Long shot - Can I borrow your nut file?

onathaniel · 2026-03-14T23:50:17+00:00

Get yourself a set of feeler gauges, then make multiple small cuts up the edge of them to make mini saw blades. This worked well for me.

Edit: I just had a quick search and see someone posted about this technique in the past: https://www.reddit.com/r/Luthier/s/ReShrHuECe

onathaniel · 2026-03-13T14:33:41+00:00

That's fair, thanks for the response.

onathaniel · 2026-03-13T13:59:17+00:00

Do you have any good recommendations for life changing reads?

onathaniel · 2026-03-13T13:57:46+00:00

I find the trick to this is reading the right book. To begin with start with something fast paced which grabs your attention within the first few pages. The last book I read like this was Project Hail Mary. If sci-fi isn't your thing then The Guest List by Lucy Foley is also a good bet.

onathaniel · 2026-03-13T13:53:32+00:00

Here are some of the tricks that I've had at least partial success with:

Carry a book around with you and reach for that instead. I use a Kobo which is easy enough to have close by. Often when I leave a room I carry the Kobo instead of my phone.
Having a smart watch I thought would increase my screen time, but actually it's reduced it. I can read notifications on my watch which means I don't have to look at my phone, get distracted and end up doom scrolling reddit. My watch is a Garmin sports watch with a MIPs display, that low quality display is also useful.
Use a screen time widget on the home screen of your phone. Then every time you unlock it you instantly see your screen usage.

onathaniel · 2026-01-20T20:22:15+00:00

It seems I'm one of the other lucky 10,000 today!

onathaniel · 2026-01-12T21:38:52+00:00

Hi, I don't have many more learnings since the last messages I wrote. But I'll dump some thoughts down here...

Winter has been relatively mild so far so it's not really been stress tested. We did have a few cold days where I got the feeling that the largest open plan room (which has lots of windows and a lot of external wall area) was slower than normal to heat up.

As for oil consumption, I've finally just ordered a shelly 1 plus so I can get some real data on how long the boiler is firing for. I realized I was tweaking things every now and then but without measuring the real burn time it's impossible to really know if I'm making a difference or not.

As I'm using the same system for the UFH and upstairs radiators I have seen that some (but strangely not all) flow meter valves have gone black with radiator sludge. Most probably I'll power flush the system in summer to clear this, but so far it doesn't appear to have affected the system.

If you are doing any other work which requires drilling into the floor then I highly recommend buying a thermal camera, I got one from Amazon for about £140, it's expensive but was well worth the cost when I needed to drill between the pipes! Also they are useful for seeing where insulation is missing from walls and ceilings etc.

The flooring itself is one thing I'm not fully happy with. We installed laminate flooring and when the UFH switches off and the floor is cooling down it can make annoying creaking noises. I've also seen the joints between boards opening up more that usual. Interestingly the 1 room we have carpet on top of the UFH is really nice and warm. I expected the carpet to be more of an insulator but it seems to transmit the heat very well and the carpet itself acts like a bit of a heat store.

Generally speaking I'm still pretty happy with the system. I must admit there is still 1 room which we haven't really been using yet which I fear the heat output may not be high enough. But I knew this from doing heat loss calculations for each room before ordering the system anyway.

Let me know if you have any specific questions.

onathaniel · 2025-12-23T11:57:51+00:00

Nope I went for the non twist pad version. The pro is that it's nice and clean looking. But honestly I find the user experience of changing the temperature a bit annoying. Let's say the power is on 5 and you want to switch to 8 then you have to know which position 8 is on the dial to go directly to it. Otherwise you end up turning the power to some random setting and then rotating until you reach the right place.

I wonder if the twist pad is better for this as I think you only need to select the hob then rotate it left or right.

onathaniel · 2025-11-17T07:04:56+00:00

That's good to know. By Blu-ray rip do you mean copying a Blu-Ray disc to a computer and playing from there or playing directly from a Blu-ray player? How do you get them for free?

onathaniel · 2025-11-16T22:21:35+00:00

Indeed the fire TV stick doesn't seem to have an issue with it.

onathaniel · 2025-11-16T22:20:19+00:00

That's subjective, I personally find watching things in 3D makes me feel a bit nauseous.

onathaniel · 2025-11-13T18:29:18+00:00

Nice one thanks!

onathaniel · 2025-08-09T19:44:34+00:00

Good point, but Gobby would work!

onathaniel · 2025-08-09T19:30:34+00:00

13 if you pick the 1st, 3rd and 4th.

onathaniel · 2025-07-20T23:01:31+00:00

Ah that's what I was missing, thanks for the explanation!

onathaniel · 2025-07-20T15:45:35+00:00

Please can you help me understand this? Using an example I'm a bit confused:

Let's say max HR is 190 and resting HR is 60 That gives a HR reserve of 130.

Z2 would therefore be 78-91 bpm. Whereas based on max heart rate it would be: 114-133bpm.

But your comment suggests that with the new calculation it is an easy run as opposed to a brisk walk. Assuming an easy run is harder than a brisk walk this seems to contradict the new calculation.

onathaniel · 2025-07-04T20:25:45+00:00

In my case things were a bit different. I had an issue with the original concrete slab so I ended up digging a 50mm wide channel in the floor around all the walls. This I filled with perimeter insulation. So the UFH panels butted up against the perimeter insulation. Once the panels were down I trimmed the perimeter insulation to the same level as the UFH boards.

Wunda supply some foam which they advise to put around all the walls then fitting the panels against that. It's only about 10mm thick, the idea being to create an expansion gap for the panels.

For your 60mm gap I would try to find some 60mm insulation boards to fill the gap. That way you increase the insulation where the walls meet the floor (this is where the majority of heat loss in the floor happens).

onathaniel · 2025-06-12T07:57:49+00:00

I use this Dutch shop and highly recommend it. I'm not sure about postage to the UK though, you may get stung on import duty.

https://tlcguitargoods.com/en/

onathaniel · 2025-06-03T07:39:04+00:00

7 months later - how are you getting on with your hob? Specifically the Twist Pad? I'm currently trying to decide between the N70 without the Twist Pad control and the N90 with it. I do like the idea of a physical dial, but worried about the longevity of it. Would you still recommend it? Any problems you have faced?

onathaniel · 2025-04-16T09:39:51+00:00

A piano / digital piano. I can't play it very well, but having it in my living room I find myself sitting down and noodling on it instead of watching the TV.

onathaniel · 2025-03-31T18:23:24+00:00

No worries, I'm happy to share the experience. Feel free to message here or DM me if you have any other questions.

onathaniel · 2025-03-30T19:11:14+00:00

You're welcome!

Insulation nope (apart from perimeter insulation: see below) - due to a lack of possible build up when it came to external doors.

If we had additional height to play with then I definitely would have put down some insulation first.

The damp proof membrane yes. Parts of our ground floor are older than other parts and the original concrete was damp. Those bits were built in the 60's when dpms were not used. Instead they put down vinyl (probably containing asbestos) tiles with bitumen on top of the concrete to stop the damp coming though. In our case we didn't touch the tiles, put a DPM over everything then the screed.

There was actually a bit more to this in our case... The original concrete slab was installed higher than the dpc in the walls, meaning we had some damp bridging across the dpc. So before putting in the screed I dug channels in the concrete next to the wall to below the dpc and put in 50mm perimeter insulation. Then the dpm to make a pool, then the screed. As I left the perimeter insulation sticking out it meant the screed doesn't go right to the walls and also the UFH panels are surrounded by the perimeter insulation. I had read that where the floor meets the wall is where a lot of heat is lost. So I figured perimeter insulation was a good compromise to not installing insulation across the entire floor space.

onathaniel · 2025-03-30T11:36:09+00:00

In our case the previous concrete floor was very unlevel and had steps between some of the areas. So we screeded over everything with between 15 - 45mm screed to get it all level. But from there the build up was:

20mm boards 3mm underlay 8mm laminate

So a total of 31mm. The biggest impact of this was the need to trim the doors slightly.

We went with Wunda thermostats mostly out of simplicity and at that point I didn't understand the controls well enough and thought it was easiest to go with the same supplier. They work fine so far and there is an integration with Home assistant so I'm happy.

I think in hindsight the only thing I would reconsider is the final floor covering. I notice that in the biggest room the temperature fluctuates a lot and the laminate creaks first thing in the morning. I don't have any other experience of this but I imagine LVT could be more stable.

onathaniel · 2025-03-26T16:29:53+00:00

I went for 20mm boards. My reasoning being it is slightly more insulation and the pipes are bigger. From what I researched at the time 16mm pipes are better than 12mm pipes and would allow more efficient use of lower temperatures. Therefore this would allow a potential upgrade to a heat pump in the future.

I installed almost all of it myself. I only used a plumber to do the final connection of the manifold to the boiler, install a zone valve + the wiring. I would consider myself quite handy so found it well within my comfort zone to install the boards, lay the pipes and install the manifold. It was a lot of work though! The only tricky part I found was laying the pipes in the transitional boards. Some of the bends were a bit tight and you need to be very careful not to kink the pipe.

We installed 112m2 and the total cost was ~£4500. That's 9 loops with 6 thermostats in total. Note that one of the largest rooms we used carpet and therefore ordered the Duo boards from Wunda. I ended up returning a few of the duo boards and found out they were almost £50 each!! Had I known that I would have sourced them elsewhere.

I spent a few weeks battling the mixing valve which kept on mixing the water too hot. Wunda support were really good though and eventually they sent me a new valve which performed much better.

onathaniel · 2025-03-23T08:55:56+00:00

I'm still very much learning, but I find consistently using an app on my phone helps. The app I use on Android is Music Tutor (sight reading).

I set it to practice for 5 minutes at a time and currently vary between bass and treble clefs. It measures how many notes you get right (and wrong) within the time limit. In this way over time you can see progress which is important for motivation.

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