Russdl

Rest easy. I suspect the ‘platinum installers’ were cowboys with shinier hats.

Mighty frustrating. High spec windows fitted by low interest installers. We had numerous issues with our supplier/fitter. I’d throughly recommend the windows but never recommended the company that supplied and fitted. I suspect the issues you’ve highlighted are all DIY fixable. My main concern would be that what looks like transit packers left behind may mean that the window/s aren’t closing properly. I’ll have a look through my stuff when I get home if @craig doesn’t leap in first with some knowledgeable fixes.

We have similar windows, may be the same, with the internal blind. 1. Those plastic bits look like transit protection, at least we certainly don’t have them, so I would have thought they should all have been removed. 2. It must be possible to adjust the blinds but I don’t know how and never had to, the instructions should give a clue. 3. The water, that’s got to be wrong as well, at least we’ve never had that. You need to go back to the supplier/installer and raise all these points for rectification, I’ve no doubt you paid good money for them and the sales of goods act says they should be free from minor defect. It doesn’t look like they are. Best check everything else while you’re at it, I suspect you have already.

@Strawberry here’s a couple of pictures.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Not everyone beholds the beauty we see hence we call it Marmite House.

@Strawberry still not made it home yet but I’ve found one of my drawings detailing the cladding/render join and the zinc drip. It obviously doesn’t have to be zinc, or metal. Just anything to stop the water going directly from cladding to render. It’s not that clear but our zinc drip is a stretched out ‘Z’ shape. It may be possible for you to do something similar to the drawing below and slide something up behind your cladding so that it can be firmly fixed in place and then project out over the render.

Yeah, I reckon pretty much anything would do provided it kept the drips that will be running down the cladding off the render.

@Strawberry I’m away from home at the moment and I don’t have any photos with me. I’ll post some when I get home tomorrow. Ours are zinc made on site by the bloke who did the rest of the zinc work on site but if you’ve got a metal fabricator nearby they’ll be able to make whatever you want (probably out of aluminium) and powder coat it to whatever colour you want.

That sounds like a load of tosh. No one would render anything if wind blown rain stained it. We have Wood Plastic Composite cladding above our render. The WPC doesn’t leach tannins to the same extent that natural wood does but I’m sure it would stain the render if it weren’t for the zinc drip we have between the two. (I’ll try and find a photo). If it were me I’d get a drip between the timber and the render, restore the stained render and then sit back and relax.

That’s bad news. It needs a proper drip flashing to stop what’s happening in the pictures above, which I guess you don’t have. I suspect one could be retrofitted, but at a cost. Can you go back to whoever installed it all in the first place and get them to rectify it and then fix the render? Is the work guaranteed? Got a photo?

Interesting. @RedRhino hopefully your thread bump will generate feedback from the previous posters on how their strategy has worked over the years. We’re inching towards completion of a 55m2 detached garage/workshop which has no ventilation in the plans, building control made no comment. I was going to use dMEV but decided to see how we get on first.

That is nuts! 30p/day difference between the highest and lowest standing charge. It baffles me how those figures are calculated.

Not answering your question @Adsibob but it’s the standing charge that perplexes me. Apparently set by OFGEM? If so, why are there such large variations? We’re electric only and our standing charge is 61.27p/day - why not 61p or 62p? Are the decimals there to make it look scientific? And then you look at Adsibob’s quote and the standing charge for electricity is 47.85p/day, around to thirds of ours - thats not fair! (Wait, I’ve not finished.) But then you look at the standing charge for gas and his quote is 28.95p/day for that, total daily standing charge of 76.8p/day! That’s not fair - to Adsibob. I believe the standing charge has been ramped up to fill the hole in the Government/Energy Suppliers coffers caused by recent events but why is there such a variation? Is it to keep us all permanently perplexed? Certainly working for me.

I was a looking forward to importing nothing in May but we’re off to a bad start just under 25kWh already, the sun has bid farewell for a few days.

It’s ace isn’t it. We imported just under 27kWh in April the solar and battery combo sorted the rest. It seems like a good chunk of that import was the constant too-fro of energy between the grid and the battery.

@markharro you can get all manner of pedestals and as far as I’m aware you can put anything on them, our porcelain tiles are very heavy - no issue. Some have articulated tops to allow fall/make up for an uneven sub base - overkill I think. I used the cheaper ones and sand to level the base. Word of warning though, they’re not cheap, but if you’re DIYing then they will save a fortune over employing someone else to f*ck up your patio. If you go down this route let me know and I’ll provide all the hints and tips that I have/remember. Not sure what you’re asking there but we had compacted type1 which was all over the place, I got it vaguely level and then let the height adjustable pedestals do the rest, bit of sand underneath the base for final levelling (with a tiny fall) and jobs a good ‘un. Google ‘patio pedestal system’ or some such thing and you be inundated with results.

They do. And it can be really crappy underneath, I’ll find a photo. We’ve got 20mm porcelain tile, still looks like new after 2+ years our previous experience with stone is the new look didn’t last long and the grouting loved to make a little space for a weed or three.

Not necessarily ’really low down’ just underneath the door drip which would be below your blue bricks. I’ll try and dig out some photos. Either way, you’re going to have to dig down and then your original drain will work, apart from: Where are they then? Above the blue bricks?? Deep underground? Picture. That’s a premium over an Aco, no doubt but whilst it’s no real help I (and probably others on here) have made some expensive purchases that weren't absolutely necessary and have kicked ourselves afterwards.

For you to do what we did would take a bit of digging out of that hard core but I reckon it could work, even with a normal patio construction. Is there a drain under there somewhere? Clearly that: should be connected to a drain.

I don’t see the blue bricks. I wonder if you can do it the same way we did. I set an Aco drain below the door drip and then used pedestals for the patio. All the water off the door goes into the Aco and the patio goes right up to the door. All the water on the patio falls down the gaps in the tiles, thanks to the pedestals.

I guess you’ve got rid of your car then?

Here’s my ‘Breakdown of property’s energy performance’ so @oranjeboom can compare. Clearly the Willis heater/Sunamp combo did us no favours but we obviously did ok on their score sheet all the same.

Actually, that was a typo, we got an A104 not A103. I was surprised considering the Willis heater Sunamp combo and despite not holding these ratings in particularly high regard I couldn’t resist a brief moment of smug self satisfaction. Indeed.

You can lead a horse to water…