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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...

So I've read the manual and looked through the settings. One setting is called kW limit. It was set to 2kW. I guess this is the max electrical power it will use. On a cold day with a CoP of 3, that limits the heat output to 6kW. Even on a mild day where you'd expect a CoP of 4, that limits...

The heat pump is a Daikin Altherma 3m high temperature heat pump. It is rated at 10kW. The house has an ECP rating of A99 but the 6.5kWp solar array is most of that. The loft is insulated to 0.13U. The walls have filled 60mm cavities. The windows are modern but average. The floor is...

I had a heat pump installed late last year into a house we're doing up to move into. The installer can't get it to work properly. The problem was that it wouldn't heat the house more than 12° above the outside temperature. They seem to think that the flow temperature is not what is being...

I'm refitting our downstairs WC. We want to fit large, rectified edge tiles to all the walls and the floor. The room is slightly larger than common tiles sizes though. Stripped to the concrete floor and bare plaster walls, the room is 940mm wide and 1350mm long (plus a bit for a concealed...

I've just had under floor heating installed down stairs. They used latex self levelling compound over the top, but with my 1.5m spirit level on the floor, there are hollows up to 6mm deep in the middle. How flat does the floor need to be for vinyl tiles? Will small undulations like this be a...

We're nearing the end of a heat pump installation. We've had UFH downstairs and radiators upstairs, all new. They switched it on for the first time on Wednesday (upstairs only) to test it. The sound of water running through pipes is loud. Like keep you awake at night loud. When the...

The walls in our house were originally painted then had blown vinyl wallpaper over the top. I've stripped the paper off the walls which pulled off some of the paint, and scraped away at the remainder to remove everything that is loose. Lastly, I power sanded it but there is still a lot of...

I'm having an air source heat pump fitted with underfloor heating downstairs and radiators upstairs. I noticed today that there are no TRVs on the rads. It's not going to work for us. My son wants his radiator off except during very cold weather. We need the bedrooms at different...

Part of me wants to tell them that with quite some force. The trouble with administrators is that you need to persuade them to let you through the gate.

What is a typical specification for a domestic drive? Our new house is in an area covered by a conservation trust. It is in the "modern zone" rather than in the conservation area but we still have to apply for all changes. We want to widen the drive and have submitted an application with...

I've found slightly different figures on line for the various elements. They give a U value for the walls between 0.37 and 0.40 - not awful, not great. My calcs take the concrete floors to be U 0.8, the walls to be 0.4, the roof to be 0.13 and the windows to be 1.6 (or 1.0 where the orangary...

We're going for a heat pump. Gas is on its way out and installing a new system seems short sighted. Heat pumps work best at low water temperatures which is why I'm looking at replacing what's there already. By my calcs, with loft insulation upgraded to a U value of 0.13 and with the rear...

Nu-heat phoned today to follow up on a few things. They explained that UFH needs heating controls per room to comply with regs, like radiators have TRVs. They offered to supply neoStats for the minor rooms gratis so that they can comply with regulations but not at our expense. The guy also...

They say they're geared up to supply DIYers and plumbers who don't know UFH. They send installation instructions aimed at the DIYer, including the exact layout of the pipes. I'd lift the floors upstairs, fit the plastic pipe throughout. We'll be having a heat pump at the same time, so I'll...

I had a quote from Nu Heat for a supply only UFH system. There's 78m2 of castellated trays, pipes and screed for down stairs, 60m2 of polystyrene under floor trays and pipes for upstairs. Manifolds, wiring centres, the whole thing. The first red flag is that they've quoted for 12 thermostats...

I'm thinking of buying a table saw and the Evolution Rage5-s seems to fit my balance of performance vs price. Shopping around I see that the same few designs are sold by different brands, no doubt with a few changes to specification here and there. I see this is the case with the Rage5-s -...

I've just run the numbers. 5mm of XPS would reduce the U value of a solid concrete floor from 0.80 to 0.49, which sounds like a lot. Over a six month heating season, it would save about £120. So it would pay for itself in about 2 years. Well worth it unless 5mm of head height is going to...