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We finally received the damaged doors and trims from Nolte and was able to get the quarts worktops on

So similar.....to my floor protection sheets!

Wot @TerryE just sed: if one room's at 21 °C and 50% relative humidity and another room is at 11 °C then any air that filters through from the warm room to the cool room will just about reach its condensation level. Rough rule of thumb: the equilibrium vapour pressure doubles (halves) for each 10 °C increase (decrease) in temperature.

Your concrete should be above the DPM layer so not an issue.

I think Nolte must get a lot of issues with quality control Or lack of it The rep rang me after numerous emails to Germany I couldn’t get a word in edgeways He just kept saying let me speak He drowned on about the company’s turnover Six layers of glued laminate Robots Then hit me with the mother of all excuses Six migrants in the truck Doesn’t know were the missing bits of my bloody kitchen are But is sure there were six migrants But in the migrants defence after scratchithing my five mtr finger rail amongst other things They attempted to polish the scratches out Going right through to the bare metal Leaving a white residue on the alloy They then re rapped it with bubble rap and packaged it with cardboard Hoping I wouldn’t notice This couldn’t of happened at the factory As there are Robots checking every item Not the German efficiency we expect

Holmfirth! Where I was introduced to heavy drinking as a 16 year old apprentice! Hurlimanns...mmmm! Used to stay in a pub up above the village...the Fox or something. Good luck anyway!

New thread time @JSHarris I'm for the Carolina's as a destination. I'll tell you how it looks on Saturday, three months in, its time to visit my middle girl loving Duke University if feeling a little homesick and keen to hear another Glasgow accent ??? Dunno if they have caves, guitar pros, self flying types or storytellers but you might just fit in Sir.

Congratulations! Time to settle in properly at the new house.

Ooooh, that's lovely!

sorry missed this while typing my essay!

P.S. Congrats on completing!

Looking good. Lovely worktops. Thats a lot of ovens

Can’t let it go to waste........or can we ??

I quadruple checked. It's OK. Design approved by the supplier company

Only if you have money to burn. When you come to a window you cut a block, the off cut goes in the next row, if you cut it out after you will end up with lots of random sized pieces with no where to put them. Have you been to see any icf builds? Go and have a look, an hour on somebody’s site will answer a lot of questions we are in Gloucestershire and up at first floor level if your interested.

I'm not annoyed - I'm just allocating my time as best I can on a crazy busy day. In all honesty (and in the nicest possible way) I genuinely had the feeling that nothing anyone says will change your mind, so there didn't seem to be much point arguing. My main concern about the island is less the diagonal wall per se, but more how you've aligned the island with it, and defined a large triangular area between the island and the corner of the kitchen up from the fridge. To my mind, that whole area consumes a lot more space than it contributes by way of function. By way of reference, we have 1.2m spacing between our island and the adjacent run of cupboards. That distance is more than enough for people to walk past unimpeded while the dishwasher is being unloaded. Any more and the island would start to feel disconnected to the rest of the kitchen. We figured out this spacing by building a rough version of the island as I explained above. In your case, I suspect the island is so far away that it will feel separate from the kitchen. All that said, I'm just some bloke arguing on the internet. If you rig up some walls and an island with cardboard or whatever you have to hand, there'll be no speculation. You'll either confirm that it's what you want, or you'll avoid a potentially costly error. Either way, it's a win. The comments about awkward spaces included some of the stuff mentioned by others (@the_r_sole in particular), but unfortunately I need to get back to work so can't expand any more at the moment.

Even more cheapskate then! ?

The money will be nice. But having peace of mind nicer....

Congratulations, Enjoy the new house and that long planned holiday. I get the feeling your old house is probably not the best rental prospect in terms of yield but that is not your concern.

Finally completed today, although not without a predictable bit of difficulty. For some reason completion was delayed, and our solicitor didn't confirm the funds transfer until 13:20. I did manage to speak to the buyer yesterday (at long last) and was told that their solicitor has had the entire completion monies for over two weeks now. Quite why completion was delayed today I don't know. I managed to arrange to hand the keys over, but our buyer didn't seem to be in any rush for them. So, we are finally shot of the old house, after a pretty stressful sale process. I can't be arsed to do a post mortem on why things took so long, other than to say that it wasn't anything related to Purple Bricks in any way, and didn't seem to be caused by our solicitors, although I can't be 100% sure that they were always being completely truthful with us about the reasons for some of the delays. It seems our buyer is entering the "buy to let" market, and intends letting the house. I only found this out today, and it explains why they were so obsessed with having a gas safety certificate, electrical installation condition report and then making a fuss over really trivial stuff, like a 1986 built house not complying with 2017 wiring regulations. From what I've seen, I think they are in for a rough time, as the electrician they used to repeat the EICR (two were done within the space of a fortnight) charged well over £300 for a 4 hour EICR job, and has quoted over £700 to replace the 6 way fuse board and meter tails (around £80 for parts plus maybe 4 hours labour - I costed it up as I was thinking of getting it done just to keep the buyer on side). Anyway, it's all over now, all we have to do is wait for the money to be transferred to our account. No idea how long that will take, but I can guess that our solicitor will try and hold on to it as long as possible.

look out for a batch of joists on ebay very soon....

Karen, I realise that this is always a Q of priorities, but I would keep a close eye on the humidity in the unheated half if you aren't running the MVHR (you can buy cheap LCD thermo + humidity readout sensors for around £10). You don't want to let it get up to condensing levels, as this will encourage mould and mildew in the unheated half which will be a PITA when you want to sell and move. Commissioning the MVHR would be one way of mitigating this.

Optimist.

The 3 year living room refurbishment?

It's not quite clear where the boundary is on the image in your OP. Can you mark it in red tell us how many meters (or feet if you prefer) it is from the garage wall to the plot boundary. We may also need the height of the eaves/gutters of the garage. Planning Permission: May not be needed if it meets the height rule near a boundary. Building Control: You may not need to involve Building Control if less than 30sqm AND is far enough from the boundary. In short you haven't quite given us enough information. If you can provide that we should be able to give you a clear answer.

I’m with you re the bedrooms TBH. I have space to sit in mine but never do, and nor is there a TV up there so I’m not particularly bothered about light or views. That said, when I view a house the master bedroom looking fabulous with space, light and views can create a wow factor ?. An en-suite is a must have for me. Love a bathroom that I can use without needing to exit the bedroom and is my own domain. My mother sounds a bit like yours. When my father needed mobility provision made she ripped it all out when he died ‘as she didn’t want or need it’. She wouldn’t have entertained a conversation about keeping it for the future but 15 years on she’s now having similar stuff put in again ?. When my husband was ill we were glad of the wet room we had put downstairs as it meant that he could remain independent. We hadn’t expected to need it for a person (it was mainly installed for the dogs lol) so you can never predict how things will work out.

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+1 in not having ensuites. I know a lot of people love them but I'm with you on the cleaning, although I think they're just generally unnecessary and add additional cost where it isn't needed (for us). I suspect it's one of those things where once someone's experienced them they'll find it hard to go back, but I can't honestly remember thinking I've needed one (and that includes big shared houses).

After finally getting the ASHP working my wife asked how to control the heating, I showed her the room stat in the hallway. After she went to work I looked and it was racked up to 23’. Bugger, I should have made it a “false” controller.?

I hate winders. I would have them only if absolutely no room for anything else.

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IANAA.... but with the barn on the left i think something that would really put me off is having to walk through the open plan living to go to the toilet / shower, could you swap the kitchen / bathroom space around, this would also mean that from the kitchen you would have a visual connection to the front of the house enterance.

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The 30k+ folk who want to see his bathroom finished !?!?!

If you have a half landing as per @joe90 instead of winders and build it, say, 1300mm deep, you should be able to get all but the largest of items upstairs. The half landing is also safer should anyone fall.

Not if you have PV and only run the cooling when the sun's out!

This is for the house I'm renting during the build, not what I'd choose for myself. It's an oil boiler direct to radiators. DHW is from a conventional vented cylinder. My landlord had the oil boiler replaced in the summer and the system was converted then to S-plan: two zone valves, one for the CH and one for the DHW indirect coil. The programmer is set to heat the DHW cylinder for an hour or so in the late afternoon and generally does so in half an hour. That gives plenty of hot water for the washing up in the evening and general washing evening and morning. The shower is electric (presumably to get mains pressure) so, except for the occasional bath, there's always more than enough hot water. Graph of relevant data for Friday and Saturday attached. Room temperature (red) on the left hand scale. All other variables on the right hand one (arbitrarily labelled humidity). Humidity is percent RH, power (pale blue/cyan) is in hundreds of watts (so the two big spikes just before the midnights are my showers, 7 kW electric shower). Boiler state is derived from the temperature of the radiator (so doesn't include DHW heating). It it were my house I'd add a couple of relays hung off the wiring centre to monitor the calls for heat by the CH and DHW tank but don't want to mess with my landlord's wiring. The blibs of power overnight and while I'm out are the fridge running. Sometimes the power monitor picks up the start current spike from that. When the heating is stabilised the boiler just runs for 15 minutes or so in each hour to a fairly regular pattern, controlled by the living room thermostat. When it's cold and windy the runs get closer together. When I've left the heating off while I'm out or overnight it initially runs continuously for 20 minutes then, once the circulating water is all up to temperature, short cycles for a while till the living room thermostat stops calling for heat. What's not obvious from just eyeballing the graph is how much is actually saved by letting the house cool down overnight and while I'm out then heating it back up. Just looking at the graph it seems like it's a bit of a wash hence my attempts to measure more accurately. Intuitively, any time the house is cooler it should be losing heat more slowly so the net amount of heating should be less but I speculate that there are other factors which mean there's less difference than you might expect.

Just checked and yep all fittings that have had failures have no upward air holes to allow hot air to escape (non are recessed as such but as mentioned are all 'un-vented' : new acronym ULF 'un-vented light fitting')

As @Nickfromwales mentioned, you *should* be able to do this with Zwave using 'direct association'. I do something similar to this in a few rooms where I have a Fibrao dimmer unit switch on some table lamps as well. I'm not sure if you would be able to set this up without a controller (even temporarily just to do the initial config)....the manuals have all been updated and I can't find the procedure for how I did this a few years back.. sorry! Edit - bit more info here under 'Associations' - https://www.vesternet.com/resources/technology-indepth/groups-scenes-associations/

Building regs may not be required if it’s below a certain size and if the building has been completed, it’s an extension behind the building line and you have the builders permission I would be surprised if there is anything for the council to be interested in.

So the LED lights that have a separate driver unit, away from the actual LED should not overheat as the GU10 type? I'm having to go for the above type for some ceilings that only have a 25mm gap between the insulation and plasterboard but may also fit them in the bungalow ceiling were I can have the driver unit sit above the insulation layer to prevent anything overheating (although they don't warm up very much at all tbh).

I'm sure you already know this, but doing this will never "take all the risk out of the project in terms of cost". It would be very surprising to not have unknown unknowns. It just takes the architect to not included something in their detailed design or you to have a problem during the build (eg, getting out of the ground, connection to utilities) and your contingency could be gone in a flash.

How about I contact him and ask for a bulk purchase price.

Didn't know ozzy was big in the renewable energy market.

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If I cant take a joke, I shouldn't have started should I? So, folks, what I can I do about that then? Booked a call from the BCO, architect sucking his teeth, suppliers humming and haa-ing.

Thanks A bit disappointed with Nolte Some items were damaged at the factory but sent out anyway Virtually no quality control Their rep was a total arse Telling me that there was six migrants in the lorry and they had damaged my kitchen including the five mtr finger rail that had been scratched then re packaged. Loads of excuses

What will we do/read if we allow him to finish it?