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Timber frame stick built with mineral wool insulation and 18mm OSB internal sheathing. External cladding of your choice. Strong, simple, lightweight and cost effective. Pitched roof would be my preference.

Agree with @Bonner, plus when you say the vents are staying, I presume you intend extending outward through the cladding and not covering over them.

What made you want to add inhibitor and biocide later, and which products did you use for this?

I'm sure there will be another chance ... the basement stuff is happening over the next 3 months 🤐. BTW anyone know a local place with a table saw / band saw / resaw service? I have 12 bits of approx 3m x 100x100mm oak that I need sawn into approx 50x30mm strips.

Agreed, @Mr Blobby. That's a good improvement on the computer putty coloured one above. I've always been surprised at how very ugly most of these units are. I suppose the designers have mostly spent years designing units for commercial buildings & ugly is cheap, & it doesn't matter. It hasn't occurred to the designers that their creations blight the appearance of so many homes & many people will pay more for a competitor's less ugly design. Same goes for MVHR units; Zehnder have some nice looking designs, but if I choose something else, I'll have to build a cupboard around it.

Hmmmm . Rather than reinvent the wheel tried codex and continue cli . Didn’t like them acting on the repo ! So we are back to “ Avalon forge “ as named by ChatGPT . Lots of guardrails , reviews etc - a “ cage “ as chat calls it . Still testing and taken 2 days to get this far with it . Codex by the way isn’t entirely local . Will use local llm , codex installs local but still goes off to OpenAI for “ things “ ….

Difficult to visualise without a drawing but you are better off DIY as it’s too small a job for many companies. SE not required nor BC approval.

Hidden in the depths of the internet is the (strangely secret) release of the 5 kW monoblock in a way nicer anthracite. 😀 And is also a couple of hundred quid cheaper 🤔 WH-MDC05J3E5-1

I'm thinking out how to conceal an ugly garage and get privacy from a neighbour's terrace. The plans are: 1. A raised bed of maybe 600mm with dwarf fruit trees, attractive in summer and not an issue in winter. Maybe some grasses. 2.A pergola and trellis with honeysuckle and clematis which are green all year. These will be about 3m high when mature. Stunning flowers for 8 weeks.

I'm not conversant with the Scottish Regs but I would have thought your installation of 15mm pipes falls under the exemption stated in item 1 i.e a pipe or a cable with a bore, or diameter of not more than 40mm There appears to be no restriction on the number and of such pipes unlike the larger 40mm and above pipes

No, no glycol, anti freeze valves for the freesing bit.

So this month is heat pump month, and I am seriously excited about it. The challenge will be, however, to convince our builder and plumber not to hand over total control of the ASHP install to a third party installer. Thanks to the useful guidance on this forum and the low heat demand in our house, I am keen to run WC mode without any buffer tank or additional pumps if possible. I suspect the third party installer would prefer a more expensive, less efficient design. I will soon find out. We have two UFH manifolds, GF and FF. It would be nice to treat the FF manifold as a seperate zone. The GF zone will always be open and should have enough volume to satisfy the flow requirement of the pump. The panasonic text book provides a direct (no buffer) 2-zone implementation but requires flow temp sensors on both zones and valves on each zone, all connected back to an additinal circuit board in the ASHP. I'm not convinced it needs to be that complicated and chat gpt concurs. I think there is a far simpler solution, to configure the system as a single zone, bog standard WC implementation, but then install a two port valve before the FF manifold connected directly to a thermostat on the first floor. This would provide a way of isolating the zone altogether. The heat pump would not need to know about this seperate zone. A thermostat with cooling function seems to be available that would cool down to cooling setpoint so, when the heatpump is set to cooling mode, then the FF thermostat would also be able to open the zone valve to the FF if the FF is overheating. The simplicity and low cost of this design appeals greatly. No additional flow temp sensors, one zone valve, no additional circuit board. What's not to like? Is this standard stuff, do others on this forum control zones like this, perhaps to switch fancoils in/out, with an indepentant thermostat/relay/valvethat is wholly independant of the ASHP? Or is is bonkers? (The more complicated, integrated panasonic implementation is in the attached pdf) Direct two zone third party controls 5kW 7kW 9kW.pdf

How wide is the plot? Just because your boundary fence height is limited doesn't mean you couldn't put something taller a bit away from your boundary. boundary fence, low planting, path, high planting/fence, sitting area, high planting, path, low planting, fence. Will fit in a 4m wide seating are if plot is 8m wide. Landscape designer will likely have lots of clever ideas for this that will be cheaper, easier to maintain and likely look better than a sunken area.

OK that's helpful. I would disagree re water from the roof. It should even be cleaner than straight off a roof or gutter. I think they are being cautious. But the issues remain that you would be creating a very big sump, collecting water from the surrounding ground, including neighbours'. You need structural design approval being close to the neighbours. The pump part of the question is the easy bit.

You'll want it to be insulated, and built quickly and simply. ICF would be my choice. We'll be doing the same as well soon.

For the header I would use 2 of your studs nailed together rotated on end as they will be much stronger in that direction than the floppy way

It would be interesting to have a definitive answer. For England & Wales, the rules are here and include: The approved methodologies for expressing the energy performance of buildings are: For new dwellings in England: the Government’s Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) for the Energy Rating of Dwellings, 10.2 edition with March 2025 amendments For existing dwellings in England and Wales: the Government’s Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) for the Energy Rating of Existing Dwellings, RdSAP10 edition which clearly says that RdSAP must be used if it's an 'exiting' dwelling. It goes on to say that The Reduced Standard Assessment Procedure is an adaptation of the Standard Assessment Procedure for use in the energy assessment of existing dwellings where, during a site survey of the building, the complete data set required by SAP is not easily accessible. So I guess it depends on the meaning of 'new' - which doesn't seem to be defined - and whether the complete dataset remains available. Maybe the existence of the complete dataset is enough to keep it 'new'? Maybe nobody is going to care either way.

Block will get you a lot of bids, is well understood, easier to insure and thinking of the fire risk, safer. If it's just to use as an office then the other options would come down to price and be more attractive.

Its an external wall, so I guess that makes it load bearing? So basically add in one or two cripple studs and double up the king/jack studs. Got it. The header I assume should be a thicker stud as well.

@Beelbeebub your points are all well made and I agree that criticising an energy policy as "woke" is unhelpful. It seems to me though that politicians are making energy policies based on culture rather than market forces driven by science and economics. I guess that's just democracy. I think we all agree that we are going to continue to need fossils as we make the energy transition, the question is where should the fossils come from. The current UK administration has decided that they are going to prevent them coming from the UKCS by restricting new licences. That's a cultural decision responding to expectations of parts of the electorate who haven't been presented with an alternative way of dealing with the climate change aspects. An alternative approach would be to manage the transition by reducing fossil consumption using carbon taxes, including a carbon border adjustment mechanism, rather than constraining supply by not issuing licences. We should grant licences with fixed prices for fossils (like renewables CfDs) which are required to be landed in the UK. That would avoid our exposure to geopolitical upheavals, albeit on an admittedly possibly small contribution. Regarding how much is there to be extracted, let the oil companies take the risk on that. Regarding how much of it has suitable quality (mainly sulphur content I think) to be refined in the UK, again let the oil companies take the risk. If the price and volume is right and with the certainty of the CfDs, they will modify their refineries to handle it (install hydrotreaters). This would allow market forces to help us through the transition in a way which possibly reduces the cost and even reduces climate impact by avoiding shipping fossils around the world. Apologies that I'm to some extent repeating something I said before, but now with a different emphasis 🙂.

Interesting responses to what I thought was a technical question and definitely not one where I expected my ethics to be questioned!!! I was asking a question on my calculations of water removal only but will fill in the other somewhat irrelevant facts for people This area of garden is located around 10M from the house so unlikely to be causing any issues with the foundations - I would expect more of a concern for my foundations would be the neighbouring house which is approximately a metre away. The main house roof does indeed go into a multi thousand litre rainwater harvesting tank that is also buried in the back garden which will be used for toilet flushing, washing machine and garden irrigation. I have been advised by the manufacturer of the rain water harvesting system that collecting water from the sedum roof on the garage and any flat area of patio should NOT be drained into the rain water harvesting tank due to the high probability of the water being contaminated with debris etc. The water from this area of garden would go into the storm drain (which is also where the overflow of the rain water harvesting tank goes) which will connect to the sites storm water drainage system that feeds into an attenuation pond at the bottom of the hill serving the other 200+ houses on the site and covers something like an acre. There will be a low wall around the sunken area which will prevent run off from our garden (nearest up hill garden boundary 10M away) and in the 3 years I have owned the plot we have never had any issues with run off or standing water flooding on the plot or neighbouring ones. I would be interested to understand where the additional volumes of water would come from? All of the rest of the ground around the plot will be laid to grass or made of permeable materials. My Building regulations company are not interested as they view it the same as if the water was collected on any flat surface, and the response from planning was that it falls under general landscapping and even if it didn't it would be classed as permitted development. The storm drain is not adopted due to the private SUDS pond and they view it the same as if it was a patio or driveway with gulley drains. The one thing the council have stipulated is that all boundary fences, planting etc be a maximum of 1.8M tall ( and they are already in place for houses which pre-date ours - the make up of the site means the fence is 1.8M on the other side but far less our side and also they own the fences) which is where all of this started as the other locations to put a table and seating area would mean zero privacy for us and our neighbours. I will leave it at that as I believe I am doing more to mitigate the impact of my house on the site than most would Regrads Paul

It is to be commended that you are trying to be considerate to your neighbours, but, this is the way the gardens were designed in the first place, and those around you must already know this is a possibility. Unless you have received some legal notification NOT to sit in your garden and NOT to overlook anyone, then avoid all this unnecessary cost and get on with enjoying YOUR outside space. 🙂

Any information on how people that self built a really good house and got a good EPC with a full SAP. How are they getting on if wanting to sell after >10 years and need to get a new EPC in order to sell. Are they forced to use the rdsap system and end up with lots of bad assumptions and get a poor EPC?

We will be embarking on a new garage build, and my mind is totally undecided on what wall build type to use. No doubt I'm going to be as confused after this post as I am already 🙂 I've added a poll to this post. It will have a 150mm raft foundation with a ring beam. This is to protect trees roots as best we can. Did I mention trees? Trees in close proximity on 3 sides so risk of falling branches and/or whole trees. To house classic car(s) and a four post ramp. Will be used as a garage was always intended to be used, not as a shed!

Just need a sanity check please: Fire stopping is required for service penetrations between separating floors (Scotland, Domestic Tech Handbook 2025, 2.2.9, p88). Exceptions are listed which seem to cover most of the requirements for single domestic dwellings (exerpt below). However with radial plumbing I'll end up with 21 plastic pipes of 15mm diameter from the manifolds heading up into the ceiling void before dispersing to outlets. Of course these pipes will basically be in 1 group in order to connect to the manifods. The forum is full of examples of mainfold based plumbing, so have I missed something in terms of the fire stopping, or the exemption? Fire stopping of the following services passing through a separating wall or separating floor need not be provided for: • a pipe or a cable with a bore, or diameter, of not more than 40 mm, or • not more than four 40 mm diameter pipes or cables that are at least 40 mm apart and at least 100 mm from any other pipe, or • more than four 40 mm diameter pipes or cables that are at least 100 mm apart, or • a pipe which has a bore of not more than 160 mm and is of iron, steel or copper, or of a material capable of withstanding 800 ºC without allowing flames or hot material to pass through the wall of the pipe, or • a branch pipe of a bore of not more than 110 mm connected to a vertical drainage or water service pipe, constructed from aluminium, aluminium alloy, or uPVC to BS 4514: 2001.