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UCS Hellmaker posted:Did Google ever fix that nest issue of them getting stuck active and neverending screaming? I've got 5 of them for 3 years and that's never happened. They've already (potentially) saved our lives once from carbon monoxide so cheers to them I say. The only issue is the notification that they're about to self-test themselves has started coming after the self-test has already gone off. Useful!
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Mar 28, 2023 13:15
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How airtight is this thing going to be anyway? Do you need one of them whole-house ventilation deals?
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Mar 31, 2023 13:32
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Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:How wide is this carport? Looks like getting out of the car is going to be extremely tight That was more what I was thinking about than the lack of door. What do people in the UK drive anyway, even a Renault Clio is not too far off 6 feet wide. I am rather skeptical. Maybe you can store some blocks in there.
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Apr 5, 2023 13:44
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My takeaway is that houses are built extremely differently over there than in (most of) north america. I haven't seen half of this stuff or methods before. On the other hand I've mostly seen the innards of older houses (80+ years or so) so it could be different. I mean, I've never even seen a block-construction house since literally everything is wood-frame here. Quite weird to see. This monstrosity looks most akin to the high velocity ventilation I've seen although the hosing seems somewhat different. I suppose the burning question is if this is UK-style construction or specifically NJAN-style construction. Fidelitious fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Apr 20, 2023 |
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Apr 20, 2023 13:53
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WhatEvil posted:I used to think that the US-style of building houses (timber frame, forced-air heating) was poo poo, but since moving to Canada, I've come around to it. It seems much less intimidating to make modifications to your house with timber frame stuff, for one thing. You've got all cavities everywhere that you can cut into and gently caress around with easily. I even cut a hole fully through my house wall to install a catflap and it was really really easy. Ah hello, I am also in Ottawa. To be fair I still think that central forced-air HVAC is poo poo after being in Canada my whole life. A brand-new install by someone who does it right is probably pretty good but older stuff is just gigantic ducts taking up space in the walls everywhere and leaking air all over the place that you've paid good money to heat or cool. And good luck trying to balance the distribution across multiple floors and rooms in different seasons. And you'll probably be wastefully conditioning 100% of the house at all times because zoning is not much of a thing. I'm definitely on board with the timber framing and all the useful empty spaces it gives you. My assumption about the roofing and cladding materials is the extreme cost difference. We could probably replace our roof 4 times for the cost of a metal or tile roof and that's on the assumption that you're staying in the house long enough for that to happen. As far as siding goes, modern 'premium' vinyl can last an extremely long time without much degradation these days while being wind-resistant, scratch-proof, maintenance-free (almost), aesthetically pleasing, and still quite cheap. It's a pretty hard sell to go for any other material. I have an old house for these parts (160 this year!) so our foundation is field stones and our siding is wood. The siding needs to be replaced soon-ish and going for actual wood is just expensive as hell.
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Apr 21, 2023 14:16
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I think the main benefit of these blocks is that you can easily carve channels into them with a butter knife.
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May 8, 2023 13:31
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~Coxy posted:Running multiple drops of Cat6 to each room and avoiding lovely dumb hubs hanging off the wall is absolutely the correct decision. I really don't think anyone is suggesting hanging switches on interior walls, but having switches in utility spaces as close as possible to the area that they'll serve. Either way, no one needs this much ethernet.
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May 26, 2023 14:25
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Yep, they've got similar issues happening around here. Homes in areas where the storm drains are getting the most overloaded are getting incentives from the city for things like rain gardens or otherwise redirecting drainage onto permeable ground. Not sure if they're funding dry wells or anything.
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Jun 4, 2023 13:59
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Ready for the moss wall or floor or whatever the gently caress it was.
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Jul 21, 2023 13:38
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NotJustANumber99 posted:cheap locks in I understand this is a low security application but I didn't know that they even still made warded locks. Is it actually cheaper than a cheap pin-tumbler?
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Jul 28, 2023 13:33
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Leperflesh posted:today I learned that in england, electrics involve "glands" I'm glad that I'm not the only one that did a double-take upon seeing "gland pack"
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Jul 31, 2023 13:38
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As a Canadian who used a bunch of cedar in our backyard, I have rarely seen a cedar plank so red like that before. I swear they picked out the reddest one they could find for some reason. It's much more common to have 'normal' looking planks in a wide variations of brown with red undertones, some are barely red at all. In any case yeah, they're all going to be grey in a year anyhow unless you spent an annoying amount of time protecting them.
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Aug 4, 2023 13:53
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Jaded Burnout posted:I understand the principle and the general benefit, but it seems just from this one case to be a huge amount of cost and effort and variance from the norm for a fairly temperate climate. Like I get it for Texas or Norway. I read an article about the PassivHaus standard from Building Science and some of its requirements/recommendations are...interesting to say the least and are probably not doable in a colder climate like Norway. Some required design limitations were put in place in the 80s when construction science and materials were not what we have now so there's things like worries about condensation in super-airtight homes that are not an issue anymore but still are part of the PH standard. It's also very euro-centric and does not even consider some things that are more common in north america like floor-based heating and such.
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Aug 10, 2023 14:15
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vanity slug posted:is modular housing even a thing? like i know there's lots of prefab stuff but actual modular housing seemed to be that one gimmick hotel in tokyo (where else) and not much else This might be a confusion of terms or something because for me modular housing IS prefab stuff. Modular parts of a house built in a "house factory" which can then be assembled on site in a matter of days. It's not super widespread but it's not really uncommon either. A number of cities in Canada have used them as a method to fill temporary housing needs for homeless since they're pretty cheap.
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Aug 11, 2023 14:35
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Sadly, Munger Hall is still very much planned. The campus architect resigned in protest in 2021 (read it, the interview's great). In December 2022 a a UCSD committee released a report calling out major shortfallings in design (health and safety risks) and Munger had a shitfit. Currently all plans are on hold while UCSB waits for Munger to come back with design changes. Isn't he that incredibly old bastard in with Warren Buffett? Just delay a few years and he'll be dead no problem.
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Aug 12, 2023 00:37
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Leperflesh posted:assumed 60 year life expectancy of a building? what in the world? Yeah, not very bold are they. Even in young north american cities piles of houses are older than 60 years and they are not anywhere near end of life. This is what happens when you don't have old growth forests to build houses out of and decide to make blocks out of air.
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Sep 3, 2023 14:45
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Jaded Burnout posted:Even with the best intentions and materials brick will blow and mortar will soften over a hundred years. Is that a “house stays up” service life or a “materials will stand up to remodelling” service life? I think piles of rocks hold up fairly well.
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Sep 4, 2023 13:53
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NotJustANumber99 posted:With the cladding here need to have an eye on that as, whilst I know we're in a heatwave right now, within a couple of days its bound to be heavy rains and wintery conditions. Yeah, can't say I would have recommended trying to drill and place plugs like 1mm from the edge of the block. And I'm not even a blockman. Does give you a nice view of the aerated bubbly interior of the block. Very aero bar.
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Sep 14, 2023 14:24
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I always forget that some places have like actual decisions to be made on things like power suppliers. Right now it's the Hydro company owned by the city and before we moved it was the Hydro company owned by the province. Sure simplifies things.
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Sep 22, 2023 13:56
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Country-wide hydroelectric power supplies 60% of Canada's power. In areas where the provider name has Hydro in it that percentage is usually significantly higher even than that. It makes perfect sense.
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Sep 24, 2023 14:26
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If you can't see it, it's not a problem is my motto.
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Oct 3, 2023 14:38
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It's only when you start doing renovations (or self-building a house I suppose) that you come to the realization that every house is a pile of crap held together by shims and scrap material that looks nice in the end because it's quite easy to cover everything over with nice trim. There is potentially a perfect house out there somewhere. Designed and built by some kind of renaissance man with an obsession for perfection that did literally every bit themselves. Excluding that, every home is built at least partially by paying some lads to do some poo poo that you don't want to do and it's simply not possible to pay someone enough to CARE in the same way that an owner might. You would need to supervise them 100% of the time and have the fortitude to point out and make them redo anything you don't like. Which also might just make them quit.
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Oct 24, 2023 14:29
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Mate, I think that's a house now.
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Oct 28, 2023 13:41
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Epitope posted:This may be more of a philosophical question, but is cladding of masonry just aesthetic? Like with stick frame, you have plywood sheathing which is structural and needs weather protection. In theory could you just paint your blocks? A quick looks says yes, you can use even aerated blockwork as external but you still need to render on top of it to protect them. And I'd say that wood cladding is much nicer looking than sandy cement as a cover.
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Oct 30, 2023 13:55
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I get the sentiment but I'd avoid real wood siding if at all possible because it looks very nice but it's a pain in the rear end. I've watched enough This Old House to decide that PVC is the way to go if you get the quality stuff.
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Oct 31, 2023 14:16
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Wasn't Musk supposed to be making modular solar roof tiles at one point? It's the one good idea he's had, which is probably why it never materialised. They do exist and have been installed, but it's a pretty low numbers game for that kind of thing. It's an idea that certainly seems good but it's really expensive to install solar tiles. I don't think Tesla's are any worse than competitors (except for wind rating) it's just a very luxury product.
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Nov 10, 2023 15:21
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I believe they mean nesting in the actual eaves not that there's holes into the house there. I wouldn't be too concerned about it though. Our old neighbourhood with mostly mid 19th-century housing had a pile of houses with wooden soffits. They inevitably rot and soften up a little and then the birds gouge holes in it and make themselves an excellent nest. Without non-organic soffits it seems nests are inevitable.
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Nov 16, 2023 14:59
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At a certain point you have to give in though and have someone who knows what they're doing tell you what's up. Especially water stuff. Electrical will kill you but at least it doesn't have pressure and backflow, it doesn't slowly leak out of wires and rot your house away, and it doesn't come up out of the ground or sideways through your foundation,. And a 10-year old can connect wires together, none of this brazing poo poo or dealing with 70 year old cast iron plumbing stacks buried in a concrete slab. Water was a mistake.
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Nov 20, 2023 14:43
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Seconding that it is an awful idea to jam your heat pump in there like that. The space behind it is probably fine but it's exhausting straight at a fence. You absolutely need at least 1.5 metres in front of it and more is better. It's going to recirculate the air that it's just extracted heat from and try to extract even more heat from it. If it doesn't fit in there sideways it would be better to find another location.
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Nov 29, 2023 15:11
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Yeah, there's got to be zero chance that anything useful happens on this first go-round, or probably the next 3 either. They're definitely assuming that there's some fibre distribution box on a pole in a straight-line of like 20 feet that they'll just string through the air and stick through a hole anywhere they feel like and then it's your problem. Telecoms aren't prepared for techno-wizardry like "conduit" or "data cabinet" in residential installs.
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Dec 1, 2023 15:04
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So what is it that makes mitered joins like that so difficult. Naively, one would look at it, and see, cut 45 degrees, cut 45 degrees, stick'em together. I assume you need a fancy saw blade and not some ripping grade one. Is it mostly about getting all the joins lining up correctly? Since you don't really get much of a 2nd chance to fix it if you do it wrong.
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Dec 5, 2023 14:51
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Are buffer tanks even real?
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Dec 12, 2023 14:41
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We have a tiny under-sink water heater that goes to a special "this is fuckin' hot" tap. Didn't put it there but useful for instant hot water for tea. Also I think you were living in some kind of illegal tenement.
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Dec 14, 2023 15:00
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Not having enough fibre seems completely wonky to me. Even a reel with hundreds of meters of fibre on it would barely take up any room. I'm pretty sure he just didn't want to do it.
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Dec 15, 2023 15:03
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Well that's pretty dire.
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Dec 15, 2023 15:40
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Wonder if this is more of a UK tendency. Guy came to install fibre at our old house and just casually drilled through our 160-year old foundation which was like 3 feet of stone because he had diamond-tipped bits on hand. I also saw that he had an entire spool of fibre. No issue. Or I just got lucky.
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Dec 17, 2023 15:01
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Absolute mad lads, actually sending (almost) what you've ordered.
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Dec 21, 2023 15:16
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Also here in Ottawa with a heat pump for winter for the first time. It hasn't been particularly cold yet, I think -14 C so far? Absolutely no issues. It of course costs significantly more than gas heating like we had in our old home but this house has no gas service and I don't want it, so there you go. Our heat pump has no built-in heating backup because the house already had baseboard electric heaters that we just kept to be the backup. I'm curious to see if we'll ever need to turn them on.
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Dec 23, 2023 14:59
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Failed Imagineer posted:hosed up. I think heat pumps are like 5x cheaper than gas in Europe but idk I checked gas rates and unless I've hosed up the therm -> cubic meter conversion it looks like the average UK price is about 2.8x more expensive than here. I'd also say that our house is from the 50s and not the best insulated thing in the world. I have to get around to sealing all the drafts now that I've found my thermal camera.
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Dec 26, 2023 23:02
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Would the opposite be a problem though? i.e. Would a pump designed for colder temps struggle in 30° summer? No, cooling is much easier than heating. It's a lot easier to dump heat into even 35 C than to extract heat from -15 C. Heat pumps are 'rated' by their heat numbers because the cooling will always be more efficient. For example mine can reach COP of almost 4 when cooling at max capacity at 35 C. When heating at -25 C max capacity the COP drops to 1.5. They don't provide the numbers but I'm assuming it's barely better than baseboard electric at -30 or lower. Conveniently I live somewhere that can hit both of those temperatures.
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Jan 7, 2024 16:12
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