MikeSharp01

We only ever learn from our mistakes the trick, I suspect, is to learn to make them without killing or naming yourself. Everyday is a school day.

Yes one with Bob the builder on but with slightly altered catch phrase. "Can we build it - only with the help of our friends on buildhub.'

Ok have some more info and the news is not good - so it probably is too good to be true. I can find no regulation details on the we site so either they are not regulated or have still to update their site. They do say that they do their best to rent back to the property owners but cannot guarantee this - and perhaps here lies the rub because - if they do rent it back to you then the whole transaction becomes a 'sale and rent back' agreement (my understanding) and so becomes regulated (see the link). So if you call them and say you would like to become a sale and rent back customer and they don't immediately send you the money advice service factsheet then perhaps best to walk away. If they don't rent it back to you then it is not regulated and of course you need to find somewhere else to live! Citizens advice have said a few things and you can find the details HERE while the old FSA now partly the FCA had some consumer advice HERE. Sorry but I think this particular firm might be sailing close to the proverbial wind so Cave(at) Venditor.

Hmmm - Never heard of this in the form here - I will ask my 'local' mortgage market expert and get back to you.

Straight from your Tinder profile eh Steamy.

Welcome and a couple of observations: (Downer) Your toddlers won't be toddlers for long and they will soon be teenagers and then off to Uni or apprenticeship and won't need the new space you created for them 10 years back, you will have created your own millstone manor and have rooms you don't go in but you still have to pay for. Basically if you don't do it now the reason for doing it will go away to Uni! (Upper) Toddlers are remarkably resilient and if you keep them involved they will be OK with some hardship and provided you do it when they have the capacity to remember the build they will feel part of it. (Clincher) If you want / need a job doing just find a busy man & women who are organised, committed, capable and resilient themselves - sound like anybody you know. Our example(s): When we extended Millstone manor here in Kent I did it over three years by tackling a bit at a time while keeping the rest of the house largely intact and always wind and watertight. We built over the kitchen, without missing a meal, added a utility room - moved the downstairs toilet, added a downstairs wetroom built a double garage with and ensuite bedroom over and a front extension above the porch one section at a time. Our children were 9 and 11 when we started and they were somewhat involved but I wish I started sooner. Taking our time also meant we could do a lot out of revenue although we did also have a capital budget. When I was a boy (13) may parents extended their home, I as the eldest, along with my mum (who by this time had 5 children - hence the increase in house size) were chief hod carriers, concrete layers and general hired hands. (Dad was out at work but the brickie did the bulk of the work.) Dad fitted out the extension and then knocked through so my three sisters (I ended up with 5) had a room each until my other two sisters came along. My brother and I were already sharing - shame on the parenting standards of the 1960 and 70s. Both of which prove you can do it alongside a family you just need to think it through!

That is quite some post Terry! I started responding before heading off this morning and kept returning to it in then end here is my penny worth. A few things / questions spring to mind. 1. Is there a schematic of it all somewhere that might make it more accessible to mortals. 2. How much data is being pushed onto the HDD and as you mention headroom how much do you anticipate on a minute by minute basis when it is running flat out. 3. Although you say there is no routing path you seem to have devices that are connected on both networks are these not a potential weakness? 4. The rock looks interesting but I cannot help feeling that you are going to end up with such a wide array of technologies that should anything happening to you, heaven forbid, would render the house control system somewhat impenetrable. 5. Have you looked at the HIVE protocols to see if compatibility might be possible I wonder or one of the commercial, albeit often proprietary, BMS protocols? I need to think this through as I will have the same basic issue but I was going to have all nodes as Web servers with some sort of domain majordomo bringing it altogether as another Web site. Speed I think is not a problem, we won't need Ghz sampling rates. Although I also played with the idea of a distributed intelligence mesh with heuristic / genetic opportunities to devolve processing once a pattern emerges. I almost had this in another life with a bitbus network where each node could see every other and track variables as proxy settings or readings but getting the intelligence to migrate was never a success although the system worked without it. I have better ideas on how to make it work now, with today's technology, by providing a set of high level commands that can be built as programmes on the nodes by themselves to replicate the control regime in the pattern. At the very least I would want them to tune. The other thread on the DS temp sensors is also of interest alongside the challenges of solar gain. I came up with a sensing plan, see attached so I could monitor the slab temp near the pipe and near the surface thus giving me the chance to see Solar gain getting ahead of the UFH and the gradient when heating and or cooling. I would put these on a 1m grid in the front three quarters of the main space (9m x 9m) as the rear portion gets almost no direct solar.

Hi and welcome, sounds interesting - look forward to hearing more.

If you are having the PIR on the inside then I think the VCL should cover the PIR then batten's then plasterboard. The VCL essentially stops water vapour moving through it so you don't want water building up in the PIR although it should dry to the inside. Getting the VCL in the right place seems like a bit of an art. There should be others along shortly who are more knowledgeable than me. I will be interested in the outcome.

Hi. Image is a bit out of focus so struggle to read the item number text to review build up. Ahhh - it works on a large screen can just read it on my 32" monitor but not on tablet. You are right the block that the frame sits on is the cold bridge along with the cavity tray which transfers the heat to the block from the outside.

If you can, wait until Friday as you should find better deals on Black Friday it's not even a week away.

The hardest wear on our thresholds is people traffic not water. I have to sand and re-varnish every 3 years and I use a floor varnish.

TV Aerial for the gas powered TV one presumes. They also have plastic front door and windows!

Just seen this in the online edition of the local rag. Scope for some energy updating and just down the road.

Well lets hope that you are good with a surf board and want to travel downhill.

I tried that by moving the stat dial on the splines about 10 years ago but my son - the blighter, calibrated the stat with the kitchen thermometer and told me it was 4 deg out and that he had drawn an arrow on the dial where 21 was supposed to be.

You are right here. Last week we were running out of GAS (LPG switch over) so I dropped the stat down to 18 from 21 here in millstone manor. The other occupants went crazy but after a day or two they got used to it - we had a delivery today, the stat has gone up to 21 again and I feel sweltering!

In the end a sensor is just a sensor the processing that goes on with its output is what counts along with the response times of the various processes across the system. I still wonder, although do not dispute that it works, if 0.1deg is fine enough because across a 10 deg range it is a 1% change which feels large. It is the old resolution / accuracy problem along with keeping the sensor in a stable environment, or adopting other technologies, that allows it to measure tiny changes without being affected by other things, such a drafts (not in a passive house). If you were processing this directly you would take a million high resolution samples every second and process them to remove all the unwanted 'noise' you can then programme the hysteresis at whatever level you want, subject to the resolution, and even adjust it for conditions. In the end the trend has to be picked out from the noise and it maybe that the noise is 0.05 deg C so 0.1 is about as good as you might expect. It is somewhat unclear to me how knowing it is going to be a cold night is going to help other than in preparing for heat input or provisioning, in the reverse case, for heat loss. I can see that knowing that it will drop does allow heat input to be made ahead of the curve perhaps based on most effective energy source. So you might lift the slab temperature using the ASHP driven by the PV array in preparation for a cold night and let the decrement delay take the cream off. This might be the place to look at a neural network technology just taking a feed from the met office and able to sense the environmental factors with the caveat that the system itself then has some predictive capacity based on what it senses in real time and it is able to adjust the weightings across the network to improve prediction based on experience. What emissive 'surface' would you point at? One of these might be a good option if a little pricey but the image processing would be great fun. Many years back I built a sun sensor in a pingpong ball it could measure the strength of the sun and took into account the various trignometric factors associated with where it was in relation to the sun and the time of year to the minute. I guess I could dig out the code, I will have it on a 8" floppy somewhere, and use that to help work out how much heat will be acquired from the sun and hence the amount needed to get ahead of the frosty night to come with free energy from the PV array (which itself is a measure of the suns strength but is very directional).

Whatever it is it can connect to or be replaced by any of the standard push fittings HEP20 or John Guest for instance. You just need the diameter of the pipe to get the right bits. Looks like the grey stuff and the copper is 22mm while the white stuff (looks remarkably like John Guest pipe) is 15mm and the ends of the white pipe go into reducers which provide 22mm male to 15mm female connections.

For all its tattiness it is a significant milestone, you can claim the VAT back for a start also, I am sure, someone on here will be happy to design a 'buildhub' completion certificate that you can be proud of after all the adulation of your peers will be much more valuable won't it.

Get a concave mirror and reflect the focused light back into their windows they will soon get the message.

I think you have your answer but if you want my 6 pence worth - is 6 pence still a thing, then you don't need them (it) however nice she is, unless she is very nice in which case you still don't need them cos you will have to sell up when the divorce proceedings commence and so will no longer be the owner of your lovely lighting wiring although presumably, and as long as an even nicer lady (or person of another gender type depending) does not come along trying to sell you the built in hoover, you will have a hot line to some more for the next house you build.

What is the core equation that enables you to work this out, PHPP does something similar, but yours might help people here particularly if the coatings fiddle factors could also be worked up. I also wonder about the internal surfaces / materials and their ability to 'manage' the heat / radiation / convection flows driven by light in all its constituent parts. PS are you back this side of the pond or do they have better comics the other side?

I am sure the @JSHarris discusses the settings for the UFH / room stat in one of his blogs. Hot water circulation is reasonably rare I think so it will be interesting to see how you get on with it.

A bit left field - pardon the pun