Paene Finitur

Ah! But you'll always know that it's there!! Alternative suggestion: You could route a vertical dado channel maybe 8mm deep, 6cm from the top to the middle of skirting on each side. Then cut your battening so that the top 6cm is 8mm wider on each side. It then just slots in neatly. This would not only hide most of the profiling gap, but would also strengthen your battening joins to the skirting.

£30K or so doesn't seem too unusual (I'm not saying it's reasonable) I've seen Sharps charging more than that with their 50% discount!! We had a local joiner to do some work and he moaned on about customers wanting bespoke work at Ikea prices! 🤣 I guess there is their time and skill to consider. He told us he had a lot of kit in his workshop specifically for large cabinetry, so I guess that all has to be paid for and maintained but, still, £30K is a lot. I have to do some cabinets but they will all sit within existing large built in cupboards so the external finish isn't quite so critical. I'm hoping to do most in MDF/Ply with a rolled or sprayed paint finish. I asked in a local Facebook group if there were any woodyards out there that accepted cut-lists and got some decent responses. What I could really do with is a design app that creates cut-lists, that's easy to use and at a decent price!!

I just found the part m document if it's any help: nhbc-part-m-disabled-access.pdf

Yes, Building Control did pass it in the end. I was toying with getting rid of it as I don't need it and it's a bit rough, but just have too many other jobs right now and it's been useful to get big things in and out of the house TBH. I think the rule was a 900 min square level area in front of the door and then something like min 1 in 12 slope. I think he might have let me get away with slightly steeper (1 in 10 maybe?) than that, but I'm fairly sure a step would have been rejected. The main thing he wanted was a permanent ramp, not a metal or wooden structure.

No, I keep it fairly low. It's mainly - in conjunction with a HVAC - to avoid condensation/damp. That said, I don't want to put something that will block even that low level of heat. Being underground, it keeps a fairly consistent temperature, being slightly warmer in winter and cooler in summer.

Thanks Conor. That sounds good. Would wood fibre go OK with UFH? Also, the existing screed doesn't quite come up to the wall in many places, but up to foam insulation boarding that surrounds the room. I'm wondering whether I should cut that back since, unless I raise the floor above that level, I'm going to find bringing the laminate up to the wall and fitting a skirting board a bit tricky.

Hi all, we moved into our self build with the basement still not complete and would like to finish it off. As cash is tight, I'm planning to do the work myself, so ideally would be looking at a solution that is possible for the experienced DIYer. The floors are currently rough screed over UFH and I need to decide how to complete the floor, ideally, before taking the project further. The rooms are: 1. A fitness studio. Ideally this would be a spring wood floor but I don't think this would work well with the UFH. My initial thought would be to pour an initial self leveling latex screed and then finish with either laminate or karndean, if funds and experience allow. 2. A den/cinema room. This is also rough screened with the added complexity that there are two large manholes in the room for the basement sump pumps. So I would have to create an access hatch for these,i guess. Again, I think that a laminate initially would privacy be easiest and cheapest here, but open to suggestions. You might see from the photos that the screed doesn't come up to the wall in many places but to insulation boards, and I'm not sure quite how to deal with these. Should the insulation be cut back level with the existing screed, or should I foam any gaps and bring the screed up to the level of the foam? One particular corner has an elevated concrete block, which is a bit of a pain Ideally I'd have a completely level floor for whatever surface goes on to of it. I'd love to hear any suggestions or experiences with something similar. I'm lacking in experience and confidence and don't really want to make an expensive blunder. Many thanks!!

There are some great pinned posts on this subject. The 3 months is from BC signoff (6 months if after 5 December 2023) but there's been a few cases where HMRC have argued that the moving in date was more significant. As far as I can tell, this tended to happen when BC sign off was severely delayed and owners had moved in months or even years earlier. They do ask for the moving in date on the form. We'd had to move in even though there was still work to get the cert and this took about 4 months. Bit of a nervy wait but they paid out without question and only deducted a kitchen appliance - they were fine with the extractor. Definitely worth getting any VAT claimable supplies in for any jobs your hoping to do imminently. I chucked in a few of these, but to be honest I wish I'd kept better records and been a bit more savvy throughout our build - I'm sure we missed a few things that we could have claimed for.

Ouch!! Hope you're better now. Certainly not what you want to come home to. I suppose at least you weren't bothered by humidity on you return. My de-humidifier has recently taken to tripping the MCB, which saves me quite a bit! 😁

Thanks for all the amazing feedback. To answer some of the points: @SteamyTea I'm not sure that I can separate out the heating from the hot water in terms of energy use. There's a separate meter for the ASHP and one from the immersion for the header tank. We had a big spike last Christmas because the thermostat for the header tank got slightly dislodged resulting in the ASHP having to work much harder and the immersion kicking in to make up. Thankfully, that got solved. @JohnMo Yeah fair point, and you're absolutely right; when I was checking last winter, the non-heating/HW electric usage was around 22KWh/day so probably mainly not the ASHP over summer. @Conor I suspect that was mostly washing machine, and also the tumble drier, which Mrs Paene Finitur insists on using. There are 6/7 of us living here though, with two of us working from home regularly so I suspect it's probably not that unreasonable, though I will look at the stand-by issue. Thinking of getting this or something like it round the back of the TV. @ReedRichards I don't have a swimming pool, hot tub or electric Aga. We have a dual rangemaster and the oven will take a chunk but is infrequently used. I guess it's the washing and drying that will take up most of it. @joth I wish I'd known about this last year when they were setting the electrics up. I have 25 MCBs on my board so slightly too many and now the trunking is in, it might make it a bit difficult but what a great device! @Ferdinand I'm guessing you had visitors in June? 😁

Hmm, I kind of agree with you there. There's still too many places where we don't yet have curtains up to keep some of the heat in. But that can't be the full story. During the period over the summer this year, our consumption according to Octopus has never really gone below 150kWh per week. That's at a time when all the stats were switched to freeze protection i.e. the heating was effectively off. It seems that the ASHP is the culprit but I'm at a loss to know how it's taking up so much power for effectively just heating the hot water.

I wish I had gone with batteries. Co-incidentally, I have basement sump pumps that are backed up with a decent but sump-pump specific, battery back up system. I was so focused on ensuring the basement didn't flood and focusing on the design of the water management for the basement that I didn't see the bigger picture of using a similar battery bank centrally to cover the sump pumps but also even out the peak periods. What a chump!! Well, you live and learn. Did you go with a specific battery system? At some point, when the sump batteries wear out, I'm considering changing to a central system, but that's further down the line.

Thanks for the responses guys. Yes, I was going to enquire with Nu-Heat, who deigned/supplied the system, whether it would be possible to centrally adjust the system to go to low power during the peak period or something like that. I have Heat Miser controls in each of the rooms, but was advised to switch off the timer part and just set to a constant temperature. 24x7 steady running was the message that was drilled home to me when it was installed. Easy to advise when you don't have to pay the bills! 🙂 I'll take a look at setting the timers - would like to do that centrally of course, but can't figure out how to link them to WiFi. A project for another time I think - bills down first! More broadly, I've got to admit that having installed a big (and quite expensive) ASHP/UFH system, I'm afraid I still feel quite naive when it comes to getting the best out of it. Are there any guides out there for novices to all ASHP concepts (i.e. COP, flow, weather comp) that might help me get more au-fait and manage it better myself?

Hi, after moving into our new house last winter and experiencing horrendous heating bills for the first few months, I'm looking at ways to keep the bills down this winter. We have a 16KW Nibe ASHP with UFH in the basements and ground and rads on the 1st/2nd floors. The usage was coming in at around 650KWh per week over last Christmas/new year period. Partly this turned out to be a fault with a hot water tank thermostat that was causing the immersion to kick in, but even when this was resolved the costs were still very high. Since about March, I've had the room thermostats set down to frost override to keep the bills down. I'm currently with Octopus and we're on the Flexible Octopus tariff which is 35.37p per kWh during the day for electricity and 14.84p per kWh at night (2am to 6am I believe) This doesn't seem great for a ASHP really since the accepted way of using them is to have them running all the time, so I get precious little benefit from the night rate. I recently found out about the Octopus Cozy tariff, which seems to have been designed with ASHPs in mind. Despite Octopus telling me that I was already on the best tariff available, I did some basic calculations downloading my usage and applying the rates from both tariffs. It looked to me as if it would be from 10% to 21% cheaper than the Flexible tariff. Has anyone else any experience with this or other ASHP friendly tariffs?

Thanks Tony, I already have a float switch with a monitoring unit and battery backup so fingers crossed, we should not have a flood without prior warning. We also had a power outage of 3 hours last weekend and it coped quite well with that. I had a beef with the pump suppliers who would not warranty their own pumps because they weren't there for commissioning. I offered to pay for them to come out to do a full inspection, but they still wouldn't warranty them. They charge £300 + VAT for a service which they say needs done twice a year but that doesn't include cleaning the pumps/sump. They also do various monthly subscription call out packages but the costs are pretty. That might be the average cost for this kind of thing - I'm afraid I don't know - but I'm seriously thinking of just training myself up in it so I can do the work myself. I mean, I'd consider a contract for a 3rd party to do it certainly, but not at those prices. In the meantime, I'd like to be able to do basic servicing on the pumps myself and keep the sumps clean.