puntloos

thanks all, sigh, and this is only a small extension of an existing kerb drop..

My council wants to do an assessment visit to make sure I'm not doing something weird. Fair enough, but the actual work will be done within 12-14 weeks (!) and for 1m worth of kerb, 1500 GBP (!!) Can I just do it myself? Options?

The problem is the underfloor heating, we can't be 100% sure where the pipes are, and accidentally cutting them isn't great. We can certainly inquire if we can go somewhat deeper, a 1cm pipe, and a tiny bit of screed on top could work....

Maybe this could work - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stainless-Thickness-Industry-Experiments-Maintenance/dp/B0C42RP1BJ/ref=sr_1_54

Floor power socket was placed in the wrong place, but it'll be under the carpet anyway, so leading a small cable duct from that socket to where the cable needs to actually come out seems the easiest way forward.

Wondering if this exists: I'm debating cutting a 1x1cm groove into a tile, laying a cable in it, and then putting a "french drain cover" over it. Does this exist? Is it a good idea? Photo below, but in miniature.

Are you serious?🤨 - I could imagine this is actually true but I'm wondering if that really is the only solution? Plus, surely a plastic pipe works better because it doesn't carry the cold of the water as easily as the metal, but metal wrapped in insulation would then also work?

Our mains water is carried into the house by a sizeable metal pipe that comes out under our utility sink in garage, and then goes into the rest of the house (a lot of plumbing, eg softener, pressure, DHW is understair in the adjacent hallway) Previously, the plumbers left the metal pipes uninsulated and they dripped quite a bit of condensate into the utility sink cabinet. Today, they 'fixed it' by wrapping the big pipe in some insulation. Admittedly the dripping seems less, but I'm not quite sure if this is reasonable? Not a plumber if that wasn't clear, but I would've expected maybe a dedicated condensate drain approach. That said, I guess it might be hard to wrap the entire pipe run (until where? the pressure cyl?) in such a condensate drain system? How is this normally handled? Or is just insulating these pipes sufficient?

Getting back to this in a bit of a different slant - we would like to have a rug in our livingroom, but indeed the 'tog' struggle is real. Even more than with carpets, very few 'rug makers' mention it at all. A lot of websites claim that natural materials are lower tog, but I don't really see why this would be. It might be a worthwhile rule of thumb if people don't know, but in the end you probably want the real measurement rather than a handwave. Secondly, anyone have any experience with converting a carpet into a rug? Are there local tailors or carpet teams that are able to do this?

As you might be aware, most passivhaus internal doors leave a decent strip of air gap below them, for ventilation reasons. But my telescopic pocket door from eclisse is taking this to a bit of an extreme - when 'closed' there is a 20mm gap between the door planks (not even mentioning near the floor) Is there anything we can do here? Maybe some 'strip' system at the far front of door 1 and far back of door 2: Or will this not structurally improve things because there are too many other air gaps? Frankly I'm surprised these doors are designed in such an 'open' way..

@Dan F - pretty sure it's coming from the strip, not the driver (drivers are in another room) Drivers: http://www.ltechonline.com/html/en/Dimmable-LED-Driver/DALI-Series/Constant-Voltage-DALI-Dimmable-Driver/LM-240-24-G2D2.html Strip: https://www.darklightdesign.com/dld-lightflow-24v-10w-dim-to-warm-linear-led-tape/

So some, but not all of my dimmable (dali) white spectrum (warm-cool) led strips make a very annoying squealing noise when they hit a certain level of dimming. I actually used a phone spectrum analyser app to record it, and then turn it off and on top part is real frequency, you can see the marked peak, 3000-ish hz, probably not a coincidence that the dimmer is also using that frequency for PWM bottom part is the 'history' and you can see when I turn the lights off the line disappears, turn it on, there it is. Anyone run into this before and how can I handle this?

Maybe I shouldn't worry too much about the smaller slot size.. people tend to fold a4, maybe not a huge deal (plus how many a4 letters do I get per year..)

This seems like such an obvious thing, A4 letters are 21x29.7cm but most mailboxes might hold them but the slots are smaller, eg: Why can I not find mailboxes with a 21cm slot? Or is this actually not a problem in reality? bonus: I would love a mailbox with an anti-theft lip, that prevents people bending their fingers into the box and grabbing mail.

Well, that's certainly an option, but trying to figure out if it's needed.

A question about moving. My current house insurance is (to my read) only insuring my house contents while they are actually, well, in the house. (some exceptions like laptops noted). So - when moving from home A to home B, I wanted to know if typically insurances cover this, to what degree, or, if there are specific insurances I can add? 1- From a mover picking up a thing 2- Carrying it up to the house treshold 3- Into the van and on the road 4- Carrying it across the new house treshold 5- Putting it down Am I correct that if I buy insurance for my new home (and starting it sufficiently long before the move) then I would be insured for items 1,2,4,5? Or is "a random dude packing up the item and carrying it" usually excluded from insurance already? Any way for me to cover myself properly?

Nope, that's not how it works, at least not in my home. The inverter can provide AC of course but a full grid failure requires a deliberate switch at the main grid connection which is a auto EPS device. But what about my antique kettle collection? Or a 22kw 3 phase car charger. Not to mention that no consumer level inverter I've seen can deliver more than 5-10kw (mine does 7) out of their EPS port. End of the day, I think forcing a few dumber devices such as a kettle (ok I only have one), coffee machine, hob etc, off by default might make sense, but it does add a good layer of complexity, where as others have pointed out, most devices will not happily resume their 'powered work' if they get reconnected to power.

Hi all, question: Do you have any appliances (oven? dishwasher?) that will continue their job after a power cut is restored without any prompting? I think most devices will do nothing, or wait for a 'resume' command, but a washing machine might want to immediately(?) drain the water out? Of course a classic kettle, toaster, coffeemaker will immediately resume as long as the button is pressed down, but I think most modern devices won't spontaneously continue? Or am I wrong? Context: if my house switches to battery power, I don't want random things to unneccessarily drain my battery. Also, having too many power hungry devices on my battery might cause the battery to shut down.

For funzies: My 3D render Cool white light Warm white light

I'm one of those guys who doesn't do "colour names" - but yes what I call beige might be warm grey or etc. This might be the one: https://www.architonic.com/en/product/refin-sublime-beige/20729582 (on the purchase order it's called "sublime matt")

Correct. Fair enough, I guess that's one thing to add to the tile choice mishap, although the tiles in our master ensuite worked much nicer. I might take a few pictures with the various options but I basically have the full spectrum available between 2500 and 4000 I believe. I believe the tiles are there already but I'm not 100% sure. This is what we designed/hoped for: I don't quite recall why we picked different wall tiles from our master ensuite, since they are a good match, but as said before we were certainly aiming for the same effect.

The only problem is that we expected a white tile with some touches of grey veining. We received tiles with loud shouty veining. My first post shows the difference. To be clear, you could argue it was our fault - the original picture seems to be direct sunlight etc, where we have normal lighting. Either way the contrast is too eye-watering. Which bit do you believe is matt? Either way, yes, certainly might've been our poor choice. Ceiling lighting is variable, it can do warm and cold at a variety of dimming levels. I don't know if we did the experiment yet but I don't think the colour temp will help with the contrast. True. But well, it might be a bit 'garish' and most of our house is pretty toned down, tacit and we're aiming for elegant. As above, primarily, the contrast in the tile pattern is the main issue. To be fair it is mostly my wife's impression and value judgment, I do agree but personally I would've left it and see if we can get used to it. No floor has beige tiles.

Well, fair, it's always possible, it would just be a change from how they acted over the last year (where they had many chances to stiff me). Indeed. But I'd like to have a good solid list of points on this It seems most people have a problem with labour, 85GBP per m2 for 36m2 of wall tiles. Of course tiles can be expensive, so if this includes tiles that would make it reasonable-ish? Or are there any other yellow/red flags in this quote? Below I truly am not holding anything back, I don't have any list of suspicious stuff I am ignoring etc. I just don't know enough about pricing to identify if any of the particular items is outrageous, it's just that the total "doesn't add up" compared to typical rule of thumb prices. Halp? Indeed, this particular tiling surprised us. Interesting idea. Losing 2x9mm and a bit of adhesive might not be such a crazy idea. I wonder what types of joints/corners etc will look iffy with this solution.. Pics here - as far as I can tell they did a fine job (obv not 100% finished), just with noisy tiles.

That's a nice attention to detail. I do hear that aluminium isn't great in rain though. How long have you had these?

Yep, sorry I should've said more clearly it wasn't the exact pic Honestly there's not much more to this, the builders have been doing a great job overall, the tiles just didn't turn out like we wanted and we only noticed when the work was 99% done, nobody's fault really, just bad luck. I don't know if the builder has some unknown-to-me reason to suddenly start charging "full-or-more" prices for things, but clearly with this particular issue, while weird to have a 'random tiler drop into a building site' this is one that they know I can easily leave aside their quote and go to another bathroom guy. If they really wanted to put me in a corner surely they would pick some work that's harder to outsource. To be clear, this house and the standard we have been adhering to are pretty high even for Hertfordshire, so we can't compare "good builder in McKillikennock, Flaniganshire, Ireland" prices with this - hence me trying to piece it together what makes this price so high