MJNewton

You're reading too much into the diagram. It is showing the minimum and maximum heights, that's all. The fact the socket shown happens to have its bottom edge just above the minimum line is neither here nor there. It could equally have been half way up. Similarly with the lightswitch it is shown some inches below the maximum height but is not to be taken literally.

Yes, although note that it is 450mm to 1200mm to the centre line of the socket. (Ref: Section 1.18 of Approved Document M)

Doesn't the insulation layer need to be vapour tight? If not, surely the moist air passes through the insulation and condenses on the pipe, which would actually be even colder than without the insulation in place hence increase the condensation further. Or am I jumping to the wrong conclusions when you say 'loft insulation'?

Thank you everyone for the input and suggestions. It is clear we have a lot in common in terms of the importance of taking the 'right' approach! All good food for thought and I will have re-read through to pick out the key ideas. I was considering using copper within the unit, and likely building up the required pipework on the bench before fixing in place and connecting up, and so it was good to see this suggestion being repeated. Even aside from the aesthetics I do recognise the benefits in terms of cost, bulk and likely longevity too. A trick my Dad taught me, which I must admit to have never actually needing to use/test, was to stuff a small piece of bread up inside the pipe. Doesn't need to be wedged in there - just enough to soak up and stop the water flow whilst the joint is made. With the water back on the bread will be pushed out through a tap. I suppose this comes from an era where there weren't fine strainers in taps so they might need to be temporarily removed, although I imagine the bread would break up eventually and pass through.

I shall soon be installing a new kitchen and, with it being in a newly-built room, I have a blank sheet of paper on which to design the undersink plumbing and was wondering if anyone had any tips/suggestions about particular items to buy (e.g. I am drawn to the McAlpline double bowl space saver trap kit to maximise space in the cupboard), features to include (e.g. isolators), pipe layouts to ease installation and maintenance etc? One specific quandary I have is whether or not to use the flexi tails that were supplied with the tap (a Franke Athena mixer) as I stumbled across an article that said they account for 22% of water damage insurance claims in Australia houses which made me wonder how good they are. I know they are often regarded as a poor method of supplying individual sink-mounted taps, when compared to fixed piping, but I wondered how feasible fixed piping up inside a mono tap is? We don't need the stability benefits of fixed pipes as the tap will be mounted in the quartz worktop. In case it is relevant to my options, the unit is a standard 600mm width, the sink is a 1.5 bowl undermount (Franke ARX 160) and there will be an integrated dishwasher adjacent. The water supplies will be coming in via 15mm Hep2O pipes but I am happy to switch over to copper within the unit.

I use a bit of silver tape to pull boards forward. If I'm unlucky and end up tearing the surface foil the same tape is suitable for the repair.

Very I'd warn! Being skylights they'll be magnets for flies in the summer who will leave poo specks on the glass.

I always run the vacuum over the cut faces - it makes all the difference to the amount of dust that gets everywhere, and avoids the face-full of it when tapping a perfectly fitting board home!

It sounds like you've got a solution now but for future reference the Simpson Strong-Tie I-Joist Hole Support can be used to allow huge holes (250mm width x full web height) to be cut to within 50mm of the joist support: They're around £25/pr (you need one for each side) so whilst not cheap they can be extremely handy if you don't have alternative options.

Yes, and leaves a much smoother finish than a saw or other tool.

A bread knife can also be handy to trim thin slithers off if/as required without virtually any dust.

I can't help but be reminded of this xkcd classic (and I mean no offence by this; indeed if anyone deserves it aimed at them I'm as guilty as the next man!):

Only on the Internet can a discussion on 'Minimum distance between DNO feed and another protected circuit' lead to a pissing contest about deep fat fryers on warships. Whilst it is mostly making me cringe, a small part of me is in sheer admiration of the impact of the Internet on mankind... and how actually I wouldn't want things any other way! ?

And on that point why don't MCBs etc have spring loaded connectors (Wago style) in order to avoid the issue of undertightening, overtightening, vibration, copper creep etc altogether?

As mentioned you can get wireless interlinked alarms (from Aico too).

Some different makes can be interlinked but the usual advice is to stick to one make. What make are your current ones?

Yes, that's the 'interlinked' aspect to them. Usually a 9v trigger line between (so you wire them up with triple+earth cable) or wireless ones are also available. Fairly standard these days (and possibly a building regs requirement but haven't looked up the details on that).

Will be interested to hear how this works out! I was surprised there weren't 'iris' type restrictors available which would be ideal for this sort of thing. (I think I may have found some, but they were very expensive)

I've never been too keen on the screw-in fixings shown (although have used the metal ones which are at least a bit better than the plastic) and would tend to use Fischer UX plugs now for direct-to-plasterboard fixing on non-heavyweight items. They scrunch up behind/inside the plasterboard and provide quite a secure fixing without damage to the board.

Or a combination of the two...

What colour is the cheaper ducting? If it's green or purple then it could well made by Blauberg which I found much less flexible (and even prone to kinking if pushing the radius limit) than the red Airflow offering. Of course if you won't be having any tight bends (ideal for airflow anyway) then this may not matter. That said, whatever it is that makes it less flexible might have other consequences.

Whilst it could be random, it is also quite common for it to be pseudo-random based on a hash of the requesting client's MAC address. This gives greater stability to allocations and thus helps with logging, avoiding problems by badly behaved DHCP clients (e.g. waiting for the lease to expire before renewing or holding on to addresses after the lease has expired) etc.

Given the inaccessibility anything with screw terminals won't suffice as there'd nbe no means for inspection and re-tightening should they creep/loosen over time. One option is crimps, but I wouldn't recommend that without a decent tool and some experience, and so I'd recommend instead something with spring loaded terminals. Wago do a 'Wagobox' that is classed as maintenance free when used with their terminals and Ashley do some maintenance free junction boxes with builtin terminals. Debox also appear to do a maintenance free version of the one you linked to. Apologies for the lack of specific part numbers and/or links but I am posting from my mobile so trying to be brief! Can post further details later if required.

It's not so much the colour temperature that we've had issue with but more the colour rendering... Interesting about the 'big brands' aspect though and maybe we should pick a few random offerings and see how they fare. Afterall, I wouldn't necessarily have expected Ikea bulbs to be such good performers.

My wife and I seem to be quite picky when it comes to lighting - too picky perhaps given the issues we're having... Our house is 95% lit by incandescent bulbs ('standard' and some halogen) and most rooms have dimmers. I am midway through building an extension to create an open-plan 'family room' consisting of kitchen, dining and lounge areas within which there will be fair amount of lighting. Sources include ceiling downlights, pendants and floor lamps. This seems to be the perfect time to move over to LED lighting, at least for the family room, and so we have been experimenting with different bulbs with extremely disappointing results. The main issue seems to be with the colour rendition (many seemingly giving things a green tinge, particularly our ginger cat who looks positively ill under a lot of them!) and disappointing performance when dimmed. We've only tried 2700K bulbs, on the assumption that this would get us the closest to what we're used to. We thought Philips would be a good bet, and was attracted by their 'dim tone' range which aim to emulate the warming of tungsten bulbs when dimmer (dropping from 2700K to 2200K), but they've been a real disappointment - the light they gave looked terrible. We also tried another bulb from them with a >90 CRI which was okay, but still not particularly pleasing. The best we've found are the Ikea Ledare range - high CRI (>90), warming function when dimming, good light and relatively cheap. The only downside is they seem to be discontinuing them as various bulbs from the range have gone through a 'Last Chance' phase on their website before now completely disappearing. Can anyone help? Perhaps we are just so used to the colour and colour rendering of incandescent bulbs that we just need a bit of time to adjust to LED? A bit like swapping from HD to SD sources on the TV; looks terrible on first transition but you gradually get used to it and it ends up looking okay. Or could it be our obsession with dimmers and that dimmable LEDs are limiting/eliminating our choice of good bulbs?