G and J

On mine it doesn’t matter. I find it easier to lay it on the floor, take up a couple of turns so the strap won’t slide out, then attach it to the job. Doing it in situ is much more fiddly.

OK. I guess I’m a Luddite. What does the filter remove? Should I feel somehow like I’m missing out?

Having had a water softener for a couple of decades I’m sold on all the internal taps, showers and cisterns being fed with softened water. It’s nicer to wash in and it reduces vastly maintenance. The exception is the kitchen tap as I’ve always felt it safer to drink and cook with unadulterated water. We had a go with filters (jug based) and they reduced the scum on tea but I wasn’t happy with the faff and the volume of plastic waste so they were ditched. I can’t see that a filter will reduce hardness, so do people have them because the taste is discernibly better? Or is it a bit of marketing hype that makes peeps feel like it’s better?

Hey! I started on SuperCalc which I believe was a forerunner of Excel. Boy, am I feeling old.

Honestly. We come up with a suggestion that saves the 43g worth of carbon involved in a 100 pack of tealights (requiring 68.469kg of carbon in the 9 AAA batteries alone) and you are quibbling. There’s no hope is there! 😉

I think maximising the solar PV is an independent decision that is now self evident in its own right, especially given the saving in slates that flush solar affords. We've had a reply from UKPN indicating that we can export 5kW, and as our roof will only hold 6.5kW of panels that sounds like a simple system with a 5kW inverter would work. Add in a ac coupled battery (with therefore it’s own inverter) and that increases my maximum theoretical export capacity and I suspect means investment into more complex control kit and time configuring, further worsening the case for a battery.

I’ve just rescanned this thread from the beginning, an interesting exercise. I’m left with the very strong impression that there are things we can do to give us the opportunity of taking advantage of weird and wonderful future electric tariffs. Slightly overprovision the UFH (closer pipe spacing), slightly oversize the heat pump, and run in the needed cables to add ac coupled batteries. That way we can add batteries and work in part day heating modes. Is there anything else we should factor in to maximise the chance of clever future tariff use?

And the giant lava lamp is a new entry at 231, failing to beat this week’s other new entry, a £9.99 set of electric candles from Blighty’s foremost style source, B&M…. IMG_2986.mov

So by accepting a bit less of a difference between FFL and the outside ground at the front of the house I can reduce the difference in level between the rear of the house and the patio. I like that idea.

Can the inner leaf be a small amount below the outer? Say a bricks worth?

Yes, so that, for instance, the rear elevation has 2 or 3 bricks visible in the plinth before the cladding, rather than a clumsy looking 6 bricks. But that would put the outer damp below the inner one and I was under the impression that they should be at the same level.

Our design has a completely flat floor throughout the ground floor, which we like. The plot slopes down a bit towards the back of the house so we have a FFL which is 150mm above ground at the front and 420mm at the back. So we have to have two steps down onto our patio if we don’t build up the patio itself, and we aren’t keen on being able to see into each neighbours’ garden. We are having a brick plinth with two bricks showing at the front with the damp proof on top of these bricks, then a bell drip and render on a block skin. If we keep the damp course at the same level throughout then we will see 6 plinth bricks which methinks will be too much. Can we leave the FFL and all associated membranes as is, but step down the damp course on the outer leaf? This in places the outer leaf damp course will be lower than the FFL.

Oh, and the 437th best visual effect is a complete lack of anything.

And as my experiments have revealed, the third best visual effect after 1) a real log fire, and 2) a spirit burner in a woodburner is 3) an iPad propped up behind the glass with a vid of a log fire burning. Still way better than the fake electric jobbies we looked at.

I believe if you get the woodburner in as part of the build then you don’t have to pay a hetas person lots, you can do it yourself, saving quite a packet.

Well said GP. Man doth not live by U value alone.

Why is that then?

For that very reason we are hiding our cisterns in the walls.

We’ve looked at spirit burners. I made one up from a foil takeaway container and some bits I had around the garage - I had a bottle of fuel anyway for my camping stove. The flame is better than the best electric ones we could find, but what put us off is the sheer volume of single use plastic containers that it would mean. I believe 5l packs are available but that would still be a mountain of plastic, and for peeps who try hard on that front (and get our legs pulled for our 70’s throwback Sodastream) it grates. So, we ended up thinking that: nothing gets near to the comfort of watching brightly glowing logs; the heat from a woodburner on cold days will reduce our leccie use; retro fitting a woodburner is difficult (having done it before); and, a spirit burner in a woodburner is easily the second best thing to a wood fire so we can use it on nights too warm for a fire. So a small woodburner it is, (a Charnwood Aire 3 is the plan), with judicious use of a spirit burner to limit waste plastic to an acceptable level. I would be chuffed if someone knows of a way of bulk buying bio-ethanol using reusable containers mind…..

Should we run a BH sweepstake on how long before the first extension lead is deployed? My guess is two days after you start putting up Christmas deccies.

Ah. A Donald Rumsfeld moment then. Those are the ones I fear the most! “Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it”. Sigh. I guess it’s a pick yourself up, dust yourself off, try and view the lost funds as the cost of experience, and start working with a more helpful organisation instead. However, that doesn’t mean that the issues they are referring to aren’t valid, so they still may need design changes.

Ah, so they were submitted to your local authority. My understanding is that if one opts for a private company BC then the local authority are out of the loop. Did the architect recommend using the LA?

I admire your confidence lol

Question 1. Which company have you submitted your building regs to for approval?

Yet. 😉