jack

I know VPN can have an impact on performance, but we regularly stream media to two different TVs at the same time, and there's still plenty of bandwidth left to simultaneously video conference on a PC. We're about the same distance from the cabinet as you, and typically get around 30mbps.

The pain threshold for water immersion is 41-42°C. Believe me, 50°C is unbearably, scalding hot, I don't care how cold the bathroom is or how hot they think they like it! I used to run our DHW at 55°C (the max our ASHP heat pump can output). However, I turned it down to 50°C as an experiment, and there's no practical difference.

I didn't. I said IR panels (i.e., the articles themselves) are expensive. Have you priced fitting out a house with these? You're not going to get change out of £200 per 500W panel, and more by the time you include thermostats and installation. You could easily spend not much less than an ASHP and end up with no better performance and 2-3 times the energy costs. I'm not saying don't do it, I'm saying do a proper costing.

Be careful about getting the other guy involved. Who (or what entity, if a company), exactly, did you engage to do the work initially? Who was the recipient of the funds (ideally evidenced by an invoice)? If it was a company or the first guy, I'd want it in writing that the funds already paid will cover this other guy coming in to finish up.

I've got one of the Kreg ones. They're pretty good, but work best with thicker wood. 12mm is marginal. I recently did some 19mm plywood and it worked well. Also, they work best when you put the pocket on the outside of the joint. If you do it from inside (which is often the best for concealment purposes), you're angling the screw towards the outer edge of the board to which you're joining, which makes for a weaker joint and greater chance of splitting. For the right job though, they're great.

Whatever else can be said about them, IR panels are an expensive way of converting electricity to heat.

No problem, just wanted to note it for others who might be reading in the future.

I'd do some research on the experiences of some members with Sunamp before putting it too categorically in the "yes" section.

Given the complexity of the situation, I wouldn't expect anything for free (although I'm sure a couple of the 6 or 8 architects we spoke with provides some back-of-a-napkin type sketches with their quotes). It sounds like you have a decent budget, so why not pay each of them to spend half a day thinking and sketching out some really rough ideas for you to consider? I suspect some architects would be quite interested in being paid to do a morning's creative thinking and doodling without having to get too bogged down in details.

As mentioned above, an assumption that air heating via MVHR would be the primary source of heat for a PassivHaus is a major factor in the peak heat load set by the PH standard. However, the fact that so few PassivHaus projects use MVHR heating should tell you something.

Is it 5 years? Wow, I thought it was only a couple.

Not at all. You can get planning permission for someone else's property without their permission. How is this different?

We have an ASHP heating a single downstairs zone and no heating upstairs. I don't actually know exactly what ours does, but at the moment I just leave it on continuously and let it do its thing. As far as I can tell, in cold weather it just comes on periodically for a while at quite a low output. Of all the things I'd consider changing or tweaking, adding any form of MVHR heating is at or near the end of the list. You can't easily add enough heat via MVHR to make much difference to the overall temperature of the house. To accomplish that, you'd need a huge amount of airflow. In a typical MVHR system with much narrower ducts than a typical ducted heating system (like Americans use), the required airflow rate will be high, making it noisy. High airflow also mean lower humidity inside, especially on cold dry winter days. You'll also use a lot more energy running an MVHR at high rate for long periods, and the heat exchanger efficiency drops at high flow rates. And finally, I prefer the bedrooms to be cooler, and that's hard to accomplish if you have heated air coming through the MVHR system. Curious about why you think that might be something to aim for? Your main heat source is likely to be the most efficient and effective way of heating your house. Why would you need/want more?

Because before this happened, there was a chance to negotiate a proper party wall that was on the boundary. As it is, the neighbour's extension is on his land. What if he'd wanted to replace that wall? The neighbor has stolen from him the right to control his own wall on his own land. It's theft, plain and simple.

I know, what a time sink of a topic! Now have a look at Woodrat videos...

He's just had a strip of land stolen from him. Would you be cool with that?

I'm not sure what else there is to say. You appear to have investigated the options and realise that it's too late to stop him and you can't just take the wall down (not that you should have to remove a wall on your own property in order for prevent someone else building on it and effectively stealing your land). Unfortunately, you're need to get the courts involved if you want to pursue your rights. Chances are you'll get costs if everything you say above is true, but they won't cover everything. You therefore need to speak to solicitor to see what the procedure and costs would be, and weigh that against what you've lost. The guy next door sounds like a proper piece of work. Not sure how I'd react to this sort of behaviour.

Oh, that'll be fine. I assumed that you were talking about a shelf sticking out from a wall, rather than one supported from underneath like this.

Sounds like you're being very sensible about it.

No particular feedback on the layout, but I'd be doing everything in my power to get more ceiling height, particularly downstairs. Even going to 2400 will make a big perceptual difference imo. Could you move both ceilings up a bit and accept lower head height in the loft? How tall is your hoarder wife? You could also increase the height of the house by 50-100mm without making much of a difference relative to next door. Certainly, before submitting for planning, I'd remove the numerical ridge height, not include the line between the adjacent buildings, and remove the ceiling height numbers from the sections. Draw it slightly higher than the adjacent property and I think you'd easily add 50-100mm without it being at all obvious that you're building taller than next door. Then when you build it, add another 50-100mm, which is well within building tolerances. Overall, I think you could go to 2400 on both floors without materially risking your chances of getting planning. Worst case, if ridge height were the only issue reason for rejection, you could always resubmit with something slightly lower.

Be careful interpreting the phase shift information as being all there is to this. The delay is just the time it takes for a temperature change "signal" to propagate through the structure, but there's a significant damping factor that reduces the extremes of hot and cold the bigger (both geometrically and in a thermal capacity sense) the structure. Think about the ground as an extreme example. There's a reason that the temperature beyond a certain depth at a given location tends to be stable, irrespective of the temperature swings at the soil surface.

Welcome to BuildHub!

This is what our sparky did. It was possibly driven by the crazy number of sockets we went for in our build. There's a double socket a couple of feet from just about every room corner, and I don't think there are many places where you can go 3 metres along a wall without hitting one. My 3m x 3.5m office has two double sockets on every wall, and most have been in use at some point or another.

I can't help you with your specific questions, but welcome to the forum. You might find you'll get better answers if you post your questions in specific sub-forums, as not everyone reads the Introduce Yourself posts.

I can't answer your questions directly, but I've recently been working with oak-faced ply to make furniture. A couple of points: - you want to make sure the ply edge is of good enough quality to be visible. I suspect most oak-faced plywood will be on birch plywood, but check before buying (tell them what you're planning to do with it) - you'll need a way a making a decent cut, as the plywood surface splinters easily. I ended up buying a decent rail/plunge saw, and it's been brilliant. The cut edge doesn't even need sanding, although you need to take the sharp edges off slightly. - I'm using 19mm plywood and I think that'd be a good thickness for this sort of application. Depends on what level of "chunk" you're after, visually. You'll need a fair bit of support if you make shelves out of this thickness and want them to handle much weight (eg, books) without bending.