All Activity

We have had timber frame fire spread engineering a while ago. Stuart Milne - no longer trading - did the frame and Fire-Q did the fire stuff. It cost about £1000 10 years ago, for a 4 storey terraced housing project about 1200m2. The fire spread risk is mainly during construction. Once it is plasterboarded and finished externally it is far safer. You can mitigate open plan layouts with sprinklers.6293 Fire-Q FSRA Falcon Wharf Rev 02 FINAL 20062016.pdf

👏👏 proper self-builder.

Yes I have said there is something very wrong with the system. We all know you can buy all the parts for £3500 and from experience I recon 2 days plumber and electrician to install in a new build. So say £50 per hour and 32 hours labour that's £1600. So that's total cost of £5100. There is some design and paperwork time so lets say another £1000 for that. So imho it should be possible for the £7500 grant to cover supply AND install in most situations. I have yet to hear of anyone getting a free to them install under the BUS scheme, and you hear of some very high charges in some cases. And nobody running any of these schemes has ever come along to justify WHY their installs cost so much.

Thanks everyone, job done with a 2mm gap. I opened up the strike plate to give me a bit of wiggle room when it comes to adjusting it after painting. Once the glue has gone off I can get the filler over the nails sanded and the edges I assume caulked, need to look into that one. Cheers folks.

You seem to get penalised from what people say installing a heat pump, so who knows?

Do you get penalised on SAP for not fitting ashp cylinder?

Everyone is anonymous on here unless they use their full legal name as their username, so makes no odds tbh.

I bet I'm not the only one that thought of Windows XP 😉🤣

I think I'm probably at the stage now where drawing it up a bit more precisely would help as the few mm of discrepancy will add up when repeated enough. Many thanks for all your help with this so far.

Yeah I thought about one of those, but you still need 900mm of space for the door to open. Maybe a pocket door would solve it. The view to the south is stunning. To the north is not that great - mostly a stone wall. I was thinking that the lean-to would be out of the insulated envelope but still fairly well insulated. I've drawn it with 200mm thick walls instead of 350mm. I think a single is ok for bed 3. I know plenty of singletons. The view to the south:

If that's the case something is very wrong with the system. My install cost just over £3500 in parts, so was eligible for £4k cash back, if I went through the grant. Don't think so.

https://www.studybed.co.uk/ Not a recommendation. I'm pretty sure I've seen better implementations but the concept probably works. One thing about the lean to is what view you get out the side. I got the impression that view was better than the one where it currently is. Another possible benefit is if you or someone you live with ever move to a work from home/invite clients to your home office type situation then the separation of this space from the main house could be good. Swings and roundabouts though all down to how you will use the space. Well if you moved the study then moving those stores into the pantry would create a bigger space for the study. Potentially making it a convertable double rather than a single. If the lean-to is not built to the same spec as the main house then obviously it's less desirable but I'm assuming it's all considered one heated/insulated space.

Thanks, some food for thought there. I do come home very muddy at times so the toilet in the lean-to was for that and also for when working outside, with the additional option for guests or if someone is watching TV after others have gone to bed too. If possible I'd like a shower in there so I can hose myself off and get out of my muddy kit before I get into the main space, but I haven't done the maths to see if it will fit yet. The plantroom could probably be smaller to help with that. I guess I was thinking of the way my son keeps completely different hours to me (and often wakes me up) when I put the bathroom further away. But that'd probably happen anyway with doors opening and closing etc. I will swap the bathroom and study back around as you are right, it does work better that way. I don't think I want the study in the lean-to. In my head it has a bunk bed above the desk somehow and I would want all that in the main building. I don't think I need a dedicated pantry - the kitchen is pretty big and there's the freezer in the mudroom and the possibility of shelves for bulk tins or dry goods etc in there too. This would be my ideal Bedroom 3/Study, but I can't figure out how to get it to fit. I think I would need around 2200mm of width (maybe more) to get it all in.

Forgot to answer the question re insulation. I don't want blown insulation as I think it will slump and not fill the edges properly. I am hoping to use hemp insulation as the factory is very close to the plot and I like the idea of limited transport miles. It's a really nice product but will probably increase the wall thickness and overall cost. Gus and I are investigating the possibility of building with a space frame atm, but it's early days.

I had assumed the toilet in the lobby was going to be the main bathroom for 'day' use. Otherwise I'm not sure I see the point of it (other than an relatively small space to change out of muddy clothes) I'd guess you can address sound insulation if that's a concern. Wouldn't let that guide the placement of the room. Other nice thing about swapping them is if the bathroom door is opposite bed 2, you create a nice short path for that occupant for their primary bathroom. If you no longer need the plant room due to using the loft space, you could consider moving the study/bed 3 to the lobby area. Use the expanded space for a bigger kitchen and maybe pantry/laundry space. You'd have to make the cloak space smaller but maybe thats worth it.

If you don't mind a flat ceiling in the corridor/study/bathroom area then you could easily create an insulated loft space there and potentially use it as a proper plant room (take back the space allocated at the end of the building). You can get horizontal HW tanks for difficult spaces but I would avoid those if possible as they don't stratify the water as well. Downside is getting things in and out of there but if you plan for that then it's a solvable problem (nice big access hatch with a strong point above to mount a hoist is belt and braces) Using that loft space as plant room would also centralise the MHVR pipework which will make things easier and cheaper.

Here's my revised drawing. Still some tweaking and 'lining up' to do but it's just a sketch at this stage.

I think there's some misunderstanding going on here particularly about the BUS Grant. The grant is either £7500 for on gas grid or £9000 for off gas grid, it is not based on spend. That's the figure you claim and get awarded if you're eligible. If your costs are below that, then you get a return. In essence, the return pays for your DIY time, but it isn't in any way close to the commercial value of the time you'll spend on your own DIY install. The other is about direct DHW with immersion v heat pump. The heat pump is always going to beat the immersion as even with just a COP of 2, you're onto a winner, and if you're putting in more that 3kW (or 6kW if you've got dual immersions) then your reheat time is going to be reduced. Some factors limiting this are that if you have a badly commissioned system DHW temp may be set so high the heat pump doesn't like it and you can see a drop of COP sometimes to below 1 on older R32 units. Make sure you choose a good umbrella because some are dreadful and will just do a basic desktop heat loss an no system design and then they'll force you to comply with their requirements, whether you like it or not. Make sure they actually understand MVHR and include the specifications in the heat loss as some heat loss tools out there don't deal with whole house MVHR on the ventilation and leakage side of things. Similarly with high airtightness, and insulation levels, often leading to over-sizing of heat pump.

On my drawing south is to the top of the page - north is at the bottom where the Sketchup logo is. I have put it on my revised drawing which I will post below. Did you get that round the wrong way or have I misunderstood you? I have made Bed 1 a bit wider and the kit/dining a bit smaller. I changed the island to a return/spur thingy so that you can see right down the corridor when you are sitting there and it doesn't foul the door so much. I think it also gives a purpose to the support wall in the middle of the kit/dining/living space. I didn't make the utility bigger as that would mean the roof pitch for the lean-to would be a bit unworkable I think. Needs to be 1.8m at the lowest wall point inside so that doesn't mean much projection for the building when it starts at 2.4m. Thanks for the positive comments. I was expecting to get ripped to shreds, so it's been a pleasant surprise. I had it that way to start with but changed my mind later on. I want the bathroom nearer to the living space for guests to use and also it moves it further away from Bed1 to keep noise transfer down. I totally get what you are saying re HW pipe runs and it has bothered me too but I was wondering if I could put the HW tank in the ceiling above one of the smaller rooms ie bathroom if I put a flat ceiling in there. Crazy unworkable idea or perfectly normal? Thanks for going to the trouble to redraw this Mike. I'ts perhaps a bit confusing but north is at the bottom in my drawings so that would mean the kitchen was in the best south facing bit of the house and the dining room in the cold dark north. Having the dining table near the fabulous view is really important I think.

Thanks! So glad to hear things worked out for you.

No I am not a plumber but I can plumb! I had the PHPP data which I sent them for heat loss along with a set of drawings and sections along with the air tightness certificate and they used that data to create the MCS form entries. I did the whole install and they came down, did a bunch of checks and signed it all off. Although I am emotionally with @JohnMo on not bothering with MCS I do need to get BC sign off and the part G cert so this was an easy way to get all that. We did make a small return on the grant but not after my time!

There could be some confusion about which you meant. 3 to 4mm is common between door and lining (and 4mm is the maximum allowed for a fire door), but 2mm is standard between the door and the stop.

The bottom rubber strip on a door can feel flexible, but when compressing over a wide area, comes to a stop leaving gaps. A proper fix is to match the concrete to the threshold. This is tricky but doable. Be prepared to close the door on wet stuff then adjust it, and immediately clean the rubber and repeat. You can use latex screed or epoxy. OR a bit of a bodge but easy and effective. Apply a self adhesive soft foam strip to the bottom. It will compress totally to the few mm ups and downs you have. There will be gaps at the frame. Silicon them and extend just under the foam.

Update: the door is insulated and I've added new EPDM seals to the sides and bottom from Seals Direct, who were very helpful. Foil tape is still to do. The bottom of the door had an aged weatherstrip which no longer touched the concrete, and there's 15-20mm from the bottom of the door to the somewhat pitted concrete. The EPDM 'D' strip I bought wasn't thick enough, is the goal to get one that compresses into the concrete or is there something (cement? Something from a tube?) that I can use to fill the texture in the concrete so there's a properly smooth surface to seal against? Top of the door and the frame at the top need a bit of work too - junk in the garage hides the bottom of the door shining across the whole width of the photo, but shine it does: I haven't got data going back before the day I added the insulation, but I'm pleased with how the temperature and humidity are now performing. This is the past week and it's noticeable going into the garage that we're not getting the heat by afternoon or the cold early morning. Temperature on the top chart, relative humidity below. And because I find it useful to track, absolute humidity too

We had something similar, and then we were into 2020 and all the delays that introduced !! We smile now, and there have been other hurdles thrown in our way. Things will proceed and all will be good. Stay patient, stay positive.