: the flux and gunk were all that was sealing the joint! Nick is the expert on this. He is my Sensei. 👍

Just had an update, and a new inspector has been allocated with a site visit scheduled for the end of the month! (finally!) ... now to keep our fingers crossed for a good outcome

Doesn't look too unnatural compared to some staircases I've seen.. I built my own because the quotes were coming out insane for mine. But they were an unusual shape and design

Nope. I think the OP got shafted so is trying to navigate a way through with a mixture of manufacturers. Hep2o all the way for me.

Wouldn't this be a better solution in this case @ProDave? Saves doing anything inside the wall or serial switching. Can still replace the external cable if needed but just use a wireless external switch (they sell IP67 versions).

By the way. My timber frame is up. Roof is due on next week. In IP8 if anyone wants a look next week.

Wowzer! That is efficient. Hopefully we will be submitting ours in a years time. Good luck with the op and enjoy the time off 🙂

If you want proper 2-way switching without replacing the cable, wireless is probably the way to go https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Quinetic/index.html replace indoor switch with a "Quinetic Wireless Switch c/w Built In Receiver". Add one (or more) "Quinetic Kinetic Wireless Switches" wherever you need them.

If the AAV has failed and is letting air out, then it will inflate the plastic bad you are about to tape over it.

Heatmiser sell an opentherm mini hub that will control 2 zones with 240v relay to zone valve. The opentherm is done by output from the mini hub to boiler. So you could buy another neoair to replace the t6r and then wire up the minihub. The other alternative is to use EPH CP4 combination if you're not using a heatmiser wiring centre - with the cp4 you just have 2 stats with receivers with one receiver set up at the hub unit which is is wired to the boiler with opentherm. Oh, and especially if you're running a low temperature heating system (i.e. 55C or below), make sure the installer has actually installed the UFH with hydraulic separation, otherwise you'll probably end up with balancing problems between the radiator system and ufh. HTH

We had a sample of this stuff and it was very impressive. But for some of the sizes of our windows we would’ve needed 2 panels per window and so would’ve had a line down the middle

This calculator reckons 12 tonnes, unless I've done something wrong. https://www.primaryaggregates.co.uk/aggregates/aggregates-calculator

I’ve had all that rubbish in the past. as others have said” Sell up, invest into the stock market/ deposit accounts/ gold. Life is too short, the aggravation too much, and the profits too small. I did and never looked back

There are two of us in the house we have 210L and even having guest stay over there is no issues. We just heat to 50, degs, sometimes once mostly twice a day if thermostat says yes. Never run out of hot water. 6kW will take about 45 mins to an hour to heat 210L. 6kW and small heat demand, thick screed I assume and batch charge floor. I would get a cheap tariff and charge cylinder with immersion. Or you could run out of time in cheap tariff time. But at 1.2kW coldest day demand, is a heat pump worth the effort, why not a Willis heater or two. 3kW x2 for 4.8 hrs, and the slab is heated. Then put a small cylinder in the space you have and heat to 70 degs. 2x Willis heaters £90 add a third for a hot swop £135. 140L direct cylinder £600. Add a 0.1 Deg hysterisis thermostat to control UFH charge.

It all nonsense really. ASHP should lower CO2 by a factor of 3 to 4, but MVHR is sort of accounted for by reduced heating demand.

They are very thick but very narrow slabs and the face nearest the camera is the top. They are laid like slices of bread in a loaf and the dimples are clearly to keep the butter grout in. Obviously.

Not that it makes a difference to your search, but the channel is at the bottom normally, so that you can insert an aluminium channel into it that guides the door. There is no stress on this channel, so most doors should be fine to be honest. Are you sure you need a channel at the top? If that's the case, could you link to the Eclisse pocket product you are using. For my own doors (including my pocket door) I used ones with a 20mm solid lipping. XL Joinery Suffolk doors.

There are options for 22mm chipboard routered out, or insulated panels routed out (for the pipes), so get some googling done and check the responses here for related content

Go to Trevor at cylinders2go (Telford) and mention my username and the forum, as he's given favourable rates to many other members here over the years

I made my daughter's staircase: https://flic.kr/p/tR4AM1

Not sure if this is useful to anyone, but we looked at so many different LVTs from Amtico, Karndean, Polyflor, Moduleo, Invictus and I don’t even know who else. I have like 50 samples of LVT and IMHO they ALL look very fake, feel plasticky and the embossing is either the same across different fake woods and/or doesn’t line up with the fake wood grain. Some are very rough underfoot due to weirdly raised embossing. I should also mention that the fake embossing is particularly noticeable in the darker woods, so those tend to look worse IMHO. Amtico and Karndean really didn’t impress when compared to others - Moduleo and the Polyflor Expona seemed the best of the lot to us. But we really just didn’t like any of them - our daughter has sensory issues so the feel of something is a very important decision point for us. Naively, I thought that LVT would be cheaper than engineered wood, but that’s actually not necessarily true. You can get good quality engineered wood at about the price of the medium Karndean/Amtico. We got a couple of samples and everyone in the family (including the cat!) immediately agreed that we would be using engineered wood for our new flooring. If you want near indestructible floor and easy cleaning then perhaps also look at the new composite laminates. However, for optimal heat transfer from underfloor heating, you want the floor to be gluedown and that isn’t possible with most laminates. We did choose a marble SPC for one of the upstairs bedrooms where we won’t have underfloor heating. That looks pretty good but won’t feel as cold as tiles underfoot. Anyway, I thought I’d just state my opinion, hoping it will help others in their decision process.

1000%. @saveasteading, just renew the cable so the light has a permanent live feed and go to Quinetic. Just so quick and simple, and you can add switches in seconds anywhere you want them. They are really effective, but the question would be what the distance from the light to the indoor switch is, as you’ve got options to just put an IP project box next to the floodlight and the switches talk to that there, vs trying to get a bulky Qtc switch into the box box you have in the wall. They’re a bloody tight squeeze, did this in my daughters bedroom and works a treat; switch by the door, and desk, and bedside 👍. All done in an hour start to finish.

Without proper wiring alterations, proper 2 way switching won't work. What you could do without tearing your house apart, is put an outside switch in series with the inside switch. So IF the inside switch is on, then you could turn the outside light on and off from the outside switch. But if the inside switch is off, then the outside switch would do nothing. If that compromise was okay then yes you could continue using the cable going through the house and down the wall.

About the fast up and the slow down? (I also cannot help noticing that anyone going up the RHS of the Big Stairs is either going to have to be very short or will have a big bump on their head).

The consensus is that they are compatible, provided you use the correct pipe inserts. The official responses are below. The official response from Wavin... "Are Hep2O fittings compatible with the JG Speedfit system pipework? We cannot guarantee that all push-fit plumbing brands are made to the same standards for the internal diameter, so we cannot say that Hep2O fittings are compatible with JG Speedfit pipework. We always recommend that you to use Hep2O push-fit plumbing pipe with Hep2O fittings." And the official response from John Guest... "Are JG Speedfit fittings compatible with the Hep2O system pipework? Yes, as long as the correct manufacturer's pipe insert is used. However, JG Speedfit fittings are designed and tested to be compatible with JG Speedfit pipe. JG Speedfit cannot guarantee the specification of other manufacturers' pipe therefore mixing JG Speedfit with Hep2O is not advised."

If you are dead set against a concrete floor why not do a floating double layer wood floor over high compressive strength EPS? That way you only have to return the 100mm timbers. I think a vapour barrier under the wood floor would stop condensation under the EPS and if you used 75mm insulation you’d end up with a similar floor level. I don’t think even two later caberdeck would withstand a large weight dropped from height but most peeps home gyms focus on machines and relatively light weights anyway. (Actually I used to use free weights and I think it’s awfully bad form to drop weights anyway, but that’s another story.) But rowing machines, treadmills, cross trainers, etc. would be fine. And that should leave spare cash for the most important bits, huge tv, sound system, mirrors, etc…. 😉

>>> Which brand do you recommend for this That bright green stuff in the image is Ubbink.

We have a fairly large driveway area covered with 20mm chippings. No membrane was used on the advice of the landscaper. He said it was a waste of money as the stones would tear into the membrane and allow the weeds to flourish regardless. We don't suffer from weeds and I think that is due to the preparation of the sub base. Yes, the odd one will appear but they are quickly and easily dealt with. As for existing growth, weedkiller would do the trick but I think the answer lies in the sub base preparation. Get that right and save yourself the cost of a membrane.

Do you already meet Part O? If not, then heatpump driven cooling is unlikely to cut it and you need to think about what other changes to make. If you do meet Part O already and are doing UFH downstairs just set up cooling there. Upstairs if using radiators consider switching to fancoils in the same place. Pricier but probably cheaper than lots of other solutions. Adding separate A/C units in addition to your heating solution probably doesn't save you money (especially as the £7,500 from the BUS scheme might be more complicated if you plan to use it) but it's an easy option you could add in future if everything else doesn't work out. If you aren't planning UFH/heat pump heating then normal A/C units might be the easy option (but then maybe reconsider UFH). As far as other changes go, dropping the cladding as per @IanR might be cheaper than brick (unless you go from being able to use a single standard length of board for each column or the extra trim around the windows is costly) so doing that you could fit 'for but not with' external blinds. Alternatively, consider planning for a wooden pergola in front of the main downstairs windows. Even if you don't do it during the build it could be a DIY job later. Of course, if not part of the build couldn't count on the solar shading for Part O. Adding an overhang on the roof to provide some shading for the upper windows might also be relatively low cost but if you basically have none right now might be difficult with planning. Shrinking the height of the windows upstairs (remove from the bottom) would likely save a lot of cost and reduce heat gain. You'd lose getting sun on your feet as you stand by the window but you could likely lose up to half a metre without substantially reducing the feeling of a big window.

Take a completely flat sheet of plasterboard, and then lay the mud on the joint, then apply the tape, then add more mud, and then sand back. That is the process/build-up. Outcome, a high point on each junction; tapered vertical joints can be smoothed well, but tapered board ends are square and the taping and filling process there makes for even higher/prouder joints. They then have to be blended into the vertical......... The only way to reduce that is to feather the filler across a much bigger surface area and blend it out, I know because I have done so myself previously; I therefore have 'hands on' experience vs just an opinion! Upshot was, the huge amount of time, effort, dust, mess (cost) vs a wet skim makes this zero sense whatsoever. Kudos to good guys who have done a good job, but you can't argue that there are no bumps created by the taping and filling, because there are, and you can see these without looking too hard, from my direct experience.

Could you not build another house with AC from the off?