Leaderboard

Through the airtight membrane and the BT phone line

So my suggestion would be, wiggle your mouse a lot, wiggle it in the morning in the evening and wiggle it a bit more on Saturday. Buy your materials weeks before they are needed, make lots of tea tidy up and. Stay out of the builders way. Forget learning a trade learn how to plan manage and deal with lads who may have a different background to yourself. Learn what is actually acceptable, you need to be able to tell the difference between a lad laying blocks in a trench that may look a bit rough to the untrained eye, compared to a diy chancer who has been on a 4 week night course. Do you have any new build near you ? Go and have a look around talk to the owners and ask if they are happy with who they used. If you build to just above building regs you will achieve it for your budget build it live in it, sell it, build another to a better standard you can’t start at the top, take it steady with a realistic outlook and you will do it. No boiling water taps, pop up extractor fans, or wall mounted toilets. There are plenty of people on here having a few dramas, but there are thousands who would give their right arm for the chance to build their own home. Hurry up and get started.

The key issue for self-builders who are not themselves time-served trades people is networks: human networks Of the -roughly- twenty trades people have been round our site, either working or blowing smoke into parts of my anatomy. Of those, 10 or so said they'd love to self build: and maybe two or three really meant it. They were the most engaging people to talk to: I could feel the fizz in their demeanor, the closeness of their questions, the sheer energy bubbling out of them. Everyone of them knew exactly who was going to do what on their build. In academic-speak, they had all socialised with one another often since school: their social technical networks were complete. And so when I struck a slightly discordant note [ say: we aren't having any hot water ducted anywhere in the building - why suffer the standing heat loss?] one or two of them stopped, and looked at me as if i was crazy - a tree hugger, or yogourt knitter. But they understood the explanation of the strategy behind the statement. They weren't used to thinking on any other lines other than those into which they'd been so powerfully socialised for so long. A nerd like me (as is the local view, I'm told) has great difficulty in breaking into those networks. They are very powerful indeed. And I think one of the outcomes of that recognition - for them - is often to attempt to over-charge. (I hear the song in my head "Will you walk away from a fool and his money?") The only way I have found of approaching such powerful people is by persistent politeness, and careful nurture. They are as powerful as the local elites ( see the story of Rollo). In the words of one of my lecturers: beware of those who are low-enough in the pecking order to really matter. Treat them well. That socialising on our part takes massive amounts of time, and if it doesn't, it takes massive amounts of money. You already have the necessary self-build skill. Go talk to people. A Lot.

But don't lose sight of what you really want. Put the infrastructure in ready for it when you finally can shell out. We've resigned ourselves to having to do that for our bathrooms as well. And being a really mean penny-pincher in the meantime.

These were decking lights. 20mm hole and 25mm bezel. A single 10w ceiling ( shower rated ) spot behind the middle of the bath mounted 100mm off the floor provides 'betting ambient' lighting. The annoyance was the decking lights couldn't be found in true warm white to match everything else, but the pocket lights and the bath spot weren't ever going to be on at the same time so no real worry. I'll link to them later.

They mixed them up and now they look fine. I think it was just bad luck that the first few came out looking like stripes and they didn't know that they had to mix them. I also suspect that it you take a picture straight on the middle tiles look a different colour due to the flash.

Only difference really is the local caravan folk have a liking for lead but fibreglass is worthless to them. Both will keep out the rain if done properly.

Mate has just been touted by a company called Solaredge. He already has 8 PV panels and a Sunny Boy inverter. This bloke wants to sell him 8 optimizers and a new Solaredge inverter for £4K. This on the basis his old inverter is only 85% efficient and the new Solaredge one 95% efficient. They'll buy back his Sunny Boy for £500 so £3.5K all in. Rekons it'll make his system 25% more efficient overall. My mate then rang the crowd who did his panels then latterly storage batteries and they've said they can do the same thing for £2.5K. All sounds b@llocks to me? Made the mistake of telling the second lot he's needing a new boiler so they're now after selling him an ASHP. I suggested Sunamp?

Help any...

Most of us might have thought this, and isn't about time that someone invented the Tardis? You have to make decisions based on the best evidence at the time you make them. Others might make a different decision; you might do the same with 20/20 hindsight. We can't go back; only forward.

It just looks a cheaper alternative to using proper lead. Have never heard of it. Says on it's homepage that it should last 20 years. Is this long enough for you so it ends up some one else's problem further down the line??? http://leadax.co.uk

That's why they will charge a £10 a brick. Hammering out each brick will break at least 3 silverline cold chisels.

Errrrrrrrm, the one where brickies own an angle grinder with a diamond encrusted blade, as opposed to the one where they wear small triangles of fur and bash away with primitive tools ( probably made by Silverline ha ha )

Thanks

Very excited, exchanged contracts today on the plot with completion next week. Just a bit frustrated as our architect is being really slow to prepare the building regs drawings and the minor amendment to planning that we want. Just want to get started now

Move.

Just a short note to let you know that I had a meeting in Swansea with @Nickfromwales to discuss a couple of projects and how the new products being released end of March can be configured. A very enjoyable meeting to help bring him up to speed. Many thanks @Nickfromwales

Ok, here's the national guide price as cited in SPONS page 226 (What's that? Click here) Per meter squared Labour: 0.69 m sq per hour Labour cost: £18.25 per hour Materials cost : £1.30 per m sq Local variations to those guide costs will apply. £10 per brick replace is a strong indication that they don't want the work, or have a substance abuse habit.

How old was the original lead valley?

New vehicle entrance to our site is over a grass verge belonging to the local farming estate. However, even though the Estate owns the verge County Council Highways have adopted it. We did a highways search to confirm this. Highways still refer to this as a dropped kerb. I had to apply for a licence to work in the highway. Their engineers specified what the construction , including the width & angles & the edging had to be. They sent a quote for the work but indicated that I could use my own contractor if preferred. I had to supply a copy of the public liability insurance (min £2million) from my contractors. They will come & inspect the work before it is completed. I have just extended the licence again for another 6 months as way behind on the build. It is not worth doing the access until all of the heavy construction traffic has ceased.

3 months? Id say you could be one of the finest scaffolders in the country in half that time :))

Zone 1 requirement is IP45, but IP65 is more common and readily available. I used SLV throughout my house, though not downlighters - not the cheapest but impressed with the quality. https://www.slv.com/en-de/products/luminaires/recessed-fittings.html# Also might be worth considering a 12 or 24v system and place the transformer outside the shower zone.

Exactly A nervous three weeks till I took the scaffold down

So they are just going to coat it, not do a full repair.

Ditto!

Thanks Nick. For the sake of a few hundred quid I guess it makes sense to run it in now.... can easily turn it off at a later date but would be a pain to install after the fact.

PMSL, full-on, tea through my nose, dropped the cup, smashed it, still laughing Welcome indeed VoH. Or may I guess, dude? I dare ya! A photo would do us all a power of good. @Onoff will be along shortly with soothing words of procrastination and electro-babble. He specialises in wet fingered dabbling in plastic wires that contain smoke. Ian

Oh my goodness yes indeed.... So far downstairs was minimal guano so a simple f2 mouth mask was worn. But for upstairs I will be getting a fancy shmancy mask with the filters on the sides... yup.. I know all the technical words! lmao

Hi VoH, welcome to the forum. If I were working in an environment with a lot of bird faeces I would definitely wear a good face mask. Some nasty diseases can be caught by breathing in the dust.

Does this mean you can export pigeon pie? Welcome.

Our roof valleys are fiberglass, haven't leaked yet, but only been up for 4 months!

I did my roof with fibreglass valleys. Another cost missing from the estimates above, is stripping off some tiles to expose the valley, replacing any rotten battens, and putting the tiles back.

Hi and welcome to the forum. If you want to start a blog, you need @recoveringacademic or @PeterW to enable that for you. Otherwise just to ask questions, start a new thread in the relevant section of the forum.

Well I can’t be much help to you but welcome. I’m sure one if the wonderfully knowledgable and helpful bods on here will be along soon to pont you in the right direction.

Quick answer would be that fibreglass is much cheaper Lead for my two valleys was £500 Fibreglass would have been less than a hundred sure it may not be as good as lead But nearly all the major house builders use it The quote seems ok to me Couple of days work for two men If it doesn’t P down Also They will have to hire or erect there own scaffold Asvits not a job that can be done safely off ladders

Can I be in the van team!!!

Nice design that, and a reasonable price. But this intrigued me: " FILON’s V-Flow DF valley troughs and accessories are fully recyclable at end of life. " Would like to know how they are doing it. It has been a problem with normal GRP because of the low costs and flammability. I did experiments in the early 90's, but was not worth the effort. Things change though.

If it is a simple shape, it may be worth having a mould made up. Then is can be made in a workshop and just fitted. Much more reliable that way.

Chances are they will use preformed ones like these https://www.roofingsuperstore.co.uk/product/dfvt72-dry-roofing-valley-trough.html

If you have identified a void why can you not fill it from above. Find bottom of void with camera, find top of void with camera mark area on face of blocks, cut a hole at the top, not a silly hole a mans hole 100 mm square, fill void with a strong wet screed mix 4-1 sharp sand cement vibrate the living daylights out of it. As others have said keep this on the qt.

When someone is getting into financial trouble they tend to cut corners. Not saying you would be just saying how it is. From experience if only foundations are done it’s very hard to get a new builder or structural engineer to sign off on them. Had this happen during the recession after a few builders on sites went into bankruptcy. Any structural cracks on competition of the building and they’ll blame the original foundations by others. Far better to dig them out and start again. Therefore a green field site with planning would be better than a site with foundations to a potential buyer. If selling it’s going to be sitting a long time while getting surveyed, finances, legal maps, transferred, etc. You really need it weather tight (sold like an office shell and core ready for fit-out) or green field to get the best return.

I would say if you're already thinking along these lines that your heart isn't really in it. Pull out now and save yourself lots of grief.

Ah yes, I believe you've talked about this guy before. Never met a door to door salesman he didn't like!

As @Ian says, or this https://www.ironmongerydirect.co.uk/product/stormguard-proline-inward-threshold-1000mm-inward-opening-doors-silver-292994?vat=1&shopping=true&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpoX6yd782AIVaLvtCh2uhwieEAQYBCABEgIZyPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Together with an appropriate threshold strip this type of automatically self operating acoustic drop down seal should work http://www.buildtec.ie/acoustic-door-bottom-seal There are various companies who make them. The mechanism is purely mechanically self operated (no power needed)

It's good news that there is nothing in the water table. As made ground is quite shallow you will be excavating the majority of this out to put in the founds of the house including the basement, roads in and everything else that needs done. When this is all being dug out depending on how much more asbestos you find will determine how you dispose of the spoil. Check with who ever done your report if this is suitable for them. If you find anything you can bag a few samples up and if you come across something major then you will get them out again. As you say its probably just from the old garage wall.

IMO, using the SunAmp as a thermal store for UFH is overkill. You've already got maybe 7m³ of concrete to do that. In a passive house with typical losses you can pump the heat into the slab when economic to do so and let the temperature vary maybe 1°C, for example with E7 or E7 powered ASHP. KISS. @Stones Jason, I am going for E7, partially because I think that within 5 years we will have consumer spot pricing tarrif options. It's really only a software issue now, and doing so is really going to help the generators optimise supply / demand management. In terms of overall design, we seem to be pretty much paralleling @Alphonsox Neil apart from the sea air of course. The only main difference is that I am not going to fit my ASHP for completion, but use just electricity for the first year or so, so we can characterise and size our system needs and fit the ASHP as a year 2 upgrade.

Just enabled E7 timed input into my twin Sunamp PV setup - the surplus PV generation on cloudy days at this time of year is now problematic. My installation took place in January and I can confirm the very low standing heat loss I suspect we get more 'waste' heat from the adjacent Solaredge inverter. Capacity per unit is 'over' 4kWh (they claim 4-5kWh) . We required a capacity to supply 240 litres into the bath at 40 degrees and the system has always managed to achieve this.

Not having a telly, I did not recognise Robert Llewellyn at first He has changed a bit. Has he had surgery?

Prior to deciding upon the SunampPV as my preferred means of providing DHW, I investigated the Sunamp Stack. http://sunamp.co.uk/...SunampStack.pdf The main attraction of this unit is the ability to store up to 60 kWh of useable heat energy. For low energy houses, this meets and probably vastly exceeds the total DHW and heating energy requirements. The following info is a summary of the information provided by Andrew @ Sunamp. The unit is currently progressing through testing, but should become available this year, 2016. As yet Sunamp do not have any heat loss data for the unit, but given that the casing will be made of the same vacuum panels as the Sunamp PV is made from, I think we can expect low losses (certainly lower than a suitably sized thermal store). The storage medium with the unit are the same PCM cells as the Sunamp PV. These are designed to have a 20 year lifespan, warranty for 10 years. Each PCM cell stores between 2.2 and 2.5kWh. Eventual output depends on unit configuration. The Sunamp Stack is a storage unit only. It would need to be paired with a heat source - electric flow boiler, high temp ASHP, although they are working on incorporating the charging system used in the SunampPV. Preferred output temp set for DHW to give maximum flexibility. This would mean blending down for UFH applications. The unit can be configured in several different ways, with full size units measuring approx 550mm x 550mm x 2100mm (16 cells) or 800mm x 550mm x 1600mm (18 cells). One interesting thread of our discussion was the option / possibility of buying a full sized housing, racking system and internal hydraulics, but only installing a limited number of cells, which could be added to later if total demand exceeded what was planned (for whatever reason). A full size unit would allow households to use E7 as their energy source. A smaller sized unit (i.e. limited number of cells) could be run off an E10 tariff, although E10 is somewhat more restrictive in that there are only a few energy suppliers which support that tariff. Cost wise, Andrew suggested a full size unit would be in the region of £5.5K to £6.5K. If someone wanted a smaller unit, he indicated that the casing/ racking/hydraulics would be £1K-£1.5K, and £250 - £300 per cell. As a tailored/bespoke item rather than a large production run item, individual units would be priced according to individual requirements. Installer training would be facilitated by Sunamp. Although designed to be used with a high temp ASHP, I think it has a lot of potential using direct electric (off peak) as the energy source in a low energy / passive type build.