gambo

I know it's not worth when comparing to energy savings but there are a few factors: We have to remove carpets and do something like engineered wood, I don't want to loose more than 10-20mm height, the cold feeling of the floor in colder days is really unpleasant. I've already have a small corner of the room don using 25mm PIR + engineered wood on top (nothing in between) and it already feels a bit claustrophobic.

No idea, we bought the house a few years ago. Neighbours say the conversion was done during the build but LA has no record of it. By the look of how it's done (eg.heating pipe running around sockets) it must have been done very unofficially.

Floor of the room converted from garage is level with the rest of the house. The difference between floor of the house (and that room) and garage floor (it used to be double garage so still one garage left) is around 200mm (+/-50mm). Hope that makes sense.

Mix up, I thought XPS was better but I've just checked that PIR has better parameters. I measured and the floor in the room is at least 150-200mm higher than garage floor and level with rest of the house.

The rest of the house is fine and I removed part of the carpet and underlay, and just for testing put 25mm PIR + engineered wood under my desk. I can see that 25mm already makes it much better. GIven it's garage conversion and potentially deep concrete, is there an option to remove 20-30mm of it just to ad XPS? Anyone knows of a company in SW to do such retrofit?

I've done some reading but still I'm not sure what to do. Late 80s house, 12sqm room (garage conversion from 90s). Based on how cold the floor is comparing to the rest of the house it's likely there is no insulation at all. Given the room is already a bit claustrophobic I don't want to loose more than 10mm of the rooms height (which is how it will likely go up when I replace carpet with engineered wood. The room itself can be insulated in a number of ways like IWI or EWI for the wall with garage and the temperature of the room is not an issue. The issue is just the cold feeling of the floor when sitting. What's the best way to approach it? Is it doable to remove 20-40mm of the concrete floor to make space for XPS? What sort of cost could it be to do it properly (full retrofit)? Even if I go for full retrofit I'm worried I'll end up doing it myself due to lack of trusted tradesman.

I think I'll go with tile vents, but now I'm not sure which ones are suitable. I can see ubbink UB19 but in the documentation it says it's suitable for " vent systems where an external pressure test is not required". What does it mean in relation to MVHR?

Due to number of issues with getting someone on the roof I'm thinking about running exhaust and intake through soffit. It will also let me clean in from outside through window. Main is issue is the space in soffit so I would want something up to 100mm wide, e.g. 160mm duct to 2x100m vents in soffits. Has anyone done it? Any recommendations for products to fit it nicely in soffit?

@richo106 I have couple questions as your installation seems similar to what I'm planning. Why so many ducts are so close the eaves? What vents do you have outside? Is there no issue with mould/condensation when outlet from the unit go upwards?

I'm in the same boat. Leaking house and the main reason for MVHR is to supply air to smaller rooms (bedrooms and study) when clsoed. Im planning it for a year but haven't had time yet. My main reason for MVHR is that trickle vents would bring too much noise from street.

What do you mean here? Outside air to mvhr or mvhr to room? I don't have space for 150mm in soffits but mvhr -> room can be whatever I want as everything will sit in the loft. It won't filter the air in the rooms as well as mvhr and there is lots of noise coming from the road which is another reason for not opening windows. Mrs also likes idea of having cleaner air and less dust on flowers.

A bit complex situation because house was renovated small couple years ago so want to limit the damage. I really want MVHR with some nice/good filters. The reason is I want cleaner air inside + kids close doors in their bedrooms which causes lots of bad air during nights in winter. House is a usual late 80s build with loft above and positioned in such a way that in order for summer bypass to work well I need to run external ducting through the roof or sofits. 1) Can I run inlet/outlet through sofits? I think I can fit 100mm but could I split the ducting into 2x 100mm to make the flow better? I want to avoid scaffolding for lifting roof tiles. 2) Does it make sense adding MVHR unit to a leaking house? I guess I can do some improvements around windows but am not planning anything massive. I don't need a huge efficiency, it's more about getting some fresh air well filtered + some recovery of the heat. 3) Can I install MVHR working only for upstairs? I would size the unit so that we can at some point extend it to downstairs too but initially we want to do it as simply as possible and DIY (got an offer for supply and installation of £12k for 110m2 house whereas supply only is around £3k). 4) Anything specific to look at when looking for a very quiet unit? I hate noises generated by fans when trying to fall asleep? Any good places where I could see units working?

I've looked at a few and looks like a good option but how do I prevent water coming on patio?

My (small) garden is quite uneven and lower close to the house and then goes up. Now I have a new patio slabs which replaced the old concrete ones and they are put in a way that they end up around 5-8cm below lawn level further from the house? What are my options to sort it out? Trying not to spend a fortune also don't want to remove it given I've already paid a lot for laying it.

House from late 80s, with paving (probably from 80s as well) cumulating water in the middle. I want to replace it with a decking 2.4 wide x 4.2m long. I've looked at the bricks and there is something like a black material between bricks at around 16cm high from paving so I assume it's DPC. 1) Shall I remove the paving or use it as support and put DPC below it? 2) Wall plate - how much space should there be given I won't be under DPC with the plate, 3) Is there a good tool to plan it? e.g. how to optimise number of decks etc 4) What joist shall I use? Does it really need to be 150mm height joist? I would prefer it to be lower so that it doesn't add to much height.

There is a box outside the house and the virgin media cable goes through that box. i've now disconnected the VM cable going to VM box inside the house and connected to one of the extra cables going into another room and it's working fine. I have a mesh solution but it struggles, perhaps too little boxes or just the VM hub itself is poor.

I'm a bit sick of poor wifi in my house so I thought I'll try to make a use of existing cables (installed years ago by previous owners). No idea how old the cables are and but I can see lots of coaxial cables running outside of the house into sockets in most of the rooms. What's the best approach to check if they are suitable for LAN? Some of them are branded virgin media.

Why is compression fitting such a bad thing? the same principle is used at the connection with TRV

Seems like I can't make further edits. I've watched YT and found pipelife easy-lay pipes which have quite good rating (7bars for 80degree).

I'm replacing a few radiators and some of them will be in a different size, so I may need to change the pipes as well. At the moment the pipes are 10mm copper. Given it's not a straight line to TRV I'm thinking about using JG PB pipe. There are couple things that worry me: - the plastic pipe has a rating of around 3 bars for >90 degrees. I know it's still more than what the system is used but it's not way more (comparing to copper). - the plastic pipe has inner diameter same as copper but the outer is slightly bigger due to multilayers. Will it cause any issues when connecting to TRV? - TRVs are 15mm, copper 10mm so I need to use a reducer. Does it make a difference if i connect 15mm plastic to 10mm copper for the last 20-50cm rather than reducing at the trv point? - the plastic pipe requires insert at the joining point so the 10mm pipe is reduced to 6-8mm? Does this cause any issues? The other thing is that I'm willing to do it to avoid draining the system and soldering. So, ideally i would use compression fitting to connect plastic with copper and then straight to trv. But if I'm using the compression fitting then could I not just use copper on both ends with compression fitting instead of plastic?

I'm about to make sketch a plan of the house and send it to companies for quotes but I'm expecting £2-3k for the full kit (without labour) for a 4 bedroom house. I don't know yet what the best way is to lay the ducting downstair but I'm thinking about using walls upstairs. One of the rooms downstair can be tricky but it's neither living room nor kitchen, so I'm thinking about single room mvhr unit as a backup if it causes lots of issues.

So derating circuit will mean the fuse switches off before the wire gets too hot because of to thin cable being laid under thick insulation. Is this what you are suggesting? If i can stick insulation under the wires there will still be a short piece of wire (30-50cm) under insulation. Would this not cause an issue? Sorry if it's a dumb question!

What would it change?

How would recommend dealing with shorter wires which are too short to pull them on top of insulation?

I've read number of pages and they say "in most cases you do not need planning permission". I can make it up to 15m2, given it's a measure of internal space, and <2.5m height. Kitchen is not required but would it be easier to do it without and perhaps years later apply for permission if I kick out kids from house? I've attached a quickly created plan where the house would be (red box), also where the man hole is (blue dot). Boiler is very close to the man hole and the room is roughly 6-8m from house. Not sure electricity is an issue but I could use PV to power it + 1 battery as backup.