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ProDave

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Everything posted by ProDave

  1. ProDave
    If you want to see more mvhr ducting, I have just put another entry on my blog at www.willowburn.net look for the entry "MVHR ducting"
  2. ProDave
    It is up to the council to provide an official address, but it's a service they charge for. So I have abstained from using that service., We don't have road names or numbers in our little scattered community, just house names and a postcode. so we have chosen a name for the house and are using it, together with the postcode that serves the houses on either side of us. So far I have bank accounts, all utility bills, electoral roll, even council tax bill, and all normal post and parcel delivieries all using the new address without paying for this "service" so I can't see me coughing up for it now.
  3. ProDave
    As long as the SNP send fewer MP's to Westminster I will be declaring it a success.
  4. ProDave
    THIS is a plenum, actually two of them.
  5. ProDave
    Anyone have a link to how to change the "service address" of a plot? I assume this means changing it from "land between x and y" to the actual house name?
  6. ProDave
    Same in our old house with tv reception. Because we are in a glen it's not line of sight to the transmitter. So when we were building that one and living in a caravan I put the tv aerial on a summerhouse that we had put on the highest point of the plot, and it worked reasonably well with a masthead amplifier as it was then a long run of cable. Later, when the house was finished I tried moving it. I spent nearly a day. Put the aerial on a pole on the gable end of the house, making it higher than it was on the summerhouse and a shorter run of cable. I spent hours trying to get a signal. Same aerial, higher location, no local obstructions. At the end of the day I gave up and put it back on the summerhouse, and there it remains.
  7. ProDave
    Exactly what I am doing right now. If the room above is boarded, I am screwing them to the underside of the floor above. If not I am fixing various bits of wood in place to screw them to. In the case of the loft, which is boarded, they are going above the boards, so drill a big hole in the loft floor and screw them down from above. Pictures on my blog in a few days when I am finished.
  8. ProDave
    Same as us. Old house used to get about 2Mbps download. When we had the line connected to the new house (100 metres closer to the exchange) we barely got 1 Mbps, so I complained. A very helpful Open Reach engineer (far far better than the one that made the initial connection) spent some time checking the line with his instrumentation and re made a number of poor connections. Result was we now get nearly 4Mbps. Definitely worth reporting the fault.
  9. ProDave
    Am I the only one that can see a potential problem in this? When there is a major incident and the phone network dies and the emergency services have no comm's, I will say told you so.
  10. ProDave
    The difficulty is you cannot compare like for like as different companies are offering different levels of completeness. Personally, I would not want a system where the walls are finished internally and conduits left for the wiring. I want the freedom to change my mind on where switches and sockets go. I would look for a system that has a complete sealed frame, then a battened service void before the final (plasterboard?) wall finish goes on.
  11. ProDave
    That would explain why EE are going to build a new mast near us, seemingly in a location that only serves a few scattered houses.
  12. ProDave
    If your reason for choosing top hung is just because the handle is out of reach on a velux centre pivot, then choose Fakro instead with the handle at the bottom. For my plant room I bought one of the budget 3G Eco+ windows from sterling build. Yes it was cheap and tripple glazed, but it didn't exude quality, in particular the trickle vent mechanism struck me as poor. It will be interesting to see how it performs in the shut position when we eventually get round to air tightness testing. I thonl we will be choosing Fackro for the bathroom and en-suite. Just to say a friend fitted the top hung Velux 3G with upvc trim inside and I did not like the internal finish, personally I thought it looked like a cheap plastic window, and I would choose the painted wood instead.
  13. ProDave
    Of course all this could be solved, at a stroke, if the boundary boxes that the water company supplied and fitted had a double check valve, instead of the single check valve currently used. Before the water gets to my house it passes through a single check valve in Scottish Water's boundary box. A second single check valve in my own boundary box, and then a double check valve in the house. Madness.
  14. ProDave
    Jeremy wins on a technicality. You know when I said "you" you know I meant the pair of you. Anyway congratulations. I know what it's like to be building slowly with no third party help.
  15. ProDave
    You have just laid the very last brick?
  16. ProDave
    @joe90 I have laid in all my mvhr duct today. I have 13 metres of duct left over, so I doubt that is enough to prevent you having to buy another roll is it? If you don't want it then in due course it will go on the for sale forum.
  17. ProDave
    I had to fit double check valves. I have three of them. All fitted in the 25mm mdpe before the stopcocks (I use mdpe in, copper out stopcocks) One for the standpipe, one for the static caravan and one where the mains water enteres the house. Scottish Water would not make our connection until I had fitted the NRV's for the standpipe and static 'van but once fitted made the water connection, so they must be okay with them being before the stopcock. You can of course shut it off at the boundary box if you need to change the NRV. I don't think anyone is ever going to come and check the NRV is present in the house, but it is there should anyone wish to see it.
  18. ProDave
    That graph is interesting, and really confirms what I have thought is houses are no less affordable than they were when I bought my first house. I remember to get a mortgage, to buy literally the cheapest house on the market in the county (a tiny 1 bedroom new build "starter home") I had to borrow 3.25 times my salary, and they even took into account a pay increment due in 2 months. That still left me nearly 20% short of the house cost which I had to fund by savings, and selling just about everything I owned, including selling a good car and buying a rust bucket old banger. Bear in mind I was relatively well paid then, so people on "ordinary" wages would have struggles even more, and remember this was interest rates of about 10% (which then rose to 15%) And the older guys that bought their houses in the 70's for a few £000 could not believe how much I paid for such a small house in such a poor location. It has NEVER been easy to buy a house. The difference now is with less council rental property, more people who would have been council tenants are struggling to buy rather than private rental.
  19. ProDave
    Some workings on how you worked out the flow rates to each room would be useful. I have read the BC documents and I need to do some sums to work out the volumes of each room and hence the required flow rates. Then when I measure the flow rates, I will me measuring linear aie speed with an anenometer, which has to be converted to volume of air knowing the area through with the measured linear air flow was measured. When the time comes I was going to put this all into a spreadsheet so I just end up with a target linear airflow per inlet or outlet vent. If someone has already done such a spreadsheet that would save me repeating a lot of work.
  20. ProDave
    Having tried for 2 years to sell our old house, I have a very different view of the market up here. Houses are under priced because there is little (or in the case of large houses almost no) demand. When I say under priced I base that on the fact even with the low cost of building plots up here, if you bought a plot, and built a house, even doing a lot yourself to save money, you would be doing very well indeed if you then managed to sell it for enough to cover your costs. The housing demand in this country is largely skewed towards the SE of England, where demand far outstrips supply and prices reflect that, yet many parts of the UK have depresses or stagnant housing markets where you can buy cheap property. What seems to be lacking is the will, or even the know how, of how to regenerate the depressed areas, spread the jobs and wealth around the country, increase demand in the depressed areas so reducing the demand in the SE. A lot has been talked about doing that but not much has really changed.
  21. ProDave
    @joe90 My pallet full of big red duct arrived today. If you have not placed your order yet, you might want to wait until after the weekend. My plan is to try and lay all the duct in this weekend so I will then know if I have any left over, or am a bit short.
  22. ProDave
    It will depend if there have been any changes to the local plan since the last permission was granted. Our plot we are building on had permission in 1980 which had obviously long since lapsed, but it still met the criterea set out in the local plan for allowing housing in the countryside so permission was re granted and we bought it.
  23. ProDave
    That's a job you can justifiably be proud of. Well done. Is it finished inside as well?
  24. ProDave
    M digger has gone, but the Landrover. No way.
  25. ProDave
    I wired a few houses at the Findhorn Foundation, where we were not allowed to start work before a certain time because we might disturb meditation.......
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