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Go for two units. Run them very low when you don’t have guests and on low when you do. Do not retrofit. Much easier to get all the ducting in before you board up your walls and ceilings. The ducting design should really be done before you finalise your wall and ceiling positions, if possible. We had to drop a couple of ceilings to get around RSJs that our SE wasn’t happy for us to cut through. Other option is for SE to overspecify steels and approve the position and size of the cuts (usually 90mm diameter), and then your steel manufacturer can supply them ready-drilled. Posi joists also make life easier.

I will let others comment on the detail of your calcs, but on your temp question as long as you get the right mixer/manifold you should be able to run your UFH at whatever temp you want - within reason. I didn’t specify the manifold/pumps so my contractor installed fairly cheap stuff. The coldest water it will mix is 35C but that works just about ok for most of our floor surfaces. I’m sure you could get one that did 30C. That should be quite a bit cooler than 35C. i wouldn’t space the pipes too much as otherwise you will get cold spots. Better to play with diameter of pipes and temp of water.

Absolutely! The max flow rate of my Brink Flair 400 is 400m3/hour. Standard operating rate is 175m3, so just under 44%. It would definitely be audible at 65%. Remember that you will increase flow rates above your standard operating rate when you hit the boost switches, so you need plenty of spare capacity so that when boosting it isn't getting too close to 100%. My system is only audible when boosting and even then it is not too loud. Although you might be thinking it is overkill to have two units, I think this is an excellent idea. You can locate them in different places making for shorter duct runs. They will both run at such low rates that you'll get more longevity out of the units.

I'd had a similar idea, but unfortunately the shed supplier I'm using doesn't offer rooflights. It's a wooden roof with an acrylic felt. Probably a bit tricky to cut into without compromising the waterproofing.

Thanks, paint I was considering was something like this: https://www.powertoolsdirect.com/ronseal-10-year-weatherproof-wood-paint-grey-satin-2-5-litre Not sure if it is water based. There is also Ronseal Garden Paint, which is waterproof (see here) but not sure it is suitable as it requires any existing finishes to be sanded off, and I don't think I'd want to do that, as i've gone for the thinnest spec wood for the walls, only upgrading the floor, and want the protection of the base coat that's already been applied. The garden paint range is also recommended to be applied in triplicate! Can't be bothered with that.

About to place my order for a wooden shed. The T&Cs on the invoice state that all sheds are treated with a "base coat preservative; the manufacturer recommends an additional coat is applied within a month of installation". Provisional installation date is around 10th December. Which means I'd have to apply the additional coat in the middle of winter, when humidity levels are likely to be high. Does this matter? I was actually going to paint it with some grey paint that had some sort of rain protection built in. Should I delay installation to the end of winter so I can paint in early Spring? Can't really delay too much.

or get smart thermostats like those made by Tado. I can either control it in the room, like an old fashioned dumb thermostat (even with no internet) or i can load the app on my phone or my pc and control everything from there, including timetabling routines on different days, copying a routine from one day to another or from one thermostat to another. It also logs the temperature and humidity in each room that the thermostat is installed, and can do smart things like switch off automatically if someone opens a window/door or incorprorate heat up times into the routines using machine learning to gauge how long it takes to heat a room.

Yes, I went with Grohe for all but one bathroom, which has Vitra. That was because i wanted a matt black flush plate for that bathroom and Vitra did them for a mere £30. Seems to work ok, though it's probably only used at most once a day as not a main use toilet. Flush plate has nice matt finish to it which does not show finger print marks. I would avoid anything that is shiny, as it shows fingerprint marks. Of the grohe plates, some are shiny and really do show finger print marks, whereas some are not like their supersteel range. Even their cool sunrise, which is described as "brushed" is actually shiny.

Have you considered getting a few adaptors that can split the tube into two or three smaller ones, go through and then coalesce into one again. A 90mm diameter pipe should have the same flow as three 52mm diameter pipes, or thereabouts.

Has anybody calculated how much power they consume worrying about these things by posting on and reading this forum?

We have UFH on all three floors of house. Our build up on first floor is as follows: 18mm engineered oak floor 25mm cellecta XFLO boards (this is FF range, i.e. foil faced https://www.cellecta.co.uk/product/xflo-ff/ they do a similar range without the foil for bathrooms). We went with 25mm boards to accommodate 16mm diameter pipes. Smaller pipes will work with thinner boards. 22mm egger chipboard flooring joists. This worked out as quite a thick build up, but the system is really good. Much more responsive than I expected. Takes about an hour to boost the temp by the first degree, than another 40 minutes for second degree, and then another 30 minutes or so for third degree. Depends on how cold your room is to start though. Also very solid underfoot. We speced the extra dense XFLO boards for the area of the bathroom where we have the swimming pool enormous bath.

Yes, but over the life of the vehicle, the extra fuel costs of an AWD will probably be more than the cost of redoing the driveway. Plus the drive is simply not pleasant to use. If it was up to me solely, I would probably get an AWD and leave the driveway as is, but accept that in winter even an AWD might struggle to get up it. But SWMBO is really not happy with it and I now see where she is coming from.

With the pedestal system. What happens when it rains? I know there are gaps for water instead of grout, but with large tiles (such as the ones @Russdl has), don’t you end up with puddling of water in the middle of the tile? Or are they installed with a fall?

I think there would be uproar. Lots of people have built in bin storage. In any case, 75cm allows a bit extra.

Incidentally I test drove a new SUV today, and that had some clever anti roll system handbrake. But that won’t fix the fact that sometimes the car’s wheels spin when trying to get out of the drive. Okay, that’s only happened once, in rain, but it wasn’t even cold. In winter it will only be worse.

Indeed. I should emphasise that the only thing wrong with the driveway is the steepness of the slope. All other aspects work well.

I agree with iceverge. The reason for the bin only needs to be about 75cm wide maybe even a bit less. The overall width of the driveway is 3.7m at the top and 3.5m at the bottom (between planter and staircase). The width of the bin wheels is 58cm. So that is almost 1.5m width either side of the ramp for each wheel of the car!

Very happy to hear your suggestions, but we have a lot of constraints: 1) we don’t want to move the staircase 2) we don’t have anywhere else for the bins 3) with the bins in their existing position, we like the ramp to get the bins up 4) given the bike storage in the planter to the right of the plan drawing, ramp is also useful for the bike.

Just by way of update, we are going to go (or at least, try to go) for the sump plug access option: Now starts the hard part!!!

You could also consider a fire curtain in certain circumstances. Cheaper than sprinkler system, but more expensive than FDs. Yes, planners won’t care, but you will if you later realise there is a better use of space that requires you to amend your plans. I wouldn’t rush this stage, it’s REALLY important.

This shape building means your ratio of perimeter to volume is quite high. In other words, every internal room of the house has at least two external walks and in some case three or four. That will make it less efficient from a heating perspective. But if you invest in a lot of insulation, you will be fine, just giving you the heads up that you want to be relying on at least 125mm of EWI. Others will advise better than me.

My gardener is helping me with this and he's concerned that actually we need to build up the sub-base a bit higher given we plan on raising the ground level when we lay turf by adding a couple of inches of topsoil in the future. So for the bottom of the 40mm shed base to be level with the ground, we're going to have to build up the sub ground area by almost 10cm. Should i build a wooden frame, fill it with sub base and then compact it, or will it compact without the frame retaining it on the sides? This is all feeling very over the top.

Thanks everyone. Hmmm, now I need to find some scaffold boards. Building works finished about 6 months ago... so not much left on site.

I need to carry some 50 wheel barrow's worth of soil and MOT down the side alley of my house. At one point, there is a 28cm drop and i need a decent ramp that will carry the weight of one wheel barrow. I was just going to use some spare plyboard (two sheets, doubled up, with one overlapping the other to create a slight diagonal, supported by some sand bags underneath), but it turns out I don't have any left and given the cost of ply I thought I may as well buy a proper ramp as it would have uses in the future. Was flabbergasted that Screwfix didn't have anything for less than £250. Found this on amazon which is closer to my budget: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Range-B5249-Folding-Motorcycle/dp/B076CM3NPS/ref=sr_1_12?crid=1RXLPZKDT9Z4H&keywords=ramp&qid=1667576923&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI2LjgwIiwicXNhIjoiNi4wNCIsInFzcCI6IjUuMTAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=ramp%2Caps%2C79&sr=8-12 Anyone think it will work, or will it be annoying that it only really holds the wheel barrow, with little space to walk on? Any better suggestions?

I’m fairly sure our rainwater off our roofs and patio are pumped into the sewer, yes. Where else would it go? I should clarify that we were renovating a 1930s semi so it probably had a combined system as opposed to separate rainwater and and sewage channels. But I'm not sure to be honest. Anyone know how i could check?