MikeSharp01

Stand by!

Is that at the bottom or the top?

What proportion of that is appliances? We are deciding appliances now and will get to the final layout around them, ours will be painted doors so we can maintain them and choose nearer the time. I think we now have the floor tiles chosen so that sort of defines everything and as you say it's a mine field with the other half.

I had no problems during yesterday, didn't post much but read a lot - I was only on via my phone but for chunks of the day it would have been on our Wifi at the build.

That's what my wife thinks as well.

Or as I prefer keep it stupidly simple.

Great idea and the large housebuilders will need jump even further than they would if they had allowed the earlier attempt at it..

They actually mention "Thermal Mass" without stating any units. Also the 0.09 for roofs is going to be challenging as is the 0.0 for party walls I wonder what the assumption is there then?

YES All kinds of straps are available and if they don't have enough then they have not done their planning have they and that is a worry. If the windows are not fitted according to the manufacturers specification their warrenty will be void and it will all fall on the fitter.

Yes and the chartered thing is a can of worms really because achieving it, well the undergraduate bit, increasingly focuses on wider theoretical application of knowledge not practical application and the two are getting further apart. AHEP4 (Accreditation of Higher Education Programmes - from the Engineering Council) and the rapid diversification of technology takes this further, or it seems to. By broadening the Learning Outcomes to cope the depth inevitably gets reduced and fight all you might to increase / maintain the practical aspects the lab work gets diminished for this and funding reasons.

Totally agree, the problem is having some metric we can easily assess the company by - word of mouth works well but we are not there in this situation but essentially anybody who can get it right and is able to explain it, not just sell it, to me gets my vote.

Ok so Airseal FM330 from Illbruck "has is a moisture curing expanding polyurethane foam that ideal for use as an air tight gap filler for construction joints. The movement accommodation factor of 35% ensures that the integrity of the seal is maintained." Accommodation factor is not mentioned on the Wurth product (Which I would have a l;ot of time for in other applications - they make good stuff)

It does not stay flexible like the Illbruk one does so if there is any movement if goes with it rather than staying where it was put and creating cracks / leaks. Also I found this video from Charlie Luxton which shows his Internorm window install. At 56 seconds in you can see him talking about a window and you can see how how your should have packer at the base and he goes on to talk about the expanding tape and how that should be fitted and refers to the microcraking you get if you don't use flexible fillers. Worth a look.

Worth a read IMO.

They cannot sort the bottom gap because of the inward opening window. The problem there is the lack of sill packer - they should not have solved that with expanding foam if not a sill packer, but rather with and insulating block such as sold by Green Building Store then render over and make good. Overall the install looks awfull and the compriband should go all around and match the system requirements from Internorm which will specify depth, recess etc then the Illbruke foam goes behind that from the back. If you paid with your credit card I would put them on notice seek immediate replace / refit from the supplier.

I think we need a political wing to Buildhub who can ask questions. I mentioned yesterday that installers should be asked how many degrees in Engineering they have in the company. This because, given the sophistication of the systems they are selling, I think they will need 1x mechanical engineer for the thermodynamics, 1x Electrical / electronic engineering for all the power and control systems and another in software engineering / computer networking to handle that aspect and finally a systems engineer to deal with the integration. If they are chartered engineers then you can seek redress from their professional body and either they or their company will carry professional indemnity (PI) which could be claimed against for inappropriate installs. The trouble is that too many of our engineering graduates go into finance and traditional plumbers don't want to grow in the graduate skills direction anyway. To be fair our daughters favourite plumber is a graduate and very happy plumbing in Dulwich.

Can you make a feature of the pipes. In a new build, yes it was a new build so perhaps more possible, I was the end user for we decided to have all the services on show everywhere we could.

Climate is as important as my heat pump that's for sure we are trying to do our bit building a wooden framed house to passive standard, trying to keep waste to a minimum, paying attention to details like air tightness. The fact is climate is a wicked problem and although we can all do our bit individually, we need to do so much more collectively and recognise the cost this will be across the piece. Still what price can you put on your great grandchildren' great grandchildren?

Great blog.

Nice place to panic in!

Looking at the pics again I can see that they either forgot to add the packer at the bottom or were expecting that the wall would be higher beneath them as they open inwards they had to clear the sill.

If they use the right foam it is OK as it stays flexible and is designed for airtightness. E.g Illbruck FM330 Air Tight Expanding Foam. How are the windows held in? Through the frames or with straps as this makes a difference to the air tightness detail.

Does have a whiff of that - ask them which university gave them their degrees in Thermodynamics perhaps. I think that all these companies have spreadsheets which don't look at the thermodynamics at all but just at demand and the double the size of the heat pump. There must be a sweet spot where the cost to them of the bigger heat pump is proportionately lower so more profitable and they can sell it you as faster reheat times. However 11kW going into 200L starting at 10 deg and going to 50 deg C with 80% efficiency is 1h 3min 25.2sec so that bit is about right and if you go down to 8kW it will be 1h 27min 12.6sec. Then you are into worrying about modulation depth for great chunks of the year anyway as @JohnMo says.

No, just trying to work out what might have happened to cause the problem in the first place.

Good points Nick although my concern is not with security but with giving away my data and having, eventually, to pay to have my equipment generate electricity for me. Look what British gas did to Hive - you need to oay £5 PCM (or some such figure) for the pleasure of keeping all the features you thought you had paid for when you brought the device in the first place.