Nickfromwales

It's down to how good the subfloor is tbh. I always set them into a lattice of Sikaflex EBT and drill and countersink every single hole position. A solid deck of 18mm plywood D4 expanding wood glue ready for fitting the 9mm fillet of ply used to raise the tray accordingly, The tray set into SF and screwed at every hole marker ( the little pillars seen in the GRP from underneath ). See the little circles in the pic above You don't need mastic on the ring TBH ( DONT USE SILICONE WITH GRP EVER ) but I do use EBT regardless as I know it's bombproof then. The reason that Impey don't show that is because they assume you'll be covering the whole thing with they're waterproof decoupling membrane which terminates into the mouth of the waste, therefore after / past that ring and below the surface of the tray, negating the requirement of any sealant anywhere as the water ( in theory ) cannot ever get there anyway. Problems arise if you stray away from the Impey family of products so are you using their membrane?

Why not just use some stickyback trunking ? Lid just pops off for future tweaks and will look a lot neater for a few £

It's unique so difficult to say exactly how to plumb it. . Do you have detailed house plans showing DHW tank location and bathrooms / kitchen / utility ? If you upload those here I can advise better, apologies if they're already up elsewhere.

Yup. I always kango them out after drilling a series of holes to reduce breakout. Damp brick / brickwork is a real pita when dry diamond core drilling .

Sorry I'm late @PeterW you get the blue peter badge, but no cigar for not spotting the other side effect here The non return is indeed needed where it is, but for the wrong reason, ( I'll explain below ). Add another, where the green arrow is and your problems will end. The pump ideally wants moving too as it shouldn't be pumping downwards TBH, but instead should be laying horizontal or vertical but travelling upwards to allow natural venting / removal of air. Not life or death but can add to the longevity of the pump. Insulate the pipework in the attic and have that hot return ( HR ) pump triggered by an occupancy switch like this in the bathrooms so it only runs briefly prior to when it's needed. It can be set to run off a timeclock too if easier but I'd certainly not make it redundant as it's there to help, by circulating the dead legs of hot water pipework to massively reduce waiting times at the outlets ( particularly the basin hot taps when washing hands after visiting the loo ). One observation is that the plumber has fed the HR into the very bottom of the tank whereas it should be going into a dedicated tapping midway up the cylinder. Does the cylinder have a blanked off tapping midway up somewhere around its circumference? Not all UVC's have one so that's maybe why it's like this. The problem / side effect here is that a system with a HR pump should only be able to draw hot / very warm water back up the return leg when the pump is off. In this situation the plumber hasn't mitigated against the fact that he's connected it where luke warm / cold water will reside, hence your system is currently able to simultaneously draw cool water and hot water into the hot pipework, hence your problem when the pump is off. Another is that in a house with all UFH this should really have been a thermal store. An hour or so after the heating comes on, go see how often the boiler is lighting and then going off whilst there is demand for heating. It's probably cycling quite a bit then and could benefit from a buffer. All depends if you want to open that can of worms or not as ignorance can be bliss ??.

Get £600 ready to lose ? Hire, hire, hire. Use, abuse return.

Any decent core ( diamond NOT Tct ) will have a clutch that any reasonably robust man can hold onto, I've used them all. Where depths are greater than the depth of the bit you need to go halfway in and then break the core out before carrying on. It's the dust / debris held between the core and the bit that cause it to snag. With a makita or dewalt dedicated diamond core drill I'll happily drill for a boiler flue up a ladder. Ask for a drill with an electronic clutch and you'll be fine. 50mm cores you can do in your sleep.

Manifold arrangements are very good in certain circumstances, but if there would be a long run of 25m then you may well do better with a couple of 22mm hot legs, reducing to 15mm for each outlet and have a hot return ( HR ) circuit teeing in at the point the 22 drops to 15mm. The downside with a manifold is that you can only realistically keep a HR loop between the tank and the manifold, whereas a regular but cleverer-erer arrangement will allow you to tee in the HR point much closer or even AT the outlet (s) worst affected. The manifold setup only really works if you don't need a HR where the runs, post manifold, are short enough to negate it, but you can also consider a HR if there is a manifold, ( but it's away from the hot tank ), as the additinal larger bore primary supply pipework and the water in the manifold will then be a huge dead leg. If I ever did my own build it would be a couple of hot manifolds suitably positioned away from the tank, kept hot by a HR loop with everything super insulted to reduce losses. I'd deffo go with a bit of pv to compensate, even if just a small DIY array to offset these and other incidental system losses.

Just to keep this thread fully informative, and on topic.....SWMBO found the remote in the wardrobe. ? Panic over everyone.

The stairs are fantastic. I can still recall the pre kids days where i put something down and it was still there 3 days later ? Not so any more. Both daughters ( 6&9 ) came downstairs accusing each other of losing my bedroom smart tv remote ( so they can watch more bloody YouTube ) which still remains outstanding ? Keep the pics and use them against the kids, telling them "santa will be delayed until the house looks like these photos, chop chop !" ?

Conversation is the key one, as both parties usually, incorrectly, assume each will try and have the other over. The biggest issue I see with other local builders is them assuming the customer won't pay extra to have some luxuries / initiatives applied to the core budget, like when I sub to them to fit a kitchen for eg the customer has a nice new smart tv but no data connection so I suggest a cat5 is pulled in to which the builder then throws a wobbler wailing "who's going to pay for that ?" when the customer has already said they're happy to pay extra for such an important ( but simply overlooked ) addition. I often see such stupid things being argued about at the end of the job, where a simple schedule of works would show the customer hadn't requested XYZ so the builder didn't do it. I don't do any job now without SOME sort of brief. For a full build I'd deffo have a VERY detailed SOW as there are just so many areas where this can go astray.

The micros make me dizzy. Too small and too bloody quick Looking for another Lunchbox rolling chassis for daughter #2 now.

Perfect ?

No issues whatsoever mate . I race Caster 1/10th scale with my boys when indoors, and they've got FTX Colossus's 1/8th for rally cross / bashing. All running lipos with brushless. My summer goal is to get my Losi 2.0 rolling chassis converted to electric and running, proper old school one which I'll be running 22v ?

Why conjoin them @recoveringacademic? Can't you build them detached and dispense with the concerns brewing here ? 8" gap between the two would suffice.

Extending them is no problem at all, been done plenty of times . Make the joint above ground and if possible accesble, if not, I'd recommend soldering and heat shrink sleeving to get a lifetime hassle free joint. Measure the resistance before and after the connection and you'll know it's been done properly.

22mm is the norm. 22mm pipe will need a 60mm conduit all to itself if it's to be pulled in / out. Tbh the Hepworth pipe can sit directly in the insulation, as @jack suggests he may do if ever building again, but I'd advise against that as the clicking / creaking noise of the pipe moving against the EPS may drive you nuts. My mate foamed his pipes into IWI covered walls and the noise of them when the heating is cycling is very apparent .

Please just get a schedule of works in duplicate and each of you sign them with the agreed amount. It protects both you and the builder and is so simple to refer back to if confusion or disagreement should ever occur. The document simply states for £X your getting XYZ, no more no less. Trust is a beautiful thing, but confusion at the details stage can add a big chunk of time ( £ labour ) so be very aware. As a contractor this method has saved me countless times where Mr Blogs thought he was getting 20 spotlights in the kitchen diner but had only paid for 8 etc. I'd never do it differently. Edit to add : Oh, and of course the very best luck moving forward

Yup, but let's be honest....wall mounted just looks the business. ?

Yes, but you need to know your finished floor level to the nearest few mm's to put the frames in early on. With the wall mounted free standing WC's you can also define the height of the pan, and when I suggest to customers to have the pan an inch or so higher than normal they agree that it's far easier to hop on / off vs the standard height. Worth remember that your not stuck to that constraint with the wall mounted ones .

Roca frames are around the same price but Geberit all the way for me Fit and forget with known after sales support.

For belt n braces I've lined the reveals with 25mm cellotex too This job has IWI ( 62.5mm thermal PB ) so I wanted to be double sure there was no significant shift in 'temperature' in the window or door reveals. That just gets PB bonded on then for which I use the foam and bracing to keep it flat whilst it cures.

Just ask the door supplier to give you the metal fixing brackets needed to set the door wherever you like whilst still being able to fix into masonry / other. As above, if Bco is involved you'll have to install a vertical damp course and insulate the cavity. My preferred method is to get some 18" DPC, wedge it against the face brick with small offcuts of polystyrene spaced every 300mm or so to keep it taught and in place, then fill the gap with low expansion ( LE ) foam, applied to obtain a depth of no greater than 150mm. Have the DPC showing in the opening about an inch or so, so that when you fit the cavity closers you can fix over the DPC ensuring no break. The closers are plastic / PVC ( ? ) anyhoo so the damp cannot bridge . If you get insulated cavity closers you'll need to trim the factory fitted insulation to suit your cavity ( they're marked for cutting at the correct increments so a 1 minute job with an old hand saw ) but you'll then need to rake out a little of the foam in the cavity to accommodate the extra depth. For good measure, as I've done on my current job ( garage conversion with new knock through of a cavity wall ) I pumped a hefty bead of LE foam into the cavity and set the cavity closer into that. Brace with a piece of batten or 4x2" for 30mins whilst the foam cures to stop the closers from bellying out with the foam as its expands and cures. When ordering the door, make sure you allow for 25mm of cellotex to go at the head, bonded to the internal section of the catnic, to eliminate the cold bridge. Catnics are factory insulated but it's still not great.

At the risk of this being read by said customer.......let me just say that I'd have part tiled that wall.......but that's with 2 boys who pee like one of those Crazy Daisy's you get for the garden . The wallpaper had 3 coats of water based matt 'varnish' so is, erm, "splashback" so to speak. .