jack

Or "what's-the-point?" Coke, as I like to call it.

Sterling work gents. Given how much beer and bacon you got through, would it have been cheaper to just buy a new system? When you've had some rest, we'd all love a brief summary of what went wrong and what you did to fix it.

This is also the first house I've ever lived in where I don't wake up every morning with a stuffy nose.

I sleep very well in ours - it's very quiet, for a start! In winter our bedrooms are cooler than downstairs by typically a couple of degrees. It's enough to be noticeable as you change levels. That makes it perfectly cool enough to sleep in. Also, rather than cooling the room, you can just use a thinner duvet or a blanket to reduce your sleeping temperature. I'm struggling a bit at the moment, as we have a duvet that's a bit too warm now that the house is warming up a bit with this milder weather.

Welcome! A good sense of humour will definitely help you through the process. When you're ready, head over to the relevant sub-forum and ask away.

Welcome to Buildhub. By far the friendliest and most information building and renovating site in the world (honest). The Dunning-Kruger Effect!

As is so often the case, it depends who you get. Well done for taking the bull by the horns.

Or they could do like probably 90% of the trades we had onsite and refuse to use any form of PPE. I'd say well over half of the people we had onsite wore trainers. My worst memory was trying to hand a youngish guy a set of ear defenders and face mask while he used a petrol diamond saw to cut a load of blocks. He refused because they were "uncomfortable" and he didn't have that many to do. My ears were ringing just from the 10 seconds I was standing nearby waiting for him to finish a cut. He was cutting for 15 mins straight. I can't comprehend people not being interested in their own health.

I know exactly what you mean. I've been repeatedly disappointed with the work of experienced tradespeople, even when they come highly recommended from friends and family. I can't say that we had anyone on site where I felt completely happy with their work, except maybe our electrician and the guys that did the screeding in a couple of downstairs rooms. I've become so disillusioned that I'm trying to finish the work myself, but I'm very slow and often not very good. I don't know what the solution is, but I feel for you (if it helps, I spent around 10 hours last weekend rectifying the plasterboarding in our garage, due to the boarders not listening to the one simple instruction I gave them).

I've heard this before, but ours (AEG) works perfectly well in our warm and well-insulated house. The previous condenser dryer we had needed its heat exchanger cleaned periodically. Could yours be clogged with lint or has it always been the same?

I just assumed £200 a day and was thankful whenever it was less!

Just to be clear, the heat pump is just the means by which heat is generated. A heat pump is more efficient than direct electric heating. It's the condensing nature of the dryer that avoids the needs for punching a hole and feeding huge gobs of energy to the outside world. There are condensing dryers that don't use heat pumps (in fact, the vast majority don't). I don't know whether heat pump dryers use the cold side of the heat pump to improve condensing. Seems to make sense that they might.

We had a glitch with ours around the two year mark. We had great service from Quooker - they sent out an engineer who replaced several parts at no cost. However, for the time we didn't have it, we were completely lost. Who knew that having to figure out how much water you need, and then waiting for it to boil could be so bloody infuriating! If I were building another house, a hot water tap would be at or near the top of the list of things I'd specify.

Check whether what you're looking at actually delivers "boiling" water. Some apparently only deliver a lower temperature.

You can connect either or both. You get the highest efficiency from connecting both the tank and mixer valve: http://recoupwwhrs.co.uk/installation/installation-methods/

Oh dear, you have my condolences. I've been flat out with other things and haven't had time to look into this yet - hoping to get around to it this week. Will update the thread when I get some advices/prices.

Me too. The plumber and I couldn't figure out how a properly functioning softener could cause corrosion of stainless steel when we saw the "no softened water" line in the instructions. I called them to ask for more info and was told that no warranty claims would be considered if softened water was used. Between that and not having time to do any research, we just went ahead and plumbed in unsoftened. I just had a look on their website and it includes the following: If choosing a water softener, it is important that you choose a system that does not remove all the minerals from the water, leave excess salt behind or reduce the pH-value of the water below 7 as the water will become corrosive otherwise. Reverse osmosis systems may not be suitable and are not recommended. Hydrogen Resin Exchange systems could rapidly change the pH valve of the water and are not recommended. Be aware that Sodium Resin Exchange systems can cause excess salt in the water which will cause corrosion on the Quooker tank. But then, Harvey water softeners says the following: Yes you can absolutely use our system with your Quooker (or other) hot water tap. Our technical director has verified that softened water from one of our units is fully compatible. My best guess is that Quooker is oversimplifying the situation for convenience, rather than giving tailored advice based on different softeners.

Incidentally, Quooker specifically advises against running softened water in their tank. Something to do with pH levels. I suspect it's probably fine if your water isn't too hard, but not something I'd risk my warranty over. They also sell some sort of water conditioning unit, although I don't know the details. It could well be a phosphate dosing arrangement.

Thanks for the advice, I'll be careful. It's a Siemens - I don't have the serial number, but will look it up when I get a moment this weekend. Thanks again

In theory, the MCS premium is not the MCS supply and install cost minus the cost of hardware. It's the difference between the cost of supply and install by MCS and non-MCS installers. Are there non-MCS installers of PV though?

Amazeballs.

And that's for 20 years.

+1 Using a mobile phone to control things in the home is completely the wrong approach to home automation imo. We have ours set up so that everything possible is controlled by switches on the walls. The only time I ever open the app is to access virtual controllers for things like holiday mode or to check temperatures of the UFH or UVC. Home automation enables things like the "bedtime switches" we have at our bedside. They act as switches for their respective bedside lights, but when you hold either of them down, it turns off all the lights in the house. That same long hold could also be programmed to set overnight zone alarms, change the behaviour of external lights, close all external shutters (if not already closed), close the garage door (if open), or anything else you can imagine. We also have a dedicated button at the bottom of the stairs that switches off all the upstairs lights. I can't tell you what a boon this is with young kids and a wife who never turns off lights. I also have certain lights on a timer. For example, the kids' bedroom lights only stay on for an hour. I plan to install presence sensors as well, so the lights will automatically remain on as long as presence is sensed. Certain external blinds automatically close at a certain time each day. That time is set relative to dusk, so you don't need to keep reprogramming to take into account the change in when night falls. Of course, many of these behaviours would possible without home automation, but would require a lot of independent systems, which for me personally would be a much more complicated solution. I wouldn't, however, suggest it's a cheap option, especially if you aren't reasonably computer literate. If you aren't capable of changing the programming yourself, you'd need to get someone in every time you wanted to make any significant changes. In general though, such changes should be rare once the systems are set up properly. Oh, and I've chosen not to expose our system to the outside world. I can't turn lights on and off from afar, but it's a lot harder for anyone to hack into the system.

That's an amazing space! First thing I thought. Our (also Crossfit) gym has special flooring in the main open areas, although I'm not sure of the actual make-up. No weights are allowed outside of those areas. "Proper" gym flooring can be eye-wateringly expensive, I believe. Not sure whether you could do a cheap version with a layers or two of plywood covered in some form of rubber matting over the top. Re: lighting, I saw this article: http://luxreview.com/design-clinic/2014/10/three-ways-to-light-a-gym - among other things, it mentions the importance of low intensity lights. I hate doing wall-balls or anything involving lying on my back underneath the lighting fixtures at our gym, and they use pretty low intensity panels. I'm not sure of the details, but they're suspended panels about a metre square.

Welcome Steve. Nice to have you aboard. We like pics of projects if you're comfortable posting them.