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its the same around here Milton Keynes has Sooooo much building work ..trades are coining it ! One bricklayer 6mth ago was at LEAST Honest ....He gave me a quote and I told him ...well thats not bad, for a nice job We were ready to do the handshake and he put in that at least i could be "canny" and claim the VAT back on the materials I said ....not if its in your name I can't he said ...Wahay Pet ...oh no ...that price was for LABOUR ONLY ...I am not VAT registered me ....Geraway! I said that can't be ...it works out at almost £900 a thousand !! He said ...yep..because you are a domestic ...you dont have no electric hoists, no premixed mortar and all that stuff the big boys have..we have to hire a mixer and do load more humping and that ..plus me and me Pal have to split the labouring in turns ..We dont like the "Muckwork" either Pal .. so we typically DOUBLE our rate ! ...D O U B L E ....I mean a brickie in Manchester is about 350-400 per 1,000 Quid for straight walls and up to 500/600 for anything "fancy" ...and these are GOOD time-served old boys too. Not some 27 yr olds that look they are stand-ins for fupping BoyZone but i dont live in Manchester any more ...and when i told him the rates..He said Yep, thats why i moved down from Gateshead aye... We re so busy with agency in the old MK..we only take on domestic that are desperate or Rich ..and prepared to Pay. Simples. bit of the old cash for the back pocket ya knows I said thanks for being honest Pal ...but I would rather take a nail gun to my nad-sack than pay that much. he said ...sounds nice ....Anyway ...good luck then ,,,and off her went in his BMW x7 series ..I hope he didn't scratch the paint with his Breitling on the way in I remember my mum saying like it was yesterday .....dont go into the building game like your Dad and Uncle ....get educated, get a proper job with prospects and money (sigh)

OK, so I'm done with the plastering and onto the painting. What have I learnt? 1) It's not as easy as it looks! 2) It's knackering. I've got pretty good arm and upper body strength but this takes muscle memory too. Respect to real spreads! 3) Cream of tartar is your friend as a newbie. 1tsp per bag of multi or two in hot weather. It really gives you extra working time. On a controversial note you CAN bring back to life plaster that's going off by adding a sachet of the stuff and done more water. 4) Again controversial, you don't have to pay top dollar on tools. I used an 18" st/st one, a 14" steel one both from Wickes. Then a 6" Ragni one. Aluminium float was from Wickes. Both big trowels well used on all sorts before I cleaned them up with 80 grit paper and the finish was great. Where it wasn't was down to the technique not the tools. 5) That guy's videos I linked were invaluable 6) However.....You think you've done a good job then you start looking! My issue was mainly having left some low bits. I think that's down to not having pressed hard enough in the later stages of flatting off. My edge technique needs work too but in this case 3 out of 4 walls will be tiled to the ceiling so I'll lose a bit there. Would I do another ceiling / wall? Yep, in a heartbeat.

1. My work clothes are ALWAYS on these days ..as I am covered in Dust and Paint from Dawn til dusk and Tits to Tonenails 2. Porsche ..well close ...I have a 5yr old Kia ...but its black ...and black is a sporty colour ...sooo it MAY get mixed up ..but then it has a toebar, and scratches on the bumper where I dropped as small lintel last week ...so maybe not I ran out of Mach3 blades 2 weeks ago and need to get some ...So the wife says i look like a Hobo ..Paraffin Lamp, Dirty Wizard, Homeless Santa, doorway dweller or whatever other euphemism is used in your part of the UK There is NOBODY that would look at me and think I have Spare Money..NOBODY...even the guy selling the big Issue in the Centre gives me a refund

oohhhh I've been pottering about doing silly stuff to the house waiting for a bank loan to be approved... IT HAS BEEN.... so, money should hit the bank in the next 10 days. I Cant wait to get started on REAL work on the house!!!

Literally just back from a week's holiday. House has been locked up tight with just the Sageglass (it's actually electrochromic) and the MVHR left running (no active cooling). Temp inside upon opening the front door was a reasonably comfortable 25C in the south-facing rooms and upstairs, and 24C on the north side. As I've said before, the glass may have been expensive but it does the job, automatically, without losing the benefit of the solar gain when we want it.

The main problem with rapid overheating is caused by a short decrement delay. Get this long enough, and combined with cool nights and a night purge system you can usually keep a very well insulated house cool. The exception is prolonged hot weather and warm nights, when a night purge has little effect, so the internal temperature builds up day on day during a hot spell.

We have horsetail here which is a sod to get rid of. I have tried all the usual glyphosate based weedkillers without much success, but by accident found Bayer Lawn Weedkiller wipes it out quickly. We had weeds in our lawn, including horsetail, and it killed the horsetail very effectively. http://www.bayergarden.co.uk/Products/l/Lawn-Weedkiller---ready-to-use-3

I have not used PHPP at all, I just applied it’s principles (good orientation, high levels of insulation and airtightness) to a design that we love. We are yet to see what our energy consumption is but it will be way lower than one built to current building regs. Already people have commented on how warm the house felt (in winter before any heating was switched on) and how cool (during this exceptional hot weather). We have a wood burner for winter days and MVHR for good air even in winter. What’s not to like ?

Done..... @Christine Walker you should see a Create Blog button on the blogs page now

Every year, when we get a few sunny days, we have the same conversations about over heating. We do the same when we get a cold week too. It is easy enough to do an estimate of extreme temperatures, but they don't correlate with time of year too well. This ear we had the cold spell in March I think, may have been April. But I think in your case you have a more fundamental problem caused by too much glass area, that is not going to change. A quick look on ebay and you can get some delivered for a few quid. Got to be worth a go as this is a problem that is not going to go away, just hide itself for 50 weeks of the year.

Some classy ladies on this forum. And there was I concerned we'd bring them down to our level!

We're interviewing architects over the next few weeks with a view to getting one to design our replacement house in Hampshire. It really feels like we're starting to move forwards after taking the first year to get used to the plot. We've had advice from a local planning consultant (ex-planning officer) who tells us the maximum size of the replacement house can be 150% of existing structure (PD route comes out the same size). We can count the garage as part of the existing structure IF it's within 5m of the house. It would give us an extra c. 50m2 for the new house. Annoyingly it's about 7m away. The consultant tells me that the PO are sticklers for the rules. We haven't hired the land/topograpical surveyor yet. I've interviewed a few and they tell me their margin of error is about 20mm, not the 2000mm I was hoping for!! A friend of mine has recommended me to an "old school" architect/consultant in Norfolk who, he says, is flexible on measurements and is an expert in fudging things to get through planning. His suggestion is to get this guy to push the enlarged space through planning (with a rough design) and potentially then go back with my preferred architect and amend plans but with the size principle already established. We really do want the extra space. We know that if apply the correct way first and get rejected then we can't fudge it second time around. What does everyone think? Try old school? Or stick to the straight and narrow?

That is the surface mount version of a meter box. This is the flush one. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Electric-Meter-Box-Recessed-UK-standard-domestic-meter-box-EBP0011/272284487833?hash=item3f656b9099:g:JisAAOxygo9Q7DF5 I used two side by side in a little bit of fence. Sometimes the DNO get a bit uppity if you put too much stuff in "their" meter box

To tidy things up our form factor (Compactness factor) is 3.32.

I have 4 1000mm 3g uPVC from Munster. I don't think Munster do replacement type work though. They definitely don't here, only new build.

Got the planters all finished up and 95% of the planting done. The boss is looking some gerberas in two of the areas. Have a mixture of flowers, coloured grass, herb section and a veg section to feed our pair of shiting machines( fat greedy rabbits). Even got a lime tree so with it and mint planted I only need an ice cube tree and that's me sorted for mojitos.

I have Internorm windows, the largest is 2400mm wide and 1800mm high split into two pains, so a single 1200mm wide 1800mm high pain. This is quadruple glazed, triple glazed windoe with inbuilt blinds an a fourth pain outside the blinds. these are alu clad uPVC.

We have Rehau Geneo triple glazed t&t frames and a couple of the sashes are 930mm wide and 1200 high. We also have a Rehau Geneo fully double glazed porch door that is 1100mm wide and 2370mm high. No problems in the last six years.

Dry air = cracked skin inside the nose = nosebleeds.

We have one of those Victorian looking hoist up rails in the utility room and I arranged it so that the utility extract vent is directly above it. Things dry very quickly indoors I've found. On the subject of humidity, I have a display in the hall that gives lots of useful information about the house, and right now it's telling me that the RH is 46%, the temperature is 22.2 deg C, the outside air temperature is 24.6 deg C and the CO2 concentration is 456ppm. I find that the RH tends to stay between 40% and 50% most of the time. It might drop right down to about 35% in prolonged very cold (sub-zero) weather and occasionally rises up to around 60% in prolonged warm wet weather. I find that I tend to suffer from rhinitis when the humidity gets too low, and haven't yet suffered from it at all here, whereas it used to be a frequent occurrence when I was working, as the RH in my office would often get down to below 30%.

Nose bleeds??? What, was that a pressure thing? You didn't suffer from the bends if you left the house too quick then?

Make sure you weigh all the timber you use.

In a previous house we had a 1M wide fully glazed (i.e 1 big tall pain) 2G PVC door. It gave no end of problems with the door sagging and catching on the frame. Basically, the PVC door had no intrinsic strength, and the weight of the glass was too much for it. We had the window company back at least twice and the only fix was take the glass out, re stick it back into the frame and put shims in strategic places to try and stop the weight of the glass pressing down on the PVC frame. It never was perfect but the buyers never mentioned it when we sold the house. We have a similar thing in the new house, Rationel 3G ali clad timber and it has given no problem whatsoever. So I am minded to agree, PVC frames might not be strong enough for large heavy panes.

My installer and man who specced system both think I dont need it. They say live in the house for a while experiment with various suggested measures of purging etc and they think it will be fine. Will see how I go. I had the issues with nosebleeds etc when first here, was keeping windows shut and mvhr on boost, its not such a problem now I have changed the way I use it.

Yes, Raspberry Pi Zero with wireless, a DHT22 sensor, a MicroSD card, a cheap 5V phone charger and a 4.7K resistor. All the software is downloadable. Job is done.

Kylie Jenner wearing only a smile?

Fair enough, although how much indoor drying do people do (genuine question) and what's the net effect on house temperature? Other than allowing towels to dry after showers, we don't dry any clothes inside in summer, and I doubt we're that unusual. Mine (Brink) definitely uses indoor and outdoor temps - from the manual: Are there really summer bypass (not simulated) systems that operate solely based on outdoor temperature? Do they assume that on very hot days your house is already hotter than it is outside? If so, that's a bizarre assumption.

House looking great and moving on at a pace. I take it the reason for the battening on the upstairs floor is for the UFH? If so are you using any form of spreader plate? TIA

900mm isn't too wide. If you think about it how wide is a door? Everyone uses a door without issue. All companies differ and have a table of max sizes for fixed, casement, tilt and turn, etc. Usually these max sizes are in a ratio of width and height. Eg if you reduce the height you might be allowed wider but only up to a point. They'll also have a table for the minimum size. It relates to the strength of the frame, the weight of the glass, the proportions, etc. You'll find some alu clad companies can do a opening of a certain size while another can't. It's similar for PVC. What you'll generally find is the higher quality and more expensive brands can do bigger opes and sizes. Cheaper frames struggle with larger opes. I've one project for a client currently on site and we had a lot of discussions with the size of the windows. Elements of the house were designed around the largest pieces of glass we could get without having to split it into multiple parts and have chunky frames or glazing joints. We had one opening 6.5 m long and 2.7m wide. When getting quotes everyone needed to split it in two so we talked to the suppliers to see what was their max size and reduced the size of the ope. The difference in max sizes was eye opening with a lot only able to go 2.4m high. For example the largest lift and slide in a single piece Internorm do is 5.8 meters wide and 2.7 meters tall so we went with this and reduced the ope. The odd company said they'd make it bigger than their usual max size but it would be sold and installed without a guarantee. I'd definitely avoid this.

Yes, initially, but the house will start to warm up and so there will come a point where this effect isn't worth having. In general, our MVHR is on 100% bypass by mid-morning at the moment, which is the point where it senses no benefit from having the heat exchanger in circuit. Yes. Spot on - better to shut the MVHR off once it goes to 100% bypass during the day, unless you have an active MVHR which cools the fresh air. Yes, the MVHR may well do as you say. There's some merit in never letting the house get warm inside, so that you can use the limited airflow from cooled air provided to (or from) a duct cooler in the MVHR to maintain a comfortable temperature (I'm ironing out the details of doing just this for our system right now). Not as such, but turning the MVHR off has much the same effect in practice, and is what we do if someone lights a bonfire. You can live in the house quite comfortably with the MVHR off and the doors and windows closed for a few hours - I watch the CO2 and it rarely gets above about 800 ppm and that's considered an OK figure.

Just a few things around MVHR I picked up from this thread so far I want to understand better. I know the flow is too low to provide any meaningful cooling. In summer if it's 28 outside and 21 inside, doesn't the cooler exhaust air cool down in in coming warm fresh air? Sort the opposite of what it normally does? You're still going to get some uptick of heat unless you shut it down completely though? Summer bypass just draws in air at 28 degrees doesn't it?! What's the use of that except at night? An aircon unit in the main living area will cool down that space but MVHR will start throwing that cooling outside (albeit at a slow pace) and not distribute it around the house, would that be accurate? Is there such a thing as a recirculate option with MVHR units like you have in a car for when you drive through smoke? The advantage is you get air circulation even when someone's BBQ'ing outside but also if you have one room actively cooled, you get the benefit throughout the whole house (eventually!).

I agree wholeheartedly! I went berserk with modelling every thermal bridge, geometric bridge etc initially. I ended up with U values that were modelled to five decimal places for every element. Pointless really, as when I later came to the trade-off stage, and started changing values of components to see what the impact was on the overall heat loss, I found that seemingly large changes in the values of some components made very little overall difference. I've a personality type that can get very easily interested in digging down to the finest detail, though, whereas I know that most of the time these small details just don't have a massive impact and are swamped by factors that are outside any modelled parameters, anyway.

The nail plate is shown with a conductivity of 17 W/mK - this is the value for stainless steel. For typical nail plate, in galv steel, this should should be 50-60 W/mK. But, as above, probably has little impact on U-value, probably only in 3rd decimal place and probably less than 0.01 W/m2K. Not sure its worth worrying to much about these slight variances in U-values when effect of linear thermal bridges may be your biggest enemy!

What did the architect have to say about the need for shading? My experience was that most of the architects I spoke to weren't that clued up about it - one even suggested that having a lot of South facing glazing would make for a wonderful sunny aspect. One thing that is relatively cheap and works well is solar sails, set up to provide shaded areas and an architectural feature. Not great if you're in a very windy area, but otherwise they seem to work well. I like the idea of using tensioned fabric structures like this, and you can get some extremely tough materials that mean you could have them as a permanent feature (subject to checking things like the snow loading). Edited to say that I cross posted with @RandAbuild, saying much the same!

When I dirst ran it up a couple of days ago it was about 2 hours in total to heat the 300L tank to 55 degrees which was plenty hot enough. We then each had a shower, did some washing up etc. Yesterday after the tank had been off for a few days it was only on for 1 hour and when I turned it off it had reached 45 degrees. That was still hot enough for washing up, and the bath had it's first use last night from that. I have now set the heat pump hot water temperature to 50 degrees which should be plenty for normal use and leave lots of headroom for solar PV to heat it further when we eventually get that. By default, this unit has a "room thermostat" input and when that is enabled it ignores any timers you have set and just operates the heating on demand from that thermostat contact, so that is my route to controlling the heating how I want it from my own timer and the UFH manifold controllers which will give a call for heat to the heat pump when any zone calls for heat. LG do sell a "dry contact" kit but as far as I can tell that just gives you one global on / off input so I can't see much use for that. The only bit of the controls that I can't see a tidy solution to is hot water heating. It controls the hot water to a set temperature with a thermistor probe in the tank. There is no other input associated with that. My only quick and dirty scheme I can think is when I want to turn the hot water off, switch with a relay from the temperature probe to a fixed resistor that gives a high temperature reading so it thinks the hot water requirement is satisfied.

Thanks, @PeterStarck, it's nice to have confirmation that you found the model as sensitive to local climate data as I did. The main problem I had was not having any reasonably accurate data for the local conditions before we started building the house. I certainly didn't anticipate the fairly large reductions in wind speed experienced in our "hole in the valley", nor the higher overall temperatures. Building the house has itself changed the conditions very locally to a marked degree. Our neighbour has a vegetable plot immediately to the East of our house, and keeps telling me how grateful she is for the improvement in growing conditions building our house has created. She tried growing raspberries, starting last year, never having had much success in the past. She's had a superb crop, some of which I finished off this morning on my breakfast!

That is exactly what I found. I started playing around with PHPP in 2009 and found climate data had a significant effect on the results. I used climate data from Meteonorm, Manston, SE England and also Vlissingen to compare results. I also found the limited wind screening aspects and therefore micro climate effects modelled crudely. I think this is why modelling decrement delay is so difficult and why it is so important in your situation and not in mine. I don't have the latest version of PHPP, mine being updated in 2010, so maybe things have changed since then.

We used two different films, one primarily for privacy on the large glazed gable, that works like one-way glass, at least during the day and one very slightly tinted film on an East facing bedroom window that had more solar gain than the models predicted (we get a surprising amount of sun from the East, far more powerful than that from the West, another local effect to do with haze build up in the afternoon, perhaps from the stream and lakes adjacent to the house). The front glazing film is Sentinel Plus Stainless Steel and the side glazing film is 3M Prestige . If not interested in privacy control, then I'd use 3M Prestige , as you will hardly know it's there. It is more expensive, though, and generally I'd avoid using an external film unless you have other options. In our case we had an unforeseen privacy problem at the front, so films made sense. If we hadn't had that issue, then I'd have been inclined to look at something like the timber brise soleil slats discussed in this thread, with some photos on the second page:

@newhome we sold our last house which HD n exhaust air heat pump fitted without difficulty. Virtually every new build here in Orkney has an ASHP, be it A2A or A2W - doesn't seem to have slowed a fast paced market. You should be eligible for an interest free loan to install renewables (MCS install) the beauty of it is you use the RHI income to pay off the loan. Should be info on the EST (Scotland) website.

A larger unit won't cost more to run The energy required by the dwelling dictates the cost of whats produced / consumed. If it takes, for eg, 24kW of energy to heat your TS then it won't take more from a bigger ASHP, it'll just shorten the time taken to get there. It'll still have only used 24kW The benefit of the bigger unit would be quieter running as it would be using a smaller amount of its capacity, eg fan running slower etc.

The backing looks dusty and weak mix When applying more than one layer of backing You must go weaker with each layer ie start with a very a strong mix and go weaker A 3-1 scratch coat through out Then a 4-1 mix will never shell and give a perfect background for any finish But as with tiling each coat needs several days to dry out The contractors material costs would be much higher Deumidifiers won’t cause any damage Bit of a lame excuse

Ahem, (said the elephant) . OK ... nearly this time last year. It is is actually quite interesting how the conversation has moved forward. I am managing better this time by more thorough stack ventilation whilst having a 6am breakfast. Being still unable to sleep properly after my hospital episode has at least one advantage. ?

Yes, I agree. I have come across two recent examples of well-inslulated recently finished builds that are overheating. One was modelled in PHPP and one was not. Some don't take overheating seriously enough at design stage. The 10% of annual hours over 25ºC that is part of the passive-house standard is, in my and many other people's views, far too high. I would like to see a limit of 5% or even 2%. For me, passive house is foremost about making a lovely comfortable home. Time over 25º, let alone any time near to 30º, needs to be considered and minimised. Working through PHPP for me has been a revelation. As the saying goes, "all models are wrong, but some are useful". I have found PHPP to be immensely useful in making me think about the things that are important. I had read about PHPP extensively before modelling my own house. Even so it has exceeded my expectations.

I'd agree, I read every passive house publication available for several years before even starting on our build. However, as a note of caution, I still screwed up... I know others that have built passive houses that have found that theory doesn't translate well into practice, and have had to take some additional mitigation measures in order to avoid overheating, which in some ways is reassuring. If I were starting again now, then I would be very focussed on two things. Reducing incidental heat gains (appliances, lighting, cooking etc) and providing adequate comfort cooling. The two biggest problems to solve with a passive house are the provision of hot water and a way to provide comfort cooling in sustained warm weather, and the two are linked, as a lot of hot water systems can introduce a significant heat gain into the house right when you don't want it.

Either your plastering wasn't as good as we all thought or you've got OTT as usual

Not that I am ever likely to be fitting an ASHP but just so that I get this right in my head having followed this thread from the start, is10l per minute +/- 3l from 7l per min to 13l per min? If so 14l per min is more ?. I’m clearly missing something very obvious to those who understand it more ? Good news though as this saga has dragged on for a while. Must be a relief to have it sorted. And now you can start that promised thread on system performance .

Blimey, I did not know this could happen to plastering, and from Mr Charles Luxton himself. What was the cause? How can this be avoided?

Good idea if you can do it. We are exposed on the top of a ridge it wouldn't last 5 minutes LOL