Alan Ambrose

>>> I'm with octopus who unfortunately know nothing about the THTC system. FWIW I've found Octopus's telephone call centre to be much better than the email centre.

I like @torre's idea also, maybe with a bolted fixing - but then you are probably going to need some custom metal bits made. Great if you can get those done easily. I just re-read the manufacturer's suggested fixing method using screws only. I somehow assumed they would use an accurate pin to stop sideways movement. I think a metal dowel pin, say 10mm, and a corresponding very accurate hole in the tile (and the bottom plate) would do it. The hole in the tile will need a diamond drill so it'll be nice and accurate. Screws and plugs are always a bit wobbly - fine for small loads. The key force you're trying to counteract, of course, is the sideways shear caused by the weight of the door acting 1/2 a door's width from the pivot point. This kind of thing:

It seems every day is a school day

Well at the stage you figure out the shortcomings in the best tools, that makes you an expert

I guess I'm still old-school solder ring tech - what do you use that press for? Can it do air hoses?

>>> but SWMBO wanted stone so she got stone There's a man who knows what he's doing. p.s. I like the look of the shelves a lot, I may borrow that.

>>> you would get a better hold from the tile Just to clarify - I was imagining that this is porcelain tile rather than, say, terracotta tile - that can be fairly crumbly.

>>> It's annoying to effectively double up on structure, but that seems to be difficult to avoid if you want an oak frame that performs well. Yeah, in a structural sense, there is a slight bananas aspect to it, . >>> The expense also annoys me as the modern equivalent of a steel portal building clad with insulated metal panels is one of the most economical build methods. Point taken.

Wow thanks - impressive what you can do with glulam. Thanks again @Iceverge - you've educated us a lot and I feel I'm getting to grips with the options / challenges now. I'm guessing you're an SE or other engineer? For everyone's amusement, I'll post up here my nominally selected stack-up when I get to that point. Here's where I am thus far (these are all options without any insulation in the service void) ...

>>> can you not cut the pin short (depth of the tile) and the screw to act as location pins along with suitable glue Yeah, I like this solution. Not sure I buy the resin iceburg idea. Also screed is normally fairly crumbly so you would get a better hold from the tile - they're usually so strong that they're a proper pain to cut. Also, general purpose PU or epoxy resin isn't very strong either. Presumably you have a similar problem with the top mount too?

Physical fixing is fairly easy for someone reasonably DIYish. As is pulling the cable wherever it needs to go - but check with a proper sparky exactly where and how. They're probably the more time consuming (and therefore costly) jobs. A bunch of panels wired together is a decent DC voltage (approx open circuit voltage is # panels x 40V i.e. 400V for 10 panels). And DC is fairly dangerous. The regs say that you need a proper sparky for this kind of work. Theoretically an MCS one if you want to sell back to the grid. Can you not get the original guys back to do you a cheap deal given they didn't install all the panels you expected first time round? They should have known about the power line in advance of course.

You can make yourself a little test board from some ply etc with a little lip round it. Maybe try it out with the depth you're planning and see how you feel once it's set?

Goodness, the BH hivemind never ceases to impress me - I'm still chewing through all the detail in the above few messages. @Iceverge - apologies if I used up any of your time unnecessarily - I didn't spot the other Oakwrights 'Natural' build-up. To answer IanR's questions: >>> What's your expectation of the Oak Frame? Will it be a green oak frame and will you be using someone like Oakwrights? Yeah, I'm sure it'll move a bit - I'm not fussed though and actually like the living nature - most of our 'engineered' materials are so dead. We live in an old barn conversion right now - the frame (prob 250 years old) is all over the place and obviously made with whatever oak sticks the farmer had around. And it's all the more beautiful for that. >>> Do you want the oak frame to be visible externally, at all? Maybe just through the windows. >>> Do you want frame to be structural, or are you happy for it to just appear to be so. Yeah structural - I like the idea of hanging the rest of the build up on the frame. I'm also attracted to steel frame for the same reason - probably too much time with Meccano when I was a kid. I can see with our existing barn though that it does allow the frame to be used again i.e. 'recycled' quite easily by tearing off and then replacing the 'cladding' - maybe in a couple of hundred years time.

If you measure the gap in a few places with a vernier to get a fairly accurate average - you can likely find some tubular nylon / aluminium / steel spacers off the shelf.

I wonder if you can see exactly where your pipes are with a FLIR or similar? But a good glue should work - given that you won't be following the manufacturer's instructions you will probably lose your guarantee or at least parts of it. There are a bunch of professional glues out there not found in the consumer aisles of your local big shed. Having said that, I would read the Araldite instructions carefully and see whether that would suffice. Looks like a reasonable opportunity for a good bond between hard tile and largish flat metal area. Probably clean both tiles and metal parts with IPA or something, maybe roughen with an abrasive - whatever the instructions say.

You mean the bolts appear to be squeezing the frame a bit out of parallel? Or it could just be a camera lens aberration / pincushion distortion thing - maybe you can confirm? Personally, I can't see that as a torsion effect as I imagine all the holes in the frame are clearance holes, so the only torsion effect would be the rotational friction on the washers. Slack off a bolt or two temporarily and see whether it goes back into parallel?

I was using this stuff: https://www.screwfix.com/p/no-nonsense-2-part-floor-levelling-compound-12-5kg/27894 Maybe it was all my fault ... I might choose the Mapei stuff now just because I've had some good results with their products in the past.

Totally cool, thanks so much - now I have a bunch of home work to do

Hi @Iceverge - I don't get the ref to March 7th and I would feel guilty about taking up a bunch of your time. But ... if you have any quick-and-dirty hints - I'm looking for u-value of ~0.1, to hang on the outside of a structural oak frame. Preferably not 0.5m thick

>>> that pays for the labour and materials when it's due without holding anything back just in case Actually I'm thinking of an arrangement where the customer pays, say, up to an extra 15-20% if they are super-happy with the work. Call it a bonus. From the customer's point of view - I don't know whether I'm going to get the quality/results I want until the job is finished. Let everyone have a stake in a positive outcome. Otherwise with a totally fixed price, unless you're going to work together on a regular basis - you are creating a incentive for the contractor to do a quick and dirty job - that is, one that gives the max return per hour.

@Iceverge - thanks for taking the time to put up those examples - I think I'm going to have to carefully work through your examples to make sure I fully understand all your points I'm sure my brain was faster at some point than it is now ...

>>> And what does it look like if you move the polythene from in between the two different types of insulation to inside the PUR? Ah thanks, spotted (one of my) mistake(s) - their section drawing does show it where you suggest. That makes it look a bit better with only the OSB apparently having the main condensation risk...(left graph) I guess if I take the min temperature as +1.5C (which is the actual mean minimum from historical data in our area) instead of -5C then that makes it look even better (right graph). I suppose I'm assuming it'll dry out OK if the temperature occasionally dips below the usual minimum ..... this really does appear quite a complex subject

I'm no expert in tis but the Screwfix (No Nonsense) stuff I've used was (a) a bit too weak and crumbly once it set to use as an actual floor surface and (b) actually quite difficult to get accurately flat.

>>> pay an appropriate proportion of your bill - and keep the rest as a retainer Yeah, I've only done one piece of work with a supplier where there was an incentive arrangement agreed. In that case it worked well and everyone was happy. So, I'm also wondering about an after-the-fact incentive payment at the customer's discretion?

Hi, I'm trying to wrap my head around insulation options particularly re condensation. I think I kind of 'get it' re structural, installation & heat flow/temperature, but not not moisture. I get that as the temperature decreases from inside to outside (generally in the UK anyway), for any particular humidity level, at some point we reach dew point and get condensation. And 'that's bad'. But surely, as the temperature graphs must always fall off 'monotonically' i.e. always decreasing from inside to outside then we're going to hit the dew point at some position in the wall build-up? Here's a commercial example. If I've understood their literature then the build-up looks like this: and crunches out something like this: - and the temperature and humidity graphs look like this: That is, 'not so happy'. Any thoughts? TIA, Alan