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Hi, I hope everyone is well, I just thought I would provide an update on how things are going with our Ecocent after 6 months use, and now that I have some data for the past few months where we have had below 0 temperatures. For those that can remember there was a debate over potential big temperature drops when the ecocent came on over on ebuild, here is the link http://www.ebuild.co.uk/topic/18060-i-have-bought-an-ecocent-and-everything-else-esp-do/ Well I am pleased to say that we haven't experienced anything like that, I am monitoring the temperature via the 12 Heatmiser Themostats we have installed around the house and there is nothing more than a degree of temperature varitaition during a 24 hour period, from any of the thermostats with house set around 22 degrees, we also are using the Earthsave Varimax ASHP to heat our 280m2 ground floor slab. I am waiting on our Electricity usage to come through so can't give the numerical figures yet but so far we are very happy, and only once have we run out of DHW from the 300 litre tank but we did have around 9 adults all trying to shower in the space of an hour.

Me too, but that was really before GD became what it is today. I somehow doubt that they'd look at a build like that now - what on earth would RIBA think if they did! Then there's the "being parsimonious with the truth" thing, that particular afflicts GD, but does affect all of these shows (except, perhaps, Amazing Spaces and also, perhaps, Restoration Man). The one that stands out for me is the GD "eco" house, that had a SAP rating of G (!) and yet had the owner and Kevin McCloud spouting forth nonsense about energy efficiency and insulation. Remember the infamous Multifoil comment from him, that a 20mm thick bit of this "magic stuff" was equivalent to around 150mm (or thereabouts) of ordinary insulation? I generally like Building the Dream, except that I have a very strong feeling that some of the costs quoted are, like the kitchen example quoted above, more than a little fiddled. One theme of this programme has been that it starts out showing how building a house yourself can save tens of thousands. I'm sure it can for some, who get land at a good price and do a lot of work themselves, but I think you need to work hard to make a self-build come in at much under its market value. Our build is a reasonable example. I saved at least £50k to £60k by my efforts. These savings came from having no architect, no planning consultant, no project manager, only a couple of trades people and doing a LOT of DIY. Even so, our build came in at around £1340/m², which was more than I wanted to pay. Had I just used an architect, project manager, and had the house built for us by all the various trades, with no DIY from me, then the cost would have been somewhere around £2000/m². Had I been able to build the frame, foundations etc, and do more of the basic building work, the cost would probably have been down around £1000/m². Market value (including land cost) is currently is around £2500/m² around here, but this is an expensive bit of the local area. Where our old house is, market value is around £2000/m² generally, depending very much on the exact location and size of plot. I wonder how many self-builders really save a load of money by self building? Only those who get a cheap/free plot, or who do a heck of a lot of work themselves, I suspect.

Trouble with tonight's episode was that it should have been titled 'Having the dream built for you'. £420k build cost for a 120m2 house (excluding land) is obscene!

Im surrounded by Ash trees So I brought a SE in prior to buying the plot Weve paid 4600 for 153 beamed floor and gone down 1,8 stepping up to 1.2 Plus a layer of over site for drainage 7 cube Including two d garages we have used 143 cube of concrete and removed 740 tons of spoil All this for a flat site on good firm ground Opposite a sand quarry Nice to have trees But expensive

Ok the clay is the issue there however at 1.2m for a moderate tree such as an ash, you still need heave protection at 2.1m depth ..! What has he proposed for the inner lining of the trench ..?? Block and beam removes the requirement for heave protection under the floor but that's still not considering the foundations. Have you got a warranty company involved as they may need something else.

convince him that you could sell it afterwards. I hear that one a lot around here

Of course by the time it is through planning and got around to starting on site those 2 years may well have elapsed. F

Nope it's entirely irrelevant ..! They do the modeling on the mature tree size unless you can prove an exception (which I've done with a pollarded oak) as unless it's on the plans for explicit removal then you can't enforce someone to take a tree out. Soil type is the bigger issue too - shrinkable clays can be a mare as they expand and contract for at least two growing seasons as the soil water levels readjust. LABC warranty guidance on trees is pretty good.

Surely size of tree is also relevant. eg a 5m tree taken out now has fewer heave implications vs provisioning for the 30m tree it may turn into in 50 years? I also see - spelunking the 2010 regulations - that the foundation depth can be 50mm shallower each 50 miles North or West of London. Surprised ! Ferdinand

Wouldn't matter if you remove it - heave takes up to 3 years. Three things you need to know : - soil type - tree type - distance to the tree From that you can use either the LABC or NHBC founds depth calculation to indicate the depth needed. That also indicates the compression foam requirement for the inner face of the founds as if it is 2.1m down then you need a minimum of 75mm compression void. And I'm not sure about the comment about being below 1.5m and suspended floor ..? Where is that from ..?

I wonder if @Sensus can help here? I hope there could be other ways round that, perhaps based on the type of tree and root spread / thirstiness etc. eg What happens if you put in a root barrier or bribe your neighbour to remove the tree? Ferdinand

I'd say that they are either occupied by better off tenants, use something like ASHP, or are good enough energy wise to be acceptable. But I do not think that Councils are guaranteed to be competent enough to check that before coming for you :-) . F

B&B didnt work out much more for us. Make sure its grouted in as soon as its down or it will just fill with rubbish. Quick and easy to lay.

Was a structural engineer involved in the design? Was it full plans approval? was the tree shown on the BC drawings? P.S imho nothing wrong with a suspended timber floor, that was my choice.

Erm, I'm just wondering whether your SE can present the BCO with some calculations?

Yes that should work.

And lack of education. People have no idea how houses "should" be. With education, they may demand more. But whether that education ever occurs is the question; the only thing Kirsty Allsop seems to go on about is fireplaces. Personally I disagree with any payback exemption. If you are investing in housing, you have to take the risks. Maybe a future government may be less likely to look favourably on landlords.

True. TBH honest meeting EPC is the least of my problems compared to tenants!

The electric combis are called Storage boilers. Not great imo, but technology may have moved on Basically they're thermal stores and produce instant hot water via a neat exchanger. Great until they lose heat and deplete. Go for a heating only wet electrical boiler and then one big instant. Your electric supply will need to handle these of course. @JSHarris has good things to say about Steibel ( iirc ) so maybe he can add to this.

Just taking a step back... The title of this thread is "Cheap, Thermally Efficient Non-Structural Wall Detail", however what you are developing here is a structural wall. Have you talked yourself out of the steel portal frame à la "BarnHaus"? or is this still your current direction. If you are still considering the steel portal frame then you could consider a less structural options than the I-Joists to make of the external walls. At the moment there is a double-count in your strategy ie. both the steel columns (suitably braced) of your portal frame and your I-Joists of your wall detail are independently capable of holding up the roof. My current build is a conversion of a steel portal framed cow-shed and in the early days I enlisted some help from Dr. Ed Green to develop early concepts on integrating the portal frame, due to his involvement with Barnhaus. I wasn't interested in the straw bale insulation, so we looked at several other options. and always the plan was to keep the steel outside the thermal envelope and ensure no warm moisture could get to it. Integrating the steel structure into the timber frame structure adds an extra layer of difficulty. The portals of the the steel frame will require racking bracing at wall level (as well as the roof) and as you have drawn it the racking braces will run through the I-Joists. It would be much easier if the steel columns were external to the wall, but this looses you some floor space you are trying to retain. Mine are half in, half out - a compromise that adds complexity. Your choice of steel portal frame is due to room size. What's the roof, ie. pitched of flat, and what way does it run. It's quite possible you could do this with Glulam and I-Joist to avoid the Steel Portal frame, and simplify your structure. With regards to your I-Joist wall detail, and to play devil's advocate, if cost and wall thickness are critical then there's no need for a service void if you are only running suitably sized cables in the external walls. But you shouldn't run plumbing. Also, your VCL could be achieved with a foil-backed plasterboard if your wall build up is so designed. Also, your outer sheathing could be both racking support and the airtight layer with something like Egger DHF board, avoiding the need for any airtight or VCL membrane. Designed right, its a cost effective solution.

Exercise bike + dynamo + wife?

O% from grid

The best GD of all time for me is Ben Law's woodland house .... Beautiful house, ridiculous budget and proof you can build something if you put your mind to it ..!

First off, these programmes are all entertainment, and most are made on a very,very tight production budget. They are almost as cheap to produce as quiz shows, I suspect (although quiz shows take some beating for being budget TV). It's no accident that there are so many of these shows around, now, they've proved popular and are very cheap to produce - a winning formula for anyone commissioning a programme for a TV channel. They are also, like many quiz shows, very much "ego TV", in that generally they don't pay the people whose projects are really the stars of the shows, any money at all, they rely on some people "wanting to be on TV", and not caring about getting paid for it. FWIW, you don't get paid much for TV work anyway, unless you're a big name. I think I was paid something like £400 per episode for Scrapheap, which worked out to less than £10 an hour, and the same went for all the production crew, who were mainly self-employed and charging pretty modest rates. They have all developed, or aimed at, target audiences, and those target audience aren't self-builders at all. There aren't anywhere near enough self-builders in the UK to get a commissioning producer interested in buying any show aimed at them, so the audience for all of these shows has to be massively wider than that for them to be commissioned. GD has focussed on mega-projects in the main, with a few oddball ones thrown in, and the appeal of the show is also partly driven by the presenter (although my other half can't stand him!). Their target audience is similar to those who buy some of the up-market home magazines - mainly "lookers, not do'ers". It's notable that quite a few architects use GD as a way to gain free publicity for their work, as there seems to be a higher than average proportion of architects and designers on that show, plus it seems closely tied to RIBA. Building the Dream is plain "aspirational entertainment", the sort of show that thousands will watch in daytime re-runs for years to come, and which appeals because it seems as if the projects are, in the main, within the reach of many ordinary people. It has a target audience that's probably pretty close to being the same as that for the programmes on doing up houses, etc, and it's a bit like some of the "chat" magazines, in that respect. Amazing Spaces is really about how small a space you can do something with, and a fair few people can probably relate to it, as it is about making use of small spaces efficiently, and a large number of UK homes are pretty small. It's also got the "wacky factor", in that it features some stuff that's pretty weird and wonderful, and there is a fairly large target audience for anything out of the ordinary. I'm friends with a former ITV and BBC Commissioning Producer (I worked for him on a BBC project that was part of H2G2 many years ago), and he reckons that the viewing target market has to be in the several millions of views (that's total views, both original broadcast plus multiple repeats) before anyone will commission a new series. Self-builders amount to a few thousand a year, I suspect, so nowhere near a big enough market for any TV show, hence the reason that these shows are aimed to entertain millions of people who will never contemplate a self-build for real.

LOL!. I remember both you guys from ebuild. The help I got from everyone was always amazing! You want photo's? ; hmmmmmm - well might not look much different from a year ago! lol - but I'll get some. @ProDave 2 years on the market! - christ! - we've been about 4 months. It's slow (thanks Trump, Brexit and Xmas!). I have no money at all; so need to sell. Borrowed on loans to get this far - so slowly (!!!) clearing those. Honestly though; can't state it enough. If it wasn't for ebuild (and now this forum) wouldn't have got as far as I did with my build.....

@readiescards has ventured down this path . He's going off grid. Maybe some leads / links paul ?

Leave the floor intact. Horizontal and up n over as per last comments. Safety plates where you cut the battens out so no chance of screwing into the cables when boarding .

Safe zones are 150mm in from a corner and 150mm down from the ceiling, then horizontally or vertically from each accessory. If you stick to BC switch and socket heights, then I like to leave a gap in the battens at 450mm and 1150mm from floor level. That gives you the option to run cables horizontally from sockets and (less likely) horizontally from a light switch, without having to bother drilling holes in the battens. No you can't run cables along at skirting board height (though plenty do, but where do the nails holding the skirting board go?. Oops.) Just run cables round the room from socket to socket, then up to the ceiling void where you can't continue that route for whatever reason.

It's pretty common to run a ring around each room at socket level. See this page, which has some helpful drawings about zones (note: do check that it's correct and up to date before relying on it!)

Thing is, we get something out of all of them ; even if it's negative. The program may have one particular focus, but you take what you can get from every resource - not always what the program maker intended. @Construction Channel's videos have taught me huge amounts of stuff. I look at those I think are relevant to me. But almost always I have learned other things by accident: how to stack wood : how to shift 20 tonnes of hardcore with a small digger : how impossible it would be for me to construct a roof : how tight a level line needs to be : whether to hire or buy a material handler : how to get a pretty young woman to mix your cement for you. Ian

Have you looked into pumped cellulose insulation? It has good thermal resistivity, a high SHC and good sound insulation.

Would you not also want a service cavity detail internally?

If those ovens are £3k each then the £20k that she said the kitchen cost must have excluded the appliances! Got the distinct feeling they were just on an ego trip.

In my view the problem with recessed spots is that they get installed in the first place. You wouldn't consider getting rid? The other issue I can see is protecting the membrane once installed. Ferdinand

I turned hay on a 135 for most of my childhood. I can still remember the old man shouting that I don't NEED to turn on a sixpence at full speed at the end of every row. ?

Have you guys never drove proper old school tractors, ? Little Massey 165 multipower (or its baby brother the 135) Hand throttle as well as foot throttle, and two foot brakes, one for each rear wheel so you could turn it on itself, And the requisite two gearboxes of course, I'll bet a few of the Irish lads (&lasses) learnt to drive on something like that,

At the moment we get on OK but see what happens eh, I don't wont to sound mean about it but making it easy for them to do the same at a future point wont be planned as this will devalue my home. Its a link detached at present and still would be with the extra bedroom but if they did the same it would make both houses Semi detached thus lowering the value. This has already been mentioned previously in the post. The caravan idea is good as I could do a cantilever (Caravantilever) design and make it all modern looking BUT from past experience with caravans the best place for them is................................................................... Cheers Onoff

you could always go old school, http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Water-Level and as they saw, water always find its own level. cheers simon

Wish my MiL had a pacemaker.....