Adsibob

This is nice, but it has a pretty noticeable flaw in my opinion. Why is that drawn curtain visible from the outside? The glazing should have been made smaller, or a recess should have been designed in on the inside for most of the curtain to draw into. That just looks ugly from the outside and increases glazing cost and solar gain unnecessarily. Otherwise very nice house!

Fair enough. That does sound like a waste.

Architecturally, it’s difficult to waste space. An architect sculpts space into positive and negative space, and hopefully creates something that is both highly functional and very pleasing to the eye and relates to is environment in a meaningful way - that is what I would define as good design. In my view, negative space is almost as important as positive space, sometimes more so.

Yes, I agree with you. Particularly as I have very little PIR as part of my roof makeup.

That seems so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t think to do it!

Or just get some ubiquiti kit and decide how much bandwidth he gets and when.

With a decent router, you should be able to limit how much bandwidth is used by the Xbox. Pretty sure ubiquiti’s dream router does this. It was selling for about £170 on their EU store recently. I’ve been very impressed by how much better it is than the so called Virgin Superhub. When comparing ISPs make sure you look at latency and upload speeds as well as download.

Really? Why do you say that? The conclusion I form when I read the links I’ve posted is that PIR is far inferior to wood fibre for keeping a building cool. And my real life experience of the two materials, albeit anecdotal, matches that: Our loft is warmer than ideal for use as a study in the summer, but compared to my parents’ place, where the loft is only insulated with PIR and no wood fibre, it’s completely different. Ignoring heat wave type temperatures, are when the maximum temp outside is 28c, I only start to get a little uncomfortable at about 4pm or 5pm, depending on the day, whereas in my parents’ loft it tends to be uncomfortable all the time, even outside of summer. Both houses are 1930s semis with the same orientation, only 2 miles apart, so pretty good comparables, although my loft was done this year, whereas theirs was done in 2016. Not sure if building regs changed in that time. My skylight is also quite a bit bigger than theirs, which would expose mine to more solar gain. I’m hoping that once I install external roller blinds on my large Velux, and duette blinds on the west facing window, it will be much cooler.

PIR certainly has its uses. It is cheaper than wood fibre, and will achieve better u values for a given budget and a given depth of build up. The only real compromise is on decrement delay, and sustainability. If I had more space available, I probably would have swapped out my thin layer of PIR backed plasterboard for more wood fibre products, and passed the U value required by our BCO with no PIR insulation at all. But alas we weren’t properly building from scratch, we were renovating an existing 1930s semi and we didn’t have an unlimited budget.

Yes i think so, this site says: "insulation materials offering a high decrement ‘factor’ include cellulose fibre (7.3 hr), wood fibre insulation board (11.3 hr); whereas materials with a low decrement factor would include low-density mineral fibre (3.7 hr) and polyurethane/polystyrene." I appreciate polyisocyanurate is not exactly the same as polyurethane/polystyrene, but they are similar enough for present purposes. This site gives technical specs of wood fibre and of PIR as follows: Wood fibre Thermal conductivity/ λ (lambda)  W / m . K = 0.038 Thermal resistance at 100mm K⋅m2/W = 2.5 Specific Heat Capacity J / (kg . K)= 2100 Density kg / m3 = 160 Thermal diffusivity m2/s = n/a Embodied energy MJ/kg = n/a PIR Thermal conductivity/ λ (lambda)  W / m . K = 0.023–0.026(18) Thermal resistance at 100mm K⋅m2/W = 4.50 Specific Heat Capacity J / (kg . K) = n/a Density kg / m3 = 30 – 40 Thermal diffusivity m2/s = n/a Embodied energy MJ/kg = 101 (17) Vapour permeable: No That site also has a page which states the following: Thermal Diffusivity Thermal Diffusivity ties the above factors together into an equation that measures the ability of a material to conduct thermal energy relative to its ability to store thermal energy. In effect it is a measure of thermal inertia or ‘buffering’. The equation is: Thermal diffusivity = thermal conductivity / specific heat capacity x density Examples: Rigid polyurethane insulation has a thermal diffusivity of approximately 4.46 x 10-7 m2/s Timber fibre insulation has a thermal diffusivity of approximately 1.07 x 10-7 m2/s Copper has a thermal diffusivity of around 1.11 × 10−4 m2/s In a material with high thermal diffusivity, heat moves rapidly through it because the substance conducts heat quickly relative to its volumetric heat capacity or 'thermal bulk'. In the above three examples we can see that heat races through copper while it moves more rapidly through rigid polyurethane than it does through timber fibre board." (my emphasis) Again, I appreciate polyisocyanurate is not exactly the same as polyurethane, but similar enough. To do the proper comparison, one would need to do the decrement delay cals. We did them and found that PIR wasn't as good as wood fibre. If you're still in doubt, see this site, which says: "For a given U value, wood fibre has almost twice the decrement layer of mineral wool and at least 65 per cent more than PIR. So essentially if you have two walls that have the same U value, it will take twice as long for the heat to get a wood fibre wall as it will through a wall using mineral wool. How that translates to a building is that during the summer you end up with a building that essentially doesn’t overheat. It maintains its internal temperature and stays very stable internally. In volume for volume, flexible wood fibre stores about 12 times more heat than fibreglass and rigid wood fibre boards store about 12 times more heat than PIR, and around 15 times more heat than EPS. So again, on every metric the wood fibre is outperforming the synthetic materials. This creates buildings that are very stable in the summer. You’re reducing your overheating risk, so you’re making the building much safer for occupants. Also that heat absorption lowers heat demand. It can absorb heat during the day and slowly release it during the evening, so again it’s keeping the internal environment much more stable. It’s ability to manage moisture also preserves timber, so wood fibre is able to buffer humidity in walls and even out humidity so that you don’t get accumulations in existing timber. It prevents mould growth and it enables safe refurbishment of building." Note that the insulation in my roof has a significant amount of wood fibre, as well as some PIR. My issues though are that I've not yet blocked out the solar gain coming in through glazing - on the to do list.

It seems i'm the odd one out as I'm not happy with the outcome of our hob extractor. We've been living in our house since early May and cook most nights. We have a very expensive Novy extractor fitted directly above our induction hob, probably only 55cm distance between the hob and the extractor. It can vent outside, but as we have MVHR we bought the carbon filter recirculation kit and so it just vents out the bottom of the adjacent wall unit, onto the worktop that is about 50cm to the right of the hob. It's very powerful but a bit noisy unfortunately, which is a shame because the reason we decided to splash out £1500 on a Novy hood and recirculation kit was because it reviewed very well as one of the quietest extractor hoods on the market. I'm now realising that as most of the noise comes from the outlet, rather than the extractor fan itself, if this vented out of the house (which would be easy for us to do as the hob is against an external wall) instead of directly onto our kitchen worktop it would be very quiet. Another gripe is that the instructions for the carbon recirculation filter recommend leaving the extractor running for 10 minutes after cooking so that the filter gets cleaned. The default settings actually run it for another 10 minutes after you switch it off, though this can be overridden by pressing the off button again. In terms of smells, if somebody is cooking, even though the Novy is on, I can smell food as I walk down our stairwell, which is at the opposite end of the house from the hob. The bottom of the stairs is probably about 9 or 10m away from the hob, although it's all open plan so no barrier in between those two points. Overall, very disappointed with the performance in terms of smell management and noise. MVHR boost will clear the smell pretty quickly, and we have fitted a boost button right by the hob for this reason, but I didn't want to rely on MVHR when the Novy was so bloody expensive. An elica hood would have cost half as much or even less. Seriously considering ruining the air tightness of our house and drilling through the wall to just vent outwards as this will negate most of the noise and probably improve smell extraction as I can't believe the carbon filter is filtering 100% of the smell, otherwise I wouldn't smell it on the other side of the house.

@Babaki think you’ve gone for the right choice. The reality is that your house is well insulated AND airtight. The airtightness will make a big difference as with no draghts, it will take much longer for the house to lose heat once it’s warm. Your avoiding short cycling, which is good. Worst case scenario it takes a bit longer to heat up, but you can compensate for that with a good timer system/smart thermostat.

I think current predictions are that the cap will be 70.34p per kWh of electricity. So a 36kwh/a difference only works out at £25.30 or so. It will take you 13.2 years to recover the £330 premium on the more expensive fridge. I went for a Bosch which consumes 115kwh/a and isn’t as expensive as Liebherr: https://www.johnlewis.com/bosch-serie-6-kir81afe0g-integrated-fridge/p4979347?sku=238631123&s_ppc=2dx92700070984466752&tmad=c&tmcampid=2&gbraid=0AAAAAD2el1w3YFeRCXRBojwHqHWJ3vwT2&gbraid=0AAAAAD2el1w3YFeRCXRBojwHqHWJ3vwT2&gclid=CjwKCAjw0dKXBhBPEiwA2bmObfpkE5sgAU2rZ8FjCITU4KogT4c-benv_9ctZXZUHUeT4SlLi30A0RoCld4QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Liebherr tend to occupy the more premium end of the fridge market, so you should get quieter and slightly better energy performance… at a cost. If you can afford it, go for it! Just check the capacity is enough for you as often the quietness is achieved by putting in more sound insulation at the expense of storage space.

Hmm, wish I'd noticed this before i insulated most of the exposed pipes!

+1. i suggest you find a different installer, preferably one with a brain.

Like the real BoJo, my avatar creation was very much deliberate. There is nothing accidental about this man. He plays the fool very well, but in reality he is an evil calculating sh!t.

We had a new boiler installed in December, as part of a complete re-plumb of the whole house. New water cylinder was installed in Feb, we moved in in May. I believe when we moved in the pressure gauge on the boiler was showing 1.2. Last month (early July) I noticed it had dropped to 1.0, but didn’t think much of it as the boiler, a Veissman Vitodens system boiler is designed to operate at 1.0 to 1.5 bar. Today it is 0.9 bar. Should I be worried? Can’t see any signs of leaks. There were a couple of green spots near junctions on some copper pipes, but I’m not sure this is evidence of a leak? Everything was dry to the touch when I was insulating the pipes, and although on occasion I had to be a bit firm handed to squeeze in the insulation I wouldn’t have damaged any of the pipe work with that as I wasn’t that firm.

Why do you say that?

I would pay @Carrerahill to paint it.

Ditto! Even the cinematography and soundtrack for the river scene (yes, the submarine does a 200m trip down a river) was excellent. The video makes building one of these things look so easy, but I suspect it’s not!

Indeed! You would have thought the Ethernet version should be cheaper as less complexity, no need to make and supply a battery or wifi module. I had thought that maybe Ring were taking advantage of PoE being a relatively new technology, but Google tells me PoE has been around as a standard since 2003! So it’s just raw exploitation.

this suggests I've really been short changed, as the connector i've been supplied is less than an imperial inch, let alone a BSP inch which according to this URL is 33.25!

I spent an absolute fortune on widening our connection to Thames Water. I was told by them I'd have over 60L a minute. I thought that was an exaggeration, particularly because when I asked them to confirm it in writing they wouldn't. In general flow rates in the house are fine. I've not measured, but everything except one fitting seems to work as it should. But our shower is a rain shower and the experience of showering under it is not great. So that's where an extra litre or two per min would be nice. (Appreciate this is controversial in current drought times.) Only other option is to change the limit on the PRV. I think it's currently set to 3.0 bar. We could possibly move it up to 3.2 bar, but I doubt we will get much more than that as we never had more than 3.2 prior to the TW connection upgrade and I don't think my issue is lack of pressure, it's lack of flow which is obviously different.

So what else is it meant to be? The shoe size? Bloody ridiculous. More seriously though, could this be having an impact on flow rates? It’s just a 1cm long fitting, but for that 1cm length, the diameter of the pipe is less than the rest of the system.