G and J

Crumbs, I didn’t realise. The Guardian was my favourite too. Which paper can I believe then? I’ll read that one from now on. I will admit to sneaking a look at the front page of the Star from time to time. They are simply so bloody funny and clever too. The Lizz Truss/Lettuce thing was truly inspired - but as a poodle cohabiter (one never owns a poodle, one simply serves them) I was upset when they described Trump as “Putin’s poodle”. But it was ok. They apologised for the unintended insult to poodles.

I’m assuming that ‘lollypopping’ is to ensure good flow even if, say, two showers were in use at the same time, so for circuits where flow rate rather than hot water arrival speed is of interest. In my ever evolving mental plumbing layout (mental being the right word, sigh) I have a single ended connection from and as close as possible to the top of the UVC direct to a small manifold that serves just the sink/basin taps. Then I’ll have a sculptural Henry Moore style loopy manifold for the rest. I think I’ll entitle it “warm in the shower despite his plumbing”.

@Redbeard Fred Drift is my friend, rambling fool that he is, but I learn so much as a result… As for range anxiety for cars, we would suffer from that. But then, before I bought one I worried about a cordless drill running out of battery before I’d finished whatever job. One ’Light Bulb!’ Moment later, I realised I could swap to a second battery. How about if they build a big version of my Makita 18V battery and design lots of vehicles to take them. Then we could lease the batteries and do an automated swap in service stations. Instant recharge. Just a thought.

And then you find the plot, and everything you’ve decided (both design and construction wise) goes out of the window and you start again. But you start again from a more knowledgeable position.

Naming your tools! Honestly - how daft is that. As I go to site this morning in Skooby Skoda, (Trevor the trailer lives on site now so no longer commutes) I’ll have a chuckle about that, and again when I tell Sam Spade. I share your satisfaction, it’s a nice start to our build.

I used to read the Guardian, but I realised I was just constantly reading opinions that matched my own, so it wasn’t challenging my thinking, though it was comforting. So there is an argument methinks that runs along the lines that if one reads stuff you don’t agree with it helps develop a balanced world view. Despite that I gave up on newspapers and now I read buildhub. Much betterer.

We could easily have fallen into that rut. However, I think I’m the other extreme. I'm too willing to stop, retrace, refine, improve, etc. That spills over into knob polishing very easily. But as a founder member of Obsessives Anonymous…. (@zzPaulzz - please can I see the alternative spiral pattern when you have it.)

If we are giving a Papal style welcome, please may we use a telehandler to carry him in a chair - my back still aches from space work.

👆👉💪😊 Can you really be sure of that?

I’m Wally the warm water molecule. And I’m going to describe my morning commute. I spent the night getting warmer and warmer in the big space, we call it the coil cavern. It’s nice swimming round the coils, as the thermals are a bit of a funfair ride. Someone turned a tap on and I happened to be near the hole in the ceiling, so I got sucked up. The first bit of metal tube was vertical but still lovely and warm. And we moved at a good pace so it was fun. We got quite roughly jostled at a sharp 90 degree bend, I got an elbow in the eye. Not happy. This metal tube was horizontal and still as warm. Then it got odd. I got wrenched downwards into a tiny plastic tube. The speed! Wow. But I must have been near the front as I got progressively cooler as the tube went on. Then by the time I hit and fell out of the metal sluice gate thing I could feel a migraine coming on. Later, as I serenely swam round with some cold water molecules and detergent strings in the big, calm, luke warm pool, I was told that my hot water team got there really quickly and were still nice and hot. I know that in a while the chrome rimmed hell hole will open, sucking us all into the underworld. And who knows how long before I’ll be reincarnated back to the warm coil cavern. But for now I’m enjoying swimming round with the suds. All I have to do is avoid that big pink thing in the middle. (I thought I should look at this from every angle, and the lesson? Maybe I should put bends in rather than elbows to make the water journey more comfortable. Being serious I take your point @Nickfromwales re cold water volume in a heat trap. We’ve just been discussing it and as J has pointed out, the UVC is in a drying cupboard, so the heat isn’t wasted. All those litres of oil weren’t entirely wasted, we always had a nice warm airing cupboard - and being 60s kids that felt right.

So I don’t have to allow room between UVC and anti thermal loopy thing and manifolds then. Good news. Thank you.

My heart sank as I started to read your blog as I (J) have fallen for a russwood option and given our site will definitely need a hi-ab delivery that we haven't fully bottomed out with them yet. So far they have been great to deal with so I am pleased to hear they were in practice. Like you our final choice may have to be "refined" to match funds, but all of the examples I've seen (not in person) of finished projects look great. You're speeding along...well done.

In my naivety when I plumbed here in ‘91 I put a nice fat pipe straight from the top of the hot water cylinder (that’s what we called ‘em in the old days) going up into the loft to be the vent pipe bent over the tank. Perfect heat dissipation device. Sigh. How many litres of heating oil has that cost in the last 34 years I wonder. I’m thinking an insulated copper pipe up from the UVC outlet, then three bends, then me manifolds starting with the 10mm ones for the sinks/basins. I’ll draw it out beautifully, then the execution will look like spaghetti. But with the cupboard door shut it will look fine. Does the balancing valve go before or after the UVC?

Everyone needs a hobby…

I’m quite sold on the radial idea, absolutely no buried joints. Plus 10mm hot water feeds for each basin to deliver warm water PDQ.

OK, hands up, I admit it, I’m a tad surprised. Earlier today I drew up a list of the feeds I will be serving from hot and cold manifolds placed (as per current thinking) above the UVC in the utility room. It’s a shocking long list. Beam me up Scotty - I need rescuing!

The relevance of the 1m for building control is that the building must be constructed in such a way to restrict/control fire (for you and your neighbours). (Planning allows you to build as close as 50mm to a boundary). Our new build (on an existing site) will sit 1030mm from our neighbours one side and 1500mm the other. In both cases there is a shared access alley between us.

The trouble with allowing contingency is that when you don’t need it then it feels like time wasted. I guess it’s a bit of a drawing of breath really, much needed, but one’s natural bent (in my case anyway) is to automatically reach for my spade and start work - thinking not required. Oddly, we aren’t in a rush, in fact, the faster we go the quicker we run out of money unless our house sells, which in this market is looking unlikely. So taking time out is a good thing, it’s just that it feels like I should be making progress regardless. We had allocated this week to a week away, maybe going on a tour of timber cladding suppliers in our campervan (who needs airport security checks when you can be rained on in a muddy field) but other events kicked that into touch. So doing nothing this week should have felt ok. Twitch. In the end I did just two half days to pull up the wooden floorboards. We put them on Facebook as free to good home and after our standard allocation of time wasters a lovely chap turned up and worked hard with me to carefully lift them, remarkably preserving the tongues in the process. The lesson is that I should have bought a pallet breaker as then we’d have done it in one afternoon, instead of two. We did discover a few wasp nests under the floors, one mummified rodent, and an uphill poo pipe - that’ll be fun taking out…. But no other surprises, thankfully. The flow direction is left to right…. But with that and some of the internal doors finding new homes we are pleased with the amount of reuse we have achieved for bits of da bungalow (RIP). Anyway, I promised a demolition summary, so…. We got two quotes for demo companies to do it. One definitely wanted protective scaffolding (we are extremely close to the neighbours) and the other wasn’t clear on that. They were close in price and cheaper of the two was just over £11k and probably scaffolding (undefined). The cheaper one wanted a welfare unit too. The dearer one was willing to do a part demo - he pointed out that if I took the roof off then we wouldn’t need scaffolding and he’d knock £4k off. So despite agonising over which was better we ended up using neither. As part of getting quotes we were told we needed a demolition survey (AKA asbestos check). This cost £350 (zero VAT) and fortunately returned very pleasing results. Steve, our guardian angel, however, pointed out that a demolition company would do it quick but very dirty and with the big machines they’d use the probability of damage to neighbours was significant. Plus about 98% likelihood of really pissing lots of peeps off too. Not good. After some negotiations it was agreed he’d work with me on a day rate and the rest, as they say, is either history or a trauma that therapy will reduce in time, but either way we got da bungalow (RIP) down. To be fair, there remains a small amount of woodwork (floor joists) to pull up which will take me a short day, and there’s concrete to break up and cart away, but the ground worker includes that in his price (partly as there seems to be a local shortage of such stuff), and I’ve three catnic lintels to clean up and sell, but I call it done. Costs: Demolition survey: £350. Demolition notice: Can’t remember, it seems so long ago, but we don’t think there was a charge. Man days: Neighbour (to help get roof tiles off): 1 day at a cost of a lot of tiles (we were robbed!) Steve: 16 days. Expert guidance; lots of hard work; wicked sense of humour but oh, the singing! Me: 25 days - General dogsbodying and everything no one else wanted to do. Why did it always have to be me up the ladder? At least my singing is tuneful. I think. Total man days: 42. The answer to the meaning of life - how appropriate. Materials: Dust masks : ~£30 Gloves: ~£50 Makita reciprocating saw plus blades: £115. Heras fencing: £120 Hard hats and hi vis waistcoats: £22 Angle grinder discs: ~£10 Diesel for umpteen tip runs: £?? - but there was so many it looks like I’m going to be invited to the tip staff meetings from now on. Bath water, washing powder, lecky for washing machine, etc. £?? Total known materials ~£347 6 yard Plasterboard Skip: £396 inc VAT Stuff sold: Scrap (so far, there’s still some copper lurking around) -£292 Roof tiles -£320 Odds and sods sold on faceache -£200 Total sold: -£812 So, if I ignore the cost of my time, it comes out less than £4k. Rather pleased with that, and as the neighbours appear to be ok, it’s a good result all round.

Water main to pop up at the back of the attached garage, with softener placed just next to it. It’s there simply for the convenience of salt filling. I haven’t researched but I assume the softener will have a maximum pressure requirement so looks like I’ll end up with multiple PRVs.

Yet more evidence that I think incredibly slowly: Was laying awake last night thinking about plumbing, like one does. I was thinking through the above and was wondering why the kitchen cold tap needed its own pressure reducing valve. I'm expecting to put one on the whole installation as our static pressure is well over 6bar, so I’m guessing to 2.5bar or 3bar. All the mixer taps other than the kitchen will be fed from a balanced (softened) supply, but the kitchen is different. To allow the kitchen mixer tap to work correctly do I need to reduce it further just for that tap?

Does each drain/tundish require its own dry trap?

Da Bungalow we've demolished shows evidence under its layers of its configuration at birth. No wet stuff in the main part. An outhouse at the front had a potty (plumbed in and connected to the sewer, a bit of a wow for Suffolk in the 1920s), and some short, buried lead piping presumably for the scullery. So there really is nothing new under the sun…

It simply wouldn’t be the same. We’ll do it another time, maybe near someone’s site when they’ve something for us all to gawp at. Either that or we could have an activity thing like a steel lifting party or a team basement dig…

Seriously though - is that for an 8 bedroom 5 reception room grand design type warehouse?

Bummer. I feel for you. As for worrying about the wall plastered blockwork will need redecorating but otherwise is highly likely to be unaffected. The cavity will dry in time.