ProDave

Skirtings are plain pencil edge oak veneeered mdf and 15mm thick. So I guess these skirting blocks need to be slightly thicker, sat 20mm, and probably about 80mm by 130mm

Any idea who might sell them? It seems howdens don't

I would be REALLY surprised if your real world energy saving is only £81 per year with the mvhr. Are you taking account of the fact that if you don't fit mvhr you will have to fit trickle vents in EVERY window. You will have to fit an extract fan in the kitchen, utility and every bathroom. Unless you spend a lot of money on those fans, they will be leaking air all the time even when not on. So with all the ventilation you will NEED I suspect your ACH will be a lot more than 0.3 just by fitting all the ventilation that building regs require. Sealing the house up and not fitting mvhr is not an option unless you make other ventilation provision. But do carry on and when it's finished let us know your real life energy bills once you have made all those holes in your house. And let us know if you get any condensation or lingering smells anywhere. For me, mvhr is worth it, not to have anti back draught flaps clattering in the wind, not to have internal doors blow shut when you open an exterior door etc (with a sealed house with mvhr you can open 1 door or 1 window even on a windy day and not have any through draught)

As a background activity, I am getting ready to fit the architrave and skirtings. I have started by buying a couple of lengths of oak veneered architrave and skirting from Howdens. No 1 discovery. Take one Howdens stock length of oak veneered architrace and cut the architrave for one side of a door, and the "offcut" is just a little bit too short to do the other side of the door. This is going to make it very wasteful. Now I sometimes see joiner putting a little square / rectangle joining "block" at the bottom of the architrave to join it to the skirting. As always, trying to search for those, does anyone know the proper name for it? In our case it would need to be a rectangle to join 70mm architrave to 120mm skirting, solid oak, or oak veneer covering ALL edges. If I can find some of those, then that shortens the required length of architrave so you would then get 2 out of each length with very little waste. Next question is finish. I want to pre finish them and then glue them on, I don't want to be finishing in place and cutting in all the edges and I don't want to mess about filling nail holes. So this method means the finish will have to be thoroughly dry as some clamping in place will be needed while the adhesive dries. I have coated two samples. One with Osmo oil which gives a nice finish but takes an age to dry. The other with a clear satin varnish that will dry a lot quicker. So far the clear varnish does not bring out the wood colour as well as the osmo oil.

My only comment is the en-suite to the master bedroom looks woefully small.

Hi and welcome John This is a damned good forum and you will get lots of help here. Perhaps post a little about what your project is and how far in you are?

Just think, if you had built it earlier, and had it "fully loaded" you would have been ahead of the game with your loo roll stockpile.

I am a firm believer that you do not need under floor heating in a hallway. So what I have done, is where 4 pipes have to pass through the hallway to get to the kitchen / diner, they do so through the hallway at the normal pipe spacing, and that is the only UFH pipes at all in that hall. That works very well. The other 4 pipes for the 2 loops in the living room, pass under the stud wall between the utility and the living rom, immediately behind the manifold. Like I say, sketch out your layout and throw it open to the forum for a design by committee

No 1 hurdle. I DON'T have an amazon account. A bit like I don't have and don't want a google account. Do I have to pay anything to Amazon to create an account?

It won't be much hotter as the water temperature limits the heat. There is an issue that you don't want to lose too much heat from the pipes "on the way" to their room. Agreed careful design is important and much of that is placing of the manifold. you can also insulate the "pipes in transit" to reduce heat from them.

Is your concern the cluster of pipes together? I can see that will be an issue for pipes set in screed, that will be a hot spot. My own UFH is on a suspended timber floor between battens with a biscuit mix as a heat spreader. I simply left out the mix on those bits that were a cluster of flow /return pips precisely to stop them being a hot spot. Careful planning of the looks is important, and don't be afraid in a situation like that to drill floor level holes in some of the walls so they can take a direct route rather than all going in and out of the doorways. Post up your proposed layout for scrutiny and suggestions? EDIT: Looking again, that large cluster of pipes I suspect is leading around that left hand room to the manifold. I would suggest the manifold location has been chosen badly in this case. Further suggestion. Where you have a cluster like that, don't put them tight together like that. Maintain the same normal spacing. They will add to the heat of the room they are passing through and to compensate the "proper" loop for that room will be smaller.

Getting the roof on gets it watertight sooner. Just do it in the order you have trades available. At least get a decent roof felt on to keep most of the rain out.

Thanks. So it's not an "out of the box" solution. It's a computer that you have to load a variety of apps onto? What operating system, open or proprietary? I don't mind if wired or wifi, both are available. Does it do everything from it's remote control and an on (tv) screen user interface or does it need to be connected to a computer to load stuff? NONE of this info seems readily available. You see the version 1 firesticks quite cheap. Are they no good or obsolete?

So is this raised steel platform your driveway? Gosh that's a "challenging" site

MY problem is "what device" I have already determined plugging the laptop in, though it works, is FAR too clumsy to use. Yes I could scrap my present DVR and buy the up to date version that has iptv built in. But I don't want to do that. All I want is a simple device that has wired or wifi ethernet in and hdmi out, and will view all the free on demand / catch up services. I keep reading about fire sticks, now tv boxes, android tv etc but they are all really aimed at subscription services. I just want the free services. None of them seem to advertise what free services they will operate with without paying anything to anyone. And neither do any "help" websites. And nobody gives examples of what their user interfaces are like and how user friendly they are. I mention that because I have set up a number of YouView boxes for people and they must take the biscuit for being the most slow / sluggish, non intuitive, buggy user interface ever written, and the software keeps on crashing. I can't help feeling something could be made with a raspbery pi. A "video" version of the pi music box I have, but again not seen anyone coded anything and i don't have the skills myself. So still open to suggestions for that "box" to take ethernit in and give me hdmi video out of the on line tv catch up services. Must NOT require a phone to be used as the user interface.

Borrowing money right now would worry me. but if you have the finances you might as well try and carry on. Just because house prices might fall does not mean the cost to build will fall. It will just mean that more self builders get caught in the "trap" of a house costing more to build than it's eventual market value. I am trying to carry on. I am in a phase of trying to buy materials to "stock pile" those so I have enough to keep me going, even if the builders merchants shut down. It will be interesting in a few weeks when i try to get building control out for a temporary habitation certificate. I will let you know how that goes.

Got a volt meter?

IF you had one of those and IF you had decent broadband.

And for those like me that missed the first one, the series is being repeated on More 4 starting on Thursday at 1:15AM I have set my box to record it.

I found tape a bit of 1" batten to one end of a 1M long spirit level was about right. Set the pipe so the level reads level. simple. EDIT @Oz07 beat me to it.

Shame I missed the first one but set the box to record the rest, and to catch up on the repeat if the first on the 26th.

What is the width of the access alongside the bungalow? Could the bungalow be retained and make that a shared access and create new parking /garage behind the bungalow? Even by giving the bungalow a haircut and making it a smaller 1 bedroom semi bungalow? To be honest it looks more like a plot for a developer if they could get both of the pair of bungalows and create a small close type development of a few houses in their place. They would also want that awkward sticky out bit.

Do not let the runs "sag" or condensation may fill and block them. Keep them supported and level.

Is that right hand wing above the lounge a pitched roof? If so the pitched roof above the lounge would make a good space for an mvhr unit with an access hatch from bedroom 3 or 4 in the back of one of the wardrobes,

I'm beginning to wish I hadn't mentioned the Scottish Regs........