Paene Finitur

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.

I had a bit of a crisis moment a couple of days ago when the AlertMaxx unit which notifies me when there are pump problems started reporting a power failure on my primary basment pump. To clarify, I have a tanked basement with two sumps, ground and foul, with three pumps, one foul and a primary and secondary for groundwater. similar to this set up. Thankfully, it turned out to be a false alarm as my son and his friends had inadvertently leant against the isolator switches and switched one off! That said, when I lifted the manhole, I was quite alarmed at the state of the sump, which had a lot of limescale and sediment build up. Ongoing maintenance of the pumps and sump is something of a worry to me since the supplier PPS systems, refused to warranty the pumps on the grounds that they hadn't done the installation and commissioning (the pumps had been hastily but properly installed after a temporary pump failed a couple of times leading to floods) and their servicing and maintentence contracts are pretty expensive so, with money tight, I've not signed up so far. I'd like to keep the pumps going as long as I can and do any maintenance that I can reasonably do. Does anyone have any tips or advice on cleaning sediment and limescale from the pumps and chamber? It looks like a fair bit of effort might be required and possibly some chemicals although I'm aware that this is groundwater so I need to stick with something that's kind to the environment and the pumps of course! Any advice, tips, links etc very gratefully received.

The back should be supported by a full length back baton so I was more concerned about the front. I'm thinking of using a hidden steel support across the front (https://www.metals4u.co.uk/materials/mild-steel/mild-steel-flat/flat-black/2257-p) covered by trim, routed at the back to allow the support to sit in. I saw this on a Charlie DIYte vid (see below). Note quite the same, but I'm hoping it will give some measure of support. I'd be a bit concerned about the sheer weight of 36mm kitchen top; would probably need much bigger battening. Plus as I have to do six of these for different rooms, the cost is a factor too, although I did see 28mm for a reasonable price (https://www.diy.com/departments/28mm-matt-white-laminate-particle-board-post-formed-kitchen-worktop-l-2400mm/3663602636151_BQ.prd?storeId=) Yes, almost but never quite. 90% done and 90% to go!

I thought of having several arched brackets across the back. Could even make a feature of it though I worried they'd get in the way of the hanging rail - would have to measure up properly. Also, as some of the cupboard backs are partition, I'd probably need two rows of back batons, one above the other, to fix the back of the brackets to. I also thought of a descending middle section to attach to the ceiling, not sure I'll go for that though.

We had cupboards built into our build, but now that we are in, they are a bit spartan and I'd like to take the first step of installing a fairly standard high shelf and hanging rail. I'm intending to use at least 1.5" battening on three sides for support and then make the shelf itself from 18mm ply. I'm a bit worried that the width of the shelf - roughly 1500mm or two internal doors width and 400mm deep - will cause it to sag; particularly since the metal hanging bar will also be long and will need vertical supports dropping down off the shelf. I tried out my parameters on the sagulator (useful tool) and sure enough it calculated the sag to be 3.05 mm total or 4.208 mm per m, which it categorized as excessive. There is no central vertical bar between the doors that I can anchor to, so my options seem to be either a fairly ugly vertical support dropping down from the cupboard ceiling, or spaced brackets at the back/underside of the shelf. Interested to know if anyone has come across anything like this and any potential solutions?

Thanks all. Good to know I'm on the right track. I'm going to check out whether backing the upper wall with a brush-on waterproofing layer might be a cost effective option. The delta sheeting is good but more suited to indoor use, I'd say, and pretty costly. As for the front, yes, I plan to replace the copings and the step surface, with something more substantial. The facing, I'm not sure about. Would love brickwork but I'm still not convinced that slips are the answer due to potential adhesion issues and the curvature on one section. Plus the cost is high. Guess, I'll have to look around - it's either that or render. It wouldn't have been my first choice but I'm kind of tending towards render as it's just a lot cheaper and easier!

Our patio is bounded on three sides by a retaining wall built from blockwork. There are steps leading up to our back garden in the middle and he's constructed a double wall with a planter section either side of the steps. I had originally asked for this to be in red brick and flint and wanted quite an old fashioned/traditional look, but clearly the message did not get through. Anyway, we are where we are and I now need to make it look better but have a number of issues with it, that I'd really appreciate some advice on. As you can see from the pictures, the wall has not yet been backfilled. I bought some 20mm shingle to do that with and was perhaps going to bulk that out with a bit of the bricks/blocks you can see lying around it. However, I've been advised that if the front of the wall is simply rendered, before too long water will get through, it will start to look dirty and mouldy and awful. There are some weep holes on the back wall, but there is a fair bit of moisture built up there too. I was wondering whether I should dig out a bit further and then brush a coat of Seka onto the back of the wall to help with waterproofing? I intend to backfill with shingle up to, say 9" below the top level, cap with a geotextile to prevent silting and then backfill the rest with topsoil. Does that sound sensible? Would using the Seka help matters or be a bit of a waste of time? The guy who created the wall assumed I was going to render it, which was not my first choice though I now think it would probably be easiest. That said, a couple of people, including an experienced landscape gardener, told me I should tile it as render will look naff fairly quickly and require repainting frequently. Trouble is that you can maybe see from one picture that there's quite a curve on one wall which doesn't lend itself to anything but really small tiles I'd have thought. Any ideas?? Lastly, he's coped the wall using the same Indian Sandstone that we used for the patio. It looks nice on the patio but I think it's far too thin to be used as coping. It's already broken up in places, particularly on the edges of the steps. I feel we should use something similar looking but a bit more robust. Any ideas on how I might take this forward or on my backfilling strategy are gratefully received.

So just a bit of feedback. As I think I mentioned, the Building Control guy would not countenance anything in metal or wood stating that "only concrete was suitable for a new build" He also insisted on 1:10 at least which is what its' meant to be, but was a bit tricky to achieve on a path that already been sloped. Here's what my builder came up with. TBH I'm not delighted with it (though the fossilised plant on the bottom slab is quite nice 🙂) Wondering whether to put some plants down the sides for the time being. Anyway, thanks for all your feedback, suggestions and encouragement. 👍