SteamyTea

My second degree used to be called an ecology degree, now called an environmental one. So you are paying for idiots like me to tick boxes. I think it is outrageous and as you say, just taking the piss.

Welcome Probably the first thing to do is a sketch of the total setup. That should help with setting up. What sort a thermal emitters (posh term for radiator/under floor heating) do they have. Is the system set up to deliver at a very high temperature i.e. is the water heated initially by the ASHP and then an immersion or the internal resistance heater in the unit. This will be expensive to run if it is. Does it have a large/medium/small thermal store, or just an ordinary looking hot water cylinder. Are there any buffer tanks. One problem to overcome is that there is a difference between space heating and domestic hot water heating, they do different things, at different temperatures and at different times. Also, do you have any idea what the heat loads for the house are? Your parents may just have an undersized unit set up to deliver primarily hot water.

I shall just push harder next time and see what happens. The Lord moves in mysterious ways

I screamed 'Oh, God' once, the Jehovah Witness I was with accused me blasphemy!!

Sounds like the Serenity Prayer to me. Things can be worse. Try living with neighbours that are renters. Landlord's that are absent/arseholes.

I was going to suggest that you put the pidgeon's poo in the garden, but as you are making an 'Essex' garden I can see you may need a skip. Though I would just cut things down and worry about that part till the end.

What you seem to be describing here is a plasterboard tent. If external air can get past the insulation and onto the back of the plasterboard, you have, in effect, not insulated at all.

@Fredd I am not sure if you are just winding us up, like the Irish electrician tried to a while back, and the Architect that tried to convince people that t was illegal to be an Architect unless you were in some organisation or other, and had insurance and ... But I shall give you the benefit of the doubt unless you keep acting like a nob. That is a bit of a simplistic statement. My Mother wants and easy to drive car that is reliable and economical. She does not need to know how the engine works, or how the ZF gearbox automatically selects the gears. A house buyer is relying on the honesty and integrity of the building professional.

@Fredd Do you understand the physical principles behind air testing and heat loss?

No picture of the spilt spaghetti there then Is Phil the Greek coming around for tea now he has retired

I have the original kitchen, a very nasty, cheap one that is now over 30 years old. When I had the place valued a few years back, the estate agents said she liked the kitchen units as there 'were in vogue'. I just bought some cheap melamine paint and some gloss roller from Poundland. Estate agents talk absolute bollocks, they really do. They could not value a house if it was made from pound coins. Why I nipped in. We usually drive Architects away, but we are working our way UP the food chain today

I was at a tyre centre at Stoke Mandeville back in the late 80's. I funny little, familiar look fellow turned up to get an inner tube fitted to his wheel barrow tyre. It was Derek Edward Trotter, better known as David Jason. I wonder if he still has that same barrow. He had the same car as me once, we got them fixed at the same garage.

There is also vapour resistance and air permeability to take into account sometimes, as well as @JSHarris favourite, decrement delay.

Do you have any close up pictures, be useful to see the detail. Saves typing as well.

Do they really build down to a price by cutting corners, or are they just incompetent and need retraining. I have worked for engineering companies that penny pinched but threw away pounds. There was a GD on the telly at work tonight. Did not catch much of it, but McCloud said something about builders going bankrupt because they were working to a fixed price. Well I hate to say it, most other small businesses work to a fixed price. I don't change my menu pricing on a whim, my suppliers don't ask me for extra money. The hair dresser up the road has not changed his pricing in a couple of years. The only other people that are as bad as builders are car repair places, and it tends to be the main dealers that offer the least value for money.

@JSHarris is the man to handle this.

Yes, some of us grew up in Essex. We have had conversations about handheld douches here, asscrack is tame.

Probably best, you don't. You are a chippy and we don't have many of them. If you had to build a few houses, say 5 or 6, would you build them on site with sticks and twigs (or rough sawn, or whatever you call it), or would you knock them up in a shed and just nail them together in the dry. @Fredd what sort of airtightness figures do your builds get? And have you ever sat down and worked out exactly how much value you add to a plot by doing the hard work. You can compare prices on the governments land registry for the areas you have worked in. @the rest of you all The style of Fredd's conversation is familiar, education is needed, rather than confrontation.

I suspect that @Fredd may well be using different terminology than us. when he speaks of timber frame, is he talking factory built and erected on site, or a joiner on site waiting for a delivery of timber lengths to be cut to length 'by the lad'. Big difference in time and cost. In economics there is a difference between 'price' and 'cost'. Economics is not accountancy. @MikeSharp01 mentions 'economic models'. They are, what they are called, models. There are many different models, some fit historic data better than others, future data, is by its very nature a prediction, and then has uncertainty built in. Uncertainty in modelling is not an unknown. This is a very important point, self-builders often have different values and are willing to spend time and cash on what they consider important, not what a market researcher considers is important to the average buyer. If I was a property developer (a term that means many different things to different people), I would be building places that were easy to mortgage, basic and simple to maintain, from easily obtained materials etc. If I was building my own place it would be very different. I would be taking our old mate Ed Davie's approach and trying to do as much work myself, he has gone for a Toblerone design: https://edavies.me.uk/ If I was building 6 houses, things may be different, but then I might rent a factory unit and build modules for erection on site.

But did you learn any sign language from it

This is the bit that made me smile. He must have watched Vision On. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus

You want to know how bad smart meters are, this is the kind of nonsense that Parliament has to put up with: Cyril W. Smith says: January 29, 2016 at 10:40 AM Comments for 'Smart meters' evidence check Cyril W. Smith Scattered light contains modulation at frequencies of the scattering object . This information is retained in photographic records and after internet transmission. Scattered light from the above image of a “Smart Meter” was imprinted into water and measured. The table below lists the frequencies measured using excitation with Toroidal and Caduceus field configurations. It was not possible to make these measurements with instruments having a frequency calibration certificate. The Comment column lists acupuncture meridian/chakra points which have their endogenous frequency nearby. These would be stressed along with the target organ by exposure to that frequency. Furthermore, the world power supply frequencies 50/60 Hz happen to be on natural resonances in melatonin which is the chemical awareness of dark and light but, many people can cope with the Arctic Summer. Frequency Hz Comment Toroid Excitation 6.000 × 10-2 Lymphatic Meridian 6.000 × 10-1 Lung & Liver Meridians 6.000 × 10+1 60 Hz 8.30 × 10+5 2.40 × 10+6 Gall Bladder & Pericardium Meridians 8.50 × 10+6 3.10 × 10+7 9.90 × 10+7 Allergy Meridian 2.82 × 10+8 Urinary Bladder Meridian 4.15 × 10+8 Heart Meridian 9.15 × 10+8 Caduceus Excitation 2.000 × 10-1 Sahasrara (Crown Chakra) The frequencies and meridians stressed would be different in a 50 Hz environment where the Gall Bladder and Liver Meridians might be stressed. The above measurements only relate to frequencies modulating light scattered from that particular ‘Smart Meter’ and recorded in its image. I presume the 60 Hz indicates it is from North America. The electromagnetic fields at the meridian/chakra frequencies emitted by a “Smart Meter” should not penetrate into the building and particularly into the sleeping areas. This could be the subject of on-site measurements at each ‘Smart Meter’ with installation and suitable shielding measures incorporated into the building. The electrical environment is not going to go away any more than is the motor vehicle. Polluters and users of the electrical environment should carry similar ‘third party’ insurance to cover the labour intensive treatment costs of persons affected. https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/science-and-technology-committee/science-and-technology-evidence-check-forum/smart-meters-evidence-check/?page=15

Less than Ducati on £647m in 2015. Honda £11 billion. Bit I agree, manufacturing is not the only way to generate income and wealth, probably one f the hardest ways to do it. And it is going to be slaughtered even more in a year or so unless we can sort out some trade rules.

If you had invented opera, you could have had those vowels back