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Not sure I have any but will do a quick sketch and scan it later if that's ok ..??

Hope the mods won't mind me posting this. I just wanted to pass on the details of a really good printer I found off Ebay and have been using to print my A1 plans. His name is David and his email is graphicsmaster@zoho.com His prices were better than Staples, local printers and all others I contacted off Ebay and he has been very professional with Paypal invoices and sending out all my plans promptly. Hope he can help out others Vijay

what screws ya been buying? i can't recall ever actually being told the difference or advantages but i would assume the twin threads go in faster but are more aggressive,

I agree that A3 Is about as big as you want on site, Laminated would be a luxury, personally i would just leave them plain A3 and have an A3 scanner available, ( i think my A3 scanner printer was about £110) Give everyone a copy and make sure it is clearly marked what edition they are. If you change something it will be fairly cheap and easy to run a batch of the new editions off and burn the old copies so there is no confusion

http://www.ezeeplan.co.uk/ for To get copies of drawings: A0, A1, A2, A3 Wide Format Printing Services Also see

Re modern day living / lifestyles. I used to be a buy to let landlord. One of our properties was a 1980's 1 bedroom flat. Timber framed (4") and double glazed. It was "normal" for tenants to turn off the bathroom fan because of the noise, then complain about the mould in the bathroom. That's when I decided to ignore wiring regs and remove the fan isolator switch so it was not possible to disable the fan. Light is on, fan is on (then stays on with a timer) NOT negotiable and no facility to disable it. Trickle vents on windows were NEVER open. One tenant in particular complained of "water running down the walls" On investigation, the heating was off so the flat was cold (were they happy to live like that) and every room had a clothes horse with dripping wet washing hung on it. They didn't seem to want to use the clothes line outside or the tumble dryer in the shed. After that tenant left (god riddance) I never had a condensation problem again. I guess it boils down to "poverty" they could neither afford to turn the heating on or use the tumble dryer, yet expected the landlord to magically solve the problem. So the ideal social housing will have mvhr AND heating that you CANNOT turn off.

I just had a quick scan through the Page 1 results searching 'passive house health risks'. Two things stood out, the first was the use of earth pipes to preheat incoming air for MVHR, and yes absolutely, there are documented problems with that particular 'technology'. From what I remember from previously discussing this, to make it work you needed very expensive pipe which had some sort of (silver?) lining to kill of the harmful bacteria that could accumulate in the pipe. I do remember a rep at one of the building shows giving me a ballpark figure for the pipe, and me falling about laughing until he said he was deadly serious. The second thing that stood out was the many references to insufficient ventilation, caused by either poor design (incorrect ACH specified) or end user mismanagement (not servicing filters, closing vents, reducing airflow to reduce noise). To me the answer to many of these supposed health risks would be to increase the rate of ventilation (ACH). I really can't get my head around why this is such an issue. Noise I can perhaps accept, if a unit was constantly on a boost / its highest setting, but that to me at any rate would indicate an undersized or incorrectly specified MVHR unit. Otherwise, what's wrong with increasing the rate of ventilation? Okay, you maybe then do not fall within the passive house parameters because you have marginally exceeded the threshold heating requirement, but so what? It strikes me that the thing that really needs to change in terms of building regs are the ventilation rates. Do they take into account the realities of modern day living - drying large amounts of laundry inside, lots of showers etc? Both of these things are relatively recent additions to the way we live and probably some of the biggest contributors to the amount of moisture in a house. Skip back 30 years and showers were starting to make serious inroads into our ablutions, but prior to that we relied on baths, which may have been daily, but equally could have been weekly. The amount of laundry we now generate is undoubtedly linked to the ease with which things can now be washed by machine. Again skip back 30 years and twin tubs and washing days were still common.

We had one A0 plan printed onto like a plastic coated paper which went on the wall in the office and then had it broken down into A3 detailed plans for which there were multiple copies. It meant that the A3 ones could be drawn on, the A1 was left as a "master" that was referred to when you needed an overall view. A1 was done by these people - think it was about £18 inc laminating http://www.studentprinting.co.uk/a1-colour-print-2-p.asp

In the end I went with a Speedistair from Ladders999, really pleased with it. Hope to sell it on afterwards too

Very similar to what we did in our last house. Standard insulated loft hatch with large block of sheet insulation bonded to the back of the hatch, then more pulled over opening.

I take the point about making building regs ever more stringent - insulation levels do reach a tipping point where the cost far far exceeds the benefits, but to policy makers, you can see the attraction of the passive house model, a house that doesn't need heating - great, we get rid of fuel poverty and reduce our carbon emissions. The biggest problem as I see it is the inspection regime (or lack thereof). You can see the attraction to developers - why spend £2 - £3K testing a house and having to install an MVHR system when you can use a default air permeability value and simply get away with trickle vents and a few cheap extraction fans. The vast majority of people I have spoken to see trickle vents as nothing more than a source of unwanted drafts. Likewise extraction fans, they view them as noisy. Nobody really stops to consider the impact of closing vents or switching fans off, they just go ahead and do it, then wonder why problems develop. It's not much of a leap to suggest the same would happen in a PH house with someone not interested or acquainted with what is needed. MVHR units get switched off because the householder is told / believe it is costing them money, they fail to check and replace filters, they refuse to increase ventilation rates etc. I did a bit of experimentation in our last house with ventilation rates. Day by day, I gradually reduced ACH to building regs minimum and then slightly below. The result was a fairly unpleasant internal environment and condensation forming on windows. Increasing the ACH got rid of these problems and led me to conclude that the prescribed minimum ACH was simply too low a rate to properly deal with all of the consequences of modern day living (especially drying laundry inside and daily showering). As every house (even when it has the same design / layout) will perform differently according its location, occupancy etc it stands to reason that every house has to be tuned / managed to meet the specific needs of its occupants. The only way of doing that is by trial and error, seeing what works and what doesn't. That brings us back nicely to the end user. If he or she is interested and prepared to go through that process, then they will have a very comfortable and pleasant house to live in. If they aren't interested, then their surroundings will always be a compromise and in some cases develop into some of the problems referred to earlier. Not an easy one to solve as no matter what handover information is given, some end users will choose to ignore the advice they are given. I for one, wouldn't even consider building a house without having MVHR installed. I'm currently renting a house without adequate ventilation and it is horrible. Properly managed (including getting the right rate of ventilation) there is in my view nothing to beat a well insulated and airtight house.

I don't understand the problem, all a passive house is, is a house that meets certain standards, the most notable one being the amount of heating input required. All of the concerns you have, air quality, solar gain etc could apply to a house built to less stringent insulation and air tightness standards. It's about how you choose to live in the house. I like a fresh, well ventilated house, and far prefer the air quality offered using an MVHR than a house without, I just choose to mechanically ventilate at more than the minimum or optimum passive house level. If I want to really freshen things up I throw open the windows. I like my house nice and warm in winter, and will happily heat it 24/7 at a higher temperature than than the prescribed design temperatures used when filling out PHPP. So what if it costs a bit more? At the end of the day, it's your house, and you do not have to be a slave to some predetermined rules unless you choose to.

I made a simple ladder stairway out of 4 x 2. It is about 700mm wide and fixed at the top. The BCO checked it was fixed and was happy for all to use it. It's been there for six years no problems and hopefully in the next couple of months will be replaced with the proper staircase!