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I’ve found one that can do an infinite loop!!! https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/22036966963?iid=384186148688 £5 cheaper on Amazon.

Please explain. I have a system boiler with a Unvented HW Cylinder. I thought the secondary loop is basically like an extension to the cylinder, effectively bringing the source of HW closer to where it is needed, in my case most of the sinks/basins and the two bath tubs (not the showers). So pump runs fora minute or two and heats up the pipe. Pipe stays hot for a few minutes. So why would you need to run the pump all day long. As long as you run it long enough to keep the pipe warm, surely it is doing it’s job of giving you near instantaneous warm water at each outlet connected to it. If you want hot water, won’t the warm water run hotter very quickly because it is already warm to start with (other than dead legs, but I’ve tried to minimise those)???

Thanks for asking @Shire2020. We move in a couple of days time. I asked the builder to retile the 0.75.m2 or so he got wrong, and he accepted it was wrong and redid it. He still has a wall to re-paper and a room to repaint (long story… but luckily this time it’s not my fault and I’m not having to pay for it). Apart from that, and apart from the vast amounts of missing joinery (we got defrauded by a joiner and haven’t managed to replace the missing joinery items yet), the inside of the house is looking great and although I’m dreading the unpacking, once we manage to unpack, I’m looking forward to living in the place. The outside of the house is looking pretty awful. A lot of external render still hasn’t been finished, the driveway hasn’t been laid yet, no rear patio, garden still looks like the builder’s dumping tip and we don’t have a front door. But I’m hoping once we move in, in a couple of days’ time the builder can focus on the outside and get it all done for when the front door arrives at the end of May. We will still be missing a fully functioning kitchen, various wardrobes and other joinery items (as well as a massive deposit the fraudster joiner has taken), but at least we won’t be paying two sets of bills and pissing rent down the toilet, and can start saving up for some joinery.

Based on what others on this forum have said (I think @PeterW or @Mr Punter, whereas I think @Bitpipe’s is activated by PIR) running it all day is unnecessarily wasteful of electricity for the pump AND heat loss from the pipe), whereas running it intermittently will keep energy costs down, whilst keeping the secondary loop pipe warm. My secondary loop is made from butyl and has some insulation on it (though not the best insulation, unfortunately) so I’m hoping that by experimenting with different settings I can find a ratio of on/off per hour that keeps it warm without wasting too much energy.

The pump for my secondary loop plugs into a regular 13A socket. The electrician recommended I use a smart plug with it, so that I can set up a routine like 4 minutes on out of every 12 minutes for the hours that we are in the house and awake. Something like a TP Link Kasa plug would probably be able to do that, but I'm thinking it would be better to have something that doesn't rely on wifi, that way the secondary loop doesn't depend on Virgin Media, which are pretty unreliable. I have a basic rotary timer that I picked up in aldi for £4, but it can only do units of 15 minutes, which won't work. I think I need something much more intermitent than that, like 4min/12min or 5min/15min. For those that have installed a a secondary loop, what timer did you use for your pump and what settings did you set it to?

We are laying a driveway made out of basalt setts, 100x100x50mm. So I think this means grout will be 50mm deep. The supplier of the setts was recommending annepoxy resin, but I wasn’t fully clear on why? What are the pros and cons of expiry resin vs cement based mortar/grout for laying setts? The joint line we will go for will be about 12mm wide.

I don’t suppose you remember the name of the supplier? R are looking at a Skovby SM33 table (round that extends to sort of round, incredible engineering) but the prices in the UK seem very high.

I realised that all along the wall where we want to hang paintings we will have a Credenza that is almost 600mm deep, with plenty of power supplies, so plenty of opportunity to put in a couple of discreet up lighters on that, rather than spotlights which will blind people.

This is very helpful, thank you! If I mounted the painting 50cm higher and used a honeycomb 12 degree gu10, wouldn’t that solve most of the glare issue?

We're about to move in, our second fix electrics was completed a while back and almost all walls are now sealed and finished, so there is not much scope for tweaking the lighting. We used an LED strip light across the whole of a wall, slightly recessed in the ceiling. It looks really nice, but doesn't really iluminate enough to see a painting properly. We don't have much artwork, but there are one or two paintings we would like to see a bit better. One option we have is to replace some downlighters with some double spotlights, with one of the two spots pointing downwards and the other of the two spots pointed at 90 degrees to the ceiling in the direction of the painting. I'm just wondering whether this will cause glare when standing near the painting and looking in the direction of the spot. The ceiling is 3.1m high, and the spot would therefor project from a height of about 3m. The light would need to travel about 5m to hit the painting, but that would be hung midway up the 3m wall, possibly fractionally higher. The painting is about 90cm high and 75cm wide. Would a narrow beam angle GU10 help reduce the glare? I've found 12 degrees and 24 degrees. Would using a honeycomb GU10 help reduce glare?

It might be maple. Not sure. Here is a photo:

I’m looking at buying a second hand table; I’ve found the one I want (is about 40 years old) but the colour might be out by a few shades. Is it straightforward to sand off the finish, and re-stain and re-oil it with a different stain?

I’m looking to get a canopy to put up above our side door so that the two steps we have outside the door stay a little bit dryer. Our side door is 90cm wide and opens inwards. The side door is also in the alleyway between two semi detached houses only 190cm apart, so it’s fairly sheltered already. So I’m thinking the canopy doesn’t need to be huge. Maybe 120cm wide, with a projection of about 80cm. Does that sound about right? i found some cheap ones here: https://www.manomano.co.uk/p/120cm-black-door-canopy-transparent-awning-shelter-front-back-porch-outdoor-shade-patio-roof-16314208?model_id=16314197 but wondering what the catch is. Is the fact that most of these are made of transparent pvc likely to mean that it will get dirty/green with algae, which will then be visible from underneath?

Indeed. I think this has been my main problem on my build. I’mroo much of a perfectionist and control freak for my own good, and lose sight of what’s important. I think I will just get the CAT5E cable. It will be 2m of CAT5E patched to 16m of CAT6, so can’t see it making a huge difference. And I’ve got 10 to 20 years to knit that cover for when the “future” arrives and we are all streaming 256k content

I want some credit for the (half) idea. Joint venture partners?

Dunelm… yuck.

Sounds about right. We had an architect who also specialises in interior design. And we ended up spending a fortune on clay works. But it looks amazing, and I never would have learnt about it otherwise. If you have the money to do it, i think it’s worth doing, and also integrating it at an early stage as it really is difficult to separate “interior design” from architecture. Everything is connected.

So we have a provisional move in date which is in early May. Let's see if it happens... already today I've spotted a glaringly obvious and stupid mistake. The tiler, who was clearly instructed by the architect in my presence (and in the presence of the foreman) as to how to tile a small area of tiles, spelling out the setting point for him, has somehow ignored those instructions and tiled, grouted (including with the necessary tile trim) incorrectly. So now I have to toss up whether to insist it is redone, which will waste half a day or so, or live with it. It's just so prominently wrong. So annoying.

Anyone know if the recommended 150mm distance can be reduced when there is a french drain immediately next to the external face of the wall, such that rainwater shouldn't splash as high as 150mm because it is hitting gravel in the french drain?

Interesting. But isn’t another benefit of Cat6 that they are better at handling interference than Cat5e cables? I’m not sure what kind of interference I might experience in this particular situation, maybe none?

This is potentially an excellent solution. Only issue is that the strip lights this works with are low voltage ones, whereas my power supply there is high voltage. Is it complicated to install a transformer?

My connection speed is 350 Mbps with a 40Mbps upload. I regularly need to upload and download several GBs of files, and doing video calls at the same time. So don’t really want bottlenecks anywhere.

I need a couple of 2m LAN cables that are going to be very prominently installed somewhere. There appear to be plenty of companies offering 3 core electrical cable in all manner of fabric finishes, but the only one I have found that does ethernet cable is a company that does this: https://www.creative-cables.co.uk/5-fabric-cables/s-1/subcategories-lan_cables but the fabric colours are not right and in any case they only do Cat5E which is obviously going to slow things down.

something like this: https://www.smart-light.co.uk/product/20w-led-grill-fitting-with-samsung-chip-2ft-60cm/

I have a small eaves space that is about 4'6" high. Electrician has put in wiring so that we can have light there to be able to use it for storage (it is about 6' deep). The wiring comes out right at the apex of the eaves and it would be great if I could find a long and narrow light fitting that has a very low profile so that I don't lose so much of the 4'6" height. I found this, which has dimensions of 630x28x44mm and so is a possibility but two things are putting me off. the 44mm downwards projection is more than ideal, although query whether it will really make a difference. It seems to have an awful energy rating (E). I won't be using this light that often, but it seems a shame to install it when everything else in the house is much more energy efficient. Anyone suggest something better?