G and J

Is a French drain simply a small trench next to the house wall filled with gravel that allows the water out either sideways or downwards?

@skeg0 Are you going to paint them or leave them for varnish/wax/whatever?

Was hoping for an extended dotage in a shallow hollow near a river and lots and lots of cafés. But I take your point.

So not analogous to resistors in parallel then. Hmmmm, yet more to learn.

Looking at 5kW as our heat loss at -2.3C is 2.5kW. (Does that mean I want to achieve 1.17m3/h flow rate or doesn’t it scale like that?). I presume I need to calculate the number of linear 100m loops we need to calculate the full UFH flow resistance. Again, I presume one dimensions Fiordland the UFH and simply assume the cylinder will be ok when the system switches over to DHW.

Oh we did have mains gas. Paid £1.7k to have it removed. Going electric only feels right, for the warm fuzzy doing the right thing internal feeling kinda reason. Just need to work the choices that follow that. I’ve read a good few instances of moderately extended pipe work for ASHPs appearing to work ok, so we’ve gone for it. Just need to find the right ASHP and cylinder now.

We've been round this one soooooo many times. It can’t go either side, too close to the boundaries. It could go right by the front door - lovely. Or it could go near the road and impede a parking space. Or it could go on the patio by the patio doors. Not ideal either. In reality the sensible choice was to give up on an ASHP and fit a gas boiler, but, as a matter of principle, we wanted no gas. So instead we are shelling out on an expensive pipe, and accepting slightly higher running costs. We think it is still ecologically better than a gas boiler. And if I can get a 300l one in the utility room without making the cupboards deeper I will. Ta for the link - haven’t buttoned down the cylinder yet.

Oh, and I’ll buy some extra soft HB pencils so my knees don’t hurt too much….

So I chose me ASHP, which will have a water pump built in. On the specs of that will be a limit to pipe resistance. So I add up my pipe resistances and compare, maybe using oversize underground pipes to help, and I either smile broadly or I plan in a return pump under my stairs to work in tandem with the ASHP water pump. Still looking at a single zone doing everything, just two 2 port valves, using weather compensation, a 250l UVC heated to maybe 50C. Oh and we want a switch that says heating - off - cooling. That’s the truly inspired bit. Am I getting warmer?

Plan D1 with naked UVC it is then. Thank you for helping me cap off daft options guys.

My base assumption would be to assemble myself from parts, but I can’t trust my instincts as it never occurs to me that sometimes factory built has advantages. Re the underground pipe surfacing just inside the house, I got that idea from a post on here, but I wanted the joint accessible. On the bright side, each idea identified as stoopid gets me closer to a sensible design - so I should (and do) welcome my embarrassment. 🙂

That had occurred, but I’ve history of excessive Ludditery, so I thought it best to seek the opinions of other's. Here's one of the units …. https://www.viessmann.co.uk/en/products/heat-pump/vitocal-151a.html

OK, I admit it, I grabbed the first link I could find - sorry. The units I’ve been looking at use a monoblock ASHP and the indoor unit is like a cylinder and lots else wrapped up in a steel box to make it look like a freezer. I think you connect the ASHP flow and return to the unit, thence the flow and return to the UFH manifolds, the cold water feed and the DHW output and thats it. Super quick instal giving a really neat unit. I’ll try find a link to the right one…

The all in one thingy is the next step beyond preplumbed, if I’ve understood correctly. It’s this kind of thing: https://bpcventilation.com/products/aquarea-all-in-one-water-to-air-heat-pump?variant=53736366866758 If I don’t go for the all in one type unit then there’s a choice re pre plumbed vs naked. I would naturally err towards naked but some of the pre plumbed ones do look ridiculously neat! My assumption would be I’d save money and a bit more choice on placement with naked, and our utility room is not going to be terribly spacious.

So, the new plan is Plan D : The ASHP flow and return twin insulated underground pipes surface behind the fridge, thence to travel in normal pipes either to the understairs or to the utility room, depending on.... Choice D1 : Normal Heat Pump UVC (250l?), and separate gubbins. Water pump under stairs with 2 port valves and maybe expansion vessel. Choice D2 : All in one unit which I think means all but the UFH manifolds are in the utility room. I like the look of the all in one type units - which appear to need few other gubbins, but would give a smaller cylinder (typically 190l). Are there any obvious factors that would make D1 or D2 clearly better?

I’m looking at maybe fitting one or more bum guns, which I think sort the freshness issue with less real estate and fewer building regs issues. (Not just because the name makes me laugh, though it does). Need to fully research them but have too many other priority decisions to focus on first.

Can you build the cistern into the wall and maybe use a floating potty? That will increase the feeling of space in that area and increase the actual ‘knee’ gap.

When I started reading about airtight houses I instantly took against the idea. Soon after I twigged the heat exchange concept and I had a Gru style ‘light bulb’ moment. Precise, controlled, energy efficient ventilation. What’s not to love? I’m actually hoping for a cold spell to encourage peeps to want my free (but a bit naily) firewood.

(There’s way too much verbage here - sorry - but it reflects the deep spring clean my head needed. Will try to make time for a demolition summary in another post which would be far more useful for others). Each Monday morning, since we started demolition on the 17th of March, at stupid o’clock, I shuffle round the kitchen getting breakfast ready trying to assess how my body is doing, physically. Well, sort of. What actually happens is I slowly get my knees and my back working while bemoaning my stupidity and sheer arrogance in thinking I can do this, convinced that my I am starting the week more tired than the previous Monday. In some ways, almost certainly mentally rather than physically, having a break really takes it out of me. That Monday restart is just simply tough. I could tell myself that this should be the last week of demolition. That this is the last push of the hardest bit of the build. But inside I know that it’s getting towards the end of one phase of a long line of phases each of which I’ll be convinced at the time is the hardest one. But two hours later, at 07:35, I’m on site boiling a kettle waiting for Steve to arrive and my head is in gear and my fatigue is mostly forgotten. My 20 minute meditation, aka the drive to the site, has done its job. I do know I can do this. Anyway, I s’pose I should write a few words about da bungalow. Today, the kitchen gets it! All that’s left now is most of the kitchen walls, composition uncertain, and the dunny. The end of the kitchen nearest the road is, we thought, mostly masonry. The other end is now naked studwork. We left the studwork last week as we suspected it was needed to help the 6m long part timber frame kitchen wall stay up, which is surprising given that this studwork waggles like mad when nudged. So the first task was to take some of the weight off of the 6m wall. We didn’t dare hack the plaster off as we had elsewhere, leaving clean-ish metal mesh to peel off for recycling. Instead we peeled both plaster and mesh together, piling in a heap for me to process later. That worked to start with, but as we made our way along the wall it became clear that there was progressively less strength left in the studs. In the end the wall plate that ran through to the single skin masonry section gave just enough strength to allow us to dismantle the wall in a controlled manner. At one point we did stop and consider just pushing down the middle section, but that could have destabilised adjacent sections and also given the likely state of the soleplate it could have kicked out at the bottom. With next door’s wall only 1,030mm away that felt too close, even with heras fencing between. So we carried on slowly peeling and it became evident that in that middle section, all that remained intact was the two layers of render, topped by a wall plate. Truly scary. Another thing not to share with the neighbours. That done we could then take down the studwork. It was by then wobbly enough to push over safely onto the floor, and a couple of well placed cuts meant it would fall the right way, so push we did. Timber frames falling like that just don’t give that satisfying thump that masonry does, but it does still leave a lot of clearing up of timbers bristling with nail heads. The nail points are, at Steve’s insistence, all hammered over safe. In fact it’s been drummed into me so hard over the last 5 weeks that I now referring to it as ‘Steve-ing the nails’. The wood mountain grows and we learn that the wood man is maxed out and won’t be returning. Would have helped had he told me that last week but that’s life. Back to faceache it is (other social networks are available, but few are as annoying). As we work our way along the kitchen wall towards the road we find a mixture of stuff. Odd bits of plasterboard. Glass fibre insulation as well as the nasty snowy type stuff we’ve had in many other places. Pieces of wood and brick and block and tile just shoved in to repair holes in the render. Satisfied that the remaining masonry end walls (a ‘C’ shape) are safe and stable, we stop for the night. Next day we have rain first thing - the first on the project so far. So we bravely don our hats and coats and bugger off to Cafe Nero to drink coffee and plan. That turns out to be fabulously timely. I have picked up bits and pieces over the years and I’ve recently read tons about building stuff but putting it together in the right order takes Steve’s experience and caffeine. We’ve now got our slightly unusual foundation design, and that enables us to talk over who should do what, when and how. Annoyingly, Steve, with his wealth of experience and such a brilliant, caring and dutiful attitude, would be the perfect ground worker to safely and cost effectively pull our foundations. But he’s semi retired and he hasn’t got the right PI cover and all that. Our party wall agreements (which I was pleased to get as at one point it felt like it might cost us lots and lots of time, money and angst) and our warranty provider (thank you Protek) require fully insured, experienced professional contractors to be used for the foundations. So it isn’t a good idea for me and Steve to do them, even though we’d probably do it more carefully and with less noise and disruption than a ground crew. Sigh. It feels like the litigious nature of our world is killing common sense. In theory the party wall awards required specialist demolition contractors to be used. We did get two quotes, each of which were going to send in a nice big machine with bloody great jaws to eat da bungalow and cause mayhem, and in my view, likely do damage to our neighbours. But we managed to get site insurance (thank you for real this time, Protek) which specifically covered demolition. But if we weren’t bloody minded enough to test and challenge then we could easily have gone with it and ‘done it properly’. Bigger sigh. OK, rant over (for now). The rain stopped and it’s back to site, having lost a couple of hours. We keep telling ourselves that we are not in a rush and it’s not sensible to set targets so of course Steve and I rush to recover the time and hit target for the day - the rest of the kitchen. We first hit single skin red brick, then round the corner, a red brick outer skin and under the internal stud skin, some very old painted plaster from the original outhouse. From the broken earthenware pipes I’ve found digging near there I now believe that this bit was originally the privy. Nearest to the road, so as far from the living rooms as possible, with sections of lead water pipe built in, it conjures up an image of such a different way of life. We find a ‘T’ joint in the lead pipe, simply sweated together - a wonderful illustration of what 100 years have done in plumbing technology terms. By home time we have a short lower section of red brick wall and a twin skinned block section of wall left, both stable but still irritatingly short of the target we didn’t set ourselves. Next day even though we want to finish the kitchen first it’s better to get the dunny down whilst there are two of us. It’s the last chance for a collapse to damage next door so I need Steve on site to blame in case anything happens. The potty is carefully pulled out (will be reinstalled in the house as temporary welfare suite - i.e. a pan, a bucket and for special occasions, a loo roll). The metal lathe and plaster remains only on the inside so is dispatched fairly quickly. Some hammering from a very mobile (but safe) bandstand removes the mostly masonry wall with the window and another sellable catnic is discovered. We now have a trio of them to clean up and sell on faceache. Thence the last studwork to drop. Just like one end of the kitchen, a couple of thought through cuts and a push and it’s down. Just like that. We tidy up, and quickly knock down the last little bit of kitchen wall thats next to a neighbour, and we stand back and contemplate for a mo what isn’t there any more. Steve won’t be back for nearly two weeks, and I think he’s a bit disappointed that he leaves one little corner still standing but he points out that even I can’t cock up taking that down. Personally I think he underestimated my talent in that. So Maundy Thursday sees me bashing plaster off of metal mesh, to get it ready for recycling, and generally clearing up and loading up for a tip run. And something very odd happens. I’m working at the front of the site, nodding at passers by, smiling with my eyes at them (isn’t it weird how a smile gets through a dust mask), when a chap from over the road I’ve not met before comes over. Richard introduces himself and I brace for what I know is coming, as in fairness the dust and noise can’t have been nice for the street. And he hits me with it, and I am taken aback but I try not to show it. He tells me how well we have done and how little disruption, mess and bother there has been. He’s impressed. Wow. Chuffed. We have quite a chat (after all, he will be one of our neighbours and it beats hammering mesh with a spade) and he leaves me rather buoyed up to say the least. Then a chap from three doors down comes and has a chat, just for the neighbourliness of it, and it reinforces how nice a community our new pad will be in. And then (how do I ever get anything done?) Monica stops to say hello and tells me that our demolition ‘is a work of art’. She walks past regularly (I have said hi to her a good few times) and she’s been watching and she is hugely complimentary. If the god of fat, little bald fellas had carefully planned a reward at the end of the demo phase she couldn’t have done better. Tip run done, I then felt I could reward myself by taking down that last corner. Rather than do it top down I stripped out the inner skin (more bloody snowy insulation) and one side to leave a bit of wall to go down with a satisfying thump. Next door have a couple of young lads, the oldest being 9. It struck me that at that age I would have loved pushing a wall down - so a quick convo with his mum, a hastily fitted hard hat and oversize gloves and with mum filming we rock the wall till I can let him give the last push - his grin was a fitting final smile for da bungalow to provide. Bye bye bungalow.

Can you set up home assistant or similar to remind you to change the MVHR filters the day after a major fire? That might prove useful. 😕

So a 9v dc operated relay (like, with a coil and physical contacts - how very retro!) which switches 240v ac thence to the smart relay that can initiate some form of message or other actions. Got it. Thank you.

I’ve not really got my head round smart relays. I bought a Shelly dimmer and started to play with that so I’m starting to understand their use in lighting control. But what function would a smart relay perform if controlled by the alarm wire of smoke/heat alarms?

Not discussing planning applications, plans etc, is unfortunate. Regard the third surveyor, both other surveyors (yours and theirs) would need to agree, so that bodes well. You're right of course they are bound by professional standards, and the way our surveyor explained it to us, and in fairness the other to our neighbours was that their job is actually to advocate for the "party wall" and therefore neither will take "sides"......it's much more factual. As your neighbours appear not to be keeping you informed so far, one of the items we needed to provide for the agreement was a drawing of the proposed foundations, so you could ask that this is provided and to see that when it, so you can judge whether all is going to plan or if changes (which may be necessary as the build starts) are being made? Hopefully, in the end all will be well, but in the meantime it's good to be acting as an informed party.

You say there will be a party wall agreement, so are you aware that as well as their surveyor you have the right to appoint your own surveyor at their cost. This is what we did, i.e. our 2 sets of neighbours had one surveyor, and we had ours. This way the two surveyors hammer out the details and yours will take a brief from you as to what you want. The agreement will stipulate (obviously check) that works on the party wall (ie on or close to the boundary) will be undertaken by skiiled and insured contractors and that appropriate site insurance is in place, which in our case was to be provided to the surveyor before commencement. We have keep in dialogue with the neighbours and intend to throughout, but they have the reassurance of someone acting on their behalf and a route of raising concerns if they were to feel we were't listening or doing something we shouldn't.......it sounds like this would be the kind of thing you would be looking for?

How close to the boundary? I ask because if it were party wall agreement close, this could/would/should prescribe insurance detail. We know this as our build has party wall agreements with both neighbours.