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Weeks 75 to 90 The plasters have finished the open plan vaulted area and it’s given us the boost to get going again in other areas. At the opposite end of the building is the plant room, this was the first room we started work on to enable the solar to be installed. I’m back in here to tile the floor and since it’s the first floor I have ever tiled I am very happy with it. I have left the service penetrations until all the services are in, we currently have temporary supplies from our existing home. We have a provisional date in August to close our village single track road (that goes to the school so can only be closed in school holidays) and will then have our own services coming into the building I will then seal up any air gaps and finish the tiling. Whilst the plaster was drying in the open plan lounge and kitchen we started on the MVHR installation. We made it as light as we could but it’s size was still too much for me to help with so we had to think of alternate methods of lifting it luckily our business had tools we could improvise with. I’ll let the photos show how this went. In the loft it all looks nice and neat. We could have floor mounted it but it would have taken up a lot of room and the pipes coming down would have needed boxing in. We could have put it in the loft but changing the filters would not have been so easy. This is a good compromise, once the pantry kitchen units are in you won't be looking up as much and we will be able to access it easily with our step ladders for filters and servicing etc. Once the MVHR was hung we moved on to fitting the plasterboard up in the pantry then I taped and jointed it all and painted the lounge and the pantry. Tape and Joint I had the opportunity of using a different corner tape around the velux, since this was not an area like a doorway that was going to possibly get knocked. I have previously used the corner paper tape with the metal reinforced edges. I have found you need to be careful on the corner you don’t rip or sand the paper. Traditional metal corner bead for tape and joiners is too thick and it can be hard getting plastic corner bead for tape and joiners. I do know of few places but they don’t deliver it due to its length and fragility. The tape I used was, SIME edge protection very similar to Strait Flex Tuff Tape both are on Amazon, it’s described as plastic coated and although on a roll when cut and folded for the corner it is not floppy like paper tape, and more like the metal reinforced paper tape but with a stronger corner. After using it around the Velux I decided to use it on the pantry doorway where I was matching up to the wet plasterers metal bead. I am happy with the outcome and will probably use it a lot more. When I first used it I bed it in and wiped out as usual but later found out they recommend to do the first finish coat straight away. The instructions on the tape are in Polish I think but the copy below is from an America website for Strait Flex Fold Original in half at the center crease, with the print-sides facing themselves. For outside corners, fold more than the desired angle with the print-side facing the wall. For inside corners, fold less than the desired angle with the print-side facing out. Apply all-purpose compound to the corner. Press Original into the wet compound and adjust, if necessary, to create a straight line. Wipe down tight and smooth with a taping knife. The first finishing coat of compound can be applied immediately. Let this dry completely, for several hours or overnight. This last step saves a day compared to paper tape that is covered the following day. Second fix electrics has started in the lounge and the light fittings have been put up and testing started for the electrical certification. The kitchen has been delivered and that went very smoothly all placed neatly in the middle of the room then a few days later we have spread it all out into appliances, pantry units and main kitchen units, the island was placed in its approximate location and immediately became a huge flat surface that we could fill. Whilst David is installing the kitchen we are also both test fitting and plumbing in the bathroom and putting the plasterboard up. We need to keep moving on with the bathroom as this will be mainly me painting and tiling whilst David will continue the kitchen installation on his own and second fix electrics. Going room by room works for us well as we can both work to our own strengths without waiting for other trades this will hopefully mean we get to move in later this year but with some rooms completely not started. Thanks for getting to the end of this update, if you have read my other blog entries please note that the posting date today does not match the week numbers as I am a little behind updating the blog. We have been working on the bathroom since May, lots more in the next blog and I have the build costs to update.

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.

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...

Reading a lot of these posts it's pretty clear that that many on BH don't have a high opinion of folk like me who design as a day job. I can see many professionals have lost their compass and are not delivering value for money and are not that good at running a business, hence the poor service delivery. I've been in the construction industry for over 40 years, 20 spent as a contractor running my own business' , did my own self build, really pretty much all by myself on the tools ( took me three years) then off to uni to be an Engineer, now for the last ten years I wear two hats as an Engineer and Architectural designer. Thus have a fairly rounded view of the in and outs of this. I can say that in the last 20 years there has been a race to the bottom, not just from designers, but also say the timber frame suppliers, ground works designers ( UFH and rafts etc) and designers who think that if they curtail their design brief, caveat it a lot the money is going to flow. But in the long term it doesn’t, as often the key to good business is repeat business, recommendation, even in the short term cutting you brief down often leads to problems, queries, design mistakes that just eat into your profit and leads to potential claims or Clients rightfully withholding money. Ok, lets look at some financials. The bottom line for a new self builder ( not someone who works in the trade with contacts) is the tendency to split each element into work packages, say foundations, timber frame and roof ect. Each package supplier takes the cream out of the job, leaving nothing for the self builder. Then you have planning and BC regs on top not least, that all adds to the cost. I work on a lot of projects where I'm involved holistically. I work very closely with the Client, not just as a designer but also do hand holding and participate in all of the design. Now to be blunt. Say for a self build the design fee is £10k. An experienced chippy ( joiner may cost you £250 a day, a labourer £150 as day, total 2.0k per week. All I have to do to wash my face is to save you a few weeks, just on the labour alone and I have well and truly washed my face! The pendulum is swinging back where folk are clocking that we need to "go back to the old days", but now you need someone like me who can cope with the modern code requirements for example, and the modern way of doing business., much less trust and more hard arse stuff. I get this kind of business where folk are happy to pay me a bit more as I can guide them, hold their hand and most importantly we all have fun, we do whacky designs that you only get to do on self builds! We also tend to avoid " work packages where we can, say from MBC et al and keep the cream to ourselves. This also often helps cash flow and gives the Client more control on day to day site activity. Now in the round if you want to make some money then try and find a designer like me that is local to you, with good contacts.

In my day job I sometimes ask AI for it's calculations for a bit of fun! A lot of the time I find it's completely wrong! I checked a beam design against AI and found it to be a factor of ten out, on the unsafe side. One of the bits it missed was the destabilising loads ( an unrestrained load applied to the top flange) loads, the lack of adequate lateral restraint and the support conditions, all that lead to is being miles unsafe. Now AI aggregates information, you could have ten undergraduates all uploading their student projects and AI thinks.. this is right, but it's dangerous bollocks! There is good reason for BC to reject you! If you want to use AI to generate calcs then you have to be competent enough to make sure it's not rubbish. By all means use AI to do the donkey work for you, but unless you know what you are doing, have the knowledge to understand what the calculations mean then you are an idiot!

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.

My self build journey, to illustrate how things have become harder. First self build 2003. Moving from England to the Highlands. A big motivation of self build Vs just buy a house, was we could buy a building plot and a static caravan for cash without having to sell our old house. If we had gone for the "simple" option of just buy a house we would have been trying to sell and buy at the same time under 2 different house buying legal systems which just sounded like a nightmare. Plus a self lbuild had been on my bucket list for a long time. That first house the only technical design input was from the timber frame company. Total cost of all drawings planning and building warrant £2K No surveys. TF company was paid to build a and watertight shell and we fitted out the inside employing trades as needed. House prices here were rising fast then, and by the time we had finished house value comfortably exceeded build cost. That all worked out well. IF ONLY it was still that simple. A few years later we decided we wanted a smaller house, (done the 5 bedroom thing) and were lucky after some searching to find a plot 2 doors up the road from the first one. The plan had always been start the new build, put the old house on the market and sell it to finish the new build. Our timing was poor. This was post 2008 crash and the market here was dead. The old house was on the market for 2 years and had just 6 viewings. My work as electrician took me all over the place, and I was seeing the same houses everywhere just stuck with a for sale board that had been there well over a year. All the agents and any "helpful" adviser could say if it's not selling, it is over priced, reduce the asking price. That would be all very well if you could reduce your asking price and then reduce the asking price of the house you bought. But self build does not work like that. Try telling a builders merchant house prices have crashed so you want all building materials reduced by a similar amount and ditto tradesmans wages. If we had reduced the price to distress sale levels, we could very well have ended up selling our 5 bedroom house for less than the build cost of the replacement 3 bed house. There was no way I was paying to downsize. Our build ground to a halt with just me doing what I could but held up by bigger things needing doing. Our saviour from this situation came in the form of a lady that wanted to buy the house and run it as a guest house, but could not get the funds to buy it without accounts, so her offer was to rent the house for a few years and then buy it. So we accepted and reluctantly went back to being landlords. That did eventually work out. It ended up being 7 years rental before she finally bought it, and those 7 years of rent, pretty much paid for the completion of the new house. So it worked out financially better just because of that. The actual sale price of the 5 bed house was only £50K more than the build cost of the new 3 bed house. As others have said a self build now likely costs more than the market value unless some house price inflation saves you. As for complications and red tape. The old pay the TF supplier not a lot for all the drawings seemed no longer available. We ended up paying an architecturtal technician and a SE to produce all the drawings that cost us £10K. We didn't have to do any surveys or that nonsense. The only other bits of paper we had to pay for (but not on the first build) were air test, and as built EPC. Building control seemed more stringent on the second build, with the added irritation that we had to keep paying an extra £100 per year to keep renewing the building warrant up to completion. And self build site insurance was a LOT more expensive second time around.

a better finish is achievable, but it doesn’t come flat packed, local company made these 3 doors for me.

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.

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..........

You ask all bonafide contractors for their RAMS too, before they step foot on site, and you also do inductions (regardless of how “busy” you are). And make the site a safe and organised place to be. Allow a lot of time clearing up, sweeping (M-class vacuum needs to be on site as you’re not supposed to kick up dust these days), festoon lighting, don’t have sharp or ‘stabby’ things poking out of ground (rebar protruding needs to be bent back over itself or a mushroom cap put on it), no unmarked or open pits or trenches or barrier around them, list goes on but not rocket science. Take risks with your own life all you like, they can’t jail you for that, but when you invite any 3rd party there then the onus is on you to make them ‘not expire’ ahead of their predetermined departure from this life.

Well done. End of story.

After a few months of delays I'm heading toward finally getting the keys to the new house. In the meantime I've been trying to unpick the house extension history and I think I finally got there. Green is the original cottage. Two (or 3 very small) bedrooms to the left, bathroom & kitchen in the middle, living room at the bottom. I suspect this pre-dates 1950s. Livingroom has raised flooring - probably about 20cm higher than the rest. The ceiling has been raised accordingly and the rafters are visible between the ceiling panels as a feature. I wonder if this was done to retrofit floor insulation at some point... Weird. Wall construction unknown, but from memory, it might be ~10cm thinner than the cavity wall of the top extension, which makes me wonder if it's a solid wall. Will need a closer inspection. Blue extensions were added probably around 1950-60s. Top extension turned the bedroom wing into 3 bedrooms + 1 study. Wheelchair-accessible toilet & wetroom was bolted on to the side of the bedroom wing. Bottom-right blue section is a single-skin flat-roof garage. Right above it is a potential garage conversion into a bedroom/dining room/study. From memory, Flat roof is raised above the garage roof, and walls were quite thick. Will need investigation. Top right pink bit is a single skin utility room. Looks like this is going to be my hobby for the next 10 years. God knows what horrors I'm going to uncover on close inspection.

Nope. It’ll fight your plasterboards until the death. Screws will wind in and pull through the boards, as they won’t be tight against the studs. Seriously, do not use 100mm, persevere and get 75mm.

You can ask for this to be more 'in depth', so they charge more for the investigations and remove as much ambiguity as is practicable.

Excellent. There are a couple of pairs of my Amtico planks that have grain line features that can be partially matched up if you lay them at the right offset on different rows. Sadly the fitters decision to change all my offsets has removed these. At present the plan now is for me to label selected planks that he has laid. And to select replacement planks. He will then take up the labelled planks and replace them with my alternatives. It won't get back to my own careful arrangement, but will reduce the worst of the problem. Unfortunately this means deferring finishing off the floor as my kitchen fitter is back in on Wednesday. I don't mind @Nickfromwales being so frank. I think doing his job you have to be able to be blunt sometimes - to some tradies, and perhaps sometimes beyond that. I do have to say having my sparky on the same day as the floor fitter was not by choice. The floor fitter gave me Thu/Fri as his only dates available before October for completing my job - so I had to take them. The sparky then told me the only dates he had were Thu/Fri. And with Kitchen fitter only being available this Wed before he goes on holiday for a fortnight next week, there was no alternative except yet more weeks of delay. The fitter admitted he knew what my labelling meant and deliberately changed all the offsets anyway. I suspect as a youngster the older guy has drilled him intensly - YOU MUST DO IT THIS WAY - DO NOT DEVIATE etc As a youngster he is also very quiet and shy of speaking. I have spent 40 years surrounded by bright, communicative people - it is difficult to recognise just how closely some things need to be overlooked. Interesting and helpful to see the variety of responses here on such detail and comforting to see I am not alone in seeking carefully detailed finishes, even if others are not so bothered. I will probably email Amtico on the issue. I really do think they could use a much larger image. I suspect you could even give their image to AI and ask it to generate additional similar oak grain and effects on an image and it would do a good job. If brands want to appeal to affluent buyers with claims of permium product, they ought to be doing better I think. Lots of things seem to me to make incredibly slow progress.

Depends what you'll use garage for, but if the floor is reasonably flat swisstrax is an option worth considering. It worked out cheaper and easier than epoxy for us (in part because we didn't need to grind/prep the slab), and it looks fantastic too. There are a couple of caveats you have to weigh up with it though. - Doesn't need much cleaning because of how it's designed, but dust does accumulate underneath it. - You don't want to drop anything very small on the floor! Also water goes through it (which may or may not be a good thing) - Not that confortable walking in socks (there is another models which this isn't an issue with though, although it accumulate more dust due to flat surfaces). On the flip-side, you can pull it up to clean underneath it you want,change the design or replace damaged tiles, things don't bounce off it etc.

There’s a material difference between something like a landscape visual assessment and structural engineering calcs. The former is a nonsensical piece of paper that needs to be produced to check a box on the planning application. Money down the drain. The latter is integral to the safety of the house and its inhabitants, and something I would gladly pay for an expert to do.

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.

Not sure as I "don't do pressfit"..... The two nuts can be pulled towards each other and the pipework below can be kept 'still', if you connect the flexi only a few turns hand tight onto the bath tap first, then finish tightening, and then go back to do the final tighten on the bath connector last. You can balance how much you pull on each spanner until tight, without transferring any rotational force 'down below'. The answer to the question "have I fecked it?", will be answered when the pump kicks in fella. Just suck it up and whack it on, the worst thing that can happen is in that link. Crack on

I've got 2 plumbed in plinth heaters that fire across my 8m doors from either side. They are connected to my radiator circuit so rarely used, but when they are on the heat they chuck out is pretty impressive. I only put them in as I was dubious on UFH performance so just ran the plumbing before I locked my floor in. Turns out I shouldn't have worried, but I'd bought em, plumbed em, made sense to just whack them in at that point. I've got 2 Smiths SS5.

Screwfix have a Trade pack of Torx screws on offer at 60% discount. 1400 screws for £19.49. https://www.screwfix.com/p/turbo-tx-tx-double-countersunk-multi-purpose-screw-trade-pack-1400-pieces/771vv I think @ToughButterCup is a fan of Torx.

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.

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.

It is a lot more complicated than it first looks. Will you want cooling? Why place radiators against a potentially colder wall Wil any of the bedrooms be used for other purposes i.e. children doing home work in them. Will forced ventillation be fitted, with, or without heat recovery. Will secondary heating be fitted i.e. a wood burner (just don't fit one). How is the house expected to perform during the day and different seasons i.e. solar gain, or lack of it. How simple do you want the system. How controllable do you want the system. Do you want to take advantage of different, and potentially unknown, time of use tariffs.

But the point is importing stuff from elsewhere when we have it available is plain daft. No-one (or at least me) is saying don't go net zero or better, but don't pretend - by importing all the nasty stuff from elsewhere. Get your heat pump(s) installed - lead by example (as you quote) do it without grants, many on here have, including me. It's generally cheaper that the grant chaser will charge you anyway. I love doing the green thing, it generally saves me money it cuts my monthly bills. So I can preach as I have been there and done it, with my own money - once you move away from gas yourself come back and preach. Until then you may need Jackdaw and other gas producers, if we have a hard winter and gas is in short supply (now Putin's gas isn't available) that 2% may make all the difference.

That's the trouble. Many are generic rubbish along the lines of safety being our priority. Also you need to see their insurance... the whole document. Eg I once had a roofer who was highly competent but on checking, his insurance excluded work above 3m. He knew it said that, and it was cheap or all he could get. but nobody had ever checked. I've met HSE inspectors several times. They asked for the paperwork but actually wanted to see competence and safe practices. They were genuinely interested and helpful... but tough. I'd hate their job... squashed people, missing digits... look and report. Meanwhile being disliked by the workforce. What they hate is to find nobody in control. On the occasions they told us or our contractors off, they were right. The safety people who like paperwork are safety consultants and company safety officers....

I always use a hacksaw and file for things like that. More forgiving.

We had an estimation module in engineering school that asked us to do critical calcs in our head and come out with approximate answers. This allowed a very valuable sanity check on the fancier version of the calcs using accurate numbers. If the results differed by more than, say +- 50% you had a big problem. So, saying that, I just had some augur piling done. There's generally a fixed cost for design / mobilisation (i.e. getting off our arses) / testing etc and a variable cost per pile or metre, but sometimes the sales person might trade one against the other for window dressing. I was quoted £1.29K per pile / £92 per metre for 350mm diameter 14m piles and only a couple of £K for design etc. I was also responsible for the muckaway. Let me guess that you'll have 20 off 8m piles (who knows without seeing your soil investigation or knowing how heavy your house is going to be). That's £15K plus some fixed costs and the muckaway, say £20K. I'll guess that the ring beam will cost about the same as simple strip founds. So plus £20K for pile support. Sure, maybe you'll need 12m piles or longer and the cost will scale roughly linearly - nobody knows because you have not provided any info besides 'soft clay'. I bet a couple of local piling companies will be interested enough to give you a ballpark. To get an accurate quote number you need: A soil investigation with load bearing numbers and a sense of groundwater height. SE calcs of your house loads and a rough slab/founds design. The piling co will then do a pile design with a 3x safety factor and give you a reasonably firm quote. On consistent soft clay you shouldn't find anything too unexpected unless you suspect mine workings, archaeology, underground lake etc. A local BCO might give you an opinion on that too. This is what the interesting page(s) of the SI look(s) like. The N=xx result is what you're after and gives you an indication of the load bearing capacity. The SI may even give you a feel for what reasonable piling might look like, but the piling company will want to refine that calc.

The easy option would be stick on plastic like this

@Alan Ambrose , to the point as ever. @flanagaj hints at the trauma suffered by self-builders when the trust-building exercise faulters: they suddenly 'go-dark' , lay bricks with a muck-spreader. Pulling the project back on course when stuff goes wrong - now that's an art form.

For a set task by any trade, I am increasingly asking myself ‘what can go wrong here’ and ‘what is most important to get right’. It’s amazing how you can often predict what the f. ups will be in advance. Then make sure you’re around for that part and be firm and unapologetic. A good trade will like that you’re double checking. Listen to all the ‘we normally do it this way’ lines, decide whether you agree and, if not, explain politely why you want it done.a different way. Check in with your trades a lot at first, then less as you trust them.