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Our windows were installed about 3 weeks ago very badly by our timber frame contractors. 2 of the frames were damaged beyond repair & have had to be re-ordered from Denmark. The 6m sliding patio doors were installed 25mm too low to achieve the finished floor level & many other problems. They have all been taken out & re-installed this week, properly, by one of Ideal combi's registered installers. The guys who did them were very professional & meticulous. Have to say Ideal combi have been very helpful in getting this sorted out for us. The cedar cladding had been started & looks lovely. The weather last week stopped the stonemasons. We are having ironstone & it was too cold for the lime mortar. Ditto the render, has to be dry & above 5 degrees. We are now weather tight & first fix wiring & plumbing booked in for early Jan. The roofers arrived at 8am this morning & will finish the roof as much as they can until the render is done. We are going to spend the Christmas break putting several coats of osmo on the rest of the cedar cladding before it is fitted. The cedar already on has been treated but we might give it another coat, weather permitting. After lots of delays & trauma we now feel that things are coming together.

Personally I think this is a mistake. MVHR is a £3-4k cost max and delivers significant benefit. It can be installed DIY and self certified, On a house your size (we are similar) it's a rounding error on the budget.

I believe MVHR is apart of a larger philosophy of 'materials first' as my architect likes to say. That is, put your money into the insulation and air-tightness of the structure to reduce your heating bills in the long term. Depending on the insulation you may also have significant performance in acoustic reduction. As an engineer I am quite fond of the philosophy as it focuses on simple and low maintenance technology rather than complex systems that would be higher maintenance and prone to breaking... I really don't like moving parts! An MVHR not only provides ventilation but it is a good combo to further reduce your heating outlay whilst providing you with an improved environment (fresher air, filtered, quicker to dry towels/clothes etc...). For us it's a no brainier as all the above are #1 to #5 on our top 10 list of priorities. Out quotes have varied from £2k to £4k for the MVHR unit and the various ductings required too. Installation is often on top of this, but half of the suppliers wont even offer it. But as many will point out, installing a MVHR is a right of passage for many of the self builders on the forum!

This thread reminds me of a loo in student digs that was so small it had knee holes cut in the door.

Cheers @Declan52, might just do that and save myself £1,300, thanks.

Great advice @Nickfromwales which I've followed. Went to Garscube industrial estate in Glasgow as they have three plumbers merchants close to each other. Young Callum at Plumbworld gave me a small double radiator for free and insisted on carrying it to the car too! Graham's had nothing but phoned another branch who unfortunately had just sent a 4 year pile to the scrap merchant. Next up was PlumbCentre who gave me a huge double for 20 quid, nice fella said he'd give it away but company policy requires an audit trail. Result, and for all the poor experience's buildhubbers are having, remember this, people are generally nice, kind and helpful. I told folk it was a charity job and like, their chance to do a mini DIY SOS but without the publicity. Was met with a huge smile and you're welcome. Few guys in the merchant queue commented too, well done son, you don't ask, you don't get and do on. Nice experience pre Christmas and saved £160 for a couple of hours driving around.

Hmmm, very good. I was going to install a bidet but these look better. Being Yorkshire I think I will have to rename it though, how's Shitoff sound ??

This is why it's good to discuss this before you are at the point of no return. You have a room in your roof, so most of it will already be insulated at rafter level. So insulate the entire roof at rafter level. It makes it easier to detail, to join the roof insulation to the wall insulation, and gives you 2 warm eaves spaces for storage or services.

Unless it's a hotel your building your talking 1 day to pull the ducts to where they need to go and once plastered out then depending on how many vents you need cut out then another day maybe 2 if you have lots of vents. All of which you can easily do on your own. All you need is a step ladder, a saw for cutting the ducts, a plaster board saw for cutting the holes in the ceilings and a swear box. Just get a price from bpc to commission it or if I am correct there is the tool floating about between members that you can use to do it yourself.

Thank you very much for all the very constructive replies. You have all convinced me that PIV has it's place in older/leaky houses and that by installing it in a new build (without trickle vents) I am doing the wrong thing. My build is by main contractor and the cost I've been given to install & commission MVHR is around £5k, so it's a significant potential saving. BPC have given me a price £2,500 for parts and £1,450 to install & commission which brings it down to £4k (if the builder is happy for me to organise the MVHR separately). Thanks again for all the help.

We had initially specified 200mm full fill rigid insulation between rafters and 25mm across rafters for all our vaulted roof areas. I swapped it out to 180mm earthwool batts and 50mm across the rafters. The U value wasn't as good, but given the running cost difference was only £18 a year, it was going to take well over 40 years before there was any payback. I also concluded that the mix of insulation types gave better decrement delay, and would avoid the requirement to have to foam in each and every board between rafters.

Hi Nick, I am trying to project manage the build. I work full time & my husband is not well, so I am spread a bit thin. The window debacle happened while my husband was in hospital so I could not be there to oversee the installation. I have had a full refund from the timber frame company for the installation & they are paying for the replacement window frames. I think the windows are a bit unusual & not something they had come across before. We are very happy with the timber frame structure. The windows were just a step too far.

Plus the ventilation heat loss has to be offset with something, like fortifying with electricity I'd fit mvhr and compromise elsewhere, seems madness not to IMO.

You're pushing moist air outward through the fabric of the building. Is this not a recipe for wintertime interstitial condensation?

Re looking at it surely you would want the slab that is over the basement enclosed in insulation so the break would be where the slab is on-top of the basement walls, if the slab extends beyond that. So insulate over the slab to the Ground Floor Walls, so the slab contributes to the "Thermal Mass" (I will be shouted at). Then only put UFH pipes in the appropriate sections of slab. I suspect it will end up being precast concrete spans as cast in situ could be difficult for that!

Getting stuck in to Fort Knox foundations this morning. This programme has blended two separate photos/ I took one of the site and a panoramic of the view - which looks kind of moody with the low mist. Dragged them both on here and it has melded them = amazing.

I have been using Nuaire PIVs since about 2012, and in the right circumstances they are excellent - of the PIV units they are relatively inexpensive, reliable and British made. I think there are more than a million units fitted in the UK. The famous product of the same type was called "Lofty". There are a range of Nuaire PIV products from basic (go in the loft to change the setting), "Hall Control" (change a switch on the vent in the ceiling), and various types of remote sensor / controller eg humidity. There is a model with a heater (500W iirc) in the outlet. They can be dramatically effective in condensation situations, and with single or old double glazing in an old house they can add enough background ventilation to make the problem just go away, or recede significantly. For example it may prevent pooling of condensation on windowsills in the morning, but it relies on the leakiness of the house to let the stale air and humidity escape. If you are well sealed you need to make provision to get the air out effectively. They cost pennies to run. I now have them fitted in nearly all my rentals, usually paired with a trickle / boost HRV fan (normally a Vent-Axia Lo Carbon Tempra) at the other end, just to make sure that there is background ventilation as an insurance, and the atmosphere stays fresh, and condensation doesn't happen. The supply cost of a Hall Control Nuaire PIV plus a Lo Carbon Tempra is together from about £400-£550, depending on model - plus fitting which is easy. For real crunch-budget you can fit a DHEV trickle fan or two rather than a Lo Carbon Tempra. Remote sensors of gewgaws, or the thicker-wall version of the Tempra, does add up to a couple of hundred more. The ones in the LBB were £280 + £150, because I went for the Nuaire PIV which can have a WiFi "is it being turned off" monitor fitted later (for £100 or so). But I did not get the extra module since I have never had the issue raised. For a larger newbuild or renovation a different strategy might be best. I think I would pre-install MHRV ducting and put the PIV where a future MVHR outlet in the landing ceiling could replace it once you have the budget in a few years. You need to decide whether you have the right circumstances, and how the costs stack up. Ferdinand

I wired a new house this year where he started out with trickle vents in the windows and mechanical extraction ventilation., but he saw the light and converted part way through the build for mvhr. My mvhr unit cost just over £500 and all the ducting and vents from BPC was about £1K so you should comfortably get a system for under £2K Have you got a SAP assesment of your build yet and any idea of your heating costs? Mine I expect to cost less than £250 per year to heat it, and there are several on here with even better houses with lower costs. It really is worth putting in the detail now to get it right, ignore it now and it's a major job to improve it later.

Did you price a kit from bpc and do the install yourself??? If you go down this route have you not to make sure your house is "leaky" so the stale air can be pushed out by the incoming fresh air. Seems a piece of kit for suitable to an older house that suffers from mould/condensation.

Our plasterer was great - although he had to delay for a week or so on the second round, which didn't really bother me. Anyway, I wanted the master bathroom ceiling plastered before Christmas to let me finish it and I asked if there was any way he could help me out. He came yesterday on his last day (with two other jobs that day) and did it for me. When I asked him how much I owed him, he told me he couldn't think of a good housewarming gift so that was it! He was there a good 4 hours! So yes, it pays dividends to take it easy on squeezed tradesmen! The landscaping turned into a 4 month saga but at the end of it, they made me a special plinth for the phone box and did a lot of other wee bits for no charge to make up for the delay. All looking great, the delay will be forgotten as soon as you're in!

A calm customer reaps his rewards. I worked for one idiot and he pushed me to 105% on everything. He heard me talking to his neighbour about a bathroom job, and I had said "as long as I've got a beating heart you've got a warranty on labour". Said idiot pulled me at the end of the job and asked me for a written copy of my warranty policy, to which I laughed. He re quoted me and I said his warranty had run out as the end of the original contract had expired by 90 days. When he protested I just said if you hadn't been such an akward prick I'd have shown you the same courtesy. Everyone that saw the job said it was above showroom standard and he simply paid me my final bill and we parted company. I even turned down his request of a maintenance contract, instead sending him to the manufacturers (aka the most expensive route ). Sounds like you have a good crew, so take them all for a breakfast ?

The snag is that the efficiency of such a set up would be dreadful at 12 V and the resistor will get very hot. The bulbs I listed have a high efficiency wide voltage range, constant current, DC-DC converter in the base, so barely run warm. A typical white LED run hard will have a forward voltage of around 3 to 3.3 V, and for 0.5 W the forward current will be around 0.15 A to 0.17 A (from I = P/V). The series resistor will need to drop between 8.7V and 9 V, so the power dissipated in the resistor would be around 1.3 to 1.5 W (from P = V*I), three times more power than the LED is using, dropping the efficiency to around 25% before taking into account the LED efficiency. Also, a resistor running at around this power will be far too large to fit in the bulb base and if it could be squeezed in it would get very hot. Better to get the bulbs with the relatively high efficiency DC DC converter in the base, I think. The bulbs I linked to barely get warm when running, certainly they are a lot cooler than the 0.5 W incandescent bulb they replaced.

It's a great shame that the major benefit of triple isn't emphasised in that article, and is just ignored. Triple glazing isn't primarily about the U value, in fact I think the U value is probably one of the least important factors in most of the UK. Double glazing can achieve good U values, but cannot get close to the comfort improvement that triple glazing gives, because it only allows a single pane of low emissivity coated glass to be used (because the coating is fragile and has to be on the inner face of the outer pane). Triple glazing allows two low emissivity coated panes to be used, the inner face of the outer pane and the inner face of the centre pane. That just about doubles the long wavelength IR reflected back into the room, and as far as comfort goes, our bodies are very good at detecting high radiated heat loss, so standing in front of glazing that reflects most of our radiated body heat back feels, subjectively, a great deal warmer. We still have our old house, with decent double glazing and a single low emissivity coated pane. Although the U value of that glazing isn't bad, it feels, subjectively, pretty cold when you stand or sit in front of a window, and it encourages you to pull the curtains early, even when the room temperature is OK. In the new house you cannot notice any difference between standing in front of a window on a very cold day and standing in front of a wall, as the windows reflect back the majority of your body heat, more than the walls do I think. I think more needs to be made of this point, as it often seems to be missed in our obsession with U values.

This is pretty much what I said to the builder. It isn't going to happen so go back to doing things in the right order not rushing them. Actually I have been impressed by the trades continuing to do things right, protecting floors and so on even though they were hurrying. TBH it's amazing how much got done in the last two weeks, if only they had sped up a few weeks ago. The main issue was not having the heating on earlier to dry out the plaster. Everyone has calmed down today. I have asked the movers to bring our stuff to the house tomorrow, and will just store it in the two rooms where the floor is down so that it's not in the way. That way we will have our stuff over Christmas and New Year. We had packed away the vast majority of our clothes, even some Christmas presents expecting to get them back a few weeks later. I have booked a place to stay until early February. They literally were just finishing off the type 1 on the drive at 5pm today so that the movers can get in and I can take the new car up to the garage to charge. I am pretty easy going as long as people are making an effort and being nice! I was really pleased with the floors as I ordered 470 square metres of it on the basis of a single sample less than a foot long from a company on the internet. It was £39 a square metre including underlay, I saw some stuff twice the price that wasn't any nicer.

https://www.homebuilding.co.uk/does-triple-glazing-make-sense/ thought of you

Pm me on easements if you like, I am absolutely not a lawyer but have spent a lot of time on the subject

I do a lot of commercial floor tiling definately don’t use heaters All they do is push the moisture around the building. you can hire couple large dehumidifiers for not a lot of money You’ll be surprised how quickly they draw the moisture out

Prudent.... ? I'd say hire 2 medium sized units and place them apart if it's the whole ground floor. One will struggle due to the internal walls. Make the place as airtight as possible to maximise their efficiency ( plus the dehumidifiers will give off heat as a waste product too so maybe no need for heaters ? ).

You may find this 6-minute solicitor timer useful . Bail out at 5 minutes or 11 minutes. http://www.online-stopwatch.com/timer/6minute/ For this reason: http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2006/04/23/six-minute-billing-units-2/

Have an answer for you @Russell griffiths but thought I would keep it to myself until my curious is satiated over the bad language post. No - only joking - Look for 3D game environment building apps these are free and most allow you to fit / project materials on surfaces. Have a look here: http://mashable.com/2008/07/10/tools-for-3d-creation/#o68NrEunJuqu

This thread has prompted an idea. Some of us are competent to teach others to do some basic stuff, I'm sure. There's nothing like an hour or two chatting and working through some typical jobs, like making soldered or compression pipe joints, making plastic pipe connections, and other jobs, like fitting MVHR stuff, and all the myriad jobs in a build. How about setting up a "I'll volunteer to help you learn about that" group? I'd happily take the odd day out to drive up with some tools and stuff to spend a few hours helping someone else pick up some of the skills I've acquired, for example. Anyone else think this is worth exploring further as an idea?