Jeremy Harris

I ran mine from a water tank a few years ago and can confirm that it's doesn't seem to use vast amounts of water. If I had to guess I'd say between 1/3rd and 1/2 as much water as the hose running at full blast.

I don't think that the big environmental campaign groups have done as much as they could, either. Greenpeace sort of started off with laudable intentions, but then seemed to get deflected away into acts of what seemed to many to be eco-terrorism, which, together with their strong anti-nuclear power stance didn't make them as influential as they could have been. If they had been prepared to accept that change needs time, then they could have almost certainly achieved more by being pragmatic, and accepting that during the change process there would need to be compromises. I'm not convinced that the founders of Greenpeace, Irving and Dorothy Stowe, would have taken such a hard line as the organisation ended up taking a few years after their first protest. The association of Greenpeace with illegal action made it pretty hard for some people with a genuine interest in the environment to support them; for a time they were a prohibited organisation as far as my employer was concerned, for example, and I suspect that restriction may have also applied to people working in other organisations, too.

Years ago I shared an office with a chap that was seconded to us from the Hadley Centre. One thing I learned from chatting to him was that climate science was hellishly complex. We had a few chats over cups of tea about it, but it not being close to my area of expertise not much of the detail sank in. I did end up being convinced that the evidence for anthropogenic climate change was compelling, and that if applying Occam's Razor to all the available evidence, ACC seemed to be the most likely explanation.

If it helps, the this spreadsheet will estimate UFH performance and give the approximate heat loss: Floor heat loss and UFH calculator.xls UFH is always less efficient than radiators, as there will always be heat lost downwards into the underlying ground, or air space with a suspended floor, but adding insulation can reduce the heat losses a lot. We have 300mm of EPS under our floor, and that reduces the UFH heat loss to around 8.5% (so for every £100 we spend on heating, around £8.50 is wasted through the floor). If we had no insulation at all under the floor, then the losses would be a great deal higher

I think there would be, had I fitted it before we got our completion chit, yes. IIRC, I think they need to be restricted to 6l/min, but I'm not sure without checking. As we're not on mains water it doesn't matter, anyway. As an aside, I can highly recommend these hand-held "bum washers", they seem to me to be a far more hygienic option than toilet paper.

Yes, a picture would help. Off the top of my head I think it should be possible to build a goal post frame around the opening to support the cut away stanchion. We have two of these in timber to support the intermediate king posts that take the load from our ridge beam.

I hadn't a clue about the details of the water use regulations until we were first ready for our completion inspection. A retired bloke was brought back in, didn't like our build at all (his first comment was that the foundations were unsafe - they'd already been inspected twice and signed off) and he then went on and on about water usage. I argued that we weren't bound by the regs (which is what I'd been told by this blokes boss) because we had a private water supply, so could perfectly legally abstract up to 20,000 litres per day from our borehole if we wanted to. He made me fit flow restrictors everywhere, and at first refused to accept that I could DIY this, he wanted it done by someone who was "accredited" (there's no such accreditation, AFAIK). In the end he grudgingly accepted that if I photographed every fitting, showing a restrictor in place, that would be OK. In the end he didn't do our completion inspection, and the chap that did took one look at the evidence I'd prepared on water usage, declared that he wasn't interested as we had a private supply, and signed the house off.

I did a load of calculations for using gabions for a retaining wall, back when I was thinking of using them for our big retaining wall. Not hard to design a stepped retaining wall with them, TBH, as there are guides from some of the manufacturers available. Their big advantage is that they are pretty low tech, easy to DIY and can be filled slowly by hand. They are also probably the cheapest way to make a reliable retaining wall.

Actually you're wrong, and anyway you have absolutely no idea what I did or did not do, you've just decided to invent something to fit your own views. What I actually did was this: I was curious about historical CO2, so did a quick web search. The second result that came up was to Wikipedia (here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere) The first graphic was a link to a Nature article (the link and graphic I posted). I trust Nature (having read it for most of my life) so noted the non-linear time scale (which you then pointed out after I'd already done so as a caution in my post) and posted the historical mosaic plot that goes back ~450 million years.

FFS, I just quoted the first link in Nature I found, as is, no editing, no BS, just evidence.

As you know, the primary issue I've been having has been the controller periodically not calling for charge. My fix has been to turn the controller off and on again to reset it, much as you've just done. The slightly worrying thing is that your controllers look like the new ones that have the new power relay and, I thought, the new firmware to get around the failure to charge issue. That's slightly worrying, as I have a new controller on it's way to me this week, that I suspect may be the same as yours. Out of interest, do you know the model of controller you have? I've been told that the new controller that's heading my way will have the B_100 firmware, although I can't find the firmware version anywhere on our controller.

Rather than believe something posted on YouTube, or whatever, that hasn't been scrutinised and peer reviewed (and robust peer review has been shown to be pretty effective at weeding out bad science), I'd prefer to believe the peer reviewed data that's readily available, like this simplified plot of CO2 versus time (source, Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14845/figures/4) : The evidence seems to show that, historically, CO2 levels have varied quiet markedly, and only been relatively stable over the past 10 million years or so (bear in mind that this plot has a non-linear time axis).

If you follow the link above (https://thewalledgardendevon.wordpress.com/ ) and then click on "photos" on the top menu it takes you to a page with a link to a lot of photos. The direct link to all the photos is: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nigpic/sets/72157688294789963 (for all the construction photos) or this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nigpic/sets/72157704667571174 (for all the completed photos).

I'd opt for the biggest silencers you can fit (and afford) as my experience has shown that running without silencers was noisy, and with limited space I ended up having to make custom ones to fit. They are as large as I could fit in the space available, but we still get some very slight noise when the MVHR is running flat out, not annoyingly loud, but as the house is so quiet it is noticeable at times.

There's no Legionaires risk with a cold mains water pipe at all, unless you're on a private water supply or the cold water is coming from an open tank (in which case it shouldn't be used as drinking water), and even then the risk is very tiny. Mains water contains enough residual disinfection to ensure it remains bacteria-free throughout the distribution network, as long as that network remains sealed (i.e. no open storage tanks). Even then, it takes several days for Legionella to multiply at lower temperatures (say, around 20°C to 25°C) and a cold pipe will almost always have regular flow through it. The risk is no worse than a normal household going on holiday for a couple of weeks in summer, when all the pipework will get warm for days on end.

I'm guilty of it too. Some of the work I did took four or five times longer than paying someone would have done, and that cost us in all the hidden costs of the delay, like running two houses for longer, loads more 32 mile round trip commutes, etc. I'd have been better to have borrowed some money and paid someone to do a lot of the work, as it would have been cheaper, but at the time it was the last thing I thought of.

I have some bimetal blades for a multitool that will cut copper pipe without too much hassle if that would help. If anyone is after decent multitool blades for a reasonable price, then I can recommend these people, I've bought quite a lot of blades from them: https://www.saxtonblades.co.uk/fein-multimaster-bosch-makita-compatible-blades

How are rodents ever going to gain access? Even a house built to just meet building regs airtightness isn't going to (or at least shouldn't) have any holes large enough for a mouse to get through.

Should be pretty easy to do, as long as whoever does the design recognises that the house outer skin timber studs aren't load bearing. The extension shouldn't need to impart loads into the house outer stud frame, anyway. To maintain the performance of the house it would seem sensible to use the same twin stud construction method, presuming you want to include that infill space within the heated envelope of the house.

I'll PM you.

As a very rough estimate I'd work on a price of between £1500 and £2000 per m² of total internal floor area. Self-builders can often come in at, or below, £1500/m² with some DIY work, whereas a mid-budget turnkey build from a builder is more likely to be towards the higher figure.

I can confirm that there are new controllers being produced now. I should have mine, together with a new sensor array, some time next week. I'm aware of one new controller that's already been delivered to another customer, too. I have to say I've been impressed with the very recent contact I've had with Sunamp, they now seem to be taking things onboard and working to make improvements based on feedback from customers.

I make the decrement delay of that build up, using the standard method (values of Y and k calculated using EN13786/EN13790) about 6 hours.

Council tax, perhaps? We've built a similar sized 2 bedroom house, but primarily because we don't intend to sell it, and if we did the chances are that it would best suit another retired couple anyway. For us, 2 bedrooms is plenty, and the chances are the spare room will only be used very infrequently. A third bedroom would never get used at all, I'm sure.

FWIW we had a noise complaint, and the planning officer made it clear that me working on the house on my own was "construction" as far as the condition in our planning consent was concerned (as it happens it wasn't me working late that caused the complaint, but they assumed it was because of the time).