ProDave

The issue to me appears to be a stone / concrete sill with no drip bead. Normally the underside of such a sill has a groove that encourages water flowing over the edge and underneath to drip off. Without the drip bead as yours appears to be water is likely to flow to the wall underneath the sill. Can you take a picture looking up from below to the underside of that sill?

Sorry, typo now corrected, I meant DMEV has no heat recovery.

He didn't get the choice. BC mandated mvhr must be fitted as the air test was <3. I have seen it reported some people deliberately aim for just above 3 to avoid it. Because the house was nearly finished he ended up fitting 2 small mvhr units, one for upstairs and one for downstairs to minimise the disruption to the building. If you play with the figures in Jeremy's heat loss spread sheet, you will see once you get to a very good level of insulation, your heat loss through the walls is very low and ventilation heat loss starts to be a major proportion of total heat loss. So your choice is something like DMEV which has no heat recovery, so all the expelled air is replaced by outside temperature air, or mvhr where perhaps 80% of the otherwise lost heat is recovered.

It sounds like one heater is struggling to heat that room, hence the very high local temperature. I would try 2 smaller heaters, one at each end of the room. Or look at why the room needs so much heat?

A near neighbour planned on DMEV and had pretty well installed that, but when his air test came in at less than 3 he was instructed by BC that full MVHR was required.

The defect is probably on the outside relating to the window sill. Picture of that?

Yes no problem at all. Other than it states a lamp size of E26 whereas E27 is the normal. It might have odd sized lamps.

A kitchen is not a special location, no requirement for any particular IP rating. If you really think you need it, look for bathroom light fittings.

It is all relative. I was disappointed with my 1.4 test but the guy doing the tester nearly wet himself he was so delighted with the result, the best he had seen. I also got the impression my BC inspector had never seen an EPC A before. As to whether mvhr works to save heat? All I know is in Scotland if your air test is less than 3 you must fit mvhr. Compared to the old uncontrolled ventilation regime with lots of individual holes in the building, it is marvellous.

If you are hoping for an air test of 0.6 I very much doubt you have anything other than MVHR. One characteristic of an air tight house, is you can open one window or one door and you will get very little draught. It is only when you open 2 at the same time a howling gale goes through. Contrast that to out previous house. You opened the front door on a windy day and internal doors would blow shut or open as the howling gale entered through the door and rushed towards any of the extract fans in bathrooms, kitchen or utility, the cat flap, or the window trickle vents, or up the chimney via the stove that took it's air from the room, or out through the vent built into the hearth. I am convinced mvhr and eliminating all those deliberate big holes in a building would work wonders even in a house that is not particularly air tight.

I would be surprised if it was screw penetrations. To allow yourself some investigation time can you rig up your own blower door? I used some OSB, some cardboard, an old desk fan and lots of duct tape. This won't get you a reading but will allow you to spend as long as you like going round with something that makes smoke, e.g. Joss sticks, to investigate where the leaks are.

Is the "poor" score really an issue? Are you hoping for passive house certification. I too got a poor score of 1.4 without being able to pinpoint where the leak(s) were. But the end result is still a very low energy house and an as build SAP score of A94 so not entirely shabby.

I spray with diluted bleach from a spray bottle. Best done when you are expecting rain shortly afterwards to wash it off.

I would leave as it is. the cost saving is not worth it. Mine is controlled by 2 room thermostats and a timeclock, to make it controlable in the same way as a boiler so most people would understand it. the timeclock has a holiday mode, but that just turns it off for a set number of days.

And a pub. My SWMBO worked at Headington Hill Hall for a while. (Maxwell's Council gaff)

Where abouts? That's where I grew up as a boy.

The other thing i did today as well as preparing a better base in the pump chamber, was I contrived a long hose from my immovable air compressor in the garage, to the treatment plant, just to blow some air down the pipe to ensure it was not blocked, and it ran free and you could hear the bubbles blowing in the "contents"

Well I have made a decision and ordered the £45 piston pump. It's advantage should be longer life than a diaphragm pump. but I expect it will be noisier. In preparation for that I am going to cut a board to sit in the pump chamber to sit on some foam. The default pump chamber in the conder TP is just like a plastic bucket with the pump sitting on what is doing a good job as a drum skin. You could not design a housing to me more noisy if you tried. The same make of pump as the one I have bought also do these diaphragm pumps that look remarkably similar to the Charles Austen type. But for those the spares are available individually including the air chambers and the flap valves contained in them, so if I did go back to another diaphragm pump, that would be a good argument for choosing one of those. It really annoys me that the spares are not available other than in a kit, for the ET100

No special treatment. Solum was built up with compacted infill after strip founds and under building done, then DPM then thin concrete screed poured. Under floor space ventilated with air bricks so assumed to be a dry space. Normal practice for a timber frame with suspended floors.

Sorry I did not describe it well. JJI 300mm deep engineered timber I beams for the floor, as light as a feather to carry. Here they are being insulated before being covered.

Thanks for the recommendations for the Secoh. The cheapest I have found for that is £160. That's still a hard sell when I can get the Chinese piston pump for £45. It would have to last 3 times as long before needing a service.

Timber frame build, strip foundations, I beam joist floors, insulated and covered in OSB. Lay battens (following joists) Lay UFH pipes. Fill gap with dry pug mix sand / cement as a heat spreader. Lay Engineered Oak floor as structural floor spanning battens.

No thought from anyone? My choices seem to be spend £40 to replace the diaphragms in the ET100. Yes that will get it working again. BUT you have to buy a kit that also contains a new armature (2 magnets moulded into a plastic armature) I am not convinced that needs replacing and I have not found anywhere to buy just the diaphragms. And as for being forced to buy unnecessary parts, there is also 2 sets of flap valves in this pump that do not get replaced with this service kit. The larger Charles Austen pumps do replace the flap valves as part of the service kit. So one has to question how many times can you service this pump with this kit before the flap valves give up? OR I can spend £44.99 to buy a completely different but new pump. It will all be new. It may be better and last longer, it may not. But if the "service" cost when it needs it is only £5 more to get a completely new pump next time, it has to be worth a try? Is there nobody reading this that has tried alternative pumps and can post their findings, in particular how long they last and can they be serviced or do they need replacing compete?

I sprayed my coffee all over my laptop when I read that. Made my day. Great sense of humour.

Out in the garden today, I noticed there was no noise from the treatment plant, the Charles Austen ET100 has failed again. I have once replaced the diaphragms in this pump, I don't recall exactly when and I can't find my previous post about it, but it does now seem very long ago that I replaced them. (if anyone can find my previous post please post a link to it) So the question is, do I replace them again? And accept this is a design of pump with an inbuilt short design life of the diaphragms? Or are there alternatives available that are better, more reliable and possibly lower power? I know these are generally talked of as good pumps, but to me something that needs servicing so frequently does not seem a good design. How about this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/315879624105?_skw=100l%2Fm+piston+air+pump&itmmeta=01JJ2C6CWW195RC06F730H2JT0&hash=item498be48da9:g:dOUAAOSwa2VnEMrs&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA8HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKm21zAzCS4zNd2jnxfrrOBkOhQYhAk7CosWXuQypC5wJb6PfvsNVkMOBejzWhXwVDjHUnawcrurG%2FiIsbWdtpK%2Fn8IwRJZJP8M7oQQgPTxjf%2BRiq7GH1iDIoBnPZGgGTwO4j0vTT7Wimo9wYGyM0IRgNX79VT%2B0F5RTNeR24E6dCJ86hGQoWhtrDsRU4%2BExDuMp6nvrHeqB6iyjGykP7uwnOH4F0eSd%2BtG3ikLuqrSuKWOLLWQVKQ1ID679iWiY4E4eWE5W00urRUrvWQ%2FZacju8p3mCAHzPjJTq1hBl4CtUw%3D%3D|tkp%3ABFBMzs6ZzJBl An 82L/min piston air pump that consumes 60W of power for £46.99 To put that into perspective the ET100 diaphragm pump is 100L/min and the service kit alone costs £40 each time it goes wrong and it consumes 105W of power.