Nickfromwales

It's flow rate. Are the valves new, and are you testing this with all the TRV's fully open ( assuming you have TRV's as new rads have been fitted )? Can't you chop out the micro-bore and extend the 15mm pipe to the rads? Quickest way to eliminate sludge is to turn all rads off bar one and then switch the heating on from cold. If that rad warms through evenly and quickly then the rad is fine. How old is the pump? Is this open pipe aka gravity, or sealed and pressurised?

Do you need your C&G’s before they’ll let you attain G3? I know it gets done with the fresh faces as part of their ACS, but I’m not sure if you can walk in “of the street” and do your G3...

Too clunky and noisy to have inboard on a TF house though, hence me chasing solid state.

....sorry Terry, you're not my type Just a heads up on how a simple man like myself would switch one of these on / off from a 230v signal would help. I assume the 230v would fire the coil in a zero volt relay and I'd have to generate the 5v from an 3rd party adaptor / transformer and send that through the zero-volt side of the relay? Simple on / off operation will suffice, mainly because I try and set things up so some poor fool would be able to reasonably quickly identify what's been done and how it works ( in the event of a breakdown and I'm not of this world anymore ) for fault-finding / ongoing maintenance & repair by A.N. Other. I strayed into the Boffins corner once, but was chased back into the woods by a headless horse-man.

I turn things up roughly 0.5o per day, allowing the full 24hrs for things to acclimatise at their own pace. Takes a good week or so to get things to 'simmer down'. Having the Ivar type blending set, a-la @JSHarris's type of set, is of huge importance as if you try to do this type of heating management with a normal thermo-mechanical type of blender ( aka TMV ) you''ll never reliably get down to a flow temp accurate enough to stop the above-mentioned overshoot. The room stat ( correct choice of ) is of equal importance. If you don't get those two elements right you'll not stand a chance, but if you get it right the curve for the heating hysteresis will be as close to a flat line ( as possible ) eg a near equilibrium as far as achieving a comfortable thermal constant. PH is nuts, and very difficult to convey to those who have had no direct experience of 'it'. With a heated slab and the house at equilibrium you can open all the door and windows for 10 minutes when it's -5 outside, blow all the heat out of the house until you're freezing your knackers off, and then just shut the doors and windows back up again. Within 3-5 minutes the house is back to how it was. For those who don't want to fit UFH, in conjunction with a decent slab, good luck with that!!

Do you have a link to these please, and did you have to fit a heat sink to them?

For the amount of heat you’d need from them, if used in conjunction with wet UFH in the main slab, I’d stick to the sheer simplicity of electric towel rads + electric UFH. If you’re relying on these rads as your main auxiliary heat source, eg no UFH, then prob best to feed them from a HP as you won’t be able to load shift. Would be disproportionately expensive as a heating design though, imo.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F264509828782 Good / bad ?

I would still fit a heat pump just for cooling. Just great for killing two birds with one stone. If you’re not in ‘need’ of cooling it is very hard to justify the capital expense, ( at a time when every penny counts ), and more of a concern when you factor in it’s inevitable maintenance, repair, and ultimately it’s replacement.

KISS at its absolute finest.

Having a slab means you can charge with heat also means you can almost always load shift from off-peak electricity, ‘injecting’ heat into the slab once or twice a day. Even heating by direct electricity is palatable with such an effective heat store, subject to the house performing well of course.

Open accounts with the respective suppliers. Approve the materials on request and make the orders yourself. VAT trail is neat and tidy, and it’s a very effective method for controlling materials overspend. You do due diligence, and prices are kept as low as practicable. Labour only; Pay wages for the guys / gals on site weekly, 7 days in arrears, and be 1000% prompt each Friday / Saturday ( if invoices are suitably surrendered ) with no excuses. Funds need to be at hand no matter what so you can make those payments religiously. Bespoke is difficult to cost, but any decent builder can employ their own QS for their own reassurance BEFORE summarising. You’ll pay for that service ( indirectly ) anyway, so why not QS it yourself and administer the results to your contractors with you in the driving seat If you have a fixed set of plans then this is do-able. You just need a contractor who can fragment this into known-knows and known-unknown’s. The former fixed, the latter variable. Fair all round then, with a view to where costs could escalate, and %’s of unknown liability being ‘reasonably’ identifiable from the outset. After that it’s in for a penny, in for a pound. Whatever difficulties your contractors suffer will simply come out of the coffers, AFTER they’ve demonstrated them to you before hand. Do not allow the contractors to undertake any ‘extras’ without prior approval, and give them documented correspondence stating any such work, undertaken without said prior approval, will not be paid for. It’s then easy for you to identify if they’re squeezing you for more money when they just have to work hard, rather than having actually needed to carry out unidentified / genuine extra work. Oh, and if you want this to go smoothly, you’ll want a project manager / project coordinator to keep a finger on the pulse. That person ( can be yourselves ) needs to be available, by phone at the minimum, EVERY working day. Or, agree a fee, day rate + X %, for the lead builder to take on that roll. Sounds like you may need to be at the helm a lot here, particularly at the outset, to get the ship onto calm waters... ?

FYI, the amount of hot water ( volume vs temp ) is a mere ‘spike’ in the terms of the ‘capability to discharge under duress’ for most modern plastics. The real problem starts when you’ve got 2-300L of roasting hot water to potentially be discharged. That’s when plastics can melt, seals become compromised. In reality, a piddly little boiling water tap is of near zero consequence in that equation.

Building regs will always bow to manufacturers instructions. If you fit it as per the MI’s you’re good to go ( as they’ve already sought approval prior to releasing the product ).

He has a point

You should hear it open tbh as the gurgle sound of the water flowing is open to atmosphere at the AAV when it functions. Can you block off the AAV temporarily to start a process of elimination? Last job like this ( same symptoms ) was a big juicy dead ? that got jammed in the battens behind the wallboards. The thing was dripping out of its own back end when I found it. Yuk. Smell is very similar but also distinctively rat, not crap, is easily identifiable to those who’s nose knows. ?

Nice jacket ?

BCO in Dorset said no too. It’s a dying facility me thinks.

But you’re a special case, so we make allowances. ??

+1. If the tanking has been on long enough to get some surface dust on it, just clean it lightly with a damp sponge prior to laying on. I use a grout float to butter the tanking with the tile adhesive ( rubber edges trowel ) about 1M2 at a time and then you’re guaranteed a great bond. Do that for the 1st metre of the wall, and then you can fall back to just a wipe and laying by bedding the tile only ( depending upon how flat the walls are of course ). Do not EVER consider using acrylic ( ready made in a tub ) adhesive over tanking ( ask me how I know how that goes lol ). 3 days later, porcelain tile, acrylic adhesive ( bragged up by the Ultra area rep ) and over tanking, and when I removed the supports to cut the lowest course in all the tiles slid down the wall ?. Cementitious products ONLY over tanking, especially with porcelain ?

I only fit Brink now, excellent products. I can heartily recommend CVC ventilation for supply of the Brink stuff. They have their own in house PH certified specialist and their design services are spot on.

Indeed. I recall some time ago having a conversation with a client where she baulked at paying the higher amount for a PH certified heat & cool MVHR unit ( sub 30db ) and staying “I’m not paying that it’s unjustifiable. I’ll have the cheaper unit and put up with it” so exactly the case of “you get what you pay for”. Can’t have a champagne job on lemonade money, sorry. ? Probably good to note here that retrospectively ‘silencing’ a cheap MVHR unit with bolt-on silencers is nonsense, as that does nothing to attenuate the noise from the MVHR unit itself. That only reduces audibility at the supply and extract terminals, so if the audibility at the terminals is acceptable then you’re stuck with the decision to purchase a cheaper / noisier unit. Also; It’s easy to tell if your MVHR installer has fitted the required ( primary ) silencer. It’s usually a large silver foil flexible section coming off the MVHR unit ‘fresh’ aka ‘supply’ outlet off the unit. They are lined with a fluffy material that immediately absorbs sound and stops it getting to the rooms as nuisance ‘noise’. If you have one of those, then you have a technically complete installation. Buying other bolt-ons at that stage will be utterly pointless.

Ok. We’re getting somewhere ?. Agreed. Any last thoughts folks before this becomes read-only? ?. “Say now, or forever hold my piece.......” @zoothorn, good luck with moving forward. . Keep your chin up and your ? together ?.

We don’t bother vertically tbh, but horizontally and especially overhead then it’s just good practice tbh. Deciding what is or isn’t an egress / escape route is a judgment call I don’t want to make. Being behind plasterboard ( ceilings ) is of zero consequence for discounting this rule afaic, but sense can prevail as to how many bands are fitted and where, but taking 90 degree bends through superstructures helps as the changes in direction will arrest the fall to some extent too.