MikeGrahamT21

Id say 40mm is too much personally. How about some kind of detail before you start above DPC? Maybe slate? Terracotta? Not entirely sure what would be suitable from a compressive strength POV.

Currently no plans for changing the gas boiler which is almost brand new and still under warranty. I’ve 3 more sections of external wall insulation to complete and 1 more window to swap out for triple glazing which should do a lot of the heavy lifting.

went from 125 to 95, you forgot to take off the DHW amount. I’m now down at 48kWh/m2.a, hoping I’ll be able to half it again which would sit my heat demand in to the enerphit range, lot of work to do yet tho!!

yes you are right, I’ve always thought of it as open cell, which in board form it is, but the beads themselves are closed cell… “EPS is, in other words, composed of 2% polystyrene and 98% air. The manufacturing process results in a closed-cell structure, but not a closed-cell insulation board (due to voids that can occur between the beads).”

EPS is open cell, I suppose you could go as far as saying some gas may enter the cells, can imagine that would cause a fair explosion. https://www.houseplanninghelp.com/bens-self-build-story-laying-a-beam-and-block-floor/ found this which may offer some solutions?

One reason for the ventilation gap is to remove radon gas build up if you are in an area which suffers from this. And the other which has been mentioned is to protect from flooding, again depends on where you are located

some of the savings will be related to insulation, but one major energy saving factor of MVHR is how dry the property becomes, which makes heating it a lot less difficult. at this time I had 62m2 of heated floor space.

it’s very hard to pin an exact value as I made other improvements in the same year. at the point of installing the unit and setting it running, my yearly annual quantity of gas for the prior year was 8752kWh, of which around 800-1000 is for water heating, no other gas appliances. Almost exactly a year later my yearly total stood at 6938kWh, however some of that drop will be attributed to insulating 2 rooms floors. Hopefully it’ll give a rough idea. Since then I’ve done more work (as you’ll see in my blog entries) on insulation and air tightness and my yearly gas amount now stands at 4314kWh

Short answer is yes, definitely worth it. My bungalow had a fair few holes in it when I first put MVHR in, as I was still in the process of doing each room and got fed up of seeing the box, and it made a huge difference even with the leaks, much dryer house and my energy usage has dropped year on year for that and beyond whilst I’ve done more work each year. For me it’s still the best thing I’ve done for this property

A good elastic expanding foam (Illbruck FM330 is ideal) and then filler to finish

Few more up to date photos, 18 bags of plaster later. Aside from installing the blind, fireplace and TV on the wall where all the sockets and aerial point is, i won't be doing any more this year, drying the plaster out became a huge problem, i ended up sat around for hours while the basecoat pulled in, and moisture was getting in places id rather it not be, like the loft. Pretty much all dried out now after the cold dry weather arrived and had dehumidifier on to top up the MVHR's effort.

They do look like they've had a lot of weather and a nice covering of lichen, very hard to match to. Nearest i've got: https://www.salvoweb.com/33167-reclaimed-cambridge-yellow-bricks https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/155202679090 https://www.salvoweb.com/29315-256-multistocks-ps250 https://www.salvoweb.com/24067-reclaimed-yellow-imperial-bricks http://www.lazdan.co.uk/reclaimed-bricks/ I'd say you're going to be looking at reclaimed for anywhere close. Hope this helps.

What is the height of the brick? These days you can get 65mm or 73mm, theres also 68mm but they are not as common. Are you sure these are brick and not brick sized stone?

Better to be safe than sorry in my mind

I'll hazard a guess that this has been skimmed over artex. Depending how old the property is, regardless of asbestos survey already done, a small sample of this will need testing, they wouldn't have been able to test what they can't see

https://shop.vitcas.com/vitcas-fireplace-construction-board.html?gclid=CjwKCAiAv9ucBhBXEiwA6N8nYHH31OuU6Kkh_bRx6ATlp7wwSQ81fzygmzTxvQmZEyEfWGpNjLnkoRoC5wEQAvD_BwE Something along these lines is what you need around a fire, doesn't matter if it does or doesn't get used then Or as suggested above, Vermiculite High Density Boards.

Wow i've not seen that much condensation in a loft for a very long time. I would imaging a lot of it will have dripped down onto your insulation, making matters even worse. If you have a window vac, might be a good idea to suck as much of that water up as possible. Check extractor fan connections, this is a common issue as has been said. There are also other options which you could look into, increase ventilation into the loft, some breathable membrane is better than others at releasing moisture, a couple of vent tiles wouldn't go a miss in yours. Bathroom will clearly be a major source of moisture, its highly unlikely you'll have a vapour membrane above the bathroom ceiling, you could remove the insulation and paint the back of the plasterboards with a liquid vapour membrane, something like black jack DPC may well work, just slowing down the rate moisture can escape through the plasterboard into the loft. Make sure there are no gaps from bathroom to loft, where light fittings are, if your extractor goes into loft etc. Any there, seal them up with good quality silicone. Rafters without doubt need treating with anti fungal.

yeah as above, flexible tile adhesive will be fine.

As long as they are in decent condition, they will be saleable. Roof tiles are in a shortage at the moment with very long lead times. I used reclaimed tiles on my recent extension. There are reclamation yards who deal in roof tiles too, they may well purchase at a reduced price and collect them from you, worth a phone call if you have no luck selling privately.

Am I right thinking you are talking more brick slips/tiles than actual bricks? If so, you need a blockwork wall to whatever height, render with mesh and then use adhesive to stick the slips/tiles on. What product are you looking at though?

+1 for everything aside from concrete. Building control do not permit concrete to touch drainage, it should be surrounded in 10mm pea gravel. My new drainage had to be shuttered so the concrete foundation came nowhere near it

99% sure you’ll have dot and dab plasterboards on your walls, and this is likely a big contributor to your issues, take a socket face plate off on a windy day, if it blows a gale, we’ll I’m sure you can imagine what’s happening behind there…

Just a few progress photos of the inside and how its been moving along since the builders left after completing their work: First job was the warm roof, literally just to get some of the 100mm boards used up as i had no where else to put them I was also trying to get as much of the dusty bits out of the way before opening this room up to the rest of the bungalow, so removed the outer bricks from under the bathroom window (the blocks will be done later down the line, as the new bathroom needs creating first so i'm not without showering and toilet facilities). Cleaned up under the floor and removed the old kitchen window, door and brickwork. 2 new windows went in, triple glazed, with just the bow window to swap out for a standard casement window later down the line. Next task was to get a firm floor to work off, so I set about getting all necessary pipes in, and also got the electrician in to sort the sockets out, and finally another load of insulation, trying my best to use up all my bits rather than skipping them A further 50mm to the roof and 20mm under it: Followed by airtight primer and tape round all of the edges Started working on the box section at the top of the roof which will house the ventilation pipes and cover up any thermal bridges from the timber wall header At this point the building inspector came, and asked me what on earth the pipes were for?! Told him they were for the mechanical ventilation and he looked nonethewiser, but otherwise was happy for me to carry on Another satisfying job using up all my odds and ends of plasterboard this time! Before the front of the box goes on, i need to cut out the 125mm holes for the vent pipe to come through, and install the plenum at each end. Also found a use for the spare render beads i had from doing the dining room (part 1), trimmed them down with the planer to 11mm, which will give me a perfect level base to work from when i put the bonding coat on. Fingers crossed the next time i post, it'll be more or less done, minus the bathroom end.

As promised another update, following many tweaks and a firmware upgrade from Solis. So the existing problems were: Whenever the battery isn't at 100% SOC, it pulls an amount of power from the grid, somewhere between 60W and 100W Even when the battery is actively charging, it still pulls the same 60-100W from the grid, regardless if there is enough PV power to charge the battery and cover loads at the same time. Once the battery is 100% SOC and im generating PV more than my load, I import 0W. Pulsating loads (such as induction hob) the unit can find hard to track, due to their pulsing nature, and the delay in reading the CT clamp and acting upon it. The firmware upgrade was to fix the pulsating load issue, it doesn't completely resolve it, however it is much better tracked now. Solis reduced the polling time for the CT, so it is polled more often than before. The problems with the excess import of between 60-100W remained, however Solis put some variables in the new firmware which allowed them to place an offset, we tried many different values and eventually stopped at a 65W offset, now the grid connection fluctuates between +40W and -50W which overall has fixed the issue as good as can be without draining too much of the battery power. Oddly since adding the second US3000C module, my overnight usage (no PV input) has dropped from around 0.35kWh to 0.2kWh, why i'm not sure but no complaints from me there!! Now have 6.6kWh of usable capacity, to note the original US3000C module had just dropped to 99% SOH, manual states to use the newer module as the master, which I did, so its now once again showing 100% SOH, and the 1% drop of the older module is handled internally. Upon connecting the new battery, the old battery appeared to receive a firmware upgrade, as it restarted a few times before staying on. Current yearly graph is looking good, still exporting a lot of power, but at least I'm using what i can now: Shown above is a daily example of the battery charging and discharging. This was after a particularly cloudy day which only just saw me reach 100% SOC for a mere moment. The negative battery power denotes power draining from the unit, with positive being a charge. This is the corresponding grid data for the same day. Previously (March 2022) I reported total import of 48.3kWh. Clearly its impossible to compare with another month, and we will have to wait til March has been and gone once again, however here is the monthly data from April onwards: April - 41.2kWh May - 18.4kWh June - 17.1kWh July - 18.9kWh August - 18.1kWh September (So far) - 18.0kWh The tweaks to the system were finalised on May 5th, just checked my emails from Solis and that was the last contact, so April shows another month before the changes. Full credit to Paul Carpenter, the European Engineering Manager as Solis for sticking with me on all these changes til we found the sweet spot! Hope this provides some good info for someone out there thinking of installing battery tech. I'll post another update at the 1year point, though probably 1year from the tweaks, so May next year, and then I'll also be able to comment on my AQ for the import.

Do it… it’s still the best thing I’ve ever added to my 70s bungalow!