Jeremy Harris

This inspector does seem radically different from most. Years ago, building inspectors had a reputation for being a complete PITA, but I was pleasantly surprised by both the head of the LABC locally, the inspector that did the majority of our inspections and the most senior inspector they had who made a point of coming out to do the final inspection (driven by curiosity, on his part, I think). Certainly none of the inspectors had seen our form of construction before (MBC Twin Stud), nor had they ever seen a passive slab, with all the load being borne by a thick layer of EPS, and no concrete in the ground at all. However, they were keen to learn, to the extent that they asked if I could give them a short continuing professional development lecture on site, so they could better understand this particular method of construction. We did have one interim (retired and brought back part time) bloke who was old school, and a PITA (on his first visit, which was post first fix, he declared that he didn't like the lack of any "proper foundations"...........), but overall I found that they were pretty accommodating, especially when faced with details that were clearly way different from many of the standard details they were used to. However, this was pre-Grenfell, and I strongly suspect that I'd have been asked for a great deal more evidence if I was doing it now. I remember in the early stages being surprised when I asked when they wanted to do the next inspection, assuming it would be before first fix (this was just after the frame went up) and the inspector said that he thought I knew more about how the house should be built than he did and he was confident to trust me to make sure everything was done OK...............

Might be worth pointing out this information from your manufacturer, that states that the history of SIPs goes back to 1935: https://www.kingspan.com/gb/en-gb/products/engineered-timber-systems/structural-insulated-panel-technology/knowledge-base/sips-the-history-of-a-truly-modern-method-of-cons

I'd urge caution before connecting mains to the motor. The motor in our roller door runs from 24 V DC, yet has what seems to be a "mains" lead coming from the motor to the control box, with harmonised "mains" colours. Without knowing what's in the control box there's no way for sure of knowing whether this is a 24 DC reversible PM motor or something else, like a switched capacitor start/run reversible 230 VAC motor, or even a 230 VAC universal motor with switched field and and armature windings. I suspect one of the wires may be the top limit switch, too, that tells the control box when the drum is fully wound up.

I'd also go for a topo survey, plus buy the map section from the OS as a base map (your topo surveyor may do this for you - I supplied mine with the OS base map). The big advantage is that both the OS base map and the topo survey will be in digital format (ideally choose something universal, like .dxf) and so can be read into any CAD software and used to accurately put a whole stack of drawings together. You can print a .dxf file as a .pdf if you need to. You can do your own flood risk assessment, it's not hard and the data is available free from the EA if you ask. I used one master base map, from the OS (not expensive) and then very accurately (to the mm) overlaid things like the topo survey, the ground works layout of drains, walls etc, boundary locations, master reference points for laying out, the house and garage outline plan drawings for planning permission, the site drawings for planning permission, the site location drawing for planning permission, the detailed drainage and services drawing for build regs approval, and even now I'm still using that master plan for positioning the planting of screening and ornamental trees along one boundary and doing the detailed garden design. I also used it to produce CCTV sight line drawings, to show that our CCTV was (at least originally) only looking at areas within out own boundary. It's incredibly useful to have one, super accurate (within a few mm) base plan, far more useful than I would have thought initially. Our topo and boundary survey cost £450, but I provided the surveyor with my licensed copy of the OS base map that I purchased on line from the OS.

If it's like the Harvey, they it will seriously throw a wobbly if there is any backflow pressure. I did this to ours once, when I had the 100 litre PV on the outlet side and ended up with a house full of very salty water! For some reason, if there is the slightest pressure differential the wrong way across a Harvey, then it just doesn't flush out after a regen cycle and ends up pushing very salty water around the outlet pipework when regen stops. I only found this out when I made a cup of tea and it tasted foul, then checked and found that the water was salty. That's why I re-arranged our system to have all the PVs on the inlet side of the softener, so that no matter what, there would always be the right pressure differential across the Harvey, with the inlet pressure always being higher than the outlet. I have no idea why the Harvey does this, and I didn't bother to do any further checks, as it was pretty easy to just rearrange the pipes. My guess is that I may have been able to fix it with a NRV on the outlet side of the Harvey. As the Harvey works just like all the other water softeners, in terms of the way the valves on a single cylinder operate (they operate in exactly the same order as the ones on our sand/manganese dioxide iron filter - that actually has a water softener control head), then I suspect that the same effect may well occur with other softeners if a PV is fitted on the downstream side of one.

IF you can get a mobile signal.............. I'm hoping that the network enhancement that EE are undertaking, as a consequence of wining the emergency services communications contract, may actually give us a usable mobile signal. We can't even reliably make voice calls at the moment, even leaning out of an upstairs window.

Looks like a simple manual control, but we need the make and model to be able to give advice. The motor will be bidirectional, either a DC motor, a universal motor with field/armature switching, or a capacitor start/run motor with reversing wiring. All can use a four wire basic connection to the up/down switch, with any suitable power supply, including a genny. Our roller door uses a DC motor, with a power supply box and relays to activate each direction, but at a guess, I'd say yours may work like the winch I have for my loft hoist, a four wire capacitor start/run motor, with the windings switched for up and down, plus limit switches in the door itself. The very rough info in those photos suggests that this is the case, but it's hard to see from those photos where the power should connect.

A contractor employed by the local authority, Hills, but they have just re-let the contract to a company called FCC Environment, and I've not been there since the change. The thing that annoys me is that there is often working, or easily repairable, stuff dumped there, yet they have a policy of refusing to allow anything to be taken off site. The really daft thing is that they actually de-gas freezers on site - I've seen the guys sucking the gas out into a storage tank, with rows of degassed freezers, with their pipes cut, just sat there. I went and asked if I could have the compressor from one and was told that I couldn't, as it was against council policy. A few months later our old freezer packed up, but the compressor was still OK, so I just cut the pipes, allowed it to de-gas and removed the compressor (I wanted it to make a vacuum pump to de-gas mixed resin and play around with vacuum impregnation moulding of some carbon fibre parts). They had no problem accepting my butchered old freezer for scrap, even though I'd allowed the refrigerant to escape to the atmosphere in order to remove the compressor....................

FWIW, I've found that setting our pump cut in pressure to 3.5 bar and cut off pressure to 4 bar seems optimal. 4 bar is within the pressure rating of both the Harvey softener and the Sunamp PV, and the half a bar pressure differential is not at all noticeable. We have two 300 litre pressure vessels on the pumps side, in parallel (this was just so that they fitted the available space) plus a 100 litre pressure vessel right before the water softener, but with an NRV between the treatment system and the 100 litre vessel. In total we have around 350 litres of stored and pressurised water, plus a bit in the filter tanks. The 300 litres in the two 300 litre pressure vessels is enough to run a backwash cycle on the filter (which is scheduled for between 2am and 3am every 4 days) whilst the 50 litres in the 100 litre pressure vessel provides local reinforcement a metre away from the input to the softener, in an attempt to minimise pressure drops. We also have a manifold system, and it works OK. Both bathrooms, the utility room and the downstairs WC all have a pretty fast hot water response time, maybe ten seconds or so. The greatest delay is the kitchen, which is the longest run, and that's around 20 seconds.

What goes around, comes around. My philosophy in life is that if you try to help others whenever the opportunity arises, then some of those people will go on to help others in a similar way, too, and gradually we'll get to a point where altruism trumps greed. 99% of the time it doesn't take much - like the 5 minutes It took me to dig out that PRedV. I know you will do things like this for others from time to time, and with luck they will go on to do the same for lots more people, so the virtual circle grows. All it takes is for more people to realise that money is not the be all and end all. It's one reason I also strongly support the Freecycle enterprise locally, and also why I'm so depressed by the way that the local recycling centre won't let you take anything away to re-purpose yourself.

IIRC, we paid around £125 for a permit to dig across the road, without closing it. Had we needed to close it then I think the cost was going to be around £1000. Our ground works guy was approved to do the work and did both trenches in less than a day, as the council sent an inspector around to check that the road surface was up to the required standard at around 4pm. Both lanes were single track, and all I said to the council (on the advice of our ground works chap) was that we would have a steel plate standing by, and should a vehicle want to cross we'd just drop the plate over and get the digger out of the way, with a minimal delay to traffic. Worked a treat, and we got away without having to close the road officially. The daft thing is that when we were removing the best part of 1000 tonnes of waste soil etc from the site, we were closing the lane completely for around 30 minutes, every time we loaded an 18 tonne truck (and there were lots of those, almost running in relays).

I have a feeling this may well be a Grenfell Tower backlash. I'm hearing rumours that some building control organisations are significantly tightening up on anything that may possibly, under any sort of definition, be called a "new method of construction". Basically they are arse-covering. They are, apparently, running scared because the potential liability where non-standard details have been approved and it's then backfired (as in the Grenfell Tower cladding) might well be massive. Nothing has changed, but building control has been exceedingly lax in some areas in recent years, and this may well be a company, or perhaps the warranty company they are tied to, being excessively cautious as a knee-jerk reaction.

We had to dig across two lanes of about the same width as that, one trench to put the relocated underground power cable to our neighbour in (it used to go overhead from the old pole on our plot) and another across the other lane to put our treatment plant outlet across to the stream. I was asked were asked whether we needed to close the road when I applied for the licence from the local authority, and replied that we'd put steel plates down so vehicles could still pass. They were happy with that, so there was no road closure order needed. IIRC, had we had to close the road there would have been a very hefty additional fee............

Too late, I've just been up in the loft and found it, and it's now in the back of my car! I have no need of it, as our pressure is now set by the pressure regulation system for the borehole supply. It's a Caleffi, adjustable one, that was notionally set to 3 bar, but has been adjusted down, IIRC. They are easy to adjust, there is a screwdriver slot in the top. The model seems to be this one: https://www.ondemandsupplies.co.uk/22mm-caleffi-pressure-reducing-valve-ca-533651/ The instructions are here: https://www.caleffi.com/sites/default/files/file/581035.10.pdf

Taxation is subtly different, though, as it's generating revenue for public services, not generating revenue for a series of business enterprises (although one could argue that there are a lot of accountants and financial advisers who make a pretty penny from advising the wealthy as to how best avoid paying tax!). In this case we have the anomaly where some types of energy supply have a fixed availability charge, and some don't. There's little intrinsic difference, for example, between the supply of central heating oil and the supply of electricity of gas. All have production/generation facilities and all have pipeline/cable distribution networks. The only real difference is that oil has a truck for the last few miles of the delivery network, but that is a pretty small part of the overall fixed/distribution cost part of central heating oil supply, probably on a par with the cost of meter reading for gas and electricity.

I'm pretty sure I have a spare adjustable, 22mm fitting, PRedV in my may come in handy box. We had it fitted originally to reduce the pressure to 3.5 bar when we were running the thermal store (which had a 3.5 bar limit). We took it out when we fitted the Sunamp, and also reduced the pump system pressure to 3.5 bar. If I can find it I'll chuck it in the back of the car and you can grab it when we meet up in a couple of weeks time.

Would some self-adhesive neoprene foam tape help? I've just used some of this to make a "bug seal" around the hinged wooden lid of our stone treatment plant pump chamber and have been impressed with how well it seals.

I'd go for cellulose, for several reasons. It has a fairly high heat capacity, so increases the decrement delay. It tends to improve airtightness, and reduce wind-wash, and last, but not least, it's pretty good as an acoustic insulation material too.

That's interesting, as I took our heat exchanger out for a check this summer, as it had been running for around three years. It was spotless inside, with no trace of any dust. I did try blowing an airline at it, to see if there was any dust lodged deeper in than I could see, but nothing came out. Our fresh air intake filter is a pleated paper G7 one, so pretty fine, but I will admit to having cleaned it, rather than replace it as recommended, a few times; on average I seem to be able to vacuum clean the filter maybe twice before it needs replacement. Is it possible that dust is getting past the filter, somehow? Our filters fit into U shaped rails quite tightly, and are slid in from one end when the filter door is opened. There's a strip of foam neoprene at the far end as a seal, plus the thick neoprene foam lining on the filter access door that acts as the other end seal. Worth checking that the filter seals are working OK, I think, as cleaning out the heat exchanger seems to be a bit of a pain. The instructions for ours say to wash it in warm soapy water every few years, but the fins look very delicate and easily damaged.

Welcome Kenny. We have discussed CDM to death here before, as it applies (or rather doesn't apply in the main) to self-builders. A look through the relevant threads where we had some fairly warm debates about CDM, may help, in terms of what we've already bottomed out on here: In particular, this post in that long thread sums up the collective position on CDM with regard to self-build, I believe, and was written shortly before we closed the thread because it had run it's course: There is also a useful summary derived from that long thread here, and I, for one, would be grateful if we didn't risk opening up the CDM issue here again, as it caused a lot of wasted time and effort last time around, when some tried to use it as an excuse to try and extract more money from self-builders or add to their burden of responsibilities:

FWIW, I think bringing parking charges into the argument may be a bit of a red herring, anyway. Parking charges seem to be set to cover the cost of providing car parking, be it by retail outlets, specialist parking facility providers or local authorities. They are not set to recover the distribution and fixed costs of retailers, AFAIK. The closest analogy we have to electricity and gas supplies to the home are oil and LPG supplies to the home, and fuel supplies to filling stations for vehicles. None have a standing charge, although some LPG suppliers may charge a storage vessel rental charge, if the vessel isn't purchased outright. AFAIK, this rental charge only covers the cost of the vessel, not the cost of their distribution and delivery network. Why do we have this strange anomaly where it's acceptable for a fixed daily charge to be levied just to make electricity available to a home, irrespective of whether that home uses any electricity at all?

I did some testing at our old house, which has a fairly high water pressure, over 5 bar and the only restriction is that the rising main is 15mm copper. The pressure is so high that all the taps were very sensitive, pretty much all or nothing, with a lot of splashing, so I fitted a PRedV on the incoming main some time ago to drop the pressure to 2.5 bar, which made the taps a fair bit more usable. That house has a combi boiler with a 28 kW (I think) DHW capacity and no power shower. The incoming mains water temperature seemed to be around 7 to 8 deg C all year around. The idea was to try and find out what sort of real world flow rates we get from outlets. What I found was than an unrestricted kitchen mixer tap gave around 9 litres/minute with a 2.5 bar feed, but was easier to use with a 6 litre/minute flow restrictor, as that reduced splashing still further with no significant impact on the things like the occasional bit of hand washing up. Wash basins would flow at around the same rate as the kitchen tap (one flowed a bit higher) and again benefited from 6 litre/minute restrictors, as these made the taps more controllable. With a basin mixer set for normal hand washing the flow rate was around 3 litres/minute. The shower and bath both ran at the same flow rate when on full, a bit over 11 litres/minute. The shower was pretty good, well over double the flow rate of a 9 kW electric shower. We had an electric shower before we fitted the combi, a 9 kW model, and that would only deliver around 4.2 litres/minute. This isn't surprising, as 9 kW can only raise the temperature of water by around 30.6 deg C at 4.2 litres per min, and when I measured our shower temperature right at the head is was around 38 deg C for a reasonably comfortable shower. I also did some experiments at the new house with flow restrictors, having been told by a building inspector to fit them. The pressure there is a pretty constant and controlled 3.5 bar. Again, I found that fitting 6 litre/minute flow restrictors on all the taps, except the bath,was beneficial, in that it made them easier to use and caused far less splashing. The shower head has finer holes than the one at our old house, with three adjustable spray patterns. Even on the widest spray pattern I found that the pressure was a bit uncomfortable, and when I measured the flow rate I found it was just a fraction over 10 litres/minute. I played around with restrictors, and found that fitting an 8 litre/minute restrictor gave a pretty good shower, with less stinging from the finer outlet holes. With the shower head switched to the narrowest, most forceful, setting, it was still uncomfortably powerful - a bit like a jet wash. My conclusion is that 10 litres/minute is probably as much as most need for a pretty good shower. That's nearly two and half times more flow than a 9 kW electric shower, and there are many who are happy to use them (although I reckon they are a bit too feeble). For a bath, the higher the flow rate the better. Our bath will only get used very occasionally, and holds around 70 litres when reasonably full, but with only a 12 litre/minute fill rate it will still take nearly 6 minutes to fill. The limit seems to be within the taps themselves, but I cannot find any removable restrictors. The pipework to the bath taps shows there is plenty of pressure even when they are full on. As an aside, our old 28 kW Valiant combi could deliver around 13 litres/minute at a reasonable shower temperature of around 38 deg C, so could only manage a single shower, plus, perhaps, a basin or kitchen tap just cracked open for hand washing, at the same time. If you want to run two showers at 10 litres/minute each, with an instant heating source, like a thermal store, combi boiler or Sunamp, then you need a power delivery rate (assuming no pre-heat, an incoming mains temperature of 8 deg C and a shower temperature of 38 deg C), of 42 kW. I found that the hottest shower that I can comfortably withstand is round 40 deg C, and I prefer it to be about 36 deg C. Ours stays set at 38 deg C because I can't be bothered to adjust it after my wife has used it.................

The real issue here is the archaic practice in the UK of using ring finals. It's a hang over from the high cost of cable back in the 1950's, I believe, but there is absolutely no excuse to continue wiring new houses like this in the day and age. I was sorely tempted to wire the house as I have my workshop, all radials, with an all RCBO CU, but didn't as space was too tight where the CU was going to go (bad planning on my part). At least with an all radial scheme you have an indication when a line or neutral gets disconnected somewhere - the circuit stops working. When the same happens with a ring final the circuit carries on working, but with the cable potentially overloaded, as the protection device will have too high a rating (outlet ring finals in 2.5mm² T&E will typically have 32 A protection, radial finals in the same cable will have 20 A protection).

Apart from the political (and public) outcry, there's a good argument for just increasing the cost per unit to a level to cover all the fixed and variable costs and have done with it. Not only would the tariffs be easier to understand, but those who use the most would pay the most, those that use very little would pay very little. As the unit price would be higher, there would be a greater incentive for people to reduce energy use, just as there is with fuel prices and the economy of cars.

I binned the pipes that came with our softener, too, for the same reason. I found some 19mm bore flexis that fitted, and 19mm is around the bore of 22mm pipe, so they are effectively full bore. Quite why Harvey sell these with such small bore pipes as standard is a bit of a mystery.