Sparrowhawk

If you remove the baseboards, have a look along the wall-floor joint with your thermal camera. You may find there's a little draught coming up there which you can fix without removing the cupboards. Also if you know where the penetrations are, a multitool will let you cut an access hatch in the back of the cupboards to get to them. The damage can be hidden by gluing a new hardboard back over the existing one (trimmed to size) so future buyers won't know there's any damage.

Is there somewhere in the ViCare app to see the daily starts? I can only find the total under Diagnostic Information

And keeping the UVC gives you options when the boiler needs replacing. You can go for a 4-pipe boiler (different temps on HW and heating circuits, don't know what they're really called but we're getting great results with our new one), a heat pump, whatever. With only a bathroom and an en-suite, if your boiler can put enough heat into the tank to reheat quickly you can downsize it a bit if you want to save weight in the loft? Though that they doesn't play into heat pump etc in the future...

"How to manage contamination of the home" Do you have lots of people spending hours in your house? As in, have you quantified the risk? I would look at good ventilation and air changes as your baseline strategy, and if you have a busy area consider an air purifier. We're thinking about adding one to my wife's home office as she sees little germspreaders children for hours every day and anything that may help us stop catching their bugs is worth a try.

I waited until Christmas dinner was over in case I messed anything up... not the fuse you were expecting: Took the front off the extension consumer unit and here's some photos. Arrow shows entry point of cable from other fuse board.

The washing machine and cooker are still on so I haven't been able to isolate the extension yet, but this is the board at the meter end. "MAIN SWITCH" is the cable running to the extension consumer unit (up the cavity, under loft insulation, down the cavity) Looking in the extension, the cable feeding the consumer unit looks the same size as the one running to the electric cooker. The cooker manual says Total load at 230V is 14.8kW and the previous home owner who installed the cooker has written "(32 amp cut out). Cable? (6 1/2mm sq)" in the manual.

We have 2 consumer units in the house. After the electricty meter there's a box where the cables split, one to the main consumer unit, and the other via a long white cable (in photo) to the other side of the house. This is a photo of the cable linking the two. I'm trying to estimate the current it can carry before we make alterations. Does this look like 80A cable?

@nod is right, but so is everyone else. Require receipts, no cash payments, and keep records. https://www.gov.uk/report-tax-fraud

For those who extract to the outside, it would be helpful if you detail how you make the external vent airtight when not in use. And tell us if you did your airtightness tests with this taped over or also tested with it in its 'closed' position to confirm how airtight it is. A couple of options have been mentioned in threads but not all in one place, and it'd be helpful to group the options together.

I'd be pretty pissed if I bought something that all over the website shouts "Full MODBUS connectivity" as a feature... and then you can't use it. The only thread of interest I've turned up yet is https://community.home-assistant.io/t/heat-recovery-mvhr-integration-titon-beam-in-ireland-mechanical-ventilation-with-heat-recovery/454942/9 using the RS485. Different models but may have helpful links.

As the caption says this is "from below". If you've enough space to get under your ground floors then this is a nice approach - though cutting and taping/gluing a bit of membrane at the top of each joist across the floorboards must be a pain compared to draping it. In my house if I have 20cm below the bottom of the joists I count myself lucky!

Welcome to the forum @andeebee. I asked a similar question a while back and the replies may be of use. I've bought the membrane and insulation, but haven't installed it yet. Partly because other jobs have taken precedence, but also because the first area to insulate has a staircase and stud walls built on top of the floorboards, so it's an absolute pain to lift them!

https://12ft.io/https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/property-home/article/our-15-million-eco-new-build-is-totally-draught-free-qr3tjd620 According to the architect, the cost [of Passivhauses] is holding back progress. Craig Beech, the Lewis-Robertses’ architect, says that to build a Passivhaus from scratch costs about £3,000 per sq m. That’s about 50 per cent more than three years ago. 🤔 At least they made their own sugi ban which "saved £60k" on their £1.5m build cost (including a £1,500 cat flap). As to what’s next, Oli says: “Our son goes off to university soon, so despite it being the dream home it might be too big for us as we get older. We have the passion and now also the hard-learnt experience to do this again, so the ultimate self-build retirement home is somewhere on the horizon.”

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/property-home/article/cavity-wall-insulation-issues-problems-extraction-cost-nx56r36pz Tangential to the article, I thought spray foam was closed cell, so if water passes through the outer leaf the only way it's to go is back out? Snots or debris let it bridge across, but wouldn't the foam keep that very localised?

I wouldnt's say it's suitable for redecorating, as it comes with fibres in it for strength and improved gap-filling ability, so it's not a smooth finish. Think of it as a textured semi-liquid alternative to airtightness tapes or membranes, rather than paint. It's incredibly useful and in my retrofit I've used it around joist ends that penetrate into the wall, over the top of spray foam which never seals completely for me round pipes, on some lightweight breeze blocks between floors (because parge coating would be too messy) and in places with no straight lines to attach tape to! Oh and up wall chases and behind plug sockets. The one I'm using is https://www.soudal.co.uk/pro/products/coatings/air-and-vapourtight-coatings/soudatight-lq because it's the cheapest I found. I believe the originator was https://www.blowerproof.co.uk/, they were certainly the first advert I saw. There's also another called Passive Purple which is bright purple from https://www.intelligentmembranes.com/. And somewhere on this forum there's a recipe for making your own!

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.