A few questions

What is beyond normal cleaning?

A damp rag with some bleach will get it back to its white appearance.

Fenwicks bike or caravan cleaner would be my first port of call. Seems to clean anything without being too vicious.

You can put as much tinfoil down as you like. IMHO unlikely to have any noticeable effect. Not sure what the answer is unless you could lay some insulation over the whole floor and adjust doors, etc. to a new higher floor.

I have used the product below - or maybe it was a previous version they stocked? Anyway, does a good job of getting rid of muck including odd dark areas which other things do not seem to get clean. It does leave the surface looking, well, ummm, revived.

It is, however, somewhat expensive.

Doubt it, the tinfoil would be a very good conductor of heat to the concrete, except that it is insulated from the room by the carpet and underlay, the tinfoil would reflect heat back into the room, if only it wasn't covered by the carpet and underlay.

Thanks, have tried bleach and a rag and it doesnt do the job. There are a lot of black streaks on it from the rubber seals.

If you dont mind I have another ?.

A lot of the interior walls are partition, either plasterboard or wood sheets. It does rather look like wood to me, its a 7 year old house. I want to hang a bathroom cabinet, curtain rails, mirrors, pics etc. some of the curtains being heavy. Whats the best fixings to use. I havent a clue what I am looking or asking for. The walls are definately hollow to the sound.

Thanks again

You ought to find there are timber studs about every 300mm apart, if so fix into those where possible, if not possible then use hollow fixings such as

Beware of hidden mains cables when drilling.

Really, what heat would that be then ?

Radiant heat, but I don't think I'd fancy tinfoil instead of a carpet so it's fairly moot really.

Really ?

and tinfoil reflects at such long wavelengths, does it ?

I think you'll find a chocolate teapot more useful

Heat rises Samantha - so foil isn't much use to keep the heat in at floor level! Carpet and underlay will do just fine (get the best quality underlay you can afford and that will improve matters).

You can try Cif (or similar) and that will clean some of the stuff off, or you can nip down to the friendly UPVc plastics suppliers (or possibly a builders merchants such as Jewsons) and pick up the proper cream or solvent cleaners quite cheaply, or pop into your local Aldi stores - I saw some 'UPVc cleaner' on the racks there on Wednesday (at my local Aldi that is).

Tanner-'op

"Traffic Film Remover" from any industrial cleaning supplies company. Note that "use gloves" in this case really means it - it is quite caustic and reading (and following) the instructions is a very good idea.

From general experience I'd say it does, but I found a couple of links for you

But the reflected heat from a room is way off being anywhere even near "near-infrared"

it might reflect a couple of watts from a light bulb, what other sources of radiant heat are you expecting to be in a room?

Radiators and gas fires mostly don't radiate downwards,

In message , Peter Parry writes

not necessarily, the stuff I use is not NaOH based and skin safe(ish)

The latest vapour check Knauff plasterboard, and the Gyproc Thermaline Super I have recently brought both utilise silver foil as the vapour barrier, rather than a plastic so I assume it must provide some heat reflection benefit, and it isn't on the outside (obviously).

No, it's verging on far infrared, and you carefully cut the section I quoted about aluminium being the highest reflecting metal in that part of the spectrum.

Radiators, fires and people for a start, but I did say it *wasn't* a good idea to put tinfoil under a carpet.

You seem to have moved from saying tinfoil is a poor reflector of heat, to saying there won't be much heat aimed at it for it to reflect.

at 290K?

that's a LONG way off near-infrared

I said FAR, not near, space blankets are designed to reflect body heat and they use a deposited film of aluminium (they're crap at stopping heat being conducted away from you but that's beside the point).

Jiff will sort out the uPVC