Ferdinand

Perhaps weed suppression membrane? When you create your loft hatch, remember to get a properly sealed one, and take care with the type of ladder. I like these sort, but they are bloody heavy if you get them wrong and they open on your head. F

I think I need a plumber out, but I wanted to see if anyone had any ideas. The circs are: Hot water OK. Central heating is totally dead. Bosch Combi Boiler, about 4 years old. Boiler is Greenstar 42Cdi Classic. A large one. A new bathroom rad fitted a few months ago. Slight weep from one pipe joint. Pressure reads marginally down (1.5 bar to 1.4 bar). A Reset makes no difference. No fault condition shown. My Circuit Breakers are all where they should be. I think I need a gas engineer, probably on Monday. Probably for a service which is due and pick up the fault. (Just before mum comes back from hospital next week - typical). Have I missed anything. eg Is there a fuse for the CH side controller that ican just push back in? Cheers Ferdinand

I think his cost our taxes £1645. I get 2 sheds for that. But it keeps needing repairing. Can I swing by and get Hoisin Nicked Dick and Poached (in both senses) trout? I have never done duck, but dad had a flock one year and said they were far harder to ring-neck than geese. If you get into Turkeys there was once a demonstration in an interview with a US Vice-Presidential Candidate.

Can't wait for the vid.

Like Highlander, there can be only one. An MP might have one going cheap .. er .. quack. Though the rumour is the ducks boycotted it. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5357568/MPs-expenses-Sir-Peter-Viggers-claimed-for-1600-floating-duck-island.html As it happens I am a distant acquaintance of the Deputy Duck Warden in the village of Foolow in Derbyshire, who does the work. The Head Duck Warden is (if still standing), Lady Morris of Castle Morris, who is the widow of Lord Morris of Castle Morris - a member of the House of Lords who bought Foolow Manor to "decline and die in". He has now declined and died.

I think I linked it in the costings post. Did I?

Upstairs is also a shower tray, but set at 20mm proud of the floor. The shower wall tiles were already there, and previously the shower screen went right across the alcove; I turned the end panel through 90 degrees to make room for a bath. Here is a video. Really needs the sound muting.

The tiles I used for the upstairs ... family ... bathroom were these - Canada Grey. https://www.tiletown.co.uk/en/canada-grey-floor They are a matt finish, which imo is a better balance between non-slip and easy-clean than the ones mentioned in my reno of the 'disabled friendly' bathroom. Tiletown will send a free sample.

I do indeed, and I will have to go around again. And the bedroom is carpeted ?. F

IF you work through it with the units in English rather than SI eg "m3.s-1" as "cubic metres per second", it may help. Also it is perhaps not intuitive for many of us to think of air in kilograms. F

All true. Though in the Oct-Mar period I tend to have my ufh on for very long periods sometimes up to 2/3 of the day, and the house cools down relatively (to newbuilds here) quickly, and the balance is between 1 - Warm enough, 2 - Low water temp for efficiency, 3 - Higher water temp or supplementary heating for responsiveness. F

Don't forget - I use PIV fans in all my rented houses to provide condensation / mould resistance and resilience against non-ventilating or washing-on-radiator tenants, as I have not accepted trickle vents for years. I often add a low volume trickle fan (used to use single room HR fans) in bathroom and kitchen to provide a "poor man's MVHR". I have always used fans with backdraft shutters and recent PIV loft fans, but have taken to the continuous ones more recently to give a low level forced airflow. That is all together with high quality renovations to provide a resiliently cheaper to run / humidity managed enviroment for Ts, which aims to keep them comfortable and staying for longer, partly by giving them energy bills 1/4 to 1/2 less than otherwise. The heat cost of having continuous low volume fans installed is in that context. And an extra £25-30 on your gas bill may or may not be significant in exchange for whatever difference it makes to your environment. This year I have done the same at home, and I do not think I have it quite right yet. In my case I have an increasingly frail mum coming back from hospital so need a warm and responsive environment. That she has moved into a downstairs south facing bedroom that is cold in winter and overheats in summer (runs up to 35C on sunny days) is the next thing I need to manage, exasperated by ufh not being *that* responsive, especially in a well-insulated but not superinsulated house. At this moment, my downstairs bathroom is at about 21C, my kitchen is at about 19C, and mums new bedroom is at about 16C. Clearly I need to rebalance the ufh again for the winter, and perhaps fit one of those carry around wireless controllers. I really want the whole downstairs at 22-23C. F

Fair cop. Full "question" in future. Must not make people think I am in a submarine. "Flood Q, Number One - Crash Dive". (Damn - just drowned the spy gadget specialist. No more exploding rat-poo for me.) F

Thanks. So - a detectable amount (albeit not yuuuuge on a Trumpian scale) or 1250 kWh per annum ish = £100 or so of electric or £25 of gas. My total energy usage is something like 12000 kWh gas and 4-5000 kWh electric for a 4-5 bed house (assuming the numbers I gave Cheap Energy Club are still right), for a bill of around £900-£1000 pa. The effect on responsiveness and perception is more interesting, even though the power to compensate is theoretically only 150W, which should be a rounding error on a properly sized gas boiler capacity. So a heat recovery fan there would reduce that by 75% in theory (may have one in stock) but give a slightly cooler than ambient draft in the bathroom by definition, but I suspect I am better reverting to the Airflow Icon. Suspect a bigger issue may be 1 - that the ufh is temperamental, and slow to adjust as they always are, 2 - that we are relatively poorly insulated for ufh, 3 - that the central programmer is immediately outside that bathroom door and so will switch off too quickly is not offset-programmed, and 4 - that I tend to use the upstairs heating relatively little, which means that I may lose a lot up the stairs. But every little helps, marginal gains and all that. Back to Airflow Icon I think when I get to it. F

As it is continuous there is no opportunity for backdraft. The q is about how much heat will be carried by a continuous flow of air. For vents, you can get all sorts of things. I used one of these in a gable, which has both a wind cowle and a backdraft shutter https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01G3YNLJ8/, but may not fit. Or in line ones are available. Or you could change your fan. Go a hunting on Amazon. Ferdinand

A quick question - how much heat is lost through a fan running continually at n litres per second (currently 6) with temperature differential delta-t (currently prob. 15-17C)? I have replaced my fans in both bathrooms with a pair of Vent-Axia Lo Carbon Centra-T devices, which run at either 6 l/s or 9 l/s continuous setting. Before one was a bog standard thing installed by the (self) builder, and the other one downstairs was an Icon Airflow I have had in for a few years. Unfortunately for unavoidable reasons, the downstairs one is directly above a radiator, and it is the warmest room. I also have a PIV device fitted, which will run at a low setting in the winter (and switches itself off at low outside temperatures anyway) to give me some modest throughput. The issue is that in the last few days with outside temps at perhaps 2-3C the heating response had been sluggish, and I have someone coming back from hospital to a downstairs room and I need to run at perhaps 23C internal temp, which is either very slow to reach or out of reach without eg a fan heater on. I am wondering if my new throughput fans are part of this issue - the plan was that they would be marginal, but I am looking for causes. This morning I will switch the d/s bathroom off completely to stop the fan to see, and will take some thermal piccies, but possible solutions include putting the Airflow Icon back, or replacing the d/s bathroom fan with a Heat Recovery Version. Any comments and insights are welcome. Thanks

Welcome to the Pleasure Dome.

And think carefully about the surface of your floor tiles. I would argue matt not gloss, but think carefully before going to "textured" ie non-slip as they are significantly more painful to keep clean. The second bathroom I have done this year is matt, but I needed non-slip for my frail mum downstairs for the first one. Get whole tile samples and put scrubbed in mud on them then work out how you will clean it. Ferdinand

I was going off @Nickfromwales's numbers. F

What I would say is to make the length of the screen at least 1m-1.1m if you enter sideways, and perhaps 1.7m if you enter at the end - both without a door.

Any of that left over from the bathroom. If HMQ wants to ban the skulls, then why not put an outdoor shower on the back? Then do the panels with those blue dolphins.

There's always a piece of music, but here it seems to be either the folk song or this one, which is quite cool. The tune and variations. Apparently (alleged in Youtube comment, but sounds plausible): Wonderful, mysterious, evocative. Composed just after the Munich Agreement - the composer - a Czechoslovak saw a newsreel of the British royal Family singing this British folk song under a chestnut - representing the values it was hoped the Munich Agreement would safeguard. Poignant! the composer escaped to Ohio and later St. Petersberg, Florida!

Oh yes, good idea but the plot looks rather like a jungle at the moment. I live about 2½ hours away from it so I haven't been a dutiful gardener. We like jungles. How about a nice photo of the jungle? And good news to see. *polishes nails on tie on behalf of entire forum* So on that timeline you completed on it before PP was approved - how did you come to that thought?

Whilst I am also with the sceptics, gardeners protecting plants use far less bulky type insulation. The glass lids of cold frames, for example. Farmers use stuff that is like strong clingfilm over seed trenches. What about bubblewrap if you do do it ... or indeed Hessian sacking or just membrane?

I do cubed or sliced mushrooms in a wok to half cooked stage, then put a layer in the bottom of a Tupperware mini container with a layer of curly kale on top. Kale may be slightly cooked itself. Then do say 10 or 12 of them and freeze. Heat up in the microwave on say 30-50% power whilst doing toast and poaching egg, and it can be turned out onto the slice of toast and the poached egg put on top as a filling but lowish carb / cal breakfast with some veg included. The juice left by the mushrooms goes into all sorts of sauces and gravies to add flavour if you like to keep your toast crispy. Goes well with say half a dozen mini tomatoes or kipper or whole / flaked mackerel or even smoked salmon. Anything less robust than kale eg spinach tends to turn into green goo by the freezing and reheating process. Will look for a pic. It is a variation on a recipe Salmon and Eggs out of a book called Very Low Calorie Recipes and Meal Plans, from the people who do the Carbs and Cals App For slimmers and diabetics. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Carbs-Cals-Calorie-Recipes-Plans/ Ferdinand