MikeSharp01

Do not forget the growing trend for working from home!

Welcome to THE self build forum.

No particular standard for the window itself but they do have U values, so if doing a passive style house yiu have a U value to achieve and they need to meet building regs in all kinds of ways; air tightness, glass toughened where needed and escape provision.

Welcome to THE forum. Looking forward to hearing more.

Welcome to the Kent chapter of THE forum. We are building in Whitstable and I think we will be using Ali clad 3G from rationel I think but yet to confirm. Think @lizzie's point about making sure you get great installers is sound thinking. Mike

This is more interesting than I had thought as there must be heat loss if the first water out is at 50 deg C plus although it could be tiny if it can then heat water quickly which I guess must be a function of the internal arrangements of water pipework and the cells. If you think about it the nucleation will perhaps need to be controlled backwards down the pipework as the water starts to move through the lattice (if there is one) the early cells at the output end of the line will exhaust and start to be a drain on the heat from cells further back down the chain. So control becomes everything and there might, one supposes, be some internal gubbins that directs the flow across several pathways to reduce this effect which may also use flow rate to control. Will the patents not be viewable? Might give us a hint!

The 80-20 listen / speak rule is key. When we had ours the architect told me to keep quiet and let him do the talking which was sensible as we were paying him after all. In the end I only spoke about things that where beyond the architects scope or where he didn't have the answer. IE were we intending to live there (yes), what were are our plans for the footpath (offered to clear and resurface), would we be happy to have obscured glass in any East facing glazing (along the footpath so no problem).

Great news Peter - enjoy your shopping.

Yes we have loads of these at home the kids took skiing and I suspect they all still work as I used one last year to great effect. I have not really looked at the underlying technology but heat loss once it is charged feels counterintuitive although the vac panels must have some function.

Does it loose anything if it's just standing waiting to be triggered or is there some background activity that has a price in heat loss?

Welcome to THE forum for self builders. Look forward to hearing more.

Is that upstairs? If so I would worry that the low frequency & high amplitude vibrations from all but a perfectly balanced load are going to get everywhere in the house. Has anybody done the upstairs laundry thing in a timber framed house and if so how did it go?

I have just had a builder move into a house 3 doors down, he and I get on well I think. I have encouraged him to join us on BH so he may already be earwigging. He is knocking down and starting again and is doing it - in my view, one of the right ways as he has employed an architect as a starting point. He seems to understand the Passive slab system and was concerned about how much of it I was doing myself but was happy to offer me a hand if ever I needed one, he is very neighborly in my view. So there are some out there who get it and his literacy is definitely not in question. You clearly can learn but the ceiling is very low because without a basic understanding of, as Ed for instance says, Physics and many other things your capacity to do other than work in a very narrow trench - pardon the pun, is limited. Sadly, as a nation, we have yet to work out that we need raise the floor on educating everyone, including engineers, architects, designers and managers in the construction industry. That way we can build better buildings using autonomous and free thinking - open minded practitioners who don't need to be driven to follow what they all to often think of as 'mad self builders' who, although playing the part of the early adopters of many of these innovations, want very good buildings with great energy credentials. Perhaps then, one day, all buildings will be like this or even better.

Some of you will remember the great bubble heist of July 2018.... Well today in a mad rush to find our passports I came across the discarded bubble level in the composting pile on my desk. Anyway pulled it out and guess what, the bubble is back! I expect it has been travelling for the summer and has chosen to return although I cannot for the life of me understand why it would want to and I am still not 100% clear how it escaped or how it smuggled itself back into the liquid.

Or his relatives perhaps?