jack

Fixed - let me know if any issues.

Wow, that's amazing. It wasn't that long ago that 6+ months was the norm! I understand that they're now not checking every receipt in every claim, but will instead use sampling. I assume they'll also do a basic check like comparing the size of the house with the size of the claim. Touch wood, but the issue with VAT claims being refused due to HMRC choosing an arbitrary completion date also seems to have faded away. I don't check this form all that often, but I can't remember the last time we had a post on the topic, which is great news.

Quite a few councils have gotten themselves in serious financial trouble by getting involved in housing. The big issue with a lot of the ideas (most of which I like!) in this thread is that they rely on some form of competence in local government.

Came here to say this. Within the limits of our height restrictions, we allocated more height to the downstairs ceilings. We ended up with 2.8 m downstairs and about 2.55 m upstairs. Massive difference in feeling between the two. We also visited friends in their new house recently (a full gut-and-refurb which we hadn't seen before they did the work). It has a large open-plan area downstairs with 2.4 m ceilings. It isn't helped by the massive array of downlights, but the ceiling height is genuinely distracting and makes the whole area feel constrained. Downlights work even worse with low ceilings, because there's less space for the beam to spread. Standing under a downlight at a party isn't that nice given it's not that far from your head!

Whether you go for CAT 6 or 6A, make sure you go for solid copper. Cheaper stuff is likely to be CCA (copper coated aluminium).

Posts now merged.

There've been discussions on here doing this with a scrap electric radiator fan. Mount it to a frame, add a flexible surround (that you can tape to a window or a door), 12 V power supply (ideally variable), and a pressure guage, and you're set.

Kitchen light fittings don't require IP65 ratings, so you're fine to install the fitting you linked to: https://www.electricalcounter.co.uk/ip-ratings

Welcome Alex. Good luck - finding property is always difficult!

Welcome! If you can't find what you're after by searching, ask in the relevant sub-forum and help will be along soon.

And thanks for reading the request! I still end up having to move a lot of threads where people didn't notice. Not sure how we can make it any clearer!

Hi Helen. You'll increase your chances of a response if you start a post in the relevant sub-forum: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/140-other-heating-systems/ Give as much information as you can. For example, it would useful to know how big the space you want to mount the ASHP (air source heat pump) is and how close it is to the adjacent property. Also, have you considered whether an ASHP is the most appropriate heating source based on the propery's insulation and energy consumption? That's something else that can be discussed if you raise it when you post in the forum above.

I can hear ours when it's running flat chat to heat the DHW tank, but it isn't loud, and it's the sort of noise that completely blends into the background. It's effectively silent when doing heating. The rustling of the adjacent trees in even a slight breeze is much louder. Generally I have to stick my hand in front of the outlet to tell if it's running. For reference, it's a nearly 9 year old Panasonic Aquarea.

Discovered/realised far too late the same thing with balcony steels for my "cold bridge free" MBC build. When I raised it, MBC foamed in PIR insulation then wrapped it in aerogel blanket. I'd probably have gone even further than that if I'd had time to consider it. Someone said to expect mould on the plasterboard where the steel comes into the house, but we've never had a moment's problem in over 8 years.

You can get fan-assisted radiators that can be used for cooling. I'm sure one or two people have mentioned using them. To be honest, I think you'd be better of with aircon in most cases, given the cost per radiator of this type.

Sorry Susan, at least from a search of the word "Baufritz", no-one's posted about them before. Still, it's possible someone might have had interactions with them but not mentioned it. Also, BuildHub will still be a useful place to get information about everything Baufritz doesn't do (if you use them). You can get independent feedback on your house plans, for example, or about landscaping, planning, etc. Good luck.

Hmm, interesting! There are a lot of people in my area who are not following this rule! 😅

There are quite a few Loxone users on here, including me. It's impossible to give you useful short answer, at least partly because there's no such thing as a typical install. I'm very happy with the system. It controls lights, external blinds, and heating. It could do MVHR and other things too, but I've mostly tried to keep things as simple as possible.

I don't want to be having to use my phone in a moving car every time I arrive home. More interesting for me would be some sort of geofencing function that caused it to open as I got near. Worse, my driveway entrance is right at a sharp curve in the road and we can have traffic from both directions suddenly appear as we turn in.

I've been looking at electric gates recently. One thing to look at is cycle time, especially if there isn't space to pull completely off the road while you wait for the gates to open.

Welcome Dee. Post your question in whichever of these sub-forums looks most suitable (probably Wood and Laminate Flooring): https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/41-floors-flooring/

Rarely any issues with a 5 kW ASHP heating a 250 L tank. I'll admit a faster reheat time would be nice a handful of times a year, but then I just hit the immersion for an hour to help speed things along. If you want to keep your ASHP temperature low and your COP high when doing DHW, go for a bigger tank than you think you need.

Unfortunately, that's the main downside to mains dimming. If you want the ability to dim very low you really need constant current dimmers rather than mains dimmers. Constant voltage dimming is also fine but is generally used for LED strips.

I used a floor grinder to grind back the spalled surface in our garage before I laid an epoxy coating. It was surprisingly expensive taking into the account the wear charge on the diamond cutters. I want to say it was something like £800 for the weekend, half of which was wear, but I could be wrong about that. I'd have a word to a grinder hire company to find out the cheapest way to roughly remove high spots. It's not like you're after a polished finish. Also, some of those cracks are a bit unpleasant looking. Would you consider drilling the ends to stop them spreading, and filling with something like epoxy to stabilise? Another thought: are you certain you can't just cover the entire thing with self-leveller? Does it matter if the finished floor level is a bit higher? Are there any dependencies on that level that can't be adjusted to account for a slightly higher floor? Might be cheaper and easier than lots of grinding and localised levelling.

I wouldn't worry about it. Does it really matter if the air right up at the ceiling isn't quite as fresh as it as at head height?