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Thinking how you insulate the garage walls. You will need self-closers on the fire-doors.

Now, there is an old saying about the constipated mathematician's cure, he worked it out with pencil and paper.

A few years back I got monitored for sleep apnea. I frequently stop breathing during the night for up to 2 and a half minutes, then wake up briefly, gasping for breath. As I have had it most of my life, it was just normal (like the undiagnosed stomach ulcer I had for 40 years). This made me tired during the day, sometimes, in recent years. I tried the CPAP gimp mask, never slept a wink, so abandoned that, rapidly. Got myself a cheap sleep monitor, and tried a few things out i.e. supper times, bed times, exercise, reading, radio etc. Found that consistent bed times the most effective and sleep pretty well most nights. Now I am naturally an early riser, always have been, so for me, getting up at 3 or 4 AM is not an issue. I 'plod' in the morning, nothing strenuous before I start work. Very occasionally I have reoccurring nightmares. The usual one is a customer never getting served, this seems a common one in hospitality. The other main one is being a passenger on a bus that is sliding backwards, down a leafy lane (the lane is near Henley, went there recently and it has not changed in 50 years). The odd thing about the bus sliding to our demise is that I calmly open a tin of biscuits and hand them out to the other, faceless, passengers, as a final meal. Not going to say about the turkey dream, that is just (expletive deleted)ing weird. So basically, get a cheap step monitor that calculated sleep hours as well, see how far from normal you are, that takes a lot of anxiety out of it as there are hard numbers, not just feelings about it. An afternoon nap can help as well, culturally that was the norm for me growing up, but the (expletive deleted)ing British think it is idle, I miss them, but do them when off work (Archers and Afternoon Play time). I am also lucky that at my age, I don't have to get up to wee (can just do it in bed as I live alone). That must be a bummer, maybe something to look forward to in retirement. YouTube has The Sleepy Scientist channel. I like listening to that. The time between 2AM and 4AM is called the Witching Hour. It is normal for us to be awake, and active, then. Get up if needs be, have a look outside the cave, throw a log in the fire, and ponder life, it is what the Witching Hour is for.

Well you're not going to fill that deep in topsoil. Either hardcore or some inert fill. Are you parking on it or is it just planting/garden? If you had a trustworthy grab driver who you knew they could lose some loads on your job. Wouldn't want any old rubbish though.

There's a note in the top right corner of drawing 3/3 that says in the circulation space on all levels (having read up I'm of the understanding this is the hall/landing etc). In addition, I will be placing heat detectors in the kitchen, utility room and garage as well for what it costs. Fire doors to each habitable room with intumescent strip which I'll be placing in the casings and I'll be putting the fire rated self closing hinges on them. The garage door is a bit different and specified with mechanical self closer, intumescent strips and smoke seals.

These are all of the drawings and were the drawings used to obtain Building Control plan approval. The garage isn't heated and is classed as a cold space from my understanding? What are you thinking here?

I balanced it all last year and got both extract and supply at the same overall values, so should be fine on that front, and the fan speed is set to the same, 35% normal and 50% boost

House is built and occupied. Soil from the foundations is required elsewhere.

Each side is about 8 metres by 8 metres. Then the depth/height is 900mm tapering to zero, hence me saying a wedge shape.

Had a look at your drawings - to be honest not great. Drawings look OK but the notes are - IMO - poor especially for a self- builder. I don’t see a heat detector/alarm in either in the Kitchen or Utility Room. Nor do I see smoke detectors in any of the Bedrooms - are they needed in England? I’m outside your jurisdiction and we need them here where I am. I presume your fire doors will have self-closers?

local builders will probably be happy to fill your holes with rubble for free...Help with Suds as well.

Extremely badly balanced? more extract than incoming so very efficient heat exchange to a smaller volume?

No heaters in situ and like I said I’ve swapped the thermometers around and the error always stays the same, yes they are defo labelled correctly, have checked a million times myself months. They are only cheap thermometers agreed, so how about the readings from the unit itself, do they seem right? I’ve just nothing to compare against and this is the only MVHR I’ve ever owned.

Q: Are these all the drawings? Have you got BC plan approval? Is your garage heated?

Exactly. Hence this thread. And I can see the... "Wot's my fookin' sleeplessness got to do with Buildhub? " argument. That's the benefit of screen names. Exactly that. You can be just anonymous enough to risk asking

Looking on the positive side then. You presumably got the drawings done for a few hundred. ditto the SE who did some calculations but not site detailing. Then the builder or trades are not project managing so have not added costs for this or for any risks. So you should have saved a lot of money towards whatever comes up. It's a commercial decision that you have taken, Some things will be required that you had not foreseen, or were even aware of. The building inspector is not your designer so will be seen as the nasty ogre who says no. You must research thoroughly and its a good plan to chat it through with the builder but do lots of reading up as well. Here on BH we can advise on the principles but not take any responsibility, nor spend much time considering all aspects.... and we may be wrong. eg I'm not opening the drawings and spending time studying them ... that's what you pay designers for. So get reading and sketching and BH may help with simpler questions.

This is a PM position, not an architect, unless they have stated in their contract that they will PM the trades for you. Usually this is so eye-wateringly expensive, very few ever go this route. Architects are also very good at drawing houses, but are often not so dapper at building them.

Haven't looked at them yet sorry. Been an a few sporadic meetings already today, plus a few extra 'life associated bits' fell out of the sky; oldest son's Golf just decided to puke every drop of engine oil out in the university car park, so now I'm off to tow that to his mates unit and throw it on the ramp..........then he will say how many £££££ to fix the fecking thing. Usual Sunday.......should have stayed asleep ffs. Anyhoo... So, if you've paid up, and they've done the GA's and b regs drawings etc, then they're pretty much at the end of their works as far as you (and they) are concerned? The issue is now that the stuff they've produced isn't 'very good' or is it completely lacking in useable information for the builders or trades or yourself to take reference from?

I have assumed I have the responsibility. The issue is, and maybe this is the biggest lesson of all. I've tried to split the works rather than just give the builder the primary contract and let them build from there. Someone who is used the building new build houses to the new standards. And this is where I come unstuck, the scope is to do the building work as per the drawings and recognised construction details.

Sorry I've been down tidying the site. Those are the drawings that were submitted for building regs approval and yes they were done by the current architect. I just need someone to advise where it's "shoddy", what needs resolved now and then specific details going forward for interpretation and how it is done in practice. Keeping an eye on the tradespeople or at least issuing them clear instructions on the details would also be good.

Internal pre/post heater in the unit?

No worries, that's what we're here for I'm all for that. It's been my life experience in all contexts where I've worked, from global companies to individual athletes that the focus gravitates towards technical and tangible issues. Even when they open up to acknowledge the softer side of things they struggle and try to box them into tangibles like soft skills or psychological techniques. Psychology generally has its problems in that it for much of the time it tries to turn qualitative data in quantitative data, which of course is rubbish and undermines the findings and the field. It's a very difficult area to tackle but has to start within openly sharing experiences so everyone knows they're not alone in theirs.

Dodgy temperature reading to me, or you have the wrong identity assigned to each gauge? So rubbish in, rubbish out. You seem to making an issue from reading from a £1 gauge.

Hi This has been bugging me for a while, but I’m still not sure if anything is wrong as I’ve nothing really to compare it to, but one thing stands out as odd, and defying physics. So MVHR system has been in around 4 years now, set the valves up last year. Unit is a Vortice HR200BP serving a small 79m2 bungalow, with all of the radial ducting in the loft under heaps of insulation. The inlet and exhaust ducts are preformed polystyrene type with a small amount of flexible ducting where needed, so as to create as little pressure drop as possible, and there is also a Blauberg Cleanbox 125 on the inlet, with G4, H16 and Carbon filtration in there. Couple of years back i bought some cheap temperature sensors off amazon just out of curiousity, as although the unit has its own temperature readings, they don’t include the temperature going back into the property, only extract, inlet and exhaust. Now I’m sure for a long time everything seemed feasible temperature wise, the extract was around the temperature of the bungalow, and the supply was slightly lower as you’d expect, some small losses. Now it’s constantly higher than the extract, which is obviously not possible, there is no magic heater or anything in the ducting. You’re probably thinking, just cheap sensors that aren’t reading right, i thought so too, so i swapped the supply and extract ones round and the ‘bad’ reading followed (and yes I relocated them on the wall correctly too! lol). Yesterday I had the unit all apart and checked everything, cleaned the G3 filter which is has on its extract side, and washed the heat exchanger out (though to be honest, aside from dust on the filter, it all looks like brand new in there), and it this point i moved the sensor which I had on the intake, to the exhaust just to see what temperature it showed compared with the units own sensors, and I was surprised to see it showing 17C, with an outside temp of 9C currently. Now the units own sensors shows 14C as the exhaust temp, and the sensors are literally next to each other, but could just be the poor quality sensors again? My main concern is the fact the supply seems to be warmer than the extract?! The air coming out of the ceiling valves using an IR thermometer shows between 18.8 and 19.5C depending on how far the pipe run is, which seems feasible. Does this all look OK compared with your units? Thanks in advance!

getting seriously off topic...