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And all the time we speak in what, to the vast majority of the population, is complete gobbledygook then that won't change. IMHO, if this forum really wants to encourage low energy homes to become the norm then it has to stop demanding a quantum leap to the Holy Grail (and scoffing at anything less) and recognise that a lot of people making small steps is better than a few scientists, academics and energy geeks fretting over minutia that means absolutely nothing to the masses.

Thansk JSH. A bit of history - the original Actis tests were done on 2 identical 'chalets', from memory in Limoges, France. This info may still be available on the internet somewhere. One chalet had 200mm mineral wool quilt in the roof the other Actis multi foil but not much other data on the construction. Actis measured 'heat loss' from the chalets and came to the conclusion that 200mm quilt = 30mm(?) Actis. There was never enough data to check if they were actually measuring heat loss through the roof alone or via a myriad other routes. Complaints to the ASA only resulted in a change of product name, Actis 8, 9, 10......It seems that only when BRE did their work, BR 443 was updated and other manufacturers of multi foil products gained certification using accepted test methods that Actis back tracked. They still use a mixture of in-situ and accpeted testing - not sure how they explain the huge discrepancy. As you say - why trust them now! Hence my warning about thir claimed U-values!

I've fitted them for the acoustic quality, and can report no real difference. In the pics if there is no silicone / sealant then it's just because it hadn't been done yet . Every job needs to be sealed so you can't pee down the gap after too much ale I always fit the pan loose, squirt sealant / silicone between the pan and the wall, then fully tighten. As the sealant oozes out you clear it away with baby wipes / tissue and CT1 multi solve ( if you've used a non silicone like CT1 ) and then level and give a final tighten. I always clear as much silicone / other away from that junction as possible, leaving just a functional seal down the sides, but on the top I tool the silicone to leave a flat flush surface so there is no 'trough'. Leave to cure for 24 hrs, and job done. If the silicone is breaking away then I'd be a bit concerned that the pan may not have been fully tightened back. They do move a little though, and you have to have balls of steel to give the final few turns of the fixings. If just a quick finger of silicone has been applied, rather than my method of sandwiching it between the two mating surfaces, then I'd fully expect it to come away / split. Needs redoing IMO.

Another week of hard work by the builders and the foundations are complete. Type 1 up-fill (only 100mm or so required) was spread then compacted down with a vibrating roller. A final layer of quarry dust was added to finish the blinding. In keeping with previous comments about a clean and tidy site, you can also see the digger spreading type 1 around the foundations. Internal drains and ducts are added, DPC / Radon barrier laid and 150mm PU insulation fitted. Whilst doing all this, the concrete wagon stopped by and the strip founds for our garage were put in. The plumber subsequently put in the UFH pipework, over 1 KM of it! A track system was stuck down (black lines you can see) onto the face of the insulation and pipework clipped in. Individual clips direct into the insulation were used where required. The following day, an hour of light drizzle forecast, the main concrete slab was poured. Two wagons and just under 14 m3 of concrete with glass fibre mixed through. Again, a concrete skip and crane were used to move the concrete from wagon to foundation. You'll notice the twin (scaffolding pole) rails running the length of the foundation. They had simply been set as guide rails for the vibrating leveler to run on and were removed once the main vibration runs had been completed. The next shot shows the slab ready for power floating later in the day. Unfortunately, it kept on raining which meant a 0430 start the following day for my builder. He did a cracking job power floating the slab, which is now beautifully smooth and level. The final stage before building the walls can start, is painting a radon barrier ( the green paint you can see ) on the concrete core of the ICF block. Apart from a bit of unwanted news - 3 week delay for our windows due to a summer factory close down - things are moving in the right direction. The walls should go up this week so we are going to see big changes over the next few days.

Edit: Fallingditch has helpfully found some reviews. If you Google "xTWO, Gießener Str. 42, 35410 Hungen, Germany" you will see a lot of complaints re non delivery of items and never answering phone calls. Whilst researching plumbing as I was commenting on the concealed cistern site I came across this site- http://www.xtwostore.com They seem to be a German retailer set up to sell in GBP and deliver here with the site in English. Some of the prices are fantastic. Would be good to know if anyone has used them.

I believe the problem, that crept over from ebuild, is the tone of the language used. For example, using the term "Snake oil" humiliates a person that might have been duped, There were too many opening contributions from Newbies" asking for them "to be treated gently", this indicates the fear people have to ask questions in the first place and they have drawn that conclusion from listening to the manner in which questions are answered. I have felt humiliated by responses in the past and I have thicker skin than most. I hope this warning from NSS is heeded on this new forum. Please no more personalisation against professions or products. It is not what is said it is the way it is said. Jeremy please do not assume that people are making personal attacks against you. You have turned the comments from NSS as personal against you and last night you made it sound like I was making personal comment against you and nothing could be further from the truth, but you expressed it in a tone of conflict; simply not needed. I thoroughly enjoy learning from this forum and share most of the points of view expressed but detest unnecessary conflict and criticism. I experience too much of that in my personal life and use the forum to escape from conflict.

Interesting debate. Yes a lot of people here think building a well insulated low energy house is a good idea. But I don't recall ever making anyone look like a fool for not agreeing. I recall one discussion on the old place where the poster was adamant he wanted to do just enough to comply with regs and no more. Some of us suggested he could do better and it wouldn't cost much to build to a better standard. He was adamant he just wanted to do the minimum. I don't recall him ever being made to look a fool or feel unwelcome.I certainly hope he didn't feel that was the case. It still amuses me that people will only buy an A+++ rated fridge, and then put it in a house with an EPC rating of F.

If you search in Google "xTWO, Gießener Str. 42, 35410 Hungen, Germany" - they get mixed reviews from purchasers #justsayin

My wife weighs somewhat more than this. On that basis she'll have to spend LESS time waiting for the silicon to cure. Seems I should be doing all I can to encourage her to lose a few pounds!

I propose to heat a tank of warm water and UFH using off peak electricity and maybe top the tank to hot using same off peak just before off peak stops ( 5 or 6 am?)

If a bath full of water weighs 8 stone that is the same weight as my wife. On this basis are you suggesting she should sit in the bath whilst the silicone cures. Silicone cures in 48 hours. If she has to do this for each toilet, bath and shower base for 48 hours for each appliance, that would seem ideal from my perspective. Could you please let me have your full name and address for the divorced papers.

When I bought mine I hired a 7.5t flatbed truck to go and collect it. TIP if looking for one of those, try a plant hire firm, none of the "van" rental firms had a 7.5t flatbed, box van yes but that would have been a pain loading and unloading.

It was free, who cares! http://stayer.es/en/ ?

Sorry Jamie, Just saw this, was offline all weekend. I borrowed the scaffolding, it was a challenge to be fair. given the option I would have bought it as some of the quotes for erection and rental were crazy. Could have bought the whole lot for the same price. And then you aren't pressured to get certain jobs done. I'm not sure how easy it would be to sell on but there are always people in a similar spot. Transport would be the main concern if buying.

He's right on the fact YOU need to get a self build site insurance policy in place. Part of that will be your employers liability insurance certificate. Like it or not, you are seen as the employer for any contractors you hire. My builders that were contracted to build and erect my frame asked to see this before they started. As regards materials, anything your main contractor supplies and installs should be charged to you at zero VAT as should his labour. It is only materials that you buy and fit yourself that you will have to pay the VAT on and claim back later. If he supplies materials that you are going to install then there is an argument that he should charge VAT on them. That's a matter for you to discuss with him. As long as you don't go overboard that may not be an issue.

I was involved for many (too many!) years with the ongoing Actis saga and their wild & spurious claims. They now declare thermal performance in accordance with both accepted Standards (EN 12667 and EN 16012) and in-situ/comparative testing (the latter not to be used for U-vals under the Regs). Above roof may only achieve U=0.17 with rafters at 400mm(?) c/c and ventilated airspace above the Actis product and Actis VC product directly under the rafter. Ian

We bought a house that had been a self-build with no warranty. I suspect the seller, who worked for a building company as a brickie, was a "serial self-builder", as he was in his late twenties and this was, apparently, his second self-build. Anyway, the lack of a warranty was no problem at all. Our lawyer raised it and the solution that kept our lender happy was an indemnity policy, which the seller paid for. When we sold the house 5 years later (when it was 7 years old) we had no problem either. Our buyer's lender just accepted the indemnity. We've talked over the warranty thing and our decision is that if one of us falls off this mortal coil before the other, then the remaining partner won't sell. It's really because we've both put a great deal of emotional effort into it, so neither would want to sell in the event of the demise of the other. I know it does seem commonplace for the remaining partner to sell up following a bereavement (both my mother and my mother in law sold up within a year) there's something very different about a self-build and the sense of ownership. We have a neighbour (two doors up from the new place, about 100m up the lane in practice) and she and her late husband (who was an architect) built their house. She still lives there today, on her own, and is proud of the house they built together.

Just a quick google brought up this advice:- Avoid these common mistakes for longer-lasting exterior wood cladding Bear in mind this country’s damp climate means moisture is inevitable. It helps to avoid cladding north or east facing surfaces Get the timing right – to avoid warping and curling of green or freshly cut timber, clad your building between October and April to stop one surface drying faster than the rest Never install cladding before or during a heatwave Choose hardwood cladding, so much more durable than softwood Find an expert installer, not just any old builder If you’re going to use a wood finish, you will need a maintenance cycle to keep the cladding’s appearance up. Depending on the type of cladding, the wood finish or treatment used, which direction the surface is facing and also on how much wind, rain and sun the cladding gets will affect the maintenance period which could be anything from 2 to 5 years. Wood oils are easier to maintain as there is no need to sand the old finish off, just clean and re-apply If you’re in an urban area remember dirt and pollution will affect the colour and condition of your cladding. It can even make some timbers turn almost black, notably cedar

I said wobbly, not squiff .

Just for completeness, I'm far from being the only one to look at, and question, the real performance of multifoil insulation. It's been discussed to death elsewhere, with a range of opinions and facts being expressed: http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=125 and here are some facts about the stuff, from BRE and as guidance to LABC building inspectors: multi-foil-insulation_july2005.pdf MG0190512 Use of Multi-foil Insulation Products - Compliance with Regulation 7 and Requirement L1.pdf just to show that I'm reporting facts, not making something up because I don't like it. As it happens I've stated elsewhere, more than once, that there is a role for reflective insulation wherever there is a significant probability that it may reduce re-radiation. The main use for it that I can see (there may be others) is as a reflective barrier immediately under a roof covering, where it may well act to reflect back re-radiated heat from the under surface of tiles, slates etc, and so be an aid in reducing solar gain.

So I've used it... Installed 7 years ago (Actis Tri-Iso 9) in a large extension. And have the data to prove that it doesn't work as described hence my comments being what they are. It has low/nil sound insulation, is pretty poor at heat insulation in the summer and it works 'OK' in the winter however some of that is down to the detailing in how I installed it and ensured that there were no gaps at all at the edges and every joint was double taped. The one I used was part of the legal / advertisement retraction and had the certificate revocation due to how it was calculated. The whole set of discussions (including all tests) is here http://www.lifespacedesign.co.uk/msc/Foil.pdf In my experience I wouldn't reuse it due to the issues I've had and now that I've lived with it and also read a LOT more than the sketchy data that was originally available.

I'm just stating facts, facts taken from the certification for the product, not bashing anything. The post change was pure accident, nothing more. The table I inserted didn't format properly, so I tried several times to edit the post as soon as I'd written it. In editing it the formatting of the table went really haywire, so I copied the text, deleted the post and then started again, just so I could get the table formatted properly. I've no doubt I was struggling to edit the table formatting at the time you posted. Nothing libellous there either - the data comes from their published data and BBA certificate, so is not my data, it's the manufacturers data. If you check back to find some of the withdrawn adverts for other multifoils (and I honestly can't recall if Actis was one of those early multifoil manufacturers or not) you will find some ludicrous claims, which is why many of the adverts have been modified or withdrawn. At the time they came out they were arguing that their stuff should be measured differently from all other types of insulation, because by using this different measurement technique the stuff appeared to be an insulator. This was argued about by other insulation manufacturers and, I believe, the BRE, to the extent that there were a lot of changes made, and the BBA certificates are now clear as to what the make up is that gives the quoted insulation performance. To give credit to Actis, they have been increasing the thickness of their product a great deal with added proper insulation, and they do make it clear what the lambda of the correctly installed system is, 0.033 W/m.K. It's not that great, as to meet building regs you need about the same thickness overall as you would for EPS, and it does have a very short decrement delay, shorter than EPS, and much shorter than systems with a greater heat capacity. I don't know the price of the stuff, so maybe it's so cheap as to make it worth fitting thick layers to get a decent insulation level.

the quotes i got for scaffolding ranged from 2K plus 100 per week to 3600 plus 160 per week. I ended up scrounging enough of it to get it put up by a plasterer guy my father knows, he charged £70 per day and it took him 5 days in all (that included help transporting to site) about 3 days to erect.

I found them frankly very unhelpful. All the guy really said is "here's a drum of cable" and all he wanted was the cable from my house to the road verge where their trunk cable runs. It was up to me to get it there, which I did when the road was up for the other services. Our OR rep wouldn't even give us any ducting. The excuse being "my van is too small to fit it" (it was a tiny van) and all he could offer was I could make a 50 mile round trip myself to go and collect some. Well I had a length of black electrical duct that had been out in the sun for many years and gone grey, so I used that

The reflective multifoils are snake oil, pure and simple. They are tested in a way that is atypical for use in a house and rely on the addition of real insulation to gain 99% of their insulating properties. It's about time their mis-selling was picked up on as they've been sailing exceedingly close to the wind with their descriptions of the stuffs supposed performance for years. They started out with what can only really be called an open lie years ago, around the time when Kevin McCloud infamously held up a thin bit of insulation and declared that it worked as well as a bit ten times or more thicker during a GD show. It had those of us with a bit of a basic scientific background reaching for calculators and proving within seconds that it was total bunkum. I wrote about it over on Ebuild last year, when the Hybris stuff came up in discussion: Here's a list of materials, including the Hybris multifoil stuff with the added insulation and air gap, listed in order of lambda. The lower the lambda the better the insulation and so the thinner the layer needed. You can see that the Hybris stuff is not great, even with added insulation and an air gap. You need around a 50% thicker layer in order to achieve the same U value as you would using ordinary PIR foam: Concrete (dense) = 1.2 W/m.K Range is 0.6 to 1.8 from Kaye and Laby Sandstone = 1.2 W/m.K Plasterboard = 0.22 W/m.K Wood (12% moisture content) = 0.15 W/m.K OSB/3 = 0.13 W/m.K Glass fibre roll = 0.044 W/m.K Warmcell = 0.04 W/m.K Steico wood fibre = 0.038 W/m.K Low density EPS 0.037 W/m.K Kore SD High density EPS = 0.034 W/m.K Kore floor HD Hybris (multifoil with insulation and air gap) = 0.033 W/m.K λ value taken from BBA certificate PU foam = 0.025 W/m.K PIR board = 0.022 W/m.K Silica aerogel = 0.017 W/m.K Silica carbon aerogel = 0.0135 W/m.K

Here we go again, bashing anything you haven't used yourself. Edit: this was actually posted in response to JSH's post below, which he seems subsequently to have removed, edited and reposted. Sailing close to libel rules?

I love marmite. In the process of self-installing now. I'll post results pics when I get a moment.

It's a marmite product !!! It's not a "true" insulation the way a lot of normal insulation works and tbh it's useless at stopping noise transfer which they don't tell you. You can easily hit 0.16 with standard insulation - have a look on the Kingspan website as they have a quick calculator that shows you how to do it.

Don't know how it would compare price wise but our 150mm Actis Hybris plus 45mm Actis H-Control gives a u-value of 0.14

Hi, Your logic is exactly why I chose the digger I bought Weight of the trailer 480Kg (I may have remembered this wrong, but I won't be far out) Weight of digger 2000 kg (add fuel and hydraulic oil I think) Buckets (dunno) 200 kg ish Ramps 150 kg Towing vehicle Land Rover, permissible towing 3500 kg So I have a little bit spare. The key thing is to keep the all-up weight to be towed to below 2.6 tonnes: it makes the digger far more saleable. Most people who can tow, are limited by the permissible tow-weight of the towing vehicle.

Cold roof me, insulation at ceiling level, airtight, less volume to heat and get heat losses from and it is a complete nightmare keeping wind out of a loft.