ProDave

I was having a discussion with a joiner friend of mine today, and he is saying one of the merchants is telling him that Multipanel are currently not supplying their normal panels with a marine ply backing but instead only supplying them with an MDF backing. Anyone else able to confirm or deny this rumour?

It was a cheap inhibitor / antifreeze that screweys sold a few years ago, intended for central heating systems and mixed at 25:1 would give frost protection to -10

Take the cover off the ASHP, instruct it to start, then go and listen / observe, can you even hear the compressor starting or trying to start?

If there is only 1 CU and there is enough of a loop on the supply cable it might fit inside the CU.

What really really annoys me about this, is the law (or however you want to describe it) says self builders are entitled to reclaim the VAT on a self build. But then the department tasked with implementing the refund scheme seem to operate in a way designed to see how many people they can exclude from claiming the refund. This has been known to be happening for years. Why has the body that set the "law" not given the refund people a good kick up the aris to make sure they implement the scheme properly without actively trying to deny claimants? the only logical conclusion from the fact they have not, is the people that set the "law" want it to be so that people can be excluded for silly trivial reasons. I think Covid helped us, because it stopped the valuation officer making his monthly snooping visits to our site.

That is a "mat well" for the purpose of allowing a doormat to sit flush with the floor. The reason you have several is it will have been designed for a thick coir door mat, and instead you have several thin ones. My guess is the concrete sub floor you are seeing in the mat well extends under all the floor in the hall. Without knowing any more about the house, age, etc one can only guess if it has any insulation under it. You can certainly improve the detail by sealing under the door threshold properly. Does the engineered floor sit directly (with an underlay) on the concrete or is it raised on battens?

I was going to say you don't want to build that with white render in an exposed location as it won't stay crisp and white and clean for very long. This photo demonstrates that and I don't think this one is in an exposed location.

Jeremy created the spreadsheet for modelling his own build and then shared it with the forum. Quite a lot of people have used it since. I built my house as well as I could, but only got an official air test right at the end. I was disappointed with the result of 1.4 yet the tester was excited as it was the best he has ever tested. You might think 1.4 would make my heat loss high? Well in practice the heat i put into the house closely matches the results from the spreadsheet. You will only get the "leakage" air loss when it is blowing a gale, and in any event the air is likely to take the easy route, through the fan assisted mvhr unit and that is certainly how it appears to be. If you built the house with just trickle vents or other leaks, you can never say for certain what the air change rate is as it will depend a lot on where the leaks are, and how strong and even which way the wind is blowing. The lesson is do the best you can for air tightness. Just one of many aspects to detail properly.

I found Jeremy's spreadsheet very accurate, far more so that the SAP calculations (with the same input figures) arrived at. I thought the idea was just play with the air change rate. A totally sealed house without mvhr would be 0. Then add the air change rate of the MVHR to see how much is lost through that. Any further refinement beyond that is unlikely to tell you much. At the end of the day, you build it as well and as air tight as you can and if you meet the figures given by the estimate then you can be pretty sure you have not made any mistakes. But all very interesting from an academic point of view.

To just do trial pits is a very cost inefficient job. You need to get a digger to site, so that is on and off delivery charges, driver hire for probably half a day all coordinated with when the builder or structural engineer is able to visit. Mine cost nothing as I had already bought myself a small digger, so on the appointed day, the structural engineer arrived, i dug holes where he said as deep as he said, pausing for him to peer down them and look at the spoil coming out. Then I filled them in again. If you are faced with a £6K estimate, that would pay for a cheap old digger to do it yourself? then you have it for the duration of the build, then sell it. It will probably save you money when you get the Archealogical survey done.

What was your spec for the house? What was the EPC rating? and air tightnes of you had a test done? What communication happened between you, the builder and the electrician? Who specified the lights? Most of us on here, if asked first would have told you not to fit recessed spotlights in that roof structure, it is virtually impossible to make them airtight, especially if you want swivel ones. We would either have advised changing the roof structure, or fitting some other form of lighting?

Four horses and a reindeer Too much laughing water.

Hand them to who? Not the new owners to move in I hope? Agrees all trades are busy in the run up to Christmas, then in January you think your phone is broken because it never rings

We have some big caverns up here, man made dug out of sold rock, previously used for oil storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchindown_oil_tanks

Last week I was impressed with my car tyres. I went to a job on one of the housing estates, knowing the estate roads never get gritted I went slowly, not the merest hint of traction problems or wheel spin. I got out of the car and nearly ended up on my aris, the road was that slippy it was hard to stand up.

There is planning in progress for such a scheme here, a field full of batteries and switchgear to do just that. Far enough from us that we will just see the glow in the sky when the batteries catch fire and hope there is not s strong SE wind blowing.

Work it backwards. Assume you will make the wall 350mm thick. Timber cladding, battens and counter battens are likely to take 100mm A 25mm service void, plasterboard and a racking layer of OSB is going to be 50mm So that leaves you able to build with a 200mm frame and get 200mm of insulation in there. I almost guarantee that will be a lot better than the original masonry wall. Now you need to choose what insulation in that 200mm to meet or exceed building regs.

Isn't that the one where the roof is a made of tiles stuck together with plaster of Paris and part of it collapsed during the build and had to be re done?

+1,more greenwash.

Most bird watchers hate the sparrowhawks, especially when one swoops in and snatches the little bird you were watching, as they do occasionally here and take one from the bird feeders.

You only need to unscrew the white trap from the bath waste and the outgoing pipe, neither of thouse couplings need or should be siliconed. the black bath waste does not need to come off the bath. Then you can examine the small screw cap that is leaking, unscrew it, and work out why. But I don't understand why you can't unscrew it in situ? if your fingers can't reach it, a pair of gland pliers most certainly would.

What you describe is one of the many "PV diverters" not an internet linked switch. These diverters will send anything from a few watts to 3kW to the heater depending on how much surplus there is. Your simple internet switch idea would be fully on or fully off, so what do you do? Only turn it on when there is 3kW surplus? Or turn it on when there is say 1kW surplus and then 2kW will be imported. A very inefficient solution.

Take the trap off the bath then you will have all the access to unscrew the little cap and examine what is going on. Or just have another try at the shop and make sure you examine the next trap before leaving the shop.

I spent the first 25 years of my life in the 1930's family home, then later I went and bought one myself. My overriding memories of both, are being cold, even when pumping a massive amount of heat in, and high heating bills 20 years ago when energy was "cheap" I would not want to be owning or heating one now. IMHO they need some serious updating. Ours was all solid walls that would need internal or external wall insulation, and the floors were partly solid and partly suspended timber, both would need lifting and insulating properly. The timber ones would be easiest but the solid floor part would be a lot of digging up, digging down and building up again with proper insulation. I would only buy another if it was sold at a "project" price, which sadly does not seem to be the case even now.

So unscrew it, make sure it has a rubber seal washer, make sure it is all clean, no foreign objects, re fit and re tighten and try again.