Sparrowhawk

My understanding of solar control glass is that up close you can see the coating on it. And that coating also reduces the light transmittance to around 70%, similar to triple glazing. So if the slider can take the weight then I'd go 3g

Thanks all, so I either want more or less ventilation, a larger or smaller temperature differential, but we all agree on more insulation To get me through the winter, I think the starting point is sticking PIR on the garage door, and trying to improve how the door seals without jamming it (any ideas?). Then to figure out a longer term solution (conversion or replacement door). The garage has heated spaces above, to the side and back, and the remaining wall is double skin with partial fill insulation, so this may even reduce heat loss from the rest of the house. We run a dehumidifier in the house from autumn to spring, so if I get the garage airtight enough I'll run another in there. The two positions on ventilation both make sense because I could see how sealed + moisture control would work, but so could e.g. an extractor fan installed and higher airflow through the garage. Though the wind pressure from the 40mph gusts now having a path through the enclosed garage might bring in more moisture. Like @SteamyTea everything in our dry-and-well-ventilated shed rusted and some went mouldy, and that's why I'll try less ventilation first as high ventilation there didn't seem to work.

Quick recap: 300m from sea (south coast) Garage faces the sea I want to use my garage as a workshop but, having just cleaned mould off a bunch of pine timber (stacked with spacers in between), and selected more MDF to take to the tip as it's mouldy, it's not in a fit state yet. Normally I'd think "ventilation" but: even with brush strips added the up-and-over garage door is nowhere near draughtproof there's a 12"x12" air brick next to the door So then I thought "damp": no damp is coming up through the floor - I've done the paper-on-floor check I also painted the floor with single pack garage paint when we moved in but I do wonder if driving rain / general mist and damp air gets in via the air brick and around the garage door And if damp, salt-laden air gets in and leaves the salt behind, that keeps everything a bit moist. The metal garage door means big temperature swings inside on sunny days, as it heats up. My thinking is that replacing the garage door, with a wall and door or anything more airtight, would improve things. But before I do anything, what's BuildHub's diagnosis? Am I chasing the wrong problem?

Final addition, the VELUX Basic manual anti-heat blind does what it says and really does keep the room cooler. Our windows are in the north facing side of the roof but in summer get a decent amount of sun on them, so these help. Cons? They are a pain to attach and detach, and my wife isn't tall enough to do them

GGU PK10 0070 94x160 cm manually operated white polyurethane VELUX window, with the 62 pane in the bedroom. This has reminded me though, we had one fitted in another room with a 68 pane (significantly cheaper) and this cuts down rain noise pretty well - but not speech noise from outside. As its lighter the hinges work better, my wife struggles to shut the ones in our bedroom.

Yes it is. We went with the top of the range 3G ones for our bedroom (replacing 2G Veluxes) and now sleep through rain storms - most of the time.

I need to caulk our staircase: the new baserail to the stringer(?), the stringer to the plasterboard wall under it. Can anyone recommend a caulk that flows like a dream, handles the movement of a 100yr old house, and overpaints without crazing? I've used caulks that do 1-2 of those, but not all 3.

Which do you have? I am sorely tempted, moreso than by a pizza oven. I used to hot smoke fish and chicken in an adapted wok but haven't done any for years.

"Just make one model that follows the green line, not 3 models where I have to work out which to use when and on which settings, and guess which will be more token efficient..."

Wish you could transfer any you don't use to me! I'm doing open source work on a large 20+ year old C codebase, and designing something that will improve CPU and memory efficiency. Fable is significantly better at planning that than Opus, which leaves holes that I can spot at a glance. Fable still leaves holes, and I have to review it with GPT and have back and forth to find and fix them all, but it's a clear improvement. I've got access to GPT-5.6 Sol this morning and that may be doing a better job planning on this codebase than Fable is. I've also got a lot more OpenAI tokens to burn than Anthropic, and I have to ration my Fable usage. More new toys... There's software that will do that and estimate the tokens per conversation (can't remember the name of the programs). That hasn't been of interest to me, so on macOS I use https://github.com/steipete/CodexBar to keep an eye on how my usage is going.

I'm finding Sonnet 5 works out more expensive than Opus due to the number of tokens it's using (for coding). Not impressed with it TBH. Now Fable, that really is something else!

@hauntedicecreamvan Which door did you go with? I'm currently looking for a fully glazed door.

Do these help? https://usceiling.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/AeroBarrier-X1-Sealant-Datasheet-and-SDS.pdf https://www.arcat.com/datasheets/aeroseal/AeroBarrier_X1_Sealant_Datasheet_and_SDS.pdf

I'm assuming only bottom horizontal surfaces because it's not sticking to vertical surfaces, so it's not sticking but settling out onto the floor. It sounds great but I wouldn't want to risk it in a furnished house!

Do you have more than one HeatGeek installer in your area? They come with a premium, but there was a 50% difference between the two quotes I got. Some are just taking the mick with their prices (and if people will pay, who can blame them).