Jump to content

Gone West

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    4504

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    19

Gone West last won the day on September 20 2025

Gone West had the most liked content!

4 Followers

Personal Information

  • Location
    Near Holsworthy in Cornwall

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

Gone West's Achievements

Advanced Member

Advanced Member (5/5)

1.7k

Reputation

  1. Gone West
    Twist the knife, why don't you 😀. I videoed the pour, and saw the concrete was going off before it was laid and there were voids forming. We had the slab tested for voids and several were found, so they took core samples and condemed it. All because they wanted to save money by not having to use a pump. So much easier the second time. Fortunately it didn't cost us a penny, but we did lose a couple of weeks.
  2. Gone West
    Indeed!!
  3. Gone West
    I can't say accurately. All I know is between 22/1/22 and 4/12/25 we used roughly 10800 litres of oil which works out at an average around 7.6 litres a day for hot water and heating using the old Aga which is around 70% efficient. Plan to replace the Aga with a new condensing oil boiler this year.
  4. Gone West
    Is to have a sufficiently large enough heater. The walls in our place are 600mm to 700mm thick stone and when we first moved in we had our 30kW oil fired Aga heating on all the time, in the Spring, to dry it out and warm it up. The house didn't feel comfortable for a long time as the heat was drying the fabric of the building. @SteamyTea explained how much energy is required to do this, and it was substantial. We now have a house that is 23C all the time. You can warm the house up, but it requires a lot of constant expensive heating to do so, and it has to be maintained. Trying to heat one room for a few hours, in your type of house, is pointless.
  5. Gone West
    I used one of those Mcalpine hose connectors and mine had a hole in the top in the centre, which acted as an air break.
  6. Gone West
    When we moved in we had the 4" wall cavity and the loft joist cavity filled with blown mineral fibre insulation. The amount of oil burnt dropped dramatically!! Lucky we did, as the build took eight years not the estimated two to three years.
  7. Gone West
    All I can say is, on my timber frame build, i didn't use any tapes or membranes for airtightness. For windows and doors I used two strips of Combriband and the Soudal SWS foam system on the inside. It achieved an average 0.47 ACH without any tweaks. It just requires care.
  8. Gone West
    As a point of interest, the old bungalow I lived in while building my new self build, had 1/2" T&G boarding on the 18" centre rafters, with the slates nailed directly onto the sarking boards. It was a stick built 4" x 2" timber frame put up in the 1920s as a home for heroes for returning soldiers from WW1. It had lasted 90 years with the original roof.
  9. Gone West
    I have a range of Ego electric garden tools including a small chainsaw and a polesaw. I always use Oregon chains and sharpen them with an Oregon hand file and guide. I also have a sabre saw but I use chainsaws only for tree work and the sabre saw for other jobs. https://egopowerplus.co.uk/products/chainsaws/cs1410e https://www.screwfix.com/p/oregon-4mm-5-32-round-chain-sharpening-file-guide/8566v
  10. Gone West
    Out of interest, are they NuLok tiles?
  11. Gone West
    I knocked through a block cavity wall, on my bungalow, a couple of years ago and fitted 1500 x 100 x 65mm lintels and they were about £15 each from the local builders merchants.
  12. Gone West
    I can't in all honesty say I had a problem getting to sleep when we were self building. I was so knackered everyday, that I went out like a light. The only thing that got me down was the daily grind, day, after day, after day.
  13. Gone West
    Is toughened glass the best option for, above your head glazing? It can shatter, sometimes dramatically, and I would have thought laminated would be better, but just my opinion, no expert knowledge.
  14. Gone West
    I agree, but most people live on a normal street, with a postage stamp garden and don't even have a garage. The result of living in an overcrowded country where it's difficult to balance the requirements of housing, industry, wildlife, food production and open spaces.
  15. Gone West
    That brings back memories! I was using PHPP2007 in 2009/2010 and I found the results were very sensitive to which of the climate data files I used. IIRC the example data file for SE England was from Heathrow. I got data from the Met Office for Manston, I lived eight miles away at the time, and then got a free version of Meteonorm. The data Meteonorm created was very close to the Manston data so I used the Manston data in my calculations. The Heathrow data produced very different results, as did a data file I got for Vlissingen.
×
×
  • Create New...