Russdl

At the very real and obvious intention of drifting this thread, please accept my apologies. Mods, deal with me as you see fit. The best thing the Austrians ever did (apart from kitchen hardware obviously, oh, and the Jaguar Ipace) was to convince the world the Hitler was German and Mozart was Austrian? ?

@joe90 That was my concern and as I live under a rock I’d never heard of those thread sealing gloops, looks like that is the way ahead.

So no votes for PTFE then. I've got loads of the stuff but none of this newfangled thread seal, off to Screwfix I go.

That’s a new one in me, Google it is. Ta ?

A shower head fixing question if I may. How do I fix my shower arm into the wall so that a. It never leaks. AND b. It ends up pointing in the right direction, namely down, when I’ve finished. PTFE and then more PTFE?

@ProDave God what a nightmare. We have thin coat render in places but used a different system so I can't offer any insight to what may have happened to yours. I hope you get a speedy and satisfactory resolution.

As @Vijay says, bioethanol fires, that's the way we're going. Real flickering flames, no chimney or dedicated air supply required, low heat output, easily switch on and offable, no ash and when things get tough you could probably drink the fuel.

Yep, did that (photo about 6 posts up there ⬆️ ) Thats the sort of numbers I was looking for, thanks @Carrerahill ? And those letters/numbers, thanks @PeterW

And he ain’t doing that! So warm white and that’s it? No other numbers and letters I need to know or any other specifics for LED’s on the floor behind a bath?

Two questions. We got the profile from the company in the link that @PeterW posted. Should it just be set in a bed of mastic, or is this another job for CT1? Biggest question is what LED strip do I get to fit in? It will be completely hidden by the bath, shining up a wall tiled in those marble effect tiles in the picture. I don’t really know where to start warm, cool etc etc. Any pointers?

@Conor Ah! I recall messing around with that years ago before I got hooked on Sketchup. Seems to have come on in leaps and bounds since I last saw it.

@Conor it looks like that second iteration would work better, easier to get to stuff. Probably wouldn’t need such a large doorway either. (Mildly jealous of the software you’re using. What is it?)

@Conor can’t quite work out where your MVHR Intake and Exhaust, Supply and Extract ducts would go. What’s above the MVHR unit if it were in that position? A landing? Would all the required plumbing for the 300lt cylinder fit under the stair treads?

I think it depends on the local authority but our self build would definitely have attracted CIL if the CIL exemption paperwork hadn’t been submitted. Hopefully you’re all sorted and don’t need to submit any forms but it may be worth checking because in our case if the forms weren’t submitted before commencement then there would have been no exemption. And still more forms to go for us when we complete. A failure to jump through any of these hoops at the correct stage will result in a big bill coming our way.

@Adsibob Vivien won’t be around to answer (it’s a long story). I’m pretty sure she had an Ecocent Air MVHR. These units have an integrated heat pump so can provide an element of heating and cooling. I was interested in them at one point and speaking to the designer he did say they can be a bit noisy especially when the heat pump is operating and he suggested that the best way to isolate the unit was to place it on sandwich of aluminium sheet and that rubber stuff you find in kids playgrounds, repeat as necessary until the problem has gone. I passed that on to Vivien but no idea if she did that or not, perhaps I’ll give her a call to find out.

@Weebles and there was me thinking it was just Map No.159! ?

@Weebles Sounds like great idea, 20mm MDF may be a bit over the top though, I would have thought 12mm MDF plus your 6mm oak would be more than adequate. Love the wallpaper.

I tried various, ended up back with SketchUp. Can't beat it imho.

@GraemeHM Our main roof is warm, giving us fully useable and open loft space. The single storey element in the image I posted was made warm roof mainly because it was easy to do with MBC. The drawing I attached was for Tata Steel which we didn't use in the end. Our zinc detail is much like that posted by @Russell griffiths with a similar sized upstand. The VMZinc mage you attached is how our roofs are built up and clad. Zero problems so far.

We have a zinc clad 5° warm roof for comparrison.

@Adsibob, it sounds like you’ve got your hands pretty full dealing with COVID, the house and suppliers, rant away. We were pretty anal about it and it took a good weekend, plus a couple of evenings to check what had already been done by the Timberframe company and fill in the bits they’d missed because we felt getting as airtight as possible was fundamental to what we were trying to achieve, which is also bound to be easier on a new build. Life can be too short sometimes and I understand your frustrations so perhaps concentrate on the biggies, windows and doors could provided lots of air leaks if not installed correctly and it would seem that they frequently aren’t.

@Adsibob is the airtightness something you can do you self? It’s very labour intensive, so it would be expensive to get your builder to do it for you, plus if they don’t pay a lot of attention to what they are doing it probably won’t be thoroughly effective. @Jeremy Harris made his own air test rig out of a car radiator fan iirc, with something like that you could find where the air leaks are and set about sealing them.

@AdsibobI have no practical experience as ours isn't switched on yet, still waiting on electricity, however I would have thought there would be absolutely no issues mounting it in either of those eaves spaces regarding the duct run lengths and lack of centrality to the building. Whilst the bottom right option gives you an external wall to go through you say it is south facing and between two properties so potentially the intake air could get quite hot in the summer months. Your other option in the top right would mean you would have to go through the roof with your intake and exhaust. If you went for the top right option I should think you could mitigate any noise transference issues without too much difficulty.

@Trw144 that looks to be zinc for the large majority, there’s a recent threads on here about zinc, it’s not the cheapest. The timber cladding on the second image looks pretty standard but again I don’t suspect it will be cheap, especially regarding the labour of a good chippy.

I knew my sons hobby of breaking guitar strings would come in handy one day!