MikeSharp01

Yep thats the sort of roller, can't compact type 1 syb base with a wacker it wont do deep compacting. On the wacker front I meant on the drainage trench bottoms before the pea shingle. Ok Gumtree alerts already set.

I will shortly be laying the foundations of our new build and am looking in invest in a thwacker plate and a set of vibrating rolls to compact the trenches and the passive slab base. What should I be looking for? I think a thwacker about 300mm wide would be perfect but as for the roller I am not sure. I am looking at used plant but I suppose I could buy the thwacker new as they don't seem expensive (on the scale of things). PS if anybody is looking to move on such equipment happy to hear about it / message me.

My understanding is that you can build your own stairs but they need to comply with the building regs so best get hold of the relevent regs part K (K1 for stairs) and do what is required - this site explains it all well.

Presumably you will now get the windfall (no pun intended) from the payment of back tariffs otherwise all that sun has gone to waste...

Sorry - got the wrong end of the stick - they do relate fall to pipe size I can have 110mm (100mm internal) because my flow rate is >1 l/s with just one WC. If I had more I might need 150mm but not until I have 5 WCs (the house itself has just 3) so 110mm shoudl be fine. Its table 6 in part H that shows the rules so I can have down to 1:80 as the shallowest slope, table 6 says minimum, it would be 1:40 if the flow rate was <1 l/s. Naturally it will be in pea shingle all round so sag won't be a problem.

We made the mistake of putting in for a demolition notice, about three months from needing it to give them time to process it. They did it in 2 days and because they had sent a letter saying we could demolish, after meeting some conditions about site fencing and the like - which we have still to meet, the building control people added our project to the commenced list. Planning saw it and promptly sent us a desist notice because we still had one pre commencement planning condition incomplete, which we knew! Anyway after a quick call to planning they agreed that we had not started and the work we were doing constituted preparation all is well. Two things we learned. 1. There are internal processes inside the LA which we did not take account of - BC adding our project to the commenced list without asking us if we had commenced or waiting for us to meet their conditions for demolition. 2. Once you get to actually speak to the planners they seem to understand and were very accomodating.

It will be 110mm as this will best match the concrete scheme it has to to connect to.

Sounds very sensible any thoughts on which system, or any that comply with BS4962?

Am just about to commence digging the sewer trench for our new builds first phase and am getting bewildered by the range of pipe systems I can use for the foul water and the drop I should adopt in readiness for the BCO. I am going for 1:60 drop that allows me to stay 600mm below the surface for the whole run which terminates in a connection to the existing foul drain running down behind the houses in the street. (1:40 brings me too close to the surface at the far end of the run and would put the pipe in the slab insulation.) This existing drain is 150mm (outer) cement / concrete pipe by the looks of it. This first run is a drop from the toilet and sink round a 90 deg bend and then a 19m run to the existing pipe. Should I use solvent or push fit and which of the massive range of systems has the best reputation as this pipe will run under the slab for 4.8m I don't want to dig it up! (I can put an access point at the edge of the slab if 19m is too long without access.) Any thoughts.

Maybe its just marketing to the uniniated you pick up on the bits you like and asssume the rest is good because you only understand it at the superficial level, Edward debono had a phrase for it 'porridge words' - bit like brexit.... oh no what have I started.

Trouble is they are selling, so it may be that you just saw the new pile. A friend of ours works in our local Lidl and he has been amazed at how many they have sold. How many people did'nt know they needed a compressor? I have the extending reel and the impact wrench, both great!

Sorry Guys, driving home yesterday so not able to do any posting... Here is boiler, but I also have a thermal image showing return pipe hotter than flow! I am reasonably sure our friends have asked the plumber back but no luck yet, anyway they are home this evening and will get onto him in the morning.

I too live in Kent and will need one to commission our system, happy to consider sharing. I think this sharing idea was raised on the old site. Mike

Yes its a grant - and no it has never worked correctly as I understand it, we were here in the summer, just after installation, and although I took a brief look at it their plumber was coming to have a look so left it to him, sadly he never showed. Now we are back, on our own, and right now the return is hotter than the flow! Here is a pic of the beast:

Have you looked at purchase, you don't necessarily need hi accuracy just repeatability for balancing. You even get calibrated systems for under £200. I have no commercial interest in this link but have a look here: https://www.tester.co.uk/testo-410i-bluetooth-vane-anemometer-smart-probe Alternatively make one with a standard car Mass airflow sensor and a DVM.

Crumbs - never thought of CT as a percentage of income but I guess it is not insignificant - do we get value for money....?

No electric value I can find, and not called for in the boiler installation notes I have read, combi boiler, and outside air is above 10, even here in the frozen north. I think the problem is a missing check value which is allowing the whole plant to get into a difficult place. My scenario is this. The CH pump is disabled if the internal water volume temperature is below a set point. The boiler works to get this internal volume up to temperature but in doing so it starts a reverse convection around the CH backwards. I took a thermal image of the flow and return and the return was hotter than the flow by more than a few degrees! As the cold water flows back to the boiler from this reverse flow it cools the internal volume and so the boiler keeps trying to warm it up. This gets into a viscous spiral and the rads warm up and heat the house uncontrollably but the return water is always a fraction below the set point so the CH pump is never enabled. Does that make sense - its missing a check valve to prevent reverse convection. Mike

I think the payback period is less of an issue than achieving passive house certification. We are very tight on roof thickness because we have an absolute ridge height we cannot exceed and between that and the ground level (which we cannot go below because of possible surface water) we cannot get the two clear stories in. In the end IanR put me on to Knauf who have been back to me an said the build up will work, in their words ' The resistance from the vapour control layer will comfortably outweigh any resistance from the cold side.' They have given me their model printout - great guys at Knauf. So I am happy but I still want to get my WUFI model to say the same thing.

All 5 of the architects we spoke to had the idea of % as a possible goal but only if they were managing the whole build. One thing you need to know, and I quote a friend of mine who last year commissioned £22m of buildings here, is that 'Architects don't do money' so the price will be anywhere but where you want it because they just draw it and don't think about how it will be made or how much it will cost. I think I should have added a clause to the contract with ours that said they would design to the budget and show us how it met the budget, Basically we ended up with fixed price everywhere except their input on the actual build which is bit open ended and that has an hourly charge.

Hmmmm... Interesting, we didn't, in the end go with with Touchwood - did go and see a site ran by Reubens brother, very impressed but we cannot get the U value we need with just Warmcell, hence the outer sheathing. I read their research on outer air tight layer which I also liked but then we need the extra sheathing. Yes I will call the Knauf support center and let them have a look at. I have been worried about this build up from the start but our architect seems to think it will be fine!

Sorry Ian have been out today. Yes I think the approach is basically a standard US scheme but they don't routinely have an airtight layer on the inside. I was not intending to have foil backed plasterboard but rather use something like Intello across the I-joists taped and held in place by the vertical battens forming the service void. Is your scheme similar? I guess I will have to find a WUFI professional to check my work. Mike

Hi. Here is a challenge for you to think about - just shows you the sort of mess you can into with plumbing by what looks like a simple omission - clue there if I am right. I have arrived at a friends , in very cold Scotland, - they are away and tried to turn on the central heating. Managed to turn the boiler, installed in March 2016, on and the pipes around the boiler started getting hot so thought I had cracked it. Hot water was flowing from the hot taps, condensing oil fired boiler, and low and behold the radiators where getting warm / hot but when I checked the stat it wasn't calling for CH yet the rads were on! How? Nothing I did with the stat made any difference so I thought I would look into it. Opened the boiler controls door - the CH pump light was off and nothing I could do with the stat made it come on, yet the rads were now glowing! The CH timer was on and the signal was reaching the boiler, the status of the stat didn't matter.... What is going on here?

Hi All - Just received notification of this document which is essentially the the course I spoke of above. Has everything you need to under stand and deliver a 'COOL' home. Mike

Hi ALL. I am working through our wall design and am concerned to make sure we don't get moisture build up. Our architect seems happy enough but because we need great air tightness so an air tight barrier on the inside I have been working with WUFI to see how the wall performs I only have the free versionof WUFI, limited materials and only Grenoble climate data. I have read loads around WUFI (good and bad) and dew point calcs plus run a few simulations. The wall build up (inside - out) is: 12.5mm Platerboard 35mm service void. Air tight barrier. 300mm I Joists filled with DRITHERM .032 insulation 12mm OSB (4) 40mm Kingspan K12 Tyvek UV breather membrain 25mm Verticle battens (Ventilated) 25mm Horizontal battens (Ventilated) Marley Internit Thrutone cement tiles. PHPP U value is .104 (WUFI says .098) My key concern is the OSB because as I understand it this construction scheme (outer sheath of insulation) requires the insulation to dry out to the inside because the Kingspan is not vapour permiable - makes me wonder why I have a breather membrain and I think the OSB outer will reach dewpoint on occassions when it is very cold outside or if the sheathing is not installed perfectly. Any thoughts anywhere?

I did go through the wall build ups I did not model the thermal bridges round the wondows as I am not sure it would help as we are trying not have any thermal bridges around them and in the PHPP I worked on the assumption that the wall U value moves from Wall to Window on the boundary which is somewhat why the windows have to set up carefully in terms of edges in contact with what in the windows sheet. There is always the what I think of as the zero sum rule to help decide if a bridge exists / needs detailed modelling or not! You are dead right you can work away squeezing 100ths here and there but get blown away by the wrong MVHR I was worried when ours was not a passive house and I modelled thicker walls, better insulation to get it back into spec only to find that I must have scrolled through the available MVHR and landed on one with 80% efficiency rather than the 91% I had intended, and still do, to use. Suddenly I could get away with thinner walls, cheaper insulation. I guess this means just keep doing your reality checks! I am happy with 5% overheadting - thats still 18 days. I can get it way down by opening the windows but then we have a security - rather bigger than mosquitos, problem.