epsilonGreedy

"300 hi load dpc" noted, I will check that out. Looking at your photos I get the impression the dpc sandwiched under the block has a short 100mm to 200mm flap hanging down and this short flap is then lapped with a second wider intermediate section that takes the dpc down to the floor where there will be a second lap to the main DPM on the floor.

This question relates to a block & beam suspended floor. My brickie has given me a materials shopping list before he starts and has specified 450mm dpc that will be used on the inner 100mm wide block wall and taken down to the internal floor where it will overlap with the floor membrane under the 150mm of floor insulation. Two other builds nearby used 600mm dpc in the same situation to create a bigger overlap. The numbers (no inner-outer cavity tray) are: 100mm wide block. 225mm high inner block. 125mm wide membrane overlap with 450mm dpc Or 275mm wide membrane overlap with 600mm dpc Should I go with the brickie's shopping list or 600mm to create an extra 6" of overlap?

You should expect the B&B floor manufacturer to design and supply a guaranteed complete product (design & materials) from actual measurements based off the as-built footings . My Architectural Technician made a good guess re. the B&B floor design but in the small print there was a note saying "to be specified by the B&B supplier". The same applies to roof trusses. The supplier was quite fussy and wanted extra details such as clarification whether a cooker chimney alcove was a real chimney or fake. I also had to get approval for using some left over 19kg blocks on short 2.5m spans where the design speced max 15kg blocks. The manufacturer's design will also specify vent positions which were delivered with the beams. I did not cut any beams, they do overhang into the cavity in places. When the building control inspector visited I highlighted my concern over the degree of overhang and he said there was no problem.

I like the lateral Microsoft oriented thinking, however I just tried that after reading your post and Word complains the document size exceeds what Word can handle. The PDE is very small at 75kb so I assume Word is struggling with a document that targets an A0 page size.

I need to digitally rub out a building feature on a building technical drawing, white space is acceptable where the item has been removed. I hope there is a free program that would allow me to do this, the input and output docs will be PDFs? Background: I wish to submit an NMA to my local planning office and want to avoid another plan edit cycle & bill from my architectural technician. The current PDF on my PC shows a profile of the updated building feature I wish to submit for approval but also another design concept that is unfinished. After talking things through with the planning office they said they could not approve the main change while ignoring another unrelated design update also featured on the same building profile plan. The cheapest way around this situation is to rub out the concept feature so that the submitted plan only features what I am seeking approval for.

I have a beginners question. Is the dashed "mains fill" feed permanently connected at mains pressure to a t-connector at the base of the expansion vessel? I assume not because of the risk of inhibitor chemicals leaching back into mains fresh water.

How does firmacell compare in terms of heat capacity? In other discussions on the forum the high heat capacity of regular plasterboard it cited as a significant contributor to the total heat capacity of a house inside the layer of insulation. I think @TerryEcalculated his plasterboard drylining had about the same heat capacity as his UFH concrete floor slab. A few Google searches indicate plasterboard and firmacell have similar specific heat capacity but since firmacell is twice the weight that means double the heat capacity per m2 of wall.

Very pleased you are asking such questions a good year before I need to know the answers. Next question is 'C' or 'D'. Should the ceiling reveal panel be fixed before the side panels? Your option 'A' diagram shows the reverse. I assume ceiling panel first is better because the side pieces then offer natural support.

I think @PeterWis saying your workshop will fail to make the minimum thermal standard from the point of view of building standards. However since it is intended to be used as a workshop you can get a free pass by having the workshop rated as a cold space in the thermal assessment. Now you will technically have a cold space below the bedroom hence building standards oblige you to have a fully insulated ceiling space. The fact that you are trying to make your workshop a warmish space is of no relevance to building standards. In your position I would give up entirely on insulating the floor because 1.9m is an absurdly low ceiling. An extra 4" or 100mm is a critical gain in height to make this workshop a viable space.

I am pleased to read this, thought I had completely misunderstood air flow to boilers. I stumbled into this quandry today after realizing I had designed a kitchen without allowing for a boiler, then thought I had discovered a great way to disguise the boiler in the fake chimney breast that forms the cooker hob alcove. My concept was to fit the boiler into the upper 1/3 of the hollow fake chimney breast however the height maths does not work out after allowing for the working air space around the boiler stated in the Veissmann advice. Floor to hob ceiling height is 1.7m. Then the concealed boiler cabinet would need 720mm for the boiler plus 300mm airspace above and 100mm below = kitchen ceiling height of 2.82m whereas I have 2.4. Time to investigate floor level under counter top boiler installation because we are typing to keep the walls as un cluttered as possible.

My reading of your post is that the air supply to provide oxygen to the boiler is indeed drawn from outside of the house?

I had previously assumed that when a modern gas central boiler is installed on an outside wall with a thru wall flu the oxygen for the burn would be drawn from air outside the house. However when I started looking into requirements for hiding a boiler inside a cabinet I encountered this explanation and I am now confused. https://www.viessmann.co.uk/heating-advice/does-a-boiler-cupboard-need-ventilation What are the regulations of having a boiler cupboard?

As with@Temp I do not like water in my socks. The holiday cottage did not have under floor heating and the screen did not contain water bouncing off both the floor and person showering. I can see good design will reduce the problem but now I am wondering why design in a problem that then needs further design to mitigate. Maybe it is a question of room scale, above a certain floor area I guess a bit of over spray does not affect the rest of the bathroom, add in a decent gradient, ufh, mvhr and floor tanking then the problem can be ignored.

The hotel bathroom experience made me appreciate how much the occupant of a shower scatters water beyond the immediate spray pattern from the shower head. That hotel shower cubical was very large but in the absence of a door I had to put down a towel outside the entrance. I have not asked for a detailed explanation of the shower fall incident that led to the broken bone though I think a smaller shower is safer though not completely fall safe, just a matter of degree. As soon as the extra info about hair conditioner triggering the fall came through I thought that explains it, hair conditioner includes some slippery chemistry by design and the casualty is not frail.

This is now my favourite option because a minimal shallow lip tray will help corral the water as it lands. The main negative of a standard fit shower tray is the significant step down to the main floor level, whereas a shallow tray as you describe feels like the ideal compromise between a genuine open plan wet room floor and a full classic deep tray.

I am loosing faith in the whole wet-room concept. A friend had a nasty accident this Christmas while showering and this has prompted me to reconsider whether I want a fancy open wet room type shower in my new build. The casualty slipped on hair conditioner that made the shower cubical floor very slippery and has now had surgery to pin a broken bone. A further point of concern is my recent experience of a holiday cottage with a wet room. Having used a shower in a wet room for a week I now comprehend how difficult it is to stop water soaking the whole bathroom floor. Then there was the fancy boutique hotel in Cardiff with a large semi enclosed shower cubicle that necessitated throwing a sacrificial towel on the floor across the open entrance to prevent a large puddle forming. We visited a relative for Christmas and used their wetroom bathroom & shower. I noted the combination of wetroom plus the British climate = nice breeding ground for mold. On the flip side: Swmbo and I have concluded the snug 80cm square shower in the static caravan is ideal. It is so small there is little risk of a dramatic falling incident. Couple this with a 21kW combi gas boiler fed with exceptional local mains water pressure plus a cheap £30 no brand thermostatic bar mixer sourced from Amazon and we have a perfect shower. The only downside is the step down from the shower tray floor to the main bathroom floor. Are wetrooms a passing British fad best featured in holiday villas in a much warmer climate?

No it just explains how greenhouse gases affect the atmosphere and ground temperatures. The video assumes such gases "trap radiation". I have viewed an extremely deep sub atomic explanation of how gases trap and emit energy, 90% of the video entered my brain and then exited without useful knowledge capture. I dare not post a link here out of fear it would trigger a destructive run-away process in @Ed Davies's brain because the presentation is by Professor William Happer of Princeton University who was also appointed as chief scientific adviser to President Trump. ?

I know you are smart enough to identify the self contradictory absurdity in that statement above. Experts on all points of the alarmist/skeptic spectrum accept the profound significance of the various Milankovitch cycles and apparently so do you because in order to counter my point the earth's climate being scheduled to descend into the next ice-age you claim it will be different this time because: p.s. While following up your link re. the next ice-age being postponed by 50,000 years I found some choice quotes that reinforce my position: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c3ae/7330dbbad1522d6a5f254f181eb4c9483b9b.pdf?_ga=2.225785561.23546783.1578483428-2001527689.1578483428 And before climate change hysteria corrupted scientific process in 1972 it was thought...

His video is very well presented though falls way short of strong support for global warming concern as he is describing an isolated mechanism. If I had 30 minutes of 1-on-1 Q&A time with prof Mike I would ask: "Given your concern about run-away warming feedback mechanisms what climatic limiter kicks in to prevent run-away warming at the end of each ice-age?" Background: It is generally accepted that solar orbital variations trigger the end of each ice-age but such solar variation is insufficient to explain the dramatic rise in temperature to an initial high spike that is warmer than the inter glacial average. CO2 release from warming oceans is the prevailing explanation for the initial run-away warming that leads into an inter glacial period, so what mechanism caps the initial temperature spike?

Much of what I posted was communicated in the most convincing pro alarmist climate change presentation I have seen. The geologist nearly convinced me about climate change by first conceding the validity of most of the skeptic points of dispute. Yes CO2 levels have been sustained at 2 or 3 times current levels in the past 500 million years and the oceans did not boil away and indeed earth's biosphere positively flourished in high CO2 conditions. Yes we have been experiencing regular clockwork ice ages for millions of years, predictable orbital variations and resulting variations in the sun's heat striking earth are hugely influential in understanding ice ages and warming periods. Yes photosynthesis evolved in a geological period when CO2 was much higher and thus it is correct to characterize present CO2 levels as a state of CO2 deprivation from a biological point of view. Yes CO2 levels plummeted to an historic low in the last ice age and simple extrapolation indicates that in another ice age or two photo synthesis and life on earth could be snuffed out as the earth's biosphere continues to lock further CO2 (also known as plant food) in rock strata. Yes the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods are historical realities unrelated to human generated CO2 but they are relatively minor climatic wobbles from the perspective of a geologist and are most likely explained by the invention of agriculture and rising CH4 which is a significant by-product. Yes the world was a touch warmer 2000 to 3000 years ago. Yes 300 years of medieval warmth did not melt the Greenland Ice cap illustrating how much thermal inertia and resilience there is in the whole system. But, and this is a big geological BUT, the record shows that when earth has experienced CO2 levels of where it appears to be heading in the next few centuries the climate could possibly probably flip back to something that preceded the recent series of ice ages. The earth's biosphere would continue to flourish in higher temperatures plus high CO2 and alligators might swim around the coast of Antarctica once again. The principal point of concern would be the inevitability of rising sea level hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

... This over simplifies the situation and skips a key point in the alarmist/skeptic debate. CO2 only interacts with a sub section of the infrared energy escaping from the earth. Methane and water vapour do the same in other segments of the infrared spectrum. When the infrared radiation spectrum is observed from space chunks of it are missing and these chunks are signatures of the three main greenhouse gases interacting with the whole infrared spectrum radiating from the earth. Skeptics argue most of the energy that CO2 can capture is already absent at current levels of CO2 and more CO2 will capture proportionally smaller amounts of energy.

Ok maybe I have attached too much significance to comments that MVHR systems tend to redistribute heat around a house and reduce natural temperature variations. I my case I am thinking about a 2 story house with only minimal bathroom x 2 heating upstairs and UFH downstairs. The stairs will be open plan to the living room. Wall U value unlikely to be better than 0.2.

I need to form a small ramp at my drive threshold. The dimentions are 18cm drop (the gradient) over a 1.5m horizontal distance, so call it a 1 in 8 slope. The width of the drive is 5m. The high end of the ramp butts up against a solid granite kerb and the low end of the threshold ramp merges into a hardcore private road. The ramp will have a decorative top covering of angular 15mm hard chippings and about 35mm deep. I cannot decide between ordering 2" clean limestone or graded MOT1 to form this ramp. I am leaning towards 2" clean in the hope that the top chipping layer will lock nicely into the larger 2" base.

My own thinking on this subject has changed. Many here think that diurnal temperature stability is a desirable outcome for a new build and I accept it probably indicates low heating bills. I however think a house that drops 4 degrees internally overnight leads to better sleep quality. For example on a recent autumn holiday in a well insulated cottage it was too hot at night and I resorted to turning the heating off at 8pm in the hope it would be pleasantly chilly by bedtime.

I agree with that. Mark Kermode is a rare exception to that rule, he makes no concession for the average mainstream media viewer. He talks exclusively to the upper tier of his audience and is not at all concerned that the other 90% will be left dazed and confused in his intellectual slipstream. His days at the BBC are surely numbered.