Adsibob

Ah, now I'm confused. I've purchased door casings like this: https://www.toolsandtimber.co.uk/oak-single-door-casing-20mm-thickness-loose-stops In addition I was going to purchase an FD30 door and the intumescent strips and architraves. I had thought all of this will combine together to make an FD30 door, but I think I'm now realising that this won't be able to conceal the intumescent strips in a rebate. Have I bought the wrong thing?

Is a 32mm casing a BRegs requirement for FD30?

Yes, I'm buying intumescent strips which we will fit. But the door lining and architrave are just standard. Is that okay?

What makes a doorframe FD30?

I’m not sure your house insurer cares. All you need to do is make sure that you answered all the underwriting questions honestly. The majority of houses in the UK probably don’t comply with current building regs, so i can’t see how that is relevant to insurance.

I’m oscillating between trying not to panic, and panicking. Progress is being made, but nowhere nearly enough for us to be in anytime soon. First fix electrics is mostly done. Apart from the UFH on first and second floors, first fix plumbing is also mostly done, although the UVC still needs to be commissioned. At least the boiler was commissioned so we have had the screed heating on for the last two weeks. The kitchen and all the appliances bar a pesky Zanussi microwave that the supplier didn’t manage to get is all on site, but it hasn’t been installed yet, not even unpacked to check it is all there. About half of the plastering has been done, and a mist coat even got applied to the two main rooms on the top floor. This is ironic, because the top floor is the least crucial for us. We need the ground and first floor done so that we can move in. I’ve signed a contract with a joinery about 3 weeks ago and paid the deposit for them to buy all the materials, they are expecting to have the bits we have ordered done by late March. None of that will really prevent us from moving in, but I doubt we will be otherwise ready before then anyway. Some of the external wall insulation has also gone up, but otherwise there is very little progress on externals. Still no progress has been made with drainage, with the pump station we have for an element of our drainage or with the hard standing for the driveway. The builder also missed the opportunity to pour our external screed when the weather was right for it in October/early Nov. It is much warmer now than it was for most of November, so I’m wondering whether we will get a chance to pour it before winter is over. The staircase is due to be installed in mid February. So much so to do!!!

You lost the bet @Big Jimbo We are still nowhere close.

Why? What’s the advantage of this approach?

I thought it was bad practice to tile onto plaster? This issue came up on my build this week when the plasterers plastered the bathrooms and in one bathroom they plastered two walls which are due to be tiled floor to ceiling. I thought it was a mistake, as i thought tiles need something more solid than plaster, and if the grout were ever to fail, it risks the plaster getting wet and failing.

I don’t think it is way too much. If he is award winning, then he is in demand, and if he has direct experience in your area, that is also valuable. But I think you need to make sure that the plans he is going to prepare for the tendering stage are really detailed, and clearly show most of the essentials, like build ups of walls and roofs. I found that our tender pack, which comprised 48 pages, was not detailed enough. We just didn’t give the builder all the info for him to quote in full. Much better not to rush the tender docs. Planning on the other hand does not need to be that detailed. So I think of the £15k, I would want a significant chunk allocated to the tender drawings.

There is NO vat on import duties. They are separate taxes.

I had a concrete base for a low table cast in concrete. From a bird’s eye view it is basically a U shape, with 90 degree corners, or a square with one side missing, except the back side projects out. Each side is about 8.5cm to 10cm thick and it is 40cm high. Before they poured the concrete into the plywood frame that had been built for it, we put some rebar in to strengthen the 90 degree corners. It’s possible that the height is a bit short, about 1cm to 2cm too short. On top of this U shape we are putting a steel plate, and on top of the steel plate, a heavy wood burning stove, although there is support for the stove from the fact that one of the “sides” of this U shape is almost directly underneath the stove, slightly off Center to allow space for the incoming air supply pipe. My question is whether I can add another 1cm to 2cm of concrete to the top of this U-shaped structure, to correct the potentially incorrect height, or will that mean that the structure is weakened by the fact that it was not made by one monolithic pour?

I'm afraid I don't really understand this. Yes, I accept that Sodium (Na) is not the same as salt (NaCl), but when doctors talk about restricting "salt", they mean sodium and that is why all food labels in the UK require salt levels to be published OR, if there is no added salt, "a statement indicating ‘naturally occurring sodium’ may appear in close proximity to the nutrition declaration, e.g. ‘This product contains no added salt. Salt content is due to naturally occurring sodium.’" See here for ref. Also keep in mind that most UK tap water will have up to 0.5 mg/l of chlorine added to it, so I would guess that the sodium will bind to that to create NaCl.

It's pretty standard medicine that high sodium diet increases risk of hypertension and this ages blood vessels. Google atherosclerosis and sodium intake and you'll find plenty of peer reviewed articles on these risks. E.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn201540 (nature being one of the most highly respected journals in the world) Your comparison to milk is a little inapposite as most hot drinks which are made with boiling water have a ratio of milk to water of about 1:6, although I guess a latte would have a higher milk content. Personally I don't drink cow's milk, and most of our boiling water use will be to make herbal teas. We do use oat milk (which also contains sodium) in our coffee and tea, but again this is is a very small amount (about 15ml to 20ml per cup) relative to the size of the coffee/tea cup. Ultimately, the point is about overall sodium consumption. You can't really get sodium free milk, but you can get sodium free water, and given the amount of water drunk is typically much higher than milk, it makes sense to spare sodium from water if you can.

If your softener is a salt based system, you should consider this to be a big issue. The occasional cup of softened water won’t do you any harm. But making all your hot drinks from softened water is really a very bad idea. Anybody visiting your house with high blood pressure couldn’t really drink it and comply with their medical guidance to limit salt. Depending on how many cups you have a day, and how much salt you take in your diet in any case, this might tip you over the limit. Do you want heart disease in your future?

I would absolutely love it if my neighbour died (from natural causes of course).

Thanks for everyone’s advice. I have just ordered a laser gun temperature sensor which is apparently accurate to the nearest 0.2C* and will start playing around with it in the New Year. * Hard to believe as it only cost me £16.89 and there were a couple of other options on Amazon which were slightly more but apparently only accurate to the nearest 2C.

Could somebody please post a link to what they mean exactly by a Ubiquiti system. I’ve googled, and various different products come up.

Try a company called London Stone. They do coping stones as well as loads of other stuff.

What size tile is that?

Why would you use chipboard based boards? There are better insulators than chipboard, such as extruded polystyrene. Slightly more expensive in terms of initial outlay, but should save you money in the long run.

What is considered comfortable?

So basically there is little to be concerned about because I’m unlikely to reach 27C floor temp?

We have wooden floor going down on two subfloors, both of which have independently zoned UFH. The engineered boards have a manufacturer’s recommendation that the wood should not be exposed to a temperature greater than 27C. Q1: On the ground floor this wood is being laid in one room where we have a sand and cement screed subfloor. The room in question has its own dedicated manifold so we can set the temp and flow specifically for that finish. What UFH temp would you recommend for that manifold so that the wood is not heated above 27C? The screed is about 70mm thick and insulated by 100mm of PIR. House is not a passive house, but fairly well insulated upgrade from a 1930s semi. Pipes are 16mm thick and laid at 160mm pipe centres. Q2: On the first floor, the same wood is going over 5.5mm ply which is laid directly onto 25mm of Cellecta extruded polystyrene that holds the pipes, which is also 150mm laid at 150mm pipe centres. What temperature for this set up?

IMO, yes. An old plumbing saying is, "enough 180o bends is a dead end", and inverted layout offers only 90o bends. Serpentine also puts all the heat at one end of the room and all the cool return flow at the other, so flow and return need strategic planning by design. Not important in a thicker, heavily insulated slab, but it will be notable with thinner insulation and a wafer thin emitter. I install UFH for others, so I have to be sure it all works A1 every time, and I would never do serpentine. As far as serpentine being easier? Not imo, but I am a 'seasoned' installer.... Can one mitigate the issues caused by serpentine by increasing the flow rate?