Mulberry View

I've only just clicked on this, looks like a comprehensive tool, thank you. What steps do I need to complete for the UFH calcs?

Awesome! Anyone up for productively helping out with this for some beer tokens?! 🤣🍺 This guy is primarily a screeder by the way (and one that came highly recommended by someone I really trust), so I'm not holding it against him too much. I also think he'll be a good supplier for the kit, perhaps just not so much the design!

I'm sure he must just be talking about the bunch of pipes as it enters the living room. That's all that really changed between the earlier design. I wish I could jiggle with this myself, but I just can't get the software set up satisfactorily.

Here's a re-jig of the design. The supplier said the following - "I have opened the pipe spacing to 150mm in the Kitchen. This will be fine if you are going to run the Kitchen and Living Room as 1 zone. If the Living Room is to be zoned on its own thermostat then I would keep the pipes at 50mm. I have put just 1 manifold in the Kitchen. This will give you uncontrolled heat in the Study, where the pipes route to and from the manifold from other rooms. Also, the Shower Room is quite a long run to and from the manifold. The hall and Utility are now controlled on 1 thermostat.. might be good to keep them separate, so that you always have the option to control separately in the future if needed?" The Living Room is only separated from the Kitchen by a partition, so it's somewhat open plan. I'm not sure if the uncontrolled heat in the study is an issue? Also, I don't see the issue with the Hall and Utility being on 1 thermostat as an issue, there is now to be no door between them anyway. Any thoughts on this? @JohnMo?

That's what I'm saying, those values aren't reflective of what is there. Even based on the standard Nudura figures of 0.24 for their blocks (keep in mind these were ordered before the new regs came in). I don't understand the technicalities, but ICF houses seem to perform differently to their relatively poor quoted u-values. At least half of the building is going to be rendered and will receive a 30mm layer of EWI in the detailing. The Architect designed a 50mm battened service void on the inside, which I may do away with on the perimeter walls or replace with PIR, yet to be decided. That "design" is very preliminary, perhaps should be taken at this stage with a pinch of salt. The software I played with was Heatpunk, maybe I could try Loopcad.

I've had a preliminary ASHP quotation which included a heat loss analysis. Keep in mind that no commitment has been made to any of this. This is the output of that in terms of heat loss. Seems high for a triple glazed Nudura house... Then I noticed that they appear to have used "placeholders" in the construction materials section... The standard Nudura blocks are 0.24. The figures for the floor and roof seem off. I'm having 230mm PIR in the floor (I'm sure that'll be substantially better than 0.18). There are 3 large rooflights, but these are Vario by Velux triple glazed units (1.1 u-value I think) I'll be very disappointed if I don't achieve sub 1.0 ACH, I'm looking for 0.5 really. I don't want to go too far with this design as I'm not vested in them and don't want to end up too deep in obligation to them. The house will also have MVHR of course.

The whole house is 200m2, the ground floor is 140 ish of those m2's. The quotes I had from Roth, Continal and at least 2 others, all seemed to go for 150mm spacing, is it just that they're a bit lazy? I tried one of the softwares mentioned on here (don't think it was Loopcad), but I really struggled getting the plan properly laid out.

The ASHP is going adjacent to the Utility Room, top left corner of that plan. The manifold in the middle would be about 10-12 metres away from the ASHP and 600mm higher than the closer manifold. I'm not against doing it in one, but I guess the supply and return pipes will be reasonably long. This could be shortened if I can pass them under the internal walls (in the Marmox blocks), but not sure if that's senslble?

I guess a second manifold was added due to the floor levels? The Kitchen is 600mm higher than main part of the building with the Utility etc and the Living Room (lowest on that plan) goes up another 400mm. Would it be difficult to bleed with a manifold at the lowest point?

I tried to do a design myself, but getting the kinda complicated floorplan uploaded saw me fall at the first hurdle. Any tips? The space above has 3 ground level heights by the way.

I have a UFH design, done by the company who'll be doing the screeding. They are able to supply quality components without the mark-up the likes of Continal et al enjoy. But what of the Supply and Return pipes for the manifolds? We haven't bottomed out an ASHP design yet and ideally would prefer to kick this can a little further down the road if possible. Is it normal for these pipes to be placed in the screed to be considered later? There is a manifold in the Utility Room, very close to the ASHP (no need for buried pipes?), plus one in the Kitchen and a possible third one for the first floor (I can't imagine that needs considering in the ground floor screed).

Maybe I'm overthinking it, it's normal for me. 🤣

Can I just use cavity batts cut down in the same way do you think? Or must they been sleeved for some reason? I guess something is needed to stop anything going down there, birds etc. Not that I can imagine how they'd get in once its finished.

This is the high end of my Car Port, 10° Monopitch roof. The inside is facing brick, 65mm cavity, medium dense concrete blockwork outer leaf. The bevelled wall plate has a DPC under it and is resin-bolted down. I didn't have the foresight to utilise a wide DPC to allow me to use it to close the cavity. The outer leaf is to continue up to the underside of the deck. I'll then attach a circa 100mm deep OSB fascia to the ends of the Posi joists for the single-ply membrane to turn down onto and with ventilation behind it. Is it sufficient to attach a DPC to the inner vertical face of the DPC, then turn it over the cavity, landing on the outer leaf? I wouldn't want to lap it in by more than 20mm or so, because of course the final blocks needs to bond. Any words of advice from the invaluable Buildhub experts?

Haha! If only you knew about my problems! A £60k court case is causing very much procrastination and too much time to think about stuff like this. The steps as you see them will have 150mm of PIR insulation on the horizontal treads and an effective 100mm of PIR on the vertical risers. With 50-60mm of screed over, followed by a 4mm microcement finish. It's more wanting to avoid any irreversible regret. I have this vision of walking through the house in a state of blissful house completion euphoria and the sensation of a stone-cold step bringing me back down to earth with a chilling bump! Call me an over-thinker, it's the truth, but I hold dear the attention to detail that quality has allowed me! Thanks for your help all, as usual.

My main worry is that the steps would feel colder than the adjacent floors. You don't think they will?

These are the steps I'm building. This is the arrangement from the Entrance Hall to the Kitchen/Dining Room. It will be fully insulated and hopefully shuttered and screeded all in one with the main floor areas. I would like to pass the pipe through each step. This is the finished look... From the Kitchen/Dining Room to the Living Room I have this arrangement... That's going to be a 150mm high plinth step. There will be a second uninsulated (hardwood) step, then the living room floor. The Nudura face can be battened and boarded over to give a void for the UFH pipes, some pipe slack can be accommodated there. This is the approximate look desired there... Any feedback on running the pipes through these transitions is greatly appreciated. The steps are pretty hefty and solid.

I can also run the bend in an offset position, as in not perpendicular to the direction it's heading, that way most of the bend radius can be lost in the upstand. Hard to explain, I know what I mean LOL! I'm just downloading that vid down my copper telecoms line, be right back!

What I bought were Spacetherm A1 pads (I'd call them sheets, but they are pads on the invoice). I had a lot of trouble getting consistent advice on what is what. Proctor are fairly helpful, but they still take for granted that products they work with everyday will make sense to DIY'ers like us! It came in an "8x4" sheet, rolled up. It's reasonably flexible, but they encourage the use of separate pieces on my steel column rather than wrapping it round the corner and I think that was good advice. It would follow a curve for sure, but you wouldn't want to wrap it around 2 sides of an object. FYI, I paid £515 plus VAT for 2 full sheets. The carriage was £40+VAT (included in that £515). I'd post you a small offcut if you want to see it before you fork out?

I'll sketch it or take some photos. But the upstands can be battened and boarded to allow some pipe slack within.

Thanks for that @Russell griffiths In terms of the UFH, the screed company has quoted for a competitively priced system, using Pert-Al-Pert pipe. What sort of bend radius can the pipes tolerate? I need to run the pipes through level changes, so the pipes will essentially need to run vertically up a surface, then turn 90° into the floorspace again. I thought about bevelling the edge of the PIR to keep the pipes deep enough in the screed in this transition.

@Russell griffiths Did you seal the DPM to the Nudura at the upstand? Did you run a 25mm strip of PIR around the edges? How about the normal foam perimeter insulation that usually goes with UFH kits?

I have a Beam & Block floor and am hoping to screed soon. I have 230mm of insulation going in, it's all here on site. The Beam & Block is grouted and fully dry. The grout has "cracked" in places, but just superficially. There are gaps in places at the perimeter to the subfloor. Should these be sealed? I have 4 soil pipes and a blue 110mm water pipe duct coming up through the floor blocks. Do these need to be specially sealed in any way at Beam & Block level? The soil pipes are plain ended and currently plenty long enough, should I solvent weld socket couplers in the insulation level to remove the joint that faces the wrong way or just live with the plain pipe ends and worry about connections later above the floor level? Do I need to consider air-tightness in the way to DPM is installed and terminated onto the Nudura walls? PIR upstand yes or no? The screed is likely to be Cemfloor at a thickness of 50-55mm, containing UFH (yet to be installed of course). Any tips or words of advice to limit my inevitable procrastination would be massively appreciated.

It's dreadful stuff to work with. Do you have it yet? It emits a really weird powdery dust that feels horrible on your hands and that powderyness will stop anything reliably sticking to it. I used it to insulate the outer 2 faces of a pair of steel corner posts. The posts were onwardly flashed with an aluminium trim which would hold the insulation in place. I simply taped a breather membrane over the top of the Spacetherm, all the way round the post with foil tape to hold the insulation until the trim went on. You'll struggle to adhere it in any meaningful way unless you buy their cold-bridging strips, which are enclosed in some sort of polythene and can then be glued/adhered to stuff. As an aside, Proctor will deal directly with you and they were, for me at least, the cheapest source.

To be absolutely honest, a part of this is to have a contingency for cooking during a power outage. But that's a neat little portable alternative. Thanks.