Nickfromwales

Yup. You are overthinking, so stop it! Lol. 😜. If you’d like to move on with your life, please do the following. Get some Marmox or ‘other’ tile backer board from a local tile supply outlet (Topps carry these at 6 and 10mm). Get a couple of sheets and cut the first one to drop down into the void to fit against the outer wall completely; for the first piece going against the door you need to leave this as high and wide as possible to act as a shutter to stop the SLC / concrete getting to the masonry. Get some Illbruck FM330 foam to use to bond this to the masonry, and use it to seal the edges, eg so no external masonry can be seen, just board and foam. Leave to cure, then cut back any foam snots. You’ll need something forced into the void to keep the board in place whilst the foam cures. Buy the proper gun grade foam and a decent gun, not the cans with the single use bendy straw!!! Then do the same again against the internal block, leaving it high again. Leave to cure, same detail. Cut a few more pieces of the board to drop in between these taller boards, full width, say 35mm shy of the level you want for the flooring to fly over. Keep cutting these and dropping them in until the gap is pretty much full of backer boards, like a sandwich. For today’s exercise the sandwich will be a BLT. Once happy the void is as full of boards as it can get, withdraw these shorter boards and set to one side. Soak the area with water, immediately prior to the next steps. Sopping wet is fine, bone dry is bad. Then you drizzle about 3” of foam into the bottom of the void, so there’s an entire bed of it at the bottom, left / right / centre and front / back. The slower the foam comes out of the gun the better the bed of foam will be. Then go back and forth from bottom to top to cover each piece of white EPS in the cavity as best you can. Then immediately drop the cut boards down into the wet foam, one at a time, applying foam to the back of each, and then setting it upright against the last; as the gap gets tighter you’ll be able to apply less and less foam, don’t worry about it, just get as much in as you can. Then fill the remaining gaps at the top and sides with foam and leave to cure for about 2hrs; you can force the foam gun nozzle down into the gaps to get it most of the way down, but don’t push on the canister! Do this obvs whilst the foam is all still wet. It gets messy so keep one hand on the gun handle and a glove on the other to move the boards about. Set the foam to come out slowly so you can squeeze the trigger without having it come out at a crazy pace; this is easier than trying to manage the job and be the throttle for the foam at the same time. Have some gun cleaner to hand for any cleanups. Prob a good idea to have some weight of some sort to keep the boards held down whilst the foam cures. Get a rubble sack or bin liner and wrap the underside of the door and the threshold, as the foam (when left unattended) has a life of its own and can spew out and get on to the things you don’t want it to. Keep an eye on it for the hour or two that the foam is still curing. Once set you can cut / neaten the foam; you’ll then have a rock solid basket ready to take concrete backfill. Use 10mm aggregate, or just use Mapei builders screed (which has fibres in it) and back fill as required. Once cured, cut the taller boards back so suit. Using the “Marmox BLT” method will leave you with a series of XPS boards which are sitting down on the substructure, and that’ll be good enough to go barn dancing on. Yee-ha! 🤠. The end.

There will be nothing left of the boards by the time you wrangle them to the void. We’re currently installing them (22mm) on a clear open roof, and all you have to do is say the wrong word and the corners or T’ / G’s are fecked. These are a good choice, they are a plus, but you getting these under there, in one piece, to do that job, ain’t gonna happen. If you think that preventing repeat cold bridging on a cold (unheated) floor will make any difference, stop. It won’t. Just put some strips of XPS on top, and raise the floor by the thickness of that XPS, lifting the infill insulation to the same height. Focus the time, money and energy you intend to use up on under-slinging that wood fibre board, on draught-proofing, as cold air infiltration trumps all the insulation in the world. Don’t waste time and money for only microscopic improvements is my 2 cents.

Just put the common (C or L) and the switched wire (L1) together in the same terminal and see if they come on and stay on.

Looks like you'll end up popping a few tiles off, and then drilling down with a 600mm sds bit at 10mm dia, and then resin bolting the wall pate down. You know the only other option is to cut some slices out of the interior......

My money is on the dimmer. Can you swap it out to a regular switch and se if the lights stay on and function normally? My bet is they will. Remember that dimmers have a max rating, but more importantly a min rating too, so these needs to be chosen to suit the load exactly.

Ouch! Ready mix all day long, even if barrowed in.

I’ve been at this for > 30 years, and my ass still goes through various differing diameters whilst the wagons are backing up; at that time the opportunity to check / change anything has completely evaporated.

Hi. How much is astronomical? People have very different ideas of costs etc in my experience.

I’d go level -3-5mm as your target, and then SLC each room to get it spot on, if you insist on DIY. Or pay a liquid concrete company to do the pour and admit this is a huge undertaking to get flat first time as a DIY project. Some battles you can’t avoid, others you can pick and choose. Professionals will pour this in one go and get it pretty damn near perfect for you, with zero stress, plus the onus is on them to get it within their stated tolerance.

Better to use bits of batten going floor to ceiling with white paint and a datum marked on it? Can use a full length attached to the ceiling timbers and then cut and wiggle free just as the concrete goes hard enough to take foot traffic over walking boards? EPS marker blocks will likely gets smashed / knocked off as the pour goes ahead, with zero time / opportunity then to reset them. Once a pour begins, you ain’t stopping it! Battens are then going nowhere, so with that and the perimeter insulation set up as datum’s the stress should be somewhat removed. Don’t do this, always have this higher than the pour, with a fat permanent marker line drawn on it from a laser line, and then cut off the excess later. If the pour happens to spill over the top (accidentally) then it’ll drop down and bridge your original DPC. Where your original DPC is, I’d black jack the area, 100mm below, and 100mm above as insurance, as once you’ve poured there’s no going back. Use a 75% water / 25% mix of liquid DPM product to prime the areas that you intend to then brush the liquid DPC on to, as brushing onto friable masonry that has not been ‘sized’ will be a pita and it’ll pull off very easily. Priming will allow the product to soak into the surface, providing an excellent key for the surface applied layer(s). A good few £££ to go on this, but I’d be doing this if it were my place. You might find that the dilute mix will go through a cheap electric HVLP gun, like one for spraying fence panels with preservative, which would make life a lot easier. If that works, just make a larger amount of the diluted mix so the gun is constantly ‘wet’ and you can refill without having to measure the solution each time; if the black jack begins to cure in the gun you’re fecked. If you set this job out, and prepare yourself, you can likely do this in one sitting, but if you’re 10% off in the prep and sequencing then it could very well go 2 pairs of tits up. No need for 100mm, just use 25/30mm PIR and then the expansion perimeter / edge insulation either side for your expansion relief. That edge insulation towns corners just fine, so aim to have the middle of the PIR directly where the door will reside. No need to install the conduits afaic, and I’ve been doing these jobs for decades. All you (actually) need is simple foam up-stands there, but they get battered during a pour. I’d say stick with the block of insulation there and use that to get the doorways poured cock-on, (as you’re DIY’ing).

Ok, and has it blocked yet, eg you’ve had to rod or jet it? At nearly 50% stagnant water you’re not yet In need of replacement drainage, as this can be lifted and reset to remove the depression, but you’ll likely need to take up the concrete at the width of the gate to allow you to excavate (by hand) the soft crap our and backfill with new, MOT sub base, and then replace the path. If it’s still useable then you can put this job off for a while but obvs not forever, but as the survey stopped short of the connection my fear is this may now be weighing on the connection to the sewer / manhole and that will eventually just shear off. If you act sooner than later the pipework could possibly be saved. Not megabucks saving to be had but pointless wasting more money by delaying further, if you have the spare beer tokens to fix it now. Plus, the last of the weather is with you vs having to do this in the worst of it, if it then fails completely. That day is coming, btw. The concrete can be disc cut to minimise damage to the surroundings, but are you sure the rest of the concrete hard standing is not on the move too? Disconnecting the path from the surrounding concrete may relieve some of the burden on the pathway, so that could be a long term insurance against the surrounding continuing to settle and the path not (possibly) following suite again.

I think those star shaped heads, on the valves where the pipes connect, are possibly hand-tightened cover caps. If these are like other weird & wonderful manifolds that I’ve encountered over the years then you remove those to expose an Allen head grub screw to adjust the flow. I could be wrong, and they may simply be the tap heads used directly to open / close. Only one way to find out…….can the OP try turning one and see if it comes off? There are isolation valves on the supply (one blue tap and one chrome knob type one alongside) if you want to shut down and isolate before explorations begin.

How long has it been like this?

Hydraulic resistance is a law of physics though?

Sorry. This is poor advice. Hydraulic resistance, aka the path of least resistance, play a huge role here. Leaving them all wide open will leave the issue to remain. It needs to be balanced, end of. I suggest the OP tries my suggested cure and reports back.

I’ve done a few projects with these cathedral type aspects, and have supported the clients with lighting design / electrical installation etc. Check out plaster-in up lights; I’ve used Tornado lighting and the results have been great. Lots of light but no obvious source or offending lightbulbs to stare directly at. For this client I installed 4 small surface mounted uplights at the base of each ‘spine’ and then you’ll see the pockets along each wall which is where I fitted the plaster-in units. Some other examples for your information.

@Gus Potter Just got to the hotel, pint of Neck Oil slipping down a treat. Thanks again for providing my bedtime reading. If I can stay awake…..hell of a long day today but getting there now, thank feck!

Happy days

Stainless from Telford, ditch the hideous suggestion of sacrificial anodes (🤢🤮) and enjoy a long happy life, you and your UVC. I’ve only ever seen one stainless UVC ‘pop’ catastrophically, and that was installer error. Your installer is a wise man, reward him with hot bacon and cold beer.

Cut some strips of XPS to give some thermal break? https://gb-home.co.uk/products/insulation-boards-xps-under-floor-heating-thermal-6mm-10mm-20mm-30mm?variant=39814976995405&country=GB&currency=GBP&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21193699419&gbraid=0AAAAApWtJjx38HziVW3HhIEbeXyiDe0yZ&gclid=CjwKCAjw_fnFBhB0EiwAH_MfZngO4IA5zvonhpp8uS3AgAxJJrg1r7kJT4xwhIwhEav0kHkFrMzqVhoCR-IQAvD_BwE

If the WC pipe drops down, and then disappears underground, then you may have to provision for rodding access at the rear of the WC, if the BCO is the most pedantic git on earth. Just tell then the lid to the boxing in is removable and you can rod down there, by using a T with a rodding eye at the outlet of the pan instead of a bend. Then box the lot in and enjoy your life.

B Regs will tell you that you 100% defo do NOT need an AAV, if the invert is <1300mm from the pan outlet to the bottom of the manhole it connects to. Furthermore, you wouldn't benefit from fitting one anyways, as the long horizontal run is a natural air break; this means no vacuum can occur so no air needs admitting.

Just close down the 2 or 3 rads nearest to the boiler, by around 20%, and see what results that yields.

Ah, yes! I read it as they are creating a warm roof, but you're right it's already warm. Well spotted chap!! 50 lashes for me.