Ferdinand

I have blogged about the replacements of my downstairs bathroom with a shower in preparation for when an elderly and becoming-more-frail family member needs to move downstairs. This thread is intended as a resource for recommendations for disabled/elderly - both for products and practice. One tension is that traditionally anything that looks "institutional" or "medical" is not liked by people who do not need the aid, and some who do need it.

At the end of day two ... the shower tray is in. I was planning a moulded non-slip shower tray, but these are proving elusive without a special order so I have gone for a normal one instead and will add a full size non-slip mat. The only other point worthy of note is that the UFH manifold-and-gubbins are under the stairs, but that a lot of other gubbins is in the garage at the other end, so I am putting in a couple of runs of water pipe in case they are needed later. These will be sealed at the garage end. Look to your laurels, @Onoff, we'll be done in the time it takes you to choose loo rolls.

Cheers @JSHarris and @NSS. Will this be tricky for larger 3g windows, due to the weight of the window? Or is Sageglass a supply-and-fit item, and you just need to supervise like Alfred the Great's mum with baking? Does it come as a 3g unit and they take the old one away? F

I think one issue with Sageglass will be electrical connections during retrofit without messing it all up. F

Speaking as a restorer of (mainly 1970 or earlier, often pre-1920) houses for rent I agree with that. I am now probably confident enough to put one into the next house I do, but I would want to be restoring to an EPC number of mid-70s to do it. I am not sure how it would be perceived in the sales market, however. Ferdinand

As @PeterW comments - this is mainly backwards. Your heating system spec depends on your heating need which depends on the fabric and context of your building, as well as the size. It is quite possible to heat a normal sized house with a single fan heater, if built for that. So you need to start by estimating your spec. The one thing I would say is that if you go for a a gas boiler, site it such that an ASHP replacement is possible in without gutting everything. That mainly means oversized rads or ufh. Ferdinand

I have family who build electric external roller-shutter style security blinds into an extension in 2001. 1 - The security aspect was overegged for them as they are in a row of semis and garages so getting to the back is difficult anyway. For an isolated or private house - yes. 2 - They do use them for solar blocking sometimes. 3 - They do really need to be designed in first wrt soffits etc, then they can be properly invisible. 4 - You do ideally want a "touch and release" option not just "touch and hold" switches. By the time you have stood next to 4 blinds for 30s each, it is tedious. 5 - Ideally also an "all close" or "all open" switch. 6 - "Easy to use" is very important; or you won't use them. Ferdinand

Very unpredictable. When a house was demolished near here to make a road into a new estate, they continued collecting the bins ...used by a neighbour who was stretched .. for a coupe of months. They had also been used for the previous number of months when it was empty. F

What's SWMBO doing opining about your man cave?

I think a key concept here is robustness .. to coping with 95% or 99% of whatever may happen during the lifetime of the house. Tod ensign to a more conservative temperature in PHPP and to (say) 1-2% not 3-4% of time exceeding that threshold seems to be a god approach. And given that solving the problems afterwards can cost into 4 or 5 figures, it seems worthwhile to provision for a variety of remedies .. since circs may move in several directions. Ferdinand

Talking of auctions. Closure of a high end furniture store, with about a week to go. https://www.bidspotter.co.uk/en-gb/auction-catalogues/timed/william-george-auctions/catalogue-id-wi412608#lot-2ed3eee2-54b7-4674-be5d-aa5300a24308 Current bids - light £2, sofa £80.

I would add 2 items. 1 - Some form of automated or touch of a button outlet for nighttime purge ventilation at the top. 2 - This interesting detail of a briese soleil that does not look like a chip cutter, from the House Of the Year if it was Designed By An Architect programme. Old Shed New House. They have a belt of trees quite close, which will help with the autumn and spring. Ferdinand

And just wait until you pay for the carpet. F

That's a lorra lorra hoovering ?.

Have been watching this this morning wrt my main bathroom due for replacement in the autumn. The most interesting item for me was freestanding baths which seem to be going at about 1/4 to 1/3 of retail, and things like cabinets and mirrors. Wall mounted tall thin rads are inexpensive. And there are still some interesting looking kitchen taps to be sold that are £250 Soak jobbies that look like going for perhaps £50. On those I think I prefer to buy online from suppliers I have used before. F

Not married here. Swings and roundabouts !

Bout £75 for doors like that -Geneva, Cottage Oak or whatever, perhaps plus VAT, from Todd or TP or wherever? Plus doodah give-you-a-blinding-headache-if-you-do-not-ventilate oil? They also seem to infest ebay. But it may be past that now. I have the egg-crate-in-primer ones upstairs 'cos he ran out of getting-his-money-back, and they still aren't painted. If I paint them they may never get replaced. F

Winding up aside, it does seem like quite a lot of oneoff work to save about £50-60 on an oak veneer door over the cheaper version. But I guess that would also tie you in to a design. My approach might be to make bathroom doors subtly different to the others. Ferdinand

It means they are 8 miles away when you may get cross ?.

Get a good door?

I cannot see what going into the existing loft has to do with planning. Unless there is some special circumstance, I would consider applying for the kitchen extension only, and treating the other as a Building Regs Application only afterwards. Why give anyone a potential spanner to put in your works? Ferdinand

Subject to the fun of "pre-commencement conditions".

And so it begins ... the refurbishment of my downstairs bathroom to be a shower room. The self-builder who added an upstairs and extension to the bungalow got a few things wrong, and one of them was that he put a bathroom downstairs, and a shower room upstairs; exactly the wrounf way round for when a frail relative or disabled visitor needs to have downstairs facilities. So this summer both bathrooms are being overhauled - starting with the downstairs one this week. I was expecting a few things to emerge from the shadows, given that there have been a couple of idiosyncracies in the way elements of the house have been done. The downstairs bathroom has been gutted this morning, with FOUR surprises. Firstly, and I am probably unwise to admit not finding this in up to the last 5 years or so, it turns out that the plughole was not connected to the waste pipe .. or rather, became disconnected from the waste pipe at some point between 2009 and now. I moved in in 2012, and have never had reason to burrow under the bath. And I don't mean the overflow, I mean the plughole - where all the water exits. You could have blown me down with a bicycle pump on that one. It seems that originally it was not pushed on by the self-builder who did the house (treat self-builders like Mr Brezhnev - trust but verify !), in that the little flange around the male half had been treated as a "push pipe up against here" thing, rather than a "push pipe over this flange to make sure it grips properly and stays on" thing. Interesting. So the waste pipe was in mid-air below the plughole and a portion of the bathwater had been missing the entry to the pipe. The effect was a moist slab, but apparently no humongous harm has been done, other than a need to run my medium sized dehumidifier overnight. (The room dimensions are roughly 3m x 2m.) Photos: Damp patch in screed caused by plug-disconnection. And secondly, a huge crack in the sand-cement screed - caused we think by expansion-contraction as the ufh cycles. Fibres, Fibres, Fibres ! Davina the Dehumidifier doing her thing. Thirdly, for some reason the chap had painted the wall behind the bath with some kind of water-impervious gloop, which guarantees that the tiles were not very well attached as the strength is that of the weakest layer. And fourthly, there was an interesting recessed trench round the end of the screed, perhaps for pipe-tidy and "flat floor" reasons. And that photo shows a better view of that crack. I am now hoping that the already identified crack in the floor of the upstairs bathroom is in the screed not the subfloor, as that will perhaps save me hoicking out quite so many of the underlying layers. Come back tomorrow for the next enthralling episode of ... the Saga of Badezimmer Zwei. And - if you have not done so recently - check that your drainage pipe is properly attached.

We had kitchen units in the bathroom when I was growing up and they lasted 25 years and were still there when we left. Is a bathroom really much less humid than a normal small kitchen? Or you could use wooden kitchen unit doors on stud, which should last OK. Anyhoo, let us know if it worked in 10 years ?. Ferdinand

Wall units from kitchen ranges can be a good thought.