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Yes. Every little helps.

@Iceverge This is the space I'm in atm, it will remove an inch of useable space from each wall, which on the end walls would bring it down to 888mm wide. My main specific challenge from a sequencing perspective is the following: Timber frame is a Larsen-truss wall, from the outside: Breather membrane 12mm medite vent board 350mm cellulose insulation 12mm Pro passive board (assuming I keep the service void) 25mm batten 18mm hardwood ply (fermacel/similar?) @crispy_wafer @JohnMo @G and J @MikeSharp01 @Russell griffiths @saveasteading So, I need to drill/core holes for the MVHR supply & extract ducts (~210mm dia hole). I've been pondering the challenge of drilling all the layers - I don't trust doing this by measuring, so I'd want the ply in place first, then I figure I would: Drill the ply and pro passive board Remove the ply so I have a (little closer access to reach through to drill to the outer medite-vent board. Once the duct is installed, I can then seal around the pro passive board, then re-fit the ply over the top and then think about painting / finishing. QUESTION: How do I drill through the propulsive board and then bridge the 350mm gap to the outer board? (for info, it is highly likely the insulation will have been installed already, though I'm going to see if I can delay this)

@Russell griffiths This has given me pause for thought - although I would like it a nice painted, clean room, the practicalities of slowing everything down for this room (when I actually like the natural finish of the hardwood ply) is something I'm weighing up. I also already realise I've built the garage before the house and if I tell my wife I'm going to board and paint the plant room, before we've guaranteed the kitchen and other family bits of the house, I may not survive the build! 🤣 Do you have any photos of your plant room for inspiration please?

I think that is what I was not getting, I can now see they have a tear off slip that leaves a nice line and finish. I didnt understand that tear off slip was temporary! Cheers

Hi Iceverge. Thanks for your reply. We will have 150ml kingspan thermo floor tf70 and a 150ml polished concrete slab as finished floor +membranes etc the walls will be, 20ml treated cladding stained black, laid horizontally. - 25 x 38mm treated softwood timber battens. - Dupoint Tyvek Housewrap, or similar approved. - 9mm Sheathing ply. - 140mm thick timber frame with 120mm Kingspan K112 insulation board + 48ml tharmaline super insulated plasterboard Roof: red/orange mix clay pantiles, membrane, 50ml air gap, 100ml kingspan, 65ml insulated plasterboard. Can I ask why blown cellulose. I don't know much about it. Thanks

Demand is 24/7 from the HP which is the biggest user. EV gets charged in the 8.5p off peak period every few days. The rest is consumption that can't really be shifted in any meaningful way.....asking the missus to cook overnight isn't an option. The majority of heating emitters are radiators so I don't have the thermal capacity to boost heat into a big slab using a Cosy like tariff. Ramping the HP up and down to track a Cosy like tariff would likely give us swings in temperature which I'd like to avoid.....we've just had 3 months of a steady 21 degrees with the HP running WC 24/7

All I know is from my own perspective, I almost never pay more than low rate Cosy even when its -5 outside. That's with a 13kWh battery and cosy tariff. (So 15p per kWh).

5 years is a bit on the short side but I have had multiple ones fail, it's one of the most common things to fail in the heating systems I manage. Prob have one or two a year out of 35 or so.

The 20kwh/day is battery capacity charged at 8.5p off peak and discharged to offset 32p peak use.....daily usage can be way more than that. ASHP has gobbled an average of 40kwh/day on its own over the last week in freezing temps. We've already got PV but it doesn't do much in the winter

Thank you downsouth. Excellent suggestion. But I am a really light sleeper and my husband gets up way before me in the morning and is not quiet when he gets up 🙄😂. So I'm ok with the ensuite being a little further away. I'm the one that gets up in the night for the toilet so my husband isn't bothered it's a little further away. And yes it makes it easier for plumbing 😁

Apologies. Completely forgot I had posted this one. I was quite happy to use a tent outside but the rest of the fam gave that hard no. I've cleared out my old kitchen now so have a space in the corner that I can break out hot and cold. It will be a bit of a challenge getting the water out with the waste quite high up and the ceiling really low. Think I'll have a go at building a frame and get some hygene board silconed together with a camping shower base. Maybe a pump of some kind to push the water out.

@Benpointer those windows look great (love the colour too).

Was this recently? When you say you spent £7500, was that on materials, or the plastering?

Great to know. @NestorI think I've been reminded that we will need more light and so need to paint our ceiling. That said, I really do like what you've done. What fixings did you use (I can't see any trace of a pattern of fixing points - lovely job!

@Russell griffithsI hadn't thought about that detail for window reveals (the walls are really well insulated, but window reveals will naturally be an area of less insulation - really like this prompt. I must start a log somewhere of things I shouldn't forget...

Firstly, yes we cut out the sole plates in all the doorways. Regarding the windows, I have trawled through our photos here's the best I can do. First, Norrsken supplied and fitted the windows and they wrapped the breather membrane round into the reveals then filled fully the gap with sealant. Here's a picture from the inside before they applied the sealant. You can see the sealant here (from the outside). I think this sealant is the key. Ventilated cavity on the outside, sills clipped in: Cement board: Beading Render + another bead of silicone

🤣 Well our dressing is huge because: We have a lot of clothes and shoes We hate folding clothes in drawers We have very little storage space and no loft in the house There will be no other storage in bedroom. Have I justified it🫣🤣 We've already decided we are putting a door into the dressing room from the hall and might be making the ensuite a little wider but shorter to make the sitting cupboard a bigger to accommodate a water tank and ufh manifold

@Benpointer thanks - I plan on laying the pipes myself and having someone lay the screed. We're on full cost-saving mode now, having had most of the build so far involve work that I simply couldn't do myself (not if I want to actually get to live in it during my lifetime).

Thank you Tony L. I'll look forward to sharing with you all. Cut back on windows/ sizes 😥 ok we'll have a look. The garage will be a workshop🤫😂 planners wouldn't let it be a workshop cause of possible noise so we have to have it as a garage 🙄 my husband's one wish is a workshop.

Just put a 4th RCBO in the aux CU and run it to a double socket so you can plug stuff in downstream. Easier and cheaper to get this done in one hit if you’re getting a sparky out.

I thought the Shelly’s could be bought with switching capacity for direct connection to the immersion.

The blue foam surround is perimeter expansion strip. The screed layers insist on it. I assume the screed slab expands a bit when the UFH is on and this foam allows some 'give'. https://www.theunderfloorheatingstore.com/products/prowarm-premium-8mm-underfloor-heating-edge-insulation-50m Our UFH pipes are buried in the screed - in as much as the screed was poured over the pipes. If you are having someone lay the UFH pipes and the screed, I expect they will fit the perimeter expansion foam but you might want to double-check.

That looks neat. The cill and frame were fitted together but manufacture details show it as 2 parts. (See attached technical drawings) There’s no upstand though… that’s looks neat but not something on mine.

Is the cill part of the actual window frame? My cills were separate to the window with 10mm upstands at the back and sides. Slotted into a grove within the bottom of the window frame. The cedar cladding reveal then butted up next to the upstand at the sides with a small gap to allow water to escape. Photo enclosed, it's bucketing down at the moment.

I might be persuaded to use something other than block cavity walls, but I’m under pressure to get my notes on how to fix the draft drawings back to the arch tec’ – under pressure from both the arch tec’ (I can put him in his place if I need to) & from my partner, who’s paying for half of all this & has become very frustrated that we’re not already much, much further forward with this project; I feel that if I take a step backwards & demand more extra time from her, for a complete structural redesign, this may lead to severe consequences. I’m also keen to get these drawings finalised soon, so we can get a BoQ/build cost, & following this, if my partner isn’t prepared to commit to spend half of whatever it might take to build this design, we’ll need a re-think. Building costs are very much higher than when this project was conceived & house values are not that much higher. I chose cavity walls because, I was told (a long time ago now) this would be the easiest & cheapest way to build. This project has been going for many years. It took forever to get PP. I designed the house before I discovered BH. The PP design has 100mm cavity walls & pre-dates the building regs change to 150mm. Obviously, my latest design has a 150mm cavity. I’ve attached the approved drawings. Since these were approved, I have persuaded my partner she really does not want a wood burner, & I’ve deleted the chimney & some of the windows. To save money & build complexity, the arch tec’ deleted the 550mm (F to C) loft space in the dormers & reduced the height of the dormers. I’ve moved some of the walls around inside, to give more space to some rooms & take it away from others; for example, there’s now more space for MVHR & other plant room gubbins (all on the left of the back door as you walk in) & less space in the adjacent room (snug). I’ve attached the approved plans. These are really poorly drawn (by me), because I had somebody helping me with construction notes, etc, back when I didn’t understand this so well; he was supposed to re-draw my rough design, but he said my drawings were good enough to use for a planning application, & we just needed to add a scale bar & a few notes. Also, I'll just mention, the construction drawings show a chunky (215mm blocks laid flat) wall next to the stairs, so I can have a floating staircase for the top flight. That's if there's any money left when we get to that stage. All the block inner walls are spec'd to go onto Marmox Thermoblocks. TonyL_NMA-ELEVATIONS.pdf TonyL_NMA-FLOOR_PLANS.pdf TonyL_ROOF_PLAN__SECTION.pdf