Alan Ambrose

@FarmerN - very useful thanks - there's a Huws Gray that says it has a 'brick centre' 20 mins away. Lovely.

This is from a local church and is the look I want for the brick plinth around our black Suffolk-barn look-alike. Some of these will be under nominal ground level. Any leads on how I might find bricks with similar mixed colours? Any specific recommendations?

Just a warning - some window & door suppliers show windows on quotes & drawings as viewed from inside (e.g. 21 degrees), some from outside (e.g. Rationel). This makes a difference re handle / lock positions etc and other asymmetrical detail. Also, some UK suppliers show the handle position at the point of the triangle e.g. 21 Degrees, some e.g. Rationel show the point at the hinge side. Often this is fairly obvious, but sometimes not. Just to add a bit of spice ... if the suppliers source extra detail drawings from their European suppliers, they may well be the other way round.

OK many thanks for those thoughts. I see the Hotun tundish guys re pipework say: "Polypropylene (PP), Modified Plasticized Polyvinyl Chloride (MuPVC) or High-Density Poly Ethylene (HDPE) are all acceptable materials." So, I'm leaning towards one of those, probably in 40 or 50mm as the tank I'm looking at has 1" BSP connections (i.e. ~31mm ID) and a long run so suggests I need to go 2 sizes up. Also a waterless trap.

>>> you send the neighbours round to isolate the leaking component If I sent my neighbours round, they'd probably set fire to the place .

OK I need to run a drain out of my attic to handle MVHR and maybe AC condensate / unvented HW tank tundish / water softener drain. It needs to fall about 3m and run inside about 10m of wall through a bunch of posi-joists and around a 90 bend eventually joining a 110mm toilet waste. Would you run this in 28mm copper or welded 40/50mm PVC or, say, 28mm Hep20? If not all copper, would the first bit from the tundish need to be copper and for how far? What would you do?

Btw dc isolators are frowned upon these days unless the inverter doesn’t have its own dc isolation.

I saw this on a nice looking new-build-in-progress at the weekend. This was the best image I could get. The border around the roof light doesn't look like standard Velux detail? Actually, a much cleaner design? Also, what kind of roof is that?

I think it's fairly normal - the Velux kits are all a bit nonsense IMO. Vast quantities of bits of ally with tabs that you're meant to bend back / self-adhesive flashing strips that are somehow meant to be watertight and UV-tolerant for the duration / dodgy pictogram instructions.

OK I'm back on this now. >>> It sounds a bit as if this hasn't been designed and is just a sequence of events. Harsh . I'm not aware of any design methodology for guttering? It's normally suck-it-and-see no? You would need a SUDS-like estimate of worst storms + detail of roof geometry and material + hydrodynamic gutter & downpipe info -> therefore max run-off flow s.b. greater than gutter capacity. I can't imagine though that anybody does that calculation or even that the roof and gutter data is available. Seems to me everyone uses rule-of-thumb / best guess. There's an overhang so it should clear the wall, but we've all seen water flow in a big storm - it tends to go everywhere.

I can see this kind of thing which is about 1/2 the price and 1mm thick: https://direct.marley.co.uk/products/marley-weatherboard-epdm-tape

I would have expected the slope to drain outwards, no?

>>> Client here has found a good metal roof installer, give me a shout if you want contact details. If they’re geographically suited to the OP, they’ll work for me too. Yes please.

Err don’t you need some horizontal batttens there somewhere?

It's been recommended I use KompeFix ventilation strip to keep the wood wall battens and horizontal cladding apart - presumably to avoid trapping moisture between adjacent wood and allow for a little movement. That is: https://www.russwood.co.uk/shop/product/kompefix/ It's only GBP 2.22 per m - which sounds OK value until I figured out I needed about 750m / 1,700 quids worth. Are there any good alternatives?

>>> manufacturing tolerances have changed My feeling is that manufacturing tolerances are a bit variable - especially for some of the unbranded / special components. The worst I've found, so far, is some of the bits supplied for irrigation and some unusual brass threaded components I ordered from Ireland for connection to a a Stuart Turner pressurisation pump. So, '3/4" BSP' is a bit of a rough and ready thing in practice.

In Aldeburgh?

I've done that and it may be tougher than you think as it might mean looking out some as-built records - otherwise the assessors will assume any old thing they like, usually to your cost. In my case, I made it clear that I didn't want a worse rating than the original (it was a flat, and nothing much had changed). After a bit of huffing, some original docs were found and the original rating was applied to the new doc too.

I think that your planning is along the right lines. You might want to check out the SUDS concepts and, if you want, you can get a SUDS calc for about 100 quid. This tells you the max storms you are expected to get per m^2 and therefore the max vessel size you need. Then SUDS assumes you slowly release the volume (at usually 0.5 L/S for a single dwelling). I've posted up an example of one of those calcs here in the past (search for 'Freeflush'). The calcs are location dependant, of course. Your 'vessel' might be some kind of tank or crate system (maybe look up soakaway crate) or the void space around some permeable fill. My MOT 3 driveway uses the latter. If it was me, I might have chosen a larger sump and a Tsurumi pump, but each to their own. Your proposed system seems a little lightweight to me, but you're right, if you're happy to treat the whole thing as a sump in a big storm, then so what. One thing I learnt recently (after installing a sump and pump) is perhaps obvious ... but the duty cycle of the pump depends on the size of the sump. You might not want the pump going off every 2 minutes. Also, pumps need a bit of oomph to raise water upwards, so you might want to check that the kind of pump you're thinking of will do that. You might want to experiment a bit with hose sizes. Otherwise I think you're good.

We're not that far from Sizewell. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of people milling around this bit of Suffolk clad head to toe in orange with hats & glasses & gloves on at all times. I'm sure they do RAMS statements before going to the toilet. We're told (I have no way of knowing for sure): they need to wear all their gear before being allowed on the company bus; they're 're not allowed to roll their sleeves up; excavator drivers can't do a 360 and can't get out of their cabs without permission; they have go/no go electronic signs on the cabs; etc etc etc. I was talking to an architect friend recently and showed her some photos of the site. She was aghast that I was on the half-built roof (nowhere to fall btw) without a hat on. Now, in reality, I can't even get my carpenters to wear safety boots; I have to hand my key worker some safety glasses when he starts using a grinder or he might not wear any; my young apprentice is a mountaineer and likes balancing even when I tell him not to. All-in-all I try to watch out for everybody, intervene if I think they're doing something risky, look out and address any hazards, provide any safety equipment they need etc. So we should be like Sizewell and strictly enforce all the rules? Yeah, I expect my team would either laugh and ignore me or walk off site depending on their mood. I'm interested in what you guys do on your sites in practice?

I'm sure there will be another chance ... the basement stuff is happening over the next 3 months 🤐. BTW anyone know a local place with a table saw / band saw / resaw service? I have 12 bits of approx 3m x 100x100mm oak that I need sawn into approx 50x30mm strips.

“At its core, HEM is a building physics simulation. It takes detailed data about a home (its construction, heating system, ventilation, insulation, glazing, orientation, and local weather) and calculates its energy performance at half-hourly intervals throughout a full year.‘ Well it’s probably a step forward being single & open source / cloud / written & paid for by the government. It’s effectively UK govt’s answer to PHPP. The usual problems won’t entirely go away though: + since we have little idea how our current housing stock is built, there will be lots of guessing i.e. ‘assumptions’. So a bit GIGO. + we’ll need loads of custom psi calcs if the results are going to reflect the actual heat loss. + these are only models and reflect assumptions about how we live in these houses - probably there will be little comparison of actual vs. model (just like EPCs) so the man in the street may pay them very little attention. The 1/2 hour intervals are marketing BS and won’t help the accuracy one bit. Lastly, one of the helpful things about PHPP is its database of real world components - this will be key but a lot of work to replicate.

>>> Finnish timber as reliable but miserable. You think it’s absorbed all that Scandinavian angst?

Stainless steel mesh stapled (stainless staples) to close the gap at the bottom of the cladding would be a good start. Also, look for any penetrations through the plasterboard (e.g. in kitchen cupboards)and seal with anti-mouse mastic. Some pest control companies offer this service if you don’t want to diy.

I’m going to respectively disagree - as I said our type 3 drive is working well. You can get a SUDs calc done, receive the volume you need to store, and then calc the volume of driveway that represents, bearing in mind the ‘void ratio’ or some such i.e. proportion of your drive that can be water. I’ve a calc like that here somewhere. Helpful if it can drain somewhere by gravity.