Bitpipe

For some reason you've just made me think of the voice packs on the old TomTom sat navs, Basil Fawlty etc. He was probably worried that with a more modern system, someone would swap the settings to Joe Pasquale for a gag... Tremendous man, although I still struggle to understand much of what he discovered and even with two engineering degrees only got to chapter two of Brief History Of Time before giving up. Even the second half of this obit had me struggling - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/14/stephen-hawking-obituary

+1 - always worth asking. A well positioned load saves lots of time, whether blocks, sand, cement etc.. I've just had a cavity planter wall built at the front of the property and ordered a load of topsoil for it and the front garden. For £20 the grab driver carefully filled the whole 20 m length of it with his bucket and spread the rest in a few heaps around the front - saved a back breaking job for me or many hours work for the landscaper (on a day rate).

I asked my sparky how he achieved it and he said thus: The switches and PIRs are basically just wired in parallel, the boost connections only usually give you the switching pair but the PIRs require a neutral so picked that up from the MVHR unit and then wired the whole lot by daisy chaining between each point with 3 core & earth with the neutral just connected through (separately to the local lighting neutral to avoid RCD tripping) in each conventional switch. The switches are double pole switches so that the local light switching is in one side of the switch and the MVHR boost in the other

I'd suspect this also. To preserve value, the supply is deliberately constrained. Also they may not be willing to invest in the workforce and other logistics to build at a faster rate. Lastly building slowly may help ensure quality, but I doubt this. Reminds me of when a high profile act announces one or two nights at a top venue and it sells out immediately. Then extra dates are incrementally announced 'due to demand' as if they venue and artist had and empty week in their schedule. Ensures that each night is packed and all inventory is sold, even the lower quality seats. Great to have a SE in the forum - we used an all female practice for our basement and associated works and was amusing to hear every trade default to 'he' when referencing the SE, and I'd always correct them to 'she'. On foundation design, she designed quite a sizeable ring beam / slab foundation for our garage as we were building on made ground from the backfilled basement excavation and I remember that frost related heave was given as a reason.

Problem is you have a long 'dead leg' to the wet room and when you turn off the tap, the water in the pipe goes cold - you then need to draw off this cold water before the hot arrives from the tank. Pressure is not the issue. Based on learnings here (or eBuild) we knew to spec a return loop - effectively the hot water supply loops around the house and back to the tank driven by a pump. Each bath/shower/tap then branches off this so the dead leg distance is minimised. The manifold approach is an alternative design to get the same result (will let the more qualified discuss the differences). Our hot water return pump could have been driven by a pipe stat & timer (as plumber originally suggested) but we connected it to the same circuit that drives the MVHR boost which is activated either by turning on a bathroom light or by a PIR in each bathroom (for daytime). So walking into the bathroom starts the pump and ensures that there is hot water close to the tap when you need it - only a few seconds for it to come through.

The two guys who did our basement rebar (all 16t of it) just used special pliers and twisted by hand - they were amazingly fast but I guess that's what they do all day!

I looked into this, before settling on a timber suspended floor with resin on top - was about £100/m2. The polished concrete guys needed a 100mm layer of concrete and cost was also about £100/m2 - this is for the mirror like finish effect. You can also do a micro-screed on your 'rough' finished floor which was same as resin but only a few mm thick. Large format tiles (800mm+)are about £50-60/m2 and labour £40-50 (two man job usually with specialist cutters etc) so they're all in the same ballpark.

As you know we didn't use external membranes and had Sika warrantied waterproof concrete alone approved. Reading this suggests that peel & stick membrane is the best approach for ICF https://poly-wall.com/waterproofing-system/home-stretch-icf-waterproofing-membrane/ Have you done a full cost comparison (materials & application cost) vs waterproof concrete? I'm guessing that if you're only using a single system and have a good land drain then water ingress is not likely a major issue for you. I also used corex (or an equivalent) to protect the external EPS on my basement - very easy to fit. I tried staples initially to hold it but that was a waste of time so I switched to using leftover nails on site to secure the sheets (EPS was 200mm thick). The backfill holds it in place - it really just stops big stones puncturing the EPS but really only gives limited protection as it's not that strong really.

A cosy 22 in our house. Only have UFH on the ground floor and never 100% sure when its on - need to open the broom cupboard to see if there's any lights on the controller.

Scotland's lovely this time of year @Nickfromwales...

I'm a big fan of the Mile 900w blizzard but the only issue is a relatively short power cord wrt the older bag model. I'm guessing that the internal reel has been shrunk to make space for the larger dust collection and filtering elements. A battery version would be very welcome...

There was a rather sobering item on BBC last week about the rise in incidence of non smoking lung cancer. Air pollution is suspected to be one contributor, but as a disease it gets much less research than others as lung cancer is still seen as essentially self inflicted. I would not be surprised if in years to come, as smoking rates continue to decline but lung cancer remains prevalent, focus will switch to even tighter controls of pollution to accompany the drive to reduce car emissions etc. Question is therefore whether investing in a WBS now is a good longer term move? Could end up being an expensive ornament.

Any trade I have on a day rate gets paid on the nail, I'll give them cash in hand for out of pocket expenses (on presentation of a vat receipt) and money into their business account for the work done. For merchants etc, I'll only settle a bill when I have a correct VAT invoice in hand as once you've paid up it's near impossible to get their attention to fix paperwork. My landscaper (who is joining the Hotel California set of trades who seem to be here perpetually) has some tales of clients offering to pay half now and half in 6 months 'in case there are problems'. His challenge is that there are a lot of cowboys in his game so clients are wary of shoddy work.

Never mind fluffy towels and passive cat-flaps.

I have an 08 A6 Avant - with seats down it's quite large but the boot area is tapered at the top which can make it tricky to get big rectangular loads in - happy to take a few measurements for you if that helps.

Looking to wrap up the project and add the pump. There look to be cheaper knockoffs than the Hyundai on eBay but happy to pay an extra £20 if it guarantees the quality. We've now built a deck over the IBCs so my plan is to put the tap / short hose reel under there and get it out as needed. Question is what fitting do I use to go from the end of the pump to a standard garden tap?

Our LA missed this deadline and I got a refund. I'd submitted a lot of material, I think I had about 8 conditions to discharge before starting. I poked them at 8 weeks and then again at 10, finally at 12. I then got a blanket acceptance, tbh I doubt they even read the submission.

Thomas at Ecowin has done a couple of builds here, including mine. I had a good experience with them but Gaulhofer are not a budget brand WRT weight, whats the concern? I can move my 500kg slider with a single finger...

My landscaper laid 600x900 pavers for our patio on a SBR sand & cement mix. They were very smooth on both sides and only 25mm thick. We were planning on using easy joint for the pointing but were worried about water ingress (it's porus) so I started pointing with BAL exterior grout but didn't get the job finished before it got too cold & wet. Now that we've had a hard frost, a few of the pavers in the un-grouted section have blown and lost their bond with the underlying base - as they're quite heavy they're not moving but a few smaller sections are so I want to bond them back in place before grouting this area when the weather improves in the next weeks. First idea is to cut back some of the sand & cement and use exterior tile adhesive - we have to finish the concrete basement stairwell in the same stone and would be using adhesive for that. Wondering though if there is any alternative method that would work, i.e. some other kind of pre-mixed adhesive? Landscaper has also offered to cut out the grout that I've put in and use easy joint, and then seal the whole patio but I'm not sure on that approach.

I get the feeling that when you search on 'rainwater harvesting' you instantly add a premium to whatever you're looking at. Give some thought to your pre-filter system. I've gone for a fine mesh sock inline with the 110mm pipe that all the rainwater runs through before entering the tank., needs quite regular cleaning as it can gunk up fast. I have hedgehogs in the guttering to stop leaves etc getting in in the first place.

We used an independent BC, very helpful. He called us up in the March the year we were planning to start the build as asked if we could do something that constituted a formal start, which he could inspect, and then we'd be acting under the current regs before they changed again that April. As luck would have it, we were just about to demolish the garage to allow us to extend the foul sewer and water to the caravan where we were going to live. Part of this new run was permanent and intended to serve the new house, so he came out to sign that off and all was good. The main works themselves did not happen until end of July that year...

The RC concrete box was something of accident as we needed egress from basement to meet regs, could have made it smaller (it's decoupled from the basement itself) but thought it would have looked a bit odd. We decided to make a feature of it with a sunken deck and then the penny dropped that we could put RWH under that. I'd guess that by the time you've excavated the hole, got rid of the muck, poured a slab, designed (SE) & built walls capable of withstanding the pressure exerted by the ground etc, you'll have paid for a 4000 underground tank many times over. If you're not connecting to the house then you can forget much of the expensive gubbins. Get one of these and a submersible pump. You'll need to ensure that all your roof drainage meets at a single point to feed your tank through a suitable filter to screen out gunk. Your tank will also need to overflow to a soakaway (where your rain water would have gone anyway). You'll want surface water, from aco drains, to go straight to the soakaway. Allow for power to the tank for the pump. Once hooked up, our 4 1000l IBC tanks filled in a single day of heavy rain...

I did a DIY system for under £200 (excluding pump) using IBCs, however these are not suitable for burying underground. Its' surprising how quickly a 4000l system will fill in heavy rain and how quickly you can deplete it. Average hosepipe will use 1000 l per hour.

We also had a great experience with Ecology but I accept they're not applicable to everyones situation. They released the money as we needed it with no questions on what it was for or any proof of progress. We took 50% of the cash at the outset and then went back for two more 25% chunks as needed. All it took was an email and the funds were there in a few days.

I meant to say pressure but actually prefer the typo