Gone West

I went to Brewers yesterday to get some paint and masking tape. They are operating a 2m distancing, card only payment system. It's weird, as you move towards the counter to pay, they move backwards away from you. I suppose we'll get used to it as hardware stores are allowed to stay open at the moment.

IIRC it's on after Living The Dream. Easy to remember.

@DavidHughes Well this is an interesting discussion. I haven't read the whole thread but from your original post I gather yours is a retrofit system in a bungalow without knowing the airtightness before fitting. I can't see any reason to doubt your calculations and in your position I wouldn't bother fitting a MVHR system either. I would be surprised if the same costs arose in a very low energy new build. For instance my new build is very airtight and is mainly heated by the electric towel rails in the bathrooms which means I have not had to install a main central heating system as the MVHR moves air around the house and maintains a pleasant 23C. I have not carried out any calculations to confirm this but I am very happy with the air quality and my electricity bills.

Should have connected your water softener .

We use a WiMAX supplier for broadband with VoIP for the landline phone with normal landline number. It's cheaper than BT for us.

Know what you mean. It used to be like that for us until we got rid of our BT line.

Afraid not, just used the digital readout.

I just used a digital spirit level set at 1.0 or 1.5 Degrees.

Reducing centres will reduce deflection of both types of joist as will increasing the cord width. Strongbacks are usually used with metal web joists and do reduce deflection.

Welcome to the forum. Planning, now that's a subject that has affected a lot of disgruntled members on here, me included.

@LA3222 Tidy site. ?

One of our own @scottishjohn has a large site and may be interested in community self builds.

Welcome to the forum. Good luck with your PP. I don't want to put you off before you've started but you could look at my blog to see the potential ups and downs of self build. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/blogs/blog/7-east-kent-self-build/

You forget about problems as time passes, it was ten years ago now and we didn't lose any money over it. Yes it's a very low energy house built to Passivhaus standards although not a certified Passivhaus.

It might have been mine, there are several on here.

No, we didn't use self compacting concrete, but I wish we had. It would have been much easier with Isoquick system.

@BenOram In case you are still around, we have now had a fault on our Genvex Combi 185LS and we found a company called Iso Energy who came out and diagnosed the fault which was a broken solenoid on the EASHP water heating circuit. They had never worked on a Genvex before but had worked on the Nilan which is similar. I can recommend Iso Energy and their engineer, Nick, who was very competent.

That sounds good. Our Internorm front door was £5500 and that was nine years ago without any fancy gubbins.

It's not difficult, just time consuming and fiddly.

I did all the circuit design, then first and second fix myself. A friend of one of my daughters checked each stage for me and did the final testing and sign off. Total cost around £300.

Hi Kaye, welcome to the forum and good luck with your project. Neat walling by the way.

We were going to use ADM before deciding to do it ourselves. They were very helpful. https://admsystems.co.uk/heat-recovery-ventilation/

We didn't have any problems using metal web joists and as you say they are much easier for first fix.

It just means how much they bend in the centre for a given weight on them. It's not that straightforward though as it depends on whether there are strongbacks fitted to the metal web joists and whether the cord/flange sizes are the same. A little light reading on the subject. https://www.steico.com/fileadmin/steico/content/pdf/Marketing/UK/Tec_Guide_Construction/STEICO_tec_guide_construction_en_i.pdf https://www.wolfsystem.co.uk/media/78349/easi-joist_tech_guide_4th_edition_nov_2010.pdf