Gone West

They are, but I would rather have one than hard water. The last one I bought, a few years ago, was a Harveys Crown and was £850. I'm lucky, now I've moved to Cornwall, I don't need one.

Never been there, they allow dogs on the beach all year round.

That seems a lot. Must be a long shower. I'm in and out in four to five minutes and we have an aerating shower head. Can get two showers out of a 140l hot tank no problem.

Our plasterer gave up plastering soon after doing our house. He was only in his thirties but said his shoulders were giving him grief and he couldn't compete with all the people doing single coat.

Which is what I do but I pay by direct debit because I get a price reduction if paying by direct debit as opposed to just paying the bill by cash.

When we lived in Kent we had very hard water and I fitted softeners in all the houses I lived in. They're straightforward to fit and all but one were twin cylinder type that don't required an electrical connection. They all seem to work in the same way and I have used Kinetico, MiniMax, TwinTec and Crown. Most seem to be made by Harveys.

That's great. We were very lucky with our plasterer and being able to find a good plasterer makes all the difference.

We have been in our current house only a year and had a couple of hundred pounds credit in our SSE account and they wanted to increase our monthly direct debit. They wouldn't back down so they have now given us back our credit and we are paying the quarterly bills by direct debit so they aren't able to hold any of our cash.

I have used Hunter in the past and it was strong, not flimsy. It also kept it's colour, black, which cheaper versions don't, going grey quickly.

I used Mul-T-Lock at our new build.

It was screwed around the the timber frame and I attached packing pieces, a few mm thick, to the metal bracket to ensure the Hardiebacker was flat and couldn't move when the pan was attached. There was no support for the Hardiebacker in the area marked in red and there was no movement.

They were just sleeping it off.

Are you going to use wire mesh under the floor to protect the insulation from the rodents.

You don't need nitrogen as beans are legumes. I tend to just use Tomorite.

They are excellent. Bought one a few months ago and am very pleased.

Is it impossible to unbolt it from the ground anchors and jack up one end to be able to slide a board under and screw down through the frame flange.

If possible I would board the outside of the whole frame including under the floor and fill with Frametherm. I would put a thin layer of Celotex over the whole of the inside of the frame and board over.

I installed wall hung toilet (not Grohe) and basin frames and clad using 12mm Hardiebacker board. I pre dilled the Hardiebacker to ensure the board pulled in tight to the frame and didn't have any movement. I had the board Venetian plastered and the plasterer would not have been happy about the board flexing. I would check that the board is tight to the timber.

We have found slow worms under paving slabs and large rocks here so I guess you could put a couple of old paving slabs in a sunny spot in there.

I like that, very smart, well done.

You would have to ask him but purely as a guess I would have thought he would have calculated it based on average winter ground temperature under the house, target indoor temperature and overall U factor for the floor. It's easier for a PH where the idea is to have the floor slab only slightly above indoor air temperature. If I were to ever build another PH, I would use the same method as before and use air to air ASHP heating.

Well the more insulation that is used the better, but no insulation is perfect so IIRC even with 300mm EPS Jeremy calculated an 8% heat loss to the ground. The area under the insulation won't be chilled by winds and should reach a steady state which would just be a higher temperature than without UFH.

In my view UFH should be banned in building regs until standards reach PH. All the effort that is put into insulating walls and ceilings and then you are allowed to waste heat by putting it into the ground. Even if all houses were truly built to current regs and building inspectors checked rigorously the standards are not yet high enough to have the slab at a low enough temperature to minimise heat loss to the ground. When building standards are better than PH then wet heating isn't needed.

I had an old garden retaining wall which was damp and I painted it with Durbocem and it has worked extremely well. I do have drainage holes at the bottom though, but I guess you could drill some drainage holes in yours. https://andrewscoatings.co.uk/shop/interior-exterior-walls/damp-mould/durbocem/

I drilled 25mm holes around 100mm deep and filled with SBK. None of the sycamores or beech showed any life but the ash trees have tried throwing some shoots which I just rub off with my boots.