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Terry It's not necessarily the case that all mvhr pipework is "within the warm environment" I have recently wired a new house, where the mvhr unit, and a lot of the distribution. pipework is up in the cold, ventilated loft space. Without lagging that would be a condensation nightmare (it might still be so) If I could give just ONE recommendation on modern house design, it would be DO NOT have an old fashioned, ventilated cold roof space where you rely on insulation at ceiling level. Even if you are not doing "room in roof" it is SO much better to have a warm roof design where the insulation is at eaves level. SO much easier to detail to get an air tight house etc etc. This new house I just wired, the builder was so smug about how well insulated and sealed (he thought) the house is, but i still noticed if you remove a light switch on a windy day, you could feel the cold air coming out of the hole, no doubt leaking somehow from that cold loft space into the service void behind the plasterboard.

Try emailing: newsitedevelopmentqueries@openreach.co.uk Normally someone responds next working day

Sorry for the late reply @JaneM..... I've been really poorly this week I cant believe your in Hockham.... it's crazy..... we are practically neighbours! We are in East Harling..... it's a small world.... lol! I will message you, maybe you could pop over next week for a cuppa and we have a nose at these conditions. Breckland have been pretty good (I bug them a lot.... lol) Also Holdens are great at repairs of the digger and dumper, we use them all the time and they are really reasonably priced.

+1 It's really not a good idea to shackle yourself to an inefficient jobs market. The longer you cling on, the worse the pain in the end when you realise that it's time to catch up with the rest of the world.

Looks like somebody burying a price increase with brexit and in at least one sense they might be right, in 2016 the pound as 1.4 against the Euro, now it is 1.17 so thats about 16% difference (now/then) or 19% (then/now) and assuming they pass on all the exchange rate adjustment BUT in early 2014 it was 1.2 did we see a big price drop in 2015-2016 and the price is just settling back to what it was in 2014 - did we heck?

The answer is mass production - if you can build a ford focus, with all its components, and sell if for under 20K you can gear up to make houses in the same way, mass production combined with mass customisation. If you want something more flexible you just need to look at house building robots and or 3D printing (see HERE for an example). Manual production has always been one of the key drags on better building. I was in a meeting with one of our biggest housebuilders and suggested that they fund some research into a bricklaying robot. The look I got was, to say the least, withering. The response was, in polite form, - there is no room in our industry for such things. (that was 2012) In 2014 we saw THIS and in 2016 THIS some interesting insights from the founder of company. It won;t be long though... Wi Fi wall switches will cut wiring and so it goes on. AUTOMATE or DIE and get the humans doing the higher order stuff. (PS I think we can automate accountants already, just no finance director will sign off on the development!)

Chatting to a couple of Timber Frame manufacturers to try and get some constructive estimates together. Sadly Space4 do not supply outside Persimmon any more. But, working to Building Regs only spec, a full Timber Frame kit for a detached house in the 90-135 sqm range can be 220-250 £/sqm. That includes everything except Tiles, Cladding, Plumbing, Electrics, Gas and Finishes such as paint, and requires a site, slab, services and to build it. (will update this post with further estimates for the other items) Ferdinand

That's good to know, although given our house is CW we'll not see a penny (unless Onoff and his fiendish and dangerous longtermist ideals infect innocent Government minds). I couldn't even get them to fill the cavities on a Government scheme, so just paid for it myself. At least I got to choose the insulant that way (apparently on the schemes they tend to use fibre... I prefer EPS bead myself).

IMO yes, but you need to think first about the whole thing and decide your spec, plan and budget first - which should be reasonably consistent. You can either do a big bang, or in bits as appropriate. You really want to make sure you do our glazing first or mount it in the EWI, and need to give thoughts about dealing with the cold bridge you may be creating in the entire thickness of all your walls at the top if you don't EWI the gable, and your gable becomes a radiator. Room in roof insulation is the best solution there or your free loft insulation plus stick slabs of PUR to the gable inside your loft to lower the EWI temp gradient in the wall. If you do go IWI remember the slice of wall between your Ground and First floors, and window reveals. One thing about EWI is that the govt is planning something soon, but are still at the waffle and standards stage.So look into that. Last time grants were two thirds of the first 6k but they needed to be able to apply EWI to most of the house. Get yourself on a waiting list at some of your local suppliers to be contacted. Or do some modest IWI and make sure that the assessor misses it if you EWI later. See https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/578749/Each_Home_Counts__December_2016_.pdf Also an issue for you will be sealing the cavity or your EWI will be useless if it is open to some degree to the outside - in which can you may as well put the EWI on the garden wall :-) . Ferdinand

Is there any point in doing retrofit EWI piecemeal? By that I mean elevation by elevation. Would it improve heat loss issues with each bit done?

A lot of the new builds I see, I see money being "wasted" by inefficient layouts and a lot of wasted corridor space or over larger entrance halls etc. That was a "failing" in our current house. I always said the large entrance hall and galleried staircase was a waste of space. I was told it gives the house a "wow factor" Shame none of the few people that have viewed the house have been wowed by it. The new one is a lot more eficcient on floor space with the hall and landing being much more modest, and my rather quirky combining of the utility room with the downstairs toilet. Having just built a house with a vaulted warm roof and now see how something as simple as moving the insulation from the upstairs ceiling, to the roof line can so dramatically improve a building, I would not advocate deliberately making "cold" parts of the house. I am actually staggered how little I have spent on insulation for my whole house, so the savings would be quite small to make one bit a less well insulated space.

Fresh bit of ply with hole in the right place, and the stud milled / chiselled out accessingly. "Don't make me come down there" ?

Hawd on - doesn't trust the previous results?! Not knowing any more about it the good old cynic in me says he's just printed his own money! Do you have to pay for any additional work/time of his/hers? What if there is a redesign? If there is a change after your BW docs are submitted, this will need to be updated eventually. What rational have they given for this change of heart?

Yes, the heat exchanger cools the out-going air and this can drop it below dew point causing humidity to condense out. The drain takes this away. On another point by reddal above, I would question why you would need the pipework to be lagged (other than the main external inlet and outlet runs from the unit itself. All of your internal pipework is within the warm environment, and as you are effectively operating the whole house as a single zone, it largely doesn't matter where you add or remove heat within the internal space, IMO.

Lets be honest if its for a power cut scenario then you probably want one of these in the cupboard and its job done.. Cheapo 2kw gennie and a "dedicated" socket and all sorted. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VonShef-Digital-Induction-Hob-Electric-Single-Hob-with-Touch-Control-LED-Display-/282194438528?hash=item41b4196980:g:9zAAAOSwwpdW1wI8