PeterW

Quality of steel, quality of castings, design for a clean burn etc, all play into pricing. Check the steel thicknesses and also where they are sourcing from. A lot of the cheaper ones use Chinese steel, a substantial amount of which isn’t high grade and is recycled and will probably fail much earlier than one with European or U.K. made steel plate. In some instances you do pay for a name but it can be worth it in the long run.

Try these guys https://www.gratefireplaceaccessories.co.uk/made-to-measure-fireplace-hearth You will get differential expansion and potential cracking with one piece so I would go with two or three pieces anyway.

What shape are the shelves ..?? U or L shape shelves will pick up the torsional loads and if you can “catch” the edges as they touch walls with L shape brackets then it makes it much stronger.

Buffer ..? UFH loop lengths..? Any other components in the ASHP primary circuit ..?

Funny lot you Lancastrians ....

As long as there is enough warm getting to the thermostat so that it turns off at some point then dropping rads off shouldn’t be an issue. Best thing to do is to take daily electricity meter reads for a week as that will show you your usage.

Excellent !! Hope those holes were packed full of silicone before you put the bar on !!

Not surprised for a 7 year old unit as that was all the pre-EUP regs so repairing that would be false economy. I know a few suppliers - City Plumbing for example - that have 8 and 11Kw on the shelf for delivery in 24 hours. Is this being done under a warranty agreement or with a local supplier ..?

@nod is your man to ask about this stuff

I take it that an installer has told you this as he’s got a “special deal on the Hong Weng Chinese Heat Pump Company” it’s-a-rebadged-Mitsubishi-trust-me-love Heat Pump he thinks you should use ..?? Mitsubishi are definitely not unavailable and are in stock in the U.K. with plenty of suppliers !!

P5 water resistant chipboard is used pretty much across the industry - the Egger protect type boards with the coating on can stay in the rain for 60 days with no real issues so being in a dry house they will last for decades.

It’s not glycol you need (usually used in a GSHP as a heat transfer media) it is just an antifreeze suitable for a central heating system that you need to use. The percentage is dependent on the capacity of the system but is usually 10-20%

Rest both ladders up the side of the roof with the one you will climb against the side wall if possible to stop it sliding. Roof ladder with hooks to the top facing away from the building on the clear side. Bag of sand or ballast on the bottom rung of the ordinary ladder will stop it moving too Climb 3/4 to the top of your standard ladder (shoulder height to the gutter) then pull the roof ladder upward and lay it onto the roof and push it up so the hooks are over the height of the ridge. Then turn it toward you so it lays on the roof and pull it downward so the roof hooks engage. Now move it back toward the standard ladder so they touch. At this point I would normally rope the two together and then come back get tools etc then head up. Getting it down is reverse of above ..!

Ikea do custom made worktop up to 4m and it’s around £50-60/m

not sure where he is going with that as it is common practice to use either rigid insulation or insulated plasterboard on the inside of solid walls to improve thermal efficiency !

Sure you’re not watching something by Clint Eastwood running a countersink into the end of a fitting ...??!!! I’m with @Nickfromwales on this, dremel with a carbide burr and cut the edge out of the hole where the pipe is.

To do a contract lift you would need to know the load. How you would accurately calculate the loading of the ground “grip” plus the sheet and friction of the next pile would mean you would end up with a very big crane to ensure a safe lift. Temporary sheet piling is normally done for cofferdams and whilst retaining walls are built, and really where you have the access to drive and remove easily. TBH with this I would just drive lines of concrete piles and leave them in situ and then cast around them for the retaining basement walls.

You will need one heck of a machine to reach back 15m..!! I’d be looking at leaving them in or using them as part of the structure.

Yep but my question was how will you get them out as you can’t sit a 12 tonne excavator on top of a basement roof ..?? If you are having to put them on to build up to the edge of the plot then how will you get the machinery in to get them out ..?

How do you plan to get them back out ..?? Surely you are better off putting them in and leaving them in - just get the tops cut off and cast a concrete footing on top and use it as the base of a wall. You could budget around the £200/sqm for sheet pile so you’re about the £10k mark for it installed depending on ground conditions.

Try insuring a £125k machine with no operator ticket and see what your insurance price is ... That £1k will be an assumed all risks hire and have a ticketed operator. Add another £300 for delivery and collection too. Doubt you will have change from £5k min all in before you put a driver in the cab. On your demo are you asking for everything taken away ..? Any soft strip and reclaim or are you just letting them hit the building cold ..? All makes a difference.

No. Private building control and warranty are two different things. Plenty of approved inspection companies out there, I use Meridian and always been impressed.

That isn’t how it works ... fan sucks air over a set of thin tubes like a car radiator that makes the refrigerant turn to gas. This is pumped through small bore pipe - the white things up the wall - to the heat exchanger where a compressor condenses the gas to a liquid and it releases the heat to the internal heat exchanger. This has water one side and in some a secondary glycol circuit to extract the heat from the compressor. The water then goes to the tank or the radiators. if the fan unit is causing noise you can mount sound panels above them about 2ft up (airflow clearance) and these can absorb or deflect the noise. This also keeps snow and rain off the top of the units which can also be beneficial.

I understand that but the outside noise will be from the fan condenser unit and the inside from the heatexchanger unit with at least one circulation pump through the matrix in that box of tricks on the wall. That will be the source of the multiple noises as split aircon and heat pump units have to move both refrigerant and water about.

It’s the heat exchanger that is making the noise - will be at least one pump in there