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Thats what I was getting at. Yes fill up with ct1 or foam etc and then a serious tape exercise to give a seemless finish

Yup. Smother them to death and then wipe any excess off with the cheapest baby wipes you can find, lots and lots of them. Buy a can of CT1 Multi-Solve spray to do the final spit n polish. Pump the bastard stuff in there and watch it ooze out of everything. You could seal a submarine with that stuff. Dont be tight or you'll be doing it again, and dont forget that when you put it in the next time I doubt you'll ever be able to get them out intact again so 'one shot' or 'deep shit'.......

You had 2 choices LOL - we would have missed you

@Nickfromwales I’ve been thinking about your comments on PH space heating in relation to floor temperatures. A PH isn’t just a conventional house that doesn’t require much heating. In the short time we’ve been living in our new build I’ve come to realise just how true all aspects of PH are that we had to consider when we designed the house. In our house, walls and floor as well as all the other surfaces, are at much the same temperature as the air. Even the glazing is similar and it is that similar temperature which creates the comfortable feel in the house. If the air is at 20C, 22C or 24C the surfaces including the floor will be at a very similar temperature. If you create significant convection currents you start to lose the feel of comfort. UFH creates convection currents so in order reduce the negative effects of convection the floor temperature is kept at only slightly above air temperature. When we designed our house we considered UFH but we wanted a ‘dry’ house, a house without water based heating. We found from modelling our house in PHPP that is was feasible to have a warm house without conventional heating. If our house had been larger we could not have used our system. In the house design in which you are currently involved it seems that there isn’t a suitable product which will provide the level of warm air heating required due to the house size. With the PH concept I like the idea of moving away from traditional wet systems with large tanks, boilers and UFH and with Sunamp, Genvex Combi etc it should be possible to design novel systems.

Getting there! They worked overtime yesterday until 7pm and plasterer is coming on Saturday apparently so they must be expecting to be ready for him. Stove man will be here today so at least things will look like they’re moving on!

In 2009 my wife and I moved into a 3 year old developer built house in Kingseat, Newmachar which is 6 miles north of Aberdeen. Kingseat was originally a farming estate, in 1859 Aberdeen District Lunacy Board required a new mental health facility for paupers and acquired the site. The hospital was constructed between 1901 - 1904, the various buildings were laid out in a villa format, with lots of green space including trees, a football pitch and tennis courts. One of the old hospital building - our current rental accommodation is in this building The hospital closed in 1995, due to the historical importance of the buildings the area was designated a conservation area. In 2006 a house builder was granted permission to convert the old buildings into flats and to build new houses in amongst the old buildings. Typical developer house Another typical developer house I have wanted to build a house since I was a teenager (I'm now 36), in June 2016 we finally decided to take the plunge and put our house on the market, with the intention of building a new house. Initially we were looking for a plot near our current house with a more rural location. However when we saw there was a plot of land available in the Kingseat development we decided that this would be a better option because our son (he is now 8 ) had friends in the development. Our house was on the market for a while because of the fall in the oil price, we managed to sell in February 2017 (10% below valuation). We immediately made an offer on the plot, after some negotiation (on price and us agreeing to put in a mutual driveway at the back of the plot to neighbouring property at our expense) our offer was accepted, although the sale didn't complete until October 2017. The plot is a corner plot approximately 950 square metres. The plot previously had planning permission for a 200 square metre house, however this had lapsed. South North East North East North South West South In the meantime we moved out of our house in May 2107 and moved into a rented flat 100 metres away from the plot. In March 2017 we started working with an architect, initially had a topographical survey of the site completed, Followed by a tree survey. All the trees in Kingseat were covered by a tree preservation order and we had 4 trees in the middle of the plot. Luckily all 4 trees were not one of the original species planted at Kingseat which meant we could remove them. Next we starting to design the house, our brief was: Open plan living room, dining room and family room utility room snug master bedroom with dressing room and ensuite 3 other bedrooms, ideally all with ensuites attic trusses for potential future development of 2 further bedrooms/office Attached double garage 2.7 metre ceiling height ground floor and 2.4 metre first floor The house would be traditional on the outside, similar to the other houses on the development. However inside wanted it to be very contemporary light and airy house with white walls, flush white doors and skirtings, cantilevered stairs etc. The following Images are the style we were aiming for. Our first planning application was rejected because the conservation officer thought the orientation of the house was wrong and the exterior was a bit too bland. The architect and I had a meeting with the conservation officer and discussed the changes that she would like to see and what I would be comfortable with. I feel that we left that house with a better house! The interior was almost identical, however we added an extra gable to one end of the house to make it less symmetrical and broke up the building by changing the garage cladding to black timber. The only thing I wasn't pleased about was reducing the roof pitch to reduce the ridge height, so that it's a similar height to the old cottage next door. In December 2017 our second application was accepted. The following is the design: Ground Floor First Floor Future development option for the attic space Architect 3D render of open plan area.

Good afternoon, I’m garry. Just recently got full planning in Dorset for a single storey dwelling. Which will be on helical screws. Just looking for idea books to get to guide me through the building process. Look forward to hearing from you. V03B.PDF

Just back from the gay very happy capital of the South East! More like the smack capital, even in the sunshine it's a shithole! Opened the fridge in the student house and all that was in there was 4 cans of cider! Dropped my boy off, his 3 mates were already there so we went shopping for him. When we came back all they had done was set up the Virgin router and were raving about the 90Mbps and climbing internet speed, & that as they've got 2 Occulus Rifts they can do 360deg tracking. FFS all 4 oblivious to the student totty walking up the road outside!

This stuff. https://www.sealantsonline.co.uk/Products/Compriband-foam-tapeshttps://www.sealantsonline.co.uk/Products/Compriband-foam-tapes

Not necessarily. Wired one at Tongue a few years back. As long as I am not too busy at the time and it can be arranged into sensible packages of a few days work with somewhere to crash for the night.

I would put it up the vertical gap as well can you squirt the entire contents out on a bit of board and slide it up the gap with your fingers.

It's been a long day, sorry Garry!

While tech not a book you will find lots of information about all the good and bad bits in the various blogs that are here. Lots of info with pics as well.

Those gate pillars are fantastic - very jealous, though they would look a lot out of place on y house

So for out the front I've managed to scrounge another 2 stone gateposts free of charge! (making 4) The beauty of these is that now I've concreted them in, they will be entirely maintenance free for the rest of my life. I plan to add a third one beside the gate to make a small "wicket" or pedestrian type gate alongside. Fortunately a farmer friend had a massive machine on loan which was capable of picking these last 2 up in one go and carrying them down for me (another reason I love living in a rural community is how much we all help each other - in the winter whilst living in the caravan we were very genuinely offered accommodation if we wanted it from no less than 5 different people. It is amazing how kind people can be, and even though we did not take them up, I'll certainly not forget who they were should I be in a position to help them in the future). One has an old "bench mark" which was how the old ordnance survey system was done with spot heights. The post had long fallen out of place and was more than half buried in the soil when we found it. It makes you wonder how many of these are slowly disappearing into the soil. I know of several, but having the machinery on hand to move them is the problem since they are too heavy even for most farm front loaders on tractors to manage. I've also seen them snap when lifted! I really like the character and story of using recycled materials like this. We can only begin to guess at the age of these posts for example, but what is nice is I know exactly where each has come from. It also makes the development feel "organic" to the place I think.

I sent her down for the craik. only there for a few seconds.

@vivienz Garry has been to mine and i've suggested he talk to you because the screw piles might turn out to be one of those early 'architects assumptions'...your journey through foundation systems might prove very relevant to him. Garry drop by and i'll lend you Housebuilders Bible, The self builders guide to project management, and give you a stack of Selfbuilder/Build It magazines.

Square feet - in a way, if you can live with the time scales etc, and can build it without a mortgage then go for it. I know someone who did that and although it took several years, of living in a static caravan they got there in the end mortgage free. Not being in a National Park (unlike us) probably helped, as it meant the outside of the house did not have to conform so rigidly to the norm for that area (basically he built a genuine log house) which obviously translates to big savings as you can take advantage of different materials and such. Though even for us, although we could only have natural stone and slate, I managed to save easily 50% on the cost of those by using recycled - which of course feels better as it has quite huge environmental advantages, means even your materials have a "history" (our stone apart from the Saxon one, was from an old convent school which was being demolished, and the slates too - the slates are recut one size smaller so have new holes put in, immediately look aged, and are double the thickness of modern slates... for half the price - a real no-brainer really). The fact is, the stress has been caused entirely by office dwellers, not the tradespeople we've used or "real" issues - just entirely manufactured issues which simply do not need to happen - sometimes it feels as if no one in the UK ever built a house before and the officialdom is doing this all for the first ever time! Well, a spare 100k in the bank would lessen even more stress of course, but hey ho - if we had that, we'd have had custom build, not self build. Lesgranepotato - the Unready could indeed be very apt! ? Well it's not particularly glamorous, or a new rosetta stone, but here it is - it is roughly hexagonal but obviously you only see 2 sides now it is built in. The mason deliberately made it stand proud of the other stones so it can be seen - I think he really liked the idea. Excuse the quality, but I smashed my phone lense! A better camera would probably make it a lot clearer as to why it stood out when it was amongst other stones. As for the house name, it was to be Curlew House, since you see and hear them here and it is also my favourite bird (the call of the bird just fits into the Northumberland moors perfectly) as well as the symbol of our National park, but then I found someone had given a twee holiday cottage the same name. So we went for a historical name (Todcroft - meaning Fox house) as the next house down was called that in about the 17th century before becoming the village school, so the name has a historical connection. Interestingly, we also found a Henry VIII coin on the site!

Nope, hes probably designing a machine that makes machines........in his spare time.

Not very fackin well

I think this is the important piece of this particular 'puzzle'. For a smaller, or certainly a single storey dwelling, the heat loss is far more manageable and therefore requires much less effort to offset it. Could you just remind me of the exact makeup of your ground floor from the earth up please? I am very interested to hear that you find the stability and relationship between the floors / walls / windows all seem to be relatively indifferent, and I assume this is attributed to by not turning the 'heating' off for any extended periods, instead favouring long low heat influx via the Genevex. Also, do you have an indication of what temp the dwelling will naturally reside at if you shut the heating off ( eg what was it performing like prior to commissioning the heating and setting it to work ) ? Sorry to keep singling you out Peter, but yours is an interesting case study and examines the possibilities that lay away from the generic lines of thought. The case I referenced is manageable, with the points I've highlighted vs the crap that the MVHR supplier first spewed out without proper review, but does indeed require auxiliary emitters to achieve it. Me personally, I'd have gone for wet UFH in plates because thats the entire ground floor done and dusted, plus they require wet heating to supply the bloody feature rad and towel rads anyway so my thoughts are that in a bigger dwelling its a bit perverse. IMO MVHR should be left to be MVHR, with just the selective addition of maybe a 'geothermal' brine loop for some passive energy input. In a PH you're never that far away from comfortable and 'climate control' should remain within reasonable grasp ( if you haven't made a greenhouse with all the glazing that is ).

There are specific rules about caravans and site sockets in the wiring regs that prohibit them being connected to a TNC-S earth. The danger with TNC-S is there is a combined neutral and earth. In the event of a neutral fault (not as uncommon as you might think) the combined neutral and earth can rise to near L potential. That is BAD news if you are standing on the ground and reach out and touch the earthed metal door handle.

Actually, I found they pushed in easily enough, and I'm just doing it by hand, not with one of those tools. However, I am doing it by pushing the point in and tapping them very gently (barely any force needed) with a small rubber mallet as I found that just easier on the hands. Did 2 loops of just under 100 metres each and pressure tested overnight. All fine.

Yes definitely a SWA cable buried where it won't come to harm. Don't go burying the wrong sort of cable. Remember the 'van should be connected to a TT earth, so be careful where / how you earth the arnour. Your electrician should know that.

Use SWA and bury it directly, no real need for conduit if you're going to leave the cable there afterwards. Needs a Part P installation and sign off, BTW (assuming you're in Part P land), so not a DIY job.

Look like Enphase micro inverters M215/M250

Our I-Beam frame was cut by Severn Valley Timber prior to delivery. Everything from notching the ridge beam where rafters land, sole plates for stud positions etc was perfect. You need a machine file for them to work from and we used Cullen Timber Design for this. Both highly recommended.

That's what my fitters used - see photos

If you want to hand deliverh.. There will be a list of committee members on the council web site somewhere and elsewhere another database/list with their addresses and contact details.

That’s better news. They must have caught your mood and valued their balls enough not to pee you off further lol ?.

I wonder if it's worth investigating a group buy from a French retailer? It seems that the GSE Integration frames are £35 each here (plus the cost of the flashing and panel mount clamps - although the flashing is nothing fancy and could easily be made up from standard alloy stuff). If things are as they often seem to be here, and there's a big markup for stuff sold in the UK, then I wonder if it'd be worth trying to buy them from France? In many areas of France there are laws/regulations that mandate the use of in-roof panels (presumably why the two main manufacturers are French). Might be worth finding out if they can be bought more cheaply over there. I (and @PeterStarck) saved a great deal of money by buying our MVHR units from Denmark, rather then the UK - they were thousands of pounds cheaper when bought from there. Maybe the same applies to the in-roof panel mounts. Using a purpose made mount gets around the SE fees for the structural integrity stuff as well.

Bet you're looking forward to the plague of FLIES! A similar smell is only just dissipating here. Whilst writing this I've just had to swat one of the bastards that landed on my leg. I twatted it with the nearest thing to hand and then had to get up and Dettox my leg and the magazine. When I looked it was the Passive House magazine...if ever there was a sign...

Hi, I hope things are feeling ..... you are feeling a little more able to cope today

I made a set of plastic plates on a cnc machine with banks of close fit holes for each group then sealed this plate to the DPC and then ran a bead of polyurethane adhesive around each pipe to make a perfect seal. The Bi was happy.

@Ferdinand is right, I'm one of the younger self builders at 31. In the south no less. Only reason it has been possible is a combination of factors: - Saving near enough 25% salary since starting my career. Lived in cheap/shared accommodation until last year to make it happen. - left university with no debt, paid via summer jobs, and never taken on any other debt since - always been frugal. For example, cars have always been sub £3k and bougt outright - been super fortunate in my education (aerospace engineering) that has landed me an insanely good career. - inheritance via father-in-law (biggest reason) - lucky break on a few share options - decision to project manage and DIY about £40k worth of labour (else we can't afford it). How we do that with two full time jobs between us will be an interesting challenge I won't deny that the majority of the above is down to privilege and luck. I would definitely consider myself a fortunate outlier, and am very thankful for it. But if I had a choice, I'd rather have my father-in-law around.

No more complicated than this. My cutter has the hose attachment at the side, but I inadvertently turned the pressure up to high one day and blew a hole in the pipe. Waiting for a new one to turn up. v

Yesterday (August 21st 2018) the ground workers arrived at 07:00 to scrape the site, erect some Heras fencing and mark the house out. The engineer did the setting out first of house boundary. Next the digger driver and one ground worker scraped the site. Next the engineer marked out where the foundations should go, ready to be dug tomorrow. The digger also ripped up the old tarmac road that ran through the plot. They finished at 18:00

3 weeks in: loving it(her) Mo Mo Mrs Mo, as my son has called her, is doing a great job. Some great features including the alerts to my phone when she gets stuck or falls out of the cutting area. This is the trickest bit of my lawn a 22 deg slope on a corner. Currently once every few days I have to reposition her when she has been unable to back up and has fallen out of the zone - optional extra rough terrain wheels might help but I'm trying to avoid the extra cost atm. My 1100m2 lawn is looking fine with cutting period set to 8am to 4pm and I've just dropped the cutting height from 7/10 to 6/10. Roughly she does about 3 hours work before popping back to her home to have a 40-50minute electric juice snack. We've painted some bits of the lower body green, added some eye lashes and her name, along with some extra mods, to make her less nickable - though the useful GPS location function and security pin code should help. Had to clean the wheels of mud a couple of times - but that was my fault for letting her go to work when the lawn is still missing grass in places and it had rained. Apart from when she tried to mount a roller I left on lawn and she tried to climb over some bricks I'd put down as a 'wall' to prevent her getting to some fresh top soil, we had no major incidents. We zip round the very edge of the lawn using a light electric mower and use the supplied electric strimmer (also awesome) to finish off around the tree bases that she can't reach. (About 40 mins/week). So other than that, lawn cutting is a thing of the past for me ?

Where’s the photo of this Saxon stone then? You can’t just leave that hanging! Will it influence the name of the house? Ethelred the unreadys byre?

That's a fine looking house. I have read some of your old blog posts and it seems that you are living in it now - is that correct? Are you just living in the upstairs part if you are still doing the floors downstairs? Sorry to read about all the stress you have been having with loans and so on. My own future build will have to be very low budget as I cannot borrow and so it all has to come from cash (which I have little of). I did feel quite held back by this but having read your experiences with Build Store I feel a bit better now.

Well when they invent a real-world usable weed robot...

I agree that its would be 'possible' however it would be a really bad idea to render directly onto the outside surface of any SIPS system or timber frame wall construction, even ones faced with a cement based board. It's a much better idea in the wet climate that we have here in the UK to use a rainscreen in front of the SIPS. The rainscreen should create a ventilated cavity between the SIPS and the rainscreen layer. In British Columbia, Canada between 1985 and 2000 approx 50% of all buildings that were rendered directly onto timber framed external walls have subsequently failed. The repair costs exceed $4 billion. They subsequently altered their building codes to make rainscreen construction mandatory for timber bulidings. Google link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_condo_crisis

The Architects Handbook is my go to, followed by Building Construction Handbook. I've got a first fix joinery book somewhere too which was superb at helping with putting a staircase together ..!

Having the ability to take a deep breath and not punch some idiot square in the nose is not taught in any book but it will come in handy in every build.

Well, I wanted to get the precise measurements so yes, the hard facts. Yet from the map it seems their house is smaller than what we propose, so I probably won't be able to use it for comparison anyway.

One thing that annoyed me and I would have changed if I had noticed: Most of our posi joists span end to end of the house in one go. so they are sized for the longest unsupported span which is about 5 metres. The other shorter spans are therefore over specified. But where the stair well cuts the house in half, the SE in his wisdom decided that in one bedroom, the joists didn't need to be that big, so a few that but up to the stairwell are smaller. So we have the situation where one end of the bedroom has over sized joists and the other end of the same room has "correct" sized joists. Needless to say this is the one part of the house where I do notice some floor bounce at that end of the room. Had I noticed this detail, I would have changed it at design time so all joists were the same size, but I did not spot it until it was too late.