ProDave

Can we see a better picture of outside including more detail of what the ground surface is and how it relates to internal floor level please? Are any other external walls, e.g. at the front of the house showing damp or are they okay?

My cheap pump arrived today. I didn't think I was going to get a chance to try it as it was raining hard and playing with an electric pump in a pit in the rain was not high on my list. But the rain stopped and the sun even came out so I could not resist having a go. Initial thoughts, this pump is VERY noisy when not doing any work, but once connected to a "load" it quietens down a lot. It is now pumping and blowing bubbles through my tank as it should. Still some tweaking to do, it's outlet connector is slightly smaller so the quick bodge with a bit of tape needs improving, and there is still work to do with soundproofing but with the lid on the pump chamber it is not so bad, but still as predicted more noisy than the ET100. I will leave that until a better day as the rain was just coming back as I finished and the wind picking up.

Scrape the paint off and make sure this one does not already have the groove that some decorator has filled in to make it look nicer? Otherwise a convex bead of sealant will do much the same job. Let inside thoroughly dry out before patching up and re painting so that probably won't be until the summer.

We fitted a similar sized 3G slider. You lift out the sliding one so that halves the weight. It was still a 4 man lift with a set of 4 suction grips So whoever you employ it needs to be 4 people with those suction grips and then know how to do it.

Are they all like that or just this one not having a drip bead? As well as re sealing all the joints, I would scrape off the paint underneath and then run a bead of outdoor sealant along the bottom say about 10 to 20mm in from the outer edge.

What would bother me is the size of solar panels does not seem particularly standard, each time I have looked different sizes are being offered. So you build your in roof PV with appropriate trays, say in 10 years time one or more gets broken, can you get replacements of the same size and appearance? If I were doing this I think I would buy a number of spares and store them carefully for that eventuality. And a good argument for doing as I have done and have some of your own scaffold.

Ask Rachael from accounts how her plan is going?

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