Jeremy Harris

It really depends on what sort of ventilation heat loss you're prepared to accept. A chimney is a massive cause of heat loss and if you don't need the hole for one for an appliance, than I'd personally just stick with the dummy chimney. There's a big development near me that must have a planning requirement to have chimney stacks, as one morning I followed a big flat bed loaded up with dozens of prefabricated dummy chimney stacks, that were just stuck on the semi-completed roofs!

Where you don't really need much heat output ( and that applies to many new homes, with their lower heating requirements) but still want "real flames", then bioethanol stoves are a reasonable choice. They have the advantages of not requiring a flue or external ventilation, they give a realistic flame effect and they have no smell and cause no pollution (just a bit of pure water vapour). The other alternative is to have a dummy stove with a realistic flame effect. I saw one recently that had an LCD screen internally and it was very realistic indeed, but gave out very little heat.

Mine only switch a few mA, but one can carry around 15A for a few hours, the car charging point one. It's usually switching high current that does the contacts in, and in my case the actual switching in both cases is done by a DP contactor, rated at 40A. In the case of car charge point, even then the contactor doesn't switch much current, as the car controls the switching internally, based on the J1772 signalling protocol. The only time the contactor would operate under load would be if there was a fault. I bought a couple of spare timers, anyway, as I reckoned that at that price is wasn't going to break the bank to hold spares!

Another vote for getting the drainage sorted before anything else! Before we made an offer on our plot I checked the situation with foul drainage and a water supply. The cheapest mains drainage solution was £14.5k to get the pipe up the lane and connected to the main drain, plus another £1.5k for a pump station and all the associated work on site. When I enquired about a treatment plant the initial answer was a very firm "no" from the Environment Agency, because of the soil being clay. The planners couldn't care less, and had granted a previous planning application when there was no affordable means of getting a drainage scheme on site! We bought the plot for a much reduced price, knowing we'd have to spend a lot to get water and drainage sorted, and I managed to persuade the Environment Agency to allow us to have a treatment plant and grant a licence to discharge it into the stream that runs alongside the plot. That saved a fair bit, as fully installed, with all the on-site drainage pipe, I think the cost came to around £4k,

I have a couple of those ebay ones, one controlling my car charge point and one as part of the water filtration system. They work well, and fit neatly into a standard CU. Good value too, but I've no idea how reliable they may be in the longer term, as ours have only been in for around a year. Seem to keep time well enough though.

Looks very similar to the stuff I laid around 10 years ago, under the floor tiles in the bathroom of our old house. Different controller, but the mat looks the same and the name rings a bell. Ours has never been any trouble at all, it just seems to work. Not cheap to run, but if only used for "comfort heating" of the floor, to stop it feeling cold, then it's not too bad. We don't use it for heating really, though, as the big heated towel rail plumbed in to the heating system provides loads of heat, the electric UFH is just timed to warm the surface of the tiles when we're using the shower.

You're absolutely right, but it's like smoking and drinking, a well-proven health risk simply doesn't change behaviour. I doubt that putting warnings on cigarette packaging has made any difference to the number of people who smoke, and I similarly doubt that putting the things in plain packets, or hiding them behind screens in shops has made any difference. What has made a difference is making them expensive and creating laws that prohibit smoking in many places. The analogy with burning wood is that just publicising the health risk is not going to convince people it's a bad thing. Either the price of wood has to be artificially increased (and here the increase isn't artificial - demand outstrips local supply, so the price is high) or legislation needs to be put in place, as has happened elsewhere.

I'm sure you're right. My brother's winter business (during the summer he's a landscape gardener) is tree felling and supplying logs. He has a Dutch barn, with slatted sides and a floor made up of pallets stacked two deep, and keeps all his cut and split firewood stacked in there for a couple of years, so he can get the moisture content down as low as is practicable. He does this, funnily enough, because we had a wood burner around 25+ years ago, just when he was starting his business (under Thatcher's scheme to pay people £20 a week to start their own small business) and I was complaining about the problem of getting decently seasoned firewood. The barn was going spare on Mother's farm, he ran his business from the farm (still does) and so he adapted it for drying firewood. I'm pretty sure his long-standing repeat customers use him because he supplies dry firewood.

I don't think they took away the export payment scheme when they introduced the FIT, so I believe you can still do as some did before the FIT was invented and fit an export meter (not a generation meter as normally fitted) and get paid the export rate for everything that goes to the grid (close to wholesale rate, around 4.5p/unit, IIRC). It'd probably be a bit of a nightmare getting anyone to acknowledge that you can still do this, but there are a few hundred microgeneration schemes that have been around since well before the FIT was invented that still do just this.

It's getting to be hilarious, guessing how much they will fiddle the numbers by each week! For a bit of reality, over 3 years, in an area where house prices didn't really dip during the recession, but just held steady and then starting increasing again afterwards, the value of our completed new build increased by just under 12%, so very roughly 4% per annum. I know these figures are reasonably accurate as they were both from surveyors, not estate agents. That fits reasonably well with other house price changes in the area. We're in an expensive bit of the South, not as pricey as the South East, but still in "London commuter" territory, with a good main line service to Waterloo. Our site was around the same price as the one in last nights programme, after we'd got it level and ready to build on; we were given a site valuation before we built the house of around £150k. What I want to know, is, how on earth can a house on a flood-prone site in Yorkshire increase in value by over 44% over a couple of years?

Ours is the same, upstairs is consistently about 1/2 to 1 deg C cooler than downstairs. I too think it's the MVHR.

Packers under steel need to be incompressible over time, so NOT cement board or similar! Slate was the traditional packing material, but steel shims work OK. As above, the timber is too short and the bearing block isn't located properly, the idea is to transfer the load vertically down into the post below, and having it off-axis like this reduces the bearing capacity and introduces an out-of-axis load component, which is not good.

I've had this when we converted to LED lights in our bathroom. The cause was as temp suggests, an induced current between the switched and non switched live. It's pretty common in older houses where an earth wire doesn't run up the light fitting. In our case, just making sure the earth conductor was connected fixed it, as it removed the induced current (or rather shunted it to earth). A fair few LEDs will glow with just a mA or two, and it's pretty easy to get that sort low current just from induction. Some LED types are worse than others in terms of susceptibility to this. Those with small AC/DC constant current inverters in the base are often OK, but there are a fair few around that use a capacitive dropper (strictly speaking a reactive current limiter) and they are susceptible, as are the types that use a long string of series LEDs and a simple rectifier/resistor arrangement (like the newer filament-type leds). The cause of the problem a fair bit of the time is in the earth not being connected in the feed to the light fitting. A fair few pendant fittings, and some others, are just two-wire, with no earth needed, and, although the earth conductor should be earthed in the switch box, it's not that uncommon in my experience to find a bit of sloppy wiring there, with the earth to the ceiling let disconnected. That was the case with every single light in our current house, except for the kitchen. Whoever wired it, just cut the ceiling earth of short, I think to reduce the clutter in the switch back box. Not at all clever, in my view.

Copied from that link Ferdinand gave:

I doubt the stuff was a stock item, as many of these flooring companies order the stuff in when they get an order, especially the online suppliers, who often have no warehouse space at all. The supplier could reasonably argue that it was ordered in, as per the customers instruction, and they made no error with regard to the order at all. Sure they seem to have made an error labelling the sample, but that's technically a different issue.

The site's down according to this: http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.nakedfloors.com Frankly it looks like the company made an error in labelling the sample, but there's enough disclaimers on that label that frankly I think your customer is going to have to try goodwill, rather than consumer law. I may be wrong, but I reckon that Trading Standards may well say that it'd be a struggle to use the law against the company.

Tricky one. If the customer ordered "grey barn oak" and that's what they've delivered, then you're really relying on the company having a bit of goodwill. If they made an error on the sample, and you can prove they did with some photos, then they may be prepared to come to a deal, but if not then it comes down to whether they misrepresented the product, or whether they made a simple error on the sample. My feeling is that they could argue that the phrase "grey barn oak" is pretty descriptive of a grey oak finish, and that the customer should have checked first. Best bet is to try and see how reasonable they will be after seeing photos of the sample label, I think.

I agree with all the above, BUT, first make sure that the problem is with the supplier and not the wrong product ordered in error! I speak from experience, having had what I though were 3m length of pipe delivered as 1m lengths; I was steaming mad, but made an idiot of myself when the company pointed out, quite reasonably, that the order code I'd sent was for 1m lengths, not 3m lengths. I've no idea how I made the mistake, but there was no doubt I had!

That looks to me like a different product, a stained wood finish rather than just sealed. There's a name for that grey effect, but I can't recall it. First thing is to check the order details, then check the companies product range and make sure what was ordered matches the sample and whether there is a grey looking product available. If what was ordered is definitely the same as the sample, and they have the grey looking stuff as a different product, then they've cocked up and should send your customer the correct stuff, ASAP. Trading Standards are really a last resort, in my view, as they often don't deal with things like this quickly. The law is clear, this doesn't seem to be what the customer ordered, so the customer has an entitlement to either get what they ordered or get a full refund if they are unable to supply. BUT, first check there hasn't been a cock-up with the order. It's sometimes easy to make a slip up and order the wrong thing, perhaps just a digit or character out in the product reference.

If you can persuade the builder to foam the edges as they are installed than the problem of trying to get the gun in afterwards goes away. FWIW, I found that the Soudal low expansion foam was about the best balance in terms of price and performance, and it's usually available pretty widely. The guns come with conical nozzles with a tip around 2mm wide that will usually work fine with board gaps. The plastic conical nozzles that come with the guns are a push fit and I found that they were easy to dislodge, so tape around the outside before use to help keep it in place.

Personally I think it's a great idea. I was a bit worried about having our fully glazed front door in the middle of a wall of glass (we glazed the whole wall, right to the ridge of that gable) but we've quickly got used to it. I think it's also nice to have a front door that leads to a space that is welcoming. In our case I now look at the faces of people coming in for the first time; as they walk in they inevitably look up, as the ceiling's about 6m high in the entrance hall, with a glazed landing running across the back. In many ways having French doors as the main entrance is more practical, too. Getting big stuff in and out has to be easier that way. Some our new furniture arrived a week or so ago, and the delivery people found it a lot easier to bring it around the side and in through the French doors.

Terry's right, foaming would be far better than trying to tape it, as I doubt that ordinary foil insulation tape (it that's what you're thinking of) will stay stuck for long inside a cavity. Low expansion foam, applied with a proper gun, will be a permanent solution for sealing the gaps. The only sort of tape that might stay on long term is the very expensive airtightness tape, like Siga, but that would cost more than a few cans of foam and a decent gun and not do as good a job. It's easy enough to just go around with low expansion foam and do the sealing, as the low expansion stuff both adheres very well and, more importantly, won't carry on expanding and risk moving the insulation.

The Barratt problem was largely down to bad design. They had a design where the sole plate sat on a cold foundation - surprise, surprise, they got interstitial condensation and rot! There was no vapour barrier internally that I could see. I looked at a bunch of Barratt homes in Helston being "put right", as a former colleague had bought one in the mid-70's. The bottom half of the ground floor fibreglass insulation was sopping wet, as was the timber. The sole plate had mushrooms growing on it.....................

Timber frame seems to have been the preferred build method in Scotland for the last couple of decades or more. When we were living up there (in a timber framed house) every new build we saw was timber frame. That was from 1992 to 1997.

I'd agree with that. There are many ways to skin this particular cat, but it's not easy if you want to stick with the build methods the big developers prefer. I've long thought that a single masonry skin with EWI would be the best way to build, for people like the big developers. The wall thickness's aren't massive, as the insulation doesn't need to have a particularly high decrement delay, so high performance, but low heat capacity, and relatively thin insulation can be used. Running the external insulation down below the floor level (provided it's something like EPS that doesn't absorb water) effectively gets around the wall/floor thermal bridge problem. The build method uses skills that already exist. Construction time is probably less, because of the single internal masonry skin. A quick parge coat over the masonry will get it pretty airtight, and the detailing needed to get thermal-bridge free window and door installation is easy, as they can be set out in the external insulation layer. The downside is that a rendered outside finish may not be what everyone wants, and there is a significant cost in using something like brick or stone slips to get a more "traditional" look. Ultimately, I think there needs to be a shift to build methods where there is better control over build quality, though, and the best way to achieve that would seem to be to move as much of the construction work away from the uncontrolled environment of a big building site, to controlled conditions in a factory. It's a heck of a lot easier to ensure that factory-fabricated house major components, in any material you wish, are made to a consistently high standard. For example, I was impressed by the wall panels for the big (900 people) office that was built as a part of my last job. They were factory made, with two carbon-reinforced thin concrete skins and a foam insulation core. They were non-structural, and were just hooked on to the structural frame and the joints foamed and then sealed externally. They had pre-cast apertures for windows etc, set in the insulation layer. The build time was dictated by how fast the cranes could lift the panels in place, and was remarkably quick. The building ended up with the highest BREEM energy rating, too.