Gone West

I'm gradually replacing all the windows, without trickle vents, in my old bungalow, and was going to install a PIV unit, and decentralised Mechanical Extract Ventilation (dMEV)) in the bathrooms and kitchen. Is there any reason that is a bad idea.

Well done, it's a credit to you.

An oil boiler is cheaper to run than a gas boiler. There are also modulating oil boilers. https://sapphireheatsolutions.co.uk/

Assuming your dimensions are external, your roof slope would be five degrees. There are very few tiles that can be used with such a low angle. There are some sheet tiles that would be suitable. The wall plates would be the same width as the wall.

It will only get worse . I started my first new build when I was 59 and it was fine. I'm 74 now, doing a renovation and am knackered.

Yes I am aware of that but @joth said "it's definitely a monobloc" just from the picture of the back of the unit, so I was wondering what the back of a split unit looks like, that is so different from a monobloc. It looks like @-rick- has provided the answer.

What is it that looks different between a monobloc and a split system ASHP.

I don't know much about ASHP, but is it a split system, and they're not water pipes.

There's a couple of companies one is magicman.co.uk https://magicman.co.uk/

They were barrowing the concrete, it was summer, the concrete wasn't flowing out of the barrows, it was coming out in lumps. I didn't get involved in the details of the slab removal, other than to get an assurance that there would be a different team who were competent.

@Mandy D Welcome to the forum. Hope you had a not too stressful build. It would be good if we could see some pictures, we like pictures on here.

We had a similar problem with the high water table forcing water past the pipe seals into our treatment plant. I dug around the seals, when the water table was lower, and packed in around 200mm of bentonite granules. It seemed to seal very well.

We filmed the whole process and saw a lot of incidences of poor workmanship which made us think there were voids in the concrete. We had non destructive testing carried out over the whole slab which indicated a lot of problem areas. Those areas were core drilled which confirmed there were voids. The company accepted the results and the whole lot was replaced at no cost to us.

@saveasteading This might be of some interest. Sorry about the quality.

It was fifteen years ago and it was in my blog at the time. So as not to derail this thread I'll start a new post with the blog details.

You could always get a big bugger like this, to show you mean business. This was my raft being cut up after a crap installation.

@Bramco Many thanks, that's useful information. Will check out Husqvarna and we also have considered having two smaller mowers, so glad to know it's not just us!

We have a garden with six areas of grass and a height difference of 16m between the highest and lowest points in the garden. Would you mind giving some details about your grassed areas and the type of lawn mower you have. We have been looking at the different types and we have a very poor mobile signal here which doesn't help.

Welcome to the forum. Having vertically challenged builders won't hold you back, plenty use stilts for plastering. 😁 Good luck with the project.

Well done, and only twenty pages!!

We tried an electronic water conditioner back in the late nineties as we had very hard water. It didn't work so the suppliers swapped it for a commercial version and that didn't work either. After that it turned into the beginning of using proper softeners, which were the twin cylinder type, and that lasted all the time we lived in East Kent. Now we are really lucky and don't need a softener.

It all depends on what they find out. A previous neighbour converted the end of his garage into a bedsit with LPG heating, shower, toilet and bedroom for his family to use when they came over. No planning or building control and he did a very neat job.

Yes we had a three way kitchen tap so we could have hard water for drinking and soft for everything else, but because the water tasted strange we had to have another filter just for drinking water.

When we were living in the old bungalow, while we were building our house, our Minimax twin cylinder softener packed up, probably around ten years ago. We thought we would try an electric softener as they were a fair bit cheaper, and we bought the Eco15 from Wrekin. It did work ok, but unfortunately the built in timer didn't remember the settings if there was a power cut. As a result it sometimes did a regeneration cycle during the day. It also wouldn't take salt blocks so we had to use salt pellets. When we moved into the new house we decided to go back to a twin cylinder and I fitted a Harvey Crown Softener. This was some time ago, so models have probably changed.

The installers used what looked like standard duct tape. It did the job for a couple of weeks.