MikeSharp01

We have used F&B before and don't now because it is just the pain described above. For my part I have recently been amazed by how good the Dulux weathershield 6 coat system is - which although needing 6 coats is a joy to work with, two of sealer, two of undercoat and two topcoat. It is not cheap but it goes one very well, covers very well, has a six year guarantee and is available in any colour!

Bad news @Barney12hope the claim goes well. Not good in Whitstable today either moving some 8x4 sheets about in 135Km winds is a bit like being attached to a kite but all safe. Can hear some whistling from the garden room windows so will have to .find where that is coming from and a bit of water has blown in under the soleplate, no cladding yet, which I will have to find and fix.

If on a network then defo it will work with it but if you mean access it via the pi USB then the only hurdle is the driver.

I thought the falls would be slopes between the flat sections of rooflight or do the roof lights stick up?

The mortgage can be taken with the site as the asset if its worth £50K - that way they don't care what you put on it or what is on it they can get their money back by just selling the plot on.

Over that distance you can have a series of very small falls, 50mm, and flat sections with the inset glass sections, but they will be set at the different levels if they are part of the path.

15mm for part M I think and IIRC you need a flat portion in front of the door - check! That sounds OK but a drawing would help. If I understand correctly you have a 200mm drop over what distance?

OK @TerryE this D1 mini looks like a lot of fun but it is Arduino which I am not at all familiar with, python though is fine and it looks like I can install micro python which would give me control of the machine at my level, if I understand correctly? (You would probably like me to install Lua - go on convince me.) The ESP-8266EX has some great little features although the 10bit ADC is bit limited for resolution. I guess the big question is getting set up to play - is my list complete? Get a D1 Mini (pro?) Build some I/O around the board to play with. Install associated driver on PC Connect D1 Mini to PC using a USB lead. Download the uPython interpreter binary. Load uPython to D1 Mini and flash it over. Get programming.

I didn't do a tradesman course but made a point of going on as many manufacturers 'awareness' courses and product talks as I could especially around air tightness as that is the major one I guess. The AECB was the place I found them IIRCC.

Your rounding could a bit of an issue as it is nearer 0.018 than 0.017 so it is reading a lower flow rate than actual, if my brain is working today - not sure it is, then it is a 6% error - might help to get closer to correct. The x10 thing sounds right but check the manual to be sure I guess.

Yes there is something a bit odd about your design @Visti as @PeterW says because your UFH return is going into your hot water tank so there is a chance that it could, depending upon demand / slab temperature, I suspect overwhelm the tank in temperature terms. @Nickfromwales seems to have shown the way using the ASHP to run the UFH and the UVC.

I did the PHPP course at BRE. Just one day but we'll worth the money as you get the software, a good grounding in PH thinking and how to apply the package.

Off the top of my head I think I would say yes because you want to keep air circulation / convection, even in a small space, to a minimum. Not sure I would use foam, might go for glass wool - easier to manage.

Hi And welcome to THE forum - Especially, and perhaps curiously, as you spell your name as we named our son - very Scottish. Also Welcome to @Luckylad as I missed your arrival.

50% feels a bit high but the general principle is sound - it usually cost more than you think, if it was software I would double it, but for building the key patterns are well understood and you can peel this onion from the outside in. IE cost per square meter right down to the number of nails you need. You cannot do much until you have the basic data each of which sort of builds on the former: Building design including standard of insulation and basic finishes - you will need that for planning anyway. Floor area - from which flows the wall area, number and area of windows. Standard of finish being targetted. Systems - Heating / DHW / Environmental control - MVHR / PV / ???? On top of that you have a number of fiddle factors that you need to pop into your working out of quantities and costs, not all costs have quantities - you just need it once EG services connections, and some adjust everything EG site access / remoteness might increase delivery costs. Site difficulty - steep slopes - leading to more civil engineering, remoteness from services - leading to high costs to run services, difficult access to site for plant. How ECO you want / can afford to be. Who is project managing - are you doing it yourself, or will you employ a PM. How much you want the architect to do or if you want one at all. How well organised can you be - sounds odd but if you can keep ahead of the project you will never slow it down and run up extra costs and if you don't change your mind about the layouts etc once the design is complete your control over the budget is likely tighter. Have a look through the JSHarris blogs - he has a spreadsheet with all his costs broken down and if you get the latest copy of the housebuilders bible (by Mark Brinkley) the basic costs / bills of quantities are well explained there.

Not sure how rain detectors will hack it - here is what I have been thinking over the last 24 hours. Firstly we need some parameters - how much of a leak am I prepared to tolerate before I want all the pressure in the system gone and fresh input water to the system choked off. I think I would not be too unhappy with 100ml on the carpet, or in the ceiling plasterboard - not so worried about dripping taps but any system would find both, If I could get better than 100ml I would be happy. How quickly to I want it to react - lets say 10 minutes for the smallest leaks, limited to 100ml. Very sensitive pressure sensor based on the the PVT rule - will need quite a bit of intelligence and other sensors. Total water volume of the system from Non returns before pump to the taps is about 230L including the UVC and 50% of the expansion vessels. If 1 drip is about 0.1ml the volume change is 1 part in 2,300,000 to detect that would need a 22bit ADC compensated for all kinds of stuff like the temperature of hot water cooling in the pipes after the hot tap has been opened, the whole system warming up as the house warms up / cools down (although heating up the house would mask a tiny leak cooling would go the wrong way and look like a tiny leak if not compensated for). 22bit ADCs are cheap enough but the signal processing before the ADC will need to be mega stable and the sampling / smoothing / filtering software will need to be thought about. However a few drips, say 20, over 5 minutes would be 1ml, reduces the required resolution of the ADC and in my ideal world would trip the leak detection. Modify or use a standard water meter. I have noticed that the water company water meter is very sensitive but I am not sure how much so, will it sense the dripping tap volume over a period? If so then it might be possible to use a water meter. There is another problem in where to put the flow meter, I would need one in the HOT final and the Cold final as a single one before the pump won't sense the expansion vessel releasing its water. As far as flow meters go I found this article which seems to show that they are not that sensitive and points out that people could get around water meters by using very low flows. Based on our trip level above 100ml over 10 minutes = 600ml / Hr with is well below the sensitivity of water meters - well on the curve shown here anyway which tends to say that below 10l/hr they may not even register. This article is more interesting in that is shows, for somewhat older meters, that the mean start rate of flow is around 20lm so if your flow is below that you stand a good chance of not paying for water - which may explain why they have never fitted one at Millstone Manor. So unless I can find a much more sensitive flow meter this approach won't work. I need to think about this some more - perhaps a hybrid system of some sort.

If I had a FIT capable company I would offer a fee based service to check and connect up a self installed system and then register it. Anybody out there up for it cos then I might register mine - otherwise not.

The UVC is bundled and is piped to overflow but on this occasion the hole caused a jet which sprayed the water over the boundary. Plus this would not spot a dripping tap.

Yesterday I got a call from the other half to say that there was water dripping from the loft hatch back at mill stone manor! We have a procedure for leaks, only used once before, and she had already done everything to prevent any further loss so the situation was calm and the amount of water was quite small - damp carpet. Had we been out it would have been another matter! Long - story short, I came home and got into the loft and saw that the water was coming from the pressure set pump's primary pressure switch, a pin hole in the diaphragm housing! I soon had it apart, ordered a new switch as a spare and machined up a new diaphragm housing, fitted it and tested it. So me thinks - job done! Overnight I have been wondering how the control system for the pressure set could be adapted to detect small leaks. It already has protection, trips, if the pump runs too long in trying repressurise the system or if the pressure rises above 1.2 bar. Neither of these would protect against a small leak. So the challenge is to come up with a way of detecting very low, constant, flows such as a dripping tap or our pin hole. Several ideas come to mind, very sensitive flow meter and / or analog pressure sensor watching the slow reduction in pressure come to mind but neither would be fool proof and might well be impractical. Any thoughts? A bit of background if it helps: We have the worst water pressure anywhere and we can get about 2L/min out of the main tap if nobody else on the hill is running anything. So about 20 years ago we put an extra tank in the roof (total of 400L), a UVC, a 100L expansion vessel and a pressure set into the loft which pressurises the cold water to 1Bar which then feeds the UVC. This approach means that the Hot and cold water are always at the same (roughly) pressure so the thermostatic showers work really well and at full bore are very refreshing. The pump will happily deliver 70L / min against 1 Bar and the expansion vessel (on the cold side - but there is a small one on the hot side as well to allow for the expansion of the hot water as it expands) ensures that you get several minutes of flow to the showers before the pump cycles the pressure up with a hysteresis of about 0.4 Bar.

Does this shower have a wander head as well as the fixed head - if not then that probably needs thinking through as well - lots of people like the idea of a wander head to jet wash those otherwise inaccessible corners, sorry.

Nope - not a one, but the glass didn't break, at least that's a blessing they can just pop it back, foam around it and all will be fine.

Why not fit one light as emergency lighting with a backup battery then if the power goes off you still have light for a bit while you fumble for s torch.

Simpler solution = shadow gaps - NOT

Welcome to THE forum. With a good architect achieving a passive house with great design should not be a problem and all the technologies - EG: MBC + Stone cladding are available and well tried. @TerryE's new house demonstrates this admirably.

I think he should immediately start work with the welder to create a shrink ray then he could shrink the kids, or perhaps the nephew, into the model to get the complete impression. I guess creaĺting a shrink ray and finishing this bathroom are close bed fellows in terms of the time horizon. BUT the one big advantage of the shrink ray is that you can adjust the tile sizes to fit exactly so the problem goes away. Wonder what else would go away!