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I see that Hwam's stoves come with a "semi autopilot" system as standard and then you have to pay an extra £600 or so to upgrade to the fully automatic version, which gets you the temperature sensor that links to your phone/wifi etc. I'm thinking the full autopilot partly takes out some of the old world beauty of a wood burning stove, in that relying on your phone to message you when you need to load more fuel into the stove is a gizmo that just gets in the way of my idea of relaxing by the fire... ie phone off! We don't plan on running the stove every night. It will be more of a two nights a week kind of "special" thing for us. In your recommendation @Trw144 were you referring to the semi autopilot or the upgraded with bells and whistles version?

Just giving this a bump in case 2.5 years later someone has an answer to it.

I am looking at the Veissman Vitodens-200W, which is described as “The boiler's special design ensures the very low operating noise of 39 dB(A) maximum (26 kW)”.

Thanks @volcane. Yeah, to be honest that put me off as well, particularly most decent gas boilers come with a 7 or in some cases a 10 year warranty now. What did you go for in the end?

Yes, an Ochsner. Includes installation of the unit externally and compressor internally. Only unit I know of to operate very quietly, extremely efficiently and have a build quality that means it will last and last. I'm very much open to cheaper alternatives, but I don't want to install something that I'm going to hear, whether in my house or in my garden.

Alas, no. For what I wanted it was either £3k for a gas system, or £17k for a green system. I just can’t make that fit my increasingly strained budget. It’s a shame because I just don’t think the government’s announcement yesterday about hitting C02 abatement targets by 2035 is realistic without introducing a hydrocarbon tax, and bringing in tax incentives for green energy. I just fear it’s too late for my project. Unless I install a gas boiler now and accept that I will have to change to something greener when it packs up in 10 to 15 years time, having damaged the planet in the interim.

Looks amazing. That's exactly the look we are going for. We won't have curved glass (because alas there's no curve in our building) but otherwise that looks spot on! We might try and get a brass handle instead of black.

Thanks @pocster, i've reached out to them but looking at their website I think they are too contemporary for what we are looking for. We are trying to emulate the crittall style but with modern security. I had thought Fabco could help us as they do crittall style steel doors with multipoint locking and PAS24 certification, but for some reason their doors must open outwards, which is just weird for a front door.

I'm looking to buy a double glazed steel door with sidelights and top lights that looks like this drawing. I've got a couple of quotes but none of them are PAS24 rated (although they can provide toughened - but not laminated - glass and they can also provide multipoint locking). Based on my reading of Approved Document Q, it doesn't have to be PAS24 rated but it does need to have one of the other security ratings mentioned as an alternative to PAS24 which are one these: STS 201 Issue 5:2013 LPS 1175 Issue 7:2010 security rating 2 STS 1175: issue 3: 2011 burglary rating 2 LPS 2081 issue 1:2015 security rating B. Does anybody know if toughened glass and multipoint locking is sufficient to satisfy one of these ratings? If it is is not sufficient, can anybody recommend a door company that could supply what I need? A few people here have recommended Lathams but they make doors with much less glass than steel, so not quite the style I'm looking for.

yes, the rear sliding door to the garden.

My front door entrance will be slightly raised above the external FFL of the driveway. How much has net yet been determined. Going to have an ACO drain all along the front of the house. What is optimal in terms of how the internal raised FFL relates to the external FFL? Should I just have a step down, or should I build a ramp sloping downwards that acts like a bridge over the ACO drain - or is this overkill? The reason I'm thinking of a ramp is that it's easier to get our son's pushchair in and out of the house. He'll be out the pushchair in a year or so, but even then could be useful for heavy luggage etc.

He’s fully bricked it up. BCO said “where is the cavity closer” builder said “whoops”. But architect says thatwe are putting a double glazed thermally broken sliding door unit there, there is no need for a cavity closer. Not sure whether BCO is being OTT.

So my builder somehow forgot to put cavity closers into the brick piers either side of a large gap where we are fitting sliding doors. The plan is to use an angle grinder to cut into the bricks to fit them. The scars from this operation will be concealed by the frame of the sliding door, which is almost 30cm thick, but I’m still wondering whether there is some less dramatic way of retrofitting the cavity closers. Any ideas?

Pull out spice rack? Pull out tray storage? Non-pull out tray storage? Pull out tea towel towel rack? In our situation, this is a 150mm gap right by the kitchen sink, so the towel rack would be most convenient , but does it properly dry when it is concealed within a unit? The other option is to make our sink bigger, but we’ve already allowed 800mm, any bigger seems enormous.

Has anyone tiled a wet room floor with R10 rated “anti slip” tiles and then regretted not using an R11 rated tile? We have never had a wet room before, so not sure how important it is to go for the higher anti slip rated tiles. We have found a tile that we really like and can afford, but it is only rated R10. The salesperson in the showroom said that is absolutely fine, but is it? Don’t want to slip!!

Further update: after a few days of vague info verging on pessimism from a leading stove supplier, I finally spoke to someone there who was more optimistic he could find a solution and hook me up with an experienced installer who would certify the installation. I will keep my fingers crossed he comes up with something soon, as builder wants to pour the concrete slab and start the floor build up next week, so if we do end up having to route the direct air supply under the FFL, i need to know asap!

It's a pitched roof, but the drawing just shows a section cutting through the lowest point of the roof (ie the air inlet would come out the rear first floor wall, 10cm or 20cm above the lowest point of the sloped roof covering the ground floor extension). I thought wind would help stoke the fire, but if I'm wrong about that am I better routing the air supply tube under the floor to the side of the house, which is basically the alleyway between two houses (where each house has it's side passage access from the front of the house to the rear garden)? I had originally discounted that as a possibility because it's some 8m away and although there would be nothing blocking the air supply vent, it's fairly sheltered so I assumed it would get enough air. But you know what they say about assumptions ...

Yes, please see below. Since drawing this I've realised I need to either move the stove to the right so that it is closer to the Chimney, or create a new flue exit point for the exhaust, as this drawing shows the horizontal height of the exhaust flue that is diagonal as being more than 20% of the overall height of the exhaust flue, which i understand is not good. But the image helps show the general idea, particularly in respect of the (blue) direct air supply. Simple physics would suggest there should be no problem with having a supply of direct air coming from above if it is much smaller in height that the exhaust flue, but clearly Drugasar don't want to take the risk.

Thanks @Trw144. Funnily enough we've just had a look at the poujoulait system. My gut reaction is that with either the Schiedel or the Poujoulait it seems crazy to draw direct air downwards over such a long distance, and that my original idea of taking direct air from the external wall accessed by going up one level was always going to be better, but unfortunately I've yet to find a stove manufacturer that will happily confirm their stove would work that way. E.g. here is the response the vendor of a Dik Guerts I'm looking at received from Drugasar (the Dik Geurts UK importer)

So I've now heard back from Schiedel. The only option they can offer us for a standalone stove is to go for either a Sirius or a Sirius 3G. Both options described in the attached brochure. This is not really the look we had intended, though we are trying to see if it will work. The main issue is the stove is really quite high. But if it reviews well, we could probably be persuaded as it does solve a lot of issues for us, given how far our stove location is from an external wall to link up the direct air supply. @dpmiller I'm curious to know which stoves you opted for. It's a shame Schiedel don't sell their Permeter Smooth Air Chimney technology for use with any direct air supply stove. Does anyone know of a competitor who does? @Trw144 do you know? 940003846_Sirius_Stove_System_Brochure_16-12-20.pdf

In my quest to hack a bog standard kitchen into something more fancy, instead of having the regular plinth to match the rest of the kitchen, we want it to be brass. The downsides of brass are that it might get scuffed easily when people knock into it with their shoes and I also imagine it's going to be quite expensive as we need about 12m by 10cm of it, although it would be pretty thin as it has to be flexible enough to bend into four right angled curves for the bit that goes around our island. It's structure would just be the plinth that is supplied by the kitchen company. Has anyone sourced such a piece of brass, if so where from? Would an alternative be to paint the plinth with some sort of gold paint. Has anybody done that before. Does it look good, or do I need to powder coat it?

Granite and marble are natural materials so although they look beautiful they do absorb liquids, which mean they do stain. Vendors will tell you that it has been sealed blah blah blah, but in my experience those seals rarely last, and even if it's possible to reseal, by the time you've noticed it's usually already stained. Wood is the only other natural material (apart from maybe slate) which is worth considering. That will also stain, but it is easier to care for if you have the discipline of regularly treating it with boiled linseed oil (a gentle sand and a coat of the oil once every 6 months should do it). I would still never lay a wooden worktop around a sink though. Worktops are really an example of you get what you pay for. If you are prepared to invest the £££ the man made composites like Dekton and Silestone are really incredible products that can almost look natural but have the benefits of man made products. Dekton in particularly is virtually bomb proof.

I tend to use www.soundstop.co.uk for all sound insulation queries and issues. They have products to suit all budgets. Slightly above mid price, is a sand filled board called an SBx board (https://www.soundstop.co.uk/soundproofing/soundproofing-floors/SBX-boards-solution4.php). This is really clever because the lattice that holds the sand is in a zig zag shape so it deflects the sound into the board where it hits more sand.

1. Pavers will be most expensive but give you a nice look. Concrete is cheaper. A halfway house is to get the companies that do concrete and then somehow mark it with a stencil or something to make it look like pavers. It is a pretty clever effect and gives you the best of both worlds, though if not done well it can look a bit tacky. Gravel is the cheapest. The low cost of gravel and the potential security benefits (it makes anoise when somebody steps on it) are its main advantages. It looks nice too. But gravel has a big disadvantage: even if you dig a trench for it and apply an edging strip to try and contain it, it gets all over the place eventually. So if you have gravel, be prepared for that and maybe consider whether you'll mind and if you will, whether you'll have time to sweep it, reposition the stray stones. 2.Pass. 3. I would definitely keep the garden. It's a nice feature, adds greenery and gives a calming and balancing affect to the view of the driveway. If you were to get rid of it you would just have a car park in front of your house. Don't worry about stray roots growing into neighbour's land. That's not your problem. 4.Probably not much you can do other than try and replace them with manhole covers that is coloured the same colour as your final driveway. 5. Pass. I'm due to do mine at the end of the summer and will let you know.

I need some concealed cisterns and frames for wall hung toilets. I'm considering the Geberit Duofix with 8cm Sigma cistern shown below, as if I understand the product correctly, this will enable me to mount my wall hung toilet onto a thinner stud wall. Is there any disadvantage to this? Compared to the deeper 12cm version, the extra 4cm of space in the bathroom will come in handy, but at what cost? The waste pipe would go through the floor and then have to travel horizonally about 170cm to get to an external wall where it will connect with the main sewage pipe. I have posi joists so I'm hoping it won't be too tricky.