I'm glad it wasn't me that poured the concrete four inches too high for the feature in this weeks Grand Eloquence. After seeing the finished product though, I couldn't see why they didn't lose the 100 mls in the walls for all that the height of the roof mattered. They were not exactly short of space inside, were they?
All the bloody houses on that show look like barns to me. Is it my fault? Or does the bloody fool narrator just need to nursmaid his clients for pecuniary advancement?
Congrats to Mr and Mrs Sensible who this week took the chance of investing their all in expert help.
At least the contractor was open about it: the fault was at his end, and he took the hit for it. (As the architect said, getting concrete off a lorry and poured in place to a given level isn't rocket science...)
You can't just chop 100mm off the bottom of the cruck frame (which was already made by then): the base of the cruck would have been wider, and it wouldn't have fit on the top of the walls.
(Unless you mean losing 100mm in the ground floor walls: but dropping those by 100mm would mean that the floor-to-ceiling height of the ground floor would be a full 200mm lower than designed -- a lot, in other words -- as you would've raised the floor 100mm and lowered the ceiling by the same amount.)
Children aren't that young for very long really (assuming they will stay here for some time.) The oldest would have been coping with the stars ok already anyway I should think.
They soon learn not to.............. and anyway, they bounce well :-)
The *floor* height would have been the same, but that's not where the problem lay: doing it like that would raise the height of the top of the roof -- the height above sea level -- above what was permitted in the planning permission (which had taken them a couple of years to get).
It was mentioned almost in passing -- during the discussion about keeping/ripping up the slab -- that in order to maximise the view, the designed building used every last available bit of the "height above datum" permitted by the planning approval. In other words, there was no leeway in the "approved envelope", and they couldn't merely build the whole thing 100mm higher in the landscape.
So they either had to get a revised planning permission (which even if possible would have taken months); or they could try and gain the
100mm within the building height (by cutting off the base of the cruck or by lowering the floor of the upper story by 100mm); or they could chop the slab off to get it back down to the "altitude" that it should have been laid at in the first place.
It was the "overall height of the roof above datum" that created the problem.
I want to know how they keep it wharm downstais, all the heat flys to the roof .... And cooking smells from the kitchen fill the place, not to mention noise from the washer ......
Not seen this episode yet - but from reports I have heard so far, there was also the issue that the under floor heating system was going to be rather pointless under 6" of concrete...
Not necessarily, it will just take much longer for the system to react to changes in air temperature, but will also give a system with better 'resistance' to changes, so will give longer on / off periodes resulting in more efficient control of your boiler if the loss through isolation to ground is low enough that is...
My underfloor heating is a 6" re-inforced concrete slab with the pipes tied to the re-inforcing steel net with 90mm celotex below slab, and is absolutely fantastic in use. The flooring on top is either solid wood flooring in living rooms and ceramic tiles in kitchen / hall.
Surely this depends on how the system's designed, and what sort of starting thickness we're talking about.
It may well be that the slab was intended to be -- like yours -- a
150mm thick pad. As poured, though, it was an *extra* 100mm over and above the planned depth; that could well have pushed the system to the point of being useless (rather than just a bit inefficient and/or unresponsive).
It's one thing to fall into a pit by having a servant dig it, it's quite another to fall into one you are digging yourself. On a previous programme a lawyer or some such professional gave the oversight of the job to his wife who was also saddled with the kids to look after, while he took on the labour for the site.
If ever there was a site from hell that was the one. I am glad we all had the decency to refrain from commenting on it. Sorry to break the taboo. But the point of the post is so remarkably well illustrated by that experience. If it is someone else who is below a very low standard you get rid of them.
Did anyone else think the house looked like another one of Kevin's "beautiful" sheds?
No, it gets innefficient only. The ratrio of heat lost downwrads to heat lost upwards is a functon of teh thermal resistance in both directions. More concrete above needs more insulation below for teh same efficiency.
As far as lag goes, even on 4" of screed, I have given up timing. Its on
24 hours now. Fuel bills are not noticeably higher.
Indeed, I was surprised not see comment on that shambolic build. Particularly felt sorry the glaziers, I think if it hadn't been for the cameras there they would (should) have turned round and refused to deliver those huge, heavy, extremely expensive DG units onto a site covered in piles of crap.
I haven't actually timed mine I just set it on 24/7 with the heat taken from a large thermal store / heat bank (whatever you prefer to call those big ugly buckets of water) via a thermostatic 3-way valve and a seperate pump, setting the feed temperature as a function of the return, so when the return gets colder the feed gets hotter bringing the system back in balance. Works a treat, the highest feed I have noticed is arround 30 degres Celcius...
And because the system floor slabs are slow to react to changes in temperature there is no oscilation on the control of the temperature making the controls even simpler...
Each room downstairs has it's own zone that is controlled via adigital thermostat in the same room, there were a few wires to install, but the level of control are great...
My fuel bills have actually gone down after I installed the underfloor heating and the house is much more confortable to live in...
That prick narrator should have walked away from that one. Instead he heavily edited the stuff he ended up with and waxed lyrical about the end product.
It was a grand design maybe but that surely wasn't what the programmes were about was it?
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