MikeGrahamT21

They're tongue and groove blocks laid on their side, probably just what they had to hand at the time! Assuming thats your party wall, id say that there will be no cavity between you and next door (on my street, 70's bungalows, some are like this and some are 2 blocks and a cavity in the middle, very bizarre the difference). Best thing you can do, aside from filling the gaps, and also putting a layer of soundcoat (https://www.british-gypsum.com/products/finishing-products/gyproc-soundcoat-plus), you could use a metal frame, pack it with acoustic insulation and then top with 15mm soundblock plasterboard, all depends how much space you can free up for it, if any. Take a look at my blog, i did a similar project in my living room, might give you some ideas.

flexible cement based tile adhesive for sticking cement boards down, or whatever the manufacturer recommends.

Re. the draining. My dishwasher has a good 2m drain pipe run along the floor, up the back of the sink unit and into the sink plumbing, and doesn't retain any water (also a Beko), but it does go up and over, meaning that other water would never be able to enter the pipe, never had any issues so far. If everything is downhill on yours, then yes, get a pipe extension and make sure that a bit is uphill to stop it flowing the wrong way from the sink

Yeah its bang on, but not all the eurocones fit. Made this mistake on a single radiator that I was rushing to put on, in the end i thought the TRV design must have changed, it was only after i'd put a 16-15mm converter on, did I realise i'd just picked up the wrong eurocone!! Loosing my marbles i tell ya! From memory the single seal ones are the ones that fit, the double seal ones are too wide.

And if you get the right shaped eurocone, you can do what I did, and pop that inside your TRV, so you get a direct 16mm connection to the 15mm TRV

Yes my old meter used to run backwards for a short period of time before the ratchet kicked in, never enough to make any real difference, but i guess over the years it probably added up.

If the whole of eurocell is the same as my local branch, they only supply AGC glazing now, which will only get you to around 1.0U, so to achieve this you would need to source the glazing from somewhere else.

I wouldn’t be stressing over 3mm, 47mm is ample for an air gap.

How about leave the door as is, no sill, and instead use something like this under it: https://ewistore.co.uk/shop/external-wall-insulation/verge-trim-upstand-2-5m-110mm/ As long as its sealed correctly in the right places it should work. There will be a thermal bridge of course, but if its an outbuilding it shouldn't cause you issues.

They all need to be metal under current edition regs afaik. You'd probably be hard pressed to buy a new plastic one!

Yeah its definitely not a free upgrade!

assuming they were to the spec of the time they’ll be somewhere between 1.8 and 2.2U

Both, good to know you are happy with their products.

I too am going to be using these, window spec is spot on, I think its either 40 or 44mm triple.

Who is your supplier?

I looked at these also, initially looked very good, but I wasn't convinced with the seals on the units, too few and in awkward places, so I decided against

These installed both my PV and Battery, they use local installers round the country, essentially they’re just a reseller.

Could be drying out still… last time I did a rough WUFI calc for adding EWI to my 60 year old bungalow, it took around 4-5 years for the humidity in the masonry to absolutely settle out and that’s a long time after construction.

Kooltherm is Phenolic, I don't know of any other manufacturers that do this type insulation, others are PIR. Take a look on seconds and co, you may get some cheaper on here with a few knocks to it, or a few mm out.

Yeah thats all its for, basically a check valve.

The bit where the can attaches, use a socket to remove the top bit, this holds the ball valve. Once that bit is off, you can then use an allen key to remove the brass part from this section, and the ball and the spring will come out. This is often so clogged up it ends up looking like solid plastic!

Could be worth enlisting the help of a company like snagsure, they will give everything a once over and then persue the builders to remediation

Hi, I’ve managed to find a builder, though at present they haven’t started yet (were due beginning of month but are behind) so I’m hoping that this won’t be an issue for me as currently I’m not well enough to do any digging. sorry can’t give any more help. Mike

As promised a little update on the Battery Storage. Firstly i'm very glad I bought when I did, as everything battery storage wise has skyrocketed in price since, even the prospect of adding a US2000C seems unlikely for now, though to be honest, going on my usage I don't think it would add a great deal of benefit. So I'm running the Solis 5th Generation AC Coupled Inverter, which does have a couple of niggles, which at present are reducing its savings potential. Those issues are: 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. Now my base load is around 45W, so that means that since i've had the battery, i'm actually consuming more during the nighttime than i did previously, which is a negative. I got in touch with Solis UK Support about this issue, and they say they are aware of it, and are going to be adding 2 offset values which will be user configurable to combat this problem, and they've told me it will be available in around 2 weeks time, so we shall see. So although it will be a static value, i should be able to get much nearer to 0W import from grid whilst ever there is charge in the battery, but its not at 100%, and its not over its maximum demand (around 1.8kW). To better news, aside from the issues above which should get resolved, the system is essentially running off grid now, and has been since the middle to end of february, pretty much every day without fail, just with the odd bit of import for things like kettle and oven, to cover above the 1.8kW if the Solar isn't generating enough at the time, which is getting an ever smaller occurence. So the graph above is from March, with the Red bits on the top graph being the bits of import. The bit at the top showing 22kWh import, the majority of this was during the early february days after install when solar PV wasn't doing an awful lot. As you can see I'm still exporting ample amounts to the grid also, not that it would make any difference at this stage. Until I get the full years amount, its almost impossible to say how much this will have reduced by. Today I've done a load of washing and then dried it in the heat pump dryer, and following that I ran the oven on its Pyro clean cycle, and come tea time, i'll be fully charged again and ready for the evening (Thai Curry if you were wondering!). This one I'm keeping an eye on, obviously we know that these inverters will never be 100% efficient, but from those figures i've sent 177kWh to the battery, and only been able to get 124kWh back out again. Some of this will be down to the BMS consuming power to keep the battery healthy. So the inverter is 94.0% efficient at charging (100kWh sent to the battery will yield 94kWh of charge in the battery), and 94.5% efficient at discharging (1kWh being discharged from the battery will yield 945Wh). Please correct me if my maths is off! Entirely possible as I've got the plague at the moment! For how much its changed my import amounts, another tricky one which will have to wait for the end of this month, or maybe even next. I didn't get the smart meter installed til the end of March last year, but as a comparison: March 2021 (18th to 31st) - Imported 46.9kWh March 2022 (1st to 31st) - Imported 48.3kWh And this will drop further with the firmware upgrade. Will keep you posted in another couple of months time!

There’s also the farrow and ball ‘smell’ very unique