Nickfromwales

For domestic works I’ve used hep2o (never John Guest Speedfit as the fittings need clips to stop them undoing themselves ) and I’ve never had an issue other than one or two duff fittings (over 10 years) which just leaked the second I filled up. 5 min swap out, back to business. I've installed tens of thousands of metres of this stuff and don’t use anything else. Clipping isn’t bad, but needs to be more frequent than copper or MLCP, defo not 300mm. MLCP (pert-al) for UFH for every install. MLCP has quite restrictive inner bore sizes, from what I’ve seen ( @SimonD ? ), so does JG Speedfit, but Hep2o inserts are thin stainless sleeves which hardly impact on the bore / flow at all. The Hep2o fittings are ‘push and forget’ and these are equally bombproof afaic. I won’t be converting to press-fit copper any time soon. Just a total pita if you’ve not got a fitting spot on first time, loads to cut out if you feck up in a tight space like a plant room, and it’s very difficult to get the machine into tight spaces (where I can reach with solder and my lamp).

Yup. Use the powder tile adhesive in bags, and never the ready mixed acrylic stuff in a tub. Needs to be cementitious so it can never reconstitute, plus the ready mixed acrylic stuff takes forever to dry over tanking. Make sure the tiler agrees to that, and if they whinge that it goes off too fast just tell them to use standard (aka extended) set adhesive which has over an hour of open time.

I tell all of my clients to have 4 seasons / 12 months of regular and normal living, and then we do a statistical download from the inverters etc to see what’s gone on (and if we need to / how we can improve things).

Replace with new, I’d go Plasson.

I know the feeling. Some of my seals are less robust these days Sounds like an issue to put back on the leaseholder? Or have you signed your life away?

Ah! Gotcha. Yes, that type of fitting is also robust. Being able to push the pipe an inch means it wasn’t past the o ring, so you were living on luck there!! yup. Just found the bugger lol.

Extra pumps and complexity??? You??? Surely not??? :swoons:

There’s no way that should have pulled / blown off, unless it wasn’t seated fully into the fitting (Plasson?) properly. Don’t choose compression onto MDPE as that’s garbage compared to a proper MDPE fitting + insert. If you’re not sure, replace like for like, and mark on the blue pipe the depth of the fitting to the internal stop point (like a shelf that the pipe insert butts up against and then can’t go in any further) so you know the pipe is fully ‘home’ in the fitting. I’d say it was poorly installed or being not fully home that caused this.

Yes. The same reason I’ve been in Jewsons twice in as many decades. Also you’re looking at too big a lintel You don’t need a 6x4” as a 4x3” (100x65) is plenty for a doorway in single skin in most situations. You mount this in portrait orientation, not landscape, btw.

Crikey, Terry. All the more grateful for what you’ve done (and are still doing) behind the scenes for Buildhub, as without your support and knowledge the back end would have likely fallen off the forum! Hope you’re able to chill out a bit and enjoy yourselves nowadays… Thanks again.

The hex bits are usually non returns and can fail, so you defo need JUST clear access to these; don’t let the tiler cut away any more than is necessary. You put a small bead of clear CT1 around the top and each of the sides of the plate, and seal it to the tiles. Don’t seal the bottom as that gets left as a drip.

PVC hero’s fit these heavier units and don’t often pack and fix them properly, so they start to play up after a few months of open / close cycles. You need to do diagonals to see where it’s ‘out’ and pack it back properly. Can you ask the original fitter to do it for you, and explain it’s moved and needs them to sort it?

Get a room you two........

Has everyone lost the grasp of plain English here lately? National typo week here atm lol.

I’m willing to chip in £5 for additional fuel costs. Don’t want anyone saying I don’t pay my way.

It's to take the known (or anticipated) weight of the tiles, as it's going to be bathroom I spec 400mm cc or for the walls at 600mm cc to be sheathed with OSB. Usually the OSB option is favoured, as it means that anywhere you go to put a screw of fix a towel rail etc, there's something to screw into. It's also a bit better for sound deadening too.

Random grab. Build for the situation, plan for the build, do it right once. Do Stud Walls Have 400 or 600 Centres in the UK? In the UK, the spacing between studs in a stud wall is typically 400 millimetres on centre, which is referred to as "400 centres." This spacing is in line with the building regulations and standards in the UK, which specify the minimum spacing requirements for timber studs in walls. However, it's worth noting that the spacing may vary depending on the specific construction project, as the requirements may differ based on the load-bearing capacity and the types of materials used in the wall construction. It's always best to consult with a professional builder or structural engineer for specific information on stud wall spacing for a particular project.

Not afaic. It works silently, and completely reliably down at 20 degrees C. No regular mechanical TMV can do this. Most shit the bed at 30 degrees, and whine or make noise, and really struggle to blend down.

Thanks for this update, and it's good to heat this has at least been slowed or stopped. It's this type of real-life feedback that is of the most value, and more so when a health condition can possibly be alleviated or improved by any measure. Best to both.

Yes and no. If the flow goes to the ‘coldest end’ of the room first so the heat lessens as it comes into the centre of the room then pretty moot in these circumstances tbf. The time you lose the choice is when the cc of the pipes are less than the minimum bending radius of the pipe, eg at 150mm cc you will seriously struggle to perform a U -turn at the end of every serpentine loop. If you lay ‘snail’ or inverted loop then you are only performing 2 U-turns per loop, with all others just a 90° turn (if the space is a perfect square or rectangle eg). At 100mm cc as per this… …you’d have zero chance of going serpentine. TBH, unless it’s a job with 200mm cc, I’d just go to snail layout as default. Just a better job imho. This was at 150mm cc iirc… …still note just the 2 U-turns at the centre of each loop. Much easier.

Relax, I’ve got you covered . This. These clients have all 3, so you can go to the ball, Cinders

Same remit as the last lot of clients, for the latter part. Some lap up the design and complication, and others just stare straight through me. I’m fine with either option as they’re employing me to gauge their needs and expectations, and meet or exceed them. So far so good I guess.

That’s what I do, to get the volume, and nobody’s called me to say one end of the room is hotter / cooler than the other. These just seem to blend into each other, from my direct experience(s). If doing this on paper then you’ll get number-drunk, just so many variables to try to balance out, but doing it in real life, in real homes, for real clients gives me an eye into the world of ‘did it, it was fine’ and then on to the next one.

The thing I’d say is, when you’ve PH levels of fabric, then setting (or attempting to set) different temps for different spaces just doesn’t really work that well in practice. The house seems to achieve one general ambient, and cooler spaces steal heat from warmer ones, ergo none are ever that different. A few people have commented to that effect, so it’s not a misconception, one of the advantages here is folk being good enough to offer feedback after moving in. Doing this all on paper, even for the great Jeremy Harris, didn’t work out well in practice. Basic heat loss calcs, to decide the size of the heat source, plus DHW, then UFH spaced uniformly accordingly (avoiding any spaces you simply don’t want to specifically heat such as pantry) and that’s you pretty much done afaic. Having digital control of the input temp and a good thermostat or WC will allow you quite a lot of accurate control over what that ambient will be. The mix becomes more of a thing when you ttt to balance the heat over upper and lower floors, but some will omit FF heating, and some won’t. Finding the sweet spot is just about tweaking up or down on the flow temps (for heat source efficiency) and thus altering the room temps to suit. How much more control you actually need after this basic commission is the real question. MVHR is introduced and you’re off to the scientific calculator to attempt to factor that in. PHPP is slightly helpful, largely for identifying overheat risk %, but tbh common sense and basic practice will get you most of the way here. Self builders can focus on this until they get dizzy and self destruct, but the mainstream heating people just rock up and fit a bunch of boxes, almost always a buffer (they need an insurance policy against client interference, or the manufacturer does so mandates it in their installation instructions) and a stat gets slapped on the wall, zoned per floor. Why we fight this so is a question I am finding myself asking, as, once it’s set up and you’re happy, you just leave it alone to do its thing. Most of my clients are happy with a box on the wall that gives them control to the nearest 0.1-0.2°C (plenty good enough hysteresis for PH) and they can walk away from that as happy as Larry. The one great thing about these types of dwellings is the way they hold an ambient temp so well (effectively) and you can just set these systems up to ‘just get on with it’, minus human intervention. One system we did in Leicester had zones, AHU, heat & cool, a room thermostat centrally mounted, and a buffer and ESBE mixing, etc, etc, and had an SCOP of 5.3. It’s a Stiebel Eltron setup and the company who supported dialled in to it to show me live data. So this is a fact. Performing incredibly well, running extremely efficiently, and has been doing so for a couple of years now. I'm beginning to accept the two different types of client (all self builders); there are those who want to know / understand / fiddle etc, and those who simply don’t.

Does the front fascia plate allow access to those two brass hex inserts? Eg, when installed, will they need to be tiled over or is the plate big enough to have them left accessible?