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Once upon a time a deluded wrinkly, his much less wrinkly wife and their noisy little dog left their almost fairy tale rural retreat to live in a freezing rented bungalow while they buggered about trying to build a new semi-urban retreat nearby. (How clever am I avoiding the word suburban!). Everything would have gone swimmingly but for the fact that the head of the wrinkly was just too full. It sort of still is I think. In the four months since the last post (stop thinking of a bugler at sunset even though some days that feels appropriate) much has been done: We’ve built a garage and the front of site is much less of a moonscape. All our blockwork is in, much of it rendered. We’ve now got one flat roof and two slated rooves, one with loads of solar panels. All our windows and some of our doors are in. We’ve got 240mm of underfloor insulation and a circa 100mm sand and cement screed with lots of buried pipes, of both the heating and soil varieties. The screed alone changed things to more house than warehouse - fabulous. Almost all the internal wall skeletons are back up - so now we get a much better feel for the layout which is a very good thing. (We built some downstairs walls earlier but took them down to make the DPM and insulation easier.) Most of the frame insulation is in. There’s even loft insulation in the loft - ok it’s still in its rolls ready to be fitted but it’s still there, patiently waiting. And there’s some VCL in place and we’ve made a start on the inner skin - some battens and yet more mineral wool to form what is really an insulated service void to give us a half decent wall U value. The man cave has its insulated metal panel roof and is usefully storing tons of stuff. All the service pipes and wires are buried in a trench ready for connection to said man cave which meant yet more depressing hours on a digger, and now the back garden is a moonscape. A humongous insulated twin pipe monster conger eel of a thing is buried, surfacing at the concrete plinth for the heat pump at one end and in the under stairs cupboard at the other. We have surface water drainage pipes installed at the back. Phew. No wonder we are worn out. And I’ve probably left lots of things out too - when you are on site every day it’s so easy to forget what has been done and focus instead on the rather elongated to do list that keeps me awake at night. Not every night mind, some nights are a lot better than others and I am getting a vaguely sensible amount of sleep more nights than not now, thanks to constantly talking stuff through with J. But there is an essential difference in the build. Before we sold Bramble we knew we were running out of money so we weren’t going at full hurtle. I had a twenty minute drive to and fro and a soak in the bath, all of which helped me keep my head in the game. It felt like there was time to think. Now I have a twenty second walk (if I dawdle) to and from site. Despite the ice box (aka rented bungalow) having a really powerful gas combi boiler it has a low power electric shower that dribbles just enough water to get clean but not get warm. And we’ve the money we need to complete, so it’s warp factor 8 Mr Sulu. Now if I was doing this on my own I’d have no choice but to slow right down, and try and get my head together, and feel in control again. Thankfully we are totally in this together, so we aren’t slowing down. Not that it’s without tensions. J and I talk everything through and she keeps track of tons of things that I can’t (hopefully everything that I can’t, which is an unfair burden but that’s how it is). We identify short term priorities and I focus on them, with me tacitly accepting that I am not personally in control of everything as for me to be so would mean a lot slower progress: neither of us want to stay in the ice box a day longer than strictly necessary. So the tightrope act is to balance keeping the pedal down as hard as possible without us actually losing control or allowing any major cock ups to occur. Simples. It gets harder when there is anyone else on site but ourselves and Rolly, our chippy. Peeps are incredibly (and I believe unconsciously) attention hungry especially when their needs are coupled with my need to monitor all work and limit disturbance to the neighbourhood. It’s so frustrating that when a contractor is on site my own productivity declines enormously. And then there’s the gargantuan mess, especially in one particular case - the thoughtless dumping of spare stuff; the treading of material up and down the road without a care for the frozen moron still sweeping and hosing down the road in the dark hours after they’ve finished their second pint; the drifting flocks of discarded paper bags mixed in with fast food packaging. Sigh. At least everyone we’ve had on site so far has done excellent work, so that does compensate. The feeling of a lack of control is not helped by the fact that I’m completely useless at estimating the time needed for tasks - though as J frequently mentions we’ve not done lots of this stuff before so we should accept that we can’t know. The DPM and underfloor insulation took me many, many times what I imagined and I’ve a black belt in beating myself up. I enjoyed doing the lower polystyrene layer, so nice to work with, but hated the PIR layer. The polystyrene has spring in it and one can cut pieces a little oversize, lever them in and get a really nice, tight fit. It’s messy in that little baubles of white stuff get everywhere but they don’t get down your throat. PIR however is sooooo different. The dust it creates is truly horrible, it lingers in the throat many hours later even if a mask is worn, which it mostly was. It almost appears to shrink away from it’s neighbours - when cut to precise size and shape, wrestled into place shooting showers of nasty dust up as the air trapped underneath is expelled through the tiny gaps at the side - it still sits there showing a small but definite gap between the sheets. Not at all satisfying. Thank heavens we ignored the architect and chose not to put PIR in the walls. So it turns out that there is a job worse than moving tons and tons of crush. But thats now done, thank heavens. As an aside I’d planned just polystyrene, but the reinforced slab came up a bit more than planned so I switched to part PIR to get the insulation level I’d targetted. Note to self: get quotes for different thicknesses of stuff before deciding. Buying stuff that local suppliers have on hand saves tons, which accidentally benefitted us on the underfloor insulation - had things gone to plan it would have cost us rather more for the same insulation performance due to me designing in theoretically available sizes. Odd world, innit. The need to book contractors is a real source of pressure. An example: We have been recommended a plasterer who everyone says is brill and so is v busy and we don’t want to lose him, but that means guessing a timescale and thence sticking to it. I’m an ex-project manager. I know that to manage the project requires knowledge of the timescales for each task in the train, and as above - I really don’t have a scooby. Well, I do, but Skooby the Skoda probably doesn’t count in that regard. So, in summary we’ve got tons done, but tons still to do. Xmas has annoyingly punctuated the project but that’s probably a mental godsend - at least I’ve a popped ballon to enjoy putting in my empty honey jar. We’re working really well and closely together as a couple and I will get used to the feeling of panic just below the surface that not feeling personally in control causes; the foreboding that I cannot be confident that I haven’t missed something important; the relying on J that will deliver much faster progress. You never know, my next post might even be a bit about the build…

Ufh pipes will cost a grand to buy, if you don’t put them in you need a serious word with yourself. I don’t understand the figures like some on here, but I know I’m sitting in the most comfortable house I’ve been in for a long time, just a gentle warmth in the tiles emits to every point of the house. it’s just an absolute pleasure.

Hi everyone. It’s been four weeks since the last blog instalment and despite the Christmas and New Year break, quite a lot has happened. Apologies for a somewhat scattergun approach but I wanted to try to cover all the progress. Kitchen units and appliances Last time, just before Christmas, carpenter Chris was halfway through fitting our kitchen units. That work was completed during the first week of January in readiness for… Kitchen worktops Martin from Langford Stone came out to template the kitchen/pantry/utility units for our worktops. While he was at it, we also asked him to template for several granite surfaces for our master ensuite. A week later Langford’s team of four fitters arrived with some very large slabs of granite, which they duly fitted without issue and to a high standard. We’re very pleased with the results: Internal doors Chris and Alan fitted the four pocket doors to the sliding gear installed back in September, before plastering. They then fitted the oak door linings for the 8 conventional doors and hung those doors. The door linings required some thinking about because we originally opted for rebated linings but these have had to be reinforced with ply backing to give enough meat to confidently screw in hinges that can take the weight of the (44 kg!) doors. We hope still to get the rebated look by fixing full width door jams, which we’ve now ordered. The doors themselves are 33” Avon Oak fire doors from Todd doors. We opted to buy them unfinished because the factory finish doors felt a bit ‘plasticky’. Mrs P. has done a brilliant job with sealing them with Osmo Door oil and we are very pleased with the results - they have a lovely look and feel to them . The doors supplied were really good quality - no need for further sanding before oiling and no complaints from the carpenters (except about the weight!) Troy Pointer supervising operations: 2nd fix electrics After a pause at the beginning of January, Darren is now back with us and making good progress on the second fix electric. Skirtings Steve, our tiler came in to fix the porcelain skirting tiles and was able to make a start, but the rethink needed for the door linings meant we are not ready to fix all the architraves just yet. So he has promised to come in on a future Saturday to finish those off. The skirting tiles themselves are 900 mm long and have more of a bow in than we were expecting (well I was expecting them to be flat to be honest!). Steve was worried that they would not look great but in reality unless you look along the line of the wall you can’t really notice the bowing and we are happy to live with it (especially since we can’t think of any sensible alternative at this stage). Once grouted or caulked to the same colour as the walls we don’t think it will be an issue. Ensuite boxing-in I’ve been whiling away the odd hour here and there preparing the ensuite for final fix by my brother next week. There’s quite a lot of pipework which needs to be hidden - given the way the house design squeezes three bathrooms into a small space, the stud walls are just not wide enough to take it all. So my idea was to create some boxing-in using spare 4x2s to hide the pipes, provide some built-in cupboard space, and form a framework for timber cladding on the lower walls. Sure, I could have asked the chippies to do this and they’d have done a great job in no time... but where’s the fun in that? For the timber cladding itself we’re going be using some of the left over Brimstone heat treated ash we have used to clad the outside of the house. This time of course we'll seal it with Osmo oil. The quality of that Brimstone Ash is too good to waste solely on the outside. You will hopefully be able to see from future blogs whether this bathroom design idea has been successful or not but for now here's some 'boxing-in'. Moving in next month! I mentioned in the previous blog that we had brought forward our target moving in date to the end of February. We now have a removal date booked of 23rd February. - so only five weeks away! We should be fine, we could probably move in and camp now if needed. The main things we really need sorting are a fully working bathroom, electrics, and ideally smooth and solid access to the front of the property. Hopefully we can get all that done in the next five weeks. Council tax Mrs P. and I were wondering about bin collection and also how soon the council would want to start charging council tax, when lo and behold the man from the council turned up. He explained the process, gave us a form, and told us we could request bins (for which we have to pay a £81 one off charge - of course we do). Since we will be ceasing the council tax liability on our rented house, we are happy to start paying council tax on the new house. The council man said it could take three or four months to get a council tax valuation but they will backdate the charge to our move in date. Address After seven months(!) Royal Mail have finally got round to adding our address to their postcode checker database. They say on their website that they will only add it when you move in but as anyone who has self-built will know it’s really very difficult to arrange deliveries, service installs, etc. if your postcode is not on that Royal Mail database. My advice for anybody starting a self-build is get that address registered as early as possible. Fibre Another service that’s taken seven months from request to delivery is our full fibre to the house. Many of you will know this is a new build building control requirement for England, so we requested (and paid for it) back in June. It finally arrived last week. Unfortunately we didn’t get added to the Openreach fibre database straight away so no service providers could offer us a fibre service until that was resolved earlier this week. We’re hoping to get the broadband service up and running next week. Focus for the next two weeks: Electrics, still lots to do. We’re hoping to have two sparkies in for most of next week so they should make a lot of headway. Plumbing. My brother Chris is back for 4 days next week and will focus on getting our master ensuite up and running, the kitchen & utility sinks fully plumbed in, and then if there’s time progress on the family bathroom and guest ensuite. Landscaping. Ashley, our garden landscaper is making a start on the front landscaping from Monday. We’re really looking forward to seeing the crushed aggregate disappear under something more wheelchair-friendly. Dashboard: Contractor days on site this past four weeks: 47 Contractor days on site since build start: 495 Budget: No change - over budget but within contingency. Plan: Moving in booked for 23rd February. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: N/A Current top issues and worries: None.

That's the trouble with this country - lowest standards possible. And a general public that are willing to accept that. So a cheap 30kW combi that only modulates down to 10kW, thermostat in every room, boiler that lasts about 5 years because it cycles so often. That'll do

As above. All the best for another year of staring at one tiny problem for waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. And then realising it didn't REALLY matter that much after all. Adios 2025, here we go for 2026. Get your house built asap, or it'll be 2027 and I'll be telling you off again

We are now in that phase where we can see the finish line not far away but, bizarrely, the closer we get the more there seems to be to do. The list the jobs that yet need to be done is a bit depressing; reflecting on all we have achieved so far is much more uplifting. We are certainly in a significantly better position as we approach the end of the year than we expected to be when we started the project. Work has continued in the run up to Christmas and several trades have asked if they can work some days during the holiday period (er… yes please!). We have sadly suffered a family bereavement this week which has naturally led to reduced focus on the house, so apologies if this week’s blog is a bit rambling. We do find creating the blog helpful and therapeutic, so we’re inflicting it on you regardless! Cladding Alan and Chris have now completed the ash cladding at the front of the house and the scaffold is down - yay! The cladding looks quite dark at the moment but it should fade to silver over the next year where exposed to daylight. It will be interesting to see how the silvering graduates under the soffits which will presumably remain darker for many years. Kitchen Our carpenter Chris has started to install the kitchen, utility and pantry units. In the past we’ve installed kitchens ourselves but various circumstances have meant we’ve not been in a position to do this and Chris is undoubtedly doing a better job than we could do. The main kitchen is bespoke from Husk Kitchens in Bristol and uses ply drawer fronts faced with Fenix. Mrs P. is, as you would expect, Artistic Director and I defer to her on all colour choices (or else we would probably end up with beige/grey everywhere). We both really like the effect now that we see the kitchen beginning to take shape. Of course Mrs P. does have extraordinary good taste - she chose me after all! Our signature 'Wall of Ovens': Here's the utility room. Mrs P. may have allowed me free rein with the colours on this one - I know my place 😉 Electric second fix Darren has been progressing fixing of sockets switches and lights. First lights fitted! Our batteries and inverters have finally arrived and been connected, so the solar panels we had fitted in July(!) are now actually generating for us. Annoyingly, OpenReach still haven’t installed the fibre, so we can’t monitor our generation in real-time just yet - the geek in me will have to wait a bit longer for that. For those interested, we have 14.88kW of solar panels and 27.12 kWh batteries. Focus for the next two weeks: Obviously a quieter period than usual but we expect there will still be progress in a number of areas: Floor tiling - Steve should be back over the holiday period to fix the porcelain skirting tiles. Second fix electrics - More progress expected on lights and switches. That depressing list of things to do: Kitchen worktops Porcelain skirtings Finish bathrooms (x3) 2nd fix Commission STP Electric 2nd fix including lights, switches, heating wiring centre, CCTV, PIRs… Install fibre to house Internal door linings, architraves Internal doors Hatches to loft storage areas (x3) Fitted wardrobes Rear timber cladding Cladding front and rear canopy soffits Front landscaping, including level access, highway apron, parking and turning Rear landscaping, including level access and garden lighting Final airtightness test ‘As built’ SAP report Building Control sign-off VAT reclaim! + probably others we haven’t thought of. Dashboard: Contractor days on site this fortnight: 16.5 Contractor days on site since build start: 458 Budget: No change - over budget but within contingency. Plan: Breaking news! We are now aiming to move in at the end of February. So, a month earlier than previously planned. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: Kitchen units are substantially in so will be ready for worktop templating. Current top issues and worries: None.

Some of that kit will last 20 years. in 2022, the UK used 1,200,000 barrels of oil a day. So we have to get a new barrel every 14 seconds. A barrel of oil is currently a similar price to 400W PV module, that would produce about 500 kWh/year down where I am (I am quite happy to cover Cornwall in PV). A barrel of oil has about 1700 kWh of energy in it, but we cannot extract much more than about 70% of that. So in just over 2 years, a PV module would produce about the same raw energy as a barrel of oil. Then about 18 years for nothing.

So took delivery of the 4kW Haier ASHP today. So far first impressions are very good. Consists of an outdoor unit, complete with expansion vessel and pressure relief valve, inside the monobloc. Inside the packaging is also a controller and indoor wiring unit. So can return the one I thought I had to buy. So total cost is £2100 delivered to the door from Wolesely. Photos to follow with full install story

We’re self builders. Faffing is what we do. Why do the obvious when one can avoid doing anything for weeks while researching? 😕

OP states this is a ‘new block of flats’. If this ‘new build’ then surely all design, method statements, competencies etc, etc should be sorted. Not the sort of question to be thrown out to a load of strangers on the internet.

If you are still weighing up what floor system to use, then it’s a good job it’s raining as you are not ready yet. you need all of this completely ironed out first. Just as a few examples, before you start you need the numbers of all the local muck away Lorries in your phone, not one bloke you spoke to but 3-4 of them, if the stuff is piling up and the lad you spoke to can’t do today then you just phone the next. the same with a concrete pump, have two lined up, talk to both talk about access and anything else. go to the local concrete company and open up an account. Dumper hire, if a dumper breaks down do you know a company who will drop one off the next morning. all this stuff can turn a simple job into a disaster get very good at disaster management, have a plan for every eventuality.

Trump may keel over tomorrow. But that is to miss the point. The fact that he has been allowed to drive a coach and horses through the old world order, threatening economic and military force to take over Iceland/Greenland with no pushback from the much vaunted "checks and balances" of the US constitution is the problem. He has shown that the institutions that were supposed to keep any madman in check are toothless. The US can no longer be considered a reliable partner. We are just one suoreme court appointment, one special election away from everything being thrown up in the air. I can't remember the source of the quote but "we cannot base our security and prosperity on some voters in Florida every 4 years"

Will fully update later but have a guy here now from same company whose first question was "who did the service?" Embarassing when I said same company you work for but different guy! This guy seems to know what he is doing been doing it 27 years. Expansion tanks just needed pumping up which he has done and DO NOT need replacing.... paid 50% deposit on the basis they said they needed replacing and guy is going to sort with office. Is sorting that leak (pic I uploaded with the leak from the bottom of Gledhill tank) which he noticed right away. Will explain other stuff later on....

Get some EPS200 and wedge/hammer it down until it hits something solid. Make sure you don't block any ventilation for the floor. Foam it in place with illbruck FM330. Trim the top of the EPS flush with the top of the joists. Stick the plywood to the top of the EPS with stixall or CT1. Apply masking tape to the door and floor before you do this as the foam and sealant will be hard to clean off.

After living in Australia this is a common thing over there. a large plot of land is divided into a few dozen house plots, the local companies come in and buy and build their design house on that plot, punters then visit at the weekend and walk around all the show houses. you pick a builder you like and commission them to build on a plot you have or they will have other plots on other sites. I really hate the English way of a divided up estate all built by the same contractor in the same boring design to the same poor standard.

Hi all. I've been on here a while on and off and posted about 3½ years ago for advice on potential plots. We ended up getting a lovely plot in a nice village in Norfolk not long after that but was held up for 3 years because of neutrient neutrality and natural England stopping all new planning permissions being granted. We got full planning 4 months ago and have made a start, in the winter🫣. Foundation blocks are nearly laid to ground level. Me and my husband with a little help from others are running and building ourselves. My husband's a carpenter and was a site/contracts manager for a building company. We are building a single storey timber frame home with a brick skin up to window height then black cladding. A slightly unusual roof will top it off. We're both really excited and frightened especially regarding budget. We will have to stop the build throughout to earn more money to finish it but will be determined to get there in the end. If anyone has any words of wisdom or suggestions regarding internal layout we'd welcome your input. Also we're stuck with our heating and hot water system in terms of best and most efficient way to do it. It will just be 2 adults+a dog living in the house. We have no gas here and don't want oil so will be all electric. We'd love to have solar and batteries one day but it'll have to wait a while. The back of the house is south facing so will need to organise some shading but again budget may determine what we have. Thank you all in advance and I look forward to being part of your amazing community

Impossible to calculate payback on MVHR, it’s about health and comfort which are priceless IMO! I I self installed a simple system for less than £2k, one of the best things about the house. Fresh clean air, without drafts and low heat loss. Trickle vents are uncontrolled ventilation, too much in high winds and also admit a surprising level of noise.

If you have to ask the question here, you are not competent to undertake this work.

I was under pressure to get PIR down, UFH installed and pressurised to get the CemFloor installed pre Xmas so I got a fella in to do it in the end. He flew through it and did a great job tweaking a few bits on site that the layout plans hadn't allowed for. It was sad, yet a relief to see it disappear under the screed! And another +1 for liquidscreedpumping.com if in the East Anglia area 👍🏼

Get them to re do it, or don’t pay.

Thank you for proving my point It is a common misconception amongst people such as yourselves that the UK could achive energy independence if only the "greens" would let us drill for more oil and gas. In case you misread my OP the oil and gas industry itself is predicting production will fall even with no restrictions on drilling. Let's take the "Rosebank" field, described as the Uk's largest undeveloped oil and gas field. At it's peak, it's owners predict it will produce in excess of 21 MMSCF of natural gas every day, which sounds impressive until you realise that is about as much as Aberdeen uses per day. That won't make a dent in our imports. There is no way the UK can pull enough oil and gas out of it's territory to satisfy it's current demand for oil and gas That is the considered opinion of all the experts including oil and gas industry. So the only option is to reduce our consumption of oil and gas via things like efficency, reducing journeys by car, electrification of heat and transport. All the "Net zero" things but not for environmental reasons, for purely pragmatic reasons. As for coal, let us assume, for a moment that there are near unlimited coal reserves available to the UK. How do you propose we heat our homes and drive out cars on coal? Go back to coal cellars, and a fire in every room? Rip out out combi boilers for solid fuel boilers? And as for cars.... If you think EV's have too short a range and take too long to charge, wait until you try steam cars! 😁 If you genuinely think the future of UK energy is coal you should be cheering for EVs and pushing for the adoption of Heatpumps alongside the blue haired vegan tree huggers. It's not your fault. The oil and gas companies have a well funded disinformation and lobbying campaign for keeping the UK hooked on oil and gas. After all, drug dealers aren't going to help you kick the habit - not when there are vast profits to be made.

Lots of photos but chosen these started this in April 2025

I use ½ blanks between my contactors, but a couple of W in a steel CU isn't really an issue. I had probs with my DIN mounted SSRs especially as my sparky had used an abs box. Luckily it was in a large closed cupboard so I could leave the cover off. I prefer my current setup. The RH unit was my sparky's work. The LH contains: 24VDC power, <gap>, contactor 1, <½gap>, contactor 2, <flyback diodes>, contactor 3, <½gap>, contactor 4 The 24V Tasmota 4×relay module is below. The red /black switch loom is all 24V.

Hello all. I’ve been a long time reader of the forum. We live on the border of North and South Yorkshire. I’ll just give you a little background. We have gutted, extended and renovated a 1900’s semi detached cottage around 2018 which was our first major project. We lived there for 5 years and then bought a bigger property for our growing family (which has loads of opportunities and work to do to it). The reason I’m posting is we have planning permission for a replacement dwelling on my wife’s family farm. It will stay in the family and not be sold so we want to make sure it is built very well and to be well insulated and airtight. I am looking at either traditional brick and block or ICF. Can anyone share their thoughts or ideally if anyone has a project ongoing or completed locally, and would like to share some advice or show us the end result it would be much appreciated. I know there are many people on here who have built with ICF and seam to be very pleased with it, but I don’t know their location or where to start asking. I hope I’m not asking to much, and thank you all in advance Pete

Baan a little while, but finally got both planning permission and building warrant approval! 😎 So this will be the year of proper progress, you know, like making the building a bit colder and a lot less habitable… 🤣 https://www.smallmissionhall.com/

No, this is a scewed perspective based upon microcosms that highlight poor installations. Last year there were probably around 60,000 heat pumps installed, for arguments sake. Do you have statistics that show that the majority of these installations were not good jobs? That you're more likely than not to get a bad job? Have you run your own figures? Lets take a pretty run of the mill materials list for a retrofit using some publicly available prices at Midsummer Wholesale for the heat pump and other online suppliers for other stuff: Vaillant Aerotherm + 7kW - £4724.24 Vaillant controls - VR70, SensoComfort plus internet gateway - £633.41 Telford UCV 250l- £1225.70 50 liter volumiser - est. £350 (not Misummer who want £455 for a 25l volumiser) Installation kit - anti vibration feet, insulated flexi pipes, isolation valves, mag filter/strainer - £270 External pipe trunking (lets say 5m length) with bends and connectors etc. - £250 External Pipe insulation - £14/m x 10 external + sealant/glue & tape - £190 Internal pipe insulation for uvc and heating primaries etc. - £65 Anti-freeze valves - £200 Type b rcd - £180 Other electrical - cable (power and control), mcb, small enclosures, junction boxes, 2 x kwh meters,32A 4-pole isolator, trunking - £360 3 bog standard radiators - £300 2 nice column radiators for the living room and kitchen - £700 5 x good quality radiator valves - £150 Copper pipe mix of 28/22/15mm - £250 Press fit pipe fittings - £ 250 Pipe clips - £50 3-port diverter valve - £110 Expansion vessel kits x 2 heating and potable - £150 This comes to a grand total of £10408.35 and there are other bits and bobs I can't be bothered to list - like system cleaner/biocide/inhibitor and all those sorts of consumables. No UFH pipe or manifolds here either. No long primaries to house or through it. And this doesn't include materials for constructing a base. This represents a fairly small job for a reasonably efficient heating system. Yes, I can probably get some discount on the uvc and heat pump, but I'm sure this gives you a good illustration of what it actually costs to buy materials for an installation.

That's because the design, installation and commissioning is shite, not because heat pumps don't work. Unfortunately, you only really hear about the bad stuff, and the made up nonsense about how they don't work. I recently did the design and installation at an old house where half of it has 600mm uninsulated stone walls and the other half okay insulation badly detailed. They were having a load of renovation work being done and when the owner was telling the trades including plumbers I was coming to fit a heat pump, they were all negative saying it would never work bla bla. Did the install and the trades came back to do the finishing work and never stopped commenting on how warm the house was..... the owner is delighted saying the house has never been so comfortable. I know I'm blowing my own trumpet but there are plenty of genuine good installers out there that do a proper job and leave their customers very happy. However, I understand your worries. I'm here now as a designer and installer of heat pumps because I couldn't find anyone I could trust to do the design and install in our house. I first went down the route of installing a gas boiler myself and have just swapped this out for a heat pump. I have to say, the heat pump is just so much better by a mile. With your calcuated heat loss you can have something very simple, as @JohnMo says, and it can be very efficient. Now, I know that the BUS Grant is a prickly thing here on BH, but the idea that this just leads to price gouging by installer is IMHO, just nonsense. People need to properly run through the figures to understand why this is nonsense. For example, in the job above, the materials list for the whole job came in at more than £11k ex VAT without any uplift for me. If you're getting someone in to do the whole design and installation, the extra £7500 is something worth having as long as they're a good installer.

Just to close the loop on my situation last year. Sunamp arranged for a local contracted engineer to come out to pull out the faulty unit. Same day, a new unit arrived and plumbed into my new ASHP arrangement. So satisfied with the service that I received and hopeful that the new unit behaves. I also made the decision that the other (working unit) wasn't required in my setup any longer (just me and the daughter here now) so decided to sell this....it's listed here on BH, if anyone is interested. Seen very few cycles, so may be of interest to someone. Not sure if the warranty can be passed on though.

It’s chilly and foggy outside and the ‘Mk2’ insulated pre filter box is performing admirably. The Ubink insulated ducting being the coldest thing in the MVHR room now. It did seem to seem to be noisier/running faster than normal. I had my suspicions that the pre filter mesh may be getting clogged again, I also had my suspicion that freezing fog may be having an adverse affect on the air permeability of the fine mesh… Turns out the freezing fog was playing a major role in restricting air flow.

As promised, I spared you a Week 14 blog due to our visit to Yorkshire for a wedding and catch-up with old friends. It was lovely to do something unrelated to the house and it made us realise how all-consuming our build has become. We will definitely try to have some more non-house time through the rest of the build. That said, it’s back to the matter in hand: UFH Two weeks ago the guys were battling through laying the floor insulation in preparation for laying the UFH pipes, ahead of the screed pour which was booked for 3rd September. In the end it was a very close-run thing - the UFH pipes were ready by 13:30 and the screed arrived 10 minutes later. Too close for comfort really: Tight project scheduling is one thing but the stress of 11 cubic metres of unusable liquid screed potentially being dumped on the site was a very uncomfortable feeling. Screed Once started, the screed pour itself (by Williams Walls and Floors) seemed to go very smoothly (hah!) and it looks fantastic. We have had 65mm of Cemfloor Therm liquid screed laid. Still in stressed-out mode I woke up before 4:00am the next day worrying about what would happen if the pipes floated up or the screed was laid too high (they didn’t; it wasn’t). (I helpfully woke Mrs P. too just so that she could share the experience - she seemed not to appreciate it.) We left the house shut up for 24 hours as instructed by the screed man Rob Williams. On Friday morning I went over and opened up to find we had a sauna! All perfectly normal apparently, but the combination of heat from the screed setting reaction, the well-insulated relatively air-tight house and (presumably) 1000’s of gallons of water created an atmosphere that made Singapore seem like a desert. Sadly, I failed to get any photos of the clouds created as the windows were opened and the saturated ‘sauna’ atmosphere hit the September morning. By the afternoon, with all the windows and doors open the inside of the house seemed perfectly normal again. Seeing the screed poured in a few hours and reflecting on how fiddly all the underfloor insulation had been to lay, made me wish there was an option for a poured floor insulation - it would surely have been so much less effort and faster? Edit: There is apparently - https://www.rtu.co.uk/assets/documents/RTU-Ultrabead-Brochure.pdf. I have no idea if it is any good, what the pros and cons are etc, and it is too late for us but if we were doing another build (Mrs P: “We’re not!”), I’d certainly look into it. Render Just to make sure we weren’t missing an opportunity to get some outside work done while the focus was on the floor, we had booked our render team (Caesar Spray-rend and Plastering) to start boarding up the 50% or so of the external walls that are to be rendered (the other 50% will be vertically clad in Brimstone Ash). So on week 14 the STS construction boards were fixed to battens and last week the base coat was sprayed and smoothed out. It already looks a lot better just for some of the shiny breather membrane walls being covered up. We now have to wait a week before the top coat can be applied. We’re using EcoRend Thincoat for anyone who is interested. And finally… Marcus from our super groundworks team came in on Thursday to set all the stainless steel oak post brackets in concrete on top of their support pillars, and also to lay the smoothest, tidiest concrete slab you have ever seen to rest our ASHP on. …Which is just as well because the ASHP arrives on Monday! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this week: 22 Contractor days on site previous week: 16 Contractor days on site since build start: 249 Budget: Getting more challenging tbh - beginning to eat into the contingency - mainly costs I hadn't properly estimated. 😱 Plan: Still on track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this week: UFH pipes laid. Screed down! Current top issues and worries: Insulation - the additional ceiling insulation is still a worry - scheduled for w/c 15th September.

Where I worked before they built a spiral staircase. The plasterboard was stood against a wall outside and wetted frequently and gradually it curved under it's own weight as it was leaning against a wall. After several days it had got to the approximate bend radius needed so it was brought inside and wetted further and gradually eased into the bend needed. Once to the radius you need you let it dry before you screw it to the wall. That is a job well suited to DIY as it will take time and your own labour is free.

I had a 10.5m steel for the ridge and did not want to just box it in. So made a frame, similar to a skateboard halfpipe, covered in red faced plywood, then glued and pinned 4mm birch ply. Have two long pendant light fittings, one over island, other over dining table. Your friends might well be right. Will try and find recent photo.

I should probably advise a condensation risk analysis for IWI on top of CWI. WUFI is good but Glaser is at least indicative. My reason for insulated stud (in my mind a glued laminate of, say, 12mm OSB, xmm plastic insulation, 12mm OSB) is to reduce thermal bridging. Metal stud leaves a bridge all the way through the sandwich, but is a narrower highly-conductive thing against a fatter less-conductive thing. So the end result may not be so different. I don't know!

Yes, already proven here. Very early on in the build I confirmed the heat loss calculation was correct by leaving a single electric convector heater of known power on and plotting internal vs external temperature for several days. That gave me the Dt for a given power input, which tied exactly with the calculations. In any event I bought a 5kW ASHP to satisfy a max demand of just over 2kW. For me the only leap of faith was no heating in the bedrooms. SWMBO likes a cool bedroom about 18 degrees. Usually we have to keep the bedroom door shut to keep it down to that. In this cold spell we had to open the bedroom door occasionally to let a little bit of heat in, and still achieved the required temperature with no actual heating there.

If you want to do as much as possible yourself then I think there’s a few options. icf you can do everything yourself timber kit, get that put up and then finish it yourself timber built on site, you will probably need a couple of carpenters to help brick block cavity you will need a bricklaying gang. will also depend if you have a large chunk of cash up front, timber frame erected on site will probably be the heaviest up front cost. icf has a large up front cost, but probably 20% of a timberframe then you can drip feed cash into it. brick n block lowest up front cost but large weekly payments for labour.

Had some very minor domestic renovation experience but achieved possibly 90% of our self build. Paid professionals for electrics, plaster skimming, ASHP, window installation and screed. It is doable, time, money, quality consideration. 3 years before we moved in and 6 years later fitting final architrave ready for repainting!! Has been an amazing experience, learnt so much and the amazing contributions from Buildhub. My Dad, 75 years at the time helped me with the stick build. Would look at other build methods in the future.

Not me, but G, and not finished, but have a look at our blog......demolished bungalow and timber frame build

Full planning it is. Prepare yourselves for more questions. 🤠

Triple glazed lift n slide from norrsken here. the back wall of my place is 90% glass, I can’t recommend them enough -3 outside here and the doors on the inside feel warm, open them up and the outside feel is freezing. a strange thing you notice with this quality is the outside door handles are freezing cold, the inner handle is warm, there is no heat transfer through the door via any lock mechanism.

The mix is not important, getting your bricklaying team to mix it the same every time is the important thing. when you get the colour you want you need to discuss it with the bricky and get it in writing that they will use a gauge box to get it the same every time. any not up to standard gets taken down at their cost. you will need to buy sand in bulk and cement to get the same batch every time. DO NOT USE any form of mortar dye.

Hi everyone 👋 I’m new here and thought I’d introduce myself as we’re about to embark on what feels like a fairly sizeable (and exciting!) project. We’re currently in the process of purchasing an old farm property that’s seen better days and is very much in need of some care and attention. The house itself has been a rental for a long time and, as you’d expect, has suffered from a fair bit of neglect. Phase one for us will be getting the main house brought up to modern standards – sorting the basics, improving comfort and efficiency, and generally making it a solid, future-proofed home again. Once that’s complete, phase two will be the big one: converting the existing barn into residential use. The long-term goal is to create a spacious five-bedroom family home, making the most of the character of the original buildings while blending in plenty of modern comforts – hopefully lots of underfloor heating and well-thought-out modern electrics along the way. I’ve already spent far too many hours reading through the forum and it’s clear there’s a huge amount of knowledge here, so I’m really looking forward to learning from others, sharing progress, and no doubt asking plenty of questions as we go. luckily we gutted/renovated a nice 3 storey property in Whitby over lockdown which has given us confidence to attack another project. Thanks in advance – I’m sure you’ll be hearing more from me soon!

Passive class house here, not certified, no UFH. An actual measured heat usage of 3200kWh or 17kWh/m2/annum. Supplied by an electric plug in heater. It worked fine so long as you plugged it in anywhere downstairs and allowed it to gently input heat for 18hrs/day. Expecting it to batch heat on TOU tariff overnight wasn't as successful as i had hoped. it needed to be turned on at about 17:00 in winter to keep the living rooms warm enough(21deg). I added some electric heaters in the bathrooms for comfort as 21deg isn't quite toasty enough. Fan heaters are better than 2 Bar quartz heaters. The house is very comfortable. I replaced the electric radiator with an A2A HP for 2025. It's dropped our heating consumption to very close to 1000kWh or 5.5kWh/m2/annum. It works fine so long as you give it long enough run times for the heat to disperse around the house. It won't be quite as cheap as an A2W HP as you can't batch heat a slab on TOU tarriffs and a COP of 3 to 3.5 won't match a top end A2WHP. However it only cost €1500 installed so there isn't much in it. Add DHW demand or solar and the sums would change again. (FWIW an A2W + UFH was quoted at €14k in 2020) TLDR: 1. Anything will heat a passive house comfortably if you're prepared to give it a fair chance. Short run times and quick runups won't work with localised heat sources. 2. A2W HP's are best for comfort and running costs. However they only have the best long term costs if you can get a well priced install.

Good shot sir

Happy new year folks, Thankyou for being such a treasure chest of information, and laughs.

Stop faffing, get PIR, spend once, save for ever more. Once in you cannot upgrade. I shopped around, bought online saved a small fortune, it came on lorry direct from factory - I had a full lorry load of 100mm thick, so 2 layers.

Where is your structural design? Should be zero need for such questions, if your building is designed.

Hi. Something’s not right if your design flow temp is as high as 35°! GF UFH, I assume, is going into a slab? If so, 35° into that will cause the house to overheat. You should be mid-high 20’s and certainly under 30°, if well built, airtight, and you have heat recovery too. Buffer “delete” may be subject to the manufacturer’s installation instructions, and an MCS reg’d installer may refuse to stray from that. On a recent Heat Geek install I witnessed they put either a 25L or a 50L 2-port volumiser in, on the flow which makes more sense to me, as that was stipulated in the MI’s vs what the low heat demand called for. That was a refurb, prob got to EnerPHit levels, and the flow temps at 25° made the place almost unbearable to work in. @jimseng As we don’t know much about your particular project we can’t possibly size a heat pump here yet, but 3.5-4kw will be quite slow to reheat a decent sized UVC; your game plan needs thought which considers your DHW needs / frequency / number of occupants. Heating is a doddle to resolve, DHW needs to be considered in isolation and planned for pragmatically. You can, for eg, use an immersion strategically to boost for times of duress, so many ways to ‘make this happen’. Do you have solar PV in the plan?

Marvellous. The most important thing when renovating an old bungalow is to immediately bulldoze it.

Yes. Or even if 25/50/75 mm etc below you can use a sacrificial layer of eps to bring you up to level. I say sacrificial but obvs would be part of your floor insulation.

2 possibilities You have a leak somewhere You may have an issue with the expansion vessel (red tank) First check the expansion vessel When the pressure is near zero, like in the first picture, get a tyre pressure gauge and read the pressure in the red cylinder. There should be a valve exactly like a car tyre one on the top. It should be something like 0.7bar, 1 bar or similar. If it has pressure eg 0. 7bar but the gauge on the water reads near zero, it is possible you have a leak somewhere. If it reads near zero your expansion vessel has lost has pressure (you may still ha e a leak but it's a bit less likely) If the latter you can pump it up with a.tyre or bicycle pump. Then top it up with the flexi hose. You need to turn the. Slotted screwdriver thing so it's. Inline withe the pipe, then turn the black handle at the other end. There should be a whooshing sound and the pressure creep up. Once at desired. Level (1 - 1.5bar) turn both valves off and disconnect the pipe (get a saucepan under as some water will come out. Beware just topping up the pressure continuously. The water is going somewhere!