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I don't differentiate between my kids when it comes to DIY. Both are quicker than me!

We installed a system based on this forums advice - led heavily by @Nickfromwales. Mains gas, 250l uvc, 90l buffer tank that feeds ufh manifold + rad manifold (for upstairs). Plumber who's worked with me on the install had never done this before. Fired it all up on Saturday for the first time. 20l of gas later we have a house at 18deg (the target I set on the one stat installed so far) - with virtually no difference between upstairs or downstairs. Next month or so should see the rads in along with their room stats. Feels good to get it in ready for the warmer weather? Very pleased with it all. A big thanks to all on here who I copied from and Nick for organising the purchase of the tanks!

I just thought I would resurrect this old thread to say finances have unlocked. I am still awaiting the small nest egg I was anticipating when I started this thread. That is still locked up in legal and technical bureaucracy and the sheer inefficiency and ineptitude of the solicitors dealing with that astounds me. I get the feeling a conclusion to that is still months away, and it pains me to think of the fees they will be charging for the "service" (sic) they have given. Anyway the unlocking comes from the fact a few days ago I attained the magic age of 55. That is the age you can unlock and start doing things with your pension money. So on my birthday I arranged for one small pension fund (the only defined contribution fund I have) to be transferred to a flexible drawdown account and I have taken the tax free 25% lump sum from that. The rest remains in my drawdown account to be drawn later as I need it, but will be taxable as income should I need to draw on it. That was not a particularly straightforward process as the provider the fund was with did not offer what I wanted so I had to first transfer it to a different provider, a process I started in January to ensure everything was in place to action it on my birthday. I always thought this was going to be the last source of funding to be unlocked and it still irks me that I had to wait until a specific birthday to access my own money. Ar least now we can start spending again (actually we started spending in February trusting nothing would go wrong and we would have the funds to settle the bills later this month)

I may reply to this when I have finished the housework

So my DIY insulated foundation project has started, after weeks of digging and peckering the basement is dug and with the help of two local ground workers I’ve started levelling up the surface prior to installing the insulation. This is the view of the left hand side of the basement. No doubt more photos will folllow as the Work progress.

Just don't forget that once that piece of paper is signed then you pay vat on anything else from that date.

You will find that the humour on here can be a bit strange and pop up in the most unexpected places. And a lot of teasing goes on too. @Ferdinand has the best lines

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England & Wales are treated the same way. I don’t know about Scotland or N Ireland.

Sorry but that’s not correct. We bought all our external works materials such as garden fencing and driveway materials after the date of our completion certificate and we were able to claim the Vat back successfully on them with the rest of the claim.

I think this is not so clear. Our claim had some materials after sign-off date, VAT refunded no questions asked. The notes also allow for e.g. snagging to happen prior to claim submission.

This is what our BCO has asked for: Before the completion visit we will require titled pdf copies of the following certificates (where applicable): a) Building Control Completion certificate (this is what he will be issuing) c) Air test d) As built SAP e) EPC h) Water efficiency G2 j) Electrical k) Gas, Benchmark l) HETAS (N/A for our build) m) Heating system commissioning n) Ventilation system commissioning o) BBA Certificates and 10 year registered insurance backed guarantee for the product and installation of: tanking and basement water proofing systems, slate roof, flat roof, green roofs, dormers, large secret gutters, cavity wall injection, and external wall systems, including render systems (N/A for our build except the slate roof - not sure why he needs this) p) Flow tests results will be required for the extractor fans (we have MVHR, and I've sent him my commissioning report which he's happy with). The visit will involve looking down manholes and into roofs and around the property

Ready or not we just moved in / squatted, call it what you will, and lived in a couple of rooms. We didn’t have an issue with access however. I did bring the build in on budget pretty much (budget, payments and paperwork were my only responsibilities initially) but in order to do that I compromised / reduced costs in some areas that I wish I now hadn’t, so don’t beat yourself up over anything, if you’ve ended up with the place of your dreams it will all be worth it when you finally move in.

My guess is direct solar as DC into the 3rd generation SunAmp would work nicely with a few dedicated PV panels (e.g. a minimal simple system without an inverter for a relatively small capital outlay). We're almost at the end of 2018 Q1, so I'm hopeful for more official news before too long.

Sketchup is great if you have a model - if not, I found www.suncalc.org very handy to show the path of the sun

That's a useful gizmo - thanks, Onoff. I've been pondering the orientation of my solar PV panels recently and this has helped me decide that I'll go all south facing.

There are a few women on here who have the dream too and you will find lots of banter / humour on here Years ago I spoke to a Belgian friend who told me that every Belgian man was born with a brick in his belly so the dream of building their own house was part of who they were. He had built his own house already. The other thing I observed was the number of houses built next to the owner’s business, so a mix of residential and commercial premises side by side. Clearly very different planning regulations from those in the UK.

There is a rule of thumb that says that you should be able to take a line from the centre of the window projecting up at 25 degrees from horizontal without it meeting the new building. There are also standards for daylight and sunlight but you will probably be looking at a daylighting assessment which would normally be requested by the LPA of the applicant (at their expense) should they feel there is an issue. The other issue may be loss of amenity of your garden should it be overshadowed significantly. As others have said, sketchup may give a quick and rough result, but if the proposal fails the 25 deg rule, just flag this to the planners.

+1 on the humor! I do agree with you that there's nothing quite like going at it with your own hands (with a little help from the power tools!). It's a shame that the UK has lost the attitude still held by the germanic and nordic states in their balanced view towards the physical+technical trades vs desk jobs. Apprenticeships and collage courses should be seen as an viable alternative route to Uni, rather than a 'backup'

This? https://www.findmyshadow.com/

Or just use an incognito or private session on your existing browser and don't log in. That won't have access to any cookies so will look just as if you're a guest viewing the forum.

Ha, I did try to set up a second account but they all show up as read. I suspect it may have something to do with cookies or some such on my computer, I was meaning to log into the other account on a different computer to check - will do that later.

In the past I syphoned the bottom of my oil tank every couple of years to ensure water didn't build up sufficiently to come out of the outlet. In my tank the sump below the outlet pipe is large and it would take a lot of water before it caused a problem, although that was what happened the first time which led me to do the syphoning.

I'm currently spec'ing two installs exactly as you've described. I'm doubling up first as last though as a 'single box solution' offers zero redundancy. I'd say save the money of ducting and pulling insulated ASHP pipework ( not cheap stuff to fit and then not use ) and look at keeping sufficient redundant space for a second Sunamp unit . These struggle a bit first getting the house to ambient, but after that they should perform exceptionally well, for as 'passive standard' usually means little and often for space heating and a correctly sized bulk for chunks of DHW. The good thing about the 3rd gen units is the near linear input of energy, e.g. 3kw of electricity input to a 9kw unit needs only ~3 hours to fully recover from a FULLY discharged state. Best to do as I have and design in some redundancy so you can cope with guest / high use of DHW. ( Space heating is a mere burp as far as these are concerned so focus closely on DHW capacity ). The 3g units have two pairs of 'flow and return' connections ( 2 x heat exchangers ) so space heating ( not potable ) and DHW ( potable ) can both be drawn from the same unit but always remain hydraulically separated. Another good point to make is that either heat exchanger can consume the entire stored energy of the unit, so a 9 kw unit with 2 heat exchangers doesn't offer 2 x 4.5kw 'sides', it can give all 9kw to the space heating HE OR all 9kw to the DHW HE. Tidy . As it has no internal pumps and controls etc, compared to the quite complex SAPV unit, you can inject heat energy near linear to consumption, which makes these a very versatile solution. Im suitably impressed so far, and Andys advice to run one unit and see how it goes is pretty much the benchmark you shouid observe. There is little useful case study to date so seeking advice is unfortunately the only measure you can practically observe.

Celotex have got a calc on their www.

I was just talking to Andy in SunAmp about this very thing today! He recommended living in the house for 6-12 months (including 1 winter!) with just the Sunamp (Gen3) , PV and off peak electricity and see how I get on and add a high temp ASHP later if I need it. I like this evidence based approach. I can plumb/wire for an ASHP during the build and give myself that option. I'm currently finishing the floor plans so wanted to figure out where things could go and the potential footprint mainly. He recommended locating the Sunamp as close to the manifold and ASHP as possible as I won't have underfloor heating upstairs. I'm building passive so simplifying the heating system and using PCM would be high on my wish list..... I'll be interested to see if my final DEAP / PHPP figures influence the solution, I plan to have 2-3 occupants, 108 sq meter house. I'll be honest the solution compared to oil/gas boilers is strange to me but looking forward to trying it out someday!

Found the calcs I did. The total voltage drop for the longest run over the roof was under 0.1%, so not worth worrying about.

Hello & welcome, I am sure your input will be gratefully received on this forum. I would have been great to have someone to ask questions of when our foundations were being designed. I would say ours are certainly robust. +1

The beams on beam-and-block are cast in the factory, and should therefore be quality controlled. The reinforcement bars they put into the beams are pre-tensioned, which means that they are pulled at each end before the concrete is cast around them. Once the concrete has set, the tensioners are released and the bars cut off flush with the ends of the beams. What this does is compresses the concrete because the bars are trying to regain their original (shorter) length. So the short answer is that you absolutely shouldn't have any cracks in the beams, and if you have, something's gone wrong in the factory. Also the driver's explanation doesn't stack up, since the concrete used is extremely strong.

This was the one (well, 1 of about 4) area that MBC screwed up on. I'd had a site topological survey done previously so I got them back to mark out the area of dig and back again to mark out the exact area that the house should go once the base had been laid. Despite marking out with blue paint, steel pegs and setting the levels it was all ignored - I came back from work to find that they'd removed the steel pegs (they were in the way!) and covered the paint with the blinding material. They did wonder what it was for apparently!!! So, the moral of the story is to treat everyone as an idiot - most people are. And realise that experience is not the same as ability.

I'm trying to juggle the vat aspect with getting sign off asap. I need to get my road and things booked at zero rate even if they dont go down for a few weeks ....saying that I cant move in without a road surface down so its a never ending circle. Paying 2k a month rent for way longer than we ever anticipated has cost a lot just need to get out of this expensive rented hovel and into my own home. 2 years is way way to long to be paying rent. I don't factor that rent into the massive overspend either. It's the labour costs that have been absolutely crippling they were hugely underestimated, everything has taken very much longer than anticipated so hence higher costs. After all the stress now the sciatica has notched up to screaming pain levels so I can barely walk I probably need that wheelchair ramp myself!