Kelvin

Can you share a picture ig your whiteish osmo coating. I have both that and clear and can’t make my mind up what to use. The floor upstairs is oak and whiteish so either had to match or be very different.

Ours is solid oak. We also had a debate about when to put it in. To some extent it depends a bit on the layout of your staircase and ease of access. Ours is tight and hidden behind the kitchen wall so felt it was better to put it in a bit earlier rather than leaving it until the end. I ‘clad’ it in hardboard to protect it.

Why do you regret putting in an oak staircase?

We still aren’t living in ours yet but it’s maintaining a very even 19°C temperature with very little heat input. It’s a pleasant place to be compared to the rental.

Next time! Or the joiners could have taken a bit more care about it. I’ve come to realise that everyone seems to work to the principle that it’s the very last finishing trade that trues everything up or sorts it all out with the magic caulk gun.

The architect drawings door schedule specify 1981mm x 838mm doors. I went round all the door openings the other day and they are a bit all over the place. I’m ok for width to fit an 838mm door as the rough openings vary from 906mm to 937mm. However the door height varies from 2040mm to 2070mm above finished floor. Is it simply a matter of having to pack the 2070 opening depending on the lining material I decide to go for? The width also varies a fair bit due to the different way the walls are built up from 137mm to 122mm.

I’d avoid Ring or anything else subscription based and relies on the cloud.

The benefit of a heat exchanger is you have more usable hot water in the tank as it heats the whole tank up. But you need to size it on the number of people in the house. In our previous house, with a 250l tank and four of us, we’d occasionally run out of hot water if everyone had a shower especially as the bin lids were in the shower for ages.

😂 we rarely use the freezer so we fitted a full size fridge in the main kitchen and moved the freezer into the utility room. Not sure we’ll ever fill the fridge though as there’s just the two of us. That we are having a ‘debate’ about how to organise the drawers and cupboards between the island and cabinets which are beside each other 😂

We have a continuous air gap at the bottom and top with insect/rodent mesh also at the bottom and top. Ours is board on board which naturally creates a big gap behind the cladding anyway. One issue we do have is at the window head where we don’t have any mesh. My plan is to use thicker stainless steel mesh bent to fit and pushed up into the gaps.

It’s what we have. We’ve barely used any hot water so I can’t comment much about it. I noticed that it reheats the water fairly regularly after use (which might just be how it’s been set but not looked) and there’s no drop off in water temperature when you draw off hot water. What size of cylinder are you looking at as the benefits of plate heat exchangers vs large coils reduce as the tank gets bigger.

Thanks. Shall keep an eye on it. It’s in the utility room so the noise isn’t an issue. It’s one of the downsides of open plan living.

White goods are worth very little second hand. FB marketplace is likely your best bet. What’s the issue with the AEG freezer. I just fitted the non-integrated version of it.

In my case I don’t plan on having a gate opener. I might eventually of course. I was just going to use an Reolink doorbell. Like you I have a duct that runs out to that side of the house to power this.

Exactly. There’s a fair bit of that in our house 😂

Yes our freezer is a tight fit and the door opens with mm of clearance.

Overheating is often a bigger problem than heating such a house. What’s the rest of the design like? (Lots of glass etc)

Check the manual if you know which one you are going for. Our integrated fridge cabinet has a large void above and beneath it built into the cabinet and the cabinets have a full height void running the length of the cabinets. The cabinets are framed into the alcove. This is a pretty standard feature in kitchen design nowadays. I contemplated putting a grill in the plinth under the fridge when I fitted it but didn’t but did leave a gap at the top of the plinth that runs the full length of the cabinets. Our separate under the counter freezer has a requirement for a ridiculous amount of space around it and behind it so much so you couldn’t really practically fit it under a counter. The manual states that not having this amount of space won’t affect the operation of the freezer it just might use more energy.

Well it’s harder to do after. I boarded mine with 12mm plywood that I painted white. The mistake I made was not putting in a self-levelling floor screed to bring it up to the same eventual height as the floor tiles from the hallway so we now have a step. I will still put in a self-levelling screed but I’ve made things harder for myself now everything is in the plant room as always.

The plumbers round here spend all winter repairing leaks from uninsulated pipes.

It is a bit of a mess. The question is how much better can they make it and will they make it worse. I did this myself and I’m no plumber. I’ve yet to connect the washing machine. I have a bit of backboard to go across where the waste pipe is to hide it although when the drawers are in you can’t really see it.

If you read any advice on DNO pricing it’s always the same, challenge the first quote. It ought to be fair and transparent pricing given it’s a necessary utility that you can’t simply buy on the open market but it’s not. You’ve got a substantial discount on the first quote and they’ll still have a substantial margin in that price.

I overthought all this too. I concluded that the most important thing was making sure the windows were sealed correctly with no gaps and good airtightness. My reveals are packed with insulation but I formed the reveal wall with ply largely because I had loads of it handy. We then fixed the plasterboard to that. My windows are fitted flush with the kit. I used jackoboard at the bottom of all the full height windows onto the insulated foundation block. This was as much about giving me a good surface to tile onto as anything else as my screed didn’t flow across the reveal to the back of the window. I considered doing all of the reveals in jackoboard but didn’t as I figured the cost benefit would be pounds vs using materials I already had available to me.

I wouldn’t do that as it could cause you different problems. Figure out how to fix the problems you have. It’s all doable with a bit of thought, care, and the right products.

The best strategy is to try and design the penetrations out as far as possible. I ducted as much as I could under the slab into the plant room so all my electrical/data cables and water into the building is through ducts. I included a couple of extra ducts to both ends of the house to make adding something else easy although I was mostly using up some leftover ducting. Where I had to come through a wall I also used ducting suitable for the size of the cable then sealed up both ends with Pro Clima Roflex duct seals and tape. I used an intumescent foam to seal the ducts. Pro Clima also do a butyl seal tape that I found to be a great product for harder areas as you can form it to shape. I also sealed all the ducts using Filoseal. https://insulationmerchant.com/collections/pro-clima https://www.filoform.co.uk/filoseal-re-enterable-duct-sealing-system