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After working all day in the cold there is nothing better than standing under a red hot shower for ages. If I wanted a timed shower i will go to the local swimming pool.

If you've not looked at Airflow, I'm going with a small commercial unit, the DV1100, which is PH Certified, F7 filters etc. My internal volume is around 1650 m3, so I was otherwise looking at 2 residential units. Airflow will do you a free system design, Bill Of Materials, and target price for you to then take round to their distributors to get the best price.

Only if I were doing a flat roof. I'd be happier with the same build up in a pitched roof. The other possibility (for a cellulose cold roof) would have been to carefully detail an internal vapour-tight layer rather than relying on a breathable structure with ventilated head space. I'm assuming, perhaps a little histrionically, that something will go wrong in 10 or 20 years and we'll need to take serious steps to rectify. Hopefully it won't come to that. If I had my time again I probably would have found a way to avoid the flat roof entirely. Hope that helps but let me know if you need more info.

Isnt that a bit 'miserly' ? ( apologies for my subtlety ). After all the effort of making a low energy, comfortable home that's cheap to run, I'd like to decide how long I 'get' to shower. Sometimes I'll just let red hot water run over my shoulders for 10 mins or so after scrubbing the day away, and if the water ran out during that I'd flip. Can 20p worth of hot water really break a budget? If it came from excess Pv then......?

Better system for fixing which is adjustable are these http://elemental.ie/eko-thermobrackets/ You can use any type of rainscreen cladding then on them, tiles, stone, timber, Glass Fibre Reinforced Concrete, Parklex, etc. They've a far better thermal performance than the ones in the first post. Remember all these brackets penetrate the external insulation so are all cold bridges. While small you do have a lot of them in an elevation.

The last of the tanking, finally!

No, the EWI was fixed on before hand, albeit they may very well have only done just enough to hold it, knowing many more fixings would result from the battens going on.

There are a lot of houses up here with cement fibre slates on the roof, and without exception, every single one I have seen has weathered significantly from dark slate to light cement grey. This particular product may well be immune from this problem but I suspect there will not be any guarantees on colour fastness. Could you fix real slate using this system? Downside would perhaps be that you would have to buy the slates without fixing holes and drill them in the appropriate places yourself. Our timber cladding is fixed to battens which are themselves fixed through 165mm of EWI. Nothing difficult in it, just a very long fixing.

I did consider the prospect of dynamic / spot pricing being introduced at some point, but concluded that I would just as easily be able to program my ASHP to heat / produce DHW during those periods. Having looked very closely into this previously, it makes a lot of sense for low requirement households - heating and DHW requirement each below 2500 kWh/yr. Once your requirement goes over those thresholds, other options start to look more financially attractive. There is of course also the 'problem' of SAP which heavily penalises you using direct electric as your fuel source. I've always been very tempted by the notion of working through a year with a temporary heating system so you can properly assess the actual rather than theoretical heating and DHW requirement, and applaud you for taking this approach. Sadly, I couldn't persuade my other half to go down this route.

Hi, I did the same as @ProDave, and used an AT rather than an architect. So long as you want a sensible house rather than a Grand Design, then IMO I would recommend this. An AT will convert your design ideas into AutoCAD and prepare (or help you prepare) the planning application and even some of the BReg submissions. An architect will usually insist on an independent QS to price the build and then both will charge a ℅ of the value for their services. This can be 15-20℅ of the QS valuation. An architect will also often want to retain the IPR on his or her design, so if you have a fall out then using the design that you've paid for might be problematic. You might also need a project manager to oversee the build and your contractors. Many of us used an AT and did the PM ourselves, which saves a shit load of money. However, there is no free lunch, if you go this route you will also take a lot of risk, stress and work on your shoulders, so you should only so this eyes wide open. Doing a self build is not an easy option, but if you it and accept the costs of the route for you then it can be amazingly rewarding getting exactly the house that you wanted.

That particular system uses fibre cement 'slates'. They look great new, not so good a few years further down the line.

I think the smart bit is the brackets for the verticals. The "hanging tile" cladding could be anything that you can attach to the vertical members or to counterbattens.

I feel like i don't know you anymore ?

Likewise I estimate that for the 2-3 heating months (that is when we need to supplement the heating) if we use the slab alone as the main heat source, it will lose roughly 1°C every 3-5 hours, so if I boost the slab's temperature to 23°C by end of E7 then this will keep the house within a comfortable window for the remaining day. Even if we need to top up or put a fan heater on in the living room for a few hours in the evening, then this is hardly going to cost a lot. So to answer @Nickfromwales Q, yes the slab can be used as thermal store. But again this is only an interim for a year or two until we've got the hard data to design and install our "optimum" solution.

Long winded discussion about magnetizing currents, impedance, unloaded trannies and the negligible consumption therein or..... Case closed! Erm......case reopened......just realised she wants to charge in the bathroom. So.....just put the socket 3m away from the bath / shower.

I found an MK spec sheet. They give standby consumption of 0.15W for a USB socket, but they don't give standby consumption for a shaver socket which is an isolation transformer. Shaver sockets are rated for 20VA, so 20W although they also seem to be rated as 200mA, 230V which would be 46W as their trip level I cannot find anything other than a guess at their power consumption. It doesn't seem that they are covered by the regulations that have reduced mobile phone charger consumption to negligible levels. I cannot find any mention of a switch in the spec for these, it may be there, but I cannot find it mentioned. Some specs say that they have an interlock so you cannot plug something into the 110V and 230V at the same time. I always thought this was the click they made. Although I found some people claiming to have sockets they can put two devices in at once. Thinking about it, if there was a switch before the isolating transformer wouldn't this increase the risk of a shock at the full supply power and seem to be unlikely from a safety point of view. They might use 0.5-1W which would be 4-8kWh a year. Maybe 50p-£1. Oral B suggested that a toothbrush on charge all year used 2.8 kWh, so that is about 35p a year in electricity. A Sonicare Elite uses 3W, although it isn't clear if it reduces consumption when fully charged. Anyway 3W continuously for a year is 26 kWh, so £3. This improbably a worst case scenario.

Hi and welcome to the forum. I am one that bypassed an architect, because my experience was they based their fees on a percentage of the estimated build cost. I don't know where they got their figures from but their estimate of the build cost was about double what it actually cost us (so of course that means their fees were double what they should be), but others have had better experiences and there are some architects on this forum who may be able to help.

Can I resurrect this topic, please? OH and I very much want to include a basement in our new build, but it's difficult to find much information on them and what we do isn't that informative. I have spoken to a few kit house manufacturers and they all put this work out to an alternative company (usually Glatthaar) who seem to be phenomenally expensive, albeit for top quality, or so I'm told. As I understand it, the two main issues are ensuring that it's watertight and also that it needs to be constructed to within very small tolerances if there is going to be a timber frame house built on top of it. Ideally, I'd like to start trying to price up the cost of a basement to determine how realistic it is to have one, i.e. is it affordable within our total budget. Can anyone give me any pointers, please?

It sounds to me as if your friend needs to go on a Landlord Training Course, which will only cost around £100-200. I like the RLA, but NLA and similar bodies are OK. NLA tends to be the one that Local Councils accredit. If he wants to do it properly and manage his own, then the silver standard is probably the NFoPP Technical Award, which is aimed mainly at letting agents. https://www.nfopp-awardingbody.co.uk/qualifications/residential-letting-property-management/england-wales-qcf-level-3-technical-award/ Fireproof labels on furniture are absolutely basic; and - to be fair - functional new furniture is very cheap, And you stick to cheap-but-robust because the Deposit rules write its value down to zero after a small number of years, so you won't be able to recover damages against something with zero value as its value cannot be reduced. And there are oodles and oodles of laws. For a forum I recommend http://www.landlordzone.co.uk/ and the forum there, where I used to post extensively as midlandslandlord. For property type queries rather than How to Landlord, I would recommend https://www.property118.com/, which hosted the campaign that overturned the West Bromwich BS mortgage decision. Ferdinand

http://www.shippingcontainersuk.com/brands/expandarange.php How about one of these flat pack models or check out their range of bespoke containers

1) How about a brick shed? 2) How much do you drink? http://inhabitat.com/heineken-wobo-the-brick-that-holds-beer/

Loving this thread! I'm just waiting for the passive house police to come along (and to be frank I've seen a few posts from current and past forum members along these lines). So don't forget some of the important rules: 1. Kill the cat, cat flaps will not be tolerated. 2. Remove or reduce all windows. I know you've bought a plot with a view but seriously saving on your energy bills is way more important than a view. 3. Make sure you go paperless for ALL bills etc. There is no way you are having a postbox. 4. Bury your partner under the patio. Far too risky that they may open a window. 5. Kill the dog. Can't think of a reason why other than enjoying yourself cannot be tolerated. OK, I'm having a bit of fun BUT you are going to drive yourself to the edge of insanity doing this self build lark, nothing is more stressful. SO BUILD YOURSELF A HOME NOT A HAUSE!