MikeGrahamT21

Yeah the phenolic are going between the joists, then loft roll on top. will put the foil nearest to the rooms below for the VCL

I was having a think about that... Obviously thats totally possible, i can get it up against the plasterboard, but there has to be an air gap for the foil to work doesn't there, otherwise it just acts as a conductor. So on that basis, making an air gap isn't really do-able, nor would it be easy to seal, so was going to have the foil on other side just to act as a VCL. Thoughts?

that’s very kind Where abouts are you? edit: just seen Gloucestershire, I’m not sure where abouts that is without looking apart from south from me

Yeah that’s fine, I need something to keep me occupied over winter, you may or may not have read that I lost my wife in the summer, so anything to keep busy no matter how tedious is welcome ?

ive plenty of other uses for it if it’s not suitable for whatever reason, but if it’s suitable I’d like to use it as my base layer as it saves me laying a VCL

Hi ive just got a load of kingspan k112 100mm phenolic board quite cheap. Foil on one side and fibreglass on other. any issues using it as the 100mm in between the ceiling joists? bungalow so only got one floor and it’s a cold roof loft. cheers Mike

The MVHR should never be switched off surely? the sensors generally activate a boost condition to remedy the issue with air quality, and then when its resolved, it goes back to normal speed.

No i've not done anything yet, had a bad time recently, sadly lost my wife to her long term illness at the beginning of June, so at present everything is on hold, because at the moment, I just can't be bothered with anything ? My main thoughts at the moment are along the lines of, 'what is the point in any of this?' can't be arsed etc etc. Doing the house up was always for both of us, but now theres just me rattling about in here. So glad we bought a 2 bed bungalow and not some larger house! I'll certainly report back when i do get round to doing this, but probably won't be for some time.

We have had glass replaced before. The general rule so I've been told, is if the mark obscures your view, and is clearly visible from a distance of 2m, if it is then they have to replace the unit free of charge.

Thanks I'll take a look at these. Company recommendation is good too for the timber, i'll definitely keep them in mind for this and other cladding I'm hoping to do (pending approval from planning of course!). EDIT: This is a fantastic tool, exactly what I was after! Many thanks

I'm probably on an uphill battle as the wife has said now she doesn't like them, personally I think they look really modern, but obviously they do have purpose. Are there any calculations available for the projection of the canopy based on how deep the window is, and what angle the louvres would be positioned at for shading during summer, but, or are the louvres simply there so its not a solid surface doing the shading?

Hi, We have 2 windows which face south, and cause the majority of the overheating in those two rooms during the summer months, so I'm wanting to put a brise soleil above each window, but I'm guessing the manufactured aluminium ones will cost lots of £££, so I'm thinking to make a couple from timber and paint it 7016 grey to match our window frames. Does anyone have any ideas on design for the blades? Any one else embarked on such a project? Regards Mike

I have just completed an extension in a very similar manner, vaulted ceiling with 225mm insulation (we did full fill with PIR, and then had to counter batten the roof for the 25mm air gap), and we have 2 roof windows on the south facing side which work quite well. We used Okpol roof windows, however the air tightness wasn't what we were led to believe, and I think in general airtightness in roof lights is probably an issue, so thats one thing to consider. Our U Value on the roof was around 0.11 in the end, the roof windows even though they are triple glazed is 1.0U, so a lot worse, but you have the solar gain in the day time when its sunny. We have both older double glazed in another roof, and these newer triple, and the triple are a LOT quieter when it rains, you could certainly sleep with it, but you can still hear it. This particular room has a lot of glazing elements, 2x2.1m bi fold doors, and a massive window at 1.6mx1.9m all triple glazed, and the room even when we have had -5c a few weeks back required around 10minutes of heating first thing in the morning and that was it for the whole day. Now with this warmer weather, the heating hasn't been on for days, holding a nice 21C. So for us, there is no negative impact in terms of efficiency. One final thing to note is overheating in the summer months, this year we have decided to add on Awnings, which are external blinds that cut down heat ingress by what they say is around 80%, so we will see how they perform.

How about these: https://www.creative-cables.co.uk/metal-ceiling-roses/7053-black-cylinder-rosette-kit-bracket-screws-and-cable-retainer-8057730181235.html

According to U-wert Phenolic Set insulation (Kingspan Kooltherm) also has a very good heat storage capacity, not quite as good as wood fibre, which seems a bit odd for a foam product, but it is extremely dense compared with PIR, will get nearly a 10hr decrement delay, which isn't too bad, plus its the most insulating of materials, unless its an error on their calculator. I find buying from seconds and co is a good deal cheaper than new, the boards i received were barely marked, but they were effectively K5 EWI boards, so fibre lining on both sides, instead of foil, but that was fine for what i wanted them for. As far as a ceiling is concerned, decrement delay definitely needs to be considered, it is very important in terms of comfort in the summer, but also balancing temperature in the winter.

So a while back I decided to send an email to British Gas FIT team to ask about the re-positioning of the panels, thinking they would come back saying no, to my amazement they rung yesterday and said as long as the panels aren't changing size or power output, and the system still goes through the same single MPAN, then we can re-position, and they sent it me on an email in writing. So good news on a few parts, this means we can go with the 6 panels south, and 2 extra east, and more importantly, we have the west side roof now free for a dormer extension!!

I used these screws on everything from the roof trusses to the floorboards, fantastic quality and very cheap, and they are rated as structural screws hence the use for roofing: https://www.toolstation.com/forgefast-multi-purpose-self-drilling-wood-screw-tub/p91716

British Gypsum make a product called GypFloor Silent: https://www.british-gypsum.com/white-book-system-selector/systems-overview/floors-and-ceilings/gypfloor-silent This goes underneath your chipboard and should do the trick. I would imagine its fairly expensive though. Are you sure you need sound proofing if its just a storage space?

Absolutely, but the systems shown above, even though they are south facing, are performing twice as good as ours in some cases. The PVGIS would be about right i'd say, we did 125kwh last February with a 4kwp system. The yellow bar person got nearly 200kwh last feb, so that also fits the bill. Just seemed a bit shocking yesterday just how much difference there was. Ah well, at least we are in the right bracket for performance, i'll stop worrying about it now and move onto something else lol

So after messing around with the optitrac parameters, I can see we get a tiny bit less on a morning, though generation begins earlier, but the afternoon is much better, and longer, with middle of the day roughly the same as before, overall, we are generating more now than ever before. I've compared our solar array with others in the area (as local as were published on sunny places), and found that we trail behind massively. Looking on google maps, the yellow line is almost perfect south facing, and the red is pretty much south, slightly west, where as we are east west split, so I can agree there will be a difference, but this much?!?! We are of course in green:

I dont think it works at all in terms of ROI at present. Power cuts would be a big benefit, and then the only other thing is the warm fuzzy feeling you get from self consumption, but I guess all you are doing is paying for the electricity up front. We would still need a grid connection, and maybe only achieve a 75% overall reduction, so 25% from grid plus the standing charge, but it would somewhat protect from price rises. I'm waiting to see what contract i end up on in October, see how much its gone up, as at the moment we are on 11p/kwh which is pretty cheap really. It all depends how much prices rise, anything above 19p/kwh for us would land a profit over the 10 years.

more than likely, as i say in first three years they say its fixed at £50 a year, thereafter its a percentage (50% i think) of the profits they make out of doing it, so I suspect its very low. Trade off is unlimited warranty. Just wondered what peoples take was on this as its a little different to some of the other offerings. There is one I got recommended a while ago which is the LUX AC storage with Pylontech batteries, around £3400 for 4.8kwh all in, self install, and this also has the gridshare incentive option available, but doesn't give any extra warranty, just the standard 10 years. I wonder if people will start selling extended warranties for the batteries. Or maybe it would be very unlucky to have one break??

I agree, it is very expensive. According to the blurb, the warranty lasts as long as you are a member of grid share, so potentially forever. Obviously grid share can drain your battery too for others benefit, which could be seen as a negative.

Came across this a while ago in the Grand Designs Magazine, a UK designed battery storage system, currently they only sell 2 and 3kwh systems, with the 3kwh being about £3900 fully installed, and they're launching a 4.8kwh soon, which is the capacity i was thinking would be about right, though I dread to think how much that would be, maybe £5 or £6k? Normally, these would be a big no no in terms of return on investment for the usual 10 year warranty, however these units firstly support the grid share incentive, which gives £50 per year for 3 years, then a percentage (which would likely be next to nothing), and more importantly if you sign up to grid share, they will give you an lifetime warranty for the battery, which somewhat changes things a little? The only thing is, what they class as 'lifetime' and that i'm not sure about. What do you think, worth it or not? Or would it be better going for a much cheaper system with the same capacity, as you can get this capacity for around £3k now, with self install. I asked for a quote a while back, and they do pester quite a lot, which is a bit of a put off.

Fair enough, that sounds like a good enough reason to drop EWI. Thermal Mass, is probably better called Heat Storage Capacity, its is a materials capacity in which to store heat, and release it slowly to the environment, which in theory dampens the temperature from moving so much either up or down. A room with IWI will warm up very quickly, a really fast response, because the insulation prevents the heat from having to warm the heavy masonry behind it, but in contrast the heat will dissipate quicker than it would had the walls stored some of that heat. This room would have a low heat storage capacity. One with EWI allows the walls of the building to store the heat, with the EWI acting like a tea cosy, keeping the heat in the walls where you want it, so the room would take a long time to warm up initially, as you are warming not just the air, but also the masonry, however once warmed, it should keep a reasonably constant temperature with little heat input. This room would have a high heat storage capacity. EWI should also help on a sunny hot day in summer, as the walls will be relatively cool, so any excess heat gets absorbed by the walls, keeping the temperature down, whereas in the room with IWI you would potentially get overheating unless you put measures in place to reduce this potential. A free service such as this may help you simulate your plans, and understand thermal mass/heat storage capacity: https://www.ubakus.de/u-wert-rechner/? This also models the Phase Shift, and temperature amplitude damping which i spoke about above, which are quite important. Site is in german, so use chrome to convert it. Hope it helps.