Alan Ambrose

The intumescent strips seem to be accepted practice. Alternatives are 0.5mm steel / wood of a given thickness (I forget how much). There’s a fair amount of discussion on this on ‘t ‘ub. My BC seemed to be more open-minded - I forget his exact words. We used the steel strip as it was cheaper, but it did take a while to put up.

Could they have got a bit oval? I had a problem exactly like that way back.

FYI I called Ubbink UK and the salesperson said the Brink / Vigor units are exactly the same except for the branding. It suggests to me that a bunch of sellers in the UK are grey importing from Europe.

@zzPaulzz I meant for a professional blow job. Payne Insulation?

@zzPaulzz - did you use the Norwich guy?

BTW this is what Google AI thinks: "The Brink Flair (manufactured by Brink Climate Systems) and the Ubbink Ubiflux Vigor are deeply related, highly efficient MVHR units. Ubbink and Brink share technology and components in the European ventilation market, meaning the Vigor and Flair series share very similar internal designs, constant-flow control systems, and matching filter/maintenance profiles, though they are branded and distributed through separate channels. The Flair series is the flagship line from Brink Climate Systems, whereas the Vigor range is marketed directly under Ubbink's Ubiflux brand." Are they the same? Maybe or maybe not.

The Zehnder box seems to require the 'ComfoConnect PRO' add-on at about £250 for LAN / wireless / modbus.

For anyone following along at home: The difference between the Brink Flair 400 and the Brink Flair 400 Plus is the inclusion of an upgraded Plus PCB board (i.e. it includes the UWA2-E board). This enables "the Brink Home online and app control via (W)LAN internet connectivity and also extra analog inputs, digital inputs, and terminal connections for advanced accessories like post-heaters or complex multi-zone sensor setups." The base model includes "standard connectivity like eBus, Modbus for building management, RJ12, and USB port for an RF dongle. Also, basic local control via integrated display or 4-way switch." Price difference is about £300 - in the UK I think by buying the 'E' board separately.

And a bonus question - assuming a bit of wired switch / app control - what connectivity options have you chosen for each of these. I see this for the Zehnder: and this for the Ubbink:

Any love for the Vipercip? Looks fine for T&E although the staples are quite big. Pity it doesn't have data cable staples. Then there's the Dewalt, Milf..kee, Klein Tools & Draper versions...

Apologies for another brand comparison re-hash: The Brink is about £3.9K vs. £2.3K for the Zehnder i.e. about 70% premium. This is for a requirement of 160 normal/210 boost m^3 /h and so the Brink is about 1.9X oversize and the Zehnder 2.2X. Am I missing something?

The building looks home brew to me with those blocks on the left added to the cast wall. If you have any kids with Lego, then suggest you make some walls in the approximate scale of your building, the roof in cardboard and then see how you feel about the structure. The struts make some strongish triangles which will tend to keep their shape, but without the hypotenuse, the other two sides of the triangle become properly ‘flappy’ as you said. Flappy isn’t a great state for a building - it only takes a big bad wolf with a strong huff & puff… An SE maybe?

Well zero planning and no PPE were the first clues and then ~a dozen other things, some big, some small … probably warrants a separate thread.

I watched a professional silicone guy last summer doing windows and chatted to him a bit. He used a steady hand, sometimes bent the nozzle a bit, good quality mastic (Soudal, I think) and occasionally some little curvy wooden tools. And, I’m guessing, lots of practice. The tools looked a bit like this, but I think he made his own: https://www.dortechdirect.co.uk/catalog/product/view/id/2010.html

I’ve must have one of the few 3P flats in the UK. I’ve had it for ~30 years. Not a problem - but no real advantage either. Took 4 visits to get a smart meter ‘cos nobody at the DNOs handling residential can compute 3P. The whole idea of the modern self-build is to keep the energy consumption down. 3P allows 2x energy consumption of 1P (usually 3 X 63A vs. 1 X 100A). Great for lumpy use of leccy and 3X the export. Also for bigger machine tools :). But you can use VFDs to solve that problem. We have some friends with a Baufritz house with 3P ovens. Lovely. But in the real world… p.s. if you do the calcs you’ll find you will be using on average only a few amps out of your 100A supply, less if you have a bunch of self-use PV.

I need to do 1st fix of the above onto the 12mm ply/vcl which forms the airtight outer skin of the 50mm service cavity in the walls. Is there some kind of stapler which would help rather than large quantities of clips?

FYI there are v few oak frame builds on Buildhub. We have one (not an off-the-shelf design) from Carpenter Oak which we’re really pleased with. Oakwrights are another big player, also Welsh Oak I think. I don’t think there much saving on off-the-shelf vs. custom btw except for a bit of architect’s fees.

Yeah, they didn’t bother to check Companies House when making Covid loans.

Solicitors are a whole new playing field. £500 for a local firm to write a simple letter seems to be par. in principle, quotes for work like this are based on no of hours expected x (outrageous) hourly rate. Things that bump the rate significantly are (a) specialist work that not many lawyers understand and therefore can do, (b) critical advice on high ticket items, (c) practice brand name recognition. An easy ask is ‘what’s the process’ and ‘how many hours do you think it would take’ (+ ‘what’s your billing rate’). They will be very open about their billing rate. Also, what skills they have. It’s unusual to just get a fixed number unless that’s what you asked for or the work is so standard (e.g. conveyancing) everyone knows how long it usually takes. Maybe the £9.5K number means ‘we’ve never done this before and we’re not particularly interested in finding out how unless you make us a stupid offer’.

>>> I have this vision of walking through the house in a state of blissful house completion euphoria Are you naked at this point? 😄 On second thoughts, don’t answer that.

This may be nonsense advice for your situation, but we chose to run a garden lawn sprinkler, actually two, on a hose timer - coming on for say 5 mins every hour. We actually did this for a couple of weeks as we were away and the weather was properly hot. Zero cracking. As others have said, a little cracking isn’t a big deal anyway. The contractor asked whether we wanted relief cuts / control joints, but we chose our sprinkler method and plan to use it again.

@G and J - this kind of thing?

@Mr Punter - an 11-course brick plinth around the base of our Suffolk-barn-like structure, not load bearing, just for aesthetics - both for us and the planners. @G and J - that's interesting, do you need to put mesh behind them to stop creepy crawlies?

Does this calc sound right (as it sounds like a lot of air bricks): If I'm using these air bricks which say they are 1,290 mm^2? List No. 350 Square Hole Air Brick 215 x 65mm - Forterra I'm only ventilating a few cm behind a brick plinth which doesn't do any structural support btw. Can I still use the floor area calc even though I'm not ventilating the floor area? Would peeps use, say, some stainless mesh masticed behind?

Maybe it just fell off someone’s project plan. Also odd though that the engineers were not inspecting. Or failed to notice.