Carrerahill

I think it is driven by shortages brought on by businesses being greedy and furloughing staff. I know of so many businesses that were just shutting down with no real reason to do so other than so management and owners could take the year off and not worry about the financial implications. Clearly this is not the story for all and for many financial problems are rampant, but there was some sheer greed and stupidity at play. When they stopped making plasterboard and milling wood that was just ridiculous because it was still being consumed apart for the first 4-5 weeks of initial lockdown. But lots of manufacturers saw the opportunity to stop paying wages, shaft the government and sit and do very little. So now we have shortages of everything due to backlog and also a boom in building projects, Brexit has nothing to do with it. Costs should drop again when it all levels but I fear they won't as everyone gets greedy.

I doubt you are going to make all this extra energy however consider a Sunamp - they are like half the size of a conventional tank and thus reduce the need for a massive calorifier.

Pretty much. Get a roof detail into them - that will let you start on site, then start detailing the externally mounted services etc. however, don't wait too long, given they want to see where more or less everything attached to your house is going to be, it could have an impact on boiler locations, soil pipes, all sorts, even ground works, which, if rejected could alter your plans significantly, so realistically, it might be time to sit down and detail it all up now. They just want it to look nice basically.

Who cut it - if not you, have them solve it, that's a right bog up.

Not keen on the utility/larder layout on the GF - with a little re-arrangement there could be a better use of space, think I'd square off the larder and just make it a walk through larder into the utility instead of that awkward door arrangement, or just ditch the larder, move the wall up to the hall boundary and have 1 big utility with food cupboards in it. Upstairs WC's - I'd consider how you will be installing all those services, toilets on different walls means more services in more walls and more waste routes thus more noise through your home, I would swap the linen cupboard with the WC door and have the main bathroom and en-suite toilets more or less back to back making that a single, perhaps thicker, service wall with water etc, and a single soil pipe with 2 connections, at present there will be services running all over. Being in M&E consultancy I see things differently to many, but that is just totally impractical and typical architect thinking. The current design is also more costly than a streamlined approach with shared services.

I think the phraseology you are using is what is confusing them, all ASHP's I have ever used have had a cooling mode, yes in theory the cycle is in reverse or as you say "running backwards" but I think that is confusing them. Just confirm it has cooling mode or better, get onto the Mitzi site and download the datasheet to confirm. Installers are good at installing stuff, they tend, not always, but do tend, to be a bit clueless and lacking in any care of actual use or functionality like a user like you is discussing.

Personally, I would not call the builder, I think he will, with all due respect, think you are being pedantic - you now have good dated record of this on this forum if you ever did need to show him. Unless you need to for testing reasons and at that I would only do a short test, I'd leave the UFH now until I needed it in the autumn/winter. Cracks in concrete/screed are totally normal. Keep an eye on them, if by say middle of July things are looking terrible then maybe start to worry, but so far that is just what screed does, it is like paint, it is inevitable it is going to dry! If you have any to look at, go and look at a dried out concrete block wall, note various little cracks in the bond between the mortar and block, this is all shrinkage and is normal, can look a bit distressing to many but it is normal. Also bear in mind this is just a floor screed, even if it were a structural slab I still wouldn't worry at what I can see above. If you can start putting £1 coins into the gap though!

Yes, it also cures from the outside in, so surface readings are not illustrative of the whole section.

Looks like normal shrinkage to me.

Correct, buildings must breath or you will be signing large cheques to cover rot issues and damp and all sorts.

So there is just a gap with pipes in it, then wooden floor? We have CH pipes running along under our FF hall floor, when the heating is on the floor is warm, when the heating is off the floor is cool - if I was to encase those pipes in something like concrete or biscuit mix and bring that mass up to temp, that same floor would feel warm much longer. I think your floor makeup is not ideal for UFH - we have suspended timber floors - I was going to put in UFH but to do it right and make it work well it was going to need much work - the only way I'd have gone for it was with biscuit mix surrounding the pipes, then I needed to consider loadings on the joists and all sorts. I didn't bother. If you keep the CH on full time and crank the temp right up does your room ever get warm enough? What are the flow and return temps on the pipes and the flow rate?

They don't really work like that, the building regs are a set of regulations that need to be followed to ensure the safe and efficient construction of buildings but there is not a rule, for example, on page 40, that says you may not build this or may not do that, this is where architects and engineers come in, you can tie a wall into a wall, you can build a wall nearly, but not quite touching an existing wall or you can build a wall a metre away, in all cases a suitable design must be followed, for a little garden wall the suitable design may be as simple as best practise right through to tied in founds and all sorts. The regs won't actually detail how or what should be done in this situation. It is a bit like saying, what does the medical book say in reference to a doctors diagnoses. There are 1000's of variations here, and 1000's of acceptable solutions. The building handbook is free for all to view, have a look and you will see what it says, it is more about general characteristics of a building. Safety and escape routes, fire alarms, general construction practises, where windows and vents and services should and can go etc. What has been built looks fine to be honest, no reason why not and I don't think the shed has any bearing on the crack. What does look like may have happened is that through a lack of maintenance there is now water ingress. Looking at the lead flashing, my thinking is that water is getting in via the roof abutment is and causing damp, not convinced the crack is connected but cannot tell from sitting behind a computer looking at a couple of images.

We have been told they will - in fact we were given a solution to a ASHP system in a residential development with limited space in the flats, by Sunamp. I am not a mechanical engineer so I will not dive in any deeper or pretend to know more other than to say, I am certainly being lead to believe they will.

I was thinking more from heating a cylinder point of view... whereas Sunamp will work on lower temps.

Looks solid to me, been there for a long enough time without issue presumably.

Fit 2 x Sunamp units. We had the rep in last week and took us through all the options. Quite clearly 2 unit (I think they were the 9kW units equivalent to 210litres) around the size of a washing machine would replace having two large cylinders and she said they could be installed on shelves so one above the other?!? Are the Mitsi units not low temp?

What is the diameter of the old pipe? Friend had a similar issue, they broke into the pipe at both ends and fed a MDPE pipe down the 100-120m lane.

I'd speak to a local SE. Slabs or rafts were partly brought in as a means of solving issues like this one, in honestly so house builders could rattle houses up on poor ground or ground that was maybe not ideal for building, the idea being that it was just a big raft floating on the ground (as usual top soil etc. removed obviously). The issue you often find with TF companies is that they sort of just have an idea in their head and that is what they go with every time. We had family member who wanted a sunroom, builder said it needed to be a 1.5m deep trench fill footing - the existing house was on a slab - the family member who is a civil engineer and a specialist in concrete was shocked at the proposal on the grounds that his house is sitting on a big raft, then this little sunroom would connect to the house firmly seated with huge concrete boots on - they fell out big time over this. Transpired the local builder discovered this always passed BW so would just spec it every time clearly unware how founds and connections etc. all work together.

Both these options are good - the end cap with the connection in the end was my first option (in solvent weld variant) but I wanted one that day and the option I came up with was what could be done with Screwfix or Toolstation - as usual with me, desperate to get the bits, and now the job has stalled anyway so I could have waited for a delivery of what I really wanted. Thank you both.

I think you are confusing spurs and radial circuits.

Yes he can. It is a radial not a spur. Would be better to be a 20A but totally safe to put them on a 16A - if anything just overprotected.

Your changes are so long ago now that there is not really going to be evidence of this very recent electrical work so I doubt someone will specifically start looking for the cert - a simple electrical test and inspection to cover the house as a whole will be fine. It is good you are thinking about it but why would a potential buyer single out the shower and go asking for the cert? They would not. When I bought this place I just bought it, electrics were rough it transpired but how would I know from looking on the surface was what new and what was not unless clearly obvious. At 5 years it's pretty much water under the bridge. You say you won't sell for a long while, so it will be even more water under the bridge. By that time good electrics from 5 years ago might be faulty anyway - the cert is more or less useless now - he should have checked all the circuits at the time, providing a test report with the readings, but to be honest, those readings are like an MoT for a car from 5 years ago. Get your spark (suggest another one now!) in to do the changes you mentioned and have an EICR done and you should be good. 1 note: 16A radial is OK for 1 socket but if you add it would usually be a 20A - bearing in mind a 13A plug is only 3A less than your combined total of a 16A so if you plugged in two 10A loads... I'd look into having that checked out and increased to 20A assuming 2.5mm T&E was used for full run and it is not excessively long, that will be fine - chances are that was just a spare way and a spark used it out of laziness though - you may also know your loads will always just be small appliances in which case, just leave it alone but the additional sockets does suggest you have more consumers to plug in... Looking at that board with all the squint MCB's I would get someone to check it all, I would want them all loosened off the busbar, straightened up and re-torqued.

I am really against the resin bound gravel, I just don't like the environmentals on it, stones bound up with plastic, so no matter what way you look at it it is one day going to be plastic waste, at least concrete and stones and paving can all be crushed and reused. I also don't like the idea of this big mass of plastic sitting on the drive, what can leach out of it?

I have a 110mm underground soil pipe (terracotta coloured) popup in my garage for the sink connection, 4 years ago when it was cast into the slab I left about 300mm above FFL and even left it with the socket so I could come along and just slide the required connection onto it. Well that was not going to work as that wall now will have kitchen cabinets along it, so the plan was, cut the soil pipe down to a 40mm stub, solvent weld a short boss on, screwed lid on the top and a 50mm waste pipe into a 50mm solvent weld boss which would run under the cabinets to the sink cabinet. All fairly straight forward... Or not. I decided, luckily, to trial some solvent onto the underground pipe piece I cut off and try and solvent weld it to a piece of 50mm waste pipe the solvent won't touch the underground pipe. The solvent is good and fresh and working perfectly on the 50mm waste and 20mm uPVC conduit I am working with too. I am tempted to use a tube of 2 part epoxy and just glue the boss to the stub. I am also having these thoughts: 1. Die grind the lip off the 50mm pipe boss so I can shove the 50mm waste pipe further into the boss than normal (not a major issue as I will never probably use the top connection) and stick a 90° bend on it inside the boss so that all flow is directed right down the pipe beyond the boss in case the resin fails. 2. Fit boss with resin then use a bead of silicone on the inside to seal the union and on the outside silicone again then haunch it with a 30-40mm mortar bed. It will just be a garage sink for washing hands and cleaning bits of car and things and I can rod the underground section from the rodable gulley in the centre of the garage floor - I am also using 50mm pipe for the enhanced foreign object handling and ease of snaking which will be possible via a Tee with an access point on the opposite side with the waste coming in the top - so all in all lots of provision for clear out. Thoughts?

Hardcore, tons and tons and tons of hardcore - at a guess, about 141tons if you are just about 3m wide and the existing ground is not bad, that would give a nice layer. That sounds bad, but to be honest you should be able to get that for about 2K if you do a deal with Tarmac or similar. I was offered a tipper truck full for my build for I think about £12 a ton plus haulage, MoT is cheap, just not when you buy it by the ton bag. Where can you put the top soil? If you scrape away say 200mm of soil that is about 105cubic meters you need to lose, if good top soil you could sell it or use it. Then you need to start trucking in the hardcore, layer it, compact it etc. Last 40m can be topped off with a decorative gravel or block or whatever, but to be honest, a good hardcore road isn't unsightly especially if the verges look smart and what no, so even just the last 10-15 might work for you.