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The person you spoke to... they did work there, didn't they??

Not wanting to hijack Peter's post This just landed on the mat What a lot of hassle to get to this

Ive been researching the many different ICF products on the market recently and have complied some data for comparison. A lot of the info is available online, but details from some manufacturers aren't so easy to find. The spreadsheet is far from complete or exhaustive, the products with the most detail are the ones I've been personally interested in and have sought quotes. Ive settled on a product now and my motivation has moved on to the next pressing decision! Hope this is some help to anyone thinking of building with ICF

It sounds like either a fault or a calibration issue. Its possible it got accidentally recalibrated? If you accidentally held down the ON button while trying to set the target temperature you would end up recalibrating it instead. The procedure is on page 25 of the Touch-N manual. https://www.heatmiser.com/en/heatmiser-manuals/#56-touchscreen-thermostat-series-1456694661 To recalibrate it you need another thermometer that you trust to measure the room temperature. The heatmiser is then recalibrated to that value.

Well, at last we have finished our renovation and have had an offer that we have accepted. It took longer to get here than we ever thought, over 17months, but I think it was worth it. After Christmas and our little party, we had the estate agent in who had already sold one of the neighbours houses and before we knew it, the photographer was there and the next day it was online! we still had a few snags to sort out but we soon had those done, apart from the wooden mantle for the lounge fireplace, which we hadn't found yet. After a couple of weeks, we had a good offer and so we are now in the hands of the solicitors. I am hopeful to have it all completed by end of April. Our buyer was in the middle of selling her place to a first time buyer so I am keeping my fingers crossed that there are not too many problems. We did say we didn't want a chain, prefering a FTB or cash buyer. So here are a few of the photographs of our amazing house, together with the origonal shots, if I have them. The dining room. The lounge. Our lovely bathroom - Am very pleased with this The back bedroom. I am so proud of what we have acheived. it was our first big renovation and we had to take on many challenges that we had not done before. But apart from the builder (who did the structural work on the side gable wall and removed the wall between the kitchen and dining room) and the plasterers, we did the lot ourselves! Poor OH has still not recovered, although his knees are much better now that he is no longer crawling round the floor doing plumbing/electrics/boarding etc. Whenever I mention another nice place I have seen on Rightmove that needs renovating, he turns a strange colour of pale and goes to lie down. I think I shall have to wait for a little while before looking too seriously. I hope you have enjoyed sharing this experience/blog with us and maybe have learnt some things on the way; I know I certainly have. I shall be sad to see the house go - it has always felt a friendly /warm house, even in the middle of winter. But onwards and upwards! Maybe we will eventually find a plot and can build our own house or, if not, a renovation for us rather than for profit. And whatever, I shall make sure there is a blog on Buildhub! Cheers, The Mitchells.

....because we have clay, and lots of it. A soil test was carried out on the site today as MBC need to know what they're building on to do their sums for the foundation. I used a firm called Mini Soil Surveys (South West), run by a chap called Martin Shirley. My selection of which firm to use was detailed and exacting - they were the cheapest. Or should I say, least expensive. Actually, I had no idea what was involved in this other than punching a few holes in the ground and looking at which flavour of mud comes out of it. That's broadly it, but in a much more sophisticated manner and it took a fair amount of time, too, starting at 9.30 and finishing some time around 2.30 in the afternoon, which was much longer than I anticipated. I rang 4 different companies, both in Dorset and a little further afield, with prices ranging from about £1,400 (inc VAT) up to about £3,000. A mini drilling rig (my terminology is probably entirely wrong here, so please excuse my ignorance) gets trundled onto the site and 3 locations, roughly triangulated on the extreme points of where the new build will be, are chosen. At each site, 3 sample cores at increasing depths are taken and then bagged up for lab tests, if thought necessary. Unfortunately, mine are due to a lot of clay coming out in the samples. The main reason for the lab analyses is to find out whether the clay/soil is shrinkable because this could have a major effect on what gets built on it. It will take about 10 days for the lab tests and report to be done, so I just need to wait this out and then let MBC know the results. It's not essential for the client to be there, but Martin was keen for me to attend if possible as, in his experience, other things often come to light that may be relevant to other plans for a site apart from the main build. Although it was a little repetitive towards the end, I did find it interesting and it brought up another job that is time critical and needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later. The urgent task is to deal with a large amount of hedgerow that runs around the existing bungalow and to do it before it all gets going and growing in the spring. I had already planned to get the majority of this chopped down (hopefully next weekend) before birds start nesting, but I need to get another long row, an inner hedge between the bungalow and the hedge that separates the site from the lane, as this can have a significant and negative affect on the clay soil there. It seems that the water demand of hawthorn hedges is enormous and especially so in spring when they get going after their winter dormancy, and by virtue of absorbing so much water from the soil, it causes the clay to shrink massively and the whole lot becomes difficult to build on. Having to put in piles is a possibility. Once the diggers are on site, I can get all the roots grubbed out then. The arboricultural report that was done for our planning submission had recommended retaining the inner hedge to act as sacrificial root protection for the outer hedge during construction, but it looks like it will instead need to go and I'll have to get some other sort of root protection in place to satisfy the PP requirements, but I don't think this is particularly tricky to deal with and it's a better course of action than leaving it and having to put piles in. The final point that came up was something that has no bearing on the house, but possibly could on my sewage plant and rainwater reservoir. Between 2m and 3m depth, the sample had lots of sparkly crystals in it which are some form of sulphate crystals. Very pretty and all that, but it seems that these, when water gets to them, can attack and weaken concrete. Both the sewage plant and rainwater reservoir will be anchored into the ground with concrete at just about that depth so I need to make sure that I specify sulphate resistant concrete to make sure that the tanks stay where they are put for the long term. It's a simple and insignificant difference in cost on the concrete spec, but one that I wouldn't have known to do without the survey. Another day, another load of new stuff learned.

Yeah I've not broken ground yet and I really don't want to think about buying another house never mind building one.

It sounds like you've had a bit of a nightmare all round, your heating system I can't get my head around. I think you are bang on regarding building a house that suits the way you live, we've certainly tried. I went as far as getting a designer to build a full 3d model in Sketchup for me based on the plans so I could visualise the house better. Best £50 I have ever spent. Sorry you've had such rotten luck.

Well that's the million dollar question . Thankfully I didn't spend a million dollars . The house is too large, way too large. There would only have been 2 of us living here and now there is only me and I live in a pretty large house, most of which I don't even go in, that has 6 bathrooms / shower rooms, which is mental. The house next door is a similar design and we viewed it before purchasing this plot (it had just gone under offer), and as planning permission was already granted and the building warrant approved for this plot we went with the overall design and just altered the internal layout so that we could get going on it as hubby was keen to get cracking. Having a house that suits the way you live is most important and having endless rooms that I never go in is a bit crazy TBH. I do like some of the things we did internally. We took out the snug and the office that the house next door has and made one big kitchen / family room. I spend all of my time in here and find it relaxing and comfortable. I would never have used 3 separate rooms the same. I wish that the utility room was larger as I could easily have lost a metre off the kitchen / family room and not even noticed. We put in an extra bathroom - AGHHH!!! and really we should have removed at least one, and we changed the downstairs cloakroom to be a wetroom with shower. That's ok, but it makes bathroom number 6! We took out a bedroom to make an upper sitting room upstairs. I have never yet sat in that sitting room upstairs . It would be an easy job to reinstate it as a bedroom though. I would make the master bedroom larger. It's not small by any means but I don't need a large open plan sitting room upstairs and would rather have some of that space in the main bedroom. This is a biggy! I would have put in a different, more straightforward heating system. One that I was able to understand and could get people to work on. It was never installed correctly and no one round here has ever been able to work out how it works, and I have spent lots of money on people coming and doing 'stuff' to it that seems to have compounded the issues. I have a very long thread on the go about my heating nightmare if you have a few hours to spare . I have a central vacuum installed that I never use. Ok, so it didn't cost the earth relatively but I push a cordless Dyson round instead and never use it so it was a waste of money. I wish that I had spent more on the sanitary wear and / or got people in who were better at installing it as there are no end of plumbing jobs still to do here where things packed up not long after they were installed or were never installed properly to start with, and getting people out here to do work is a nightmare, and those that do come can be terrible. At least with many bathrooms I can just use a different one if something breaks . We did spend extra money on the insulation, but whether that has been a success I'm not sure. I haven't really looked into whether the heat losses in this house are different from next door who just have standard insulation. We started off by looking at lots of suppliers for the TF but in the end we went with the supplier of next door's frame as they already had drawn up plans for this house for the previous plot owner and were happy to work with us to redesign the internal layout to match what we wanted. They were always very helpful so I have no regrets there, but I suspect that what we wanted to have done wasn't particularly challenging for them. We sourced different windows as we wanted windows with internal blinds that the TF supplier couldn't supply. I do like those however as I am not a 'curtain' sort of person . Think they are the main things anyway.

please don’t ..... they clip on, there is a small screwdriver slot on the bottom that allows you to lever it off. But there is nothing to disconnect inside other than 3 wires - two are power, one is signal ... mix them up and it’s bye bye controller and possibly the other bits so may be worth leaving alone ....

Thanks Lizzie, I'm probably best kept clear of any skilled trades to be honest and cracking on with my actual job to get the money coming in. The aim is to get a central contractor on a fixed price and let him get on with it. We've had a lot of builders tender and they have varied by an amazing amount.

Just to clarify, although I have quoted @ProDave my reply below is to @Ralph This is very true and I suspect has happened in my case. My husband and I planned what we thought would be a house for us to retire in later on so we weren't always as cost conscious as we might have been as we were building a house for us, not for profit. That wasn't a major issue to begin with as my husband wanted to do as much of the work as he could himself for the 'challenge' and self satisfaction, and it would help to keep the costs down. Unfortunately he got sick half way through and I then had to organise for random trades to come and do the remaining work on a piecemeal basis that cost much more than we had budgeted for, and it was all a bit of a nightmare at times. And now I'm on my own in a house that's far too large for me, and will be selling up at some point, possibly now at a loss although I may just avoid that. I'm not saying that this will happen in your case of course but you do have to plan for the unexpected. There will always be costs you don't plan for. I wish we had gone with the 'fixed price' quote we received early on from a builder recommended by our TF supplier that would have taken us to the end of the first fix. It would have meant that the house had been built much quicker, and in hindsight it may have been cheaper too given the events that followed later with my husband's health. And I wish we had scaled back on some of the non essentials now. Some of them are white elephants that I never use! So review your spec and review it again, and then again for good measure. Is there anything in there that isn't essential? Are there things you can retrofit easily later on when you see if you do actually need them? Are there things you are getting overly fixated about that cost more than their eventual value? If the cost of those things is holding you back can you force yourself to compromise so that you can actually break ground? Is holding onto the dream more important than getting on with things in the here and now? Have you had someone else look at your spec and critique it to see if there are certain factors keeping the costs high? Have you asked the builders who gave you quotes what they could suggest to bring the costs down? I don't have much experience of fixed price quotes in the building trade but I do a lot of contract work in my job, and the thing I have learned about fixed price work is that it needs to be based on a very clear outcome, with agreed sign off / quality criteria. There are fixed price quotes that just buy you a capped amount of time and materials effort which is not what you want. For the type of work I do we just go through the change control process if we need something to change post agreement and go cap in hand for more money. When it's your own money there will be a finite amount, and the only person you can go cap in hand to is you. So get a detailed spec in place that very clearly notes all of the things to be delivered, what is to be done / delivered, the materials to be used, what the end result should be and the sign off criteria. This should help to set full expectations on both sides and prevent endless arguments later over what the builder considers to be 'extra'. And ensure that they don't charge you vat either as you will not be able to reclaim it later. You can only reclaim vat for materials purchased in your own name. I wish you the best of luck with your build.

I think that is quite a good scoping study to give a sanity check on the possibility of a project. Clearly they know the Council and the Locality. There is much work to be done after receiving such a document, and the creation of specific proposals plus exploration of more technical constraints, but it is a good start at identifying site and planning policy questions. IMO decent value, although the sort of thing some on here would be do ourselves. If I couldn't do an initial assessment myself or had too much on I would pay them that much quite happily. I think that a brief with specific questions and areas of interest may extract even more value. The only obvious mistake at a quick scan is the suggestion that Trees in Conservation Areas have the same protection as a TPO .. in fact the TPO process to do things to a tree is a free Planning Application needing specific approval ( with an exception of dead, decaying, dangerous or diseased) whilst Conservation Area tree work is give notice and proceed if the Council do not react. But to be fair to them they err on the side of caution wrt to CA trees, which is the right side to be. Ferdinand

thats what i get for 600 plus vat what are peoples thoughts Example-FeasibilityStudy-PlanningAppraisal .pdf Example-FeasibilityStudy-ArchitecturalAppraisal .pdf

Yes. Though I could not get up close to measure it. Think I may have a picture somewhere of the first part they were doing. Shall see if I can find it after work.

This is the problem we get, that’s why I thought the hairdryer might work. Ho hum. Think again.

Send her round @lizzie, we're in such a mess that a careless cleaner is just as welcome as a good one.

The working routine of your cleaning lady sounds really irresponsible ... About my situation, maybe the reasonable solution is to talk with some local company. It would've been nice to find some magic trick to fix this

A fixed price isn't fixed, but any price or specification variances should be flagged up to you prior to your builder proceeding.

I always use LTP Middle range price and really good Put it on with a sponge

One option might be to try doing do a factory reset on the stat... https://www.heatmiser.com/en/heatmiser-manuals/ See touch screen manual page 26 However I hesitate to suggest this as I think you have the optional central control panel which I'm not familiar with as I don't have one. Doing a factory reset would loose any programs set in the stat and I don't know if you would have to re-enter these into the stat or if the central control panel would magically do that for you. The stat and control panel may have to be configured to work with each other and doing a factory reset might also mess that up. Perhaps best only do a factory reset as a last resort before buying a new stat?

PS: The default temperature at which it calls for heat in frost mode is 12C but it can be set lower.

As Triassic says, the stat is OFF or rather it's OFF with Frost Protection mode (snowflake illuminated). The manual says.. So despite it only being 7-8 degrees it might not be cold enough to trigger the frost protection mode and turn on the heating. To turn the stat back on you have to press OFF again and the snowflake will disappear. This still doesn't explain why it thinks the room temperature is 20C unless there is a bug in the frost protection mode software?

On my Heatmiser stats if if it says "RT" or "Room Temperature" that's the current temperature not the target.

The BCO came yesterday for his final visit and to let me know what remaining documentation he wanted. He couldn't believe the air tightness of 0.47m3/m2.h as it was the lowest he had seen and that he usually saw results around the 4m3/m2.h. I didn't think it was especially low, but it was a point in my favour. Today I received the completion certificate, so now I can insure it as a normal house and start the VAT reclaim. I can only praise the experience I had with Building Control.

@Onoff The council have recommended a band E and I have suggested a band D. The other two cottages in the area that have three bedrooms are band D. The original bungalow was a C.

Thanks Lizzie, yes our grout is charcoal ( mud coloured) but I would hate it to get stained after all the hard work getting it to look good.

@Ralph What are you wanting to achieve in terms of running costs? As others have said, improving the U values of the floor, walls and windows would make a significant difference. Plugging your U values into the heat loss calculations for my house, saw a near doubling of heating requirement. Try dowloading the heat loss spreadsheet from @JSHarris blog: http://www.mayfly.eu/ plug in some different values and try and work out where the best value improvements would be. Our last house used the Supawall system (made by Scotframe - a licenced version of the Valutherm they now produce). It is used a lot up here in Orkney, and is a well engineered system and IMHO a good option, and takes away a lot of the workmanship risk in terms of insulating the walls. On windows, I've certainly found Nordan to be quite expensive in the past (albeit they are nice windows). Have you had quotes from anyone else? In respect of your heating / DHW, we went with a packaged Mitsubishi Ecodan system which you can read about in my blog: Key to using an ASHP is making sure its set up correctly, easy with this system as it has an auto adaptive mode so manages itself, and that you have correctly sized the heat emitters, either UFH pipes OR large (oversized) radiators and pipework designed for low flow temps. We had the latter in our last house, UFH in this, and I find UFH far more comfortable to live with. The master controller stat is set to 21C and it maintains the house at that quite happily, with flow temperatures usually around 26C (albeit the past few days they have been as high as 29C). I'll be posting on the blog soon with how the system has performed over 12 months but just a quick look indicates annual COP for DHW to be 2.3 and for heating 3.4

@Ian D I was looking at the existing planning app, where the Lombardies are a line alongside the common drive/parking area, so could fall into a common ownership of some sort depending on how it is all set up in the new scheme. The trees circled are the ones where future ownership would not be clear, and the back gardens of the houses lose their sunny aspect as they are on the north side. That S106 also looks nebulous - afaics it does not say what the Planning Obligation sum is. That may be to your advantage as you can negotiate it or possibly change your Planning App to avoid it entirely.

I think it's possible to calibrate Heatmiser stats but I thought they could only be adjusted a few degrees? Perhaps I'm wrong and someone messed with the calibration by mistake? Otherwise yes it's faulty.

Welcome what sort of consultant have you approached for the price you’ve been quoted..? Planning..? Architect ..? It will make a difference as to what you will get.

I think that £600 will get about 1.5->2 days of time as a maximum unless there is a special factor involved, and 25-30% of that will be writing, so I hope you wouldn't expect too much. Unless it is a very simple, focussed brief I would be concerned about the thoroughness that is possible. If t is a general brief, he will need nearly a day to get to grips with your planning app and the history. With such a small quote the precision of your brief and telling the consultant what not to do will be crucial.

What would you expect of any of these outlets * I'm being kind here* to do the fcuk about any of it? Investigative journalism has almost died in the mainstream media, not extinct completely but the titles you quote are unimpressive to put it mildly...

I was fortunate to be able to visit recently and whilst there is some work still to be done it is a credit to them both, it is luverlly.

It will if you get the air infiltration rate down. We’ve spent about £250 on Gerband tape and it’s made a massive difference. There is no perceptible draught anywhere in the build, and the 3G uPVC windows are holding their own. In fact we have snow sat on the outside pane and the inside is reflecting the warmth of your hand. It was time consuming and fiddly job but it’s made a “standard” brick and block build remarkably warm and comfortable - even with no heating ..!!

Congratulations to you both. I saw it part finished and it was fantastic. I'm sure it looks even better now. Hoping that everytime I use my wall mounted wc I'll think of you and it'll inspire me! (To those unaware Peter kindly gave me a couple of his surplus Geberit fittings )

Great news well done fantastic achievement. Have a well earned glass or two now!

While I have only just seen some of the questioning posts on this topic, I agree with Jeremy's comment - I think we need to give the FMG a bit of space. Personnaly I am happy to accept their decision and if a post has been removed, there must have been a good reason for it. We all agree that this is one of the best forums on the web and I would hate to see this issue spoiling such a good thing. Can we let it go, please.

Well done, house looks spot on. you have probably got another pile of paperwork to deal with when you start the demolition. ?

Was in my local builders merchants and got onto the subject of how little insulation was in my house and how i needed to sort it asap as today the pipes are frozen in the loft..... they sent me away with 15 packs of insulation for free ! Happy days.

Hey, @Nickfromwales and @PeterW dinnae be coming oop the day. It’s fair jeelit ootside but bonny enough tae get the washing oot . I’m fair scunnered wit the snow.

It's starting to feel like the finish line is in sight now. Since my last entry, I've largely finished the interior including all the flooring, the doors, most of the kitchen, the windowsills, and the huge and daunting task of the bathroom (big thanks to @Nickfromwales for answering my hundreds of questions on that one!). I got a plumber in to install my UVC (sorry Nick, forgot to get a photo of that). I've also done a bit more of the cladding, but the exterior work has been on the back burner. I've also gone back to work full time since my last blog post, which is why everything has slowed down so much. Still managing to get a bit done in the evenings and at weekends. You'll notice some furniture has appeared, some of this was given to me by a neighour and was very handy for storing all my tools etc; the bed and sofa were in storage with family and eventually I exhausted their goodwill and had to take delivery of them! The shower has had a couple of test runs, and SWMBO reports that it is very nice indeed. The plan is to be open for business in April, which should be tight but doable. I expect that at that stage I'll still have some outside jobs left to finish but the inside is only a few days away from completion now. Sorry for the crappy image quality- will have to do a bit better when the time comes to do the proper marketing shots

I'm in North Dorset Vivienz. At an early stage of works I accompanied my groundworker to Sydenhams and Bradfords, places he favoured and had a rapport with. His introducing me made a significant difference I believe and i've had great service and good prices from them both, compared to other merchants where i've just made solo contact as a self builder. My Blandford branches are constantly accessing Verwood's stock for me. Even if I went into Verwood for something i've already had before from Blandford, they'd check to ensure I didnt pay more than I previously had. I think it all comes down to what 'discount tier' the merchant group chooses to put you on, and for me that was significantly affected by how I was introduced versus my cold calling for 'best possible prices'.

You need to find out what adhesive the layers will use to see if they'll react to each other. I don't see you needing to do much more than mastic all around the wall / ply junctions to seal up the gaps. Sealing the vinyl to the wall afterwards is a no brainer. Will there be skirtings sitting on this junction or tiles / other ?

Amen to that. The trouble is (well it is for me) the assumption that due diligence is enough to filter contractors with a poor record. In my case, it did. But it couldn't filter for poor management of staff during the build. Couple that with the pressure we all feel to get the job done (code for reduce-the-stress-of-the-build-process) and you have a significant brake on that reinstatement process. Where do you draw the line? 2mm out of plumb? 6mm over 3 vertical meters? C25 not 35? How does a domestic client know the difference? Who out of all of us has done a slump test on delivery BEFORE pouring? Bird's mouth beautifully seated on the wall plate, or one which would accept a 50p piece? Well, not to worry, it'll settle. @nod knows his stuff. I don't. And every trades person knows he knows his stuff. (But, he tells me that occasionally they still try it on - quite a relief that , in a masochistic sort of way) And they know I don't know my stuff. Buildhub is the mainstay for me in bridging the gap between complete naivety and a fighting chance of getting work done to a reasonable standard.

Ok. I too always used specialist cleaners on my engineered oak. I had a problem appear in one area with clouding - eventually it turned out that my cleaning lady had been leaving mops standing on the floor and moisture had penetrated and got under the lacquer finish. She had also been using the steam mop on it without my knowledge. On advice I got a special product that stripped off all residue and took it right back to the base lacquer that cleared the clouding and I refinished the floor. I did not sand it. If you have a flooring company that supplies wood floors near to you then I would go and see them and ask them for help. You need to be careful not to make it worse.

Nope, it didn't worked out It would've been great to find such a fast and easy solution (definitely worth trying) .