ProDave

@BotusBuild Did you put the ptfe tape on to start with? I have never heard of that being done. I have put ptfe tape on when re sealing an existing compression joint, but never when doing one from scratch. A smear of my trusty water hawk potable water jointing compound often helps as well.

Hi and welcome. Not far from me then (I'm 20 miles north of Inverness) A big problem with a lot of old steadings is the almost complete lack of foundations. Assuming you will want to dig out the floor t insulate it, be careful. Very few are left as bare stone, most line and insulate the inside. How about just leaving one stone feature wall. Sounds like an interesting project.

There will be some type of filtering on the input which inevitably means some leakage. With no earth, the case would probably adopt a voltage somewhere between L and N and would give you a shock if you touched it,

Yes, otherwise it will add unwanted heating in the house when just trying to do DHW in the summer.

Our cat would have taken that from your hand. No she would have taken it from the wood pile.

Self employed people will be scouring the rules to say where it says I can (or at least confirm it does not say I can't) Employees will just take the general guidance without looking at the detail and say "I can't"

I think the plumber is wrong to cancel this job. The "lockdown" document does not tell all industry and all trades to shut down. The document allows travel to essential work. Most of the tradesmen I have spoken to agree a leaking pipe or a fault with an electrical circuit are essential things to fix so allowed. Most of us now would not attend for a non essential think like change a light fitting,

Cluster flies get past the first seal in our Rationel windows, so when you open them for the first time in the spring a whole load of half asleep dopey flies fall in and you spend the next 10 minutes chasing them out.

I have sorted my timber needs for a while (assuming Wednesdays Multipanel delivery happens) But one thing I forgot is PAINT for the bathroom unit. Hatching plans for one last dash to find anyone selling paint tomorrow. is that irresponsible?

I haven't cut any skirting to length yet so can't try it. Carpets upstairs might go under (I like that but most professional carpet fitters don't) Oak or slate floor downstairs.

So I got a length of American White Oak from the merchant today. All they had that was close was 95mm wide so I had to cut the width down to 80mm (it looked silly at 95mm) One stock length of Howdens architrave will do a full length down to the floor and a shorter length with a corner block. So a decision has been taken not to use a corner block inside the bedrooms, just on the landing, and both sides of the downstairs doors. the length of timber I bought will make 17 corner blocks at a cost of £1.30 each.

Can someone please post these a day or more before the series starts. That's another on I have to search out if there is a repeat of that first episode.

Looks very nice.

22mm minimum. Most are VERY sensitive to flow rate and require quite a high flow rate, I had to fit a second pump to mine to satisfy it. So there is an argument if a long run for going up to 28mm.

In defence of the static caravan. Yes they are cold. One option might be add extra insulation around the outside and clad it in timber? We just accepted it would need a lot of heating and put a cheap wood burning stove in it.

Yes I know they are like marmite, but get yourself a static caravan, or even TWO. We paid just over £4K for one in decent nick including delivery. £10K would get you two, or better still if you can find a twin unit (less common here as most of the stock here is holiday park stuff, twin units are more common on residential sites) Go out to your caravan dealers TODAY or tomorrow while you still can. Choose one (or 2) and arrange delivery. You will need to do some ground work like prepare a hard standing base (compacted MOT1 did fine for ours)

Take that dust cover off the smoke alarm or it won't work very well.

Howdens have now announced they are operating "no contact" Do not enter the shop. Phone your order from the car park. A door will be opened and your order placed outside to take away. At least they are remaining open.

A bit like the one I finished wiring last week. There is a normal boiler programmer on the wall and next to it the heat pumps own "user interface" When it came to the customer "how do I operate it" I just said you turn it on and off and program the times with the normal programmer, just like you do any other heating system. The other box is for information only and diagnosing if it goes wrong. Don't touch it.

Indeed. I have just finished wiring a small semi detached house built by a small developer, that started in the Autumn, Even the mass estate builders recon 12 weeks per house.

Intertesting, not far from me. I wonder who built it and please show us some pics. Findhorn by any chance?

Bloody hell that was quick. Or was it not 8 Jan this year?

I am buying lots of joinery stuff this week, to try and ensure I can keep going if the merchants start shutting.

I chose 48 degrees by trial and error, as the hottest temperature I can just about hold my hands under without it hurting. So take washing up water, I can run that so hot I can barely put my hands in the sink. I can think of no reason why you would want it any hotter. We discussed legionairs a while back, and with an unvented hot water tank and treated mains water there really was no risk. But the standard procedure if you want to do an anti legionairs cycle is once a week you heat it hotter with the immersion heater.

A thermal store is a very bad choice for an ASHP as generally you have to store the water in the tank quite a bit hotter than your target HW delivery temperature.