Adsibob

It's a shame I - or the professional company that designed and did my install - did not think about this in advance. My setup is incredibly cramped and I'm not sure I have enough space. I will post pictures later in case anybody can see a way of squeezing this in. I have the same MVHR machine as @Ultima357 so could follow his setup exactly I think particularly as I think our flow rates are the same, I'm also running at about 220m3 per hour.

yes, I'm pretty sure. Save that some air will get in when the front door (which is rather large) is opened.

Interesting. What does “do not use on box fans” mean at the end of that url?

I was surprised to smell smoke in my house today. It was only faint, but definitely smoke. Looking out the window confirmed that it was coming from the neighbour whose garden backs onto my adjacent neighbour’s garden. All my windows were closed but the MvHr was running as usual. Clearly my F7 filter isn’t doing enough. Googling around, I can’t seem to find any better than this. Could that be? Smoke is unusual, but smog isn’t given we live in London. Would be good to get as best protection as possible, given the pollution. My machine is a Brink Flair 400, fitted with an F7 filter between the air intake and the machine, and with a G4 filter to filter the extracted air before it hits the machine.

Ok, fair enough. I thought it was a bReg thing. But yeah, if it is planning, I would ignore it.

I’m not sure I agree. My inspector required me to evidence all manner of things before issuing my certificate. I had to supply documentary proof that I had installed toughened glass for one window and was made to replace a couple of doors because the glass within them was not fire rated. I can’t remember the full list, but it had at least 10 items on it requiring 10 different bits of paper. E.g. they wanted to see the commissioning certificate for the MVHR unit, another one for the sprinkler system.

well the middle one was retrofitted, in that originally it was just the top and bottom one and I complained about the door sagging and so they fitted an additional hinge. It's very odd, this website suggests that three hinges should be plenty as by my calculation the door weighs no more than 6.5kg and three hinges will do up to 12 kg: https://ea.blum.com/en/number-of-hinges/ Though that spec sheet does say that this is for doors up to 600mm in width and that doors should be higher than they are wide, and mine is almost 800mm wide and certainly much wider than it is is high. It's very frustrating, because our design was for 18mm thick doors, and it was only because the joinery insisted thicker would be sturdier that we went with a thicker door. I don't think there is space to fit a fourth hinge without flipping the door and redrilling 4 fresh hinge holes. But if I did this, would is certainly fix the issue?

no, the carcass is rock solid. It's all made of 26mm oak veneered MDF and solidly built.

These are the Blum hinges. All made by Blum, but middle one is slightly different to the other two - this middle one was the additional one they installed on the snagging visit a month or so ago. I have asked them to return to fix this issue, as well as a couple of others, but there’s not been a response, despite me chasing. It’s a shame the aftercare service is so poor.

Won’t the piece of wood just crash with the cabinet frame? Could I ask the joinery to cut the door so that instead of 26mm thick it is 18mm thick? That would remove about a third of the weight. Another solution is to find some sort of specialist hinge that could cope with this weight. Anyone have any experience of such hinges?

We have an MdF cabinet door that is 79cm wide and 39cm high, 26mm thick. It sags, presumably because the width of the door creates too much weight/moment for the hinges to support the door straight. i raised it with the joinery that made and installed this for us and they added an additional hinge, so that there are now three hinges. That has not made much difference, after a few days’ use it sags again and starts to hit the frame. I have adjusted the Blum hinges, but this also doesn’t seem to make much difference; it’s almost as if the hinges don’t have enough adjustment to them, but I suspect they weren’t designed for such a wide door. Photo below. Thoughts as to a possible fix which doesn’t involve cutting the door into two?

Wasn’t really worried about it now. But I was 4 years ago when i started researching it, and still was 3.5 years ago when I had to make the decision, so that’s why i went with gas. But everything is pretty much setup for converting to something greener in the future, so one day we will hopefully change it. Reading the news article I posted just reminded me of my worries…

Ok, good to know that when my gas boiler eventually needs replacing in 15 years or so, I will be able to find a near silent ASHP.

The main issues that put me off installing a heat pump in my renovated home was the noise and the cost. Both are discussed here: https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/27/pump-up-the-volume-the-trouble-with-noisy-heat-pumps Just wondering how those that have heat pumps here dealt with the noise issue and whether now that you have lived with your heat pump, particularly in summer, you are happy you made the decision to go with a heat pump.

You are probably right. But given it is a fire suppression system, and given my house is by far my largest asset, I probably shouldn't be doing anything that will invalidate the buildings and contents insurance.

You are held hostage forever. Otherwise you have to live with the bleeping alarm. Total gotcha for me. I think the service is about £160 a year with a 5 year “service plan”. It’s robbery, plain and simple.

Yes, it means it’s past its deadline for an annual service. Only way to switch it off is to get it serviced by imist at a massive cost. Otherwise known as daylight robbery.

In what sense? Our oak staircase is very quiet, only real noise is that there are a couple of treads which creak a little bit, but nothing major.

I spent a small fortune on my staircase. Three flights in solid oak, stained to match the other oak in our house. Looks great. Bank balance still hurting.

Why? What’s wrong with oak?

You could apply for retrospective planning, then if they reject you, you could appeal. I can’t really see any reason why a brick wall is preferred by them and it’s possible the appeals officer would not be able to spot the rationale for the presence either. Are you in a conservation area?

Not sure. Building regs notice was served when we started works in late 2020 and certificate was issued in March or April 2022, so whatever breaker was mandated by the regs which were current then.

Looks like an alien invasion to me.

I now understand the correct terminology to be “trip”.

Relatively new 1000W zanussi built in microwave. Is actually 2.5 years old or so, but is so crap we hardly use it, maybe 80 uses since installed at most. Today, for the first time ever, it lost power. I went to the consumer unit and saw that it had cause the dedicated fuse to “blow”/“switch”/“break” - I’m not sure of the technical term. Easily fixed, I just flicked the switch and it’s all working happily again, but I just wondered why this happened? There is also a fused switched spur between the CU and the microwave, local to the microwave - I guess this is additional safety.