Nickfromwales

I installed a new gas combi for an old biddy and her spinster daughter. She had me go back, complaining that the living room would not get warmer than 21oC. My friend and I arrived and walked in, and within 60 seconds were both lathered up with factor 50 and stood there in pants and socks, as it was like a sunny day in Dubai! The daughter had bought one of these weather station things from a petrol station and sat it on the marble fireplace, which had a gale blowing up it, and was on an ice cold outside wall ( mass produced bag of shit house btw ). I picked it up and placed it on the lady's coffee table next to where she was sat. As I was getting my arse chewed off about how the old boiler ( same kW rating, same radiators etc but now all flushed and with new TRV's ) was "so much better than the new one"...... After 5 minutes I pointed to the weather station doo-dah and it was showing 24.5oC. We replaced the central heating system, but what we couldn't replace in that house was the lady's central nervous system

100%. With Atmos you're either in or out. Pointless going half-cocked tbh. These need to be via dedicated speakers to get any actual effect, and I'm about to start installing cables in a clients build ( dedicated cinema room ) to do just this. Atmos effect will be delivered via a pair of flush Kef ceiling speakers, small enough to be as inconspicuous as possible as they do very little. Sound bar should be lower, and take up so little room it shouldn't affect SWMBO's requirement for space below a correctly positioned TV as there would still be room above it?

Are people still watering paint down? Leyland paint from Screwfix / B&Q etc will sort this. It's specific to new plaster and "high opacity" for maximum 'obliteration'. I've used this for year now, and 2 coats in the same day on new plaster leaves you a surface that looks like its had 3 or 4. The secret is not to use a labourer who thinks hes paying for the paint to apply it !! Get plenty on the roller, and apply it nice straight lines in rapid succession, overlapping and back-rolling ass you go to ensure that you leave no tram lines behind you.

Then its the wrong solution for that dwelling. You should not feel anything like that in a house with a correctly designed and executed UFH installation. UFH flow is obviously running way too high, but is probably doing that to keep the rooms at temp. See if they can make some improvements to the house to reduce the amount of heat that the UFH then has to provide?

+1. I've just specified 40mm PIR thermal break / upstand for a client where the walls will battened for a service cavity, PB + skirting. There will also be a 10mm foam expansion skirting at the edge of the slab to allow ( the miniscule amount of ) expansion. Pennies to add the foam skirting, so better to be belt and braces. Not necessary where you have a passive raft, but very necessary where you are pouring slabs within 4 boxed in sides and the slab may wish to push out in all 4 directions.

Usually no sale or return due to the dates on the gas, so what you have left over is pretty much dead and goes on gumtree or marketplace here.

Power tool lol. You’d be there for a week with that hand tool

Ah, just a bloody expensive low loss header / mini buffer tank. Do you have any UFH?

Ring shank only really necessary for fixing the racking boards for structural strength, or fixing deck boards down onto joists. ‘Bright’ nails ( plain shanks ) have a glue sprayed onto them which melts with the heat from the friction of being sent in at speed, so try one and then try pulling one out. You’ll see how good the glue is when you get a miss-fire and try to hammer the nail in the last 20mm. At first it wont want to budge, and some you’ll bend the nail over before you can send it home. Best advice is to get some good speed clamps, with rubber jaw covers, to help you line the wood up before firing the nail. You;‘lol see why when you get going . Just because its easy to fire a nail, don’t go mental until you’ve pinned top and bottom, then have checked the middle of the timber is still lined up nicely, before nailing the middle and then fill in the gaps. You’ll also need a recip saw with a long fine metal blade to cut through nails installed in error. Buy yourself one of these LINK as they’re a great bit of kit. The pointy ‘claw’ is designed to be hammered in under the head of a set nail to go hunt it out for extraction. Used @Russell griffiths one and then went straight to the tool shop to get one. Cracking little addition to the toolbox.

OK, so you will be keeping ( replacing ) the hot water cylinder for excess PV diversion to hot water, great. What is this ‘magic heating box’? Can you show us pics as I’m at least very curious. Name / make / model etc? Cheers.

Yup. Robust bits of kit. Require a high number of turns also to go from 100% open to 100% closed, and need a bit of a "pinch" at the end of the rotational operation to be sure they're fully closed, so actuators wouldn't work with them.

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.