Recent content by Colin Green

A third guy came today, also £4700. He wants to replace both valleys with GRP and re-felt either side of the valleys, then reinstate. The second guy wants to renew the entire gable battens and all, just reusing the original tiles. He sounds like better value. The first guy was just going to...

We discovered a leaking roof last night and have had two quotes so far (two more to come). £1800 and £4700, which is confusing. A bit of the front of the house sticks out and has a gable end, so there are two valleys. Both quotes are to replace the tile valleys with plastic and replace the...

yeah, we moved in 3 months ago and haven't yet thought of a good solution. The utility room doesn't have an external wall. My wife flat out refused to get a condensing tumble drier. Perhaps now she'll change her mind.

I recently noticed damp at the bottom of the downstairs wall next to the toilet. I've had a look at the concealed cistern and the concrete floor down there is wet. When I looked, the cistern was soaked in condensation from the water line down. I flushed the cistern first thing and held the...

A bit of progress. The other rad on the system is a towel radiator in the bathroom, and it's the rad closest to the heat pump. I'd expected this not to have lock shield valves, but this one does. I turned it down a bit, which has allowed me to adjust the rad in the room that was too hot so...

Yeah, they went bust. Somebody didn't pay on a big job and they folded.

We have a heat pump. All the rads and piping are new because the house had microbore when we bought it. All the lock shield valves are turned to 1/8 of a turn except the coldest bedroom which is completely open.

The check valve is a 90° elbow with a brass blade on the top, and a plastic cap that covers it. The blade has 4 turns from fully closed to fully open.

We've had new radiators and a heat pump fitted. It all works, but I'm trying to fine tune the radiator balancing and I'm struggling. There are 4 bedrooms on 1 thermostat upstairs. The thermostat is in the biggest bedroom. I've had to turn the lock shield valve down to 1/8 of one turn in this...

This makes a lot of sense, thanks.

It would be an odd question for a house, but I'm considering adding radiators to a narrowboat and it would be easiest to fit the pipes under the gunwales and drop them down to the radiators. Can the check valves be mounted to the top ports and the bottom ports be blocked off / have a drain...

We're about to get some tiling done and have got the first price, which surprised me. What's the going rate for a tiler? The job is a downstairs WC, 0.91 x 1.35 x 2.41 m, plus a niche in some boxing in. Floor and 4 walls. Tiles are 900x450 porcelain, so I know that most will need cutting...

It's inconclusive but promising. Changing the kW Limit setting may have improved the heating. For the last few days I've been setting the compensation curve and leaving the heating over night. All the stats are set to 18° from 9pm and 21° from 7am. I check the temperatures are 9am and 10am...

Yes and yes. We got a fair discount for it being their first installation. Plus the MCS inspector will come to assess their work at our house to certify them as installers. The implication being that they'd do it by the book. They had a heating engineer design (and warrant) the system so it...