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I lumos do some nice products: https://hartingtonheath.com/product/i-lumos-8-x-16mm-warm-white-led-flexible-waterproof-neon-strip-light/

We are having a poured floor in our kitchen which will add 3.5mm to our screed. It’s too expensive to do in the utility room that is off the kitchen, so was going to tile there. The tiles I like are 8.5mm thick. So I will have a discrepancy of 5mm plus whatever thickness tile adhesive I need for an 8.5mm tile. This is going to be a trip hazard isn’t it? Suggestions? Haven’t poured our slab, let alone the screed yet, so still time to do something about it. Rather not change kitchen FFL though. Is it just a case of dropping the slab by 10mm or so under the utility room?

@wozza do you mean the Rapid SL? If so, what thickness wall did you put it into? I struggle understanding the dimensions on the attached spec sheet, is it saying the wall has to be 230mm thick or 165mm? GROHE_Specification_Sheet_38773000.pdf

Looks very technical! The nice thing about tado is it's idiot-proof.

Thanks @saveasteading but i rather stick to water based rads if possible. I would consider electric only if it ticked all other boxes, but that has no timer or wifi control. I guess wifi control isn't essential if electric heats up within 5 minutes. Have no experience of electric towel rads so don't know how responsive they are.

Yes, but one can't take the trade benefits of EU membership without giving up that control. Otherwise, it would undermine the whole point of a customs union. If we could have our cake and eat it, then there would be nothing to stop the UK from undercutting the EU in negotiations with third parties and then importing stuff to the UK from outside the EU more cheaply than one can import it from within the EU and then exporting it to the EU. So for example, let's say Australian wine carries a 2 euro tariff when imported to the EU. The UK leaves the EU and makes a deal such that it can import Australian wine with no tarrifs. Ozzie wine is now cheaper in the UK than in France because we decided not to charge tariffs. Some clever merchant spots this and starts importing Ozzie wine to the UK and then exporting it France. This effectively robs the EU the ability to impose that 2 euro tarriff on Ozzie wine. So it completely undermines the customs union. We could have left the EU but joined EFTA like Iceland Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland.

Thanks for the replies @PeterW, @ProDave and @joe90. Is there an alternative way to have smart control of towel rads, either by rigging up some sort of "false" radiator valve outside of the bathroom and fitting the tado smart thermostatic valve there or by losing tado altogether and using something else? I appreciate that if the tado is fitted outside it won't be able to sense the temp inside the bathroom, but that doesn't bother me as much. I just like the smart control that means I can control the valve from my phone as well as set it to different routines on different days. We had this at my old house (on radiators outside of bathrooms, not in bathrooms) and would love to know how to replicate this. I prefer to stick to water based towel rads as I think they are more efficient (i believe, but might be wrong about that) than electric.

I have some Smart radiator valves made by tado from my old place. Our new place will have UFH throughout, except that in the bathrooms we'll have some small towel rads as well. I was thinking of using the Tado rad valves on those towel rads. Below is what the Tado website says. I'm thinking of installing one about 50cm from a bathtub, so in breach of the requirements. Given it is IP20 rated, what's the worst that could happen? Would the tado die from a few spashes, or could it actually be dangerous? They are battery operated, so not plugged into the mains. Is this something the BCO will spot if I breach the rules?

excess demand over supply

Welcome to Brexitlandia.

Good to know! I was literally just about to order from them. So where's best for Grohe toilet frames and cisterns?

Or a Prima: https://www.ergonomicdesigns.co.uk/product/BPR405~prima-plus-3-in-1-kitchen-mixer-tap-in-matt-black.html which isn't a bad price for WRAS approved and 10 year guarantee

Does anyone have a pronteau by abode? http://www.pronteau.co.uk/4-in-1/propure-monobloc-swan/configure

Agree with that. Builder's depot also does good deals on toilets, particularly if you need 2 or more.

There are a few online shops that do good prices. Depends if you know alley what you want. QS Supplies and ErgonomicDesign are both pretty reasonably priced. Victorianplumbing and drench are cheap, but watch out as a lot of their stock is cheap Chinese stuff.

Welcome to Brexitland.

It's not a huge floor area as it's just in the loft, but I will wait for @ProDave to comment on sound/impact transfer. (And before somebody tells me I don't need heating in the loft, I do - We've not been able to achieve a passivehaus standard of insulation.)

That is clearer, thanks. So the UFH still goes above the Chipboard, but rather than in the XFLO, which in my case is 25mm thick, it would go in the pug mix, which you think would dampen down footsteps so no need for the 6mm rubber. It's a small saving in height of 13mm (as 18mm battens with PUG in between instead of 25mm XFLO , and no 6mm rubber layer) but sounds like extra work. Not sure it's worth it for a 13mm saving.

The XFLO Micro is described here: https://www.cellecta.co.uk/product/xflo-micro-ff/ it basically provides pipe routings and heat diffusion in a high compressive (500kpa !) easy to install package. For the 16mm pipes I'm running however it needs to be 25mm thick. I'm not sure how I would do what you are suggesting as surely for pipes to go in between the joists, i would need to drill through the 50mm wooden part of the POSI and I thought the whole point of posi joists is that they can't be drilled or notched and one has to route stuff through the metal webbing.

I've just found out that the Cellecta XFLO Micro FF, which are foil faced extruded polystyrene boards is not compatible with my choice of finished floor, which is 14.5mm engineered wooden parquet flooring. The parquet company recommend gluing it down and Cellecta say that whilst I can glue the parquet directly to the XFLO Micro FF, it is designed for larger planks to just float on top, rather than small parquet to be glued. They have suggested adding an additional layer of plywood above the XFLO Micro FF that I can then glue the Parquet engineered boards to but that would result in this build up, which is pretty tall at 73.5mm plus adhesive. I was concerned about it's height already, and so the additional 6mm and adhesive makes it even taller: 14.5mm parquet adhesive 6mm ply 25mm Cellecta XFLO Micro FF 6mm Celecta Ruberfon Impact 6 dense rubber matting (this prevents impact sound transferring to room below) 22mm T&G Egger peelclean xtra chipboard 200mm POSI Joists filled with rockwool (other than where MVHR pipes go) There must be a better way of doing this. With normal joists i could drop the UFH into the gaps between the joists and suspend it on battens, but there are two reasons I don't think that is possible here: I need the space between the posis for the MVHR ducting - or is there space for doing both here? The POSI is 50mm wood then 100mm gap for ducts then 50mm wood, so space for battens and UFH would be 50mm at the very most I would lose the ability to put the 6mm rubber matting under the UFH system. It would need to lay it over the UFH, which isn't ideal for responsiveness of heating system - although it doesn't have much of a U value. Any thoughts much appreciated!

The Qettle Mini is exactly what I want, except I hate chrome. Shame they don't do brushed brass or brushed steel.

I have 600 by 300 tiles going down on the same floor as 600 by 600. It just made it easier to fit the tiles to our bathroom in that way - rectangular ones in the rectangular shaped shower area and square ones in the more square shape elsewhere. Just found out the rectangular ones are 10.5mm thick whereas the square ones are 9.5mm thick. Does a 1mm discrepancy matter, or can I just have a bit more adhesive on the thinner square tiles? Hopefully someone like @nod will provide some reassurance.

Just checked my contract and it is the builder's duty to: "comply with all statutory obligations applicable to the Works." Fat lot of luck that will do me in a criminal court though!

Just googled this. It doesn’t look very secure. I don’t have windows or a front door at the moment.

Thanks. So I pointed out to my builder that he could change the hoardings so that they are 1m set back. (This isn’t mentioned in the legislation, but is mentioned in the Council’s guidance.) He said he would charge me for the work and that it would cost more than the £195 licence fee. At the time, I thought it was a simple case of paying the licence fee, but this was before I discovered the requirement for £10M public liability insurance. I feel like the builder should have done better for me here. He is experienced enough to know about the licensing regime so really he should have known about this. When I challenged him on this, he said he had never worked in this London borough and that he thought the licence was only required in more central London boroughs. But googling other council’s websites, I think it is a fairly common requirement in many London boroughs. It just feels so unfair.