MikeSharp01

Today I was getting millstone manor ready for the XMAS throngs (18 for lunch on boxing day!) anyway as part of this exercise I cleaned the lava lamp that is in our 'drawing room' - dank place we only use on hi days and holidays. I turned it on and by the time I had cleaned the room, polished the grate and hovered round it was bubbling away merrily. Then a thought struck me - the lava lamp needs an incandescent bulb to make it work, generate the heat to create the motion for which these lamps are famous. I had a look at it and wondered if the bulb went whether I could get a new one or would have to replace it with an LED and a small heating element (thus defeating the drive for eco lighting)! Extending this a little further I wondered what other devices of fond memory might have to be re-engineered because the incandescent lamp is in its final phase of life - or is it? Any ideas? (PS this is not an excuse to discuss the finer points / merits or otherwise of government policy or, heaven forfend, the machinations of much maligned / meddling (delete as appropriate) bureaucrats in Brussels.)

Yes me too, but for a modest home, with a gamer (or 2) a CAT6 network with switches won't be a problem. As @Alphonsox says its the broadband that will be the bottleneck for most of us.

If you haven't already don't pay them until the job is done as per the spec agreed in the contract, no joiner no payment.

Is it to passive house spec? if so there will be an approved connection and / or your PHPP model will show a cold bridge calculation for it. Making it air tight will be easy with tape but that will not deal with the structural or thermal join.

Friends, Romans - country men (by which refer to all countries where like minded individuals reside) don't forget that we are up now to CAT 8 (almost - but likely to be different connector and not backward compatible) and CAT7, bright green colour favoured, is common. Don't be fooled though because the transmission standard for CAT6 (10GBase-T) means CAT7 will be no faster. It has the advantage, while being a bit more costly, in that the shielding is better - you can run it more intertwined with other cables and get away with it, fewer lost packets, and it has a larger copper cross section this allowing the PoE to work a bit harder. If installing now the lowest standard should probably be CAT6 (or 6a) which has 1Gbs data performance (CAT 5 is 10Mbs (5a 100Mbs)) so 10 times a quick as CAT 5. Also in your discussion above remember that switches (true switches) allow you to set them up with different QoS (Quality of Service) offerings to the various stations on the network. In this way you can give the PS4 gamers a better connection, less latency / contention / speed to WAN at least around the house, than the iPad browser. As things stand cabled connections will be faster than WiFi and QoS over wifi is a bit more of a dark art. If you have a larger home then consider pulling through some fibre connections, packet loss immune but limited to 10GBase-T speeds if using converters - if your router / switch has fibre ports these will be faster, between switches and fan out in CAT6/7 from there. Finally in what might be helpful to others of our vintage, me not you, its worth recounting, as you pull though your CAT7 cable to your sons bedroom for his PS4 / XBOX and stretch every sinew to give him a great connection, that our son moved out of home to get a faster broadband connection - result (but don't tell his mum I said so)!

Looks like money for old rope for the installers again.. I will look at an ASHP now and solar thermal because it may now squeak in on payback. Although we will be going round the tank heat loss problem loop again.

Not sure Terry, have you factored in the expansion / contraction of the slab, I think I worked out that across our slab (15m) the expansion per degree was around 0.2mm per Deg C (K) @ 14.5 x (10-6 m/(m K)) {always assuming I have my powers of 10 right} so to stop / reduce movement I was sort of expecting to do my utmost to keep the slab at a constant temperature rather than cycle it. Given your wall construction (elsewhere here described) excessive slab expansion / contraction might appear in your outer leaf!

They must have a sprinkler system and perhaps a ladder out the back, or a secret door through into next door - good point!

I have a smaller one, plus a few 'skill' saws (Dewalt, Bosch and Festool plunger) but it (they) won't do the 300 x 90 I-joists which are the main components of the build. I watched a video of it and appreciate its big but my plan is to ensconce it in the site 'shop' and leave it there when I am on site. I want repeatability and accuracy which no matter how I try with the one I have I cannot get to the level I want it.

Today we got an email from the council saying that they, and the valuation officer, had accepted that we not longer need to pay council tax on the property we are building in Seasalter as there is no longer a habitable dwelling on the site. The roof has been long gone and I am just salvaging the main timbers, those that are not rotted, for general purposes around the site. The small win is that although they only checked on the site in October, after we requested the council tax to stop, they have back dated the non payment to the date of the demolition order (August), some here might remember that asking for a demolition order triggered an automatic commencement of the build. So we are due for a small windfall in council tax repayment which I am looking forward to putting towards on one of these if anybody has experience of the beast please let me know good / bad!

That's amazingly compact! Answers from my research - have not actually installed one yet. 1. The most you can manage but the general feeling looks like being at least a meter. One, exhaust, could be above the other but some horizontal distance will help, you want to avoid exhaust air returning via the inlet. 2. In theory but you would need plenty of gaps at the bottom / top of the door to ensure circulation but this may interfere with Q3. 3. Higher the better but somewhat depends on whether you are putting heat in via the MVHR with an air battery in the feed duct because hot air rises and you may want to induce gentle, very gentle, mixing of the air in the space using this flow in sympathy with that generated by the airflow. Extracts IMO want to be as high as possible because they go in 'warm' / 'wet' spaces. In your Living room / Kitchen you will need both inlet and extract and this in itself will cause useful circulation in the room to help handle the cooking vapours. The extract(s) will be above the kitchen and inlet(s) at the other side of the room. If this has a vaulted ceiling you will want to think hard about where the cooking smells will be going, assuming you are using a recirculating cooker hood. 4. Oversize has the advantage of having loads in reserve so should do your job very quietly in normal mode because it will be at a low setting. It can then boost loads of air in the summer if you need it. (see below) 5. Depends on what other cooling you have in the house - windows, induced circulation etc and can then turn off the MVHR. In air tight buildings I would be concerned about turning it off if I could not leave secure openings elsewhere in the house. In the case of loo you will need another extractor if you do intend turning off the MVHR. If it is running without summer bypass it will return exhaust heat. So, again IMO, you probably do need summer by pass. Hope that helps.

Sorry Nick - Typo. Yes this is a concern but I will do the sums on the heat loss, its not a huge mass but its hot - kept hot and not that brilliantly insulated. I think I was working on the basis that we would switch them off in the summer when showers can be a bit less sizzling and we don't want the heat loss warming the building. My only worry with the system as it stands is getting it to tick over at a low enough level to run the UFH and / or Air battery in the MVHR. We have VG mains pressure and flow, I will do a full test with a direct connection to the meter, when we dig it up, later in the build but a single hose delivers 24L/min from an outside tap and throws it 12 meters so I suspect full bore will be fine for our needs.

Hopefully around £1200 + VAT (New build so will get that back) the unit is THIS one suggested by @Nickfromwales. It does have some standing losses because it has a very small heat buffer in it but I think, if I read the blurb correctly, you can configure it not to use the buffer tank if you are not going to experience high demand.

Not always that directly - the old DHW / space heating question again. We, most of us, have been around the dwellings on this, our passive house design model shows we will need around 2Kw of heat, worst case - peak in a typical winter and max of 3Kw once every 10 years. BUT following a conversation elsewhere with @Nickfromwales we are going, as things stand, for a 35Kw Combi because we want to run two simultaneous showers at 10+ L/min and don't want the standing losses from a tank which @JSHarris has shown, and is discussed above, can be a problem in the well insulated home. The conversations above make the same point in that heating a well insulated home consumes a lot less energy than the DHW demand if we are all showering frequently as has become the norm or at the very least demands the ability to expend energy at a hi rate to recover hot water in standing volumes quickly in readiness for the next hose down! This is a classic 'no one right answer' problem - just an optimal one for each according to their circumstances....

Our experience was that an internal process in the council triggered the start of the development. We are not subject to CIL, at least the council have not mentioned it and we are a redevelopment that does not add more than 100SqM so should not be. However if we were seeking exemption then our experience tells us that if you go for a demolition order even if you do not intend to demolish immediately the act of getting a demolition order puts your project onto the commenced list. We them got an immediate stop order from enforcement because we had not closed our finish materials condition. We fought the stop and they agreed we had not started all the work we had done was classed as preparation so the order was lifted. Suspect that there are a number of such triggers.

Unless you want a large number if holes to seal try and get the plenums in the air tight zone that way you only have two pipes to seal.

Just so organic.....sensual even! Don't you just want to get naked, roll around on that and become one with it? Well are several reasons why not. 1. Working at height. Not sure how you can be harnessed and rolling at the same time. 2. Performing lude acts in public. I suppose you could put a scaffolding screen round it and carry on all weather's. 3. Somebody might think you had a mental health problem and section you thus slowing up the day job -assuming you are not already banged up under 2 above, leading to loss of income, divorce and penury. Not to mention having to give the other half 50% of you power tools. My advice - get over it!

Just enough time not to crack the slab by heating it too much in one go. This is a worry I have been mulling over. Our polished concrete floor needs to heat and cool very slowly if cracking it to be avoided. So in some ways its good that the time constant is sooooo loooong but if I recall my control theory its all about the sample resolution (digital systems) so you can spot the smallest changes that are above the noise or filter out the noise and get even closer. Sampling the slab depends on the coil pattern a bit I guess as well. Until a couple of weeks back we were not having UFH, didn't need an ASHP but its great to hear that the ASHP can feed the slab direct, that makes perfect sense in a number of scenarios and I am going away to model that and see how close to the optimum COP you can get & stay without cracking the concrete and / or overheating the house.

Looks like a classic self tuning PID controller would tackle this Terry, there are many implementations for raspberry PI - such as this one. It would need time to learn, some upper and lower limits carefully set and servos (or digital equivalent) on all the controls but then it should just read the stat and go from there.

Size not but technique yes.

My point entirely, why abstract the ideas on there why not instead have your own. Ah.. good point on one level BUT (won't use the consultants AND here) it is not possible for humans to have spontaneous ideas. The ideas we have are in fact new combinations of things we already know. This is how progress happens. So to have your own ideas you need a feed of ideas to combine in new ways and it is this feed stock that I think house of the year does for me. Once upon a time... someother time.

Just watched first of house of the year, blown away by some of the ideas and the two best got on the shortlist IMO although the other three had a lot about them. Building the house around the street - inspired.

I think MBC now have a UK facility so they may not be affected as much by exchange rates which might help a bit.

Hedge and buy everything now. You will have the cost of the money for the extra few months but that won't be much even if borrowed at 5-6%. I am discussing this with the other half to see if we should do it.

Hi just back from Jewson the site singe pack is £135 decided I can do better elsewhere on this one. Will be off to eBay shortly.