Radian

The boiler microcontroller appears to be fubar. Not getting past its boot-up and into the state where it can even report its own demise. Wondering if perhaps Thames Water also temporarily cut the local electricity supply either deliberately or accidentally. Power being applied to an SMPS is often the point at which it fails.

I just bought some Integral Warmtone LEDs from Toolstation to try - very impressed so far. When you examine them closely, they have an 1800K LED surrounded by 2700K LEDs and crossfade between the two depending on dimmer setting. The effect looks, as advertised, just like dimming a Halogen. I tried them because I have some old-school phase angle dimmers with IR remote control in a bedroom and normal 'dimmable' LEDs are a bit hit & miss with them. Not all 'dimmable' LEDs really deserve to be called so. It occurred to me however that these Warmtones must have been carefully designed to ride the AC phase angle and drive the appropriate colour LEDs accordingly. This they do very well. Other 'dimmable' LEDs I've had sometimes don't dim all the way down smoothly but suddenly cut off at some point.

If, however, the Architect refuses to acknowledge an issue or take responsibility then the client can be left with an unbuildable design. Contractors are left in need of revised plans which are part workable and part not. The part that's not may fairly easily be revised through 3rd party assistance (in our case the helpful designer of "attic trusses to be designed by others") but the lack of a common electronic reference makes this process laborious. I expect you'll point to the official arbitration processes designed to remedy such disputes but in reality, when a project is on hold and your builder has wandered off to other jobs, the most expedient solution is to cut your losses and do the best you can with the little you've got that's useful and that you've paid for. You can probably tell I'm still smarting.

Maybe but there will always be a certain volume of water vapour in the air above the plasterboard, vapour pressure differentials will see to that. But by the very definition of a warm roof, the area from ceiling up is unventilated so the timescales for vapour equalisation will be greatly extended and therefore out of phase with outside temperatures and RH levels. I fear there's nowhere you could place a vapour barrier in this kind of build-up other than on top of the insulation - except that that would just promote condensation directly below and collect on the deck supporting the insulation. Hopefully the insulation is tightly fitted together such that very little air exists at the cold side such that the quantities of vapour are small. This circles me back to why a largish void under the firrings sounds like a bad idea.

I agree. In a way these energy price rises feel bigger to me than the oil crisis in '73. It couldn't get much worse - other than if the gas and electric actually stopped flowing as well.

I read that in my feed too. Reminds me of my concerns about Aldi's special on vapour barrier insulation: Similar issue but at least the foil can easily be removed if it does cause a problem. I can't get my head around how any timber structure can be wrapped in a non-breathable covering - unless it can be guaranteed to form a continuous vapour barrier around it - but is even that safe? ?

Feel for you. Always happens on a weekend.? From what I've seen online tonight and from experience it's probably the switch-mode supply on the main PCB. These are often the weakest part - specifically the large 400VDC reservoir capacitor which often have a rated lifetime of as little as 2000 Hours. In practice this is a de-rating that continues over its lifetime so some margin is designed in to keep the thing going over its warranty period. But past that, the power supply becomes too erratic and odd faults like this crop up. The controller isn't even managing to boot the firmware that would identify and display a fault code. I've re-capped a few of these kinds of controllers before and there's a healthy market in refurbished ones like this as the fix can be done for as little as a couple of quid.

So what was on the display when you first noticed it wasn't working? Was it showing the "Loading" message?

Had you switched it off when the water went off? I mean - was it working, you switched it off, then the next time you switched it back on it wouldn't start up?

Maybe but what a coincidence! Just can't think of anything relating to water supply loss that could cause any kind of problem with a system boiler.

Vaillant eco tec plus 837 continuously 'loading'... I seriously Doubt that.

If I'm understanding this correctly it means they've created an unventilated void, defined by the firrings, between the top of the cold side of the insulation and the underside of the upper deck. Generally we would not want significant volumes of air able to accumulate water vapour with nowhere to go except for those occasions when temperatures fall below the dew point.

For me, as a client and given my personal experience: To keep an eye on what the builder is (trying, possibly with difficulty) to do and stepping in to help out.

Phew, I dodged a bullet without knowing it then! I did try to run a perforated pipe out from just below the top of our extensions footing trench to the rainwater drain but didn't have enough fall so took it off from directly on top of the concrete foundation instead. Glad you mentioned this.

That seems to be true. All the usual component suppliers websites I use are turning into wastelands. I wonder how much duff kit will come off production lines '21-'22 as manufacturers swap out parts for poorly considered alternatives. I know there's a growing pressure behind this.

Cool. Looking forward to some piccies ? Now get a bullet camera and poke that into the cavity for a more detailed examination ?

If you're that worried about compliance, why not just build up the ground into a steep slope at the end of the deck? You can't be blamed if the ground suddenly rose to a plateau that you subsequently decked!

This is very true and something always at the forefront of my mind (having already had a close call with the latter, and the ever present potential of the former ?) Fortunately much of the important stuff I'm talking about is plug 'n' play so can easily be swapped out for 'dumb' alternatives. Even my home-brew motorised CH valves are mounted on standard valve bodies that replacement actuators can be bolted to. The very fancy stuff tends to be more frivoulous (cameras, doorbells, WiFi Tea Machines...) so no great loss should it come to the worst. But the gains are potentially enormous. When TCP Connected LED bulbs had their service cut off overnight thousands of 10W lamps eventually got dumped into various markets at a time when 10W LED lamps cost £20 or so. I picked some up for pennies and hacked them into my own system. Got over 30 now. Contrast my delight with the sorrow of those that got ripped-off by TCP (who still have the nerve to market stuff to this day).

You're absolutely right, but I think phone thing is more about the faff of having to pull up the right app to do something trivial like turn on a light. Voice control is another story though. Ambient Computing has a great deal to offer but your second point about the reliability of the service provider is still valid here. This is where I wish more people here (noted that some already do) would transfer their skills in housebuilding into learning to code inexpensive microcontrollers that can be made to do whatever they want. It's nowhere near as complicated as people might imagine (with plenty of online instruction available(. As an example, just about every single 'smart' product made in China is based on a common WiFi enabled microcontroller (ESP8266) and a collective of hobbyists have developed an alternative firmware that can be applied to gain fully independent control over the entire range of smart products. This releases them from any external dependencies - including having working internet access. The same kind of process applies to more expensive services like those offered for smart doorbells and security cameras. Not only do these tie you to the manufacturers whims regarding the service but they also come with monthly subscription fees for certain 'premium' facilities. For this kind of thing we can turn to Raspberry Pi Single Board Computers and the wealth of free software available to create identical functionality, under our complete control, for very little money.

dMVHR is what I would be going for unless you plan to do major refurb - run ducting between floor levels, air seal all rooms etc. Regarding the room with damp at the top of the ceiling, it may be that the cavity fill has settled a bit there. Is the top of the cavity exposed to the loft such as you could get an inspection camera in to find out? You can pick up an Inspection Camera for peanuts and it would help in numerous investigations. If you fancy a thermal camera and have the money for it, then yes they're great. I've had loads of use out of mine but I do use it for electronics development.

I would say that, with the right API's, being able to defer the energy usage of these kinds of appliances in conjunction with dynamic energy pricing can be useful. Edit: Dudda just got in before me on this ?

I don't wish to alarm but as soon as I see cavity wall insulation I get an uneasy feeling. What do you know about the type of fill you have and whether there are any known issues with it? And which walls have the mould - the party wall, just the outside walls, or what?

10 Tado's is going to give you loads of info ? I waste spend ages going over my daily logs from the little Chinese thermo/hygros. One of the more useful plots I have produced is the continuous display of dew-point which is a handy heads-up for potential condensation issues: First sunny day in a while and it got quite toasty mid morning. No particular condensation risk throughout day or night. But I keep an eye on things in this room as it has three totally glass walls made from sliding patio doors in aluminium frames. They have thermal breaks but the very bottom edges have developed condensation when below zero outside, except for when we have the UFH on. With the dewpoint plot I know when to put it on - next step is to automate this with node-red so I don't have to do a thing.

Hi Foggy, there's loads of really knowledgeable people on these forums. I think some are professional builders but most are DIY'ers that have gained lots of skills and understanding through experience. Good luck with your project!

Any tips on how to find one of those?