Spinny

quooker boiling water only tap with Pro3 tank. Plumber mentioned some people cut a hole in the base of the cupboard and install a dish in the hole so the tank can sit lower into the plinth space. Anyone ever seen this, done this, point me at the metal dish people inset etc ? Anyone actually have a shelf in the same side of a cupboard as the tank and cut around it or in front of it ? In fact if anyone has a photo of an installed quooker in a kitchen cabinet it would be helpful. Looking to work out best positioning for tank, and socket etc

I'd have thought by suitably placing the PIR (e.g. on the side panel) it will be triggered by the movement of the doors themselves without having any visibility through any crack between the doors. A lot of these things just seem simpler using the smart home approach. Then you can move the wireless battery powered sensor around until it reacts as you wish, and choose whatever logic including delays, conditions etc to control the light. Lots of LED strip controllers available with wireless smart home integration. The following sensors readily available... PIR Contact sensors Tilt sensors vibration Sensor presence sensor lux sensor I always wonder why have the LED strip at the back of the shelf rather than the front. Things under a shelf are illuminated by reflected light incident from the front, and can just get silhouetted when lit from the rear. Unless you are going to open the cupboard in a dark room you could use a lux sensor inside the cupboard to detect the increase in light when you open the cupboard doors.

Yes but no, Post & Beam. I have had people willing to be fast and loose with such details, and then over a cup of tea show me photographs on their phone of the elaborate mm perfect TV unit / fish tank / patio slab work etc that they have done at their own home. It is things like this where if you are around at the time you can catch and correct, once it is done it becomes an issue to move. Had similar with boiler flue position through the roof which I had marked weeks before they eventually put it in. Plumber was going to forget or ignore that and run it straight up which would have put it too close to an adjacent wall. As I was around I overheard a conversation with the carpenter and politely got it cut in the right place. I still have a drain which needs moving by 6 inches to be under the rainwater pipe - a detail I didn't notice when the groundworks were done. For a lot of us we don't get the luxury of big houses like the yanks have, all the endless acoutrements of modern life have to be squeezed in somehow. Sometimes 20mm on the positioning of a door opening makes the difference between fitting an ikea wardrobe in, or not. A big chunk just goes with the territory because building is something that needs planners and doers. If you are in the trades you kind of need to be a doer. Both to be commercially efficient, and also because it is the nature of the job. Doing an occupation that conflicts with your personality type and likes and dislikes for decades is going to send most of us loopy. Doers need to do, and feel happier doing - planners need to plan, and feel happier planning. A house 'planned' by a doer can look like dogshit, a house 'built' by a planner will always be finished next year. Seems like a popular sentiment, was ever thus and ever thus will be... SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS

Let's go deep sea fishing... https://youtu.be/QH4NRIDjRjk?si=3G--x1TkCMqr86U-

Good idea. Gonna try it.

TBH it is not the clients role or responsibility to be 'a supportive presence', whatever that might be deemed to be. The client is paying for the work, and is the only person that ends up holding the (sometimes deformed) baby afterwards. To me it seems to be as common for being supportive to be seen as 'weakness', as it is for it to be in any way appreciated or reciprocated. People vary, everyone is different - personality, objectives, world view, work ethic, competence, lived experience and attitudes. That needs to be respected on all sides. Leave the pig headedness and the ego at the site gate. Builders often seem to work with strict heirarchy. I am boss, the site leader is next, all employees and trades are subservient and to 'follow orders' - the 'lower' the skill group the more so - from labourers, ground workers, brickies, plasterers, carpenters, plumbers, up to electricians. More akin to the armed forces than so called 'knowledge worker' type companies of inter co-operating thinkers with equal specialisations. It can be difficult to know who to talk to, and whether it will make any difference. I have had individuals listen and adjust something, I have been ignored and fobbed off with lies, I have seen individuals over ruled by site leader or builder for showing any degree of independent thought or for listening to a client. I have seen people fail to stop work even when it is obvious they have a problem. The relationship between builder and worker can be multifarious - employee, partner, sub-contractor, 20 year drinking mate, day rate, piece rate, job and knock, personally liable to fix any issue arising with their work for free - or not. Generally everyone is rowing their own boat and will often advise you based on what suits them - can't be done, nothing wrong, next trade will sort it, too late now. Lettered professional opinion is normally listened to - structural engineer, architect, QS, BCO. Client not necessarily even when they are saying exactly the same thing as the lettered professional. You need to find the good people which you only know if you have experienced their work and approach. I have been told people were the best person in the top building firm before they joined the builder, everyone is said to be excellent, worked for King Charles, a brickie AND a carpenter etc. Often a warning sign. Some clients may actually know little about whether their builder or tradesperson is actually good or bad - many clients likely don't own a spirit level or know a steel screw from a stainless one etc. There is a reason good businesses let you see your car being worked on, have a window into the kitchen, show you the shop floor etc. You can't ask for trust, you can only earn it.

PS Found yet another hidden bodge today which doesn't help my paranoia. Top board on the omnie u/floor heating fitted by our original builder - was sticking up vs adjacent boards, so took it up - turns out the board was wrongly cut so the pipes didn't match with the routing in the top boards. Whoever screwed it down must have known - but why give a shit when you are being paid to work on someone else's house eh. Don't have a router or a spare board, so chiselled out a new groove to put it right.

Yes OK thanks. However what bugs me most is that you can clearly see the pattern in the surface colour in the first two photos from the floor mats and their joins. You would think this would be due to greater drying out where the mat joins were. Therefore removing the mats would see these areas gradually dry to the same colour. The surface of the floor has been at 24-25C for periods because that has been the ambient temperature, and the doors have been opened to create air flow over the surface. In fact when sunlight somes through the rooflights or bifolds the sunlit floor surface temp gets up to 30/31C. What the temperature is lower down in the slab I have no way of knowing. What I don't want is to turn the u/floor heating on at 45C when winter comes, producing a floor surface temp of 26C, but driving moisture out of the floor leveller causing cracking and ruining an LVT floor. That could be £10k and more down the drain and a ruined room.

Have tweaked up the mixer a little, but if using my heat gun on the pipes at the manifold is anything to go by I seem to have an input flow at around 25C and a return flow at around 24C. The actual surface temperature of the floor is around 23C (though did open the door for a bit earlier). So I guess not much appears to be happening because that is all close to the same temperature - very gentle heating if anything at all. Meanwhile there is no visible change at the surface. I have some marks/surface colour differences where I had mats down on top of the floor during the kitchen install. Lighter colour at the joins where presumably some moisture could escape between the mats. See photos... Should I actually be expecting the whole floor to turn to the same colour ? It has had pronounced colour variations by pour since it was levelled.

Hmm. I have been doing something similar to what you suggest @Nickfromwales I suspect that as the surface is around 22C, then it might well be that heating the slab to 22C (though it may not be getting to that) has no effect whatsoever on the levelling compound on top. Essentially the heating below is no different from the heating the levelling compound is receving from the environment above it. I shall gradually increase the flow temperature over the coming days.

Ah. No heat pump, gas boiler. There is a mixer valve on the manifold. I am not actually sure how accurate those things are but in the winter we had it set at 45C, albeit we still had no insulation around the bifolds. Boiler output is at 60C to rads. Floor temperature got up to 26C then. I guess Min on the valve is perhaps equivalent to off ? i.e. cold water feed temperature ? Tweaked it up a fraction, heat gun has pipes at 22C. The concrete slab itself is well dried out, been heated through two winters.

So my last lot of floor levelling compound was put down 27 days ago and has been left to go off and dry naturally in that time. All be it chunks of the floor have had floor mats and kitchen parts all over them for a couple of weeks of that. Kitchen now sitting on legs awaiting parts. Floor makeup - 120mm concrete slab with heating pipes around midpoint, approx 25mm to 5mm of levelling compound on top in 2 coats, top coat between 15mm and 3mm. Time to run some heat through the slab, but it is June. Unheated the surface of the levelling compound is around 24 today anyway - using my heat gun. (Presumably temp is lower deeper within the slab ?) I have turned down the flow temp to Min - probably about 25C ? ? - and just turned on the underfloor heating. Advice please on how long to run it and how to increment the water temperature over the days to come ? (LVT to be laid in 26 days time)

BC have shown no interest in my Cat6. I'm expecting to give them an electrical certification from my sparky when all is done- I can't see them second guessing that really. As far as I am aware there is no network certification required for domestic networks. Low voltage cables like Cat6, speaker cable, HDMI etc not supposed to share ducting with high voltage. There are some nice semi-autistic videos of tidy cabling into patch panels and racks on youtube.

Are you aware that you can look at resources like the British Gypsum 'white book' to see a variety of stud wall constructions and their expected sound performance, thickness etc... https://www.british-gypsum.com/specification/white-book-specification-selector/white-book-overview For our extension/refurb we have used Habito on some timber stud walls with 100mm acoustic rockwool infill - and don't forget to soundproof apertures like electrical sockets with acoustic putty pads. You might want to vary choice of construction somewhat depending on the requirements for the rooms in question and other factors. For example we have a wall with a pocket door where we wanted the wall to have decent sound resistance at the pocket and so have it double boarded with Habito then skimmed. Walls for a TV/music room potentially different requirement from other rooms etc. Consider dealing with noise sources at source - e.g. insulated soil pipe or acoustic wraps. For timber stud make sure to get good straight timber. Very best acoustic performance is normally from constructions where the two sides of the wall structure are isolated from each other - staggered stud construction, resilient bar etc. We wanted to also maximise room size on an existing footprint which took us away from staggered stud. We had a small area needing thermal insulation at minimal thickness and used an aerogel MgO board from Proctor - aerogel with a few mm MgO. It does tend to crack if you drill into it.

Are we all supposed to have emergency ladders stashed in every bedroom ? In theory a fit person in their twenties might be able to climb out at first floor level, hang down from the window ledge with their hands, and drop 6 feet onto concrete without killing themselves. However I don't fancy my chances of making such a move at an advancing age. It'll be shouting ''help'' out of the window until the elderly neighbour arrives with a step ladder and a barbeque knife.