jayc89

I built an insulated "room" in our cold loft - boarded it out, 3x2 stud walls, rock wool in the studs and 50mm PIR adhered to 12mm ply screwed to the underside of the rafters - wasn't aiming for massive amounts of thermal efficiency up there, given there's 400mm of insulation beneath it, just enough to keep the frost at bay. I did plan to stick a small electric heater up there, with a stat to come on at under 5-10c but haven't got around to that yet. So far so good. Where the "room" is, I laid some 6x2 joists across the existing trusses (we have some beefy king posts), and used loft legs everywhere else, then ran some Caberfloor across the lot.

CT1 did cross my mind, but worried it might be a bit of a hack of there was a more serious fault causing it. The siphon screws in, but the plastic it screws into looks like it has a squeeze clip at one side and some sort of lug at the other which doesn't seem to want to budge, and I'm worried about applying too much force and snapping it! Also noticed the exhaust pressure seems to change when the siphon's disconnected, is that normal?

How far away are the manifolds to the furthest rooms they serve? Are the flow/return supply pipes to/from the manifolds insulated? Have you measured the flow/return temps of the UFH loops supplying heat to the rooms which are struggling to reach temp? Do you have a heat loss calc for the house?

I’ve got a Brink Flair 325 MVHR unit, and I’ve noticed condensation is leaking from the outer edge of the plastic part where the siphon connects, rather than flowing through the siphon itself. The seal between the siphon and the plastic part looks fine, so the water seems to be escaping where the plastic part connects to the unit. Has anyone else experienced this or know what might be causing it?

When it dropped to -15 back in 2010 (ish, can't remember exactly which year it was, might have been '11), I genuinely didn't think it felt much colder than negative single figures we typically get each year. No idea what humidity it was but I'm guessing it must have been pretty dry as I can remember a lot of snow, but not much ice needing scraped off the car windscreen.

We did consider making the utility area a dining area (well, switching the two around and having the dining area in front of the patio sliders) but we typically prefer a more formal dining room, so we can shut out the kitchen mess whilst eating - call us old school! We also thought of having the "other side" as a sitting/living/day room space but we're not convinced our lifestyle lends itself well to that either.

If it's been removed below you, it should have been supported, historically using gallows brackets, but if done more recently with a length of steel. Presumably if done between flats the Party Wall Act would have also come into play, so there should be a paper trail which your conveyancing solicitor should be able to assist you with.

Been toying with this for a while now and think we're finally ready to pull the trigger. Would appreciate any and all constructive criticism before we do. For context; Clearance around the island is 1050mm, would have liked more but to get the units we needed in a layout we liked this was the best I could come up with. All services, where possible will be overhead and dropped down, of course services to the island will be in the slab. Service voids overhead and to the West and North/West side of the North wall (up to the column), rest is cavity wall, wet plaster on brickwork. Plan is to run a 110mm waste pipe left to right, picking up with utility and kitchen drains, leaving the house under the kitchen sink (which is nearest to the mains sewerage connection) House has MVHR, hob will be induction, not quite landed on the type of ceiling extractor yet (after reading a handful of threads on here), will probably opt for a cheap-ish recirculating extractor and grease filter cone in the kitchen plenum to catch anything else.

Thanks for all the suggestions. It's a flat roof which will need replacing at some point, so I could; 1) Fill up to the bottom of the windows when I change them 2) Fill from the top when I replace the roof 3) Pour some diluted PVA in from the top at the same time Presumably the PVA at 10:1 should be of low enough viscosity to traverse the full wall, top to bottom?

Looking for a pair of low threshold sliders for our new kitchen, span would be approx. 3m. Local fabricator says they don't have any frames that are suitable for low/flush threshold. Any recommendations on a decent frame I should be looking at?

I have a UK Cylinder and it's done the job fine. Have you posted about this somewhere else too, maybe a Facebook group? Sure I've read something similar recently, but I could also be going senile...

How? Presumably the wall ties would make fitting batts a PITA.

We have a relatively small cavity wall section of the house, approx. 15m2 excluding windows/doors. I'm pretty sure it's approx. 100mm cavity and not insulated (built 1970-1980 time). Ideally I'd blow EPS beads into it, but I doubt I'll get anyone out for such a small surface area, it won't be worth their time. The only access I'll have is when I replace the windows/doors, and I can't think of a good way of getting some insulation in there without risking the introduction of cold spots. Any clever ideas?

Figured it out - SWMBO managed to turn flick the fused spur off when faffing about in the wardrobe 🤦‍♂️

Noticed the MVHR unit didn’t go into boost when I had a shower yesterday, so I went to check it out today. There was no power to the display unit. Changed the fuse and still nothing. Visually checked the circuit board and nothing looks obviously blown, all connectors were seated securely. Any one any ideas what could be going on? It’s in a cold loft but the pipework is all insulated.