JanetE

We got our OSO cylinder from a company called Electrical Deals Direct, based in Weston-super-Mare. Keen price and excellent service with quick delivery. We can recommend them.

Had a search but nothing on the forum about these. Has anyone any experience of these water treatments and how they compare with a conventional salt softener? They look a lot more expensive as the filters have to be changed regularly. Our Harvey costs £76 a year in salt blocks.

I've tried the wire brush, but that's only a very temporary fix and a very laborious job. Have got a hand held burner but that is worse than useless as it doesn't get hot enough. I'm wondering if @markocosics remedy of acetic acid will do the job as I'm reluctant to use a systemic because I have planting at one side of the drive?

12 packs of salt blocks last a year. They are £72 from: Greens, https://water-systems.co.uk/

The chap that laid our grey riven slate sealed it before and after grouting. It still looks really good, so I think that's the way to go. Our grout is pale grey and does get quite dirty but I have recently invested in a steam cleaner which works really well. We love this flooring.

When I tanked our 3 wet rooms over 3 years ago now I used the Mapei kit in 2, easy to use and worked a treat. In the 3rd I used the adhesive membrane, what a dog to apply and not quite so successful as we have the grout around the trap breaking up, I think because the membrane was not stuck down so well. So I would definitely recommend the Mapei.

@MrSniff Not quite clear what 'this' is? Has it got a long handle? Can't see from your picture, perhaps you could put in a link! ?

We've tried the jet washing as I have planting on one side of the drive and didn't want to use any kind of systemic weed killer. It has dislodged some of the sand but not much, only problem we have is that a lot of the weeds are still there ? but the drive is pretty clean! So I'm now thinking of just spot spraying them with the pathclear stuff as per @Bitpipe 's recommendation.

Talking about weeds in the gaps. For the last couple of years I've gone around with a sharp knife teasing out the weeds ? Looking at it the other day I've decided to ditch that idea so am interested to see if anyone has any suggestions for a weed free drive? Thought about using a weed burner? I have to say that, weeds aside, I really like these paviours, we had tarmac for years, which is OK but these look much nicer and were properly laid, only sinking in a small area where the skip lorrys foot wasn't properly protected.

MBC did a great job for us. We loved the fact that they do everything, slab, build, and airtightness guarantee. We've been living in our house now for 3 years, so different from the old farmhouse we used to live in which was draughty and cost so much to heat. We heat our 240m2 house with a willis heater, basically an immersion heater, similar to the ones you get in a hot water tank, with underfloor heating on the ground floor only. I can't recommend them too highly.

Thank you all for your responses. We shall be getting the 12v wall mounted lights as we have hard standing so no room for the ground fixed type. Out of interest @Dave Jones did you open a trade account with the Lighting for Gardens company?

I need them to be on during dark evenings, so don't want sensor type. Just low level illumination. Unfortunately the solar ones wouldn't work for this.

We need some lights for our driveway walls just to give some illumination. I was thinking of low watt LEDs. Would it be better/safer to use 12v or standard 240v? What's the verdict, as I can't find any recommendations for this looking through the forum?

Should you decide to go ahead with any of this work and wish to sell your house sometime in the future you will find it virtually impossible. Any buyer's solicitor will require all documentation from Planning/Building Insp/Structural Eng to certify that it has been carried out correctly. Without this any sensible buyer will walk away. Another good reason to ditch this plan!

Our house is very similar to @Jeremy Harris up to passiv standard, slightly larger at 210 sqm and with the same slab and underfloor heating. We have 2 Sunamps which supply our hot water only. Underfloor is heated using a Willis heater which runs on E7, we have no additional heating upstairs. We also only need to heat the slab for about four months of the year, but it would get very cold without that input. If you want to have a look at our setup, then check out @TerryEs blog.

Well at least he's actually wearing clothes ?

Well our Willis has been heating the house for the last two years without any problems and it is mounted with the electrics at the top!

We moved in to our house end of December 2017, BC signed off February 2019. We had the necessary documentation for our electrics at the time of moving in, no gas anyway. We were rated for council tax. We transferred our John Lewis policy from the old house and they were aware that our new place was not signed off, had no problem with them.

@Roz the 'copper bits' are the tails that feed the hot and cold water to the shower.

I did the hep2o plumbing in our house and with a bit of common sense and a lot of research it isn't that difficult. As @Onoff says don't forget the pipe inserts! Also the connectors are really easy to fit, just push and twist. Measure exactly where you are putting the basin, shower and toilet and bring the pipes through in the correct position. I fitted dwangs to bring them through the walls. I attach a picture to demonstrate. Bearing in mind these were stud walls. I also fitted wooden supports for the bolts on the basins. As you can see it is easy to attach copper pipe tails into the hep2o fittings. Have a look at YouTube, there are some good demos there.

MBC... do a search on this site. Jeremy's, ours, and many others have been build by them.

That's v interesting. What model of AC unit have you got? Presumably you have some kind of connector to attach to the MVHR outlet. I do think that this would be a viable option for our problem as it's only the one room at the top of the house that really gets a bit too hot. I know the portable AC units are noisy but we really cannot fit a proper unit such as Jeremy's. With the benefit of hindsight it would have been a trivial job to put in a couple of access pipes through the wall during the build as it is easy enough to fill them in if they are not used!

Yes, I also thought this might be a good solution, Terry thinks it will upset the balance of the MVHR. So I will be interested to find out how it's working.

@NSS haven't heard of a Panasonic Air Rad before. How does this work? Have looked online but not sure I am absolutely clear how they work. We have a similar problem to Jeremy in that the top floor of our house gets a little too warm and there is no way we can retrospectively fit a conventional air conditioner so we're looking at alternative cooling options.

The whole plot belonged to us so we just drew the line on the plans, forwarded it to our solicitor and she then forwarded this to the LR together with the necessary forms. IIRC this was pretty straightforward.