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Crofter

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Everything posted by Crofter

  1. Crofter
    So had an email back from Everbuild this morning. They recommend using 'Febflor Heatflex' instead of the Lumberjack product. Comes in powder form, around £20 for a 20kg bag which will do 2.4m2 at 5mm thickness.
  2. Crofter
    A lot of boaty people swear by those pump action weedkiller sprayers, apparently they make quite good showers.
  3. Crofter
    It's not really fair to compare biofuels with PV solely on the basis of which one is a more efficient use of land area. What would a cradle to grave assessment of cost and environmental impact look like? Considering factors such as the sourcing of the raw materials for PV, the lifespan of the arrays, storage of energy, biodiversity, and of course cost to establish and maintain. I know my situation is atypical for the UK, but I am gradually planting more of my croft with willow cuttings at no cost (except my time). In theory I could cover four acres in this way. What would the same area of PV cost?? Eventually, this will produce wood that I can burn in the winter. Whereas if I went down the PV route, I could look forward to shivering under a blanket all winter muttering about how much excess I produced all summer...
  4. Crofter
    Ok so I am no Ed Graves but here's a wee clip... now I just have to work out how to work at this speed without the aid of a timelapse app!
  5. Crofter
    Everbuild website suggests minimum of 0.5kg/m2, I'll drop them a line and see what they suggest when UFH is involved.
  6. Crofter
    Blimey this could get expensive. My backup plan is to not bother with UFH in the kitchen/living room and maybe fit a plinth fan heater, plus there is of course the woodburner in that room, and waste heat from cooking, TV, etc. That would halve the area of UFH needed.
  7. Crofter
    I'm going to presume that a caravan water heater is not going to have a tremendous output so you'll probably want to limit the flow rate in order to keep the temperature up. Does it have a kW rating? I know from personal experience that you can just about shower in five litres (one of those solar bag thingies) but it's not the best experience ever! As an absolute minimum a shower at home would be using 5l/min so say 20-30l per shower as an absolute lowest figure. So you're looking at about a 100l container to give a couple of showers and a bit left over.
  8. Crofter
    I know Sikaflex well, being a boat owner. Hopefully the builders' stuff is a bit less eyewatering than the marine version From what you've said before, it's best to bond down the bamboo rather than having it floating. So whilst this is pretty much a done deal, I'm yet to cost up UFH vs simple panel heaters (or, rather, cost up just how much more UFH will be). Will the use of UFH mean I need more Sika? And will I need those insulation boards that are sold for the electric mats? The floor makeup, by the way, is 22mm chipboard over 300mm rockwool between engineered joists.
  9. Crofter
    Yes it's a bit bewildering! As Ed says, are you putting sarking on? And are you doing full fill insulation and therefore need a breather membrane? I did more research on this than was healthy, making a big list of the different types and noting down the vital specs off their BBA certificates (nail tear strength etc). I knew mine was going to be exposed for a lot longer than normal so I didn't want to skimp. Ended up using Cromar Pro Vent 3, for what it's worth.
  10. Crofter
    You were lucky then- I had to get the neighbour to offload my windows using his telehandler, and the insulation (from Seconds and Co) we had to strip from its pallets and chuck off the lorry piece by piece.
  11. Crofter
    Yep, 1 bar = 33ft in old money. I wonder if you could organise a pumped feed instead? If the one bar is simply a minimum, and the heater doesn't require a very narrow pressure range, then a pump might be the easier option. If you are only allowed occasional connection to the stand pipe then a header tank sounds useful anyway though.
  12. Crofter
    Normally if the delivery vehicle is capable of offloading, then they don't charge for doing that- in my experience anyway. It can be handy to have a digger on site for offloading. Failing that, is there anybody with machinery nearby, e.g. a farmer with a telehandler?
  13. Crofter
    A dummy chimney will be cheaper and give fewer problems with leaks etc, and of course allows you to keep the thermal integrity of the building intact. If you install a flue for a gas appliance, I understand that you cannot use it for other appliances- solid fuel flues must be to a higher standard, and may be larger diameter much of the time as well.
  14. Crofter
    Oh and can I ask a related question... I gather it's necessary to bond down UFH mats. I'll be using bamboo flooring over a suspended chipboard floor, so any sort of adhesive will need to deal with the slight flexing of the floor. I'm wondering if this is a job for some sort of Sikaflex product, or whether flexible tile adhesive would be suitable? If the former, that could add considerably to the cost.
  15. Crofter
    The problem is that a material like tile, when it is at room temperature, will still feel a little cold on bare feet because it conducts heat away. It would have to be closer to skin temperature to prevent this, and in a PH such a large heated surface would massively overheat the whole building. So you can heat it using an efficient wet system, but if all you want is five minutes of warmth whilst someone is using the shower, it may well use less energy to just use direct electric heating, rather than cycling on a full CH system- which would have to run for longer due to a slower response time.
  16. Crofter
    Got my pension in obsidian futures...
  17. Crofter
    Ethanol fuelled stoves are supposedly quite nice, and avoid the considerable expense of a flue.
  18. Crofter
    Wood burners are like fish... if it smells, something's not right.
  19. Crofter
    Slow going on your own and with no scaffolding... but that the hardest side done! Just need to finish the easy side now...
  20. Crofter
    It's not 1, because I removed the still-glowing lamp and it instantly went out. It's a 3w LED so in its dimly lit state cannot be consuming any meaningful amount of power... can it?
  21. Crofter
    I fixed my IWI using big plastic insulation washers- £12 per hundred off Amazon. I was originally just going to use the battens to hold the insulation in place, but I've fitted a separate VCB over the insulation so the washers hold the insulation in place whilst I am getting the battens finished. Tbh on a masonry construction dot/dab would probably work, I was fixing to studs though.
  22. Crofter
    I couldn't find a front door that I liked, and ended up buying half a French door set. Cheaper, looked perfect, had far better U value. Of course you can't put a letterbox in it, or, dare I say it, a cat flap...
  23. Crofter
    This one had been turned off for about twenty minutes when I noticed the glow. There's only a single switch to it. I wonder where the induced voltage could be coming from... can I experiment with turning other things off? I was worried it was a sign of some very dodgy wiring somewhere...!
  24. Crofter
    Bit of an odd one this. Popped into the kitchen after lights out and spotted that a GU10 task light was glowing very faintly. The lamp is a SMD type. At first I thought that it must have been left on and the lamp had failed, but, no, it was switched off at the wall. 'On' works, but 'off' doesn't! It's only the very faintest glow but obviously there is something wrong. I'm not convinced that the previous owners of this house knew what they were doing. I swapped out a single socket for a double and found that the earth was connected to the back box but not the socket! And the plumbing is pretty poor too, waste pipes laid with sections that remain full of water etc. Anyway, any suggestions for what might be causing the symptoms with the light? It's a single downlighter on its own switch. Oh and I did remove the lamp just to be sure, it has stopped glowing now, so it looks like I haven't discovered a source of zero point energy after all
  25. Crofter
    It was just a bit of a throwaway thought really- keep one big AC immersion for doing the bulk of the work, and spend a couple of hundred quid on a DC solar system for the second immersion. I was assuming it would mean giving up on E7 so probably not worth it at all. Just curiosity really, prompted by the low cost of solar and the mainly summer usage of the house. Also I've been assuming that E7 comes with some drawbacks like higher peak rates, install cost of second meter, fewer tarrifs to choose from, etc. Could be completely wrong about that!
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