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Our planning application was finally approved yesterday! When we bought the plot it already had planning on it, so our application was a variation to change the design. We submitted it in February 2026 and it was finally approved in October 2026. Annoyingly we just had a long series of stupid delays. The planning officer didn't even seem to start looking at our application until May-ish. Then she requested a few changes regarding window symmetry and wanted us to lower the ridge height slightly. We did that. We had to send it back for another round of consultations but she gave us a new deadline of mid-July 2026. That came and went with no contact from her... We then learned our officer was on leave for an unknown amount of time so it was reassigned. It took the new officer so long to look at it that our original one came back from leave and it got reassigned back again! Glad this process is finally over. Next step for us will be to sell our house to fund the build and move into a rental property. At this point we'll be waiting until after Christmas to kick that off.

Weeks 91 to 105 In May we started in the Bathroom. It took us almost a month to first fix plumbing inc wet room former, create stud wall behind sink and toilet, plasterboard, tape and joint and then paint. By mid June David handed the bathroom over to me and I was dry laying the floor tiles out it took me a while as you may remember the plant room floor was the first floor I had ever tiled and I was about to cut larger, heavier, more expensive and diagonal cuts, Oh and it was a wet room. Once I was happy with the tile layout I used Impey water guard system on the walls and the floor. I chose Impey because the former has a sort of backup weep system in that should any water get through the grout on the floor it will drain on top of the membrane and has weep holes in the long trap to escape. I was a bit nervous about unrolling a sticky membrane on my own but I found that ok with the laser for guidelines and just removing a bit of the backing at a time. The sealant that you use in-between the membrane joints on the other hand was the most sticky and messy sealant I have used. Particularly on the floor I could not help getting a bit of tile on the floor/wall joint or the toes of my shoes (when kneeling down) in the sticky sealant days later. I had read on Build Hub about this being sticky but had not comprehended how messy compared to other sealants. On the 24 August I handed the bathroom back over to David to fit the shower, toilet, sink and mirror. Whilst fitting the bathroom David and I also put the plasterboard up in the front bedroom so that once the bathroom was finished I could move straight onto another room with the plasterboard jointing. I have started this and the photos are the end of the first coat so tape not covered yet, screw heads one coat. Could be a while before I carry on with this. David has fitted the kitchen and pantry and the worktop was fitted by Wren. Our water connection has been completed this required a small road closure which had to be completed during school holidays as its the main route the children use who walk to school. The 3 phase electric supply has been moved from the temporary location into the house and we will now start looking for our supplier. We are still temporary connected to the house we live in as the solar on the new build is feeding the old house this will be changed to feed the new build hopefully only a few days before we get the supply connection. Openreach are here at the moment installing our line. The original plan back in 2023 designed and plotted by Openreach was to connect to an electric pole on the border with our neighbours where our electric also comes from. The electric company have recently stopped new connections to their poles, (I don’t know if this is everywhere or just local) so although its been coiled up at the pole a few years from when we made the temporary electric connection, we now had to find a new route. This meant finding our existing connection that was underground (from a different pole) breaking into this and pulling a few meters of cable back from its coiled up position to a junction box with the existing house cable, or digging up the shared drive and laying the cable back to another pole that already had a connection on it. The timing of this meant we had only just dug a trench down the side of the drive for the water, had we known earlier about the change made on new connections to poles we would have obviously laid the cable at the same time as the water. A big thank you to open reach who I think felt sorry for us as had one of my emails been answered in June (when I wanted to check were still putting copper in the ground) we could have laid a cable down the drive, unfortunately new connections sent me round in a few circles but the current solution is ok for now. I guess eventually we will pull a fibre cable in and presumably they will use the copper cables to pull the new fibre though. It’s 2 years from the start of the foundations and we have come a long way and are happy with our progress. Of the most common hiccups that I see on TV programs we are doing OK. We didn’t have a ‘blow out’ on the ICF concrete pour, we haven’t run out of money yet, and we are not expecting a baby (I'm 57) so I think that just leaves health. I am now on a break from the build whilst I recover from surgery but as I had 6 weeks notice we planned my jobs in the build and I now have at least 6 weeks to catch up on a mountain of paper work before I can return to light duties on the build. I have two companies for which I need to complete and submit end of year accounts, the self build VAT to catch up on (see below) and a website for our new holiday rental to set up to take bookings for next year. We are on schedule to move in to the build later this year but Im not sure if I will get back in the build to finish the tape and jointing in our temporary bedroom this year or we move in as it is, but at least we will have a working bathroom and kitchen. The costs to date are: General £4230 Plastering (open Plan area) £4160 Plasterboard and jointing by us £1124 Tiling Plant room floor and bathroom walls and floor £1000 Paint £246 Carpentry £746 Kitchen/pantry £11130 Kitchen appliances £1385 MVHR £3490 Roof insulation and airtightness £4778 Electrical Connection £4969 Electrical installation £2588 Plumbing installation £4257 Water connection £4566 Services trenches £3730 UFH £909 Drainage wastewater, soakaway and guttering £8538 Floor insulation £2669 Screed £2737 Wood Cladding £5694 Render £3090 Solar 7.5kWp £8574 Roof covering £23311 Windows £20869 Shell build excl roof, inc founds £119614 Pre build costs (architect, SE, BC and surveys) £10528 Total Net £260,000 VAT to reclaim so far £9500 Cost per m2 £1900 Big costs still ongoing Plumbing, Ensuite, Tiling in hall and pantry, Wood floors in bedrooms and open plan area. Landscaping and now all the service connections are in we can resurface the drive, as part of the planning condition, for the first 10m near the road.

The key word is “reality”. These drawings are single discipline, unless you have provided a ‘line out’ of your other large bore services such as soil and waste pipework etc, so that is always the crux. Current project, CVC supporting and myself installing (and adapting the design to suit) on the fly: I changed a few bits around, and did my own thing with the manifolds to make it more sympathetic. Actual install when it was WIP: As you can see, I abandoned the square box manifolds as I had other services in some of the posi joist voids which took up too much space; these needed to take priority so needs must. It gets very busy very quickly, but this is a sizeable home (~400m2) and I had to get a lot of ‘stuff’ squeezed in. The MVHR install is considerable, but I have installed it all with ZERO impact on GIA; no boxing in etc, and CVC providing solutions to achieve this wherever I needed to reach out. It would 100% been a complete PITA to have to do this from scratch with no initial design, and I have a long history of such installations and am very capable, so any novice or DIY self-builder should defo reach out for support and CVC will do their best (based on the information you give them ).

Courtesy of @craig - 22 windows plus 2 doors and a set of Bifolds going in this week. Windows are aluclad Zyle Fenster (tilt & turn downstairs, outward opening upstairs) and the bifolds are Cortizo Bifold Plus.

This totally sounds like a scene on grand designs where the woman boasts about her expensive kitchen widget and kevin Mc Kevin understands how they are 10 million over budget. Sounds like a way to lock you in to only being able to buy a certain type of hob, whereas a normal one is basically the same size hole. I'd do myself a favour and just keep it simple and not create my future self another nightmare.

Yeah I've done it. I used a block and mallet on the short sides to put that home and an offcut and mallet to bring the long side into the tongue/groove. It's a fairly satisfying project I found. Easy to cut with a straight edge and a Stanley knife, just score it and snap, jobs a good un. With the UFH I often hear the odd click of a length popping out slightly I assume, but it hasn't been a problem so far and I'm 18 months in. Also dropped SWMBO's favourite ceramic ice bucket on it which exploded into a million bits but the LVT was undamaged. What I found a pain, especially in a big room, was trying to keep the pattern random. So a plank with as many individual designs as possible is a bonus, I was always fighting it trying to randomise it. Worked out nice though I thought.

So after 6 months of delay due to one shoddy bricklayer and another one who was shoddy with a massive 'I'm the best' ego, it is finally third time lucky and the two guys we waited 6 weeks to start, take pride in their work and are really approachable when you want to ask a question or raise an issue. Just how it should be. Being behind is a pain though, as it will mean I will be cutting the roof and installing the standing seam roofing most likely in November. But so long as it doesn't get too wet, it might be ok. Here are a few photos. I made a jig up to cut the insulation at the angle of the cavity tray and I was chuffed how it turned out. A rather laborious task though, but I said I would get the trays and insulation all ready for them I also knocked up probably 12 different mixes over the last few months. We tried 5 different sands, grey cement, white cement and lime ...., but non of them really worked and they were either too grey or too yellow, but we kept searching and finally found a local firm in Thatcham who had some sand from a quarry a long distance away. The colour looked like it would work and as soon as I mixed up the 5 sand, 1 white cement and 1 lime mix, we both said "that's it". Sand cost us about £90/ton, which is not cheap, but I didn't want to be looking at the house thinking "I don't like the mortar colour". Here are a few pictures of progress from the last two weeks.

Finished, after a few false starts.

When I was a lad at Uni I met a Mr Dibner at my local pub - he used to live not far from my digs. At that time I'd not heard of him - and he wasn't the sort to point out his fame. After getting on well a few times, he offered to take me on one of his jobs - a quick inspection of a local chimney... just a small one. Lets just say it didn't go well for either of us. I was OK going up, but it took him nearly 3 hours to get me back down. All was well until we got to the bit where you had to go around the Corbeling near the top. The memory of clinging upside down off an ancient wooden ladder miles in the air is something that still gives me nightmares. It wasn't the height that frightened me, it was gravity and the woodworm holes. And the ground - the ground always wins! After that experience, jumping off a building with two decent ropes attached was a doddle... Even HSBC tower where you had to tie a bloody great knot in the end as the ropes as they ended 580 odd feet above the ground and it would be too easy to absentmindedly abseil of the end! I do get vertigo on tube escalators though...

Further update on our VAT reclaim journey... HMRC have written to us (actual letter, not email) querying four invoices, covering about £3k VAT. The invoices are for our lights and our flooring tiles (two invoices for each: deposit and balance). They are asking for more information because the invoices don't specify the goods supplied. They have asked for paper copies of the four invoices, and supporting evidence from the suppliers detailing what the invoices cover, so I have sent the matching orders for each. The good news is that they said they will pay the vast majority and just hold back the the £3k for these invoices. And the day I got the letter the money arrived in our account. So, quite happy with that - 14 weeks or so from claim to payment of the bulk of the claim.

I have discovered that SWMBO's shower arrangements are completely different to mine. I very rarely use the side shower and she NEVER uses the overhead. I would suggest (i.e. I have been informed) that the riser bar is a necessity as whatever height you were to choose, either hair or body washing would be sub-optimal and therefore unacceptable I have a Mira digital and it is awesome. This is the arrangement in our downstairs bathroom. You can just see in the bottom right hand corner where the edge of the controls is. I would disagree with ProDave above as there is a delay between pressing the button and the digital shower kicking in, that delay is sufficient to retract an arm without any dampness , also the digital showers retain their heat settings so no twiddling is required Regards Tet

And after another long break, it is finished. I had been too busy doing things and going places to order the roofing until now. I ended up ordering it from Steadmans, part of the SIG group. Their quote was £300 cheaper than Plantex with the bonus they did the facings in long lengths where Plantex only do them in 3 metre lengths which would have meant a join. The roof panels were delivered last Wednesday and today me and a joiner friend fitted them, which took us about 5 hours in total. To lift them up there, we wheeled the mobile scaffold in the pictures out onto the grass, on 2 scaffold boards so stop it sinking into the soft ground, and used that as a staging post, lift them onto that, then both up onto the scaffold for the second lift. It was actually easier than I expected it to be. Tip for anyone doing this sort of job. While the suppliers are happy to make the roofing sheets to any length you want, they only seem to supply them in "1 metre" width. Great I thought, my car port is exactly 6 metres wide, I need 6 sheets. Actually the sheets came 105cm wide. There is a 5cm overlap. So while it is true each sheet adds 1 metre to the width of the roof, with 6 sheets there are only 5 joints, so the finished width of 6 sheets of roofing is 605cm. That is 5cm wider than my car port frame. Quick thinking, by cutting a small piece off the top and bottom corner of the first sheet to clear round the garage roof tile overhang, that end of the roof ended up coming closer to the garage wall than originally planned, leaving the other end finishing mm perfect at the end of the framing. There was also a few sheets of "spare" roof sheets used as packing and protection. I am now scheming what I can use them for. Next phase will be fitting solar panels along the back of the car port.

First, don't panic! I think this is an easy option. The AFT forms are just a way to make the concrete laying easy, producing the same shape with standard (correct spec) XPS should be fine. Maybe reinforce with wooden forms on the outside if not sure of the glue strength. If you look at people in Sweden laying these types of foundations they don't necessarily use preformed XPS anyway, just build up from sheet.

When the client is clever and pragmatic enough to ask them to do so, and to be happy to pay them to do it . Anything else is wishful thinking and short-sightedness on the clients side. Pay people to take time to plan and discuss, and they will, which is why I am flat out busy working for self builders who want something better / more robust than making daft assumptions that “it’s all going to go well”…. . Not aimed at you @Mr Blobby, just a point to consider moving forwards, to help you get what you thought you’d be getting. Half a days wages would have likely mitigated this type of misunderstanding / faux-pas out, but you as the client also need to be present, often, and with some time to invest, if you really want to influence things and bolster the outcome. How many car journeys do you set out on, wearing a blindfold?

Thanks for your reply. I do appreciate they are really busy, and not looking for them to come up with the solutions. We are having issues with the B5 compliance, we had contacted the fire service who said they needed to talk to the building control officer. Our officer said to forward the information over to him which we did immediately. This was 2 weeks ago and he is not replying to any of our attempts to contact him, even though he has mentioned the issue to our structural engineer while disusing a different issue. Its cost us money and time. We are now unsure of how to proceed. Firstly.. Thankyou to everyone that took the time out to respond and apologies for taking so long to say thanks, I Hadn't checked or seen that we had so many responses. I am starting to remember that the admin is one of the reasons I stopped social media. So the update is positive, I think we finally figured out how building control works. We had thought part of their role was in an advisory capacity and no-one, including them would tell us specifically what their role and responsibilities were, who they were accountable too, how the game plays out and what the game rules were, so when they just wouldn't respond to our emails or anyone in the company would answer the phone, and then would make extraordinary demands of us with no other additional information or guidance, we felt like we were being taken on a merry dance. We have since figured out that they are as a general rule NOT working in an advisory capacity, because if you build something they advised on and passed, and something went wrong, they are then liable, which makes perfect sense why they would be reticent to pass on their knowledge. The B5 requirement was a headache because the impression we got was that we HAD to install this HUGE turning area that would dominate our land and involve taking out a lot of trees to produce. This has now been satisfied with a sprinkler system installed in the house, of which a certificate from the company installing is enough and it was this extreme request that was solved with a simple solution that broke the camels back and we figured out the way this particular inspector seems to work. He will throw at us the worst case scenario, we find the simplest solution to solve it and as long as it is reasonable and under someone elses name, he is happy. I know it may sound daft and we are slow learners, but the parameters with which it all operates just isn't written down anywhere and my brain needs to fully understand the system we have to work within, before it can function. Anyhoos...We got there, we submitted our actions and we got the go ahead from building control at the end of last week so WE'RE OFF. Thankyou everyone and I am sure we will be back with more further down the line.

Do NOT have the connector and isolator tap behind the appliance. Fit it inside an adjacent cupboard unit so it is accessible, and does not restrict the appliance going fully back into it's recess. Same for waste fitting and electrical socket.

I decided I had to do something to combat the eventual indoor overheating which didn't involve installing air conditioning, this may be needed at some point if temperatures keep rising but i'd rather keep it as a last resort. I've been using all of the usual tricks in the book, opening everything up when its cooler outside than in, and shutting everything up during the day, which worked as well as it could, the bungalow is pretty well insulated so this strategy worked in the most part, but the prolonged heatwaves we had and tropical nights made it an impossible job to shift the heat. Keeping the internal blinds and curtains shut also helped, but the triple glazed units eventually heat up and then retain that heat for some time. Internally the frames/panes hit around 40C, which all adds to that air temperature over time. I have 6 south facing roof windows, and many years ago decided to get the external awning blinds which made a huge difference to the internal temperature of the windows on a hot day. The 2G ones used to hit well over 70C midday, but with the external blinds that came down to 50C, still hot but a big difference. The newer 3G ones, i currently have one with and one without an external blind, just bought one at the time to see how much difference it made on the newer version of the windows, as you'd expect this is much less of a difference as they are just better overall. Without the external blind the frame/pane hit 55C and with the blind, 47C. This was during the prolonged June heatwave when air temperatures were also very high. I looked into getting some external blinds made for the other windows to bring those internal temperatures down in extreme heat, and maybe just maybe give myself a better nights sleep when it happens, but was shocked at the cost. When I read of the impending El Nino and that chances of more heat next year, I decided that i'd get some external blind material, and make my own. Cue the sewing machine, not something i'm overly familiar with, so with plenty of practice, and all the right bits (as they're for use outside, needed UV stabilised polyester thread, a special needle as its thicker fabric and a special foot for the sewing machine due to the 'stickiness' of the fabric, combined with polyester webbing to strengthen the hems, and finally stainless steel fixings to stop rust), i made some very slow progress but have finally completed my first blind, decided to do the bedroom one first on the back of the bungalow, so its not particularly seen from the street side whilst i get better at the whole process, but on the whole i'm pretty pleased with the outcome. And from the inside the outlook is like this. Very dimmed light inside, but a good view out. Obviously time will tell as to how effective it will be, but im confident it will have a good impact. The two windows on back of bungalow are surrounded by 100mm thick EPS External Wall Insulation, which provided its own unique challenge for fixing. I found these Fischer fixings which I hadn't come across before, and have to say I'm really impressed with them, though they are rather expensive. https://www.fischer.co.uk/en-gb/products/fixation-on-etics-insulation/fixing-in-substrate/thermax-8-and-10/stand-off-installation-thermax-8 So first one down, and concept works, just another 4 to make and fit before next year! Total cost including the Fischer fixings for all the material etc was no more than £300 for all 5 windows. Fabric came from this online shop, in bronze: https://www.fabricuk.com/fabrics/2298-sun-shade-mesh-wide-width.html

Thanks everybody. The DNO confirmed that the sloping install inside the meter box is standard for a flush mount. He did say that the installation on the pole would be redone. The ducting is only exposed because we didn't back fill that part of the trench in order for the DNO to gain access to the end of the duct. I think the way they cut the duct we buried and hooked up the hockey stick is poor, as is the connection on the pole. I guess we'll have to finish it off ourselves. I don't really know what we pay for nowadays. I had to pay up front. What is the world coming to? (And other things old people mutter to themselves)

Just thought I'd update. We are using a contractor. The warranty/site insurance providers (Protek/Build Zone) were not keen to say the least for us to take on the demolition, and neither were building control.

I did that in a room about 6x8m. It nearly killed me 😁 To answer OP, no gluing, expansion gap around edges. Used trimmed tile edging to cover the gap.

A follow up on this thread. I bought a fogstar 16kwh DIY kit and Solis 5kw hybrid inverter back in March. Inverter installed and set up fine but the inverter I bought needs a DC supply to operate so without a battery or generating PV it's dead. With a faulty battery that becomes a problem leading me on to..... Fogstar kit went together OK following 3rd party YouTube videos.....the Fogstar documentation isn't the best. I had problems balance charging and after a couple of weeks Fogstar tech agreed I could build and use the battery. Had problems with a couple of cells which Fogstar were reluctant to replace and accounted for the struggle to balance charge them. Not long after I started using the battery there were a couple of instances of the battery collapsing and dropping to 0% charge in front of my eyes. After weeks of back and forth with Fogstar tech and stripping the pack for balance charging a further 2 times, Fogstar took the battery back for 'test and proper set up'. 3 weeks later I got the battery back and 2 days later it collapsed again so went back for a refund. In the months I had the battery Fogstar stopped selling the kits and the cells that go in them so I guess I wasn't the only one with problems. Spoke an installer who sells Fogstar kit on ebay and he convinced me the product is good so I bought a factory assembled battery through him and it's run perfectly for the last 2 months. There's another one on the way to help with the winter load. I'm happy to recommend fogstar kit but just be aware that after sales can be lacking!

These older houses can be built with lime mortar and a bit of movement is expected, stitch something together ridgid and you move the cracks to another part of the property. im no structural engineer but have been removing trees from properties for the last 40 years when the finger gets pointed at the tree, I’ve been on sites where you could shake hands with the neighbours through the cracks in the walls 😂😂

Bit quiet in here recently, so for your viewing pleasure... Still need to paint the lid but these things look the b*ll*cks.

Mixer is on the UFH heating. So in heating it is mixing return water to bring down the flow temp, in cooling mixing return water to make supply water warmer than used by the fan coils. Its just the same as you would do for UFH and radiators. Pumps I would set up a primary and secondary loop, primary loop is just the ASHP circulation pump, for the UFH and fan coils I would have a close coupled tee (CCT) for each circuit, first CCT for the fan coils and second for UFH. Each circuit from the CCT would require a pump. So sort of 2 zones one for UFH (mixer as well) and the other fan coils. Set the two secondary pumps to run fixed speed. Then flow match the primary pump speed to match the combined flow from the 2x secondary. Fan coils output is governed by fan speed (which is controlled via a thermostat), so the flow can be left to circulate the whole loop, so then run both pumps when ever you have a call for heat/cool. Otherwise expect to need a volumiser or a buffer. But personally I really wouldn't bother doing fan coils below dew point, save the complication and you can buy something like Jaga Strada Hybrids to do above dew point cooling, no mixer etc.

Here is a Haier scheme, you just setup as a 2 zone system. Each zone with a different flow temp fixed or WC. The image shows a buffer which is unlikely to be needed

New Tank Fitted over the weekend Grant Tank - 180L 2.7m2 coil surface area couple of errors in pipework configuration that are resulting in increased heat loss but I'll fix them over the next couple of weeks. meantime a quick experiment on boiler efficiency (compared to old tank data) revealed Boiler efficiency Old tank when heating HW - efficiency was 88.97% (condensate volume 157 grams - condensate stopped after 10 mins of a 30 min cycle due to return temp being above 54 deg) New tank when heating HW - efficiency is 93.29% (Condensate volume 332 grams was generating condensate all the way thro the 45 min cycle) Can show workings if required....... Heat Loss Old Hot water tank fully lagged pipework - london loops everywhere (U loops on any hot outlets from tank) best I could get in term of temp decay in the tank was 0.4 deg per hour (most of the time it was 0.5 to 0.6 deg per hour) so heat a tank to 50 deg and 20 hours later it would be down to 40 deg (thats a just bearable shower according to SWMBO) New Tank - no lagging on pipework yet and minimal london loops and the tank losses are down to 0.19 deg per hour - so heat a tank to 50 deg and 24 hours later it's still over 45 deg - I think I need a better hobby!!!! PS Yes I need to fit a tank stat PPS The tank is set up as a vented tank (so no G3 certification is required)

I think you have to change your expectations or nothing will suit. I don't know when I last used a decimal mm in construction. I appreciate it may be a mindset and things like cutlery laid approximately can be an issue. I'd be interested to know what measurement would have been acceptable 1mm? 0.5mm? Measuring tapes aren't even that accurate. pencils get thicker as you draw a line. Saw blades have thicknesses, materials are variable, hands are not machines. There will be many worse discrepancies in your house should you choose to look for them. Nobody else will notice.

It’s what I do / have done, in every single kitchen and bathroom job I’ve ever done. Dulux Diamond for the finish stuff in kitchens for most folk, or appropriate bathroom paint from whoever. 2 coats on brand new plaster in the same day, and customers think I’ve gone the whole 9 yards. Contract stuff is fine to leave on ceilings, but it isn’t very good on walls as it’s quite chalky and doesn’t wipe at all well. I use it sacrificially, for obliteration, and as above for use as a paint-come-filler for the very minor imperfections that you cannot see with the eye (until you pole sand lightly to show any defects). You must leave this to go bone dry before sanding, and I only say to dilute 10% water if spraying; current client is about to go full on Picasso and that’s the instructions for dilution from Wagner. Depends on how fussy you are whether you pole sand ceilings, or not, but my go-to plasterer is on site atm and he is shit hot, so very little needs doing tbh; he’s incredibly fussy in corners etc, and is pretty much the best plasterer I know or have ever met. If the plasterer is of ‘lesser finesse’ then you’ll have it “all to do” downstream and will soon regret not getting someone better. He’s Coventry based, and if anyone needs (wants) an exceptionally good spread then PM me for his contact details. He’s also an excellent external renderer, and does micro-cement and Venetian (etc) plasterwork. He has pics of some of the jobs he’s done and it’ll blow you away! Tres bien It’s all in the finish folks, and you’ll be staring at it in every room for the next couple of decades or more, and if that’s not right then what was the point in getting everything else behind it A1?

Two thoughts: 1. If designing from scratch the additional cost of adding cooling will be minimal in the overall scheme of things so put it in at the start. 2. Why on earth would anyone building a new house in 2026 NOT want to add cooling?

We moved into our new pad just as the first heatwave hit. We are epc A, well insulated, good airtightness, mvhr, ashp that cools the ufh (downstairs). We passed part O (overheating) with flying colours......our experience is that we should have put WAY more thought into our cooling strategy beforehand.....we are in the process of changing track ...(a2a rather than fan coils from ashp), so not sure whereabouts you are but..........

1 kg of seasoned hardwood has approximately 4.5 kWh of energy in it, when burnt in ideal conditions. As wood burners are not very efficient devises, you probably need to halves that. So a 5 kW one will, if run properly, will take 2 kg an hour, but probably closer to 3 kg. Burners can be adjusted to moderate thermal output, but that not only hurts efficiency, it also changes the combustion chemistry. Depending on the temperature of combustion, you also get varying amounts of particulates. Then there is the land area needed to grown the timber. A metre² of land in the UK gets around 950 kWh of solar energy on it, trees convert, at best, 0.25% of that to timber. So sub 0.2 kWh/year.m². So to run a 5 kW burner for 1 hour is going to take, at very best, 15 m² of land. Then you got the timber transport, storage, conditioning and waste disposal. Do you really want a wood burner. Most houses got central heating in the 1950s and 60s.

That would like be a non-material change. Keep going and put the application in. Just make sure you're ok regarding egress requirements under building control.

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

I wondered if that’s why the top room was presented as an office - because surely you’d need a fire door otherwise. I liked the cladding design, thought the overhang was clever. Loved that his grandparents got to see it built - no sad GD bits and little jeopardy, made a nice change!

Ledger board and face fixed hangers to this?

I've been arguing we should be moving away from ICE for transport precisely to avoid having these sorts of events. The larger the proportion of our vehicle fleet that is electric and the better our charging infrastructure the less we can be impacted by an incompetent US adminstration flailing about out of it's depth or a murderous Russian president flailing around out of his depth

Or hunt out ducovent. I’ve got these, as i was a bit late with ergovent hobbies.

I've paid £195 for a heat loss analysis with a hefty report. £295 for the UFH layout and for that he's going to route the manifold supply and returns too. Honestly, I think he'll pay for himself in what he's looking like he'll save us on kit already.

Just to update this, I've put it with an independent heat-loss consultant who has done a much more thorough heat-loss analysis. Very comprehensive and far more believable. I'll be sharing his details on here once I have the full work in hand so I can make a proper recommendation. I realise many can do this themselves, but there are clearly some out there with far more knowledge than I can hope to attain in the short time I have to get this sorted. Good news is that he makes our total heat loss a more respectable 5.45kw and has already hinted at 300mm pipe spacings with a 5kw heat pump. I hope to have eyes on the UFH layout plan next week.

Supply and fit for a new residential dwelling is 0% You can’t use the supply and fit route as a way of tricking the self-build VAT reclaim process. The person supplying and fitting the items has his/her own set of rules to comply with. So it’s up to their judgement whether wardrobes they supply & fit should be zero rated. They could then be liable for any incorrectly charged VAT if investigated (as someone else posted here previously).

as JohnMo said with the hydraulic design pretty much but I wanted true cooling so I went fancoils so I can run at proper ac temperatures. I’ve installed this exact setup with a Panasonic aquarea tcap heat pump. Ground floor is UFH and first (and second floors) are 7x fancoils. All pipework lagged and all fancoils have condensate drains. It took a while to get the design how I wanted it and warrantied with Panasonic. I had an extra towel rail loop that they wanted to make sure was isolated from chilled water so that’s why I couldn’t go off their standard design. I can run 5 degree water in cooling mode to the fancoils and keep the UFH loop at above dew point (16 degree) as the Panasonic accepts a dual zone temperature control. It’s critical that the heat pump controller actually supports this and Panasonic was one of the few that I found that was big, reputable and would warrant the hydraulic design. I worked with their technical design team to get the design right. it fundamentally works by having two circuits off the buffer (sorry but yes, Panasonic mandate a buffer for hydraulic separation in this system design). In cooling mode, heat pump can chill the buffer to 5 degrees. That loop is pumped straight to any FCUs that demand cooling. The second loop to the UFH has an inline temperature sensor and a 3 way mixing valve. The temperature sensor connects back to the heat pump controller and that makes sure that water leaving to that circuit is blended up with return water to a safe minimum temperature. If the circuit stabilises at say 16 degrees the zone valve closes to prevent the circuit going any colder. it’s a pretty simple setup really. I had additional complexity because the towel radiators are on the same circuit as UFH. There’s a zone valve I installed before this circuit that is controlled by loxone relay so in summer I just deactivate this. You could Do this with a heating controller as well (or a switch!).

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more The North Sea is not just about the North Sea The weird and wonderful world of gas, in all its different flavours. And what the strange chemistry of methane has to do with one of the most controversial issues facing the new UK government Aug 18 You will know, if you’ve read Material World, that there are many different flavours of oil: sweet and sour, heavy and light, gloopy Canadian tar sands and light, clear fracked crude. You will also know, if you’ve read much of my subsequent stuff here, that such things actually turn out to have outsize, sometimes geopolitical significance. But did you know that something similar also goes for natural gas? When it first comes out of the ground, natural gas can also be sweet or sour, depending on its sulphur content. It can be wet or dry, depending on how many other liquids have come up in the pipes alongside the gas. Natural gas from Algeria is decidedly different (richer and heavier) than the stuff that comes from Trinidad as a consequence of the variety of organic material laid down millions of years ago and the conditions under the ground since then. I learnt this a month or so ago, touring round the Isle of Grain LNG terminal, while filming a documentary for Sky News. The film itself (which I’d love you to watch if you have a moment) is really about something else, about the fate of the North Sea and the question, significant here and, I think, actually of some international import, of whether Britain should be doing more drilling in future. But as is always the way when you’re filming these things and trying to compress it all into a finished film (even a mammoth 30 minute film - mammoth, at least, by Sky News standards), some of the interesting, chewy, nerdy stuff ends up on the cutting room floor. So it was with the various different flavours of natural gas. But such things are actually quite consequential. Consider the gas in Groningen, the first great gas field of Northern Europe in the Netherlands. Groningen gas naturally contains an unusually low methane content and quite a lot of nitrogen. The upshot is that most Dutch appliances - boilers and gas cookers - are designed to work with this low-calorific, gas. However, the Groningen field was recently closed. Since gas from elsewhere has a far higher methane content, the Dutch network operators have had to build vast nitrogen production facilities to blend it into the imported stuff and make it “taste” a little more like Groningen gas. This is quite an expensive operation, since producing nitrogen is very energy-intensive. But given the alternative is to ask the country to buy new boilers, it was considered the least bad solution to an awkward problem of what economists would call “path dependency”. Something similar goes for the UK, where the particular flavour of the gas in the southern North Sea - the gas that really started Britain’s era as a hydrocarbon producer - happens to be pretty lean and dry. When the powers-that-be began to lay down Britain’s national gas grid in the 1960s and ‘70s, they did so with that flavour of gas in mind. Even today, the UK gas network (or rather, the boilers and cookers plugged into it) is designed for a very particular flavour of gas, with a very particular calorific rating. If one of the LNG tankers coming into Isle of Grain to unload gas from Algeria were to send that gas straight into the grid, it would raise the risk of something bad happening: older cookers leaking carbon monoxide, sooting up, and generally not working properly. And so in Britain this foreign gas also has to be treated to bring it into line with British standards. Surprising as it might sound, this is the single most energy-intensive process at the Isle of Grain terminal. Given LNG is already considerably more carbon intensive than the sort of gas you pipe directly from a gas field into your system, this sort of thing matters. It matters all the more today, and will matter still more in the coming decades, since one of the consequences of the rapid decline of North Sea oil and gas production is that Britain is coming to depend on LNG imports even more than in the past. To put it another way, if the only thing you cared about was carbon emissions, you could make a strong case that the green thing to do is to try to squeeze as much gas out of the North Sea as possible. This will sound counter-intuitive for many people, but it is the logical consequence of the energy transition. Even in the best-case scenario, it will take decades to reduce Britain’s dependence on gas down to a level consistent with net zero carbon emissions. As Material World readers know, there are some fossil fuel processes that can be relatively easily decarbonised (electric cars are a genuinely decent, by many yardsticks superior, substitute for petrol ones, for instance). But when it comes to other things: the production of fertiliser for instance, or the grid-scale intermittency support we need for when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, the greener alternatives aren’t quite there yet. So while the amount of gas Britain is consuming is going down, and will continue to go down as more people buy heat pumps and more renewable power becomes available, we still need rather a lot of it. And so the question of where that gas will come from is rather important. Especially since, well, as you already know, not all gas is alike. And since Europe has now committed to importing less gas from Russia, that means more gas shipped in in the form of LNG from elsewhere. And since LNG is far more carbon intensive (even before you get to the extra steps to convert and blend that gas into a form palatable for the UK grid), that means more pollutive not to mention more expensive gas. All of which raises two questions (well, actually plenty more than that but let’s stick to the two biggest ones): first, is there really much more gas left in the British half of the North Sea and, second, what does this all do to Britain’s net zero commitments? Let’s take the second question first, since this gets to the knotty, uncomfortable reality. If you presume that the world is really committed to net zero and that carbon emissions are going to fall everywhere in the coming years, consistent with a glidepath to 1.5 or 2 degrees of extra global warming, then you could make the strong case that more North Sea gas production will be better for the environment than gas from elsewhere. Why? Because more domestic gas production in the UK means we have to ship in less LNG from elsewhere and since LNG takes a staggering amount of energy to liquefy and ship (you need to reduce the temperature of the gas to -162 degrees celsius - this is challenging physics), it is surely more efficient to produce the gas domestically and just ship it through the existing infrastructure. But while this would mean lower global emissions it would nonetheless mean more of those carbon emissions happening in the UK than elsewhere. From the perspective of carbon emissions, this ought to be entirely irrelevant, after all the atmosphere couldn’t care less which country is pumping more CO2 into it than the other. However, politicians (and the various climate frameworks they’ve signed up to) fixate instead on domestic carbon emissions. So, yes, by this yardstick, more North Sea drilling would be bad for the UK’s domestic emissions and humiliating for the politicians who promised to reduce it at a particular speed. Photo: Patrick Hutton However, more germane and I think a more serious objection to more North Sea drilling comes back to something else, something a little less about physics and thermodynamics and a bit more about the gloopy world of geopolitics. If you believe that Britain has a leadership role in global climate politics - and given this country has pushed towards net zero faster than any other developed nation that seems like a fair notion - then actually the decision over the North Sea is of outsize importance. It is, you might say, not just about the North Sea. If many other nations see that the country that led the push towards net zero is now committing to a different path, might they follow suit? In other words, might the very act of promising more North Sea drilling send a signal that changes the global trajectory of carbon emissions? If so, that completely topples the logic I’ve laid out above. It would mean more domestic gas production in the UK actually raises global carbon emissions rather than cutting them. So, this isn’t exactly simple. So how about the other issue, the question of whether Britain actually has enough gas to exploit in the first place? The conventional wisdom, as you will know, is that the North Sea is a “mature”, “declining” basin, which is hard to disagree with. The question is whether this means, as many assume, that its path of decline is somehow set in stone. And it so happens we have a rather helpful natural experiment right across the international maritime border in the form of Norway. One of the people we spoke to in the course of making our film was Wood Mackenzie, the leading oil and gas consultancy who arguably know more about the prospects for the North Sea than anyone else. And one of the charts they showed me showed the starkly diverging paths between UK and Norwegian oil and gas production. While UK North Sea output has declined rapidly since the peak in 1999, in Norway output peaked in 2004 and then, critically, stayed relatively high. The lines on that Wood Mac chart diverged. Anyway, one of the great things about AI is that it enables you to make pretty good websites pretty easily, so in the following weeks I used Claude to make a site pulling the publicly available data on oil and gas production in the various UK and Norwegian North Sea fields, and the end result was a rather helpful website. You can find it here. I’d encourage you to look at the numbers yourself (and do let me know any thoughts that occur in the comments) but one striking thing I found is that for all that we are often told that the UK section of the North Sea is simply more “mature” than Norway’s, implying that we have “withdrawn” our share of oil and gas earlier, actually when you tot up the total cumulative output of each side of the basin (see the chart above, right), it turns out Norwegian output has now overtaken the UK. In other words, this isn’t just about maturity, it’s about something else. Either the UK’s side of the North Sea simply has less oil and gas available, or this comes down to politics and economics, down to the differences in the way Norway runs its side versus Britain. I’m not sure there is yet a definitive answer to this question, but it seems like a reasonable one to ask. Would the UK, with a regime similar to Norway, be able to produce as much oil and gas as Norway? These are questions that most politicians have sought not to ponder in the past decade or so. But they are relevant all over again. And they are relevant not just for the UK, but because many people see the North Sea as a sort of test case for the future of the industry - not to mention for global climate policy. Anyway, do watch the film we made, which has far more detail on all of this, Do check out the maps and charts and be assured, this is an issue we’ll come back to again soon. A reminder that if you pre-order my forthcoming new book Trade World between now and Sept 2 and email me at [email protected] attaching a proof of purchase, I will send you an exclusive essay containing bonus material that didn’t make it into the final edition of the book. Material World is a free newsletter, mostly about topics relevant to my recent book, of the same title, and my next book, Trade World. If you enjoyed this post, please do share it with friends. And if the above whets your appetite, please do order a copy of Material World or, even better, pre-order Trade World. And let me know what you think! Buy Trade World © 2026 Ed Conway 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

A modern glass induction hob is less than 5mm thick. I admit that a flush fit may look a tiny bit better but I'm sitting here looking edge-on to my island hob and it isn't exactly unsightly (unlike that glass gas monstrosity above) I would suggest that the astonishingly marginal benefit of easier cleaning is vastly outweighed by the cost and complexity of the install, plus the risk of a replacement not fitting correctly Regards Tet

Maybe CT1 and then overpaint? CT1 is ridiculously good for this type of thing btw. Not slightly good, ridiculously good, and will stick when wet and stop rain as it’s coming through. Nuts stuff that I used to use to seal up showers and baths etc in student digs where silicone was a constant source of severe leaks and property damage. For this application I would inject it into the crack as much as possible, and then apply it liberally around the affected area, and then work it around with a 2” brush, giving 2-3” of coverage either side of the crack. Same both sides if possible. Jet-wash it if you can, and leave to dry, to remove any friable materiel, and wash away any residue well to get rid of the nasties.

Be very wary as width, length and depth are often confused. It is errors such as these that can lead to screwups. For kitchens I consider length and width to be side-to-side and depth to be front-to-back. Height and thickness can also cause confusion. With some of the induction hobs in a 600 deep worktop there is often only 50mm remaining front and back after the cutout.

With ours, the stone provider did all this. When they came to template the worktops, as well as making their plywood templates, they took the sink with them, so ensure the hole they cut in the worktop fitted the sink correctly. They also fitted their preferred type of fixings to the worktop to secure the sink (not the ones supplied with it) and on fitting the worktop they secured and sealed the sink to the underside of the worktop. In our case, the hole in the worktop is a few mm smaller than the size of the sink, so there is a very small lip around the sink. I don't find this a problem, and it has the advantage that you don't see any of the sealant used unless you put your head down into the sink. I was very glad it was a supply and fit contract. When two strong men walked in carrying a long heavy granite worktop with a sink hole in the middle and the two halves joined by just the strips front and back of the sink hole, it looked very vunerable to damage at that stage, and I was glad it was them fitting it not me.

That's because you are thinking the wrong way. With UFH (cooling) it's not really about cooling the airspace, will come that in a second. The floor surface becomes cooler than your body, its primary cooling method is a radiant heater in reverse. Your body is the heat source and the floor sucks the heat from you. The second thing it does, is it becomes a heat sink for the building fabric, it again sucks the heat away. Biggest thing we noticed when we did UFH cooling was the thermostat on wall only reads a couple of degrees cooler. But you feel way cooler and more importantly the whole building gets back to a nice temperature way quicker. We have recently also added a DIY MVHR cooler (car heater matrix installed into a duct filter housing), not because it's just like Aircon, because it isn't, as airflow rates are way to low, but because it cools the air coming into the building and gets to the high areas in rooms. That air is about 6 degrees cooler than it would otherwise be. So over a few hours has a cooling effect. A chart showing the effect on the air existing the MVHR unit to go into the rooms The yellow line is air temperature as it leaves the MVHR unit. Blue is after the heat exchanger Red is water temperature.

The architect telling you rads won't work is essentially the architect telling you they're going to design a shit house that needs more heating than you would like. Did you talk about levels of insulation and airtightness? You're doing mvhr so I'd start there, figure out some heating (and cooling) demands then decide if you need. IME architects will often speak a pile of bumkin about what is and isn't possible in terms of heating. In most cases this is based on having one bad experience and wanting to have themselves future hassle. Passivhaus/ AECB qualified architects are sometimes better, but they can swing the other way and under specify. Also in my experience you can spend many hours and pounds on iterating this at design stage, only for the eventual contractor that gets the job to rip up those plans and do something completely different. Case in point my current project (BMS for a london town house reno), I suggested ashp for heating+cooling, architect said it's not possible in a Victorian terrace, client paid M&E consultant who specified system boiler and multisplit Aircon, that was all thrown out in value engineering and re-tendering (not to mention planning application refusal), eventual contractor is now installing a single Veissman ashp to do everything via a mix of UFH, fan assist and even cast iron rads.

fancoils over UFH for 1st floor / bedrooms all day long. free air con.

Is agree. UFH all the way in 1st floor. We bought towel rads as well, still sitting in their boxes. As we had concrete and screed 1st floors, cost of UFH on 1st floor was minimal, 500m of pipe, pump and manifold. rads would have coated way more and compromised the rooms.