Jeremy Harris

You can get those outdoor cable covers in white, too, if you hunt around. I've just spotted that they are cheaper and available in multiples on ebay, search for "cable wall entry white" and you'll find them. You could use one indoors as well if it's not in a critical location, and that would then allow a 40mm hole inside (it's the 32mm external diameter of the round ones that restricts the internal hole size).

It's not too hard to do, but does need some special tools. I made up a very long 6mm timber drill, by turning down a drill shank, drilling the end of a length of 6mm studding and brazing the two together (I did it this way to maintain concentricity). This is long enough to drill through around 370mm or so, IIRC. The other tool I made up was a turned up cone of acetal, that is a very tight fit into the end of a bit of 20mm plastic cable conduit. The technique is to find a suitable location, away from studs and battens, and drill a long pilot hole that slopes slightly down towards the outside. I did mine from inside to outside. Next, drill a larger hole with a hole saw (say, around 30mm diameter) through the inner skin only (in your case the Fermacell). Then drill a 20mm diameter hole with a hole saw through the inner timber vapour proof board. Next, go outside and repeat this process. Use a 40mm hole saw to drill an oversize hole in the external render and carrier, then a 20mm hole in the outer OSB skin. The cellulose will stay packed in place. Then comes the fun bit. Starting from either inside or out, whichever is easier (I went from inside to out) poke the bit of 20mm plastic conduit, with the conical end, into the hole and try very hard to aim it at where you think the hole is on the other side. I found it useful to take a vertical and horizontal offset measurement from datum points when I had the very long 6mm pilot drill in place (I took the long drill bit out of the chuck to take these measurements, whilst it was still poking right through the wall), as a guide to get the angle right. The cone on the end of the conduit will compress the cellulose out of the way, and the point of the cone should make finding the hole on the other side easier (although it will be fun, I can assure you............). Once you have the conduit through, push it out enough so that you can remove the cone. Smear some sealant (I used Sikaflex, but CT1 would do as well) around the outside of the conduit, on the INSIDE bit, close to the 30mm hole. Push the conduit back in so that the sealant bonds to the vapour proof board well. It helps to rotate the conduit a bit when doing this, and use loads of sealant to try and get a bead around the joint with the inner board. Leave the conduit oversize, so it pokes out too far at this stage. Next, go back outside and squirt some low expansion foam around the annular gap between the conduit and the 40mm hole in the rendered face. It's worth masking up the face of the render to avoid getting foam on it. Let the foam go off, then trim back the foam and the conduit, so that it's flush with the wall. On the inside, do the same, use foam and trim it back. When all has cured, fit the cable and squirt some low expansion foam as deeply into the conduit as you can get from the outside, to seal around the cable, then bond an outdoor cable cover on with a downward facing slot, like this one: http://www.satgear.co.uk/fk21 On the inside, do the same, but fit one of these types of cover: http://www.satgear.co.uk/fk22 . Fit the inner cover before the foam has cured - it should just slot down inside the conduit. If you're stuck, I can post you the long drill I made up, plus the acetal cone that fits into 20mm conduit.

I'm with couple of nuts on the end and a quick blob of weld on the end of the stud. You can then get a decent spanner on them too try and screw them out.

We extended the counter battens down to the base of the internal "L" on the uPVC fascia, over the top of the folded down DPM over the EPS, and then nailed the uPVC with black plastic headed stainless ring nails. You could probably bond the uPVC , neutral cure silicone and PU Adhesives like Sikabond adhere very well to it, but you would need to find a way to hold it in place for a while. We've found that the clack headed nails aren't noticeable at all, you have to look hard to see them. Worth leaving a decent expansion gap between sections, though, and only bonding on one side of the cover strips at joints, as uPVC , like aluminium, has a pretty high coefficient of thermal expansion.

Just a word of caution about delaying the draw-down of an agreed mortgage. To part-fund our build I needed to borrow around £100k. Rather than get a self-build mortgage (because they are expensive and attract massive fees from the few brokers that specialise in them) I opted to mortgage our existing house (we had no mortgage on it, and intended to sell it after the build anyway). I shopped around, and Santander, who happened to be our bank at the time, agreed to lend £100k without any problems, We paid the valuation and set-up fees, and were given full approval for the mortgage within about a month. I told Santander what the mortgage was for, and that we wanted to delay the draw down until we had used most of our savings, and they were fine with that. We went ahead and signed a contract with the main frame and foundation contractor, committing us to a stage payment plan. Come the time for the second stage payment, I went to the bank and asked to draw down the agreed mortgage. Santander then told me that their mortgage policy had changed and that they were withdrawing the offer, and wouldn't even refund our fees..................... This caused a load of stress, as we were committed to paying the contractor and had insufficient funds available. In the end I was able to secure a mortgage from another lender, although it cost a fair bit more in both fees and interest. It was one of the most stressful points of the build. Needless to say there is no way I would ever deal with Santander again. We did eventually get our fees back from them, but only after the best part of a year battling them via the regulator. We didn't get any other form of compensation for the additional costs incurred because of Santander's actions. The moral of the story is never, ever, trust any lender. Until you actually have the money in your account, assume that they will renege at the last minute and have a back up plan in place if they do,

I also provided a fall arrest harness etc, mainly for the PV installer. He didn't use it and had an accident when the ladder up the roof that he was working from slid sideways. He was damned lucky, in that the ladder slid towards the centre gable, so just smashed the valley GRP moulding and stopped there. Even after that accident he wouldn't use the harness, but I did insist on him fixing ladder braces to the scaffold planks and tying the ladder securely so that it couldn't move sideways before he went up there again. You cannot force someone to use PPE, and if you provide it then you have to back that up with the appropriate certification. If you provide something like a fall arrest anchor point, then you are also wholly responsible for ensuring it is adequate, so there are some risks in providing PPE on site. My general policy was to have signs highlighting the PPE requirement, keep a bucket full of basic stuff (gloves, safety glasses, helmets) on site, plus a first air kit and eye wash station. Beyond that any PPE was for my personal use only, and if used by anyone else was at their own risk.

If you watch the programme, then very often an unexpected pregnancy occurs part way through the build. It's happened enough times as to have been remarked on by a fair few people!

It probably was Kevin McCloud. In several of the programmes he's made completely clueless remarks about stuff that defy the laws of physics. He's a designer, and as such has always been very much focussed on the design and artistic aspects of stuff, which is fine; he just doesn't seem to understand the technical stuff very well, and would be better admitting as much and getting someone else to do it.

Not exactly got a great track record, has he? Grand Designs is full of BS, like the "eco" home that really has a SAP band F rating (goodness knows how they managed that), wildly inaccurate claims about the performance of products, and to top it all, his development at Swindon showed a staggering lack of competence when it came to basic design, plus some of the daft features he came up with just failed to work. I think he should stick to presenting TV programmes, rather than try an compete with the big developers, as I doubt this project will end well..........

They are, but the outer seals are never 100% waterproof, they work by keeping most water out, and allowing whatever seeps through to drain down and out at the base of the outside of the window, via a small drain. If the water flow rate against the window exceeds that which it's designed for (heavy blown rain), then there's a chance that the amount of leakage through the outer seal exceeds the ability of the small drain to take it away, so water may then build up and make it's way through somewhere else within the frame, or even under the frame. I still think it's worth doing a hosepipe test if you can, to eliminate or confirm that this is where the water is coming in. As an aside, my car never leaks when parked outside or driven in heavy rain. It does leak water slightly through the two front doors when it's pressure washed, though.

It is. A cheap spring-type bender inserted inside the conduit, and you can then just bend it over your knee. You need to over-bend it a bit, to allow for the spring back, but it's easy to get pretty good bends after you've done a couple.

I'm sticking this here as I've been asked the question via PM, and rather than just give an answer to one member, I thought it might be more useful to stick the answer somewhere were others can also read it. Back when I was first looking at doing some rough "what if" type comparisons, between different build systems, windows, insulation and airtightness levels etc, I wanted a fairly quick way to be able to change one element, say the wall U value, or the efficiency of the MVHR system, and see what impact it had on the overall heat loss of the house. This model was never intended as a substitute for something like PHPP, which is very comprehensive, it was just intended to give a rough idea so that I could see the scale of some of the changes, and work out where best to spend our limited budget. Having written the spreadsheet for our build, others expressed interest in using it, so I tidied it up and let others have a copy. Because lots of people seemed to want to use it, and also because it generally seemed to give results that were within 10% or so of more complex models, like PHPP, I put a copy of the spreadsheet up on our website, as a free download: http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Fabric-and-ventilation-heat-loss-calculator-Master.xls This post is a set of very brief instructions on using this spreadsheet. First some health warnings. It was never intended to give an absolutely accurate prediction of heat loss, and as such it takes no account of solar gain, wind or incidental heat gain from occupants and appliances. As a consequence it is generally a bit pessimistic, in that it will usually tend to slightly overestimate the heating requirement. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it can be useful to have a bit of heating capacity in reserve for exceptionally cold weather. To use the spreadsheet, you first need to gather all the data needed to complete the white cells. Most of this should be self-explanatory from the notes in each section. The U values, for example, should be the true U value of the component, including any additional thermal paths, so the window U value needs to be the Uw value, not the Ug value, and the floor U value needs to be adjusted for any thermal bridging around the periphery. All the areas are the internal wall, floor and ceiling/roof areas, not the external ones. The model does not account for geometric thermal bridging at corners, but in a well-insulated house this effect should be very small, anyway. Some of the most difficult to obtain data can be the mean daily air temperature and the mean minimum daily temperature, for each month. This data is available for your location on the Met Office website, but posting a link seems a bit fraught, as the Met Office keep changing their website and this makes any link out of date fairly quickly. All I can suggest is that you work your way through the historic data on the Met Office website and find that closest to where you live. Once all the data is filled into the white cells on the spreadsheet, you should get some numerical data in the green cells, plus two graphs will appear. The graphical data is often the most useful. First, there is a basic heat loss versus outside air temperature plot (the Heat Loss Vs Delta T plot). You can use this to determine how much heat the house will need to maintain the room temperature that you put into the spreadsheet (it defaults to 20 deg C, but you can change this to whatever you feel comfortable with). The red line is the total heat loss, the other lines are there so you can see which elements are contributing the most to the total. If you want to know how much heat the house will need in order to maintain a temperature difference between inside and outside of 20 deg C (say a 20 deg C room temperature when it's zero deg C outside), then just go up vertically from the 20 deg C point on the horizontal axis until it meets the red line, then go across horizontally from this point to the vertical axis and read off the heating needed in watts. The other plot shows the heat loss per month, and this one can be a bit confusing, because, like the other plot, it takes no account of incidental heat gain, from solar heating, appliances, occupants etc. The best way to use this is to print it off and pencil a horizontal line across where you think you wouldn't have heating on. For example, If you turn your heating off in April/May and on again in September/October, then draw lines across at about the point where these dates cross the other lines and call that your "no heating" point. The mean heating needed for each month will then be the difference between those lines and the values on the plots. You can quickly work this out by just noting the amount of incidental heat gain, indicated by the pencilled horizontal lines, and then subtracting those values from the monthly values. Be aware that this is really a very rough estimating tool, as there will be big peaks and troughs in daily temperatures within those months that will effect the heating required. In most respects, the heat loss vs delta T plot is more useful for sizing a heating system. Hopefully the above should make some sense to anyone trying to use this tool.

My existing system uses a PHE upstairs, with the buffer downstairs, and the PHE is always pre-heated by thermosyphon action, so I would guess the same would be true if I just swapped the buffer tank out for a Sunamp Stack fitted with PCM 38 cells.

This time..............

I just used plastic conduit and metalclad double gang sockets. Cheap, quick to install, and good enough protection for the cables in this application. It's not as if the conduit is likely to be hit by something like a forklift, where metal stuff may offer better protection. I did fit a bigger CU and add contactors for the power circuits. I have three radial power circuits, all protected at 20A, all switched with 25A DP contactors. The contactors are all switched via a common 6A protected supply, via two emergency stop buttons either side of the workshop, plus a DP illuminated switch by the personnel door, next to the light switch. This allows all the socket supplies to be isolated by either hitting one of the E stop buttons or by switching the DP switch by the door. My main reason for doing this is that there will be two milling machines, a lathe, metal bandsaw, mitre saw etc in there, all capable of causing serious injury. I wanted a way for me, or my other half, to be able to quickly isolate the power if there was a problem. The DP illuminated isolator on the supply to the E stops and contactors is there mainly as a way of just quickly turning all the sockets (except the electric door socket) off when the workshop isn't in use, as a fire precaution more than anything else.

Could it be that the scaffold boards are acting as a gutter and directing water at one or other of the windows/doors? In very heavy rain I could imagine that something like a hosepipe of water might be being deflected sideways. Best check would be to dry it out, then get a hose and direct it at an area, wait for a while, and see if water seeps in.

If it's at the bottom of the tank then it will make no difference if the thermostat is 450mm or 270mm, it will still be measuring pretty much the same temperature. For those unfamiliar with French tanks, they are often configured very differently to UK ones. I had to repair one at a friends place we used to stay at, and found that the French ones are more like the US ones than UK ones. The one I fixed was enamelled steel, for example, and was horizontal, rather than vertical, and bolted to the inside wall of the garage.

Removing trees from the site, prior to development, and as a required part of the development (don't mention the survey!) is a zero rated activity, so just give your tree firm a note with the planning approval reference number and you should be fine. If you don't yet have approval, then with luck you should just be able to use the description of the site that will be on the planning application, with your name, as evidence that the work is a part of a development that will be zero rated for VAT. Costs specifically related to surveys only are not generally zero rated for VAT, hence the need for caution in the wording!

Snake oil indeed. I think we've discussed these before, but the fact they cannot defeat the laws of physics, despite claims that come very close to stating that they can, seems to escape a lot of people. Most electricity ends up heating something in a house, hot water in a dishwasher or washing machine, compressed refrigerant in a fridge freezer, domestic hot water in a cylinder or a kettle to make a cup of tea. There's a fixed equation that determines how much energy is needed to do this, and decreasing the voltage (which is what these things do) just increases the time taken, and that actually increases the electricity used, because the losses are higher. Take a kettle with 1 litre of water in it at room temperature, 20 deg C. To heat it to 100 deg C will take a fixed amount of energy, ignoring losses. That energy is pretty straightforward to work out, it's the specific heat of water x the volume x the temperature change, so in this case 1.161389 Wh/K/l x 1l x (100 deg C - 20 deg C) = 92.9 Wh. If the kettle element is rated at 2 kW at 230 VAC, then at an electricity supply voltage is 240 VAC the kettle element will deliver about 2.091 kW (2091 W). The boiling time is the energy required / power (ignoring case and evaporation losses for the moment), so will be 92.9 Wh / 20191 W = 0.046 hours = 2.76 minutes. If the supply voltage is then "optimised" to 220 VAC, the kettle element power reduces to 1.91 kW, so the time taken to boil 1 litre of water from 20 deg C to 100 deg C (again, ignoring losses) = 92.9 Wh / 1910 W = 0.0486 hours = 2.92 minutes. So, the kettle takes longer to boil with the "optimiser", but uses the same basic power to boil the water (so no energy saving). BUT because it takes longer to boil the heat losses from the kettle case and the evaporative heat losses will increase. At a conservative estimate, the kettle boiled with a voltage optimiser fitted will use around 5% MORE electricity than one without. The same goes for every single appliance that heats something, be it a domestic iron, or the compressor in a refrigerator, as well as all the water heating elements found in things like washing machines etc. How these rogues get away with sort of con trick is beyond me. I would have thought that they must be coming very close to breaching the advertising regulations.

Here it is: http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Fabric-and-ventilation-heat-loss-calculator-Master.xls

We don't have E7, so every kWh of output from the ASHP costs between 3.5p and 5p, depending on COP. LPG costs around 5p to 6p per kWh, I believe, so the ASHP is a bit cheaper to run, at least for low temperature heating.

Yes, it was power floated, in the main, but because the concrete was delivered late (a pretty familiar tale, I'm sure........) the final finish was by hand, out of deference to the neighbours at around 10pm.

I found that a small buffer tank was pretty much essential with our low heating requirement (UFH) and small ASHP. Without the buffer the ASHP would short cycle, with it the ASHP runs continuously at it's lowest power for an hour or so ever other day in winter, maybe an hour or so every day in very cold weather. At it's lowest modulation level the ASHP draws around 600 W from the supply, and delivers around 1.8 kW to the house.

I worked out ours. Our DHW usage follows a pretty set pattern, two showers, both in the morning, about an hour apart usually. The first uses around 100 litres at 38 deg C, the second uses around 70 litres at 38 deg C. Our incoming mains water is about 8 deg C, so in total the showers use around (100 + 70) x (38 - 8) x 1.161389 = 5.92 kWh. Next came hand washing and hand washing up. Both the basin and sink taps deliver around 6 litres/minute, and the hot water is usually around 45 deg C. The total time per day they are used is around 15 minutes, so that gives: 15 x 6 x (45 - 8 ) x 1.161389 = 3.867 kWh. Our total DHW usage is therefore around 5.93 + 3.867 = 9.797 kWh/day. That's on the high side, because our showers are quite long, and at the moment the shower flow rate is quite high. I may well put back the shower flow rate restrictor, and that would reduce the shower DHW use by around 20%.

I had an ex-commercial garage 3 phase compressor for a while. I ran it on a second-hand three phase converter box (one of the ones that just used big chokes and capacitors) and it worked fine. That was around 35 years ago. Modern 3 phase converters are far smaller and probably far more reliable, too. My small milling machine uses what amounts to a 3 phase motor, a brushless DC motor with a speed control drive that is just a variable frequency 3 phase supply. My lathe is about to have it's motor changed for a similar set up, just because it's nice to have constantly variable speed with maximum torque at any speed.