Home DIY

It used to be any kind of tool and ties. I feel old.

And the dude using the pillar drill with long hair!!

The health and safety lecturers favourite subject - machinery and
gloves. Probably just surpassed by machinery and finger rings.

double bingo

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Thank you, thank you.

Was a good excuse to buy a mitre saw out of the savings from not having to pay someone to do it too!

Eeek.

Luckily (?) I lost my proper wedding ring (twice...) and wear silicone ones now. all the safety, and I never need to take it off.

Coming together now (was only worried briefly that it would all fall apart)

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Looks good, should finish off nicely now. I actually rate that Ronseal big hole stuff - bit tricky to use as it as has to be pretty lightweight, but useful for building up

that'll look brilliant long after you've forgotten about the pain

Looks amazing great job!

You've been more methodical than most would have been (including me). That'll be stronger than it was originally. There's a hole/crack bigger than that that I just slapped a couple of layers of easifill into 2 years ago (first fixing job I did on Fucked House™) and it hasn't budged. Yours is a way better job.

Anyone had condensation appearing on the underside of the roof felt?

I imagine it’s due to the solar panel brackets that were recently installed and the extreme temps.

Is it something that’s probably only an extreme weather thing or something I need to sort with better ventilation / circulations?

Yes! That's reminds me I need to buy some more lap vents.

I was up there for a bit before I noticed so wondered if it was from the warm house air coming up through the open hatch but the top of the timbers did feel a bit damp so I suspect it had been there for a while. Not noticed it in warmer times. I have about 10 lap vents and two tile vents but going to buy another 20 lap for good measure.

I didn't know lap vents were a thing, but I will go and buy some asap.
We do have a tile vent, looks like the previous owner didn't like the draught and taped it up...
I've untaped it so we'll see how things look tomorrow.

Thank you, it's the only way I could see to do it. Having time to do it has helped. 10 to 15 minutes a day and then waiting for it to go off properly.

Now finishing up with polycell plaster repair, which is working really well. Just need to get that last niggly bottom edge right!

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Yeah ours were originally completely useless as there wasn't actually an aperture through the felt into the loft space lol wut

Hi all,

I am potentially needing to replace my boiler as it has just broken. I was intending on replacing in 12 months when we were planning on extending the ground floor but unfortunately not the way it has panned out.

I currently have a Combi boiler and will replace with a Combi as well. As part of the ground floor extension I will be adding underfloor heating (a wet system). Are there any considerations for me buying the boiler today? Or can UFH just be retrofitted when ground floor is done and radiators in ground floor are removed. We will still have 6 radiators upstairs.

Also from a size perspective is 30kw right for UFH, 6 radiators and 2 bathrooms (1 bath shower combo, 1 shower).

Many thanks,

Tom

You could look into an air source heat pump if you have the space. We’re doing the same as you, rads in the house and UFH in an extension. After the £5k government grant the quotes for combi or ASHP were very similar.

Unfortunately no space for heat pump - London terraced house…

Us too, it’s going on the roof of the extension.

In a conservation area that won’t allow that either. A shame as it’s the right way to go!

Conservation area and renewables really is a pain everywhere.
Friend is converting a Berlin arttic into a flat. Solar on the roof is apparently not possible because conservation rules.
And it's a house that has zero original features left, the whole block is a mix of bad decisions from back when no one cared.

I'd have thought 30kw is too big. if you add up the watt output of each of your radiators and UFH system that gives you a good idea of the heating output.

That being said, check out the 'modulation range'. thats basically how low the boiler can go without going into 'anti-cycling' mode - lower is better and it's more efficient to avoid cycling (in theory). Viessman seem to be the best boiler manufacturer in this rgeard.

in our recent renovation, we put in a vaillant ecotec 35. we have about 12-15kw radiators/ufh and the boiler can modulate down to 3kw ish. because it's on weather compensation it basically just ticks over at this power output giving a temp of around 40-50c in the radiators and uses around 80kw of gas per day on a minus temp day (which is still a lot of gas at current prices).

we went for an overly complicated system with different zone controls for the ufh - but in theory, you can just run the ufh of the main radiator circuit i think with a manual temperature valve used to reduce the temps. if you're running weather compensation, this shouldn't be an issue as the boiler is basically always on.

caveats- i am not heating expert (heatgeek is a great website) and i regret some of the choices we made with our system and the vaillant boiler has broken down about 6 times.

In hindsight, i wish we went with an ASHP and internally insulated when we were renovating.

Plumber with a van full of tools didn’t have the right one to get this nut off. Sockets weren’t working. Thermostat gone at my old man’s house.

Found a 30mm box spanner on Amazon which some googling is telling me I need, but some of the reviews say it’s not 30. Is that a niche tool? Can’t see one at screwfix either where I usually grab stuff

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I thought that but they tried it unsuccessfully (dad and a plumber) apparently. Looks to be slightly rounded and it’s quite a thin nut!