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Perhaps you are right. The insulating lime plaster solution is really expensive to get the thickness required. It is a 1935 house with cavity walls on the main floor, and an externally rendered solid brick walls upstairs. I heard that moisture does come through bricks and lime mortar from the...

It is a lime mortar solid brick wall, so I am loath to put anything on it that might trap moisture, which is why I was thinking to use a lime based insulating plaster. There are some such as Diasen Diathonite Thermactive .037 that claim to have a thermal conductivity of .037W/mK, almost the same...

Does anyone have any experience with insulating plaster? I have a 1930s house that is solid brick upstairs and the walls are cold. I redoing the upstairs and I was thinking to knock off the old on the outside walls and redo it with around 25mm of insulating plaster. Any recommendations on...

I believe this is the answer to the question.

With 2.5mm you could use a pair of 20A breakers (RCBOs), so the ring might actually have more capacity than with a single 32A. Although there is a balance issue there. I am not sure what RCDs has to do with this, but on the load flexibility, if the boiler quits you can plug a pair of electric...

Haha, it could be as simple as that, but I was kind of hoping for a legitimate technical/practical reason.

Is that true? I don't have enough experience here to know. In Canada you can also use a pair of single breakers and a handle tie. If you look closely you will see the one in the picture has a handle tie, even though the body looks like two breakers molded together. You could make it 2 radials...

In their defense, ring finals do have some advantages. Load flexibility, redundant grounds, lower resistance, etc. And one of the main drawbacks/safety issues could eliminated by using double pole 20A breakers instead of a single 32A. Given that breakers are cheap, the question remains, why...

When I first moved to the UK, ring circuits seemed a bit unusual, we only use radials in Canada in house wiring. Although ring finals seem to have a lot of benefits, I don't think they would be legal in Canada with a 2.5mm cable because you cannot use a 32A breaker to protect a cable rated less...

I use Grundfos Alpha 2. Sometimes they are called variable speed or modulating pumps. They are not on/off, but rather they continuously ramp up/down depending on the resistance from the TRVs. You set them for a fixed pressure, and when TRVs open up, they pump more. They go down to a few watts...

Any chance you could post audio? I am not an expert, so I doubt I will be able to tell what it is from hearing it, but someone else might.

Here are some sources for noises in pipe work that I can think of: 1) Air in the system. 2) Valves. They can cause banging if they close suddenly, or can even vibrate and make other strange noises. I had one TRV that would make sometimes make a load buzzing sound at a specific setting. Normally...

I'm just a DIY guy, but I do have a heat bank (thermal store with external plate exchanger). There should be 3 pumps on such a setup. 1. One for the boiler to heat the store. This should be set on high, although you might get away with a lower setting. If it is too low, the boiler will...

Happy New Year! This post is for anyone interested in researching options for a DIY thermal store. Parts list: £430 300l standard Telford buffer, comes with dual stat, TPRV, 3kW electric immersion £145 Nordic Tec Ba-23-40 165kW plate exchanger with insulation £52 FS-05 flow switch 22mm...

Here is a possibility. When water is heated, it cannot hold as much dissolved air, so it drives the air out of the water and makes bubbles. Depending on how your system is piped, there may be many places where air can be trapped, and can dissolve into the water over time. Colder water can hold...

I have an old Ideal FF360 that I was going to replace, but looking at the cost, it is just not worth it, even with the increase in gas prices. If I repair it when it breaks, it will probably outlive any new boiler I could replace it with, at a much lower cost. Most of our demand is hot water, so...

The reason that hydrogen is attrictive is two-fold, because the electrical grid cannot currently handle home heating, and because hydrogen can be used to "store" electricity. Resistive electric heaters, including boilers are almost 100% efficient. The reason to use a boiler instead of electric...

The roof itself mostly. It always seems something goes wrong. A tile cracks and needs replacement, a ridge tile comes loose. It would just seem easier if you can move some tiles aside.

It is not so exposed, and only single story. If possible I would like to be able to remove tiles for maintenance. I plan to screw them down with stainless screws, not nails. I was thinking to fasten the verge tiles, the eaves, and those under the ridge. For the rest I am not sure if I should do...

Thanks, that is very informative, although it does not say much about lime. When I stuccoed an addition I built in Canada some years back, I had read that lime was required or it would crack, as cement only was not very forgiving. It was all wood frame houses there, most of them stuccoed. If it...