canalsiderenovation

The other half is playing around with furniture. Yes as we have the other space which will have the gazebo and space around it I don't want it to look too heavy on the porcelain and a path will connect both areas and with the rendered planters it may be ok. I think I'm just struggling to visualise it.

I'm having a bit of a wobble about our patio and the sizing. Need some opinions please. The length isn't an issue as it spans the length of the sliding doors of the kitchen/dining and bedroom/ensuite/office. It's the width I'm having issue with and I don't know if it's just because the footings are dug and it looks smaller! From the doors to the start of the footings is 3.3m. I think originally we had it down as 4ish metres of patio plus the planter but I think the builder took it as 4ish metres WITH the planters and I can't make up my mind if it's too small. From the kitchen looking out; Side view It isn't our only seating area as we will have a path going to this other bit which will have a gazebo and extra seating which will be around 14ftx16ft (it's our old septic tank now not in use). This area is more of a sun trap and is nice to directly look out onto the canal facing forward rather the patio in front of the sliders looks down the garden to the canal on the side rather than front on. With the price of porcelain we don't want to have more patio for the sake of it but at the same time it needs to be practical and obviously we have the length so wouldn't just have seating just where the sliding door is (the other side is our guest bedroom/ensuite which will also be an Airbnb room).

Thanks everyone. Looks like I need to get the plasterer back and then the decorator again 😕

Nope. Nothing.

I don't know really but we have lived in the house 3 years since it has been plastered so any movement or expansion and contraction should surely have happened already. It just seems odd that since he has sanded, prepped, filled and decorated etc we now have screw pops we didn't have before. The sander on a stick thing surely would cause movement/vibration?? If I'm being unreasonable I won't raise it as we have paid up and he's finished but its just frustrating we have a situation where the ceilings are even worse than before he touched it. Yes the right screws were used and the plasterer was highly recommended too and the decorator even complimented his work (it probably wasn't helped by the fact the house was plastered initially in November so we had dehumidifiers etc drying out and this is why we left it so long to have it properly decorated to give things chance to dry out and settle properly). Just annoying we are going to have to pay someone to come back and do it again!

We lived with our house plastered with just a white mist coat sprayed on (which the decorator did) for 3 years as we wanted everything to settle before having it properly decorated. In this time we have some cracks and we had quite a bit of popping (I'd say about 12 screw pops) on some of the plasterboard ceiling in the kitchen (this is where we have a glazed gable and very high ceilings). About a month ago the decorator did our kitchen properly and did a lot of prep, sorting out the pop marks where there was them. We have started to notice that we have a lot of pop marks - infact more than there ever was before and certainly not ones that were there before he started decorating when we look back at photos. I wonder if in his sanding/prep (he had one of those huge sanders on a stick and had scaffolding) he actually caused more screw pops, had to fill them and with the very hot weather this past week it's caused them to pop again but we now have probably in excess of about 20. The decorator is well established with an excellent reputation and we have generally been thrilled with his work but the ceilings are difficult in the kitchen as they are so high but am I being unreasonable to raise this? Here's a couple of pics of some of the worse ones (it's hard to capture on camera).

That's what it is at the moment so I'm going to turn it down a bit.

Ah ha, I can see numbers 1-5 under the label which says factory set do not break seal. Question is how do the numbers correspond to temperature of the water. Ideally we don't want the Solic to heat the water beyond 50 degrees (anything that would heat the water beyond this we want to export). And do you have to pic a definite number - can't you have between 3-4 for example. It's between 4 and 5 now which heats to up to 56 degrees.

Ok here are the pics... @ProDave @Nickfromwales

Yes, I understand flux I understand is a little more at about 22p export but the cheap rates are only 2-5am where with Cosy the times work better for us with the heat pump (more so in winter). If we can get batteries sorted this will sort out any use in the peak times.

Thank you! Job for tomorrow.

The pic didn't upload but I think it is this @Nickfromwales. @ProDave is this the same as your pic? Think you guys have solved it. I'll tackle it tomorrow.

Please tell me you mean this? If so I'll look at it tomorrow.... If I unscrew it it's not gonna flood the house is it (I realise this is probably a stupid question)!

No way of getting inside here

Ok so our export with Octopus goes live on 11th May so I need to turn down the stat in the immersion so we export as soon as the water is at 55 degrees (or maybe lower as that is plenty hot enough)! How do I stop the Solic from diverting when we have reached this temperature? Do you mean the lid of this big tank? How do I get in this? 20230506_141914.mp4

Motorway barriers 😁https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/20512-bonkers-idea-or-a-great-idea/page/4/

Success ready for us to fit the new toilet tomorrow. Minor injury but I did a pretty decent job even though I'm covered in soudal adhesive.

Thanks I've ordered a new decent knife and a pack of new blades and will practice first. Luckily our flooring company sent out about 20 extra packs of flooring too many so we have absolutely lots spare Incase I make a dogs dinner out of it. Not sure how I'm going to cut out the circle of the waste in the floor but it doesn't matter if it's a bit rough as we won't see it.

I must need to be tougher with it (or get a better knife)!

Haven't put new loo in yet 😁 still got a rag shoved in waste pipe but need to cut some tiles that were alongside the back wall too (I wasn't planning on cutting the tiles around the loo rather just putting the loo on top of them) which is what the installer did (obvit need to cut around the waste pipe hole in floor though). Because of the UFH the toilet wasn't fixed onto the floor and the plumber never bothered to stick it down with sealant etc. Probably a good thing as it was easy to disconnect etc.

Long story short, taken out toilet which I've never liked (huge argument with other half about how I can be offended by the old loo). The new one is slightly smaller so need to replace a few of the LVT tiles. Got old ones up, old glue off, purchased adhesive and sorted nice templates of what I need to cut. Without risking taking my fingers off - is there a special type of tool I should be using or knife? Had a little practice and my god it's tough stuff (or I'm just weak)! Getting grief about how I've created lots of other jobs now and I want to prove it's really simple and we don't need the flooring man to come back at more cost. And let's face it at some point it's inevitable I'll have to replace a tile and this is just good learning.

Seems we all do slightly different things! I'm not going to worry too much at the moment as we aren't exporting and the solar is doing ample hot water for us just with the solic and we don't have to worry that if the ASHP was heating our hot water at certain times we may or may not be using the grid if it was a bit cloudy etc and other electric things were on too and with us both working from home the coffee machine is always going, laptops etc charging. At the moment we just know it automatically diverts when there is excess and it's enough for our two person household. If we sort our export out I'll reassess but it's only practical if we are being paid more to export than the electric would cost us and that seems unlikely unless we go on an E7 tarrif which doesn't suit out use (particularly with the ASHP heating in winter). If we end up getting batteries later in the year I'll probably need to completely reassess but that's for another day!

We aren't exporting at the moment so I guess until that's sorted I'll carry on using the solar to divert excess to the hot water tank unless it makes sense to use the heat pump. My issue with using the solar to do the heat pump is I'd have to guess when we would have excess solar (likely mid morning onwards) where with the solar diverting excess I just know it automatically does it and I would hazard a guess our export would be so low with just under 4kw of panels. Once we know we have solar, the dishwasher, washer, laptop charging etc goes on. Need to get this export sorted .....

I'm having a bit of a debate with someone about heating our hot water from mid March til October. We normally turn our heat pump off from now til autumn as we aren't using heating or hot water. They are saying rather than using the Solic to divert excess solar to the water tank we should be using the solar for the heat pump to heat the hot water as it will always be cheaper. The problem I have with this is that it would rely on us turning the hot water programme on for the heat pump when we were generating solar and off when we weren't or having a set schedule when we may or may not have solar and we only have just under 3.68Kw of solar so combined with us using the solar for other things I'm not sure it would power the heat pump with other stuff. They are saying heating via the heat pump (using the solar to power the heat pump) will always be cheaper than the immersion (via solar). They are saying on average we are putting as much heat into the tank as you take out giving an example that assuming we use 200litres of water at 50degrees which came in originally at 15 degrees, we need just over 8kWh of energy which can either be delivered directly via your Solic200, or through the heat pump which means it will only actually use about 2.5kWh of electricity, leaving 5.5kWh to export. We aren't exporting (yet) and actually we probably use everything we generate as we work from home and are quite savvy with making the most of the solar. My question is have I been doing this wrong? Should I be using the solar to power the ASHP and let the ASHP heat the water?

I'm a little confused as yes we have the DHW set to 48 degrees on the ASHP, which is what it is heated to without solar but on days where we have good solar it frequently goes above this to say up to and above 56 degrees and this is what I'm confused about. How does the diverter stop diverting when we have excess solar? We do have a large 400 litre I think it is Gledhill tank as I took advice from here at the time re ASHP installation and oversized it.