MJNewton

Are you sure that terminal has something in it to prevent backdraft? To me it look like the type fitted to many a log burner, and just serves to let smoke out and prevent rainwater getting in.

We spent ages - months in fact(!) - debating what option to go for for our 600mm larder unit and there was something about the wire frame pullouts that seemed less than ideal. Whether it was the amount of space it took up, having to pull out far more than what you actually need, reaching over things to get stuff out from the back, I don't know. We then stumbled across the much simpler approach of using full-width and fully-opening deep drawers for the section below eye level and open shelves above. There's also a shallow drawer for tins (a lot of tins - must be over 50). We've lived with it for a few years now and wouldn't change a thing about it. The drawers obviously work much better than the shelves, but we just make sure the rarely-needed items are located at the back on the latter. With drawers it doesn't matter as everything is equally accessible. (Forgive the rather messy shelves - I've just taken these photos following a whole bunch of shopping being thrown in today... I'm sure it could be dressed better!)

Hi Karl! There's always potential for ambiguity and different people's interpretations of tolerance, however notwithstanding this in my view if the tolerance is '3mm within 3m' then I'd take that to mean that over any 3m length the difference between the highest and lowest points should be less than 3mm. Thus your units could ripple like a (square) wave but if you were to locate the lowest unit then all the others must be no more than 3mm higher than that and you'd be fine. It might not sound a lot but 3mm is a fair amount for something that is infinitely adjustable. Do you want to elaborate on your situation? Did you cancel the templating or did the surveyor say it was far out? If the latter I'd expect them to be advising what improvements were needed and where etc. Gosh, this thread is a blast from the past. Funny reading back how concerned we were at the time... A few years on and we love the worktops and wouldn't change them for anything else!

Yeah, and of the four air sections I'd expect it to be the only one where water would appear. (Okay, perhaps the occasional stray raindrop might get sucked in through the outside air intake too.) There's still the issue of why this water wasn't draining away though. Or have you solved that?

Are you accusing my doorbell of being racist? 😉

Remember the 'extract from dwelling' air will have some heat extracted from it thus raising its relative humidity which, at the saturation point, will cause condensation to form.

It has night vision too!

I'm not sure I should admit this but that is pretty much what I've got! Specifically, a Reolink Doorbell with AI person detection that triggers a Shelly smart relay to turn the porch light on. It was born out of an overreaction of being annoyed by the PIR sensor triggering in the wind! Overkill, yes, but it works ridiculously well.

Yeah, we've had a couple of Shelly Flood devices and found them really good. Whilst we've never had a real leak/flood to deal with I do periodically test them. Battery life has been great too - predicted to last 12-18mths but I've just replaced one that lasted just over 3 years!

Yeah I thought it was a bit steep, but I was assuming it was just to cut holes in the frames and whack some form of louvres/shutters over the top but it turns out to have been for a separate fabricated section that would be fixed to the top of the frame.

Is it definitely a scratch and not a mark? If the latter I'd certainly recommend giving a Magic Erase a go - it never seizes to amaze me how effective they are. Here's a link to a generic one which whilst not the exact ones I've used I am sure they are all pretty much the same.

Hi Mark, welcome to the forum. We retrofitted MVHR (also a Titon HRV1.25 as it happens) and have been really pleased with it. In our case it was a 125m² 2007-built property and whilst we didn't have any condensation/mould issues to treat the initial motivation was the creation of an open plan kitchen which, primarily for aesthetics, we didn't want much on the walls (high level cupboards and, more relevant to this discussion, a hob extractor) and so started exploring the use of MVHR. Retrofitting was difficult, particularly given we're spread over three floors, although saying that we've ended up with a pretty much 'invisible' installation and so looking back it was really just a lot of planning, problem solving and head scratching but we got there in the end. We were helped massively by the flooring structure being long engineered I-joists which, surprisingly given my usual luck, nearly all happen to run in the ideal direction for us! Furthermore, given we had the ceilings down on most of the ground floor that also helped. To keep costs down we actually bought the MVHR unit off eBay for £350 as a second-hand unit albeit one that had only been installed and not used as it was one of many fitted to a small estate of houses that turned out to not be to specification so were pulled out and replaced. It still ended up costing us £1400 in total once every last component is factored in. It's been in around five years now. Electrical running costs have been ~£26/yr (based on today's rates of 22p/kWh and ~125kWh/yr consumption) and I change the filters every 6 months at around £1 a time as the frames are reusable so I just buy a square meter of filter medium to chop up. Performance in terms of humidity control and perceived air quality has been excellent. We also saved £400 in not having to have trickle vents in the lift-and-slide doors too which was a nice bonus. Based on our experience I would definitely recommend it, but it would certainly be worth exploring the alternative options raised for consideration by others above.

Just to follow up on this, spoke with Octopus and they were happy to fit an isolator at no charge. Due to scheduling issues it ended up being done in advance of having the smart meters fitted a couple of weeks later but now it's all done.

Was this the video? The installation has put me right off. Going from a boiler hidden neatly inside a kitchen cupboard to a grey washing machine sitting on your drive with all that pipework and black trunking going to it really doesn't feel like progress to me.

When our neighbour installed a wood burner I went in to full-on damage limitation mode, admittedly prior to even knowing whether there was any damage to limit! Instead of additional filters though what I did was install an air quality sensor in the intake duct and if/when it detects smoke particles (actually, it is not that discriminatory but smoke is within scope of what it can pick up) it triggers the MVHR to stop pumping in air for a while. There's some info of the approach here: Incidentally, it turns out that in practice my wife's cooking appears to be arguably more of a threat than the neighbour's wood burner! So, I now have *two* sensors - one that turns the MVHR down if the neighbour's wood burner goes wild and another that boosts it when dinner's nearly ready. 😂

Thanks @garrymartin. Re the isolator (and/or anything else) I did wonder if it'd be worth me getting one just in case there wasn't one 'on the van' but, as you suggest, explicitly requesting it at the time of booking ought to mitigate that.

I am just in the process of moving supplier (to Octopus) and whilst I don't currently have a smart meter or require one for the new tariff I will opt for one when the opportunity arises. I was wondering: given the likelihood that I will one day require an EV charger is there anything I should be getting done when the smart meter gets fitted? It seems like the ideal opportunity (power off, all cabling disconnected etc) to do something (isolator? Henley block? etc) whether that formally or through bribes, sweet talking the installer etc. Here's the current 'electricity cupboard': At the very minimum I wouldn't want the new smart meter to be installed in such a way that might prove problematic for an eventual EV charger e.g it being fitted in such a way/location that doesn't leave space for whatever else will eventually be required so any advice as to what I should be requesting/suggesting would be welcome. In case it is relevant, the consumer unit sits just above the cupboard in the photo (you can just about make out the tails and earth cable going up to it), and the EV charger would sit on the other side of an outside wall a few metres to the right.

You can tape some foil to the wall (well sealed around the edge) and see which side the moisture appears. If it is the exposed room-facing side it is likely condensation, if it is on the wall-facing side it's coming from/through there.

Oh I see - the removal of the scale caused a leak?

Thanks for that! I did wonder if it was just overblown marketing blurb, or perhaps something that is technically correct but in practice might take decades or something.

That's interesting @marshian, and the kind of thing I was concerned. That said, the tank is stainless steel and the immersion appears to be sealed with an o-ring so finger's crossed that might mean it won't be seized in place. After 18 years though anything could've happened! The dilemma is do I wait until there's an issue (and risk not easily being able to run solution through all the component parts which might be helpful) or perform preventative maintenance (and risk causing a different problem in the process!).

I did think removing the immersion might be a good starting point, if only to give my visible access to gauge what state we're in. If I could get a vacuum hose in (no chance of removing the cylinder - it is too piped in) that might help too. Would need to be confident I could re-seal the immersion though so need to work out what type of seal it actually uses. Knowing my luck though the current immersion will be seized in place and I'll end up deforming the cylinder trying to unscrew it!

I'd seen them but glossed over them assuming they weren't intended for me - perhaps thrown by the common use of the word 'combi' in the names of these products. So, would I be looking to supply the whole house through one of these (including taps for drinking from) it just the hot water side of things? I must say, even though we've got very hard water we don't find the cleaning of taps and other wet surfaces a particular problem - the main concern is scaling of the cylinder given how expensive it (and its (re)installation) is.

We live in a 2007-built housing estate and over the past few years I've seen a number of unvented cylinders being replaced and, having grabbed one of the plumbers doing a job recently discovered that in that particular case (and perhaps therefore others too) the issue has been down to the cylinder scaling up and blocking the inlet at the bottom. These particular cylinders - Range Tribunes - appear to have an inlet whose design is meant to help minimise destratification but is seemingly vulnerable to to the consequences of limescale. I was wondering: is it practical to descale such a cylinder and, if so, how? I do wonder if it might actually risk causing more harm than good e.g. dislodging some scale that then blocks something, or causing a leak around the immersion if the chosen might involve its removal to hoover out scale etc. Recognising the G3 restrictions about working on these things consider it a hypothetical exam question scenario. Also, I am considering fitting a whole-house water softener (with bypass for the kitchen tap) and so presumably this would prevent further scaling occurring. Water softener manufacturers claim that it will gradually remove existing scale too - is this true? Might that be a safer approach (more gradual, no physical disruption to the cylinder and its fittings etc), and perhaps could be considered to represent value for money given that it'll hopefully negate the need for eventual cylinder replacement (at least for scaling-related issues)?

Yes, as above it'll almost certainly be due to the ghost/stray voltage that is picked up when using high-impedence test meters (the MTM01 has an input impedence of 10MΩ). Some further reading here: How Stray Voltage Affects Multimeter Measurements