Nickfromwales

You usually dig out for a footing, trench fill, and the BCO has normally already stated this before you start works. What's written in your spec?

If you want to sort this properly, it’s tiles ALL off, bath out, walls sorted and a batten installed to accept the bath edges, bath back in, sealed before tiles, tiled, then silicones to finish. Anything else will fail again and again. Been here, got the T-shirt, made a LOT of money off insurance claims to put this exact thing right. Sort it now, as you’re just putting off the inevitable.

Jump on YouTube

OK. So you should have a dedicated discharge from each pump to a FW stack, and you shouldn't pump into an existing pipe ( T'd in ). Was that what you were saying in "a"? This will all be grey water and not black ( foul ) water, yes?

Yes...?

Yup. I use 40mm rising up, with a 40mm bend / elbow facing forward. At 2nd fix, I insert a 40x32mm reducer and the correct length piece of 32mm pipe. If space is tight, I will put the 40mm elbow at the floor and then rise with 32mm.

Hi. Just surround the pipe with acoustic rockwool and box in with plasterboard. Use foam to seal at the floor and ceiling, patching in with plasterboard if the gaps are "major". Foam all round a soil pipe really amplifies the sound, as I did one that went down through a B&B lobby once and it was noisier than with just a boxing around it. Got swapped out for rockwool.

If you'd spent 3 decades cutting out blocked pipes, you'd see my PoV. Even 40mm pipes from kitchen sinks and showers end up with enough bore to not get your thumb down the middle. If the small-bore waste is dropping vertically more than 1000mm, then you'll need air admittance, if it is dropping a whole storey then you'll need that to be in 50mm pipe with a 50mm AAV on the highest point. Wastes should never drop from FF to GF, they should always only travel horizontally to a stack, after falling vertically from a basin trap etc. Pipe unblocking chemicals etc is just a way of saying, its going to block so I'll pour this carp down there when it does @Thorfun, I would install 50mm anywhere where it's getting buried, and then drop to the size you want when it gets exposed / above floor. You'll spend a few tenners more upsizing and that buys a shit-load of insurance. You'll be using the same amount of time and labour regardless, so defo get 32mm pipe off the menu for starters!

Answer = "A LOT!".

Thanks! @All Ahem! Lets shut this digression down please, as it is now doing nothing for the topic / OP!!

Nowhere cheaper than free, me old chum

This is often a project killer. PLEASE, do NOT move in until all of your trades have completed and left, as this would slow them down, alienate them, and likely increase frequency of visits, costs, and reduce the amount of work they can do in the same day ( vs unoccupied ). Wise words.

Naughty step for 15, please 👉

Ring and complain! Get it sent to you directly or to the store.

KISS wins again!

I think it would be less if they went turnkey foundation / frame in actuality. This often includes B-Regs and SE content up to the point where the finished article is presented and the provider disengages. Doors and windows next, then roofer and external rain-screen, and you're then stood inside with a set of keys in your hand. After that it's electrician / plumber / plasterboard / plaster / kitchen / bathroom / final hard finishes and that's deliverable by a good local builder with relative ease, or it is easily within the reach of someone who feels confident to engage with these trades independently. There's bucket-loads of info on Buildhub that can be mined over the next 4 years. Absolutely no reason whatsoever to not plan ahead and make this a smooth project. Time, knowledge, confidence and budget need to be realised and realistically too, before deciding to proceed.

"Lush" Meanwhile.....back at the ranch, others were discussing ASHP's

Not directly, no. I've read a lot on here re "the competition", however it's a "yes" in the case of Panasonic Aquarea and I am VERY impressed with those for the price, very impressed indeed. Fitting another 4 of them shortly for current turnkey clients, all with cooling requirements which the Panasonic does out of the box. The Stiebel unit has all of internal compressor side completely encapsulated in EPS, and all of the internal pipework etc is heavily insulated with neoprene, and the inside of the chassis etc is all sound-deadened with more neoprene panels / self adhesive sound-deadening, and Stiebel really seem to have really gone to town on this ( noise pollution / local audibility ) and this thing is literally 'whisper-quiet'. The Panasonic isn't far behind it, to be fair. For clarity, I have designed everything holistically to allow this unit to have a flow temp of sub 24oC flow temp into space heating and a room internal temp of 20.5oC ( which seems to be comfortable whilst standing still / sitting, but a little warm when undertaking any activity. All of this would of course be unachievable without the airtightness having also been detailed to the nth degree. I am still gobsmacked at how few of the "big hitters" fail to pay proper attention to this type of detailing... instead they just pay it some lip service and those who don't know, don't know. But when the AT test is done, "Oh!", do they know THEN!. Obvs too late to do much about it by then though Stable door / horse / etc. I design bespoke for each client, so never is there any element of 'copy / cut & paste' with my M&E proposals. I am also a 3rd party external contractor and liable for my actions / the end results. This particular house has 500mm ICF walls, AT score of 0.88 ( but I defo expect that to improve after some tweaks and hope to see sub 0.6 or better ), AND it's the 2nd storey where I've recommended that the A/C unit is installed. This is a studio / recreational room and on a super-sunny but windy day it may be impractical or a nuisance to have the wind blowing a hoolie through there when the occupants are trying to purge / cross-ventilate to have the room comfortable to use. This is NOT a bedroom, so the issue of 'summer overheating" shifts from a manageable purge / temp decrease before bedtime to a room requirement of "nice" all day / any day, on demand. With a PH there is no switch to flick to raise or lower the temp ergo I was firm on my specification here. In honesty the unit may never get used, but anyone who has an A/C unit and uses it in the summer will tell you in an instant that it makes that room / space absolutely wonderful to be in, with an almost "fresh" feeling. When the windows can be opened the clients will absolutely do so, so would I, so would you, but if it's 24/25oC or more outside then that's the temp that room will then instantly raise to. For sub £3k for a quality Mitsubishi unit, plus the benefit that this unit will offer heat also in the same price tag, then on a build which is the ouch side of 7 figures, £3k is a price that I thought worth purchasing some insurance with. If it was my house I would use it routinely, and my son is up in the attic of my leaky stone box in Wales and without his A/C the room would be unusable for at least 3 months of the year. As it stands he has many unwanted visitors in the summer, eg some of my other kids going up there to bunk for the night because his room is just so damn pleasant to be in. I'm downstairs sweating my arse off, with the house at 22oC or more, and his room you could bloody well keep meat fresh in! 🥶 In the above clients home I also fine-tuned the design for the MVHR; so that it had a fresh inlet at one side of the room and an extract at the opposite side to absolutely maximise on the air quality up there. Also remember that with cooling via MVHR, you need to use a lot of boost, so, the whole house would then have the elevated flow rates and possible audibility / compromise caused by it. I think it would be a shame ( aka a bad design ) to have to impact the entire household just because one room was problematic ( for the sake of £2-3k anyways ). If the clients come back to me in 3 years time and say it's never been used, I'll buy it back off them. That's how sure I am that it will get used. Folk who build to this standard PH / PH+ / NZEB etc become a little "bedazzled" with the nonsense that the sales-folk offer up, which is often just generic regurgitation of stuff they heard someone else say, and very rarely ( or more like almost never in my experiences over the last 8 years of 'PH' ) make their comments absolutely specific to the dwelling and the occupants, and life beyond moving in. I have to be held accountable for things to work, not just to fit, so I have a very different ethos to some others out there. In a nutshell, that's why I specified this home this way The next one may be different, as will the one after that! In your instance this would either need the AHU's 'blowing' directly into the spaces you wish to cool, or having a second fully insulated distribution duct network ( if you wanted to centralise for eg ). Is this as the primary heating, or is it a lamination over the UFH as an auxiliary system for targeted heat / cool?

What frame / model?

“Who’s coat is that jacket” is a close second. 👊😎🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Yup. Polyplumb. Some of these exact fittings still available on eBay.

On one’s own, more like!

Stiebel is expensive, but after being hands-on with the installation, commissioning and setting to work of it, I am very impressed. The controls system(s) are VERY comprehensive, and it benefits from temperature blending ( mixing ) sets which allow pinpoint accuracy when delivering cooling. The AHU can get water as cold as 10°C whilst the UFH can get a steady 15-16°C, simultaneously. I have designed this house with an ethos of “prevention not cure”, so the A/C unit will likely not get much use. If necessary to cool that one 2nd storey room, then it is there to perform a task that it is not sensible to ask the whole-of-house MVHR system to do. Nor would it be capable, ergo it was something I mandated in my turnkey M&E “solution”.

For the domestic heating and cooling I chose Stiebel as it shows a COP of 6 by design, for this particular uber-low temp dwelling. Stiebel don’t ( iirc ) do an AC unit. The pool just needs a ‘dumb’ ASHP so I will choose accordingly based on service / reliability / longevity. I chose ( will finalise my choice ) for the units based on merit / suitability and what will serve my clients the best.

Yes, that’s the foundation assumption. Self ordained lunatics bend this rule and try to justify that there is a loophole they can negotiate around. Idiots.