LA3222

Get one off FB marketplace...always loads of paslodes on there, no point buying brand new.

This looks exactly what I need, it will be interesting to see how you get on. I haven't the time to tackle this issue yet, hopefully by next summer!

I had to get G3 for Build control but to be honest as @TerryE said, these things can explode under certain conditions so I would have had it looked at anyway. Plumber spent 20mins checking it over and charged me £300 for the pleasure - still a big saving overall by doing it all myself. As far as servicing goes, its the PRVs and expansion vessels which need checking - easy enough to do DIY so no need to pay a plumber.

Agreed. My ASHP which I installed myself along with the UVC had two bits of 'plumbing' - Flow and Return. That's it, not sure why an MCS bod would need to do that?

I installed all mine myself then got spark to wire up. Had to pay a plumber £300 just for the G3 sign off for BC - was at my house all of 30mins checking it over. The beauty if pre plumbed is its a piece of cake...just dot to dot.

The sauna has a vent that extracts into the bathroom pretty much next to the mvhr extract, nothing in the steam room - just leave the door open once done and the moisture dissappears in short order with the MVHR on boost. There is a floor drain in there too.

I've put both a steam room and sauna into my Build- did them myself and they are easy enough. Steam room is just tanked and tiled all around, sauna is foil lined all around and then clad. They both quite big, I have 3ph so used 3ph 9kW heaters for both - sauna one sits in the sauna, steam one in the loft. Both take about 20mns to get to temp - all in they generally run for about an hour a time and use about 5kW.

A other one for drinking softened water here. It goes to our quooker tap and the fridge water dispenser. It's fine.

@Mikey iirc i ordered all of my lintels from london lintels - will have to check. Catnic do bespoke lintels, I told londonlintels what I wanted and they ordered from catnic. Catnic did a drawing and sent it through for me to sign off on pre manufacture. I've attached what they did for me. ALN20-466 Customer (1).pdf

So he plans on laying circa two slabs an hour.......🤣

Nay drama @Eric I sorted it. As a follow up in case anyone else has this drama the solution was to literally beat the proverbial out of it with a rubber mallet and block of wood. The frame is slightly over 70mm with the foil coating and the coupler was just under 69mm due to the foil wrap on one side. It would push onto one frame but doing so would pinch the opposing sides closed ever so slightly - so want started tight, became tighter. Solution was to knock the bottom corner in, screw it in and then work up, screwing in as you go. It took a while and a lot of brute force - point to note is that the glass wasn't installed at this point. Wasn't my favourite task but then self building is full of rubbish jobs!

Now then, I have a French door with two side panels for the garden room.....today I have lost the will to live; no matter which way I try, I can't for the life of me seem to get the coupler strip to fit properly. I can get one side on fine but can I buggery get the side panel to click into it - its so snug it won't budge. I've tried fitting it to the door first, then the side panel first, levering it in, sliding it in, wd40, plumbing lube...I'm done. Does anyone have an idea of how to get this bloody thing to join properly?

Cheers for the reply bud. I need to do some thinking about the setup- I was already thinking along the lines of a separate string. I can't recall what I put out there but I think it's a 3.6kW invertor with around 2.2kWp currently connected to it (small bit of roof). The ones on the garden room are going to be an East/west ish split whilst the others are south east ish but with an overhang shading slightly. In short, I don't expect to ever have all panels kicking out max power at the same time so with my fag packet thinking at the minute, they will be within the capacity of the invertor. The part of the puzzle I am trying to understand better is the wiring from a to b. Sounds like it's a non issue, I will look in more detail at the setup at the invertor end.

Long story short, I have an invertor on the side of the house and am in the process of building a garden room at the bottom of the garden. The cable run from one t'other would be about 100m. I want to stick another 3.64kWp onto the roof but don't want to add another invertor there. Is it feasible to add them to existing invertor and if so, how large would the cable need to be to keep the voltage drop within limits?

Stick some compriband in from the outside which will give you the watertight seal but allow vapour through. Then foam up to the compriband from inside...try not to overfill so you aren't trimming the foam too much then apply airtight tape across the window to the reveal. Should only be about 10mm on the frame which will get hidden by the plasterboard. Look at the illbruck 'i3' system and you'll see how it all works together.

Yep, he did. Loads of threads on it as he put one of the pre gassed units in at the top of his hallway if I recall correctly. I read a lot on this forum before I started building and learnt a lot. There is some bits on here which I think are pushed out with rose tinted glasses on. My house is 280m2, air tightness is well into passive and same for insulation. The super insulted and airtight house works against you in the summer as once the heat is in its a pita to shift. I have ufh in the slab downstairs and in a 50mm pug screed upstairs.....running the ASHP in cooling mode is pretty pump and not enough to keep the house cool. It certainly helps but is insufficient by itself. I would advise all new self builders to consider additional cooling mechanisms for the bedrooms, whether that's FCUs, aircon or whatever. The climate is supposedly only going to get hotter🤷‍♂️

@wardie9025 A timely thread. A ducted FCU keeps coming back into my mind, even with the ASHP pumping cold water around it still gets warm upstairs. When I started building I very nearly put air con in but I didn't because lots of folks on here talked about using the UFH pipes and how that was good enough - that was, until J Harris actually bit the bullet and installed air con and then the thinking changed. Too late for that ship on my house so I am looking to do the same as you. I haven't spent a great deal of time looking but it looks like a hard setup to find information/suppliers. I have the means to tap into a condensate drain and power in the loft. I was thinking like yourself, suck air out of the hallway and add vents into the bedrooms - should be sufficient to drop the temperature to a comfortable level to sleep. FCU rads seem abundant but I do not want stuff on the wall, not so much for a ducted unit that could sit in the loft so I'm hoping this thread will yield some useful pointers.

Think I went 400mm centres for the batten to the SIP. Fixing the plasterboard to the battens is just standard fixing spacings for plasterboard - can't remember but a quick Google will yield the answer.

I have bulbs failing...they sometimes flicker....go dim for a few weeks, return to full brightness for a bit and then give up the ghost completely. Been happening since day one, in two years I have probably swapped out nearly a dozen bulbs - no idea what the issue is.

If you are attaching anything to the OSB face of a SIP panel it should be screwed. I built my house using SIP and I spoke to the technical bods at Kingspan to confirm what type of fixings to use and was told screws and they referred me to another company who had done all the testing for pull out strength etc. It was them who told use screws long enough to protrude beyond the osb face by 20mm. I'd add screws to your cladding battens if you haven't already clad....I'm sure the nails will do the job, it would just be belts and braces.

Battens should be screwed into the SIP panels and screws should protrude around 20mm beyond the face of the SIP so you'd be looking at around 60mm for screws.

I didn't suggest all insulation is equal, my point was/is that once you decide what airtightness and u value you want to achieve etc then any build method can achieve those values. The key factor in any build is the quality of workmanship and not the method of build. You can champion a particular build method if you like bit a crap tradesman can still make a hash of it. There is a fabled blown cellulose company championed on here and I recall early in the days of buildhub there were a few on here having some not insignificant issues. The 'best' build method can be cocked up, equally you cam lump for brick and block and achieve a great build given quality tradesmen and the right method. Timbre fraction.and cold bridging...whatever. The vast majority of timber frame construction will be your standard 140mm stud and not larson Truss. SIP has far less timber coldbridging than standard timber frame. Decrement delay is another load of nonsense championed on here. I did all the calcs with my build early on ref Dec delay etc and iirc my build was 14hrs plus....means feck all because eventually the heat will get in and guess what, all that insulation now works against you by trapping the heat in. My build is something like 0.4ach, 0.1 for u values and triple glazed windows. My top tip for future self builders, get the air tightness and u values as low as you can, put plenty of solar on the roof and stick air con in the house - I considered it and wish I had....the solar would mean it costs nothing. My house is significantly cooler than outside but like I say, with windows etc eventually the heat will get in and then you're no better off than a normal house.

I have a SIP build, I am not sure why folks who don't have one are dismissive. The one thing I have learned through doing a self build is probably the single most important thing to take into consideration....the method of build is irrelevant, you'd be splitting hairs and if you standardise the ask I.e insulation/airtightness then king becomes cost; it is the application of the chosen method which is key. A supposedly great system can be Total shite if cobbled together by a bloke with one eye and three digits missing off each hand.p You can achieve really tight specs with whatever method, it's the effort in monitoring that is essential.

@ProDaveLooks like a lusso stone bath which will be why it's £2k.

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