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Block and beam? No! Ground bearing slabs. A decision that has given me sleepless nights and resulted in some serious hard graft. We had 60 ton (that’s what we were told 🤔) of Type 1 MOT delivered and had to then proceed to get into the bays and levelled up, before compacting it. The brickie was an arse as he should have stopped building and said “get your hardcore in and laid”. His work was rather shit, so I knocked some of it down to enable me to get a dumper in distribute the piles to make levelling it quicker. Building control were fine with me using grano dust as the top layer. This compacts nicely and gives a much harder surface than sand. Below are a few pictures. Hoping to get everything finished by tomorrow. I’ll breath a sigh of relief that it’s done and dusted.

We're first timers in our sixties, renovating a 200 year old Gloucestershire property as our last home. It's very basic (no central heating, damp) with a stone centre, brick semi-added pre 1860 and s 20th C. extension at each end. Removing the plaster and some ceiling my wife has revealed questionable [cough] building techniques which explain some of the cracks and a patched up Inglenook which we plan to restore. Early days but we have a builder and architect for a garden room style extension. We have lots of ideas and plenty of time, but of course not enough money :-) If you've done anything like this by all means tell us we're barmy, it just say hi. Met a couple this morning and got chatting about this, and they recommended this forum highly. I'm learning so much useful stuff from others offline and online. For others I can recommend Mastodon (a non commercial social network - no ads or algorithm getting in the way). Posting questions there has been a great help.

You have basically taken a passive slab and killed all its benefits. You have no continuity of insulation. Take a look below, you can follow the insulation in the floor and up the walls. The slave takes the structural loads the block work sits outside the insulation. Your Marmox block works but is an expensive bodge.

And yes, that title is a nod to the wisdom of the Beverley Knight song. But it also applies to self building, methinks. [Health Warning: The following diatribe focuses on the 2% that’s not gone perfectly, and risks massively underplaying the 99% which has gone right. But maybe that focus is what makes selfbuild what it is, and why for normal people, it just doesn’t add up.] We are now in, living at no. 11. Well, not this exact moment in fact. Right now we are cooking in Flora the Explorer (campervan around which our garage was designed), parked on a cliff top on the Isle of Wight overlooking the English Channel. Being boiled alive (slight exaggeration) in a Fiat tin can is at least variety from being boiled alive (bigger exaggeration) in a new build. We moved in to a substantially but not completely finished house just in time to enjoy some heatwaves. How very fashionable. The decision to categorise the main bedroom fancoil as ‘to be done later’ seemed such a good idea when the choice was delaying moving out of the s@#*, I mean rental, and in my few rational moments I know that it was a good idea. If we had stayed the rental would have been much, much worse than no. 11 is. But if I’d had free choice I’d not have started our living in our new pad in a heatwave. Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda (henceforth SWC) put the fancoil in. It’s made a bit worse by our choice of sleeping in the west facing front (sort of) bedroom, which sits next to our biggest window, the one above the front door overlooking our stairs and hall. We passed part O with flying colours, so we now view the afternoon solar gain with incredulity at what a house would be like that didn’t pass part O. But every day is a school day, and the first thing we learn was that we could comfortably sleep in no. 11, even on a sofa bed, at temperatures which would have prevented rest at our last house. It’s hard not to attribute that to the life support (MVHR). The worst days at our last house were when the nights were completely still, and I’m guessing that meant higher humidity and CO2 levels. No more, not with life support. We are now in the habit of whacking the life support onto Boost n Bypass once the outside temp falls nicely below the inside temp. Even when we have the upstairs windows open it seems to help. To start with opening a window (in my mind) required kneeling to confess our sins and three Hail Marys, but I soon got over it. And whilst we still don’t have our fancoil(s) thats how we are managing the upstairs overheating. Downstairs is a different matter. Downstairs we have porcelain tiles throughout, gently cooled by Maxi the moody teenager heat pump. It has helped enormously and once we have a way of transferring some of the cool to upstairs life will be peachy, though it’ll likely be 6°C outside by then, given the current todo list. We’ve wrestled with Maxi to get it to a sensible working arrangement, and that work is ongoing. At the mo if we set the WC curve (no, thats not the shape of the toilet pan) so that the flow temp is set to 15°C Maxi bothers for about 20 to 30 minutes and then sulks for an hour or two. Following a call with the Energy Lab, the distributor of Maxi, it’s better than it had been as some of the settings weren’t sensible, but it must and will do better. Our tiles sit at 19°C to 20°C, which matches the return temp to Maxi after a few minutes of sulking. That makes for a noticeable improvement in downstairs temperature but it’s as low as we can get it without cranking up Maxi to full condensy by dropping the target flow temp loads. A work in progress which is currently delayed by The Energy Lab being about as responsive as I am when a glowing J asks when I hope to get the fancoil(s) in. SWC properly tested Maxi when first installed. Sigh. It has given us the ability to start the balancing process, which I think is a good thing. The downstairs bedroom and bathroom floors were colder than the rest of downstairs, enough to make it slightly uncomfortable in bare feet, so I’ve tweaked the flow controls on the manifold and that has helped. The downstairs bathroom is in the process of being renamed the paddling pool. We have gone for a sort of wet room shower and loo, etc. and it looks the business even if I do say so myself - it’s just that we didn’t realise how wet a wet room would be. That bloody great big rain head shower jobby feels great when showering but oh boy, the water distribution! I think we can get away without a sign indicating which is the deep end, but for some guests we might need to sand bag the door. Some friends of ours came to dins recently, they have a nice big downstairs shower wet room with a bloody great big rain head shower. No doubt that was part of the subliminal thinking route to choosing them ourselves. During the inevitable tour (we are in huge danger of continuing to be self build bores for years to come) we shared our concerns regarding the paddling pool. “Oh yes” they happily said “we never use ours, far too messy”. Humph. SWC asked them methinks. And you can guess how good a nicely cooled tiled floor is at drying out. But there’s a ‘learn’ even there. We’ve discovered that the floor dries out much better if the door is left closed. The mechanism seems to be that the undercut forces the whole room to be ventilated, whereas if the door is open, which is how I automatically left it when it needed to dry, the moving air goes through at a higher level and the floor stays wet. Who knew? (Everyone with life support, probably!) Anyways, all that misses out all the fun of getting from our last post to here. Maybe that would be a good thing, but if you don’t have a strong constitution, look away now…. Last time I happily reported that we had dug our trench to connect our poo pipes to the sewer, and we’d found the capped off sewer, and the levels all worked. Happy days. Till the next step. In theory all we had to do was uncap the sewer, put the last few meters of pipe and a manhole in, and then bury the whole shebang. In theory. In practice when one of the groundworkers popped the plug out of the sewer we had a bit of a foul fountain. Quite a bit in fact. He was so shocked he literally just stood in the hole with his mouth open (yes, literally), whilst I and his workmate screamed at him to get out. He did, but he was rather messy. I threw a block into the trench and pushed some soil in to limit the aromatic expansion. It subsided with about 8’ of swarfega consistency sewerage filling the trench. Lesson: it’s not happy days till the hole’s filled in. I knew our sewerage run was old and wasn’t on the Anglian Water sewerage map. I didn’t think that mattered. Wrong. Not on the map means not maintained. We are the second from the end of a run of perhaps 5 houses on an ancient spur running to the main road main sewer. There had been reports of the drains backing up in the past (danger sign no 2 I missed), and I knew from my water level that the whole run was very shallow and had little fall. Danger sign no. 3. In the year the sewer was capped off the debris that had sat in the pipe for decades had collected lots of gooey solids and was apparently only letting liquids through. If a few more months had gone by next door would have noticed it backing up, but we hit the jackpot timing wise and many linear meters of pipe’s worth of thick sludge finally saw daylight. It took a week to get the whole run blasted out and the stuff that came out was horrendous. We had excellent service from Anglian Water, they even dug out and took away the by then remaining solids from our trench, before spraying many litres of disinfectant. Then work could resume. It delayed some things by a week and made site access a nightmare as walking a plank over septic ancient sewerage is not for the faint hearted (or the sensible). I’ll remember that long after I’ve forgotten the excitement of seeing the bathrooms tiled, or the downstairs porcelain floor tiling grow daily, or the test lighting of the woodburner, or us exporting lecky for the first time. Yet in many ways things like those or the posh Lino going down upstairs or the Pax wardrobes sprinting into shape or the furniture going in and looking just right or many, many happy things are far more important than the wrinkles. Over a relatively short space of time the shell of a house got coloured in to start to resemble our home. Making one’s self stand back and notice current status, let alone daily progress, is a skill that will always ellude me. When there are others on site (old fogey repeating himself yet again warning!) my time disappears in a whirl of checking and answering questions and tea making and organising and tidying up and ordering for other days and and and…. and I get nothing done myself. Except that is getting something done but it doesn’t feel like it. Bits of kitchen and utility room arrived and got fitted, painting got done, internal doors finally arrived many weeks after they were due and got fitted, and in odd moments late each day and at weekends I got to do stuff myself, including some plumbing. Doesn’t feel like plumbing in many ways as there’s no flux or burnt fingers involved. It’s more like Lego. Cut the pipe to length with glorified scissors, select the correct bit, click, realise the mistake, swear whilst taking off the incorrect bit, click on the actually correct bit, turn on the water and wait for the drip that doesn’t appear. So simple it’s almost surreal. I’m used to electrics just working, perhaps because it’s my background, but with plumbing it’s almost like I need to find and fix a leak to feel comfortable. In my mind the time leading up to us moving in is a big mix of memories with few distinct bits, but between J and I we kept things just about under control enough to get ready to move in, meaning J kept an overview in the form of lists of the bits we needed done. Vital. One big milestone was commissioning the life support and the dreaded air test. I built a nice strong stand for the Zehnder unit as otherwise it would have been hung on the block outer skin of the downstairs bedroom wall and we were convinced the hum would keep guests awake. Good news if like me, one doesn’t like guests, but apparently not a good thing. So when I turned the system on I realised it was faulty as it wasn’t running. Only the air was moving but it was just so ridiculously quiet, so actually it was working. (SWC gone and stood next to a working Zehnder to realise I could have saved myself time and bolted it straight to the wall). It defaults to a lot higher flow speed than we needed, and even then it was nice and quiet. So after commissioning it’s wonderfully invisible, apart from the odd shaped vent thingies in the ceilings. Works brilliantly at clearing the steam from the one little shower room we had working to move in with too. Very happy. The air test was not quite such a happy thing, however. Over and over again I was told I’d done everything needed and we were bound to be fine. Rolly, our chippy, had never seen such an airtight build and he knew we’d be super airtight. If only. 1.65. Bugger. During the first test, after a false start where I’d left a 40mm waste pipe uncapped giving us a 5, it was identified that I had a sodding great big leak at or near the base of my internal soil stack. I just knew I’d have a problem with our flat roof and the junctions thereof so I put lots of time into that. That was all fine. I absolutely knew that the entry point of the 15 MVHR ducts into the house would be a problem so I put time into that too. All fine there too. I knew from what I read on here that my Heath Robinson DIY loft hatch would leak. Nope. I thought I’d taped to death the DPM round the soil stack. We all know what Thought did. The DPM forms the bottom of our airtight layer, being taped everywhere (or so I thought) to the VCL. I knew all along we should take time out to test the airtightness. I even borrowed a leaf blower to have a half baked go at it using our loft hatch to test airtightness. But I never took a day out to do it. There was always something else that needed to be focussed on at the time, the silly and arguably unnecessary air test can be done later. Only it never was. SWC cubed. The leak appears to be near the bottom of the soil stack but as it’s all but encased now in studwork and plastered plasterboard so where the actual breach is is impossible to tell. I went nuts with the Passive House Systems airtight and insulating foam but it made no difference at all. There’s little leaks in the external doors but nothing like the one near the soil stack. I’m guessing we are looking at a hole about the width of an index finger. Perhaps something a single piece of tape could have sorted. Who knows? But does it actually matter? Well, there’s a good question. I’ve not rerun Jeremy’s spreadsheet and in truth the horse has already bolted. And if that means Maxi is actually slightly undersized for -3°C outside then at least we do have the woodburner and we could always invest in a little fan heater. But as you can imagine, I am royally annoyed with myself. The house is shaping up to be a really nice home to live in. The garden is coming along a treat. We love living in that location. That’s the 99% I need to focus on. Maybe writing this interminable blog is part of that reconciliation, and I know it will happen, but I’m still really, really, really annoyed at myself. In case you aren’t familiar with the song I’ll share one particularly apposite line from it. "Shoulda woulda coulda" are the last words of a fool. Sigh.

Any decent carpenter / kitchen installer will take the hinges off, clamp the units together exactly aligned, and then screw through with 30mm countersunk wood-screws (not the thru-connectors) so the hinges hide the screws. Note: for 15mm carcasses use 25mm screws, and only use 30mm for 18mm.

Forgot to put an update on this!!! It FAILED spectacularly. Building control refused to sign it off on many counts which was the only sensible outcome. P.S. for those who thought it was acceptable and those that are watching and still build like this, don’t come to Shropshire , substandard workmanship isn’t acceptable here 😎. For those that were helpful and constructive I thank you 🤠

Hi everyone - I'm Tim Newbie selfbuilder here, in the early stages of planning our self-build project in South Wales (But currently living in Bristol). Looking to build a family home to passive house principles, and avoid any Grand-designs style crises during the process! Excited to be part of this forum, which is a great source of info! I look forward to picking your collective brain more as we make our design choices and progress with the project.

Thanks everyone. Probably overkill but it's done, onto the next thing. Happy Sunday to you all.

I like the idea of a two tier pricing system for essentials like lecky and water. I guess for me the concept that everyone deserves a fair basic allowance at a reasonable price is a very good one. The idea that the wealthy can disregard the scarcity of resources, thus pushing up unit costs for other users, is an uncomfortable one. So we charge wasteful/profligate users more for their usage above their basic ration and that pays for the required top up infrastructure rather than charging everyone for it. Goodness knows how such a pricing system would work but I’d vote for that.

Yes Spinny, that is all in place and nothing overhanging or over looking windows. Pro Dave, the owners are in their late 80’s and we think that at the moment they are just going to leave it!!! The issue then I suppose will pass to the next owners but it will be un unmortgageable so will potentially massively reduce its sale value…… might buy it myself should this be the case 😂

I’d go for a minimum of 250L for the UVC, possibly even 300L, so you can heat it far cooler (50-55°), so theres less latent losses snd more volume to store off peak energy or diverted PV etc. 200L is very small for an ASHP even if it’s just “the two of you”. You’ll need a second, smaller duct for the car charger for data / comms and to bring the CT clamps to the meter; if the meter is at the boundary then you need to work out where the CT clamps need to go and duct accordingly. Rigid BT56 duct is the only duct your’e allowed to use for telecom, which they usually supply you for free. Assuming the exported heating is for keeping you warm in the outbuilding, consider a large fan coil out there so it’ll cool and heat (remember that it’ll need a condensate drain); note: fan heaters give almost instant heat (and cool) vs a radiator.

Listen to @Nickfromwales. Believe me, you will save money. My Brink 400 was a little less than £2k on his advice. Which reminds me, and on the subject of thanks @NickfromwalesIf i forgot previously a huge thankyou for the tip.

Lift the 5a one as much as possible, then same for the socket to see if you can hide this. Plasterer was shite, decorator equally as guilty. Just unbelievable that this incredibly low standard of work could have escaped the 80’s and still be so prevalent today in 2026. I bet neither of those two tossers houses look like this. Utterly embarrassingly low standards from these people. The ‘fix’ is to remove the outlets, PVA the openings, apply EasiFill and allow to dry fully, then sand and paint, then, repeat if necessary, and paint. If you have a PM then send the bill to them.

I was recommended a screed company, I was told they are absolutely shit hot, I met the main man and he knew what he was talking about, I asked about screed curl at the edges and covering the screed to slow down evaporation. he said it wasn’t necessary. so I did some more reading and asked a few questions. they did the screed, an hour after they had gone I hosed it down with a very fine mist spray, I then covered it in polythene and also covered all the windows to stop the sunlight coming in. the result is I have the flattest most level screed I’ve ever seen. you need to satisfy yourself how it should be done, and any short comings in your opinion you need to make up. buy the polythene and install it yourself or do you due diligence and insist on a curing agent. if you think they are good why do they not want to cover it ?

Flanagaj, I think maybe you are trying to be a builder without being a builder. I write with sod all experience except my own troubled extension. We ended up having to ditch a bad builder and then decided (as we had a dry shell by then and good alternate builders were not available for 18months plus) to continue by bringing in trades to get to completion. It is not an easy process because unlike a proper builder... 1/ You do not have a little black book with several good contractors for each and every trade - people you know from experience are capable and you can work with. 2/ You do not have any real clout with trades because for them you are a one off customer - a few £k's or £10k's of business - builders will be known sources of regular business 3/ Some trades people may be wary of a novice builder, or sometimes take advantage. 4/ You lack deep knowledge and experience of your own - of trade specifics, trade tendencies, what to watch for, how to specify a job These things do make it difficult. Finding good trades can be a lengthy process where the only proof is in eating the pudding. These things affect timeline enormously, you can never call in a favour from someone, no one will ever call you looking for work, you are potentially the job that gets delayed in favour of others. For your slab specifics, do you have a concrete mix specification defined that is what they are going to meet. My SE sepcified the mix for us. And where you don't have a contract only a price/purchase order/invoice then I would suggest always emailing to ensure you have something in writing which defines your requirements. In case of dispute at least you then have something more than verbal conversations and a price. You can even then write down what the contractor has told you verbally about the job, answers to your queries, etc. But try and get someone you can talk to, I've always been able to talk to my SE or Architect or the QS that dealt with closing my original builder contract, to get bits of advice or a site visit.

Why can't everything just be moved under the sink? Don't think I've ever seen any plumbing, water or waste behind the actual machines. Yes you lose the cupboard space, but so be it. My machines have a recessed section at the bottom so pipes can travel past it without interfering with the space. For what it's worth I did that in 2 places on the opposite sides of the room in my gaff, no regrets.

To add, if you do just decide to DIY something and there is an underlying structural issue that then reappears later, you may be invalidating the NHBC insurance (or at least giving them a lot of ammunition for an argument) and exposing yourself to much higher costs down the line.

To break his arguments down by section 1. He makes the mistake that declining N.Sea production is a choice - it isn't the rate of decline is slightly modifiable but not to any significant degree. We are arguing over the green line or the red line. He also makes the mistake that our high gas and electricity prices are due to us deliberately running down our production. Aside from my point above, they are high due to the high price of gas and the international price of gas is not changed by the UK output. The price is set by the international markets and those are (nominally)supply and demand. Even at best, our output is too small to change the international price. It should be noted that the rise in electricity prices and gas prices was very closely correlated in 2022 because a much larger proportion of our electricity came from gas. In 2026 the rise was much less direct because less of our electricity comes from gas. He talks about the supply chains for renewables being dirty and having emissions. This is a variation of the landman rant (and the "EV's will never pay back the carbon used in making the battery" argument before that). Study after study shows wind turbines, solar panels and EVs are all net negative for carbon well within their lifetime. It also ignores the carbon and pollution from fossil fuel extraction as a comparison. 2. He talks about "what happens is the gas prices fall?" Well, they will eventually for a while,until the next crisis. Then they will fall again until the next crisis and so on. So far we have had 2 massive "once in a lifetime" shocks in the current decade -that we are only half way through... Does anyone want to bet Trump doesn't do something stupid I'm the next 2 and a bit years. What would happen to oil prices if the world's largest oil producer suffered massive political instability? Say a the kind caused when a leader who loses an election tries to cling to power using a paramilitary police force or even elements of the armed forces.... Who wants to say that is fantasy land? 3. He seems to get mixed up on the cost of capacity. With renewables capacity is a more statistical figure than gas plants etc. With ccgt plant the peak cavity is easy. Just an engineering question -"that plant, at full chat, will produce 2GW of electricity." With renewables there is a theoretical capacity - what if everything was perfect, but that's only a few % of the time. A better question would be "what is the 95% available capacity" ie the level it can produce 95% (or whatever arbitrary figure you want) of the time. So my 11kwp solar array has a 95% figure closer to 1kw (during daylight obviously). Essentially we will have to dump a load of capital into building these assets. Once e have built them they will provide cheap energy for decades. Or we could kee the capital and dole it out to buy oil and gas as we need it. That's our choice. Right enough for now....

It is worth pointing out that we started the transition to low carbon generation nearly 2 decades ago. Apart from some very small scale wind farms, hobby PV and a bit of hydro, we had virtually nothing. Since the we have added 55 GWp if wind and solar. Now the name plate capacity if RE cannot be compared directly with thermal generation, but it contributed close to 40% of our generation. It also contributed to our pumped storage as well. I have not looked at storage capacity in a while, but must be close to 1 GWh now. I cannot see any reason why we should not hit 90% low carbon generation by 2040, except if there is not the political will to do so. I think the political will is there, we tend to hear the naysayers more because they are the vocal minority, the majority says nothing. I am going to repeat what I said about cost. Wind and PV are the cheapest forms of, and it is coming in bold , NEW generation. It is not competing with the same contracts as legacy generation.

It depends! But here is a rough outline of how we go about designing steel fire protection. The following is in the context of the self builder, not multi storey, multiple occupancy structures. Ok, the process / theory is.. roughly this. The starting point is to understand how steel behaves when it gets hot. Someone ask me / others a while back.. why does my oven not start to melt / distort when I cook a pizza hot? The above is what we call a fire curve (SCI, Steel Construction Institute data ). There are different fire curves. They vary depending on fire loading (how much and what types of stuff can contribute to a fire, how "intense and rapid" the heat delivery) but the above is one we would refer to in a typical domestic self build. You can see that up to about 350 Celsius the steel maintains much of its strength, which is why your oven does not "melt" and fall to bits. After that the steel strength starts to plummet. When we fire protect steels as @saveasteading says This is correct. All we are doing it to stop the steel from getting hot enough, then soften too much, and thus not carry the loads on it for the time required by the building regulations for example. Now we can either select a geometry of steel member and make it very heavy such that there is so much mass of steel that it does not get heated quickly enough to soften to the point of failure. In lay terms. If we had a solid round bar of steel say 150mm in diameter it has a large cross section area compared with the exposed surface. This is what we call the heated perimeter / cross section area ratio (Hp/A), the Euro codes have slightly different way of presenting but they mean the same. They are presented using the ratio Area / Volume, A/V. But if we have the same cross section area of steel and weight in an I shape (a universal beam) it has a much larger surface area and thus will heat up much more quickly and thus lose strength more quickly. Now we ain't going to be using solid 150mm diameter steels. What we could look to do is is insulate the steel. This could be by way of fire proof plasterboard or intumescent paint. But also we could build the steel into a masonry wall and maybe have only one side exposed to the fire on the inside of say a garage. Or we could have the steel built into a floor that in itself insulates some of the exposed faces of the steel. Below is a screen shot of a table that shows how we need to consider the exposed sides. They key here is that the lower the section factor the slower the steel will heat up. The section factor changes depending on how many sides of the steel are exposed. But to go back to what @Great_scot_selfbuild asked., which was how heavy does a steel need to be so it does not need fire protection? The info below is taken from Corus literature 2003 as an easy generic example. The bottom line (Hp 61m^-1) is of interest to us here in a domestic self build. Using a design temperature of 550 deg you can see that the bottom blue line hangs in there, all other things being equal for 30 min. So let go back now and find a steel section with a section factor of lower than 61 m^-1 to try and get a handle on how big a column needs to be for example. A 203 x 203 x 86kg/m is a candidate if it has three sides protection (section factor 60), but that is a heavy steel. You also need to handle this safely on site. Ok let's see how a box section compares. Ok we can get down to 60 for three sides exposed protection.. not much difference. But if we reduce the sides exposed the numbers get a lot better. I've not shown them here. That main remaining key bit is what we call the load ratio mentioned above as 0.6 ratio. When we design a beam / columns or pretty much any structural member in your house we design for the normal expected loads. The self weight, permanent loads and the imposed ( live loads, people, book shelves etc) but in a fire we recognise that the floors, roof etc are probably not going to be fully loaded with people for example during a fire, the permanent / self weight load is still there. So we can make a reduction in the load if a fire occurs. Its based on probability and the loads that could be reasonably expected in the case of a fire. We call this an accidental load case and the safety factors get reduced for example. If we designed everything for the worst case buildings would be too expensive to build! The load ratio is the load (stress generated) during a fire compared with the ultimate capacity of the member. Often we design beams to be restrained by say a timber floor.. but if this has burnt away we can't count that. To conclude: The above I hope, gives you all a bit of insight into what we need to do / think about to design steels for fire. The take away is that sometimes it works using a heavy steel to avoid the expense of fire protection. The design can become much more complex if bolted / welded connections need to be taken into account. This kind of design consideration is a bit complex if you've not done it before, it's not common bedtime reading! It can be a tricky subject once you get into detail, something that many Architect's, BC officers are also not too familiar with. But it's a fundamental part of producing a safe design. My objective in writing is to try and help BH folk gain a bit more knowledge so you can ask and phrase any questions you have to your designers from a lay person perspective. You make a good point. Yes steels expand in a fire and will change shape and distort the surrounding structure, to the point it often has to be later demolished. The objective is that the building hangs in there so it does not fall on the fire brigade, set light or fall onto a neighbouring building not least.

Sorry I don't mean I am personally hoping the English and Welsh get these wind farms and pylons in the numbers we have been "given" in Scotland. What I am saying is while for so long England in particular has banned them, they have instead been built up here so the good folk of England who largely make the rules, have not seen the blot on the landscape that they are, and if the good folk of England don't see them, they obviously think they are good.

To an extent, outside of a very small number, none of us, no matter how well read are able to be experts on any particular topic, so we have to take our views from those who we see as experts. I have not read all of the source material, conducted my own experiments or submitted my theories to scientific challenge so any assertion I make is potentially a call to authority. The same is true for the other side of the argument. All any of us can do is weigh the situation in front of us, which seems to be following a common playbook. First - deny. Next, obfuscate - its not anthropogonic etc. Finally, fatalism - we cant do anything anyway. Some things are clear however: It is hot. Much hotter than when I was young, and hotter every year. There is a physical mechanism for this heat being caused by C02 emissions Modelling and predictions of the C02 effect are matching reality If it is C02 and if we don't do anything we are in for a very bad time If it isn't C02, and we reach net zero, we are in for a pretty good time still It does make me laugh (cry) when people blame renewables for high prices. The UK spent at least £75 billion on supporting energy prices just during 2022-23 due to gas prices. It is also the case that renewables knock out the most expensive conventional electricity generators, so the wholesale price of electricity is reduced by renewables, which gives the impression of a subsidy but the reality is the reverse - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oct/wind-power-delivers-ps104-billion-net-benefit-uk-consumers I do get frustrated with people who just raise problems like there will never be a solution. The nature of progress is you don't always have all the answers, if you never started a journey unless you knew how it could be done then nothing new would ever be invented. It is also a demonstrable fact that renewables are more suitable from a security perspective. More distributed generation, less reliance on critical things like pipelines, LNG facilities and so on - we're literally right in the middle of 2 wars that are being defined by attacks on energy infrastructure. Really?

I am quite happy to do a design for you…..please let me know if I can help…..

I would have done a design for free!

I was interested also, so I had an internet search. Compared to one of my units (Titon HRV), see images below. Heat exchanger size on the Rega is very small. Insulation between air streams almost none. Casing insulation almost none. Just about as basic as you can get - maybe and most likely poor performance as a result. Fan motors on Rega mounted in the steelwork, Titon mounted within the insulation, giving better noise attenuation and vibration dampening. Electronins away from where any water could collect etc etc Rega unit Titon HRV unit

Depends what you’re doing, of course. But, we tend to use (for a timber frame build) 3 x sets of bought in sawhorses with sheets of 18 or 25mm ply on top. No vice, maybe the occasional clamp. We’re largely cutting sheets of ply and C24 at this point. Not much use for an mft yet. A tool strongbox for somewhat nickable tools, some wire shelves for non-nickable tools and supplies (these are both undercover now) and a 20ft container for less used tools, fixings etc.

Just looked back at our gas and electricity bills in 2023, we had £89 Direct Debit for gas and £180 for electric. Since then I have added more solar and a battery. Plus we now get export payments. Plus got rid of boiler and installed an ASHP. Battery and additional solar cost me around £7500. Fully installed. But current DD is a total of £52. Instead of paying normal rates for electricity I pay 10p per kWh, can only do this because I have a battery. So in simple terms I am saving £214 monthly, or £2568 per year. Nice round 3 years pay back on the additional solar and battery. And an added bonus, this month via Axle VPP, have earned an additional £20 directly from having a battery. So taking this into account in the the above, now pay back becomes 2.7 years.

Not to the detriment of the functionality A lot of "cheap" designs have fresh supply vents almost immediately above doorways of bedrooms etc, and near zero air flows across the room. If you need to have a long run, and want quiet operation, you simply double up on the ducts. This is something sewn into the heart of the build fabric, with near zero chance of 'putting it right' retrospectively. It will also be on 24/7/365 for the rest of your life there, so maybe not somewhere to cut all of the meat off the bone Buy a good quality Brink unit from Air-Haus.co.uk, oversize it(!), and make sure to install proper attenuators on the supply and extract ports for super-quiet operational sound in the rooms.

I've now reached the happy place of 'offer and acceptance' for my subject-to-planning offer which in Scottish legal parlance means that we have a bargain and timescale agreed. I wanted 12 months to complete planning, the seller offered 3 and we compromised on 9. So I now have until April next year to get the planning I am happy with before I have to pay for the plot and take ownership of it. We've also agreed that if my application is stuck in the planning process through no fault of my own the timescale will be extended to reflect that. I'm not looking for any comments on this regarding legal safeguards just now thanks. This may be a little simplistic, but in my mind there are four possible steps to the planning process: Pre-application enquiry Planning permission in principle (same as outline planning in England). Full planning Building warrant I've opted to skip step 2 as I think I should be ok to move straight on to step 3 once I have a positive pre-application enquiry response. If you've any thoughts or advice on that then I would be interested to hear it. As you can hopefully see from the photo it is a gorgeous plot in a beautiful part of the world. The image above shows what will be the view from my future house. I feel very excited and lucky to have this opportunity.

A friend of mine is an American and she worked for a large architectural company. She had never heard the sayings 'as safe as houses' and 'put your money into bricks and mortar'. They do teardown and rebuild a lot more than we do, use fractures to produce structures, don't piss about on site, generally have a more relaxed view in planning, and I think the codes they work to are easier to understand. As for the sizes of the houses, the UK has disgustingly small houses. We should be ashamed of our housing, and of the industry I general.

potentially use a 2 gang socket extension to bring out the metal work form the backbox that you use to fill into and upto, then remove when all filler is dried. ML Accessories | 2G16EXT | 2G 16mm Galvanised Steel Skeleton Extension Box | Superlec Direct

Are you letting it go silver? Have you viewed final "colour" with mortar as well? Image of our attached just as eg. Took us a while to choose whole "package"

To put it into real life context, in the Steading we left a significant proportion of 600mm original wall exposed internally. This was for aesthetics and a historical nod. That would never pass Passivhaus which is an extreme target. I have no intention of sacrificing lots of money and aesthetics for the certificate that comes with a few % energy benefit. But many do and it's their choice and money (never regained in £ payback). We did get respect from the bco who agreed it was a good design feature, and we balanced the insulation by extra elsewhere. You are building all new, so can more easily tweak the insulation. Should be easy enough esp with a proper analysis with expertise. You say lots of insulation. What products?

My Amtico fitter was outstanding. It is all he does and he is so good that he limits his quote area When he installed our >100sq m he trimmed every single plank on two sides at a 45 degree angle to stop the "glue squidge" problem. This was absolute genius and I cannot fault the quality of the install. I had some very fixed ideas about how I wanted it laid but all his "suggestions" were the exact right ones in hindsight. I have laid Amtico myself in a previous house and I got the "glue squidge" problem and a line where two plywood boards butted together, I was still pleased with my efforts but a proper professional makes a huge difference in quality Regards Tet

I have just been chatting to a mate's partner. They where banging on about Overseas Aid and we need to stop it. If we stopped OA then our Navy would have been ready to send boats to the Gulf. I asked them how much our Military Budget was, they had no idea, asked what the OA budget was, again they had no idea. Then they blamed the Boat People, then the Muslims, then the two tier policing, ended up blaming the local council for not sorting out a pothole in their road. I kept saying that they are reading the wrong newspapers and they need to look up some numbers, rather than spout an opinion. The response to that was 'listen to me, listen to me' When it got to the government not allowing for more drilling in the North Sea, I had to say 'you don't keep up with the news do you.' These (expletive deleted) are allowed to vote, and it is not going to be for Bin Face. So rather than spout opinion about a subject, get some data, then come back and state your case. If you don't, you are just spouting opinions, and as this thread has shown, the opinion spouters refuse to find any data, in fact it is worse than that, they expect others to find it, then say the data is wrong. That is the policy of time wasters and internet trolls.

No. Insulate the room, and ventilate it, but “throw a blanket over the battery”?!?!?!? NO!

A polite note to all: I have said earlier in this thread about direct insults, which will be moderated and removed from public view. Buildhub T&C’s have been updated for this exact reason, and are available to (re)read at everyone’s leisure to ensure that we all function admirably on here. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/terms/

UK production of oil and gas I have - can you tell me how many are in operation today? 2 - one in china that took just over 11 years to build and floating one in russia that also took 10 years to build. And there are 6 or so under construction with intended in service dates sometime before 2030. Ideally we would have gone ahead with the various reactors we had planned back in the early 00's and have several up and running by now, but we seem to be very bad at nuclear construction in the UK. I'm not convinced we will get any better in the timeline we need. We have 2 under construction (hinkley C and sizewell C) with a combined capacity of around 6.5 GW coming online in 2030 and late 2030's. But that only covers the loss from the 5 existing plants shutting down before 2030, and as they are AGR's they are going to be difficult to life extend - not impossible, they will be about 40 years old at planned shutdown and the design has been extended to 50 years at other sites. Without a time machine, nuclear isn't going to dig us out of the hole. Except when they don't keep prices down. Several years ago our gas and elec prices rocketed because a politician 1,500 miles way decided the country next door was his. Our gas and oil prices recently shot up because a politician 3,000 miles away got mad at a country 3,000miles the other way and started flinging bombs about and suddenly, ships with oil bound for us turned round in the ocean and headed to china and the far east because they outbid us. Environmental issues aside, oil and gas are very shaky foundations. We struggled in ww2 for oil. We struggled in the 70's for oil. This isn't going to get better but they don't - they offer (in effect) fixed price deals for capacity. Those prices are lower than a new build gas plant can offer (and that was before the higher gas prices). And whilst there may be a security issue with inverters made in china, in the sense they could be controlled from abroad - and there are strong arguments that the uk or at least europe should be making it's own inverters or at least the software running them - the fact the panels are made in china is irrelevant. Once you have bought them they are yours, they are dumb bits of silicon and glass that create a voltage when illuminated. That's it. Once you have bought them they will last for 25 years or so, churning out power every day. A barrel of oil, on the other hand, can be used one. Then you have to buy a new one. You realise we have wind turbines, right? They tend to do well in the winter. And if the sun doesnt shine and the wind doesn't blow - what will we do? Burn gas in CCGT plants exactly as we do now. The difference is we will be burning gas for a month or two a year rather than all year round. The future energy mix will have nuclear, wind, solar (etc) lots of battery capacity and a good chunk of CCGT plants with gas storage for the times when we need them.

I've done a few buildings ( schools and factories) on steep slopes. My principle has been to build a platform at the higher level, then a conventional framed building on top. That keeps it simple and vastly more economical. No basement as you get into a different level of complexity and risk.( digging into the ground, waterproofing, stability, access) So that is conventional strip footings ans walls up to level . Then beam and block or precast planks make the surface. You are then out of the ground and on a solid surface. With a raft you have a big hole to dig then work in. If the slope is steep there is potential differential movement of the ground. If the slope is extreme then you can perhaps have a natural extra storey or part of one. Worth mentioning perhaps that in a couple of those jobs the original designers had assumed the dig and raft technique or retaining walls and mass fill to make a platform. I met one during negotiation and discussed the principles, and he was simply surprised at the cost difference, not being a contractor. Beam and block then a conventional kit above is my suggestion.

That's only applicable to ToU tariffs. If you want no extra charges use a flat rate tariff. ToU tariffs are an option, you make your choice and then live by it. Our battery takes us through the expensive periods. Never use grid energy unless in a cheap period - until I mess up things, which happens to everyone.

Fixing it in the open position will guarantee to make your house hotter during the day. Bypass should only be used (and should automatically turn on) when the outside temp is below the inside temp. Your MVHR shouldn't ever be delivering 31 deg air. In normal, non-bypass mode, the MVHR will work to maintain any existing temperature difference between inside and outside. In summer that means it will transfer most of the heat from the incoming air to the outgoing air, significantly reducing the temperature of the air delivered to the house. So if it's 30 deg outside, and 20 deg inside, the air delivered into the house will be something like 22 deg, depending on the heat recovery efficiency of your unit. Summer bypass only comes on when it's cooler outside than inside. Depending on the unit, you might be able to adjust the temperature at which it kicks in. To maximise effectiveness: Reduce airflow when it's really hot outside, cooler inside, and you want to minimise incoming heat. Turn it off if you like, but you risk a stuffy, humid house. Personally I'd avoid that. Summer bypass won't operate in these conditions. When the temperature outside drops below the inside temp and summer bypass kicks in, bump up the flow rate to maximise purging.

If there’s no solids going down it I don’t believe it needs to be 110mm pipe, you could drop to the 80mm version or even 50mm depending on run length and rodding access. I would go with hiding a smaller diameter pipe in the insulation level, insulate all around the pipe and put a chicken wire reinforcement over the pipe in the screed.

Ok a bit of food for thought. You have a steel column, likely supporting a structural load. Let's say as a minimum you need some fire protection? Say 30 minutes. Now you can achieve that in two common ways. 1/ Box it in with say Gyproc Fireline board. Which probably gives you a detailing problem, which is why you are probably wanting to use Aerogel as it saves space. 2/ Paint the steel with intumescent paint. But for intumescent paint to work it needs to have space to expand into... you see the dilemma? As a rough rule of thumb the intumescent paint thickness needs to expand some 50 times to work properly. It needs space to do this. So you can't stick Areogell to the steel per say and you need manufacturer approval to stick it to intumescent paint. Now often BC etc don't pick up on this. But if something goes wrong, there is a fire, the steel fails and the building falls on say the Fire Brigade.. then the buck has to stop somewhere.. as an SE I'll be on the radar, Architect's also, and you if you have taken it upon yourself to become a designer then you are facing a huge liability. Now the above is a worst case.. but if you get a smart BC officer that knows about this stuff then they might be minded to fail your design unless you can prove otherwise. There are cases where the steel is well protected by masonry and very heavy and thick and thus possibly as at Paulie I think in Paulie's case the steels are so heavy they don't need fire protection. The load we use when designing steels for fire protection get reduced as they are called an accidental case. In lay terms we don't design most steels for the building being fully loaded up and a fire starting at the same time. I would go back and look at what your steels are doing, the loads and so on. Also have a chat with your SE to check if what you are proposing might invalidate their design for example. I appreciate you may not like this news.. but it's up to you and your risk.

Many thanks for this thread. It's been really useful, cheers.

Now I’ve seen this, the architect is appearing to be another self-perpetuating over inflator, as this is just soooooo simple and straightforward. Local, reputable builder will do this with one eye closed. M&E??? “Where would you like the 3x switches and 3x sockets, sir?” 🤦‍♂️. Get a set of construction drawings, A3 for your reference, and laminated A2 for site / contractors use, and sit with the builder to go through every stitch of the detail (when vetting builders) and see what they spot, comment on, and how engaged they are. Then, when you’ve decided on ‘the one’ you need to go and see their previous work, in person, and possibly align so its the right time of day to speak to them face to face to see if it all went well etc.

Hi All, Excited to join the forum – I hope you don’t mind renovation projects as opposed to a proper self-build. Mrs and I are in the final stages of buying our dream home (1950s bungalow) & just waiting for the paperwork to be finalised by the solicitors – they seem to be taking 5 weeks to do what AI can do in 5 minutes. Good news, the house was so run down, it was within our budget. Even better news – the home report is mainly “2”s, so there’s several years of fun work for me to do to get it into top condition. Bad news – while I have extensive fine woodworking skills, and can do some basic electrics & plumbing, I’m pretty much a newcomer to major home repairs. We’re still in a bit of “what have we done” phase. As a matter of priority for phase 1, I’ll be looking to fix the pitched roofs and repair & replace a couple small flat roofs (porch and bay windows). Trace any leaks & moisture spots. Then consider insulation & window replacement and radiators replacement – so I’m prepared for winter. Any internal decoration works will have to wait for phase 2 I guess, but there’s a major re-wiring on the cards, with a view of getting a modern consumer unit installed within a couple years of moving in. There’s also a (likely) single skin extension that the Mrs wants to eventually turn into a bedroom and there's a garden to overhaul. Phase 3 would include a garden room (I’ve built one from a kit before but will likely do a scratch build this time) and maybe even a garage roof terrace if things are going well. Apologies in advance for daft questions.

You don't get that option 2 either

Lay the floor flat and level, ramping it up at the door will look like dog shit, you will see it, you will notice it on the skirting around that reveal. 10-12mm step up is absolutely fine at that cill area.

The impact we can have on our own lives, especially as self builders is pretty big. Some of the first things that come to mind are 1. Designing in good passive means to heat protection. Lots of insulation with good decrement delay. Limiting glazing, espically in bedroom's. Appropriate shading. 2. Active colding, even a fused spur and a short 70mm duct will allow an A2A unit to be installed at a later date. 3. If opting for batteries get a change over switch to cope with power outages. 4. A store of water, even a rainwater butt will allow toilet flushing if the mains is cut off. 5. Raising the floor level well above current food level. 6. Shuttering for windows is something t.o would like to have e done. Maybe PVC rollers but even a stack of appropriately sized OSB sheets stacked in the garage would offer a a lot more protection than glass windows from extreme weather.