Nickfromwales

Essential, not just good!

You can kill 2 birds with one stone and just use Marmox to line the reveals. It can be plastered directly, or you can PB and then plaster. Easier to do this without insulated PB as its a bit tricky to do this in straight thin strips imo.

In the hope it’s good money after good, as so far……

Something as simple as a continuous bead of expanding foam at the foot of the plasterboard, before fitting skirtings, will make a huge difference; this prevents air being sucked in at the bottom of the wall preventing convection airflow / travel around blobs of adhesive when dot and dabbing the boards on. Anything done poorly will always perform poorly, as with everything. Other notorious failures are sealing the slab around rising services such as SVP's when there's a cold ventilated void under block & beam. Heating bills go sky-high when you add all these things together.

I've replaced too much of it over the years, and external corners defo don't hold up as well as real timber, where hoovers bump into them etc. I guess it's down to how you look after / treat it, much as with anything. MDF needs to be sealed well at the bottom, and ideally painted at the lower and bit of the rear to prevent any effects from mopping / bathroom water spills etc. Bottom ends of architraves seem particularly susceptible. And yes, pine is a PITA and knotting solution etc is a real PITA. Pine needs a lot of prepwork to get the painted surface looking flawless.

Less typing and more tiling I guess then! lol.

These are all going to charge to attend, and as said not many installers will want to be left holding someone else's baby.

This is installer negligence / error. Tell them the system hasn't been left functionable, and demand that they send the proper unit out. Tell them you will agree to send the U/S unit back to them.

They also get to edit the videos.....

Chop-chop

MDF is for mass developments, absolute crap and the external corners just get battered and fray. I costed a project and the client went with oak everywhere. Looked at the cost of prep / prime / undercoat / topcoat / re-coating every few years for life etc, and the clients just said "maintenance free, please", so that was that. Not a huge difference if you look into it holistically, eg the cost of this landed less ongoing ball-ache of keeping it looking nice, and hardwood looks hundreds of times better. A wipe with some oil every now and then, for high traffic areas, and that's about it.

You will need very good nerves to do all the flag cuts by hand. I'd say get a cheap wet bed cutter for these. Much quicker than sanding down every grinder cut, and waaaaaaaay less dust and mess. If using porcelain, you'll soon be reaching for the cyanide pill if you try to finish these all by hand.

If I saw someone beating a few hundred masonry nails into my skirting boards they’d be bounced off down the road. Onto timber studs with 2nd fix gas fired pins, yes, but onto masonry? Is Fred Dibnah doing it?

Once it leaves via your meter it’s recorded, and is your own generation that’s being paid for by the supplier. The neighbour consumes it via their meter, so they purchase it from the supplier. Agree this bit is good for the environment etc, but it should be less of a burden on the public coffers and far more heavily subsidised by the grossly profit-heavy, privatised industry. One for another thread, so we don’t use up Zoot’s remaining 5% capacity!

2. Get a groundworks company geared up for it, materials ready, crew of more than 1, and blitz it. Some cans of worms are better off left unopened.

@zoothorn, have you explored other grants, like external wall insulation, solar PV and batteries? Lots online about grants or zero interest loans for renewables and energy efficiency upgrades. Solar PV outputs <10% of the size of the array in winter, so using an oversized solar PV array in an attempt to provide heating is a non starter. Plus you’d then be haemorrhaging excess all summer with nothing to do with it other than get the paid export. If it’s available through grant, it’s a no brainer though. Maybe an option for harvesting positive funds into the winter heating coffers in the summer, to offset your anticipated heating bill, but maths need doing.

Maybe opening a can of unnecessary shaped worms?

Might be really nice sheds

Yup. I felt sorry for you even attempting this, and was about to call you a tight-arse, thank goodness I didn't have to do that................

Have you confirmed it has in inbuilt pre-heater? You'll need it I'm sure.

Tres Bien!!

Hot water from an ASHP is cheap enough, and if you've invested in all that infrastructure, have already plumbed the house for hot water to all bathrooms etc, then it would be madness to not use it??

I use a laser and all-round patent band, at around 1000mm cc. I try to avoid connecting it to the lower chord, so sound doesn't transmit to the GF ceiling. Geberit stuff is euro 90mm, whereas UK (3") is 82mm vs (4") 110mm. Regs say you can have 1x WC on a singe run of 82mm going to meet a 110mm SVP. Youd need to get a specific adaptor, if one exists, to go 90mm > 82mm, or go 90mm > 110mm > 82mm 82mm > 110mm adaptor I only ever use 3" if its a rising (dry) vent pipe, and it needs to go up inside a stud wall, or alongside a rainwater downpipe to 'match', vs doing it in the cumbersome 4"/110mm stuff. @Oz07, how long a run do you need through the posi's?

Im still at odds, as I’ve literally never had a single issue with Brink. If changing this out then just look for something reputable, with the ports as close to the current configuration as possible.

Ok. I mentioned it being on constant as I suggested fitting the battery powered room thermostat, which you’ve not gone with. Not a problem, your choice. If you’d have gone for the type of thermostat like I have then the Vaillant controller would have become the slave unit and the battery powered stat would have taken control of the time and temp. In this situation the auto/timer functions would have been in place on the new unit. As you still only have the Vaillant one, that you seem prepared to move if needed(?), then yes you’d be going to the auto/timer function on that and not ON constant. So now, you must get to grips with how that auto/timer gets programmed and what times and temps you want to trial run. For completeness, the auto/timer setting is going to choose times for comfort and times for setback. This means essentially your house will heat on demand 24/7 to try to achieve the temps that you’ve set during the times you’ve asked it to be at that temp. 07:00 - 19.5° 09:00 - 17.5° (daytime setback) 18:00 - 19.5° 22:00 - 15° (nighttime setback) (I’d go 16° for nighttime setback but it’s your house so you’ll have to decide how high or low nighttime setback temp is, by trial and error). So, if you’d look at the above “heating schedule” you’ll see the heating doesn’t go ON > OFF so to speak peak, just instead it just changes the target temp for different times of the day. Let’s see if you grasp that and then we can look at you then setting this schedule up. Thanks to the other posts above folks, that’s all very helpful. The info for cable type and so on and the links to tutorials for setting the programmer are welcomed with open arms! @zoothorn, does my above now make sense? Next item: You mention moving the unit to the kitchen, that is a big “NO”, as that room has big temp swings. If you’d look move it, the controller needs to go in the living room or other living space like the dining room. It depends upon where you loiter during the day, as that’s where I’d locate it so it’s looking after the space you use on the day. The other rads will amble on in the other rooms, so you can just ignore those and let them all simply do their own thing. These will simply be contributing to the house simply staying at a balanced ambient. As you get the house settled to these new temps, so it’s never getting as cold as the current 12°C setback, you’ll not be having the amount of moisture and humidity to deal with anymore. You'll start to see the house just generally feeling ‘nicer’ and when it’s not getting cold it’ll start to ‘dry out’. Like my house. Once it’s routinely heated (to some degree) it’ll get better each day, and you can change times and temps every couple of days as you see fit, eg tweaking the heating schedule until you get the sweet spot of times / temps dialled in.