Iceverge

Computational flow dynamics?!

Don't do this. Moisture will get stuck behind the boards.

Be cautious of Ubakus. It's imperfect and shows a snapshot, typically of -5 outside. Unless you live in Greenland that isn't a fair representation of the lightly seasonal behaviour of the wall. Lightly in the UK the weather will be warmer 360 days of the year. No need to remove the existing plaster. Just patch up the holes and make sure anything at a penetration is sealed in a manor that won't crach with slight movement, tapes airtight paints and silicone are all fine. There's so much nonsence talked about vapour barriers. It really is almost nothing compared to leaks casued by airtightness. Concentrate on great airtightness, add mechanical ventialtion and you can get away with as much internal insulation as you like proviced it's not vapour impermeable like PIR.

A blocklayer is more than capable of installing cavity batts correctly. It's a technically much simpler thing than putting a cavity wall together. The industry never trained anyone to do it properly, manafacturers make unworkable products (rigid cavity boards), and there's usually zero oversight and reward for a job well done. We still pay per block so effectively want the insulating job done for free. Brickies who make a good job of it loose money becuase they havn't been paid for their time. Setting up the incentives so negatively for any human and getting a bad result, it's a bit rich to blame the individual.

Both fine. Will last 60-70 years with some care. Tiles look chunkier, slates look flatter. Natural slates will last twice as long but cost 3 times as much.

Preach. If uPVC was there times the price everyone's would think it was amazing.

Agreed. Everything is always behind you. Islands are for cookery shows so the cook can face the camera. The public got confused, thought that they were on TV and everybody else needed to see them peeling turnips. Turns out, nobody's going to watch that.

Great value. I'd do this if I was to new build again.

Whats your exact buildup? It's a good product, offer some drying capacity, hard to tear, offers very good airtightness but as Mike says it's not magic. It won't do much if not installed to an excellent standard and it's very expensive to boot.

As much as I can be, the UVC is too far from the kitchen tap in our house though. I think maybe 13-16m? I would use 10mm to the kitchen tap again as 6l/min is fine and it really speeds the delivery time. It also stops the Mrs pouring too much hot water directly down the drain. We get 10l/min at the tap if needed just by blending it down a little with cold. I did the same setup in my parent's house. Speed of delivery trumps flow rate in my view. We too have an A2A unit as the main heating so no water heating available . If we had an A2W ASHP I would certainly use that but the prices we were quoted would never have made sense given our small heat load. PV and divert is the eventual plan but the ~€400/ year (3500kWh) we spend on hot water on a TOU tarriff won't break us. At a guess you'll be double this usage for your house. The money for the PV is making far more use of itself as AVCs in my pension at the moment anyway.

That's ours. More pipe clips would make it prettier. Note the thermostatic mixing valve screwed straight into the cylinder and then the manifold directly above it. The. The first pipe away is the kitchen tap (10mm for us). The water in the manifold is preheated by convection so theres zero dead leg before the manifold. I've since removed the second stopcock and lowered the inlet group as it too was warming by convection. The only changes I think I might make to this if starting from scratch would be to lower the inlet control group more and move the tundish to the space between the tank cold feed and the cold manifold for tidyness.

When you have a cylinder with heaps of fittings and coils and extras this is an issue. Jeremy had a problem with this. Ours is a simple direct 300l UVC living in a 2m2 cupboard and its never much above the house +2deg at a guess in there. Even in the height of summer. I would argue against this by default. The price different of the cylinder Vs a direct one could pay for a solar diverter and a few panels if you're committed to immersion only heating.

Yes to UVC. 300 litres is too small for that many people if you plan to heat exclusively on a TOU tariff. Get 2*300l and be done with it. 300l is the most bang for your buck the last time I checked. We manage to store enough for 2 adults and 3 kids with 300l and 70deg storage on a TOU tariff 30mins showering and a large bath and a bit of washing up I about what we get from it. Run everything in 10mm Hep2O except the kitchen/utility tap and baths/showers. The delivery time will be small even at 15m run length. Don't bother with anything fancy like return loops or external manifolds or remotely heated sinks. Just flick the tap for a few seconds. It'll be way cheaper on the long run. Don't bother. The dishwasher will be already almost full of cold water from the pipe by the time it gets any warm water from the tank.

If you need to make significant fixings you could always cut a section out of the insulated plasterboard and replace it with ply direct to the wall for a solid surface to fix to. Have the cavities been insulated? EPS beads would be my recommendation.

If you don't want to have a raised base to the shower it's stuck in that corner. Although drilling through joists and adding metal strengthening plates is not impossible I believe. To a certain extent everything else can happily be moved where you like it as built in vanity, bath surrounds all conceal pipes nicely.

Great result, well done.

Vapour/diffusion and resistance is the greatest red herring of modern building. Compared to air leakage due to airtighess it makes almost zero difference. Get the airtightness right and you won't have any issues.

We put... ........digs out calculator.......... .......scratches chin....... ......285 screws through the airtight membrane to fit the service cavity battens. No extra sealants of any sort. Had a blower door score of 0.31.

That's the original bearing. It was a 608Z but I couldn't find any easily online from a reputable supplier so I opted for 608zz instead. I think it's the same thing other than sealed on both sides. It fitted and is working fine anyways.

Did ours recently. Watched that video too. A small circle pliers would have been nice to have had as the blighters have a habit of bouncing to the far side of the room when fiddling them off with a screwdriver. Here's the fans and the bearings I used.

Yeah that's spot on.

Yes, calibrated ones. Expensive though. I made my own to depressurise and find leaks in the house from a car rad fan and some OSB for about €40. There's a thread of how to do it somewhere.

Wet boards. They'll need to redo them Make sure every defective board "falls" down so they don't try to get out of a full reboard.

The whole thing is still bananas. Get the bulldozer.

Changing your mind is part of this game. It's got more to do with learning than indecisiveness. My plans went from renovations of an ancient cottage, to a shipping container build, to ICF, to masonry with EWI, to timberframe, to stick build, to wide cavity wall. At one point, each one seemed like the best course of action. ........until I learned more. Similarly with heating and ventilation systems and a Plethora of other choices. When you stop changing your mind one of two things have happened. 1.you've arrived at an absolute truth or 2.you've given up thinking. Try not to do the later and mistake it for the former.