Bitpipe

Our MVHR is designed to trigger boost when you walk into a bathroom or turn on the light. There's also a humidity sensor in the MVHR itself which will trigger boost. I recall from the time I properly balanced it (some 18 months after moving in) that supply exceeded extract by about 25% so that was the first thing to fix (both tweaking fan settings and the room supply / extract vents). I easily exceeded the BR mins for extract but struggled to meet the min room supply by area which could only be met by cranking up the default fan speed from 30% to 40%. Once I recorded all the correct settings, i turned it back down to 30%, keeping boost at 50%. All seems to work fine - just checked the humidity with a metre and it's about 40%

I think she runs Windows '95 on an Intel 486 so is no longer a supported product. Will be interesting to see what happens to her in the next few months. Whatever the outcome, it's inevitable she'll be deposed as leader and I would't be surprised if she stood down as our MP. Not convinced the tories would still be a shoe-in, I think TIG would do quite well here as the LibDems traditionally come in second but were beaten by Labour in the last election. I will obviously be voting for Lord Buckethead and pledging my undying loyalty to his galatic empire.

Big assumption she's even going to be there in a few weeks Based on my brief doorstep chat with her, she's not big into listening ....

I can offer our SE - we found them through an ICF contractor but decided to go with a shuttered pour method instead for the basement, however she has experience with ICF also. Did a great job for us. ruth.haynes@rexonday.com

Note that zero/reduced rating only applies once you have planning permission. Most contractors will want to see your approval before zero/reduced rating the works, incase they have to justify it in their own VAT return.

Mine is in basement, under the utility and adjacent to kitchen - was a bit of an afterthought in the design but all incoming services (power, water, gas) come in here and the MVHR external vents are directly above in the utility wall. Contains gas boiler (flue through utility), UVC, MVHR and power distribution. There's no heating in the basement so the UFHG manifold is on ground floor in a cupboard. As we have a pumped hot return, no issues on DHW performance but the MVHR was tricky to balance as some runs are a few metres long and others are tens of metres.

Me too, sort of. I still have a fear of the ladder slipping at the bottom, so always pile a few breeze blocks at the base. Also have an irrational fear of the ladder snapping where the two bits meet. So first few times up and down I'm uber cautious and then get a bit more relaxed - which is no doubt when the risk of accident increases Worst ladder ever was a roofer's one when I was visiting prospective trades on site - they seemed twice as high and really narrow and springy.

I have no idea. Will ask sparky on Monday.

Yes, grey box is a Came gate controller. External socket is going on wall so kiosk doesn’t need to be opened to use it. Cctv was the one thing i never really make provision for - kind of wish I’d pulled an additional few cat 6 between house and kiosk - the one that’s there is for the intercom and gate controls.

Our beloved sparky has been doing the last few jobs and is finishing up where he started, in the garden kiosk which he installed on October 2014! It's probably not in the ideal location but has survived the whole build process of demolition, heavy plant, deliveries, landscaping and felling of a nearby tree. The kiosk now contains incoming mains supply, company fuse, meter, switched supply to house, garage and garden sockets (was temps to caravan and site office) main gate controls, driveway lighting, wall lighting and supply to secondary gate controls. Very tragically there is no room for a smart meter Seems a shame to put covers on the boxes and close the door on it! Might explore making it completely see through and light it from inside, like those funky gaming PCs ...

I suppose depends on how you interpret the wording - it does say 'wardrobes that meet all the following criteria' implying the whole unit and not bits of it. I also claimed for sheets of MDF, poles and hinges for our simple hall cupboards, even if they don't strictly meet the 3 visible wall criteria. However the main reason I didn't do this for the bedrooms was that the Ikea approach was still cheaper and more versatile than anything the joiner could create.

Yes, however they'd need to be very basic to comply - effectively just a wall of doors in front of bare plastered walls with a single rail and no internals.

Ditto on solar gain - our 4.5m west sliders still let in a lot of heat in summer. Our east windows and roof windows all have external electrical louvre blinds which work great at keeping the gain out. Also not sure there's such a thing as a 'standard window', especially in passive standard 3g units - all of ours were made to the size we had on plan. A decent TF firm should commission a SE to do all the necessary calcs and give them to you to pass to BC. Unless you have significant elements outside of their supply (i.e. we had a basement) you should not need a separate SE.

We put a run of 6x600mm Ikea wardrobes in each bedroom (two singles, two doubles) and got the joiner to frame around them in MDF to give the 'built in' look. They do a nice variety of doors and interior accessories (drawers, shoe racks, baskets etc..) - way cheaper than something bespoke - joiner agreed that it was way less than he could do it for in MDF or conti-board.

Should be fine - we have a cantilever box that sticks out about 1.5m - plenty of steel holding it up inside the frame and the frame company didn't blink when they saw it. Picture here -

Our Sika warrantied waterproof concrete system for the basement used waterbars on every vertical and horizontal join. The slab had a stub wall 100mm high and the crew cast in a waterbar sized recess down the centre. They dried it out prior to fitting the water bar using a leaf blower to disperse standing water and then a blow torch to dry the concrete. Same deal for the vertical joins but they obviously did not hold water the same way. Waterbar was fitted in a bed of special Sika mastic (both a deep red colour) and then they tied the rebar and built the shuttering, so it was exposed for a good few days while that was going on, didn't seem to effect it at all. I think the drying exercise was most important for good adhesion of the mastic. There was a stub of waterbar poking out the top of the various vertical joins - only after being exposed for a good few weeks did it start to swell. Does the product you're using have guidelines on exposure?

This is why I got fired from NASA. Apparently getting 'quite close' to Mars is not good enough...

I was only 103 out

I think it's 76mm2 so 10mm for a regular sized door, less for wider doors.

We have FD30 fire doors on all rooms that open onto our hall (with fire strip and stops) - they're mostly 820mm wide so the MVHR airgap is only 7mm. We used blue plasterboard on the basement and ground floor ceiling and around the downstairs WC - usual rockwool in the stud cavities etc. Hard floors throughout. Can't say there is much noise issue, thumps and bumps from upstairs are noticeable but our teenage son plays electric guitar in the basement and it's not noticeable unless really cranked up One of the old eBuild stalwarts Wittenham (Oxford based, did his MBC house around the same time as Jeremy) spent a ton on proper soundproofing technology - decoupled walls, rubber floor mats etc. It didn't work. IRC, he said that low frequency sounds are very hard to prevent.

Not sure how quickly Companies House gets update but still showing them as trading - apparently the liquidation started last week and I have an email from them stating that they can’t deliver my order for this reason.

I had a lot of internal/external balustrade and balcony work supplied and fitted by Elite Balustrade and we were more or less finished bar some snagging - one piece of external stair glass needed re-made as the original template they took was incorrect and some handrail needed fitted (it's on site). I finally got round to re-templating the glass myself and emailed it to them this week, however they've replied that they've just gone into liquidation and wont be able to deliver. Shame, they did some nice fittings and quality of work was decent however I did need to get them back on site more than once for snagging so I think they struggled to get reliable fitters. I'm not that concerned as the bulk of work is done so I just need to source a replacement piece of glass and get a fitter to finish off the handrail (will probably use one of their freelance guys who did the original work.) Question is how do I approach the CC company to fund this?

Not helped by the fact BC only inspect 1 in 10 developer built homes. As has been said many times before, developer makes the profit when the planning / change of use is granted. Everything after that is cost, eating into the margin, so cost is minimises at the expense of quality.

I recall that my Impey wetroom former came with a matched waste. Therefore when installed, the former sat on joists to make it flush with the 22mm deck around it, the tanking layer went over the top of everything and the waste neatly slotted into the former (making a necessary cut in the tanking membrane, folding the edge into the drain area) so any water that penetrates the tiles would hit the tanking layer and end up in the drain. Your challenge may be to make your cut tidy wrt with the drain you're using.

Useful exercise to send your planning drawings to all of these TF firms for an estimate and then check to see what's included in the price. Some can seem expensive (or cheap) but when you factor in plant hire (i.e. crane), slabs, internal walls, floor decking, u values etc then you'll be able to compare apples to apples a bit better. Some of the cheaper quotes I received wanted me to provide full fall arrest systems (i.e. airbags etc) ...