AliG

If I lost the bathroom I would switch the en suite on the upstairs bedroom to having a bath instead of a shower. Their bedroom will be downstairs so they basically can just live downstairs if they start to struggle getting upstairs. Frankly the building regs on accessible showers in Scotland are daft. You cannot count an ensuite as an accessible shower. You either have to have one off the hall or provision to add one later. The room has to have 800x1100mm clear space in line with the door plus activity spaces in front of the equipment. Thus the architect has made it very large. However, if we make it future provision, I believe we can say that we will reverse the door at that point to swing out the way and cut 500mm off the size of the room, making it just a large WC.

OK. Take 2. Based on discussions with me the architect has pretty much nailed what we were looking for, hopefully planning like it too. We have ended up with 5 toilets. Any thoughts on doing away with the main bathroom upstairs and making it a plant room. With all the bedrooms being en suite it doesn't really seem necessary, but would people find not having a bathroom odd? If we keep the bathroom I might ask for a the downstairs shower room to be a little smaller allowing the bedroom to be bigger. I would also like the kitchen to be around 300mm longer, but there may not be space to do that, we could make the utility a little smaller. I would probably do away with the back door. I might want another window in the lounge. The architect may draw up a different exterior treatment and porch arrangement. Any other thoughts? Site plan Ground floor First floor

Actually looking at the temps in the house today, I have two other rooms that are constantly a little warmer. These are the bedroom and Gym where the UFH manifolds are. Depending on what is running, water flows to these manifolds when there is no heating demand. Conduction through the pipes causes the manifold itself to warm up. Again this is why I would like to reduce the boiler temp as it would reduce the flow temp in the system, but I was wondering if anyone has ended up insulating their UFH manifolds. A lot depends on how low people think it is safe to run the DHW. I know 60C is recommended, but if I could run it closer to 50 then I could reduce the boiler temp to the low 50s and probably reduce heat losses quite a bit.

The UFH isn't set up that way unfortunately. One thing I already fixed though is that a loop to the hall/WC runs through the room. The WC is the coldest room in the house (north facing, obscured glass and outside walls/roof) so we had to separate this loop from the hall thermostat and put a wireless thermostat into the WC. Somehow the wireless controller was confused and running every morning irrespective of the actual temperature. I fixed it in time honoured tradition by switching the controller off then on again. I had hoped that this would help but it made no discernible difference. The other thing I did was the heating installers insulated all their pipes, but the pool guys didn't, so I insulated the last 5m of pipe in the plant room hoping that this would cause less heating demand through these pipes. I have one other thing which I plan to try, which is tuning down the boiler. At the moment it runs at around 61C with the hot water tank set at around 57C. The boiler temperature drives the flow temperature to the pool and UFH manifolds, so if I can turn this down a bit I might reduce heat loss that occurs in the ceiling voids where these pipes run. I have been working on doing this without affecting the supply of hot water.

It's about 600mm wide and 300mm high. But I need to check how close the pipes are to the ceiling to see if I can get anything underneath them. There is a speaker nearby in the ceiling so I will see if I can take it down and get a better look. My wife won't lie me messing around with it. Having checked again with the IR camera, a lot of heat is also coming from the AV rack also. It backs on to the utility room, and I often leave the back door ajar, but that doesn't make much difference. I need to see if I can get a vent in closer to the top and maybe insulate the stud wall between it and the media room. The media room is the only room in the house with no opening window as it just has a narrow high level window. Even then I think it is better that I try and insulate the pipes and save on heating rather than lose the heat outside.

The media room in my house has always been the hottest room. Indeed the heating had never been on. For ages I thought it was the heat from the AV cabinet which has 100s of watts of equipment running constantly. Then when I was out with the IR camera last week I discovered the real issue. The pipes from the boiler to the swimming pool heater run in the stepped ceiling in the media room. I believe that they are insulated with armaflex, but still the IR camera says this area sits at around 28C. The pool heater runs on quite short cycles so these pipes stay constantly hot. It is 15C outside and just shy of 27C in this room at the moment, it was 26 before I put on the projector. The rest of the house is sitting at 23-24C depending on the amount of solar gain in the room. What's the best way to insulate the ceiling and stop the heat getting into the room? I was wondering if I could just stuff the space with loose fill rock wool insulation?

The professional's tools often give him a big advantage.

I think that a tiler would tell you to use adhesive roughly as thick as the tiles, so around 10mm on floor tiles. This always seems way more than I would expect and I know that people do get away with less. It might be worth using tile backer board where I think you can go thinner than with ply. This seems like a good article about it. https://ukbathroomguru.com/tiling-on-wooden-floors-part-4-overboarding/

There are a lot of differences between a home pool and public pool. This article explains the issues regarding steel corrosion. https://atguv.com/2015/12/18/how-uv-can-reduce-corrosion-in-swimming-pool-structure/ Public pools are open all day and heavily used. They will probably have a higher level of chlorine in the 1-1.5ppm range. The swimming pool smell that we are used to is not chlorine but chloramines caused by reactions of contaminants with the chlorine. It is these which particularly attack stainless steel. My pool has a UV treatment which breaks these down and you never smell that "swimming pool" smell. On top of this the pool is rarely open for more than a few hours a week and rarely has more than 2 or 3 people in it, so you just aren't sending as many chemicals into the atmosphere. Public pools are normally set to a 30C room temperature and left permanently open and evaporating. You often see condensing water all over the place in these pools. You should not see that in a well insulated private pool. Mine is only wet where people splash water. The combination of excessive temperature and humidity and chemicals in the atmosphere all lead to public pools frankly often being really unpleasant to be in and basically falling apart as everything is damaged by heat and humidity and chemicals. You really should not be getting a similar situation in a private pool.

Tap water has as much or more chlorine in it, so I don't think it is an issue. Public pools have vastly more chlorine in them. Clearly I will keep an eye on it. The room is well sealed and all the steel in the house is galvanised and painted.

The pool continues to work fantastically well and is a big hit in the recent hot weather and with various guests we have. The automated systems looking after the water continue to tick along with minimum maintenance. I reckon you are talking about £500 a year for a couple of maintenance visits and to top up the chemicals. Heating seems to be running to about £500 a year. I noticed that the two pipes supplying the pool heater are not insulated for the last 5m of their run so will insulate them this week and hopefully that will save a little bit. Last week was the lowest gas consumption I have seen since we moved in at around £2.50 a day which includes the cost of hot water. The surprise cost is electricity. It is hard to separate the cost of the dehumidifier and pump from our other electricity consumption, but I reckon we are talking around £1000 a year. The pool is set up for the filter pump to run 16 hours a day, I believe that we could cut the electricity cost by reducing this, but the water is beautifully clear and clean so I don't want to mess with it. So around £2000 a year in costs which I think is a lot less than you might expect. The humidity of the room is set at 60% which is actually lower than humidity levels outside in the recent weather. The pool has 0.55ppm of chlorine so I am not worried about corrosion issues, you wouldn't know there was a pool in the house. In the winter it is the warmest room in the house, but bizarrely the temperature is more steady so in the summer it has been cooler than other rooms.

Weather apps say it is 21C in Edinburgh yet my MVHR says that the outside temp is 26C. I have noticed out in our garden that it consistently feels warmer than the quoted Edinburgh temperature. This is nice the vast majority of the time. Just getting dark now so I think the temp is starting to fall. My wife opened the balcony door in the bedroom and it dropped a whole 1c to 29C but the breeze makes a big difference.

Not really cooling down today. Looks like it is a 3C differential for bypass to kick in

Our bedroom faces west so we have now hit the magic 30. It has a balcony so we can just open the doors later.

My wife just Facetimed me from the car. I did ask if she was just sitting there to cool down. Re lying on the concrete floor, for the last few weeks our tiled floors have felt pretty warm, the wooden floors even more so. They really seem to absorb heat. I did discover one thing at the weekend. For a while I have had a niggling feeling that one of the downstairs UFH circuits was always on, even though it was switched off, as I sometime felt that the floor was warmer. I had some spare time so got out the Flir One and sure enough I could see the circuit was warm in the floor and the pipes were warm at the manifold. As I was looking at it a pump clicked on, I think to send hot water to the pool. Just then the flow gauge bounced on this circuit. I checked it out and the actuator was not clicked 100% into place, we are talking maybe just 1mm out on one side. This seemed to be enough to allow hot water to flow around the circuit when pumps were running elsewhere. I found this on Sunday night, so I will be checking if the loose actuator was the issue when I get home. Hopefully it will save a little bit on the gas bill. I often get the IR camera out when it is very windy as it was on Sunday. Not an issue today, but I continue to find small holes not properly sealed up. Of note I checked our gas consumption last week and it was about 20% lower than normal. Perhaps the incoming water temp is a little higher and this is cutting down on hot water costs. The higher temps in the house will also reduce standing losses.

OMG a loft would be awful today.

I think I heard about that movie, it sounded scary.

33.2 will be hard to beat even if @JSHarris switched on his heating it is hotter than his flow temperature.

It would be a rare day in Scotland when it was warmer outside than in! But indeed when I am not at home no one does anything about opening windows at night to cool it down, or closing curtains to keep out some of the sun, or turning off lights, or... I could go on. If only there was some way to save this heat for the winter.

I think it kicks in when the differential is 5C, but I would have to check. It might not be running at the moment, but it usually runs in the evening when it cools down outside and I do not see it making a noticeable difference to the temperature. I just don't think it moves enough air.

I keep asking the family to open windows to let house cool down but they don't seem to care. MVHR is running in bypass mode but makes little difference compared to opening a window. I find anything over 23 horrible. Currently on train home and AC cannot cope with the temp, which is 37C outside, probably the same inside. My phone started to overheat and throttle earlier so I had to switch it off for a bit. We have a 600mm overhang and indeed the upstairs south facing rooms are slightly cooler, but only slightly.

My family seem to be averse to opening windows no matter how hot gets. I just checked Heatmiser and see a temp of 29 degrees in one south facing room. But it is a mere 25C in Edinburgh at the moment, versus 38C down south. So let's see how hot you can get.

The UN estimates that 26m people a year have been displaced due to weather and climate related events between 2008 and 2015. They estimate 200m people will be displaced by 2050, less than 10m a year. 10m a year is a number the world could quite comfortably cope with, it already is. Europe, China and Japan are all heading towards flat or declining populations, and even growth is slowing in the US, so this can offset it. It actually may be less disruptive than it has been as immigration has been into already growing economies historically. Offsetting this many countries will see development which means better living conditions and job opportunities. They may be able to internally offset the climate issues or they may offer a more attractive economy to stay in. Within 75 years all regions of the world except Africa will see flat to falling population and i suspect that almost certainly people will move to falling population as the new crisis. I also seriously doubt that the fertility rate in Africa will stay as high as forecast, as other areas have got richer fertility rates have fallen much faster than expected. UN predictions below.

I saw this article and thought it was pretty much what I posted about somewhat tongue in cheek the other day. Looking forward to the Costa Del North Berwick! We were in our house last summer and this year does not seem any warmer but for some reason it is hotter in the house. It may be that I turned down the MVHR which was running flat out when it was first installed or it may be that it has not been getting as cold during the night, but looking at my Heatmiser app every room in the house is sitting at between 23 and 26C with the outside temperature in Edinburgh at 19C. For the moment it seems like I can fix this by opening windows. In London at the moment it is 26C in my apartment and showing 27C outsize. The trouble in London is that the air temperature is higher and the traffic noise and fumes are bad so opening a window doesn't really help. I can see AC becoming more prevalent here. If I could get it I would have it already.

Yes, I think this solves the head height issue as you can move the landing past the entrance to the kitchen. The upper floor picture looks correct, not sure what you have done with the levels on the lower floor, are you thinking of having the door level with the kitchen then going down from the kitchen to the playroom under the stairs that go up to the bedrooms? That would work well I think and gets you down to just three sets of stairs. Realistically you won't get a lot of light from the front door to the playroom either way, there isn't that much glass and it is quite far away, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Is there something stopping you putting a long narrow window at head height in the spare room facing south? Then you could split the space with a north south wall rather than east west, you could have the small room with one north facing window next to the kitchen and the large room being dual aspect running front to back. Even without an extra window at the front, this room would have west facing windows now, although I don't know how much sun you expect them to get. TBF this may not be there best se of space as you would need a small extra hall, depends how much you want extra light. With an infinite budget I would be tempted to make that whole area a new kitchen/family room/dining room with windows all round.