Thorfun

got a last minute question! the groundworkers are pouring our patio slab tomorrow and we have a drain/gulley from the flat roof above that will eventually have a rain-chain on it going in to a plant pot that will sit on top of the drain. they're saying that they've set the level of the drain cover to be about 5mm below the concrete slab which means it'll be about 30mm recessed from the top of the porcelain tiles. I'm thinking it should be flush with the patio tiles. what does the forum say?

Got the perfect solution for you @Pocster

and don't forget acoustic sealant to fill all the small gaps!

I think it’s 12kW

Just standard 2”x2” for us (ends up about 45mm/47mm). No angling at all, figured that as the cladding was tongue and groove very little (if any) water would get behind.

We used these https://www.impeyshowers.com/Wetroom-floor-formers/Aqua-Dec-EasyFit-Wetroom-Floor-Former/ made things easier to fit!

With a ducted system there is minimal drafts that we can feel. but I agree with the wall units. Careful placement is required so you’re not sitting in the draft. one regret I have is not having the money for ducted system downstairs and having to have wall units instead. But something had to give as money runs out quickly!

Extra installation costs for sure but when running it’s very efficient when just maintaining a room temperature

ultimately it depends on how much dampening you want and how much money you want to throw at it! we used Rockwool throughout and standard 12.5mm plasterboard on both sides of internal walls. we do get sound transfer but then again, it's a house and not a museum so we don't mind a bit of transfer. besides, more often than not doors are left open so no amount of sound insulation is going to fix that! 🤣 i'd suggest RWA45 personally. nicer to work with than the Isover stuff afaik and it stays in place between the studs well. we put 50mm in the walls and 100mm in the ceilings

Mitsubishi AC unit. i got a local company in to design and install it to the budget we had. as the budget wasn't limitless we had to compromise and have one ducted unit cooling both kids bedrooms which is a bit of a pain if one kid wants their room cooler than the other. but such is life.

this all equals faff! it's why i ditched the idea and just went separate AC.

there's only one solution......air conditioning. 😉

our house is cool but that's because we have the AC on! 🤣 we knew we'd want AC for the bedrooms as even with external shading things just warm up quickly and so the AC keeps us at our desired set temperature. we didn't put heating upstairs apart from electric towel radiators and ufh in the bathrooms safe in the knowledge that if we ever did need supplementary heating upstairs then the AC would do that.

i previously bought a 2.6T Kubota used it for a while to dig a driveway and some trenches and move blocks/tonne bags etc around site. i sold half of it to a friend and then eventually sold him all of it for pretty much what i paid for it. now the house is nearly complete i do need a smaller digger to help with landscaping and moving heavy things around (i'm a wimp) and so i'm looking at a 1.7T machine for around £10k inc VAT. i figure that will see me for the next 5 - 10 years and with the amount of use it will get probably won't devalue too much. in the last couple of months i've hired 2 x diggers (one 2.5T and one 1.5T) and have spent over £600 for 2 x full week hire (i didn't need it for a full week but a day's hire is stupidly expensive). i had to plan when i wanted to do the work and wait for it to be delivered etc. i feel like i've thrown that money away and i could've put it towards the purchase of a digger. having a machine on site means i can pop out whenever i feel the need to do some work. for me that's priceless as i'm a lazy ******* and am not organised at all! 🤣

Yeah. Our basement is always nice and cool too.

@Rob99 is a Loxone installer and might be able to help if @Dan F doesn’t know the answer. but also the Loxone documentation on their website normally has all the connection information you need

Exactly what we do. I also tried to find a flaw in it but couldn’t but my maths is not great! 😂

Getting paid for export on Octopus also means you don’t have to care what the forecast is for the day as you get paid more for export than on the cheap rate. So we just charge the batteries every cheap period on Cosy and if we export during that time then we’re still getting paid.

Once again @Pocster you lose 😝

Agreed. But it did help with the water calculations. 🤣

ok. neither bag that I elastic banded to each AAV inflated so I think they're ok. think I found the source of the smell coming in though. we have a header tank in the loft for our RWH to flush the toilets with (we don't use it anymore as it was making the cisterns brown and scummy and we had a pressure issue at one of the toilets) and the header tank has an overflow that goes in to the soil pipe just below the AAV. I didn't put a trap between the overflow and the soil pipe so smells can easily come back up and in to the loft that way. so I've stuffed a plastic bag in there for now and will see if that makes it smell less. I really want to decommission the header tank and just use the RWH for the garden but it's so ingrained in the toilet plumbing system that removing it is a real faff! I think I'll just drain the header tank fully and plug up the overflow for now. it does still smell in the master bedroom though so maybe the dry-traps in there aren't doing their job properly. I guess I need to fix the source and stop the STP from being smelly. I'm hoping that leaving it for a few days for things to start working properly again will help. otherwise I guess I'll just get it de-sludged and start again.

is there a way to test an AAV? or, for the £60 it'll cost to replace them, shall I just replace them anyway?

STP has never been de-sludged yet but it's only been in use just over a year really. I'll check the traps but we use every sink/shower/toilet/basin regularly. the only anomaly is in the master en-suite we have 3 x dry-traps as space-savers. good idea about the bag of the AAVs and I'll give it a go but I'm now actually wondering if the smell somehow got in to the loft and as it's airtight has nowhere to go so is just lingering! no idea how it would've got in there though if one of the AAVs hasn't failed though.

need some help. our compressor pump on our one2clean failed a couple of weeks ago and it's taken this long for them to send a replacement pump (next time I'll just buy my own as a spare rather than wait for a warranty replacement!) so the STP hasn't been aerated for quite a while. I fitted the new pump yesterday and things are moving again in the STP but there's an awful smell in the house. our loft space is split in to two halves, we have a soil vent pipe above the master bedroom on one side of the house and then on the other side above the kids rooms each stack for their bathrooms has an AAV. it smells really bad in the loft above the kids' bedrooms. I'm wondering if there's been some kind of pressure build up and the AAVs have failed? is that a thing? obviously it's late on a Sunday so nothing is open to get replacements. if I can find a blanking cap for the soil pipes to block them off in the loft and remove the AAVs until I can buy new ones is that a bad thing? or do I just need to live with the stink until I can get to Screwfix tomorrow to replace the AAVs? any other ideas to help? if I lift the lid on a couple of the manholes leading to the STP then there's a bit of a whiff as well. I'm wondering if I need to get the tank de-sludged asap as maybe no aeration for a couple of weeks has screwed up the cycles in the tank and anything new deposited in the last couple of weeks won't now break down. I know there are lots of STP owners here so if anyone can give any advice then I'll gratefully listen! tagging @Nickfromwales as he knows everything. 😉

for completeness it was supply only. We fitted all our balustrades ourselves.