G and J

Brilliant, thank you Nick. I think you may have mentioned that when I visited but I failed to retain - sorry!

This (sort of thing) is on your MVHR supply main duct I assume. DO you find it effective?

Eureka!! I've come up with the perfect solution to my needing brick slips that I can’t buy to match our chosen plinth bricks without subjecting our neighbours to hours of deafening brick cutting or choking them and myself on the dust. Please would everyone on build hub order some brick samples. Each sample card comes with some lovely little brick slips to save postage costs! Perfect! What could possibly go wrong? 😕

We haven't, mostly because we are attracted to what is a local (long standing) firm taking on the whole job, including manufacture, and should cash flow deem it necessary (!) more than one hit at fitting. From a quick look at the seniors site, they look very similar, but couldn't see anything about installation?

Have you let the neighbours (definitely those who will be formerly consulted) that the application is in? Better you do it than them just received a notice. We let the whole street know, as the build will affect their access (e.g road closing in March for electric to go underground). It could be argued that this isn't necessary but living in a small community everybody will look at the planning notice when posted, and will have an opinion of some sort. I hope you do get some letters of support. We were happy to get some neutral, and in the scheme of things the objections we got we were either aware of in advance or they were non material in planning terms, so although it's hard try not to take it personally. Wishing you every success

There’s been quite a lot of discussion on here about the ‘bounce’ of longer beam spans. We can’t use a crane, and we don’t want bounce, so we’re putting a sort of mini foundation down the centre of our house to keep the spans to under 12’ and the beams two man liftable. Is this called a sleeper foundation?

Thinks….. is there a solar pv equivalent to Cool Energy for heat pumps? I buy the bits from them, get them installed, said company commissions and het presto, I’m mcs’d.

At the moment we are looking at smart systems stuff: alitherm 800 windows, designer (ooh er Mrs!) front door and Visioglide patio doors all from a local company. Some fixed windows and the opening ones will be top hung. Still tons of work to be done on that, with the next job being to finalise the opening sizes for the timber frame company (another local-ish bunch). The big advantage is that once the timber frame is up they’ll come along and measure, then a 8 to 10 weeks later they fit them. Any breakages or mistakes they fix, pronto.

So it’s simply mcs rules. Hmmmmm. Taking the tails from the panels into the loft to allow reconfiguration to me seemed such a patently good idea, but I guess it allows users to meddle, perhaps the source of their rules. The more I read about mcs the less enamoured I am. The reactionary in me feels like spreadsheeting a diy instal and comparing the saving (and the little bit of engineering freedom) to the estimated export payments over, say, 15 years. Then I think about all the other things I’m going to try and do myself…. Sigh.

Bet your neighbours loved you lol

Sounds good but is that actually practical to do? Maybe with a high power tile cutter?

Oh good. Ergovents are back on the shopping list then. There’s only the two of us and I rarely bother to wash anyway (I am a boy, after all), so I won’t be causing boosting too often.

Then you are off my Christmas card list.

Lined chimneys don’t benefit from ventilation. Sadly.

In a cottage in Norfolk I installed a fan in the kitchen flue which we had to have running to stop smoke being drawn down when we first lit the lounge fire. It was usually ok once the fire and thence chimney git going nice and warm, presumably because the warm gases simply rose up past the other chimney pots. Oddly, a tiny whiff of woodsmoke I find comforting. Any more than that is nasty.

Fortunately our house is small enough so the runs are short enough so I don’t need (I hope) a hot return thingy. Fingers crossed.

I saw an ad for them. Looked fab, PV one side, almost matching standing seem roof the other. However, I looked at the gloss of the marketing, thought fondly of our budget and the fact that we want slates, and I didn’t save the details. I categorised it as something for someone else’s grand design.

Hmmmm. I’m thinking dedicated 10mm hep2o pipe to each hot basin tap from cylinder manifold to deliver quick hot water. After that just one 15mm hot and cold to each bathroom. Given the above this sounds like overkill.

So, the panels I fit are part paid for by the saving in slates. I fit optimisers that are accessible from inside the loft and I accept that some panels will die in the next 25years so the solar output will diminish, but not terribly, and the rest can keep going thanks to the optimisers. I can live with that. I still get lots of kWh.

Until this thread we were pretty sold on ergovents, a mix of linear and square ones depending on which room. It does t take much to worry me lol

Many BCOs won’t sign off a woodburner install however perfect, and insist on. Hetas person signing it off. So the perfect arrangement for recirculating smoke down a flue. Hmmmm. Maybe it is worth running some duct to the outside, perhaps even up to ceiling level then outside somehow. Are you sure you can’t pick just one woodburner as your emergency hear source?

Copy that. I’m going for nicely airtight anyway but I can see the need for even greater vigilance around aluminium door and window frames.

OK. Maybe there is another way to look at this. Insulative block under cill to limit bridging has got to be a no brainier. Insulative upstand round perimeter of screed similarly a no brainier. But what if I let the screed touch the aluminium cill? Yes it will cause more heat loss than needed. But the screed will warm the cill, reducing or eliminating condensation on the cill. I think condensation would be harder to live with than a tiny increase in heating load.

That was one of the aspects I was worrying about. It feels like this requirement is conflicting with the requirement to avoid cold, condensey aluminium cills/frames. Removing some of the thermalite blocks thickness, maybe even to the extent of the PIR up stand being partly under the cill, sounds like a good plan.

Good thought. Our front door is our part M access door so there I could use thermalite blocks instead of plinth bricks. we have a rear door and patio doors where the plinth bricks will be visible as both have a step down immediately outside