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This may be of use to some people and of interest to others. Certainly I could not find much information before I embarked on our build and it was a bit of a leap in the dark. We designed our house with a swimming pool. It is quite an extravagance but my daughter and I really enjoy swimming and messing about in the pool and it is a luxury I have always fancied. The pool has now been up and running for the past couple of months and I am extremely pleased with it. The installers did a very professional job. As always I tried to make sure that there was as little maintenance as possible required. The filtration system by a company called DA-Gen is all automatic. In the last two months all I have had to do is put a pool cleaning robot like a Roomba in the pool every week and it polishes it up. Other than that there has been abolsutely zero maintenance. The installer told me that historically they would visit a pool once a month. They will probably visit mine three times in the first year and then less after that. The main job will be changing over the chemicals, and just checking everything is working. The pool automatically tests the pH level and adjusts as necessary. The pH is set at 7.2. The chlorine is set at 0.5 ppm which is the same as the local drinking water. The pool creates chlorine from salt when necessary and there is no chlorine smell or taste. The pool is from a company called Niveko. It is a one piece polycarbonate pool and came as a single piece on the back of a truck from the Czech Republic. The pool is 8.9m long, 3.4m wide and 1.3m deep. Thus it contains around 40,000 litres of water. I spent some time at the pool in the gym and reading advice from owners in America on what size to buy. Traditionally pools are twice as long as they are wide, but I wanted a pool that was long enough to swim lengths. Having tested out the gym pool I reckoned I needed at least 8m. If I could not get permission for this much floor space I would have investigated an endless pool where you swim into a current. Depth wise people recommended that a deep end was pointless as it was impossible to stand and play games. we often stand and play water volleyball and the depth is working out perfectly. More depth would just be more water to heat and more ground to dig out. I would recommend 1.3-1.4m depending on your height. I read up on various kinds of pools. A discussion with one company that build traditional tiled/concrete pools suggested a cost of £200,000 which was ridiculous. You can also have a liner pool where you build a concrete shell then use a waterproof liner inside. This is cheaper but needs replacing every so often. I also investigated building a pool from ICF. Although this seems like a good idea, I could not find anyone with expertise in it. Eventually I came across these polycarbonate pools. I liked the design as it has EPS insulation around the outside. The pool could also incorporate a built in cover. Around one third of the heating cost of a pool is due to evaporation. This also keeps humidity down. Finally the smooth finish compared to a tiled pool makes the build up of bacteria much less likely and reduces the need for cleaning and chemicals. It also means no sharp edges on your feet. The total cost for the pool, dehumidifying equipment, filtration, ventilation etc was around £80,000. The real cost is the 80 square metres for the pool room, plant room and changing room. This probably added around £120-150,000 to the build cost of the house. The building work was not complicated much by this, a deeper area of foundations was dug and the pool sits on a concrete slab similar to the ground floor of the house. We did find once we dug down that there was some underground water and it had to be tanked. The pool and ventilation were then put in place below floor level and covered up whilst building work continued. The pool sits on top of 150mm of EPS with a further 50mm around the outside. Historically a pool was a big negative on a house in this area, making them almost impossible to sell. The reason was massive heating bills and maintenance costs. Also they made your house smell of chlorine and the humidity would destroy your house. One thing that prompted me to write this is that we have our heating now all working as it should. I noted on another thread that they had not insulated the circulating hot water system. This has been done now. I thought that this was causing unexpected high bills for heating hot water. However, I have since realised that perhaps the main reason was that the pool, hot water and UFH had all been connected in series to the boiler. Thus when any one of them called for hot water from the boiler all the pumps ran. This was pumping hot water to all 4 UFH manifold in the house every time the hot water or pool called for heat. By my calculation the loops contained towards 200l of water which was constantly being circulated and heated unnecessarily. We have now separated the circuits and gas use has dropped dramatically. Before building the pool i tried to use @JSHarris heating calculator to calculate the cost of heating the pool. After a bit of messing around I decided that a pool was not different to any other room. The reason that pols historically use a lot of heat is that they were often put in orangeries or cheap extensions. Effectively you are trying to heat a large (80sq metres in my case) room to 28c all year round. These rooms often had single or double glazing. My pool is in a room as well insulated as the rest of the house with triple glazed 0.7 U-value windows. The area below the pool has 0.1-0.15 U-value, the walls 0.14. The heat recovery system is 90% efficient. The calculation said that the pool would cost around £500 a year to heat. Frankly even at £1000 I would have been pleased. Anyway I have been on holiday this week and checking our gas usage now that everything works as it should. We have been using 7-9 units a day depending on how much the pool is being used. We have been using 75-100 kWh of gas per day or around £2-2.75 a day in gas. Hot water is around £1 a day, so the pool seems to be coming in close to my calculation. I am very pleasantly surprised. This is heating the pool to 28C and the room to 24C when the pool is closed and 29C when it is open. The outside temperature has really dropped to around 15C. The humidity is kept to around 60% when the pool is closed and 65-70% when it is open. All in all it is a big extravagance but one I am very pleased with. It was great in the hot weather a few weeks ago, my daughter and her friends are loving it and hopefully I will get many years of enjoyment from it. In terms of things I would have done differently. We were a bit tight on the plant room and stuff just fits. The changing room door is quite close to the pool and the frame gets wet. We should have sloped the tiles back towards the pool so that when the kids jump in the water would run back naturally. I bought a squeegee to push excess water back in. Everything is pretty much finished, just some mastic around the room edges required. Heating costs may fall a little as the bottom edges of the windows have not yet been sealed to the floor and had compriband insulation outside, so we are probably leaking a bit of air. Pictures - Concrete pad awaiting the pool. Pool and ventilation below ground level. Plant room. These are the filters and chemicals, the dehumidifier/heater is behind the door. Changing room. We came up with the idea of building the bench out of wood effect tiles so it won't be affected by water. Changing room shower. Pool today after the kids were playing in it. Cleaning robot. The pool has two large colour changing LEDs that provide a great effect at night.

Not much longer hopefully...

It's all about being sensitive to their needs and listening...

Following over from another thread about fire, It got me thinking I do not have any fire prevention or fighting stuff on site. I have mains water but no hose! I am thinking of adding:- a hose (need one anyway), 2x fire blankets (stay after build) 5kg C02 extinguisher (stay after build) 6kg powder extinguisher (stay after build) 2x battery smoke alarms ionisation that will be replaced with hard wired alarms later Is this way over kill?

We saved about 400 decent whole bricks from our bungalow demolition for a future “project”. Flowerbed edging? Firepit? Offered the rest on a local Freegle site. No takers. People couldn’t be bothered to come and sort them out of the pile of rubble. We wanted to put some rubble back in the hole but we had no space to store the rubble whilst we dug out for the foundations. So it headed away in skips. Did manage to give away about concrete 150 paving slabs though.

Been looking in to spray foam and currently wondering if anyone's used it or know people who have used the kits from Foamseal? Started building the stud wall and realised that it would be considerably easier if I had a floor in place at the moment. Minor dilemma mixed in with usual procrastination, apparently there are two different types of spray foam, open cell and closed cell, the closed cell doesn't need a VCL but the forma does. If the floor is in place already I cant fit the VCL and because of the type of floor im using, i cant exactly attach it to the floor for various reason. But either way, without knowing what type of spray will be used I guess im just going to have to make the wall first and be prepared to seal it up. It took a few minutes for me to realise that I had answer my own question. So.....here are some pics. Floors up, bricks back in place, bottom of stud wall coming together, think I may level off the joist before going much further. Its not that ones out of places, its that its actually smaller and ones bigger. And here's all the flooring for upstairs which arrived not too long ago, 22mm t&g chipboard flooring pre-routed for 12mm UFH pipe to be laid in. This actually forms part of the structural deck. Its very sad, but I'm unbelievably excited about getting this in.

I used that fortax 6400 to stick my membrane to the blockwork. It's really sticky stuff. Top tip don't get it in your hair only thing that takes it out is a razor.

Yes if your going for wet plaster backing coat There’s no need to Parge coat Simply trap the membrane and trim off the excess

That's the pre-flight checks done. Time for lift-off SpongeBob ?

I would just run it in with the big digger and if your concerned about soil washing into the voids then lay some ground fabric down, that way it will maintain good drainage but you will not loose your soil. Do the sums on the cost of ground fabric v importing pre crushed road bace to top it off with.... I recon the fabric will be cheaper and quicker.

Joking aside you could probably clean a good few bricks up and sell as reclaimed / salvage.

How long do you expect to live for...

Another thing to try and get rid of, rigid insulation offcuts, we have a room full of them, put them on market place today, first person filled his jeep up twice, very grateful for them, several other enquiries from people who want photos and measurements- they’re getting the damn things for nothing , they’ll be wanting them delivered next!

You could always fill it up from the over order of the MOT 1 from the driveway ?.

You man up, get a club hammer and spend days breaking them up into manageable pieces!

If they are not crushed very well you will likely have a lot more voids that will need to be filled with soil over time causing the surface to pucker as the soil is washed into the voids over time by the rain etc. So for a bit you will need to keep topping up the surface. Once the voids are filled however it will be very stable you could speed this up by blinding it with a sand layer and washing it in with hose. If their quote included crushing it I think I would insist they did.

Tracking back and forth over them with that big digger will be more than enough to drive them into the ground.

Mapei is good stuff. Used loads of it over the years and their grouts are good too.

Quick check at TP (cash trade account for self build) mapei pro flexible 20kg £10.51 ex vat. Don't know if it's any good though.

Don't know where you are but I'm paying £11 a bag inc the dreaded. I'm collecting though.

You can sub to me. How does £200 a day for half a days work sound

Thought wall and floor tiles were the same so surely using same grout colour ..??!!!

Post up when you've done it!

You can of course talk to Planning Aid, who are the RTPI offering free advice. http://www.rtpi.org.uk/planning-aid/ They advise on planning law and policy, not cases. F

Man up Ian. Take a leaf out of @Onoff book. There was no messing with the grout issue, he just told her straight, did he not?

Tidy. Something else for my boys to use as target practice

We were originally looking at a 1 1/2 storey but the plot is 1.6 acres, so decided to spread ghe house over 1 floor. Our plans have been approved for another 2 bedrooms and a mezz in the attic, so we’ll do those before we sell in the future. Planning on doing this again...all being well.

Grrr. Now I'm thinking that would be nice to have as a 'night-time' option so the bathroom doesn't have to be floodlit to go for a 'midnight pee'. ? Think I'll go for 2 of the 2G switches and 1 of the 16a receivers. Can help but think the 16a models will have better longevity even with a low load. Same price so hopefully they're not noisy. Prob mount the receiver in an IP box in the bathroom attic. I'll pick up some cable tomorrow for the low-level lights. Nice treat for the customers as they've been very patient with all the extras that have needed doing, ( old house / wonky walls and floors etc ). Makes a nice change from the usual ungrateful pricks I seem to find in abundance.

This is the website used by my electrician for all our LED tracks ( extrusions). http://www.mr-resistor.co.uk/interior-lighting/tape+strip/extrusions+profiles I think you may be looking for the plastered-in extrusion. I see you're still with us? Did you solve your "pressure" problem?

Crud in the pressure reducing valve? Does fiddling with that make any difference? Have you got a pressure gauge on it to see? Think that's our issue here. Job for the next week or so to sort that. Right behind the downstairs cloak wc.....kids with bad aim etc!

Take the WB website with a pinch of salt aswell. All it means is they fit X amount of WB boilers, attended a sales course and a odd day training course. Being ex trade the few good guys I would trust in my own house don't advertise Inc no sign writing on van!

I got all the insulation, EPS300 and 100, from Varley Insulation, they came in cheapest. Regarding the L shaped edge up stand, the design from Hilliard Tanner called for 200mm wide 200mm tall up stands on three sides and 100mm wide 200 tall up stand at the front. I cut these pieces, all 90 of them, using a table saw. I cut one side then turned the 100mm thick insulation slab over and did a second cut. The cuts were all ok, in a few cases a bit wavey, but remembe4 the cuts are facing the concrete and the outside, so are of little consequence in the grand scheme. I glued each peice using low expansion foam, staggering the joints of the second course. Once set they were solid.

£140 including the VAT. £300 for an hours work is very nice going. +1. Over gassing at low setting ( CH mode ) would throw readings off from the MI's, but leaking CO? Leaking from where ? I wonder if he fitted the fan properly. Its part of the combustion pathway so its definitely a contender for causing issues with CO if its not fitted properly ( new seals / overhaul kit bought and fitted ). Sounds like this guys in for a good £7-800 for a couple of hours work total. I'd ask for copies of the invoices for 'warranty purposes in case he goes bust' That'll squeeze a turd out of him.

BB is on Checkatrade - says it all to me! I know he got some bad reviews removed, (I didn't know that when I employed him)