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I hate to say this, but how long have I been banging on about inadequate building inspection standards? This has been going on for decades, and the bigger construction companies have now got very adept at bending the system to save money. I've raised it here, and on ebuild before, I know, and I even went so far as to raise it with my MP just over two years ago. Despite me having evidence that a large development in his constituency was being built with major failures to comply with the building regulations, and asking him if he would look in to it, he insisted that the government did not want to add to the regulatory burden of industry and he was sure that the construction industry was able to police itself. I wish I had recorded that conversation, and could play it back to him now. I was concerned enough about the clear and obvious inspection failings that I asked a LABC building inspector what he thought. His reply was that he thought that around 60% of work failed to comply with the building regulations, and that this view was shared by many of his colleagues, but that they were powerless to do anything about it.

Double act, it's like watching Fun With Flags!

This could have gone horribly wrong. Luckily I spotted it was on the wrong line before i got the saw out

I think that says more about your valuer than reality. I would never market my house as an 'Eco House' because it has no meaning. We've had a lot of people look at our house as it has been built, and many have been interested in the PH concept. One couple in particular, the woman was from Germany, were looking to buy a house but were fed up with seeing draughty old houses. They knew about PH and wanted to buy one. Having certification would have been a bonus for them. The PH market is small but the the number for sale is also small. We had our house valued and the valuer added a premium because it was built to PH standards. Don't devalue your house because it is a PH.

Did anybody read this? If this is true then Building standards are meaningless, NHBC may have some rather large problems and the Construction industry as a whole is going to need defibrillation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40418266

Its been a while since the last blog and lots has happened. We'd been busy with other things and planned to crack on with the house but while on the way to our house a couple of weeks ago, the OH was hit by a car which failed to give way at a junction. He was riding his cycle, got thrown up and across the road, landing on his head. Luckily, nothing was coming the other way, and he was wearing a helmet which took a lot of the impact and somehow, apart from lots of scrapes, his main limbs were fine, it was just his head that was badly hurt. He suffered a fractured cheek and eye socket but luckily, his eye appears okay. There were no fractures of the head or neck so after a night at the hospital he was sent home. A week later he had an op to fix the cheek and is now recovering from that. His good looks have returned with only a small scar around the eye. Another week and I'll be sending him back to work - he can do the painting at least! And in case you are wondering; the car driver was reported for careless driving and has admitted liability. Back to the house and a few pictures of the plastered bedrooms. What a transformation from their origonal state. The old windows had plasterboard added right up to the glass so I did take it all off and redid the reveals. It looks so much better now. The new cupboard on the landing and door to the front bedroom. and the back bedroom; This is the wall in the last blog which was my first plasterboarding attempt - it looks much better now. We are looking to start on the bathroom downstairs next. I have been busy sourcing everything and once the OH is back to normal, it should leap forward. The stud wall is in place, the bath is sitting in the bedroom and I am waiting for Nicholls to give me a good price on the rest of the furniture. More to follow...............

Sailed? Mines bloody lost at sea!

That's the situation we were in, so I opted for the slightly more capable unit, which was slightly bigger than we needed, to make sure we had a bit in reserve for the losses. The higher airflow unit was the same physical size, and not a lot more expensive, so was as easy to fit in the space. In practice, the measured flow rates from every terminal massively exceeded the requirements in Part F, so they all needed to be throttled down a lot, and we can exceed the background ventilation requirement on the lowest setting of the MVHR, which is around the highest SFP, too. I'd not be overly worried about a couple of 90 deg bends, as they will be far less restrictive then the very flexible duct that's often used. I used some semi-flexible "concertina" type aluminium duct for the vibration decoupling sections, wrapped with insulation on the external inlet/outlet side, and that seems less restrictive than the more floppy stuff.

Agreed. If you don't get it certified, how does a future buyer know that you did everything properly? First, the PH standard involves a lot more than just airtightness and insulation standards. I think a lot of people think that just meeting those two marks makes a house more or less PH standard, but there are also a huge number of other factors. There are limiting values for everything from glazing U-values to MVHR performance to thermal bridging, for example. Second, even if you do everything to the required standards, how does the potential buyer know that you didn't cut corners? For example, let's say you introduced cold bridging with some of your steelwork, because it turned out it was cheaper to do it that way than with a more expensive thermally broken approach. A buyer is unlikely to pick up such a change. Building control won't care as long as the change meets building regs. Certification is not just about ticking some boxes in a spreadsheet before building commences. It involves careful oversight at every stage of the build to ensure that the building is constructed in the way it was designed. I was told, for example, that we'd need to photograph every junction in the house at several stages of construction to show that what was designed was what was being built. That said, of course you don't need certification. We went back and forth on this issue several times, until eventually we decided that it just wasn't worth the extra cost and effort (incidentally: @JSHarris, I doubt you can get away with £1500 additional cost for certification. I estimate a minimum of twice that, and more likely quite a bit more). If we were in Germany and buyers understood the PH standard and were willing to pay a premium, it would likely make perfect financial sense. But we're not, and it doesn't.

From the tests that @Crofter has done, it seems as if the 10mm stuff is far more prone to water damage than the thicker stuff. I'd say the 14mm stuff we have would survive a short duration flood, say a washing machine malfunction that was cleared up pretty quickly. Whether it would tolerate a flood for a day or two I don't know. I suspect it might, but would possibly need sanding and refinishing just to get it dead flat again. The test I did was a bit extreme; the sample was immersed at the bottom of a bucket of water for over 4 days, and that's probably far worse than would be likely from a kitchen accident, I think. Being bonded down may well help a lot, as it should completely stop water getting underneath, at least for a few hours. Unfortunately I don't have any left over adhesive, as if I had I could bond a few bits down to something and try a more representative test.

I went for the 4g router and the Vodafone sim, it works great. I just need to get it connected up to form our home network

Hi All - Just received notification of this document which is essentially the the course I spoke of above. Has everything you need to under stand and deliver a 'COOL' home. Mike

It is not quick, you need the full details for the house, dimensions, windows location type, the works, so there is a lot of information you need or have to assume. Even if you paid someone to do it you would have to provide them with the info so it would take probably just as much time! I spend an hour or two a night for a couple of weeks, working through the book and filling in the details into the system and I had a lot of info to start with. As I say you will need to do a lot of work either way!

I bought a copy of PHPP seven years ago and used it to help design my house which is being built to PH criteria. I did design in a large glazed area facing WNW which did cause some overheating in mid summer which was predicted. I have mitigated the effect by using a solar film. I have visited several PH, two of which were designed by PHPP experts but I was not impressed. If you have a scientific background, or not maybe, and read the manual a couple of times before starting to use the spreadsheet I can't see why it can't be used by a non 'expert'. It would at least give you an idea of what you want and input data can be tweaked easily to change results.