MJNewton

You’ve missed out the issue of having gaps in the ceiling and the corresponding risk that it presents a passage for fire. That’s what fire rated fittings are for - they seal the opening whether at the back or the front.

I don’t think a conservatory can be considered a ‘room’ as it is not part of the dwelling (hence not being subject to building regs).

Ah, but is it? Using the definition from this LABC Guidance Note it has to have at least 50% glazing in the walls (seems okay from the photo) *and* 75% glazing in the roof (but this one looks solid?)… Edit: I missed that Building Control have already been involved so it’s down to them how they interpret legislation that uses undefined terms, and if they say it’s a conservatory (or could be!) then I suppose it is!

Having read a few of your threads (but evidently not one where you describe your place in detail!) I had this image in my mind of a dusty old farmhouse for some reason. Looks really nice! (And on the topic of triple panel radiators you've effectively got them already dimensions wise so I think they'd be a good idea if required)

The benefit of the waterless trap is indeed the avoidance of breaking the seal when there's no condensate. The fitting instructions for mine mandate the use of one.

Ah. Mange tout, Rodney. 🙂 (Edit: I don't know how that's going to translate so just ignore it if it doesn't! Link)

The floor area doesn't really play into it, more how many showers and baths you'd expect to be having per day (and when). For example, if a shower gives a flow of say 10-15 L/min combined hot+cold then you might expect the hot portion to be just over half so perhaps 6-8 L/min. A 120L cylinder would therefore only give around 15 minutes worth before needing reheating. Of course, this could be happening whilst the shower is drawing but I'm sure you'd end up cursing your mate with the family round and you're trying to keep up with demand, particularly if the cat suddenly decides it wants a bath.

'Weak-current network'? Never heard of the phrase, and Googling suggests it's a very little used term. Personally, I'd ignore him. I wouldn't be without a wired network in the house. Really handy for static items (AV kit, computers, cameras etc) and leaves my wifi free for mobile devices. Cable it cheap, as are sockets etc really but you could always leave them out until as and when you need them. It all depends if *you* want one though. Is the network itemised separately?

The tracking info would indicate the delivery attempt. There's no such thing as free proof of delivery. Are you thinking of proof of postage? (Which as you say is good enough for the courts, but personally I'd want to be confident it actually got to the other end just in case it really had got lost).

It is still very much worth it as at least *you* know it has been delivered.

I don't think you necessarily need to camouflage the entire hatch to succeed here... If the visibility of the hatch is largely down to the gap that allows it to open would decorator's caulk be sufficient at making it reasonably well hidden? Relatively easy to cut out / remove and also to reinstate afterwards. Might need a blob in the keyhole too. I've often found this with cracks etc - it's the colour contrast that makes them stand out. Filler alone, if against a light-coloured wall, seems to go >90% of the way to hiding them completely. I might be extending the theory a bit too far with the hatch suggestion but hopefully some food for thought...

I measured ours in a shop to make sure. Our plates are part of a Villeroy & Boch set so we didn't want to replace them with something different (smaller). You could always take a plate in if you didn't mind risking the funny looks!

Increasingly important these days for peace of mind in my view - I'm sure many a premium brand these days are trading off the back of historical quality. I'm sure there are plenty of cases of people saying 'My last so-and-so from brand X lasted 20 years so I'm definitely getting another', not realising that the only thing in common now is the name and logo - ownership, design and manufacture have completely changed. Of course there are always consumer protection laws to fall back on but I'd much rather just get the manufacturer out with a van full of parts and get any issue sorted out directly without a fight.

Not at all, even when I admit to it being a Blomberg (LDV42244) which is basically Beko’s ‘premium’ arm which in practice means that whilst they share many of the same internal parts (so spares are dirt cheap) it has slightly different styling and comes with a 5yr parts+labour guarantee (10yrs for the pump). It cost a fair bit less than many more premium brands and yet was better in many respects on paper eg all metal cavity unlike the cost-cutting-yet-prone-to-leaking metal-plastic hybrids from the likes of Bosch, an inverter motor and also quieter than most which for our open plan arrangement was critical.

Our dishwasher came with both a cutlery tray and basket so we spent a few months trying each separately, and both at the same for a while! We’ve settled on just using the basket (tray now removed) as it took up less space and was quicker/easier to load/unload. It particularly helped height wise as our largest plates are 29cm diameter and these along with some of our larger trays are much easier to accommodate. We have the upper basket on its highest setting so that impacts space for tall glasses above with the tray in. For what it’s worth we didn’t notice any differences in cleaning/drying performance between the two.

Have you got a combined fridge-freezer @ProDave? If so there’s a good chance it’ll only have a single thermostat and this will be located in the fridge hence it won’t ‘see’ the drop in freezer temperature. It assumes the door is (nearly) always closed and that the freezer temperature will follow that of the fridge (just with a -25C offset or whatever).

You say nightmare but wouldn't that be a good thing? They could manufacture a new frame that properly fits your opening and the glass wouldn't go to waste.

I guess it could be our house! We're in a 2007 Persimmon house (boo hiss!) and so might not have the levels of insulation and detailing that you've got? We've got some large sliders and a roof lantern downstairs - both unshielded from solar gain - and indeed the sliders were open most of the time due to constant child traffic and so we were getting high-20s downstairs at least and as we were only(!) seeing 36°C outside our -5°C of cooling sounds like about the right ballpark for a notional 85% efficiency?

As is mentioned from time to time here the heat transfer in an MVHR is bidirectional insofar that heat transfer occurs in whatever direction the temperature delta is. Thus, if the outside air is warmer than inside then heat will be transferred from the intake air to the air extracted from the house and in doing so cool the supply. I normally only see a degree or two tops in practice but the recent heatwave gave some more extreme figures producing just shy of 5°C of cooling on occasion: Of course, with the low air volumes and heat capacity it likely didn't make all that much difference but every little helps - even if only psychologically! I think I've hit refresh on my monitoring charts and Met Office forecast app more times in the last two days than the last two years! Also evident from the chart though is that even with the summer bypass activating when appropriate (extract < intake and all relevant thresholds being met) there was still some heat transfer taking place and raising the incoming air by a couple of degrees. In my unit the bypass diverts the extracted air around the side of the heat cell and so I suspect there's still a chance some heat transfer will take place from the close proximity, and not to mention the 40°C loft space that's going to eventually heat the unit up somewhat despite its insulation.

PIRs don't emit any IR (the P = Passive).

I did something similar with a pair of Shelly 1's. In my case it was to connect a wired-only central heating controller and a remote zone valve powering the pump and boiler heat demand input. I had to fit an RC snubber across the 'receiver' Shelly output otherwise it would sometimes reset on triggering. I bought this seperately but I think Allterco sell them alongside the Shelly now.

Do you monitor humidity levels too @Radian? I seem to recall reading somewhere that CO2 levels generally correlate with humidity level and whilst I couldn't quite see why that would necessarily be the case I did wonder if my humidity (only) monitoring might suffice for determining air 'quality'. At £22 I am tempted by that sensor you linked to though.

There's a script running on a Raspberry Pi doing the monitoring which in turn signals a Shelly smart relay to trigger the MVHR's boost input.

For what it's worth I've been using a duct-mounted DHT22 humidity sensor to detect a >5% rate-of-rise in humidity (over five minutes, measured across the whole house extraction) and in the few years we've had it running not observed a single false positive or negative. The 5% was intended just to be a starting point but it's turned out to be perfect. You can see from the graphs how prominent the spikes are (the first three are showers, the fourth a pan of boiling water) and so quite easy to detect without being triggered by more gradual variations:

Oh absolutely. My main driver for going down that route is that most of my cameras don't support PoE. In practice it's still not too bad though as I power all 12 with three PSUs, but yes it's three more than might otherwise be necessary!