ProDave

Present house has a themostatic bar mixer valve. when it works, it is great. BUT... The present house is 12 years old. At 4 years old, the mixer stopped regulating properly, so i replaced the thermostatic cartridge. At 8 years old, it failed again. Although the original cartridge came out easily, I had to press VERY hard (vice) to get the new one fully home, so I thought the chance of getting it out to replace it again was slim. So I bought a whole new bar mixer. Now at 12 years old, it's failed again. So is 4 years the "normal" life? is it considered normal to have to repair or replace them every 4 years? If so I will be lookinf for something different for the new house, something that just keeps working. SWMBO of course blames me for buying the cheapest. That is true of the current one, but not the original. Is it really true that if I spend more, it might last longer than 4 years? Is it a problem with our water? We have very soft water here so I can't think of an issue, but clearly something is gumming up inside. Is it worth digging out the original one, giving it a few days soaking in something like Viakal and trying it again? Ideas and observations please.

... plumber, joiner, kitchen fitter, chief tea maker and several others no doubt. I have tried plastering and rendering and I just can't do it. We can't all be good at everything so I am paying a man that can.

The wood fibre board is rated by the manufacturer to be exposed to the weather for 3 months before being covered. I have not exceeded that yet. However the roof (which is also covered with wood fibre) was closer to 6 months with only the breathable roof membrane protecting it without leakage before I got the tiles on. In fact the garage roof has only just been tiled and that is a year since it was put up, again only the breathable membrane protecting it. Not a drop of leakage inside.

Well it's nice to have the doom sayers telling me my house is not approved and will rot and fall down in no time. Yes, I appreciate the render is what keeps the rain out. So attention to detail is important, as is keeping en eye on it. So if in the future I see cracks then I will need to fix them. With a masonry wall you can let the render blow and half of it fall off and apart from looking tatty, nothing much will happen. With my build it will be more important to repair any defects quickly. Having had a good look at and spent a lot of time working with this wood fibre board, it is actually very surprisingly resistant to water. The outer layer has coating that makes it waterproof. I have had some bits left exposed while waiting for the renderer, and rainwater just runs off. compare that to bare timber where the water soaks in and wicks deep into the timber. The firm that dis the design on my house have just built some flats in town using this method, so the housing association involved are happy with the risk. As to vapour barrier. the condensation analysis and approved drawings show just the OSB layer as the vapir and air tightness layer. But when I do the interior I am likely to also include a air tightness / vapour membrane on the inside.

Well if you really want cheap http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LED-Voltage-Tester-Pen-90-1000V-AC-Non-Contact-Electric-Volt-Detector-Sensor-UK-/131754093686?hash=item1ead27ec76:g:bTwAAOSwmmxW6Wph

All that matters to me is building control have accepted.the design drawings and as long as it's built to the drawings will sign it off for completion. I am not using the services of nhbc so if they don't like it, that's too bad but not a problem. i don't want to stay in the past and am happy using a modern building method that's been in use on the continent for some time.

Tou need a voit stick or voltage detector pen. Something like this http://www.screwfix.com/p/fluke-1ac-ii-voltage-detector-pen/85949 Turn on circuits one at a time and use the pen to see which are live, and them label them with a marker pen. Note for lighting circuits, turn all the lights on when testing as some lighting cables will appear dead when the lights are turned off. This, imho is the only use for these devices, they should never be used to prove a circuit is dead before working on it.

I would have a serious word with the council. It is the School project that is causing the "issue". I would respectfully point out that YOUR plot did not have a problem, you already had an ecology report, and you have STARTED your development. Any newt problem that now arises, is clearly the result of the school project and the relocation of the pond, and I would poin tout that it is the contractor responsible for that work that should take all precautions including a newt fence along your plot boundary.

That picture is quite shocking Jack. It shows the builders regard fitting insulation as a "box ticking" exercise, rather than actually giving any thought to making it well insulated.

Yes. I lost count of the number of builders that told me I had put the frame up "inside out". The OSB racking layer is on the inside and only the wood fibre cladding on the outside. It has it's own challenges of course, the big one being the insulation was fitted from the outside just before cladding which meant I only fitted the insulation as I went and if I could not get a section covered in the day I had to fix some plastic sheeting to keep the rain out if it were to rain before I could continue. Another consequence of not having the blockwork shell, is on some walls the structural engineer specified two staggered layers of OSB racking panels on the inside.

Much as I hate the use of flexi pipes for a fixed item (e.g their prolific use to connect the feed to wc cisterns) that does seem a very good solution. As long as the other end of the flexi is at an accessible position because I would personally deem a flexi pipe to have a finite life and one day need replacing. Does this explain why some baths come with over sized tap holes? And how waterproof will it be, e.g if you have a shower over the bath, will water drip underneath when someone is showering?

Normal wisdom is a conventional timber frame house with a brick or blockwork outer skin, needs to have a ventilated cavity. Indeed filling the cavity between a timber frame and the brick outer skin is frowned upon. But the wood fibre cladding option does not need a ventilated cavity. Part of the design process is a vapour analysis (someone will be along to tell you the correct name for that). What that does is to ensure there is no condensation risk within the frame. that is achieved by making sure each layer as you move outwards is more vapor permeable than the inner layers.

I don't really think they bother where it is. they gave me a 100 metre drum of SWA 5 pair phone cable to install. I will leave some slack under the floor and bring it up under the stairs where the router can sit out of the way, and then slave phone wiring can go to other sockets. in the last build, they fitted the master in the static 'van, with a big coil of cable left and I moved it into the house myself when we were ready. And in a previous house I actually had the master socket installed in the loft, and from there ran the cabling I wanted to the slave sockets where I wanted them. That was when sockets were first introduced, before that your (clockwork) phone was hard wired to a junction box. We have two Open Reach engineers staying in our B&B at the moment, aparently we have temporarily imported a lot of them from "down South" One is from Manchester and one from Yorkshire (I appreciate not many of you think of those as "down south") due to the backlog of faults resulting from a lot of lightening strikes just over a month ago. One of them upgraded my router to the latest version of Home Hub, but as I predicted it made no difference to our slow broadband, and even the latest one still crashes from time to time and needs resetting.

And I'll bet you don't have a cavity anywhere. Good job I decided NHBC was too much for too little.

Yes it is an approved system. It was designed and detailed on the construction drawings by a local Eco hose builder who use this system a lot and approved by the local Building control before we started. The render system is by Baumit.com. The wall make up is shown here (along with many other variations) http://www.ecomerchant.co.uk/walls/lime-plasters-renders-mortars-ancillaries/insulating-systems-ewi-iwi/steico-protect-system-wood-fibre-board-lime-render.html Click on the Technical info tab, and download the file. It shows options of timber frame, CLT and masonry walls. The only difference is we used Pavatex wood fibre board rather than Steico, and I didn't buy my stuff from Ecomerchant, instead I sourced it via the local firm who gave me a better price.

I should have made it clear mine is timber frame. The wood fibre cladding fixes direct to the timber frame with no cavity and the render goes onto the wood fibre board.

In Scotland, the cavity has to also be closed between first and second floor levels and therefore two more rows of vents installed above and below the fire stop. I decided early in the design that I didn't want to pay for a lot of blockwork that added almost nothing to the thermal performance of the house. That is why I went for the wood fibre cladding and then render, so that every bit of the wall make up adds to the insulation. It also has the benefit of a clean render finish with no "warts" (weep vent slot things) to spoil it.

Here's how I dealt with the ground level at the front of my house. I dug a trench and made a retaining wall of railway sleepers, just 3 sleepers high, topped off with a 4" fence post on it's side so the top edge on show is not as clunky as a sleeper.(and I wouldn't have had enough sleepers) The house side is then filled with stones to make a French Drain. The DPC is level with where the rendered wood fibre board stops, the course of blocks immediately below the DPC has air bricks so the stones are built up to just below the level of the air bricks. this French Drain will get continued along the side of the house where the ground is much lower.

Reading your blog and your "FFL" being 150mm lower than the ground level. We have a similar situation, not regards to FFL but regards to DPC level (strip foundations) that are some way below FFL. I have solved this by digging a trench around the front, making a little retaining wall out of railway sleepers, and filling the inside with rocks, to form a sort of French Drain that will go all along the front and down one side of the house. I have to go out just now but when I get back I will take a photo and post it here

This seems to vary with both time and location. In our case they are happy with the SWA cable coming straight into the house to the BT master socket, which in our case will go under the stairs where things like routers will go out of site and nicely in the centre of the house. In other places they seem to demand a junction box on the outside wall of the house.

The standard BT duct is "duct 56" which I guess means it's 56mm diameter. but I dodn't have any, the Open Reach surveyor only had small van so could not carry it. they told me I could make the 50 mile round trip to their depot to collect some free issue. Instead, I had a length of the identical but black ducting, that had been left outside for some considerable time and had gone grey, so I used that. It is only the bit under the road in duct. Being SWA cable the rest of is is direct burried in the ground.

Re fast fix boxes. They have a bad reputation in some places. Three things can go "wrong" with them. They can pull through the wall because the fixing lugs are too small, the fixing lugs are not held in position properly so when you try and screw an accessory on, the lug just pushes back out of the way, and lastly the screws can jamb and the nut spins in it's plastic moulding. The fact is, the design of a LOT of fast fix boxes leaves a lot to be desired. but there is a simple solution, just buy a decent make of fast fix box. I only ever use Appleby fast fix boxes and they have none of these problems.

"No evidence of original ground level? They could have taken a look on street view? There are no worries in our case. I submitted a site plan with existing levels and a site plan with proposed levels. I am pretty close to the proposed levels. Basically all I have done is taken a sloping site, and built up the downhill end of the site so it is now very much less of a slope (but still a slope) so more of a useable garden. The build up also minimises the height from floor level to the ground at the "back door" so fewer steps needed from that down to the garden. It has worked out well as I have already used most of the soil that was excavated for the foundations. any that doesn't get used up when we finish the final details later on, will simply get used to smooth out the ground on the other side of the burn, which is otherwise being left at the original level. So no muck away charges whatsoever for this job.

I can't recall what temperature we run the UFH but it's not particularly high. If you walk on the floor bare footed, you certainly don't think "gosh that's hot" but of course neither do you think it's cold. In fact about the only time you really notice the UFH is if you lift the rug in the living room and then you can feel the warmth that's been trapped under the rug. Likewise in the morning if you pick up a pile of clothes from the bedroom floor, the bottom of the pile feels warm.

This is definitely something to think about. Present house has surround sound system for tv, all free standing speakers (though the satellite speakers could be wall mounted) I don't like the theory of all the bass coming from one place, as technically it sounds wrong, but it does seem to work quite well. But for listening to music, I am sorry, nothing will get me to part with my pair of floor standing speakers. If you want small but good speakers, I have seen (heard) some good results from Bose speakers. I recall walking into a hi fi shop once thinking "that sounds good" and was amazed at just how small the speakers were. The price tag wasn't small though, and I know some people detest Bose. The "issue" for us is two living rooms, the open plan "familly room" and the snug living room. My inclination is to have the decent hi fi and big screen tv with surround sound in the snug, and an ordinary sized tv in the familly room, though it will want something better than the rubbish speakers built in. So I guess I will end up cabling both rooms for surround sound just in case.