Nickfromwales

Nope. Those types of actuators are slow functioning and quite 'weak', which is fine as they're only ever supposed to close off a slow-flowing UFH loop, not mains water at that kind of potential.

New gas run in 22mm also, unless the existing one is already 22mm. If it's a long run, it may need to start with, or include along its length, some 28mm pipe, eg to get the manufacturers stated "working gas pressure". Will you be installing a combi or a system boiler plus hot water tank? Do you have / do you intend to fit solar PV?

Hi Dave. 1000% yes mate. The pipes will be full of corrosion / crud / ferrous particulate from that long a service lifespan, and when you fit the new appliance that will ultimately get back to it, regardless of how good a magnetic / particle filter you fit. I would completely re-plumb and replace all the rads / valves, plus also look at a good controls system ( not Honeywell Evo-home!!! ) to manage it all economically. If you approach someone like www.mrcentralheating.com and ask for a package price for boiler / rads / valves / TRV ( thermostatic rad valves ) then you can get a yardstick on prices when plumbers come to quote. Take the room sizes / number of outside walls / number of windows / ceiling height etc into any decent plumbers merchants and they will size the rads for you room by room FOC ( when you ask them for a quote ).

Just advised one client to do exactly the same. Negates ever having to fit / temporarily install a panel heater for 'whenever'. Cost uplift is negligible when view as a % on build costs, and North facing bedrooms will be colder on PHPP, regardless.

Oh dear! That walls does not seem very sympathetic to directly covering with a thin coat render system. @nod ? ( he’s the in-house plaster god, so let’s see what he has to say ).

Note the #2 TMV also, as the client had a son with learning difficulties, so I capped the max temp to the wash hand basins so prevent his lad inadvertently coming into contact with the water at 55oC ( preset of TMV#1 ).

Yup. You can then simply feed the kitchen sink also from the manifolds. In this pic, the mains comes from an immediately adjacent airing cupboard in 28mm pipe, and I fed both sides of the manifolds ( like a plumbing version of a ring main ) as I then installed a 300L cold mains accumulator in the left hand side of that ‘airing cupboard’. For that particular job, the client stated he wanted to be able to use all 3 showers simultaneously, so I went to town on it.

Hi. Sorry to hear of your issues. For us to help, we need to know what this has been applied on top of. Please give as much additional info as you can.

It’s nothing to do with pipe, it’s to do with all of your outlets getting calcified up because of the hardness. It’s not so bad inside the pipes etc, but very problematic where the water dries in the atmosphere and leaves all the residual crud behind. Ask someone who lives in an aggressively hard water area to show you inside their kettle….

I suspend the pipe with black powder coated all-round patent band ( Link ), only fixing to the upper chord. This is to; a) set the fall in the pipe b) physically decouple to pipe from the ceiling below / lower chord.

If the water is not hard, then you’ll be fine. Don’t bother with the non salt water ‘conditioners’, as it’s been well discussed on here that they are found on the shelf next to the snake oil and magic beans

Bring the cold mains in wherever the softener will reside, if you need one. On my clients builds I bring one rising main in ( 20 or 25mm ample ) for the kitchen sink cold ( raw / hard ) feed, eg for human consumption, and the main ( 25 or 32mm typically ) at a location where the softener won’t cause a nuisance when regeneration cycle is running. That can be garage / utility / cupboard under the stairs etc, but make sure there is a low slung drain that can accept the backwash from regeneration. You then pipe the soft water to wherever the distribution manifolds are.

Yup. Seems Russian roulette out there tbh. There is more demand than satisfaction, now that the UK had opened its eyes to the better way to build eg fabric first. It used to be “kitchen first”, insulation if there’s money left over from buying the granite worktops 😐. I’ll admit when I first started plumbing the answer to a cold draughty house was bigger rads bigger boiler. . I’m a changed man lol.

Not at all. I’m just a bit of a blunt tool, so, apologies all round 😘. We do get some who say they run a 4 minute mile, but the majority of active members here are doing a mixture of strolling, tumbling, and picking themselves back up, so appreciate the offer of the videos. If not too commercially garnished, by all means post them directly here ( just post links to the videos ) and folk can see the hot knife in operation. FYI, I will bank that info , if you’re not growing, you’re dying. One ( of the ) advantage(s) of battening, is the ability to pack and screw to soak up any notable deflection from a less than excellent build / pour. Exactamundo, and yes. One of the reasons we chew the cud a fair bit tbh. I’ll always prefer EPS over woodcrete btw.

Use adhesive for all layers above the OSB. The cement board should be set into adhesive and tapped down to the desired height, making it level and flat. The tray can then be bonded down as per the MI’s. If using tile adhesive to bed the tray, use some of the mix to decontaminate the underside of the tray by scouring it with the mix on a cotton cloth.

Indeed. Especially on a new build where you may want to progressively make rooms live as the project moves forward. Saves filling up and draining down repeatedly, plus the radial arrangement gives very good flow to multiple outlets eg 2 showers running simultaneously.

Yup. Insulate after a week of everything being pressurised, as a drip / dribble will not show so easily otherwise. You cannot use these isolators as attenuators, as I’ve found previously that they are quite noisy when the flow is ‘strangled’, plus the results were very unreliable in practice. Deffo use inline flow restrictors at the appliance. For the basins, 10mm pipe seems to give just the right amount of flow. Buy one and hook it up and see if that works for you, but I never use them for flow attenuation, personally, as clients like things to be as quiet as possible.

I’d say that you couldn’t. Only speaking from direct experience in doing exactly this on a live project. If you are geared up to do this for a living, then you’ll understand the process and will have bought tools, at cost, learned a routine and have this perfected. Build hub is populated with people doing this for the first time, sometimes the only time, and they will have little or none of the knowledge or shills of professionals who do this daily, therefore the information on here needs to be balanced accordingly. You have an impressive work rate for sure. My previous post stands.

Your sparky should be doing it

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All 100% correct. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. The screed is a feathering compound which rids the floors of all imperfections, without it you will see every divot made by the laitance-removal machine head. The ply could be thicker TBH, but that will also need the joints and screw holes filled, feathered and sanded. Sounds like you have the right guys for the job.

You fail to mention the cost of labour and the god almighty mess associated with cutting the EPS to then fit all the conduit. Cost of battens to be able to affix on 3/4/600 oc with absolute minimum wastage of PB. The “solid feel” would only be where you foam, so to get that you’re saying to foam all of the area of each PB?!? Far more expensive and totally impractical / unnecessary imho. PB which is in TF dwellings sails across joists at 400 / 600 oc and PB over dot n dab does the same, albeit it feels more solid than TF as D&D is typically applied over a masonry structure. PB “sailed” over EPS and foamed where it misses the spines will also need bracing whilst the foam cures, so more labour etc. Will deffo work out to be a complete and total PITA of a job, especially when working up at ceiling height, or higher. Sorry! 👎

Also, some TRV’s have a very short / shallow depth for receiving pipe vs the lock shields. Check that detail!

What about sticking with your original and “moving swiftly on” ? That’s a plenty good enough detail imho. I would probably have gone a-la MBC’s higher performing spec of rock wool in the outer, and PIR inner for bridging but that uses a deeper frame iirc to get more wool in. Work out what will be the net physical results from all the options / effort and how it will make a difference to your life The only main Achilles heel with all PIR only structures is that they’re quite dire in terms of acoustic attenuation. You can rid yourself of some of that by using 15mm SB PB on the exterior walls. After that, I’d go and start choosing paint and tiles

Ah. Ok. That makes way more sense now. Thanks.