A BUILDING REGS’ GUIDE to
the boiler will continue to run, sending hot water around the pipework indefinitely. To actually tell the boiler to switch off requires a ‘boiler interlock’ commonly provided by room thermostats. Either hardwired or wireless, they send a signal to the boiler, shutting it down when the pre-set room temperature is achieved. The timing and temperature requirement is today mostly met with programmable room-stats that allow a variety of temperatures to be set at different times throughout the day. In small homes one heating zone is all that is required, but for homes over 150m2 two or more are required to divide the property into multiple heating zones — one serv-
the Safety Regs WAtER
Part G of the Building Regs deals with sanitation, hot water safety and water efficiency. It contains the water efficiency requirements we looked at in the September 2018 issue, but it has five other sides to it. The first requires your new home to have wholesome drinking water supplied, even if it’s from a private borehole. Another says you must have a sink in your kitchen and yet another says you should have a wash hand basin in your bathroom and either a shower or a bath. We rarely need to enforce these requirements. The hot water safety is a little more onerous, as it:
l Requires baths to be fitted with thermostatic taps or valves limiting the hot water temperature to 48°C maximum.
l Makes sure that discharge pipes are fitted to pressurised appliances (for example an unvented hot water cylinder) and terminated out of harm’s way.
l Requires installers to complete the safety-warning labels on unvented cylinders with their name, address and the completion date. Plumbers and heating engineers cannot remain anonymous. They must commission their work on completion and notify the building control body within five days after or registered within 30 days under the Government Competent Person Scheme by a registered installer.
from the appliance and give rise to carbon monoxide. Spillage tests should be conducted in these cases to ensure the appliance still burns correctly with the fan running full on. Combustion ventilation is sized by the rated output of the appliance, but make sure you locate it appropriately where it won’t cause a nuisance draught. All vents now should have the Equivalent Area (EA) figure in mm2 marked on them.
QWe have started laying the floor tiles in the kitchen and, to our despair, a lot of them don’t appear to be sticking and there’s a lot of movement. How can we get this fixed?
What is a turnkey package?
QWhat separates turnkey builds from other packages available, e.g. building to weathertight stage?
aaNthoNY kINgstoN saYs:
Turnkey provides the total package from design to handing over the keys at the end. Everything to do with the build is taken care of for the client. This is ideal for someone who would like the reassurance of a continued relationship with the company that has helped them from the early stages through to completion. It allows them to remain involved but without the stress and time commitment to manage the numerous and daily activities on site.
The client does, however, need to make detailed decisions upfront, including all finishing details like bathrooms, kitchens, even socket positions and the types of taps to be fitted. But once that’s done, it should give a fixed-price approach that’s worry free.
Build to weathertight only is the earliest of the build stages, ideal for clients who want to finish the job by managing subcontractors directly. An advantage at this stage is experience, some of the selflevelling screeds, even if sealed properly, fail to hold.
If the fault is the adhesive then it won’t stick to either the tiles or the substrate. If it’s the substrate, then the adhesive may stick to the tiles and not the floor.
The answer will be to start again, using a different adhesive. You could even try an epoxy type, instead of a cementitious one.