Jeremy Harris

Interestingly, ebay is how I found APC Pure! I ordered some stuff (may have been methanol, or maybe toluene) from ebay and it came from APC Pure, so I found their web site and found I could buy direct, with a lower overall delivery cost if I bought a few 5 litre containers of stuff at the same time.

I've pretty much settled on buying most solvents I need from these people, online: https://apcpure.com/ They deliver quickly, and have a reasonable range. IPA is around £17 for 5 litres, plus they stock other useful stuff, like toluene (probably the very best solvent going for dissolving a very wide range of stuff) and acetone.

Having seen this done, I'm 100% with Nick on this! The power flush tank our guys used was around a 2ft cube of translucent plastic, with a massive pump and a magnetic filter around 5 or 6 times the size of the one in a Magnaclean. The flow rate when on full blast was more like a pressure washer than a circulating pump. The guys did say that one risk was that old steel radiators might develop leaks afterwards, from pinhole corrosion that was exposed by the crud and scale being blasted away, which gives some idea of the flow rate. It's a pretty noisy beast when running, with the flow noise very audible in all the rads as they were being flushed.

Thanks Nick. I replaced all the valves, fitted TRVs to all the rads at the same time (they didn't have them before) and installed a big heated towel rail in the bathroom, in place of a small rad, with no TRV. The installers power flushed the system and fitted a Magnaclean as a part of the install. The installers were fine with this, but that's not really saying much, as they turned out to be a right shambles when it came to fixing constant, recurring, faults with the boiler......................

You're right, I'd missed that they had relocated it, seduced by the statement in the other document that they had deleted it! Sometimes the people that write these things could try a bit harder to say something like "relocated to Section 1.18" rather than deleted................ Anyway, it looks the same as the old section 8 as far as I can see: Which is clearer, except that diagram 1.5 seems to be the same as the old diagram 29, with lines that indicate the bottom and top, rather then the centre line. I've edited the original post, but with strike through for anyone who decides to take me to task (yet again) over making an error, so what I originally wrote is still there to be argued over...................

Just an update, as my copy of Part M dates from the start of our build and there is now a new edition. The new edition completely removes the electrical outlet and switch height requirements, believe it or not. There was a consultation document released in 2014 stating that this section (section 8) was to be deleted, and in the 2015 edition of Part M it's not there. I've double checked to see if they've moved it into Part P, but Part P still says refer to Part M. So, as I understand it, the old 450mm and 1200mm guidance no longer applies and you can put switches and outlets where you like. If you want to check then this is the consultation doc referring to the intention to delete this requirement: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/354091/02__140731__HSR_Supporting_Doc1__Access.pdf which states: And the new Part M is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/540330/BR_PDF_AD_M1_2015_with_2016_amendments_V3.pdf Sometimes it's hard to keep up when things like this happen.......................

Just a quick question, if you're using horizontal battens for the service void, how are you going to run the cables in safe zones? It can be done, but it's more usual to run service void battens vertically, as it makes things a fair bit easier and allows the cables to be run vertically without obstructions. Edited to add: I've deleted the Part M reference and quote, as it referred to an out-of date requirement. There is no requirement for switch and outlet heights now, see new post below.

Or just buy a slip coupling, as this is designed specifically to do this, without the need to cut anything out: http://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-110mm-Black-Soil-Pipe-Slip-Coupling/p/435224

Nick, isn't changing all the rad valves also something Vaillant ask for when a boiler is fitted to an existing installation? I know that it was called for on ours, and I agreed that I'd supply and fit new valves and TRVs whilst the fitters had the system drained down (which was overnight, as they had to rip out the old system boiler, tank, cold tank, header tank and a lot of the loft plumbing). Again, I was told, rightly or wrongly, that the Vaillant extended warranty depended on this. IIRC, the three things that were essential to get the longer warranty were a power flush before commissioning, the fitting of a magnetic filter on the return, as close to the boiler as practicable and the fitment of new rad valves, including TRVs.

I've had much the same with heating. When I was looking around for an ASHP, many suppliers wouldn't supply just the heat pump, but insisted on selling a supply and install service. As I had cable ducts in place for power and control cables, two bits of 22mm pipe sticking out through the wall and a concrete pad for the thing to fix down to, I wasn't too bothered by paying what I thought would be a modest sum for a very simple install. All of the suppliers, without exception, wanted to massively over-size the unit and none would believe the heat loss calcs that showed that the house needed, at most, around 1.6 kW to heat when it was - 10 deg C outside, and that most of the time the heating requirement in winter was perhaps a couple of hundred watts, if that. I can understand this, as 99% of the time trades people will be working on houses that do have massively greater heating requirements, or that don't have things like very airtight/vapour tight external walls. Self-builders tend to be a minority, and many are focussed on building a home that not only meets their needs but that is almost certainly built to a higher performance specification than the majority of new homes today. The Bovis homes problems highlighted in another recent thread are pretty typical of the way the majority of new homes are built, I'm sure.

I can't remember exactly what the flow rates are on our UFH, but have a feeling they are only around 2 litres/min or so, per circuit, so around 6 litres/min for all three parallel loops. All those bends, plus the long length of pipe, does introduce a lot of resistance to flow.

I'd agree, but raised it only because there was no mention of a power flush being done as a part of the new Ecotec install, and I was led to believe that Vaillant would only give their extended warranty if this was done, as well as a magnetic filter being fitted in the return. If the system had been power flushed when the new Ecotec was fitted, then it seems very unlikely that doing another one would achieve anything.

My experience with having a Vaillant Ecotec fitted as a replacement for a ~30 year old system boiler was that power flushing was needed as part of the installation, in order to get the full warranty (at least that's what we were told). We did have the whole system power flushed and I was absolutely staggered at the amount of crud that came out. The magnetic filter in the power flush unit had to be cleaned off at least three times during the couple of hours or so it took to flush the system, and as far as I know the system had always had inhibitor in, as we inherited half a big can of Fernox when we bought the house and there was a Fernox tag on the old header tank. I can say that power flushing does work, though, as every year there's barely anything on the Magnaclean filter magnet now. As above, I can't see how it could just be crud causing a rad to be dry, it sounds very much as if it's disconnected to me, as Nick says. I've experienced a completely blocked rad, with a couple of inches of crud in the bottom, and even that was flowing a tiny bit of water, it just wasn't getting hot.

As Terry says, or you can just measure the return temperature to the boiler. If the return is over about 50 deg C the chances are it's not condensing much, if at all. Or you can measure the flue gas temperature at the outlet and see how hot it is. The flue gas temperature drops sharply as the boiler starts to condense. If doing this, then use a small temperature probe so as to not restrict the flue outlet.

One thing well worth thinking about is that no trades person is a mind reader, and many will quote on the basis of what they can see, what they are told and what they can guess based on their experience. Perfectly understandable, but for a lot of people self-building or doing major renovations, it's important to remember that only you have all the information about how the finished structure is going to end up. Also, it's still perfectly legal and OK to DIY plumbing, electrics and even gas, if the person doing the work is competent and if building control have someone competent to sign it off. BC have an obligation to offer this service, but we found that they just simply didn't have, or know of, anyone they could use to inspect, test and sign off either unvented plumbing work or electrical installations, and asked me, very nicely, if I could make their life a bit easier by using a Part P approved and registered electrician. Personally I'd NEVER DIY gas work, but, believe it or not, it is allowed in your own home, something I find staggering, given the other safety-related constraints we're under. I'd also never suggest that anyone undertakes any plumbing or electrical work unless they are competent to do so, and just reading how to do it on the internet, no matter how reliable the source, does not make anyone competent. As an illustration of how important it is for you, the self-builder or renovator, to understand how each trade best uses their skill and experience, so that you can specify a job as thoroughly as possible, I can give an examples of where competent (as in registered and qualified) trades people can be misled by not fully understanding what the building is going to have done to it after they've done first fix. I had quotes from 4 electricians to do the first and second fix internal electrical installation for our new build. All were given detailed and scaled electrical installation plans, with all outlets and key positions of things like the incoming supply, position of the CU etc, marked, plus additional key information, like the acoustic insulation in the stud walls and ceilings required to meet building regs. None of them had made any allowance for that insulation, shown clearly on the plans, when they got back to me, because when they walked around the inside of the house frame to price the job up it hadn't yet been fitted, for the simple reason that it's a pain fitting plumbing, wiring and ventilation stuff in around insulation, plus the internal wall insulation can't go in until one side of a stud wall is boarded at second fix. These weren't by any stretch incompetent people, in fact two of them I knew already and would trust implicitly. None of them had ever seen a passive house structure before, which isn't at all surprising, and all were surprised when I stressed that they could not make any holes in the external wall Durélis board inner lining, or clip cables to it; all cables had to be clipped up the side of the 50mm x 50mm service void battens. I also told each that I'd be fitting glued-on, over-sized, ply backing boards to space out back boxes to all the fittings that were going on the inside of an external wall, and that all such fittings were positioned on the plans so that they were adjacent to a vertical batten, to remove the need to clip cables to the airtight/vapour tight Durélis board inner lining. The guy I chose in the end was the one who was the most willing to work on a house that was a very different to anything he'd seen before and was also keen to learn about how a passive house is built and how it works. He was also more than happy to have me working as his labourer, and the two of us ended up getting on well together. One chap put himself out of the running, not because his price was too expensive, but because he was just opinionated and inflexible (and happened to be the oldest of the four, I think), and wanted me to change my spec for a few things, including not fitting a big combination plate for the TV "as it was against the regs", which was just untrue, plus stating that it wasn't an electricians job to wire 'phone extension cable, Ethernet cable or satellite TV cable, so I'd need to get someone else to do that. Curiously, he was also the one that argued with me over the phone when I asked him a question about the cable size he'd quoted for the run of high current cable, partly in insulation, with him arguing that it was fine to use 4mm² to feed a 40A RCBO protected radial to a cooker outlet, even when three quarters of that run was embedded in insulation. I didn't want to make things worse by pointing out it wouldn't even be OK for 40A if clipped direct. The other two I didn't end up using were OK, except one who insisted that he'd have to buy all the materials for the installation to be compliant, even when I explained that if he did that we'd not be able to reclaim the VAT (none of them were VAT registered). I think the reality was he wanted to make a bit on supplying the materials, which is fair enough, but he just didn't understand, or perhaps even know about, the self-build VAT reclaim rules. The key thing here is the point I've made elsewhere; only you know what you want, and what work is going to be done after someone has left the site and that might very well impact on the decisions they made, in good faith, when they did their work. It's the reason that I think it's very useful for anyone specifying work to have as great an understanding of what is needed as possible, as that way it reduces the chance of errors and increases the probability that you'll end up with exactly what you want, without things needing to be re-worked later. Even if you're not going to DIY anything at all, it's still very beneficial to have some understanding of what each trade needs to know in order to reduce the risk of later problems. I doubt there's anyone here who hasn't heard of, or experienced, a builder-related dispute, and I'd happily bet that the majority of those are because the customer didn't fully understand what they were asking for, or what the basis of a quote was.

I had samples here from both Simply Bamboo and the Bamboo Flooring Company, and apart from the labels on the back it's difficult to tell them apart; both look to be the same quality, possibly even the same product. So, I'd say go with whoever gives the best deal at the time. At the time we bought ours the Bamboo Flooring Company were slightly cheaper than Simply Bamboo, but it probably varies a fair bit from one month to the next and we'd have happily used the Simply Bamboo stuff if it had been a better price at the time. As above, it's very tough on saw blades, and I ended up burning out my 25 year old (!) circular saw right at the end of laying it, doing the very last rip cut down a length. Ripping planks down seems to be far and away the toughest bit, even with a decent TCT blade in the saw. I found that using Saxon blades in a Bosch multitool (these: http://www.saxtonblades.co.uk/index.php/fein-multimaster-bosch-makita-compatible-blades-c-29?osCsid=fdf642i9g9vv0to2tdmfd2m456 ) worked well for trimming around doors etc, as long as you use the hardened metal cutting blades. All their multitool blades seem a lot better than the Bosch ones, and they are cheaper, too.

Please don't worry about it, threads here inevitably end up with a life of their own, and often are more useful and educational or many because of that.

I have the Skyeskyns on right now, whilst typing this..................... The cheaper polymer that Peter W found looks good, and I can't see any problem with using it with UFH heatng mats. I'd probably lay a thin layer of adhesive, embed the mat into it, then lay more adhesive and lay the boards. I tended to put enough adhesive down or two or three boards at a time, and that would probably fit well with the width of the sections of heating mat.

Health warning - I've not tried this! When I was first trying to model how our UFH would work, I had a great deal of help and advice, from several sources. I found that some had found ways to modify TMVs to run at lower temperatures. As it happens I didn't need to do this, as the Wunda manifold I used had a TMV that work very well down to about 24 deg, then loses control at around 22 deg C. Somewhere I have some links as to how to adapt some TMVs to work at lower temperatures as there's a very worthwhile benefit for a low energy home in having a low flow temperature, as it minimise the room temperature overshoot problem. It's a relatively easy mod, as I recall, so if I can find it then it may well be useful and I'll try and remember to post the details here.

My experience is limited to having laid a couple of rooms in the old house with uniclic-like laminate flooring, floating on underlay, with expansion strips all around (a right pain in a house where the skirtings are nailed to the walls!) and laying half the ground floor and most of the first floor of the new house with T&G bamboo, bonded down.. I can't say I'm that happy with the click-together floating floors. Both just don't feel great to walk on, and even though they are laid on concrete, with the proper (and most expensive underlay) I can't say they are particularly stable. They don't make any noises when you walk on them, but there is that slight feeling of movement. One very major issue was the first laminate floor I laid in the kitchen of the old house. About 6 months after I laid it the central heating sprang a small leak and water got under the laminate and into the underlay. I had to pull the whole lot up and replace it, as the stench was just unbelievable. On the other hand, the T&G bamboo was quicker to lay and is inherently well-sealed, as it's bonded down with Sikabond 95. The bonded bamboo floors feel a heck of a lot better to walk on, IMHO, as they are really solid-feeling. The T&G is also a lot easier to lay around awkward areas, as you don't have the problem that the uniclic stuff has of having to insert new planks at exactly the right angle, all along their length, before pushing them down so they lock into place. It's surprisingly difficult to do this when you're working around cut-out areas, like doorways, where you cant get the boards in at the right angle. T&G allows you to slide boards lengthways when they are down, making it a lot easier to get a neat finish in awkward areas, whereas you can't easily slide two uniclic boards relative to each other once they are down flat and locked.. I'm far from being an expert, or even someone with a lot of experience, but I would definitely recommend bonded down T&G, especially if you want something that's easy to fit and gives a very solid-feeling floor. We've laid some rugs over ours, where the beds go and in the centre of the living room, but because the flooring is usually at, or slightly above, room temperature it's not unpleasant to walk on in bare feet I've been told (my better half tends to always walk around barefoot - I stick with very thick sheepskin slippers from Skye..........).

I seem to end up emptying our vacuum cleaner every couple of weeks, cleaning the filters three or four times a year and giving the internals of the thing a good clean maybe once a year, so I reckon that's more time and effort than I spend on the MVHR! It takes at the most 2 minutes or so, every 6 months, to change the filters and clean out the chamber on the fresh air in side of the MVHR. It's quicker than taking the filters out of the vacuum cleaner and cleaning them and probably not much longer than it takes to empty the vacuum cleaner chamber into the bin.

Worth telling them, but I have a feeling that the magazine may well just ignore your views, I'm afraid to say. There's no logic with these things, especially when you look at all the things in a house and compare their maintenance requirements. Most people would spend more time maintaining their vacuum cleaner than they ever will maintaining an MVHR.........................

That's barking mad, isn't it? Back in 1987, the morning after the "Great Storm", there were trees down across roads, power cables etc all over the South West. My brother had recently started his own landscape gardening and tree surgery business, and first got a call from SWEB (as they were then) to ask if he could cut away some fallen trees for them ASAP. He spent the next week working around the clock cutting up fallen trees, and not only got paid a fairly hefty premium for the work, but he got to keep most of the timber. It filled the Dutch barn and we had tree trunks lining the rear drive up to the farm on both sides (the drive's around a quarter of a mile long) for a year or so afterwards. It was the start of his firewood business; I think he had about two or three years worth of firewood stock, free of charge, from that one storm. Not a bad kick-start for his new business. I'm pretty sure there were no risk assessments, he was just being asked to go from one emergency to another, practically non-stop, and I know he removed a fair few fallen trees that were blocking lanes.

This any help? : http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Unvented_DHW#Discharge_Pipe Seems to be compliant with Part G as far as I can see, so 22mm should be OK in your case, I think.

I would! I didn't have that option, as our flooring was all laid before the first floor and roof part of the house frame was lifted into place.