Jeremy Harris

Welcome. Probably best to clear up some of the terminology, I think. i stud is an internal wall metal framing system. The main timber frame external wall choices are traditional solid timber frame, I beams, or twin stud. I beams were originally designed to be used as joists and rafters, as they are very stiff in bending, but have been adapted to be used for walls, as they thin web of OSB between the two structural members significantly reduces thermal bridging. Twin stud is pretty similar, two standard studs spaced apart by noggins that, like the web in a I beam, reduce thermal bridging. None of these methods of external wall construction have any impact on running services, as the space between the timbers ends up being filled with insulation. Space for services will usually be provided by adding a service void inside the frame, made from battening the inside of the external walls. When it comes to floor joists, the choice is really between solid timber, I beams or posijoists. Solid timber and I beams need to have holes cut into them for plumbing, wiring, etc to run through, posijoists have a steel web frame holding the top and bottom timber parts apart, so everything can be threaded through the spaces in that.

You also have MBC in Gloucester, who use a twin stud frame build up with pumped cellulose insulation. We have one of their houses, and are extremely pleased with it. Build details are in our blog, in the link in my signature below.

+1 to the above ^^^ I'd very definitely want to see weep holes to drain what amounts to a gutter all around the periphery. Sooner or later the edge sealant will fail again, for sure.

I was really pleased to read the article on your website, showing how "you" had diagnosed the fault and repaired this valve. It was very heartening to read this, and to watch your video on the repair, especially as you made a really special effort to give credit to all those in this thread that actually did 99% of the diagnosis for you, and gave you detailed instructions on how to repair this. Yes, I am being very sarcastic. I don't suggest anyone bothers to read the article or watch the video, as there was no mention at all in either of the very detailed help received from the members of this forum. The closest was "I've gone online and tried to investigate and find the solution". I just loved the "as part of our investigative journey, we think that the problem is with this motorised valve". You knew diddly squat about it; pretty much all the "investigative journey" was other members of this forum taking the time to help you determine the cause, buy the right part to make the repair and even give detailed instructions on how to use a multimeter. The closest to any credit for the very detailed help received from members here was "I am not a trained professional, have simply followed instructions online and suggestions from forums". This was followed up with "there was a bit of diagnostic work we had to undertake", when in reality it was members of this forum doing most of that diagnostic work. Finally, the video shows work on live terminals/dangling live wires, much of which is just stupidly dangerous, and something even a trained electrician would avoid if at all possible. When making off any potentially live termination ALWAYS isolate the power and do a dead test first. Never, ever, allow live wires to just dangle as shown in the video, and only work on live wires when there is absolutely no alternative, and then wear appropriate PPE to reduce the risk of electric shock. Also, never allow part of a live conductor to be exposed in any termination, the insulation MUST always extend far enough into it so as to reduce/remove the risk of accidental contact. The comment about the terminations "dropping off" indicates that they were not properly crimped in place, too.

Our house is timber frame, well insulated and has MVHR. The MVHR does reduce the amount of heating needed a fair bit, around 30% or so less heating is needed because of the heat loss it saves, but that's not the greatest benefit. Far and away the greatest benefit is the superb air quality. Every room is always fresh, with no drafts, no pollen (it is filtered out by the MVHR) and no lingering smells at all. We both sleep a lot better, because of the much improved air quality. We can even dry clothes indoors, very quickly, just by hanging them up in the utility room, and we never get any condensation anywhere in the house. I couldn't go back to living in a house without MVHR now.

There are a few here who have built for under £1,000/m², but they are very definitely the exception, rather then the rule. Some. like @Declan52 and @nod, are in the trade, and have done a lot of work themselves, and maybe they live in areas where stuff is cheaper. The flip side is that we also have members here whose builds have come in at closer to £3,000/m², maybe more, but again they are the exception, rather then the rule. If I had to guess at a reasonable figure to expect, then I'd say between £1,500 and £2,000/m² is around the right ballpark. Getting down below £1,500/m² requires a fair bit of DIY work, and also means shopping around a fair bit to get the best prices on stuff.

I've merged the two duplicate threads and deleted another duplicate one.

Exactly my thoughts, and one reason why I now carry a small bottle of IPA/water mixture plus some sheets of kitchen roll in my jacket pocket, so that I can give them a wipe down before handling them. That, together with sticking rigidly to the "don't touch your face" rule when out and about will probably significantly reduce the risk of infection. Might also reduce the chance of just catching a cold, as the transmission path for rhinoviruses is much the same as that for this corona virus.

The calculation isn't easy, given the wide variation in grid CO2 emissions from day to day and even hour to hour during the day. Probably the best way to look at it is to estimate your total household emissions and subtract the emissions saved by the PV generation, to get an idea of the true impact. I was asked to give a talk in our village hall a while ago, about our build (turned out to be surprisingly popular - standing room only). When putting together the presentation I tried hard to think of a way to enable people to visualise CO2 emissions. The best thing I could come up with was to convert emissions that were saved, both from designing a low energy house, and the saving from PV generation, into trees. A mature tree sequesters roughly 20 to 25 kg of CO2 a year, in the form of carbon locked up in the timber. The SAP calculations for our house give a CO2 "emissions" figure of -0.9 tonnes/year. This equates to the CO2 sequestration from about 40 mature trees. All those who knew our site could see that we couldn't possible fit 40 trees on it, so it was pretty clear that our house was, at least in terms of CO2 emissions, less harmful to the environment than if it was planted with mature trees.

If you want barking mad when it comes to employers and travel, then it's hard to beat the terms of my job when I was working in Scotland. The job spec was for me to be based in Scotland (West Freugh, near Stranraer) and work three days a week there and two days a week in London. The really daft thing is that my boss specified that the two days in London had to be Tuesday and Thursday, so I worked Monday in Scotland, drove up to Glasgow airport at ~05:00 Tuesday morning, got the shuttle to Heathrow, then a 45 min tube ride into central London. I did the reverse on Tuesday evening, getting back to Glasgow at ~08:30 and then driving home to Portpatrick (about an hour a half). Wednesday I'd be working at West Freugh all day, then back down to London on Thursday, etc I did this mad schedule for about 3 years until my boss in London was found naked in his office one Monday morning, having been locked in over the weekend. He was sectioned and diagnosed with some severe mental illness that meant he never came back to work. His replacement took one look at my travelling expenses (I'd managed to get a BA silver frequent flyer card, just on shuttle trips) and changed my work pattern so I worked in London on Thursdays and Fridays, with an overnight stay down there. Back then I was still eligible for overtime, and all the travelling time meant that I bought a new car every couple of years, just from expenses. Pretty knackering, though, all the same.

Good luck!

I've had LED lighting installed in this house, and in our old house, for several years now. I've not noticed any loss of illumination at all. The older CFL lamps that I replaced with LEDs in the last house definitely did reduce in light output after a year or two, though. My experience has been that LEDs seem to fail pretty catastrophically when they do fail, and either just stop working or sometimes one or more LEDs in an array will die, creating a dark spot. I've yet to see any failures in this house, and all our lights are LED. Most have been in and working here since fairly early in the build, so are now around 5 years old. We've had one failure, a small, "filament" type globe LED lamp that I fitted to a Tiffany bedside table light. That failed about a month after I fitted it, and I replaced it with an identical spare and it's worked fine since. Most of our LED lights are fairly inexpensive ones. The standard "bulb" type ones came from Screwfix (none have failed yet) and the panel lights in the kitchen/dining room ceiling came from China (they were dirt cheap, so I bought far more than needed, so have loads of spares). The only problems I had were with a mismatch between some 12 V drivers and some MR16 LEDs, that was caused by the drivers being designed to run halogen lamps. It turned out that they delivered high frequency (~20 kHz) "AC" (really a pulse train) that upset the slow rectifiers in the MR16 LEDs. Changing to 12 VDC drivers fixed that problem, and also got rid of some bad radio interference that these drivers created.

The panic buying thing, along with the daft wearing of surgical masks (which offer the wearer pretty much zero protection from infection) is just a consequence of all the fear that's being stoked up by the media. The reality here in the UK is that seasonal 'flu has already killed more people this year than this new virus, as have many other other infectious diseases. Our local supermarket had sold out of hand wash stuff, and my wife's reaction was to assume that this meant that the majority of people never wash their hands, and have suddenly decided they need to (not a bad idea, but it does make you wonder a bit). Building sites are probably not a major risk, for a few reasons. The virus most probably doesn't survive on surfaces outside for very long, and those who are used to having their hands dirty when working are usually also used to not putting their hands near their face when working. Add in that many people may be wearing work gloves, anyway, and that porous materials are generally poor at transmitting the virus, and the risk drops still further. Most likely places on a site where transmission may happen are probably communal rest and refreshment areas. My experience was that most of those on our site chose to go and sit in their vans for tea, lunch, etc, even when I'd sorted out somewhere to sit inside.

One thing to watch is that the SMMT only report data from manufacturers that are members. This creates a bit of an issue with Tesla, as they have refused to join the SMMT, so consequently their sales are classified by SMMT as "other", meaning they tend not to show in some of the statistics that SMMT publish.

This is another duplicate post, best to stick with just the one thread on any topic, as it gets a bit confusing having multiple threads asking the same question. The original thread is here:

Welcome. I fitted an aluminium pole (a 5m length of 2" diameter, 14g aluminium tube) in the corner of our plot and fitted a timelapse camera on the top. It worked well, but my choice of camera wasn't great, so the resulting video wasn't that good. This was back in 2013 though, and there are better cameras around. The Brinno seems to give very much better results than the cheaper one I used. I arranged the mounting on the pole with a hinge at the base, so I could lower it to change the batteries in the camera and swap out the SD card. I still have the pole around the back of our garage and could dig it out and take some photos if that may help with ideas.

The Apollo Gem is another one with a wireless sensor: https://www.apollosolarelectric.co.uk/products/ Has a 30m to 40m indoor wireless range, according to the spec.

In principle it sounds like a good idea, to try to quantify the impact of any development on light at any existing dwelling. I suspect that it will turn into yet another excuse to charge exorbitant fees, though.

It seems the foundations have been undermined, along with the loss of about 30ft of their garden. The local authority refused the planning application on the ground of flood risk. The planning inspectorate rejected the appeal on the grounds of flood risk and the Welsh Assembly chose to over-rule both.

Pretty much our entire house, foundation system, twin stud wall panels, roof, windows etc came from Ireland, along with the great guys that put it all together on site. Flooring came from either Taiwan or Turkey, most of the sanitary ware and basins came from Turkey (Vitra), the MVHR came from Denmark and the slates on the roof came from Canada. About the only local product was the larch cladding, that was grown about 6 miles away, at Fonthill Estate and milled about 3 miles away at Ansty Sawmill . . .

I suspect that a fair few buyers just aren't clued up as to what is, or is not, a flood plain. I doubt that it's something the developers spell out to them in words of one syllable, the chances are that buyers may be told that there "isn't a problem".

There are a great many more options than just the GU10 downlighter LEDs available. The main issue with 230 VAC GU10 LEDs is that they are a bodge, in that the base has to contain a shoehorned in LED driver, plus GU10 downlighter fittings were originally designed for halogen lamps, that like to run very hot. As a consequence, driver failure due to overheating in the base can be a problem with GU10s. An alternative, in the same front face form factor, is to use MR16 12 VDC LEDs, with an external power supply. An even better alternative for downlighter type LEDs is to look at using low profile panel lights. We started out with MR16 LEDs in standard downlighters, with a separate 12 VDC power supply. They are OK, and we still have a few, but I changed all the ones in the kitchen/dining room for flat panel LEDs, and we've found that they give a much better spread of light. There are dozens of makes of these, all fairly similar, with a choice of light colour. They also come in a range of different sizes and shapes, ranging from small round ones that are pretty much a direct replacement for standard downlights, to large rectangular panels. The round 6 W ones are a pretty good compromise, as they are a bit larger than a standard downlight, but still look fairly neat, and they give significantly more light, over a wider arc, than downlights. I made up a test panel and fitted samples of 6 lights to it, with a rotary switch so that I could select each in turn. This made it easy to compare lights and decide which we wanted.

That's a pretty good illustration of the way some developers can manipulate the planning system. Be interesting to see how the Welsh Assembly responds, given that they seem to have over-ruled the sensible planning decision made by the local authority, that was upheld on appeal. I can't see how the local authority can be blamed for this, as it seems that they acted sensibly in refusing the application. Just goes to show what happens when politicians get involved, no doubt suitably "lubricated" by the developer.

OK for just a single room, perhaps. However, you wouldn't really need all those fuses for just a single room. We have a lot of 12 VDC LED lighting, and the power supplies needed tend to be around that size per room. The small study I'm in at the moment is a fair example. It's a bit under 3m square, and the 12 VDC LED lighting draws about 4 A. Our kitchen is bigger, and has two sets of 12 VDC LED lights, and each has a 5 A power supply, so 10 A in total (the lighting only draws about 7.5 A, though). It depends a great deal on the power of the LEDs that you plan to install. I have some LED strip lights in the garage/workshop, and they are roughly the same light output as a traditional daylight fluorescent tube, but a bit over half the power consumption. This is a fairly good indicator of the power you may need, as a single 5ft fluorescent tube may be rated at around 60 W, and you could probably get away with using about 35 W to 40 W of LED lighting to replace it (roughly 3 A to 3.5 A at 12 VDC). I had four 5ft long fluorescent tubes lighting my old garage/workshop, plus a couple of lights over the workbenches, and in the new garage/workshop I have 6 LED strip lights, cutting the power needed by about 40%. That's still a total of well over 100 W, though, around 9 A at 12 VDC. Some of our 12 V LED lighting is powered with supplies like these, that aren't too expensive and are fairly easy to use: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Universal-12V-5-10-15-20-25-30-50A-Switching-Power-Supply-Driver-for-LED-Strip/263824483495?hash=item3d6d2a24a7:m:m_qbFJUVUpO1n2ghbSBEEuw They need protection over the terminal block area, though. I 3D printed covers for a couple of ours, to make them a bit safer when installed.

You could, but it would have a high vampire drain, and wouldn't be able to deliver much current at 12 VDC. PC supplies tend to have high current outputs at 3.3 VDC, and may be 5 VDC, but can't usually deliver much current at 12 VDC. This means that the unused outputs will cause the front end of the power supply to draw power from the mains, even though they aren't used, adding to the losses. You can buy high power 12 VDC switched mode power supplies fairly cheaply. I have a fairly small 15 VDC one (turned down to 13.5 VDC) that keeps a bank of 12 V batteries charged up, to run all our house network stuff (modem, router, switch, etc) and that cost around £15. One to run a few rooms of LED lighting would probably only cost around £20 to £25.