Thorfun

+1 for sand. 'tis what we did in our basement before insulation and screed. was actually recommended by the screed company to 'level' the dips.

got another noddy question. putting together my hep2o brass manifolds and I notice that there's a rubber grommet on the male end. does that mean I don't need any form of tape and do I tighten until the rubber grommet is fully squished? my first attempt I've used some loctite 55 on the male thread and screwed in to the female end and then tightened the nut which has squished the rubber ring as shown below here's the rubber ring at the end of the one I attached waiting for the next manifold to go on.

Ps. We used a 120mm profile for the Siberian larch. The charred was 150mm though.

I paid about £6.5k labour iirc. We bought 4130lm of a mix of charred larch and standard Siberian larch so that’s about £1.57/lm I think! hope that helps. Although I think our chippie has put his daily rate up a bit since he finished our job so might’ve cost us a bit more if we were doing it now.

how well does that work with UFH?

I guess that's a benefit of having a 10.5kWp array! even at this time of year with the storm we had today we generated 16.54kWh. 🙂 also helps that we haven't finished the house yet so pretty much all we generate goes in to the car or battery before exporting. I'm sure once we're in the car won't get as much love.

Hi @NSS. Glad the Zappi is working out well for you. I've recently purchased an EV charger having used a 3-pin plug for the last 3 years! I wanted something that worked with my solar PV and batteries and, obviously, the Zappi was near the top of the list. But.... ...I decided to go with a Hypervolt charger in the end. not as intelligent as the Zappi for solar/battery but it was quite a bit cheaper! since having it installed by my sparky I have mostly used it to charge from solar PV in what Hypervolt (HV) call their super-eco mode in which is requires a minimum of 1.4kW being produced to charge. I have noticed that in this mode it will also sometimes discharge from the battery to charge. I think the logic is that if the house is exporting to the grid then the HV will ramp up the charge to the car. I guess then that if the solar PV generation drops maybe the battery kicks in to cover the shortfall quicker than the HV reduces the charge rate. I'm not really sure but it seems to work! The reporting side of things is poor in comparison to the Zappi but from my battery usage data I can see that it's working. when you consider that there's hardly anything running in the house at the moment, just site lights mostly and so any consumption in the graph below is the car charging. you can see that the battery definitely discharges to help out with the charge and when the car doesn't need power (or there isn't enough power being generated) the car stops charging and the generated electricity goes back in to the batteries. what this basically means is that for the last month since I installed the HV I have been running the EV for free. 🙂 According to the HV app the amount of energy it has put in to the car during October would've cost me £133.06. I think that's a pretty darn good saving in a month.

Thanks. Always good to know why! Means we can go in with eyes open. 👍

Iirc the windows were 60mm back from the outside of the TF.

What is actually the pro with Topps Tiles? Do they make their own tiles and they’re rubbish? Do they sell other manufacturer’s tiles and they’re rubbish? Is if the service? The cost? Is it just a bad experience on your side or do others feel the same?

you'll be lucky to find a new supplier full stop. when I was looking for a new smart meter (3-phase or single phase) I was told by most suppliers that they weren't taking on new customers due to the current market conditions. but if you do find someone offering 3-phase meters please let me know as I could do with one. 🙂

they are very nice. I will also be interested in the response. 🙂

I have a display on my Luxpower so if I can't access the web based monitoring I can simply look at the front of the inverter.

I was told by our window company to ensure the roof was finished before the windows were installed to ensure the roof was fully loaded. So I did that. Our timber cladding came much later. I don’t know with bricks though.

I bought these for our basement. https://www.mad4tools.com/defender-22m-led-fully-enclosed-festoon-lighting-kit-110v-or-240v?utm_source=google_shopping?gclid=Cj0KCQjwnvOaBhDTARIsAJf8eVOhbSluYCTlFdjjIMnGf9-RCw1YLHm0Yv2h08-NFgu9sDS_koMsbnIaAiKeEALw_wcB but also got these for moving around the house depending on where we’re working. https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-led-mains-portable-work-light-with-tripod-2-x-20w-2-x-2000lm-220-240v/247kf run off extension leads.

so, who would've thought that the toilet choice gets even more complicated! looking at Bernstein toilets as per @Onoff's recommendation and they've some specified as 'washdown' toilets. (https://bernstein-badshop.com/toilets/wall-mounted-wc/a-34070). so a quick google later I now know the difference between syphonic and washdown toilets. sounds like washdown is better and I'm now concerned that if a toilet doesn't specifically state it's flushing mechanism that I might end up with a syphonic WC. e.g. this toilet doesn't state washdown https://bernstein-badshop.com/toilets-00000000000000000000000000000691/wall-mounted-wc/a-13972 am I being paranoid? I did read that most European toilets are washdown and the US use syphonic. so maybe every loo I can buy in Europe is washdown anyway and so nothing to worry about!

Wunda default to serpentine but I asked for spiral and they did that instead no questions asked.

Graf one2clean for me. installed but not used yet. we have sandstone about 2.5m down so I didn't want to go for one of the conical ones and the one2clean gets good reviews and is slightly shallower dig. external pump unit for blowing bubbles in to the brown stuff as well. there's lots of threads on here about this subject. what I found from my research was that everyone seems to recommend blower units rather than disc based units and everyone seems to have different brands and everyone is happy with them. so, I would suggest that the pretty much all do the same thing. just find one that ticks your costs/requirements/environmental discharge and then see if anyone on here has one installed and ask what they think of it if that's not already been asked!

ha ha.....I bought mine from Screwfix so can easily pop down to replenish if I run out.

yep. Wunda for us. and bought the stapler but I'm sure I can sell it on once we're done with it so total cost won't be too much. you 'can' push the staples in by hand but life's too short to do something like that!

Wow. That is steep!

we also had no experience and did our basement UFH ourselves. the wife was stapling behind as I lay the pipe down. it was actually quite enjoyable. I can't really say how long it took as we were doing the odd hour here and there but it all seemed to be ok and there were no leaks when I connected them all up to the manifold. I go in to more detail about ours here

this would be my solution as well although it's easy to spend other people's money. you've also admitted that you're worried about delivery drivers/visitors slipping on the slope in the winter/ice so just get it fixed now for good and then you'll have a happy wife who's not dreading leaving the house when winter comes and you'll not be worried about a health and safety claim against you by an Amazon delivery driver (other on-line shopping websites are available). to me it's a no brainer. but that's just me.

been there, done that, got the T-shirt (and by T-shirt I mean STP)

rimless wall hung is what we're after. but the options are countless! even from the same manufacturer it seems they each have a plethora of options within the same range. 🤯