Nickfromwales

You can’t have the DPC up that high and under the tiles as they need to be bonded to the substrate with flexible tile adhesive. That needs to be dropped down under that upper block. Also, you won’t be able to tile that vertical PIR, so that’ll need swapping out to Marmox and you’ll need to set that back against the vertical sections with flexible tile adhesive.

Oh and yes, defo sister new timbers both sides of every joist, extending as far under the preserved sections and perimeter as you practically can. Weight will not be a problem at the perimeter and sink, just focus on the shower area and WC.

Jesus. That’s shocking. I used to love destroying insurance companies, all you had to do there was say you fell over and the impact broke the floor. Automatically gets the claim through under ‘accidental damage’. May as well just get stuck into it and rip the lot up, it’s near total loss. To minimise grief / time, cut around the tiles nearest to the sink and WC and perimeter, on the nearest grout lines, slide more 4x2’s up under the sink and WC to reinforce those point loads with screws and D4 glue, repair all flooring into shower area, and P5 board the lot flush to the edges of the tiles / perimeter you’ve preserved at outer walls and WC / sink. Get a mineral floor laid over latex (to get the falls) and that’s a quick way out of this.

Hi, and welcome aboard 🫡. There’s threads on here from a chap who was a hutter, @Tennentslager Have a read of his adventures here as a start point 👍.

So you'll be having MVHR also?

OK. You keep saying "commission", do you need to commission it or just turn it on to get heat? Big difference, as one makes sense and the other doesn't Some folk have their tilers recommend thermally 'shocking' a newly laid slab / raft foundation to provoke it into hairline cracking ahead of tiling, but it depends on if it's a screed, a slab / raft, and how long this has had to dry. So do you just want heat?

We can help here tbh, what's the heat source? ASHP I assume? Any quotes or spec in for that yet?

Explain please, so we can advise best without kicking the can too much.

Very much unsuited to how an oil boiler wants to work. Exactly why in the last job with mixed temps flow vs oil boiler, I did a thermal store to provide temp & hydraulic separation and provide a wallop of DHW too. I’ll stick to my guns, this needs to be set up for the boiler to heat a buffer 100% on / 100% off, for more set durations, and the lot will run more efficiently. Then these ‘smart-arse’ controls will come into their own. 👌.

So all the way around the gardens and back to basics then? KISS lol. 👌

You’ll hate me, I don’t ever use fully threaded screws as I don’t like the way they can ‘jack’ the board up away from the joist . You then have to murder them to get the heads sunk and the board down tight. Yes, I’m an objectionable individual, you’ll get over it 😆

Yup. The ‘eeek’ sound comes primarily from the deck boards ‘rubbing’ up and down the screw shank or nail. 5x 5.0x50mm screws per joist with a line of D4, and never had a single noise on any of them. Using gas nails is ok, but in the old days when I had to go faster to make money and gas nail them, I made sure I stood with both feet either side of where the nail was going so the board was compressed to the joist before firing. I also made sure to use quality ring shank nails, and put 2 in if I was ever only 95% sure that the first one ‘didn’t feel right’ eg went in too easily.

If you can use a pencil and a ruler you can have folk here help, by scrutinising options / designs, and get it over the line that way. The caveat is you roll the dice that were all not locked in padded cells

1000%. Most architects suck at these things tbf, it’s not exclusive to yours 😉 If you have the manifold on the upper floor it’ll happily travel down to the lower and back up again. Having the manifold below the upper floor will just constantly trap air (gasses) and airlock and cause you ongoing grief a-plenty. How big an area, and have you got an UFH design done yet we can tear into shreds for fun? 😀

Ah, I didn’t realise (read) that the TRVs fed back too. That’s a lot of info for the system to juggle!!

Not entirely, lol, I think we got away either way it. Not taken any offence, I’m too stubborn and thick skinned to allow anything other than a round from a .50 to penetrate mate The install was put in according to the clients wishes, would have been better on the 40° roof, but a compromise was struck, in a nutshell. 👌

Run the UFH through them? Maybe not squire! I’d decide where movement is going to occur, and mitigate that in the design for these steps. Microcement has some tolerance, but you’ll need the top tread bound to the upper floor section to avoid a hairline crack happening where the step ends and flooring begins. Timber would have been a disaster! Good call 🥾 👉 🚪

Hijacking is good, fill your boots lol. I’ve done scores and scores of these types of floors, and there’s zero need for the Lewis deck etc, and fyi I like that system a lot, it’s just unnecessary for anything other than the more sizeable dwellings. I was going to spec it for the 2nd floor areas for an 1800m2 property, for eg. Mid-sized you’ll get away with screed over timber deck, just make sure you’re chosen P5 deck boards are D4 glued and fixed VERY well, as the squeaks and creaks come from the fixings, not the wood!!! Not many people know that.

….trying to catch up with me in ma’ 🇩🇪. 🚙 💨

Heated rear windscreen, to keep your hands warm when pushing it. 🫡🤣.

I’m confused. The thermostat onboard the boiler manages that and the 3rd party controls just give a call for heat signal? Are you saying the 3rd party controls give 6 on signals per hour and the boiler doesn’t get to satisfy its own onboard stat?

It’s mostly from additional costs for labour etc which clients just don’t see / aren’t aware of with woodcrete ICF. This massively affects their top lines and forces most to quote themselves out; it’s hard to find anyone decent enough to demonstrate this uplift before signing up vs the shitheads who get you signed into a contract full of exclusions / omissions and Carte Blanche mechanisms for adding ‘extras’ aka variation costs. This can be massive on anything other than a simple ‘cube’, and after seeing one clients build cost go up by nearly 60% I said to myself “f*** that for a game of marbles”. EPS for me or TF, other than that I just don’t bother quoting for the job. Life’s already hard enough tbh, why make it harder? Great for DIY’ers with the time to write off, but commercially it is a ballache.

The issue with heat banks (thermal stores / buffer tanks) is that they need to be huge to have any useful effect or storage / stamina. I installed a 2600l Galu buffer on the above solar protect, with a log gasification boiler, and it just about provided central heating via radiators for a 24hr period if heated mid morning to late afternoon to 85°C. Anything smaller would have not made it through a 24hr period. Slightly difference if there’s a wood burning stove inside the house, as that will get heat to the surrounding rooms (if the doors are all left wide open and the fire stoked and burning well continuously) but to be storing that burn in a buffer tanks to carry you over needs at least 1000-1500L to scratch the surface. I’ve looked many times at banking heat for domestic dealings, and, as much as it sounds great, the sums just don’t work when you begin a design / concept and then realise just how quickly that size tank gets sapped of (useful) heat energy; anything below 50°C is pretty much useless in a standard home with radiators, so at 85°C you have a useful capacity only for that 35° of headroom.

Couldn’t agree more, but this was pre Covid, literally on the cusp of it, and the electricity market was a very different place back then.

45° south facing arrays in populated areas can also cause inverters to shut down temporarily midday, due to over-volting the network. Always best to look properly at the whole picture, for anyone considering installing solar in a densely populated area / cul-de-sac etc, where most people may be out in work all day and exporting. I wonder how well documented evidence of these instances are and how ‘problematic’ that actually is though. Anyone?