ProDave

I have been wondering that. Or if not a sensor to detect that it has just started a defrost cycle. My thinking is if the heating and hot water load is low, and you have plenty of time for it to heat the water so are not in a hurry, it would be better to shut it off for half an hour or more and let it defrost naturally. The thinking being most icing occurs when the climate is cool and wet, i.e still above freezing so it will defrost naturally. If it needs defrosting when it's below zero, you have little option but let it do its thing.

On my last self build I used the HNBC solo for self build. It wasn't too badly priced then. We took it on as we knew we might sell within 10 years. As it happens, the 10 years of that has just expired and we still have not sold, so it in fact turned out to be a waste of money. And there have been no issues with the house that would have warranted a claim either. The present new build, we have no intention of selling (after the trouble we are having selling, I won't be in a hurry to sell another property ever, it has the be the very worst aspect of owning a home) so we are not bothering with any form of warranty. The only bit of paper that interests me is the building control completion certificate. I did briefly lok at structural warranties and found them all to be a lot more expensive than 10 years ago.

My entire house, roof and walls, is clad on the outside of the frame with 100mm thick Pavatex wood fibre board (other makes are available) In the case of the roof it takes the place of a sarking board (a requirement in Scotland) then is covered with a breathable membrane then battens and tiles. In the case of the walls the render is applied directly to the wood fibre board.

My neighbour fitted his over the winter, but has only just got around to oiling it.

Before you stick the tape to the face of the blocks, go round with a good filler, and fill in the grooves along where you are expecting to stick the tape, and leave to dry.

I found the same on ebuild. It must be an IPB thing. Once you have posted a table, any attempt to edit anythign whatsoever spoils the formatting of the table. I would go as far as saying post the related text in one post, then the table on it's own in a following post, so you can still go back and edit the text post without upsetting the table.

You can buy a 16mm to 16mm coupler to make a repair in one go, I have two here in fact. If you can't find them locally and quickly, TP sell adaptors to fit a standard 15mm compression fitting to take 16mm pipe, so a 15mm compression straight coupler and two of these adaptors will do the same thing.

I found them frankly very unhelpful. All the guy really said is "here's a drum of cable" and all he wanted was the cable from my house to the road verge where their trunk cable runs. It was up to me to get it there, which I did when the road was up for the other services. Our OR rep wouldn't even give us any ducting. The excuse being "my van is too small to fit it" (it was a tiny van) and all he could offer was I could make a 50 mile round trip myself to go and collect some. Well I had a length of black electrical duct that had been out in the sun for many years and gone grey, so I used that

But will Open Reach charge you for that? When I met the Open Reach man, I was told there is a "budget" of a little over £3000 for each new connection, and you were only charged if it went above that. I don't expect to be paying anything.

How are your other services coming onto your plot? do any of them require digging up the road? All our services come from the other side of the road to us (in the grass verge) so I managed to get away with paying for the road up only once, and laying in the water on that visit plus ducts to take electrcity and telephone cables. You need to talk to Open Reach to see what they advise.

I'm getting a better U value than that, with 100mm wood fibre board and 190mm of Frametherm 35 earthwool. That's a warm roof room in roof house (see my avatar) More detail of your roof make up, thickness of rafters etc. What are you putting between the rafters etc.

Originally my timber frame was going to be filled with one of the blown in types of insulation. However when I loked at costings i found that was an expensive option. So I have chosen to fill my frame with Knauf Earthwool frametherm 35 which is under half the cost of the blown in stuff and gives the same U value. I have 190mm of that in the frame plus my 100mm EWI. I would consider something similar. I spent £1200 on insulation and that is more than enough to do all my walls (what is left over will be used under the floor or in the roof) so you don't have to pay huge amounts. I would also look at over sheeting on the inside with one of the PUR type insulations sheets, e.g kingspan, celotex etc to mitigatecold bridging of the frame members.

The "normal" timber framed house in these parts has a 150mm frame filled with insulation and quite likely a thin layer of something else inside. An important question is what is going on the outside? The traditional timber framed houses up here have a brick or block outer skin, but because the cavity has to be ventilated, the outer skin adds very little to the insulation, and is just an expensive rain screen. So as well as having a thicker than normal timber frame, I have chosen to clad mine in 100mm thick wood fibre external wall insulation and the render is applied directly to that. As a very rough ball park figure, the external wall insulation system is a similar cost to a blockwork skin, but helps to make the building more airtight, and adds more insulation.

What you are describing is a 2 stage heat pump. I believe the additional problem is needing a different refrigerant for the high temperarture stage, so two ordinary ones cascaded may not work well. And the second stage one would be a water to water heat pump, not an air source.

Probably an even better idea up here. Our drinking water comes from a loch about 600 feet above sea level, so it's the run off from surrounding mountains, and in the spring, snow melt. By the spring, it comes out of the taps so cold I wonder it's not coming out in lumps. One winter I must measure the incoming temperature.

Yes you can appoint 2 agents, but it's unlikely they would work together and in the event of a sale they would both claim their full commission. The original agent we were with offered to do dual agency and accept half of the commision in the event of a sale but I couldn't find anybody else to take up that offer. I have been advertising it myself on gumtree, but the only enquiries from that have been other agents wanting to market it for me, so a bit of a waste of time, but it's very cheap.

My Komatsu PC30 is nominally a "3 ton" machine but when I looked it up, it weighs 3.5 ton. It was way outside the weight for towing with any vehicle I have access to, it must be well over 4 ton allowing for the weight of a suitable trailer. So I just paid a local plant hire company to transport if from the seller to my plot. They came with an 11 ton beaver tail flatbed. Towing something of that weight is virtually outside the weight limit for a normal licence. I have seen it discussed on the boating forums and it can be done with a 7.5 ton vehicle that has been de plated to a lower weight then the vehicle weight plus trailer weight is within limits, but a fully plated 7.5 tonner you would be over the limit for your licence with the trailer. I did ask some of the car transporter and recovery companies first but they all point blank refused to even consider anything over 3 ton. If you don't have far to move it, a local farmer will almonst certainly have a suitable trailer he can tow behind a tractor, but that was not viable for a 70 mile journey.

A phrase that springs to mind is "incongruous on the street scene" That was the phrase used when South Oxfordshire district council refused planning permission for a garage. the garage was outside the building line so was not permitted development, but still further away from the road than some neighbouring houses. They could equally apply something like that if they feel its design and scale is out of keeping with neighbouring properties. But I won permission for my garage on appeal, so if they refused it for something like that, it too would likely be allowed on appeal. Jeremy, re your vivibility splay, I wonder how the council would react if a neighbour of yours drove into you while exiting your drive, because you couldn't see him? any one of you care to test that? When the council get the bill from the insurance company for allowing a dangerous situation they have previously been warned about.....

Yes those are the things. I am sure they are even cheaper than that at TP, I was surprised just how cheap they were (though it might be a long drive to TP from where you are)

Check ebay. I am not sure what rhe market is now, but not long after part P was introduced, people on ebay would pay a premium for old coloured cable. I tried it once, anything over 5 metres I listed on ebay and sold several lengths. All sold for MORE than the cost of new cable from a wholesaler. I would never re use them because of the old colours, but there are plenty that will so they can claim their alteration was done before part P came into force. I have given up collecting scrap cable to weigh in since the price of copper fell. I only got £25 for the last lot, barely worth the petrol to get to the scrap yard.

I have just updated my other roofing thread with this picture. This is the detail I ended up with for my sun room roof. Almost identical except it is set slightly lower, so the roof profile (as mocked up here by the spirit level) does not quite touch the ventilator strips. the filler profile for the box section roofing will fix (glued?) to the top of the ventilator strips.

To finish this thread off, here is what I arrived at. Almost identical to how I did the main tiled roofs, except the height is set to the roof profile (as mocked up here by the spirit level) does not quite touch the ventilator strips, to allow the filler profile to be fixed (glued) to the top of the ventilator strips.

Yes I was intending to drill "mid span" between where the nail plates fix to the bottom member, and not up in between the nail plates.

Yes just like TerryE's they are just like "spacers" He has an uncanilly similar arrangement to me, but I never got a picture of mine from above lke he did. I personally can't see anything wrong with drilling them, I am not going to compromise their function as a "joist" as the edge ones are not "joists" but "spacers" All I need is two holes for pipes, probably 22mm (cold water up from utility to rest of house, hot water down to utility) and a row of probably 20mm holes directly above the consumer unit for cables. Everything else can find a different route.

Think of a "joist" that throughout it's length sits on the downstairs wall so is evenly supported throughout it's whole length. Then the upstairs wall sits on top of this "joist" It is not in any way supporting a mid point load and being subject to bending forces like a normal joist. In fact I don't even know why they used a posi joist in this position. So instead of having the normal loads of a joist, that put some of it in compression, some in tension, some in shear, this one just has an even vertical compression load applied to it throughout its entire length. Yes it is the same height as the others and the only reason for using a posi joist here is to ensure it is exactly the same size as all the others that are really doing the function of a joist.