Fantasising about your dream home while looking at colour swatches and browsing furniture catalogues? Stop for a moment! Before you dive into the exciting world of home renovation, there are a few key things you can’t ignore. These hidden factors can not only save your wallet from unpleasant surprises later on, but also ensure the safety and comfort of your home. Discover with us what you need to look out for to ensure that your home is not only beautiful, but also livable after renovation!
Category Archives: construction
Explore expert advice, tips, and best practices for construction projects, from planning to completion.
Pool Construction DIY – With Counter-Current System
Buy it in winter, dig it out and build it in spring, so you can swim every day from the beginning of summer.
A self-installed, in-ground, concrete, insulated, steel-walled, foil-lined pool will be presented, including the installation of a counter-current system and heat pump pool heating.
Background
Have you ever experienced this?
You can watch the full video on facebook.
You don’t need a large dog for this. It’s enough to have a tired foil inflatable pool, from which air is slowly but steadily escaping, and a curious cat, who, preferably in the middle of the night, presses down the edge of the pool to see what’s inside. Once it does, the edge won’t come back up due to the low air pressure, and by the time you wake up from the sound of the gushing water and rush out, the garden is already ankle-deep in water.
This is when you decide you want a safer solution.
The choice fell on a steel-walled foil-lined pool, and since the manufacturer suggested that the pool should be at least 30 cm deep in the ground for side stability, we got the idea to dig it in completely. This way, it doesn’t overwhelm the relatively small garden.
Continue reading Pool Construction DIY – With Counter-Current System
Installing wall heating in an already inhabited apartment, under plasterboard or stone porcelain – do it yourself method
We can increase our comfort while simultaneously reducing heating costs.
It is well known that the lower the temperature of the water used to heat the house by our boiler, the more economical it is. This is especially true for condensing boilers. Whether it’s an old open fire or a turbo gas boiler, caution is needed because the return water temperature to the boiler must be higher than the dew point of the flue gas. This is approximately a threshold value between 55–60 degrees Celsius. In condensing boilers, the key is that the return water temperature is as low as possible, as the condensation of the flue gas below the dew point is stronger, meaning the precipitation of water vapor from the flue gas. This precipitation, the change of state, comes with additional energy release. The lower the temperature of the water used to heat our home, and by better dissipating this heat, making the return water as low in temperature as possible, the better efficiency we can achieve in operating our condensing boiler.
Here, the heating pipe is already in the living room wall:
All of this is fine and good — however, the lower the temperature of the heating water, the more difficult it is to give off heat, as the temperature difference between the room temperature and the advancing water temperature becomes smaller. This problem can only be solved by increasing the surface area of the heating element. Beyond a certain size limit, implementing this with a radiator would be impractical. Especially considering that multi-panel radiators increasingly enhance heat dissipation through convection (i.e., by heating the air) and to a lesser extent through radiation. This is not advantageous, as heat emitted through radiation provides a more pleasant sensation even at lower temperatures.
On the other hand, if we use underfloor, wall, or ceiling heating, we can heat a larger surface area. This warm, radiant heating ensures a comfortable feeling of warmth.
If we want to live in the apartment during heating system improvements (now specifically discussing water heating), among the three surface heating methods, wall heating comes with the least dust, clutter, and inconvenience, using the following method — provided there is available wall space. And there was.
Energy cost reduction in an apartment block – DIY – window replacement, internal insulation, underfloor heating
Two basic principles:
- Produce the energy with highly efficient equipment!
- Don’t let the generated energy go to waste!
The transformation of the living room:
As much as it’s a priority to steer the population away from gas consumption, let’s admit that in an apartment block without district heating (central heating), heating and hot water can primarily be provided by gas, and secondarily by electricity. If many people switched from gas to electric heating, it would also cause problems, as many apartment block infrastructure and stairwell electrical systems are not designed for mass electric heating. Therefore, the possibility of massively increasing the amperage of apartments would also face limitations. Naturally, heating with air conditioning could be an alternative to direct electric heating, as it represents roughly a quarter of the electrical load, but many people do not like the warm air blowing, and the numerous outdoor units attached to the façades are already a terrible sight. For this reason, I believe gas will remain predominant to a greater extent.
But what can we do to keep our gas bill low?
Continue reading Energy cost reduction in an apartment block – DIY – window replacement, internal insulation, underfloor heating
Do-it-yourself home renovation – window replacement, internal insulation, heating modernization, new bathroom, kitchen, wardrobe – cold and warm flooring
Besides general home renovations – such as replacing cold and warm flooring, kitchen cabinets, and sanitary ware – a crucial point was to create a low utility cost home.
Because of this, modern plastic insulated glass windows with shutters were installed, and the previous convector heating, open combustion bathroom heating, and the open flow-through domestic hot water unit were replaced with a single condensing boiler.
Since there is zero chance for common facade insulation in the apartment building in the near future, 10cm thick glass wool internal insulation was installed on the enclosing walls, with a vapor barrier heat reflective foil and drywall covering.
A disappointment may occur if you believe any RGB LED strip photo to be real
Of course, it can happen by accident that we publish a picture of a product that has nothing to do with reality, but it can also be intentional. The problem is that RGB LED strips can emit light in many colors — practically any color of the rainbow. This puts manufacturers in a difficult position when they have to showcase an RGB strip with just one photo while it’s lit. To convey everything an RGB LED strip is capable of, they resort to various image manipulations. This manipulated image is provided to distributors and is also featured on the product’s box (if it has one). Photoshopped images like these are created:
In the above image manipulation, we see stunning combinations of RGB LED strip colors. Unfortunately, these are not real; they are mere manipulations. There are, of course, LED strips capable of illuminating in every color simultaneously, but these are not them.
Products sold with such photoshopped images not only belong to the group of cheaper and less reliable RGB LED strips, where even the seller doesn’t know what the product is capable of because they’ve never seen it in person or, if they have, haven’t tested it. What I don’t want to delve into right now is that, in many cases, not only can’t these RGB sets achieve the lighting suggested in the pictures, but buyers frequently report issues with improperly sized, overheating, melting RGB controllers, and exploding power supplies, as well as poorly soldered LED strip connections in their product reviews. However, this article is not about these problems; it’s about the misleading representation of lighting experiences and ultimately deception.
What’s wrong with these depictions of RGB LED strips?
Continue reading A disappointment may occur if you believe any RGB LED strip photo to be real
Understanding IP Ratings
IP designations are encountered multiple times during the design of LED lighting. They are most commonly seen with LED drivers, LED strips, and are essential for outdoor or poolside applications.
IP ratings are determined based on practical tests. Their meaning can be determined from the table below.
Continue reading Understanding IP Ratings