jack

Even turning the MVHR off completely for an hour shouldn't leave the air feeling noticeably different in my opinion (and experience - I've tried it). Are you sure you haven't mentally mapped still air to stale air? Perhaps you perceive moving air as being fresh? Re: humidity, have you tried an ultrasonic humidifier? They can pump out quite a lot of moisture for relatively little energy input.

We run our MVHR at under half the building regs rate, and we never boost unless we're cooking something smelly. Condensation in the bathrooms clears really quickly. Humidity generally sits at around 50% during winter.

Wow, it's really coming along! We went white throughout, except for the TV room, which is a dark matt navy/grey, and the hall and downstairs toilet, which are a very dark matt grey-green. After a couple of years, we bit the bullet and painted the living room dark too (using a Johnsons version of Farrow and Ball's "Railings"). It looked so good that I had to physically stop my wife from continuing painting into the kitchen when she finished! I'd encourage anyone to consider at least one properly dark (not just tinted) room in their house. Do the whole room, not just a wall. It gives an amazing feel. Paint is pretty cheap compared to most other forms of decorating, and if you don't like it, you can always undo it with a bit of effort. Some ideas here.

She has voice reproduction circuitry but I'm not sure she has sound receiving capacity. Maybe with her next upgrade?

Welcome to BuildHub. It sounds like a long and frustrating experience - you have my sympathy. Perhaps the best advice is to look at the appeal decision and analyse the specific reasons for rejection. Can you modify your scheme to address each and every one of those reasons? If so, you could consider submitting a new application, and make it clear in your covering letter that the new scheme addresses the reasons in the appeal decision. Either way, at this stage your main aim would be to get the council to approve something without the need for a further appeal, so I wonder whether opening a dialogue with them might be productive. What's your relationship like with the planning department and councillors?

I've heard the 100mm rule too. Also, unless you actually have dimensions on your planning drawings shown relative to a specific datum, the only way of telling how tall a structure should be is by measuring off the drawing (even a thickish line is probably 10s of mm thick) and visually estimating relative to surrounding properties on whatever street scene was in the planning app.

Exactly. The Loxone DMX extension is just a standard DMX controller. You can use it to control anything, including lights and DMX relay boards (much cheaper than Loxone extensions if you need to increase the number of output relays).

Sorry, I meant "native" as in "designed to work natively with". You do need the DMX extension of course. I don't recall the details, but I believe the KNX functionality in Loxone isn't the full deal. Something to do with licensing of the KNX software, but again I don't remember the details.

True, although try using the wrong type of screws near the edge and you'll find it splitting all over the place.

They hadn't released this before I installed my kit, but I believe it's what Loxone calls their bus-based control system. It allows less wiring, as you just loop from point to point. Personally I'd stay away from it, as it's completely proprietary. It ties you into using Loxone devices. If you eventually decide to (or need to) move away from Loxone, you'll need to replace all Tree-based devices and will be limited to using bus-type home automation systems (KNX uses a bus format, I think). I haven't used any of Loxone's lights. I just used DMX control (which is native to Loxone) and DMX mains dimmers. This is something I'd reconsider if I were doing it again - mains dimmers just don't give the quality of control that proper LED drivers offer.

We have a mixture of Fermacell and plasterboard. You can skim over it like plasterboard, which we did for a consistent finish. Yup. Compared to plasterboard, it's extremely heavy (45kg for a standard 12.5mm board) and expensive. You need to use special screws, which are several times the price of plasterboard screws (the guys who put ours up skimped on this and had a really hard time). Subjectively it's probably twice the physical effort to install - unless you're using the small one-person boards, there's no way a single person is going to be installing standard sheets by themselves, they're just too heavy. When it's up, it gives a much more solid feel to walls than a single sheet of plasterboard. You can hang heavy stuff without drilling into studwork, although I still prefer to drill into the wood behind if I can. You may also struggle to find people willing to install it. Most plasterers either haven't used it or hate it with a passion. You might find commercial guys who have experience with it, but they'll be expensive. In the end, we used Fermacell in places where we knew we'd be hanging things - kitchen, plant room, garage. Everywhere else, we doubled up on standard plasterboard to give extra weight to the walls more cheaply. I can't really tell the difference just by knocking on the walls. There are other boards that are somewhere between Fermacell and plasterboard in terms of density and strength. For example, I believe habito and duraline are heavier and somewhat more impact resistant than standard plasterboard. I don't know to what extent though, and I'm sure there are other products.

I believe so, but it's worth asking on the Loxone Google group: https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/loxone-english Very helpful bunch of people.

Very effective these are if you have toilets prone to blockage. We had one of them in the old house we knocked down, and after demolition it ended up on a pile of stuff to be skipped. During a break, I came out with load of cups of tea to find the builders sitting near the pile, with one of them idly playing with the plunger (including holding it at the "operative" end - and it had certainly never been properly cleaned before disposal). "Do you know what that is?", I asked. He stopped, looked at it, and about 5 seconds later said "It's a toilet plunger, isn't it". Oh how we laughed.

We have three cantilevered sections. One is only about 600mm from memory, and isn't much of a thermal bridge because it didn't need steels. The other two, however, are over a metre each, which required the use of steels. They also support a balcony, and so couldn't be within the thermal envelope. As a result, we have cold bridges at these points. Unfortunately, I didn't pick this up until it was too late. To try and mitigate this, the external steels are wrapped in aerogel blanket (supplied by the timber frame manufacturer) and I'll be further insulating with some left-over rigid insulation before enclosing these areas in the coming weeks. There are ways of thermally breaking such steels if they're required. One I saw used GRP spacers positioned within the wall, between the internal and external steel work. No idea of cost though.

Can't help you with specifics, but if it's on the deed, then clearly it hasn't been there forever! What did they say when you showed them the deed?

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Especially when you were aiming for the moon.

We have that general arrangement and it's fine. The only minor issue is that it's a long way to the loo in the middle of the night, but that's not the end of the world.

Yup, agreed, but I've definitely read at least once on BH that supply vents should be high up.

My floor-level vents are in the bedrooms, so they're outlets/supply. I've heard it suggested that a higher supply position helps ensure that the fresh air being introduced diffuses better, but I'm really not that fussed. I don't notice any difference in air quality in these rooms compared to others with ceiling-mounted outlets.

Wow, didn't see that coming! I had plans to order some glass from them in a few weeks once the weather improves enough for me to finish the fiberglassing on our balconies. No idea how liquidation works, but is there a potential opportunity to buy fixtures and fittings cheaply from the liquidator? Naturally not bespoke stuff like glass panels, but all the mounting bits and pieces.

We have floor outlets in the bedrooms for our MVHR system. They seem to work fine

Oddly enough, I was reading about this again just the other day. They apparently degas the lake somehow to avoid this problem arising again. There's at least one similar lake somewhere in Africa.

In a house, CO is the real danger molecule, partly because it doesn't cause a fall in pH (and hence your body doesn't recognise that oxygen is being squeezed out) and more importantly because red blood cells strongly bind CO and tend not to release it. I believe the latter element is why even apparently low relative levels of CO can be a problem if you're exposed to them long enough.

So crack on then. Let us know what you come up with. One factor to consider is that solar thermal is eligible for the RHI.