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I will post some images tomorrow. But thanks for showing an interest. Ideally, I expect SE to be totally responsible for all calcs and drawings. I'm just the end client who knows nothing about that discipline.

This may well be the case. The English BC system can be much less rigorous then the Scottish system for example. But in all cases BC are not their to check or take liability for calculations for example. Their role is to exercise reasonable skill and care to determine if your submissions generally appear to be sufficient to meet the regs in the round. If you read the fine print of BC approval you'll find that the real liability rests with you and your appointed designers. If you miss something then BC are pretty much off the hook. @saveasteading has written at length about this in the past. I've suggested you post some info, photographs etc. It's up to your how much you want to explore. I'm curious as to how the box section is going to be buildable, the orientation for example and how it works.

Generally, projects have 3 control levers: budget, timelines and scope. People very often focus on the budget and forget about the other 2. For best planning, you need to use all 3 and build in contingencies for all 3. And if you prioritise your requirements well, scope is the easiest one to adjust. Since you're living in the house, have an orderly exit plan from every piece of work that you begin. And follow the 7P principle in everything you do.

The SE basically provided a lintel schedule for all openings. I have just ordered lintels as per her spec. Builder has installed dpc cavity trays and weep vents according to building regs. I will ask her for calculations. I submitted the lintel schedule to BC and I didn't even receive an acknowledgement. I don't think they have actually looked at a single spec that they have been sent.

Ok. If you fancy let us see the drawing (include the weathering detail if possible) and a few photographs of what's been built so far. What's the beam span and confirm the loads if you can. Has your SE provided calculations?

Thanks @Gus Potter the SE was as much use as a chocolate teapot. She listened to the builder and basically said "what would you be happy with?. I too was also asked". I replied "You're the SE, I think you need to tell us". So apparently, it's 60mm box section welded at 600 centres, to join tHe two sections together. I'll of course get her to provide a drawing.

That’s good news the SE is coming to site. It's also very encouraging to see your builder chipping in with their concerns, demonstrates competency. From time to time I use an unequal galvanised angle to support an outer leaf. They are prone to torsion and warping. Just as an aside, the angle is galvanised and the internal I beam is not. If there is too much moisture floating around the angle will become a sacrificial anode. Thus we could electrically decouple the angle an internal steel. Or we could paint the angle and make sure the drip above keeps it dry and protects the paint. I tend to plump for an I beam on the inside, especially if supporting floors, heavy roof loads down the inner leaf for example. You can use Cee sections, but again they are prone to twisting, torsional effects. Going into a little more detail. An I beam has it's centre of gravity in the middle of the section. There is a also a thing we call the shear centre. For an I beam the shear centre coincides with the centre of gravity. But on a Cee section the shear centre lies outwith the actual section profile! If you load a Cee section in the middle of the top flange it immediately twists. Now we can actually take advantage of this behaviour by making sure the floor joists for example frame into the web side, the flanges face towards the outside. But this makes it a bit harder to insulate as the inside of the Cee faces into the cavity. Below is an example where I'm using an angle on the outside and an I beam on the inside to support floor and roof loads. This project had a fair bit of steelwork thus the method I adopted of coupling the angle and internal I beam didn't add much to the over all cost. There are three thermal bridges, one at each end and one in the middle, but the coupling plates are thin and the work was to an existing build. Yes technically, thermally not perfect, but is does the job in the round. Part of the 3D steel model: There are three plates called F4. One at each end and one in the middle. The first detail shows the DPC arrangement etc. The next two show a plate called F5 welded to the back of the angle and a plate F4 welded to the I beam. F5 has a slotted hole to allow for tolerance. Below is a diagram of the shear centre of a Cee section: The shear centre is marked SC, the centre of gravity marked C. @flanagaj It might be worth you reading around this a bit (including the finish on the angle, galv or painted) and then ask your SE about it when they come to site so they can explain to you and the builder why they have designed what they have and explain to you in lay terms how it works. Well, lets hope they can answer your legitimate questions.

You're doing internal doors yourself but budgeting £75k (over a third of your budget!) to pay somebody for externals? Are you planning significant structural work (relocating windows)? Just sayin', £75k is a lot of spondoolicks. Does it really need to be done? I'm not in a too dissimilar position (just moved into a run down, somewhat smaller, house - 135 sq m + garage + half an acre plot with a view of building a workshop or 2), but I'm not doing any budgeting - I'll just tackle 'em as they come because the house keeps throwing up new problems faster than I can deal with them right now. Just have my high-priority hit list and the rest can wait. Instead of trying to eyeball a budget for a massive project with a bucket of unknowns (you'll never get it right - trust me, I've been consulting on massive IT projects for a decade now - never seen an initial budget that didn't make me want to laugh out loud), I would very strongly advise you to do two things: 1) Tranche the works, at least into year 1 and year 2. Maybe into year 1 - summer; Year 1 - winter; Year 2 - summer; Year 2 - winter; Backlog. Good idea to MSCW all your requirements at this stage. After each tranche you, ideally, want to be in a position where you can cancel/long-term pause your works if you get a black swan event (you or Mrs become unemployed, end up in hospital, Mrs gets a bad case of postnatal depression, kids go long term sick, you get into a car or bike crash, Trump decides to invade us just to name a few). Do not plan to start work that you can't exit in an orderly manner. 2) Determine a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for each tranche and each year. The absolute minimum you need to deliver to be able to say that your work during that tranche has been competed and actually improved the house and added value to it (value to you personally or mkt value). In this case if shit hits the fan, you can de-scope the works to the absolute minimum you need to deliver in the given tranche. Also, have you done your full discovery? E.g. Are you 100% confident you wouldn't suddenly need to fork out £40k for removal of lose fill asbestos, crumbling AIB or lagging? Do you have a brand new roof already, 'cause I don't see anything budgeted for roofing works? Boiler's arse is not falling out yet? Another thing to consider is if you have a mortgage or not. If you do, can you spend some of this cash repaying the loan instead and do the works 4-5 years down the line? Otherwise you're essentially paying 5% interest on every pound you spend on your house. We'll probably get hit by a huge inflation over the next 2 years so your 10% padding might even cover the price increases, never mind any unforeseen works. Good luck mate 🤣

I'm thinking of laying the upstand flap of the internal 1200ga membrane over onto the flat light blue XPS face, then laying the EPDM from the door threshold over the top of it and bonding the 2 together on the horizontal plane, or vice versa. This is a rough diagram of what I propose. The magenta is the EPDM, the green is the 1200ga DPM. I hope it's not too hard to see... I wouldn't be able to retain the turned up portions of the EPDM on the jambs if I want it to head downwards, but are they really doing anything? I could triangle cut them to allow the EPDM to fold down. Does a threshold DPM usually turn up the jambs anyway? Apologies that this sketch is not at all in proportion!

So you have to turn that membrane down to get the suggested (obligatory) 9mm?

The RK door is set up for 9mm clearance. You can see the skimpiness of the threshold arrangement in that drawing. Essentially, my EPDM sits on the datum line where the arrow points and just has slim packers (around 5mm) between it and the underside of the threshold.

Watch the gap for stones / debris brought in on your shoes. 6-7mm gap is minimum but 10mm better. Just one gotcha to avoid before committing to final floor levels.

I find the same using Chat got, can talk utter nonsense and really contract itself - And AI is set to take over the world.

Thanks @Tony L for drawing attention to the erroneous information from Gemini. I use the same AI source a great deal. The answers to my questions are often simply wrong. But it's correct often enough to keep my custom. Annoying, but useful because simple acceptance of the answers given is not an option.

And with drivers on top of cupboards, make a box for them to go in (with side vents for heat dissipation). Regardless of how good your kitchen vent is, the top of cupboards still tend to end up with a greasy film over time so a little protection is worthwhile.

All our drivers and led controls are in a central location with a flex running to the led strips. no driver or control needed near the strips. All dimming and colour changes done on an app, al switching on and off from a switch on the wall.

You're welcome Will, glad it helped. One thing worth adding: when the VCL goes down, tape every lap and run it well past the wall plate so it can be sealed properly to your wall air tightness line. Do the same around anything that comes through the deck, like soil vent pipes or roof window frames. A few minutes with tape there saves a lot of grief later. Good luck with the build.

Not sure this is relevant ,as you may be asking about floor level lights under main units. Our LED strip lights under our wall units to light the work top are in a channel with diffuser. They were mounted right at the front of the units ,behind the front trim strip of the cupboards. Unfortunately this leaves an unlit shadow along the front edge of the worktop, they should have been set back a few inches . Didn’t want them at the back of the underside of the cupboards as we thought they might be visible from the far end of the large kitchen / living room. Drivers on top of cupboards , wires down behind units.

300mm pipe spacing does seem big, on tile flooring you'll notice the heat spacing unless you have really thick screed. Id opt for smaller and dial back the temp.

Yeah we had similar positivity with quooker several months ago, light weep from one of the joints, and despite being out of warranty, and without quibble, sent out nigh on everything for me to diagnose and replace myself. Wasn't a big job at all, but was a relief when I thought it could become expensive. Very happy with them.

Another Quooker service win from us. The filtered/sparkling water had slowed to a trickle, everything else was fine. The filtered was changed about 5 months ago so that surely couldn’t be the issue. Service booked (£125 😬) but only payable after the visit. Engineer arrived, diagnosed a knackered filter, replaced it, zero charge. So, whilst we have had several issues with our Quooker/Cube combination, not all posted here, we have always had a great service and quibble free fix where required. Throughly recommend if you want to spend the excess dosh on one of these appliances.

It was a dark wood unit and clear glass on top. It was just a smear of silicone round all the wood/glass joins. Most of the water stayed in the bowl, only the odd splash outside, it was never an issue.

FWIW, French regulations specify a maximum of 250mm between pipes - more here:

When I studied construction - when there were very few building physics geeks - the library had a whole bookcase documenting experimental buildings technologies that people had tried in an attempt to live off grid or cut their energy bills (carbon emissions weren't a thing). Trombe walls, solar hot water (usually using salvaged radiators), solar chimneys, superinsulation, earth sheltering, water powered generators and plenty more. Most of the people only had a rough clue about what they were doing and how well it would work, not much idea about what to prioritise, nor whether any of it made economic sense. And intuition was the only way of knowing whether or not a brilliant idea from Arizona, Tokyo or Stockholm might have any relevance in Abergavenny, Brighton or Clydebank. The revolution that PHPP brought to this jungle shouldn't be underestimated. It's difficult, for example, to be a member of this forum without knowing about the key ideas it helped popularise - such as airtightness, MVHR, superinsulation and triple glazing - even if there is a case for prioritising ASHP, PV & battery storage (at least in Ireland).