OwenF

Great, thanks. It was your posts that led me to the Lowara pump. I can see a lot of adaptors between the pump and the copper. Any chance you can recall what each is? Looks like: pump 1/2” male to ? female coupler NRV (1/2 to 1/2?) 1/2” female to 15mm compression bend copper the one out of sight looks simpler My understanding is the 1/2” male into the pump has to be taper, or if parallel needs to be a union with washers.

I’m looking at installing a secondary circulating pump. The ‘go-to’ seem to be Grundfos comfort or these: https://www.anchorpumps.com/lowara-ecocirc-pro-15-1-65br-1-2-bronze-circulator-with-temp-control-240v I cannot for the life of me figure out the fittings needed to take this down to 15mm copper. Ideally I also want to put 1/4 lever valves either side for easy maintenance. These HRC pumps seem to have either 1/2” female parallel or 1-1/4” male parallel ports. What fitting would I need to drop either of those to 15mm copper? These look perfect https://www.toolstation.com/perfect-pump-valves/p52920 but I’m pretty sure are 1-1/2 on the pump side (normal size for main circulator?) No apparent equivalent for 1-1/4 port

I’m a geotechnical engineer and GI is my day job (though typically on large infrastructure) Previous replies have covered some points, but I’ll add/clarify some more. - Planning conditions usually only ever focus on contamination assessment. As said, if it isn’t a condition in you planning, you don’t need a GI for this purpose. - Phase 1: desk study. These range in scale from a quick look on BGS website, to £30k worth of work. Again, if not a planning requirement, don’t pay for one. Search BGS viewer and you’ll find the mapped geology (superficial and bedrock) for your location. You can also turn on the ‘BGS borehole’ layer and see nearby historic boreholes to get a feel for thicknesses of strata. - Phase 2: intrusive investigation should be validating outcomes of the Phase 1 e.g. proving presence of sand depth for bearing/ presence of water as risk, etc (not comprehensive). Your SE should be explicit on what he expects and provide a brief / scope for GI (usually based on the Phase 1 desk study) if he’s expecting you to engage and procure a supplier. To be honest, bigger SEs will work with geotechnical consultants regularly and would seek them to do this. However I’d expect for a house building SE this should be routine for them to spec and recommend a basic scope for you (or minimum what info they need!) GI Techniques: depending on what your SE needs and the ground risks for your site, I expect the most you’d need is a couple of window sample boreholes with SPTs and a trial pit or two. Day-rate for windowless sampler rig is between £600-£1200/day. They’ll do two shallow holes in a day easy. Your SE should specify if he wants an interpretive report or if he’s happy taking the factual data. The former will add cost (probably £800-£2000 depending on outfit). Tbh, I think overkill and most SEs worth their salt would know an SPT result and be able to make conservative foundation design decisions. All above is simplified for (what honestly) is low risk Geotechnics. The discipline is a skill as much as structural design and it’s easy to spend money that isn’t needed.