BCO 'signing off' my build: Q's.

[Onoff]

An MVHR unit stands for mechanical ventilation and heat recovery. They can be single room or whole house. 

 

It removes stale, warm, moist air and blows it over a heat exchanger. It recovers the expelled heat and warms the cold, fresh air coming into the house. 

 

A benefit is the air is constantly changing and in some respects it also acts like a hoover, expelling a lot of what would otherwise become house dust. Things like minute organic particles like dead skin cells and mould spores. 

 

I would say a lot of yours is a cold bridging issue at wall window junctions. 

 

Borrowing a thermal.camera would be interesting I bet. When it gets colder I'll borrow my nephew's FLIR one and take some pics here. 

[Onoff]

Get some of these house plants that absorb moisture through their leaves:

 

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/four-houseplants-banish-mould-condensation-28375107

 

[Onoff]

Mods, please delete those first two posts, first one had the  wrong link. Somehow I managed to post three times!

[MJNewton]

1 hour ago, Onoff said:

Mods, please delete those first two posts, first one had the  wrong link. Somehow I managed to post three times!

 

And for a brief moment I was actually trying to work out how 'magnetic iron composite printer filament' could absorb moisture and almost had a theory in mind that I was comfortable with! 

[Onoff]

7 minutes ago, MJNewton said:

 

And for a brief moment I was actually trying to work out how 'magnetic iron composite printer filament' could absorb moisture and almost had a theory in mind that I was comfortable with! 

 

Please do tell!

 

That link was to do with 3D printing modern recreations of Denco coils. Having trouble finding suitable tuning slugs so I had the sudden brainwave to maybe print them!

 

Now...if I could print Jackson variable capacitors I'd be a happy chap. 

[ProDave]

8 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

Please do tell!

 

That link was to do with 3D printing modern recreations of Denco coils. Having trouble finding suitable tuning slugs so I had the sudden brainwave to maybe print them!

 

Now...if I could print Jackson variable capacitors I'd be a happy chap. 

Fred drift,  What are you looking for?  I have a fair few old coils, formers and slugs and variable caps etc.

[Radian]

15 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Now...if I could print Jackson variable capacitors I'd be a happy chap. 

Those silver plated jobbies fetch a pretty penny!

[MJNewton]

17 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Please do tell!

 

The thought process had barely lasted a couple of seconds before being aborted, but it was involving some combination of magnetic attraction of something-or-other coupled with perhaps a similar mechanism to how activated carbon filtration works. I don't think it's worth taking any further though.

[Onoff]

3 minutes ago, Radian said:

Those silver plated jobbies fetch a pretty penny!

 

So tactile too, things of beauty imo. I recall, as a kid, reading how the English POWs in WW2 would craft them from old tin cans. 

[Onoff]

17 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Fred drift,  What are you looking for?  I have a fair few old coils, formers and slugs and variable caps etc.

 

I can print the formers, it's the ferrite slugs I can't find:

 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3422348

 

This alternative doesn't need the B9A valve holders:

 

http://sm0vpo.altervista.org/3d/denco_sub_01.htm

[Ferdinand]

2 hours ago, Onoff said:

Mods, please delete those first two posts, first one had the  wrong link. Somehow I managed to post three times!

 

Only triplicate?

 

@Onoff is not a planning officer, and I rest my case.

[Onoff]

https://news.sky.com/story/two-year-old-boy-died-as-a-result-of-mould-infested-flat-unfit-for-human-habitation-12747927

[Adsibob]

3 hours ago, Onoff said:

https://news.sky.com/story/two-year-old-boy-died-as-a-result-of-mould-infested-flat-unfit-for-human-habitation-12747927

Was literally just reading about this on the bbc: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-63635721

 

Absolutely outrageous. I hope the council agencies involved are sued for this completely avoidable tragedy.

[ProDave]

24 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

Was literally just reading about this on the bbc: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-63635721

 

Absolutely outrageous. I hope the council agencies involved are sued for this completely avoidable tragedy.

Devils advocate time.

 

If THIS house was defective and mould was rampant, how come ALL the houses of this type are not condemned?  I very much doubt this one particular house has a big fault in it's construction that the houses adjacent don't?

 

Could just a little of the blame be put on the tenant for not understanding how typical old UK houses, in a damp UK climate work, and how they need to be heated and ventilated properly?

 

And could just a little bit of the blame be put on the fact English is not their first language and no matter how much you try and explain things to them, they just don't understand?

 

Two examples.  We used to have a 1980's build flat as a buy to let, typical construction for the area, timber framed, electric storage heaters, wooden double glazed windows.  We had one tenant complaining of damp.  Inspection showed all the heating off. All the windows shut and all trickle vents closed, the bathroom fan turned off at the fan isolator switch (that was when I learned NEVER have a fan isolator switch in a rental) and wet clothing hung in every room.  It was unheated and unventilated with very high humidity.  Just what do you expect to happen?  No tenant before or after had a problem with damp.

 

And the language thing, yesterday I had to go to a rental with the reported fault "heaters not working".  They were storage heaters, and they were turned off at the wall switch.  I tried to explain to the tenant, who did not speak much English that you turn them on and leave them on and they will heat up over night.  I gathered from what little I could understand, she turned them on, the light did not come on (in the daytime) so she assumed they were faulty and turned them off.

 

Now someone will come and label me racist because I struggle to communicate with someone who does not have a reasonable command of the English language, and heaven forbid I expect a tenant to do their best to work with the property they have warts and all.,

 

The alternative is we knock down most of the UK's housing stock and replace it with idiot proof passive houses so the tenant does not have to think.  But better not fit an off switch to the MVHR.

[markc]

Council house a few hundred yards from my mum, family always complaining house was damp and windows misted up. … they had laid turf in a bedroom for the dogs!

I dread to imagine what the house smelled like

[saveasteading]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

a little of the blame be put on the tenant for not understanding

Not everyone is clever.

Not all clever people have the faintest idea about technical stuff.

Some people have little time or money.

Some people are lazy and selfish and uncaring, but that applies to all of society.

 

Doesn't the landlord inspect his own property?

 

[ProDave]

33 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Not everyone is clever.

Not all clever people have the faintest idea about technical stuff.

Some people have little time or money.

Some people are lazy and selfish and uncaring, but that applies to all of society.

 

Doesn't the landlord inspect his own property?

 

This was a council or housing association property not a tin pot private landlord.  You would hope they inspect them. And the tenant did constantly report the problem.  But my point is just what does the landlord do in this case?  It is just yet another symptom of the lousy state of much of the UK's old housing stock.  

 

I am keen to stop being a landlord and I most certainly would not want to be responsible for most of the housing stock in this country.

[joe90]

I am about to stop being a landlord and can’t wait. I was asked my advise as a builder about black moulding a house only to see the wife dried all the washing indoors, no trickle vents and minimal heating, I told them to buy a washing line and turn the heating up. They were not happy as they wanted be to “build a solution 🙄

[Adsibob]

3 hours ago, ProDave said:

Devils advocate time.

 

If THIS house was defective and mould was rampant, how come ALL the houses of this type are not condemned?  I very much doubt this one particular house has a big fault in it's construction that the houses adjacent don't?

 

Could just a little of the blame be put on the tenant for not understanding how typical old UK houses, in a damp UK climate work, and how they need to be heated and ventilated properly?

 

And could just a little bit of the blame be put on the fact English is not their first language and no matter how much you try and explain things to them, they just don't understand?

 

Two examples.  We used to have a 1980's build flat as a buy to let, typical construction for the area, timber framed, electric storage heaters, wooden double glazed windows.  We had one tenant complaining of damp.  Inspection showed all the heating off. All the windows shut and all trickle vents closed, the bathroom fan turned off at the fan isolator switch (that was when I learned NEVER have a fan isolator switch in a rental) and wet clothing hung in every room.  It was unheated and unventilated with very high humidity.  Just what do you expect to happen?  No tenant before or after had a problem with damp.

 

And the language thing, yesterday I had to go to a rental with the reported fault "heaters not working".  They were storage heaters, and they were turned off at the wall switch.  I tried to explain to the tenant, who did not speak much English that you turn them on and leave them on and they will heat up over night.  I gathered from what little I could understand, she turned them on, the light did not come on (in the daytime) so she assumed they were faulty and turned them off.

 

Now someone will come and label me racist because I struggle to communicate with someone who does not have a reasonable command of the English language, and heaven forbid I expect a tenant to do their best to work with the property they have warts and all.,

 

The alternative is we knock down most of the UK's housing stock and replace it with idiot proof passive houses so the tenant does not have to think.  But better not fit an off switch to the MVHR.

You seem to be missing the point. You are an intelligent person, so I will assume that you just didn’t read the article. The family did complain, several times, and their complaints were ignored:

 

“We cannot tell you how many health professionals we've cried in front of and RBH staff we have pleaded to, expressing concern for the conditions ourselves and Awaab have been living in," they said.

"We shouted out as loudly as we could, but despite making all of those efforts, every night we would be coming back to the same problem."

 

Edited November 15, 2022 by Adsibob

[Adsibob]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

You would hope they inspect them.

Just like they inspected Grenfell. Please… when will people stop this ignorance.

 

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

what does the landlord do in this case?

either fixes the problem permanently, or avoid that it is uneconomic to do so and sell the property at its true value so that somebody else can fix it / tear it down and start over.

[SteamyTea]

47 minutes ago, joe90 said:

I am about to stop being a landlord and can’t wait. I was asked my advise as a builder about black moulding a house only to see the wife dried all the washing indoors, no trickle vents and minimal heating, I told them to buy a washing line and turn the heating up. They were not happy as they wanted be to “build a solution 🙄

As a general point, I think we do have to 'build a solution'  and help pay for it.

Some of us have gone off to university, studied this stuff, been asked for help, offered the best advice available, explained how it all works, highlighted that it is not a 'no cost' option.

And then been totally ignored.

Happens on here, well in special places, in a mythical Welsh valley anyway.

Some people have to have their autonomy removed for their own, and others, safety, and the rest of us have to accept that we need to pay for it.

So if we have to hand over an extra 15 quid a month to help out, so be it, it will make the country a better place.

I suspect that mould may become a serious issue this winter as people cut back on energy usage, and misunderstand the difference between controlled ventilation and a thermally leaky home.

 

Killer fungi: The health threat that’s creeping up on us

They kill more people than malaria, and the death toll is set to rise. But we are only just starting to understand the devious ways fungi can infect us

 

LIFE 10 August 2016

By Tim Vernimmen

Ron Kurniawan

SOME are tasty, others are a nuisance. That’s probably how most of us think of fungi. Few people would consider them to be killers. But perhaps we should.

Fungi are on the march. New varieties are emerging and infecting everything from crops to amphibians. Some of this is down to the ease of international travel, which is spreading hardy spores to new locations. Then there’s our disruption of natural environments, which creates opportunities for fungi to evolve. Now, some researchers are worried we could be about to reap the spores we’ve sown: might we have unleashed a killer?

Neil Gow, a medical mycologist at the University of Aberdeen, UK, was co-organiser of a conference held at London’s Royal Society earlier this year to assess the growing fungal threat in areas from animal welfare to food security to ecosystem stability. He’s keen not to overstate the threat to human health – but not to downplay it either. “I don’t think a fungal pandemic is imminent: as far as we know, humanity has never been struck by one,” he says. That is not to say fungi don’t kill people. “More people die from invasive fungal infections than from malaria, a disease we hear much more about.”

 

Even now, about a dozen fungal species kill in total around 1.5 million people every year. Fungal disease is a significant contributor to AIDS deaths, for example – and yet the threat is often overlooked. “Fungal and bacterial infections may give similar symptoms, leading to misdiagnosis,” says Gow. “So in many cases, patients with fungal infections are initially treated for bacterial infections instead.”

 

Meet the mushroom man who wants the world to take fungi seriously – in a good way

Stuart Isett

 

Meet the mushroom man who wants the world to take fungi seriously – in a good way

Fungi comprise a whole kingdom of organisms in their own right, separate from plants and animals, and far less studied. This hugely diverse group of up to 5 million species includes mushrooms, yeasts, moulds and crop-destroying rusts and smuts. Most of the time, we happily coexist even with the killer varieties – you may be inhaling them right now, or they may be living in or on your body. But occasionally they turn rogue.

 

Take Candida albicans, which causes most fungal infections in humans. Candida cannot survive without living on us or other animals. “There’s no evidence that it’s doing us any good, but it usually doesn’t harm us either,” says Gow, who studies Candida. Yet sometimes the unassuming resident gets a bit too comfortable and multiplies so fast that it causes the infection commonly known as thrush.

“More people die from invasive fungal infections than from malaria“

How and why this happens is the focus of intense research. Usually, our white blood cells and other defences do a good job of keeping the fungus under control. “But anything that tips the odds the other way,” says Gow, “such as low numbers of white blood cells or antibiotics that wipe out other microflora, may cause a local outbreak.” This can be very aggravating – just ask one of the 100 million women worldwide who suffer at least four episodes of vaginal thrush a year. Most people recover without complications, because the fungus seldom thrives in the blood.

“The bloodstream of a healthy human is quite robust to infections,” says Gow. But Candida does overcome the defences of hundreds of thousands of people each year to enter their blood – and at least half of them die. How can this be? “In a way, fungal infections are the disease of the diseased,” says Gow. “People who are vulnerable after an accident or invasive surgery, or whose immune system has been weakened or suppressed after an organ or stem cell transplant, may be unable to fend off a fungal attack. Candida is very opportunistic.”

To work out a way to help the immune system nip Candida in the bud, Gow and his colleagues are investigating how the fungus interacts with our white blood cells. “It’s a titanic struggle on a microscopic scale,” he says. Candida uses camouflage and can shed tiny bits of cell wall to avoid being caught. Even when it does end up inside a white blood cell, it’s not game over. “The fungus can evade digestion by reducing the acidity inside the cell compartment where it’s held, and it even scavenges some of the cell’s food,” says Gow – “which is why it’s often able to keep growing until the white blood cell bursts open.”

Another potentially deadly fungus, Cryptococcus, can cause meningitis by lurking in a white blood cell until it crosses the usually impenetrable blood-brain barrier. It then forces the cell to eject it.

 

A handful of fungi kill some 1.5 million people each year. They include Candida (above), Cryptococcus (below) and Aspergillus

DAVID SCHARF/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

 

Cryptococcus

E. GUEHO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Unlike Candida, Cryptococcus is not a fungus native to us – instead, it usually grows on rotting plant material in the soil. “Though most of us have been exposed to it by the age of 6, the chance that a particular Cryptococcus cell has encountered a human before is absolutely minuscule,” says Robin May at the University of Birmingham, UK. Yet Cryptococcus has recently achieved something once considered almost impossible: it has infected and killed previously healthy people.

First discovered in Vancouver, Canada, over a decade ago, a particular strain of Cryptococcus, C. gattii, spread across the Pacific Northwest of the US, killing hundreds along the way. How does a fungus living on plant matter manage to survive inside a healthy human body? By accident, argues May.

“There is obviously very little evolutionary pressure on Cryptococcus to find a way to survive in humans,” says May. However, the fungus is preyed upon by amoebas in the soil, and their mode of attack is quite similar to that of white blood cells. That might give the fungus a head start. This means it can occasionally thrive inside the body, harming its host in the process.

Like Gow, May doesn’t think a fungal pandemic is just around the corner. “Fungi have very complex life cycles, and they tend to grow and evolve much slower than bacteria or viruses do.” The fact that fungi don’t depend on us for their survival cuts both ways, though. “It means that they probably aren’t trying very hard to conquer us. But also that they couldn’t care less if we were all to die.”

When fungi are on our side: Fungal products won’t win prizes for glamour but will be greener

Given that there has only been a single outbreak of C. gattii, it’s difficult to establish what led to it. May surmises that the strain had been around for some time, and that a very hot and dry summer may have contributed to its spread. “The fungus likes humid soils, so perhaps the drought stimulated it to produce more spores, or simply provided conditions that helped them to blow around more,” he says. However, we don’t have clear evidence for this and May notes that the summers of the past decade have all been fairly wet.

This raises the question of whether other deadly new fungal strains might emerge as climate change takes hold. That is difficult to answer because the impact on weather patterns is likely to be very variable, says May. “But you might expect, for example, that Britain, which is a bit too cold for many fungi right now, may see an influx of fungus when temperatures rise.” Another concern is that although the warmth of our body protects us from many fungal infections, a warmer world may undo that by helping fungi to adapt. “But I currently know of no studies showing that fungi from warm soils infect warm-blooded animals more easily,” says May.

 

Aspergillus

EYE OF SCIENCE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

 

In any case, Cryptococcus copes just fine with being at 37 °C. Another fungus, called Aspergillus, can live in the heart of compost heaps at temperatures of 60 °C. Aspergillus spores are absolutely everywhere, says Jacques Meis of the Canisius Wilhelmina Hospital in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. “Every breath you take, they’re infecting you.”

Garden-variety killer

In the early 1990s, Meis was a parasitologist working on malaria when a prominent Dutch haematologist sought his help. “We can now treat blood diseases with bone marrow transplants or cycles of chemotherapy, but then patients literally die of garden-variety fungal infections,” he told Meis. Keeping Aspergillus at bay is a constant challenge. “The fungus and its spores are really small and often very water-repellent, so they take off with the slightest air current and find their way through all but the finest air filters,” says Meis. They are also extremely hardy – the spores can survive acidity, dehydration, freezing and high heat. No wonder they’re the most common eukaryote on the planet.

Eukaryotes – which include fungi but not bacteria or viruses – are organisms in which the cells contain a nucleus. The fact that we, too, are eukaryotes makes it difficult to combat fungal pathogens. “Some of the most effective medicines against fungal infections, such as amphotericin B, are quite toxic to our cells as well,” says Meis. So they are often combined with or replaced by another class of antifungal drugs, collectively known as azoles. “The azoles block an enzyme that most fungi need to maintain their cell membrane,” he says.

Watch this: Fungi break acceleration record to escape dung

You would expect fungi to develop resistance to these drugs in people receiving repeated or long-term treatment. But lately, Meis has seen an increasing number of patients coming down with a resistant strain right away. “We found this very odd at first,” he says. “But then it dawned on us that in the past decades, azoles have become very popular products.” They are now used to prevent fungal growth on crops, produce and flowers, and are an ingredient in many paints and coatings. Aspergillus isn’t the target of these azoles, but it is constantly exposed to them. “There is no doubt that some of these applications are contributing to azole resistance in the clinic,” says Meis. “Because Aspergillus is quite literally all over the place and exchanges genes very quickly, resistance can spread across the world incredibly fast.”

Meis doesn’t expect companies to stop producing azoles or farmers to stop using them. “I’m afraid the fact that Aspergillus targets only patients who are already weak will likely undercut any arguments in favour of reduced azole use,” he says, “except if we can figure out which products are causing the biggest problems and why.”

 

One deadly fungal strain has found a way into the human brain

Koh Okamoto, Shuji Hatakeyama et al.

 

EDMOND BYRNES AND JOSEPH HEITMAN, Duke University

Deadly fungal disease is often not viewed with the seriousness it deserves because it mainly affects people that were “on the way out anyway”, says medical mycologist David Denning at the University of Manchester, UK, But that argument is very problematic, he says. “The Cryptococcus gattii outbreak shows that there is always a risk that a fungus will one day find a way to infect healthy people as well.” In any case, it isn’t true that weakened patients who contract a fungal disease are already bound to die of some other cause, says Denning: our ability to keep severely ill people alive is constantly improving. However, this means the number of people vulnerable to fungal disease will go on rising unless we tackle the problem. “It would be a terrible shame if this progress and all we’ve invested in it were offset by fungal infections.”

Yet that is what is happening, especially in the fight against HIV. Antiretroviral cocktails are now highly effective, but many people with HIV live in poor countries where it can be difficult for them to take the drugs as prescribed. A lapse in treatment can cause their white-blood-cell count to drop, at which point any fungus they’re exposed to may turn invasive. “About half of all AIDS deaths are the result of fungal infections,” says Denning, “yet they’re hardly addressed.”

There are multiple reasons why the problem is going untackled. “Diagnosis of fungal disease isn’t straightforward – it is as good as impossible without access to a medical lab – and treatment with amphotericin B is intravenous and risky,” says Denning.

But the task isn’t impossible, and cracking it could be a big step towards achieving the UN’s target of reducing annual AIDS-related deaths to below 500,000 by 2020. “If we could treat 60 per cent of the HIV patients annually overcome by an invasive fungus, we could save at least 300,000 lives a year – typically 35-year olds, economically active, with husbands or wives and children who need them,” he says. “These people aren’t on the way out. They are ill, and they need our help.”

[PeterW]

5 hours ago, ProDave said:

THIS house was defective and mould was rampant, how come ALL the houses of this type are not condemned? 

Read the rest of the report - GMP have found numerous houses on the same estate with the same issue.

 

HA also admitted that as the family had instructed solicitors then they (HA) had done nothing until the legal process completed !!! They have now changed that policy.. but why do you need to get a solicitor involved when it’s so obvious ..?

[Adsibob]

22 minutes ago, PeterW said:

why do you need to get a solicitor involved when it’s so obvious ..?

Well if their HA/Landlord won’t remove the mould promptly, or wishes to make tenants jump through hoops, I can only infer that the tenants felt the delay and prevarication/bureaucracy was beyond the pale and needed legal action to speed it up. But I don’t know… just inference.

[PeterW]

10 hours ago, Adsibob said:

Well if their HA/Landlord won’t remove the mould promptly, or wishes to make tenants jump through hoops, I can only infer that the tenants felt the delay and prevarication/bureaucracy was beyond the pale and needed legal action to speed it up. But I don’t know… just inference.

I should have probably worded that as “why should you have to when it’s so obvious “ to prove what is essentially negligence by the landlord, and you’re right they probably had exhausted every other option.