Sparrowhawk

Welcome @Kacha refurbs are fun! By which I mean maddening, frustrating and full of compromises that self-builders can sidestep 😀 Part-way through doing a 4 bed 1920s house which as we're living in it is taking a while.

That's... quite an overreaction. Airtightness paint is useful. It's available from at least 3 manufacturers. Pick the one you want, everyone has their opinion.

All 3 are certified: Blowerproof since 2019 Soudatight LQ since 2020 Passive Purple since 2020 An observation is that despite positioning as separate manufacturers Blowerproof and Passive Purple's certification both include the same "Primer „Primer 46“, Self-adhesive Tape „Butytape”" as part of the system.

Thanks all, sounds like whether I get a 1.9J or 2.4J rated SDS+ drill it doesn't make any difference for what I'll be doing

It's this one https://www.intelligentmembranes.com/ But you can get the same thing without distinctive features like the - ahem purple colour and breathless marketing - cheaper from other brands e.g. I used https://www.soudal.co.uk/pro/products/coatings/air-and-vapourtight-coatings/soudatight-lq I believe the originator was https://www.blowerproof.co.uk/, they were certainly the first advert I saw.

That flooring is really good, a great colour. The skirting board works well in the space too - what have you used, flat top 12cm?

Only 12V Makita, a superb drill/driver and impact driver combo which is great for carpentry style jobs. I like the look of the 18V ones with kickback control, so Bosch is the front runner. More expensive, but if I hurt my weedy desk-job wrists I can't earn money until they heal, so looks like good insurance.

Getting blinded by the sales literature here. What kind of impact energy is enough for domestic/self-build SDS drilling? 1.7J? 1.9J? 2.4J? 2.8J? The jobs I've got coming up are stitch drilling multiple openings through 1920s cinder block (hard), 1920s brick (soft), thermalite blocks (v soft), pebbledash and render coring a 32mm basin waste through the 1920s cavity wall cables through a couple of walls no doubt drilling concrete somewhere outside for fixings 10x chasing from floor to back box and cutting back boxes taking up floor tiles and breaking off bits of cement 90mm holes in timber (no impact force required) Any future larger coring I will hire a proper core drill. The lower enrgy drills are cheaper and lighter which are both a bonus. But so is my current hammer drill which struggles to drill a hole.

It is - it read the data from the one when we bought this house and calculated the heat loss correctly. Going through the "I need to make changes to this process" came close to the spreadsheet calculating where I'm aiming for. For typical UK housing (knackered and draughty) it seems to work fine.

Would you do skirting boards with the track saw? I want a track saw for fitted furniture, and I've also got 400 bevel cuts to make in our skirting boards. If I can buy one tool rather than both, that's a nice saving.

Hmm, my layout guide from them was like the one shown here, "X marks the spot" and a number for one run or two. Did yours cover more than that, like flow rates per room?

A paid MVHR design service isn't cheap (c£1k) but will provide things like: calculations of flow rate in ducts e.g. how fast the air is moving (too fast is audible) and the pressure drop (too high means the MVHR has to work too hard) work out how to best route the ducts around the house use the calculations to assess the size of ducts you need and which runs need to be doubled up position the supply/extract valves in sensible places (this is not a high bar to meet ) They do like to be involved before build starts though, to iron out problems like "there's a beam where all the ducts need to go" You are where you are, and my first thought is what does changing to 90mm ducting do for the number of ducts you need? If you use the Frankische 90mm duct which has ~half the pressure loss per m of the others, you can push a single duct to longer runs than would normally be advised. You're still restricted by the volume of air you need to move though. But - what does your structural engineer say about cutting holes through the beam? How many at each diameter are you allowed? I don't. With what looks to be an open plan setup, the air will mostly go from the supply vents straight to the extract vent, creating a dead space in the kitchen. I've tried to show that with arrows on the picture below.

Did you pay them for a design or is this their free one? I found the free one wrong on many counts, and it's worth doing your own if you have the skills to.

There are two ways sound is transmitted through the floor: airborne sound and structure-borne sound. The insulation you've added takes care of airborne sound, so it will deaden the noise of Taylor Swift from above. However, it will do pretty much nothing to deaden your missus dancing around. To deal with that you'll need to add some kind of cushioning over the joists - a thick underlay if you're putting down carpet, or better decouple the floor deck from the joists (or the ceiling below from the joists) to reduce the sound transmission. Others here have more practical experience than I do - I've been focused on airborne sound transmission.

Do tell. We're adding sockets room by room as we work through the house. The first room we've done I've made good the chases and almost finished replastering, when my dearly loved one sticks her head round the door and says "I've changed my plans for the room, the sockets aren't now where I need them". #$@&%*!