SimonD

That looks great @Mr Punter. Neat profile on the hood and simple which is what I'm looking for. Did you have any issues with the internals when you removed the motor, like losing the spigot or other necessary ducting that needed to be fixed?

Good to know. Thanks for the heads up on the TD Silent. I have a Vent Axia unit going spare I thought I'd used so I'll check to compare extract data.

That's excellent, thanks

Yes, it's 29mm deep. I've also found some that's 308mm wide https://www.nationalventilation.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Monsoon-Rectangular-Ducting-308mm-x-29mm-Duct-Accessories.pdf Okay so I haven't completely lost it. That sounds very similar where I'd planned on using the corner in the kitchen base units to house the fan as I've ditched the idea of a corner cabinet to have some services in there instead.

Because of my kitchen design I've been looking for a kitchen extractor/cooker hood design that is similar to commercial designs in that I've got a canopy with grease/carbon filters and then ducting (29mm that goes in my service void) to a remote fan unit, that I can box in and isolate acoustically (I've even got a dedicated space available for this in my kitchen). Other than to have a commercial canopy company make a bespoke one, I've been unable to find anything like what I'm looking for. Otherwise, every other extractor seems incredibly noisy (all our previous ones have been too), and unfortunately most, if not all, are imposing on my attempted clean space and drawer/cabinet design. Even the downdraft ones seem to have fundamental flaws, like I've got to reach over my cooker to operate the controls and the motor unit ends up taking up all my under counttertop space which is designed for drawers to store all my pots and pans. If I can't find what I'm looking for above, at a push I'm thinking of a subtle cantilevered recirculating unit (that provides a low profile) - we're not having any wall hung cabinets in our kitchen. My other desperate thought is not to have a hood at all and maybe just install a single room mvhr that has a boost function for local ventilation for the kitchen. Or maybe I can gut a hood by just removing the motor & fan assembly? I've been looking for months on and off and feeling rather downheartened that I haven't found an adequate solution yet. I've left it a bit late because I'm making the kitchen right now and cutting the plywood for my drawers as I start this thread. Can any one help with some creativity here please as mine's deplete? Desperate for some ideas.

I think that was the same for Didcot, coming over the hill on the A34, or walking up on the ridgeway, the view was just something that was there.

I don't feel so sure about that. I think behind the scenes he's able to muster undue organisational influence because what he's saying plays into the hands of those who have much to gain and lose in the coming energy shift and they currently wield power. Just consider the self-inflicted damage he and the ERG helped to inflict socially, economically and politically and for what real ends?

Yes, this is the dilema. Wind generation needs to be where the wind is and this often clashes with peoples' view. Vattenfall has come under some criticism in Sweden for this. Large windfarms are being developed in non-ideal places because the ideal places are more heavily populated and develoment is resisted, not that they're anywhere near as heavily populated as here though. I've really tried, but I personally find it difficult to accept the position of those who oppose the development of onshore renewable energy because it might be an eye sore, yet want the energy on tap and to be able to consume it cheaply.

That's a good point. Interestingly I've been consuming the recent book by Helen Thompson, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century which takes a fascinating and very worthwile look at energy and geopolitics and puts quite a lot of current issues into perspective.

That would certainly be a big improvement.

My concern with that would be the absorption co-efficient of the insulation. Knauf and Rockwool kindly sent me their test data a while ago and if you look at the performance of 50mm versus 75mm it's pretty significant, especially at lower frequencies (obvious caveat that the acoustic performance depends on total buildup of course). Files uploaded for reference below. Knauf Insulation Acoustic Roll - Absorption Co-efficients .pdf Absorption Coefficients of ROCKWOOL Slabs - v2 2019.pdf

Yes, it would be fine.

I'm going to be annoying here and not entirely answer your question, but instead pick up on something slightly different 😉 I notice you have acoustic insulation shown in your drawing. If you're looking for decent sound insulation within this staggered wall, I'd recommend you use a continuous roll of insulation which zig-zags behind the staggered studs. 25mm acoustic insulation isn't going to do much and with the current design you only have 8mm between staggered stud and plasterboard so too narrow to do anything. In that sense, depending on the noise levels you want to achieve, you might be better using 38 x 89 studs which are installed on 38 x 140 studs at top and bottom. You can of course go for 38 x 63 and increase the gap behind each stud using 50mm insulation but I'm not sure how quiet the wall will be. Remember though that your stud spacing will be 600c/c at each side of the staggered wall so in effect 300c/c (Just noticed PeterW already said this) Most places will supply C16 cls in my experience.

I can't seem to find actual dates. When was the microcement done? How many days has it been now? General rule of thumb for my microcement was allow to dry for 48 hours with no use. Light use only for 7 days. Do not cover and wet for 14 days. Fully cured in 28 days. Recommended Minimum application temp 11 C. Drying times are based on certain humidity/temps only. HTH

By following the train line and identifying places along the line that you are attracted to and may have potential opportunities within your budget. You can then draw circle around those places to give you a search area. IMHO your search area is just too big and covers a whole host of areas with massive variations in land and property values, some are horrible while others are just amazing, which means you'll be struggling to make any valid comparison between plot prices and understand why they are how they are. There are also huge variations in the services to London - some are direct and fast, some are slow and meandering which means that you can select a town that has a direct link with London but takes 2.5 - 3 hours to get to London, whereas another town just a few miles away might have a station providing a link so you can get to London in less than 1.5 hours (consequently there usually a good price difference because of this too). It may sound unhelpful, but this really is the starting point and requires a good amount of research. It's time consuming. It's a really good opportunity to get to know the country mind you and can be an adventure in itself. That, I'm afraid to say, is the reality every self-builder has to face. It's a gamble but one where you can increase your odds through diligent research - e.g. how to asses the potential of a plot.

I'm guessing you don't know Reading very well? I'm sure the area has improved over the years but where that plot is used to be pretty rough. Great for access to the M4 mind you. Personally I'd recommend you try and narrow down your choice of area and then get to know it. That way you can begin to develop relationships locally to find a plot. I had subscribed to various plot finder services and looked at auction sitse for more than 10 years but the place we found came through deciding an area and getting to know the estate agents and clearly telling them what we were after. It then took only 8 months then. Lets not mention the rest of the journey 😉

You probably know then how many psychological studies, which form the basis of so much psychology theory, are based upon a rather limited demographic (western, white, middle class university students) with context removed as far as is possible? At some point, there is going to be an unravelling of this, or at least I hope so.

You're going to me started on method and methodology here - especially when it comes to qualitative/quantitative research. It's one of my pet hates in psychology where it is so common to try to convert what is qualitative into a quantitative value as if that gives it more standing - take a Cognitive & Behavioural Therapy question that asks a client to rate an emotion from 1 - 10, or asking someone who is depressed how many times they've had a negative thought in the last 7 days. There are plenty of qualitative methods that can be used to great effect and provide reliable results, but the problem is they're more challenging. What I like about the papers you link to is their explicit acknowledgement of context and how emotions are context dependent. In my work I've spent countless hours with senior people helping them to untangle their emotions because they've been taught their emotions are just 'theirs' but when they finally articulate the context, only then does it start to make proper sense for them and those they work with. If you just consider the emotion seperately from context, it loses so much of its meaning, but also falsely gives us the impression we feel and behave independently of our environment. For me, the field of EI has been so unfortunatley sloppily defined and conceptualised, but also it has attempted to reduce the nature of human relationships down to a mechanistic process based on competencies and 'factors,' whereas true human relationships really do tend to be much more emergent and unsurprisingly, more down to feeling your way about them!

lol 🙂 Goleman is a major proponent here. I've found a downloadable copy of the book The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace which is a bit of a follow on from his melding EI into a model for leadership during the 1990s. You can also find quite a bit on the Emotional Intelligence Consortium. It's not that I'm against EI per se as a concept for being aware of and improving relationships, just more how it has been morphed into a tool applied for a defined gain, which changes the nature of it entirely. This is not unlike how Mindfulness has become a way in which organisations as well as societies at large can divert the responsibility away from themselves onto individuals rather than consider and change the organisational, or environmental context, that is causing the individual the problems in the first place. It's also about the imposition of a model of being onto general populations I question. I've worked in a number of engineering, technology, and accountancy firms, several of them world leaders in their field. In those organisations I've met a lot of specialists that don't posess great interpersonal skills to say the least, they're techies and specialists and that part of their nature is actually part of what makes them special. EI training here doesn't land very well...nor does it necessarily provide the intended gains, but can have the opposite effect on those individuals.

Kindness, yes, consideration, yes, and a number of other important social behaviours, yes (but with some caveats in what the children actually end up experiencing socially and culturally within the education system, which is in many ways at odds with this in terms of what actually gets valued and thus modelled). Emotional intelligence, however, it is not. Please forgive my cynicism here. I work with people psychologically as my main profession. I first trained as a youth counsellor in the early 1990s and a lot of my work is related to mental health. I've spent a lot of time teaching and training clients in EI, especially in organisational contexts. I think there are serious questions as to whether the term EI has any real meaning or validity at all, other than being another means to derive better work productivity, and thus economic performace from individuals - which is really where EI as we know it today came from. It is more or less a tool for manipulating productivity rather than a tool for helping people to learn how to navigate a complex world and being able to effectively deal with the emotions associated with doing that - in this sense, children are not being taught EI. The rise in young persons' mental health problems is an indicator that there is something wrong here and that what is being taught may not be of any practical use, rather like a number of things being taught within today's curriculum.

I think you're putting it mildly. I doubt with the current buildup it's going to perform as intended at all as there are too many additional layers within the cassette wall buildup plus the ground/damproofing etc. IIRC sheepswool can also only absorb up to about 35% of its own weight in moisture before deterioration of performance. This is one of the reasons why European detailing using timber frame/panels with natural insulations often specify a minimum height above ground of 300mm. Below that the detailing starts to become onerous and often requires replacement using EPS, for instance. I personally wouldn't even trust a desktop condensation/moisture analysis but would be looking to build a test rig in situe with some hygrometers within the structure for at least a full year cycle.

Torx all the way for me. I hate PZ with a vengeance even with functioning hands. I've been using the Torx screws from Forgefast all the way through my build. Good price and work just as well as spax IMHO. Honestly, I don't think the schools or the teachers are equiped in any way to teach emotional intelligence properly. They have neither the resources, time, nor the necessary training to do it. And that's not to criticise them, they've got enough crap on their plate and don't get sufficient reward or funding for what they do as it is. The construction industry has a culture problem in this regard too as it's 'too soft' which is shown by how high the figures are for those in the construction industry suffering mental health problems - unfortunately under the radar for the most part. But as for the basics of communication and listening to the customer, there's just no excuse there!

+ 1 to this. I burned out an SDS drill clutch and when it went the drill nearly broke my arm against a joist. Instead of trying to save money on a cheapo sds drill I went and bought a proper core drill with proper bits. I don't even have to have all my weight behind it, just a firm press, to chew through concrete blokes. The bit set I have has an extract function so it hardly ever binds on the grounds. It's a revelation.

How annoying and frustrating!

It's funny this. I wonder whether it comes from a misreading of the regs, by the gas safe engineers and the way the training organisations seem to do it. Or maybe they can't read or think properly. In the regs for equipotential bonding on gas pipes, it says that bonding needs to be within 600mm of the meter, if the meter is installed internally. Where the meter is installed externally, bonding should preferrably be installed internally as close as practical to the point of entry. It even says that connection within an external meter box is acceptable but unpreferred. If the gas man questions this, you can point them to the Domestic Gas Safety On Site Guide published by the NICEIC, so should be considered a reliable source 😊 Oh yeah, I know this because I've just finished my Gas Safe training portfolio and am just writing up my method statements! Even we have ben told to make sure the bonding is always within 600mm and before the first junction, but that's not what my method statements reads.... 🤔