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It did turn into a DIY demolition, as much by accident as design... We removed the roof tiles and slid them down scaffold planks that were laid on ladders, it worked very well, and they remain stored on site because we couldn't give them away. I"m sure we'll be able to use them to make some paths through the mud that is now EVERYWHERE on the site. The roof timbers were removed and are stored on site. I'll use them for various things, such as a frame for a shed etc. Then I started getting overtaken by events... A friend of mine owns a skip firm and, despite my protestations to the contrary, he was convinced that he would be able to get a 20 yard ro-ro skip up the VERY narrow lane to the site. He gave me a call a few weeks ago and told me one of his drivers would be round in a few minutes to have a look. Well, "have a look" actually meant squeezing his lorry up the lane, I had to climb up the back of the cab to lift a telegraph pole stay over the top of the ro-ro mechanism. He had inches to spare on each side but somehow he got to the end of the plot and completed a 98 point turn so he could drop the skip, the problem was that we had nowhere prepared for the skip to go so it just went straight on to the grass and after another 98 point turn he headed back out of the lane (with me lifting the telegraph pole stay again) so, after him "having a look" I had a chuffing great skip in my garden - I was somewhat bewildered but grateful. I then asked another friend who has a mini digger if he could come and lift some of the paths around the edge of the bungalow. He arrived and promptly started pushing the bungalow over, completely ignoring the footpaths! At this stage I realised that it was probably too late to worry too much about the Method Statement for the demolition which I still haven't submitted. We started loading the bungalow into the 20 yard skip and made a call to get the skip replaced. It was another nerve wracking creep up and down the lane for the skip lorry and, of course, since the first drop the weather had taken a turn for the worse and now there was much slipping and sliding of the lorry. The only solution I could see was to throw bits of bungalow under the skip lorry, which did the trick. We only had 20 minutes between the skip lorry departing full and returning to dump another empty skip during which time we threw loads more bungalow onto the grass to provide some hard standing for the skip and the lorry to manoeuvre. Yes, onto the grass, I should have called a halt. Stripped the top soil, then thrown the bungalow onto the garden and then got the skips back but I didn't, not until later, but by then the damage was done. Anyway the bungalow is now gone and the plot looks like Passchendaele.

After we dismantled the bungalow we were left with 45 to 50 tonnes of mixed concrete, bricks and blocks along with around 10 tonnes of footings that needed digging out and removing from site. We finally found a groundworks company that would bring a concrete crusher to site and crush the mixed rubble from 50mm down to dust and dig out the footings and remove. We asked three companies for quotes which came in at £4320, £2154 and £1390. The only one that would crush on site to the size we wanted, rather than remove everything and bring in crushed concrete, was the cheapest so we went with them. We have seen what some suppliers bring in as crushed concrete and it’s crap. It took a day to crush around 35 tonnes of the best of the rubble and another to break out the footings and remove along with the remainder of the rubble. They were a company we would definitely recommend which was nice to be able to say.

I think the thing that depresses me the most about this 'story' is the thought of another 25 just like you .

Certainly not SWMBO.

We have light switches next to our beds, great so that you don't have to get out of bed to turn lights on or off. We have inset sockets in our island rather than the pull up ones, much tidier, one socket and 2 usbs Spent more money on a really quiet dishwasher in our open plan kitchen/diner/lounge it is so quiet great when you have company Also love our stair lights, really add the wow factor for very little money

I am very pleased with my new build but one thing I am a bit dissapionted with is the noise transference between floors, it has 100 mm rockwall insulation in the upper floor void but noises, music etc can be heard more than I would like. In hindsight I wish I had either double boarded the ceilings downstairs, used sound block plasterboard or used top hats to hang the plasterboard from. Not something that can be done afterwards easily.

From reading some of the threads on here, a real hard look at any sockets etc that you might want in the middle of your floor before you complete the screed or whatever. Lots of threads here where people change their mind / didn’t think of it, in relation to kitchen islands or for open plan living so sofas being in the middle of the floor and wanting floor sockets there. Better to install cables (or plumbing) and not use them than to have that ‘oh crap’ moment afterwards. And the right type of cables for the thing being connected too.

They can indeed! Looking at the (somewhat scarce) data that's available, it seems that a ten year life is a reasonably good bet, so that's probably around 2500 to 3000 cycles in practice (winter not being great). Clearly the sums don't quite add up, as 2500 cycles at a notional 80p per cycle (ignoring round trip losses etc for simplicity, and assuming that electricity prices don't increase over the next 10 years) gives a nominal return through life that's around the same as the capital investment (exc. VAT). However, what are the less tangible benefits worth? For me, having the ability to run some limited stuff during power cuts would be very useful (we had another three hour power cut last Thursday, for example, and will get several more through the winter, I'm sure). Hard to place a value on this, though. There's also the "feel good" factor of using more of the energy you generate yourself. Impossible to pin a value on, but nevertheless something to be considered when making an investment, much like the make, model and colour of car one decides to buy. I think the price of these system is so close to break even as to probably be worth the investment, given that I believe we are likely to see a significant increase in electricity price over the next 10 years. That alone may well tip a battery investment over into being profitable, who knows?

We've found that the pulley maid thing we have in the utility room, with an MVHR extract above, dries everything, even towels, very quickly. The towels still have to go in the tumble dryer for ten minutes to get them fluffy, but that's far better than having them in there for half an hour or more as we used to at the old house.

I'm certainly no boffin but could find a definite use for a state of charge indicator. EG first thing in the morning in winter, today; is forecast to be sunny; I need to do some washing but am unsure whether to do it now or later in the day. Check indicator - level very low - leave the washing until later. level just above half - wash now so that it can utilise the sun to fully recharge.

Two easy to implement and useful ideas that really work well, both involving MVHR. Firstly, connecting MVHR extract ducts to the toilet cisterns really does remove all odours at source (i.e. in the pan) and is so discreet that it's invisible if you have a built-in cistern, can be done with standard waste pipe fittings and a bit of ingenuity when it comes to adapting these to the MVHR extract ducting. This shows one of our cisterns with the lid off, with the extract pipe on the left: The second idea was to fit an MVHR fresh air supply vent immediately above the kitchen door, on the outside of the kitchen. This acts as a very effective "air curtain" we've found, and is remarkably effective at keeping cooking smells inside the kitchen where they get extracted from the kitchen extract terminal. We're still surprised at how well this works, as you literally take one step through the open doorway and go from cooking smells to no smell at all, and vice versa.

Angle the bath panel inwards at the base - easier to stand close to it. Sink the bath feet into the floor so the bottom of the bath is level with the tiled floor. Both together make it much easier getting in and out especially when older.

Thanks, but the CPC one arrived yesterday and is about to have its guarantee voided by me hacking open the remote and turning it into a mains switched one.

Seems madness considering the ups and downs of my self build project. However, over the last year I have been trying to find a “new” office for my accountancy practice, we are currently in a house that’s been converted into an office, which isn’t ideal. I wanted it to be within 3 miles of my house but was willing to go up to 10 miles away. It had to be somewhere around 1000sqft, give or take 500sqft. I wanted it to be well positioned if possible for visibility and for the building to not be an eye sore. It seems this is just too much to ask. I’m now considering buying a plot and having a glass/contemporary style office built. Perhaps I am being too picky.

You sure one of your rellies didn't live there before you?

Hi James, mine is 22mm caberdeck, 225 i joists @ 400mm centres, 100 rockwall between joists, 15 mm plasterboarded and skim. I think your EPS from wunda will help a fair bit, but might be worth sound plasterboard or double board or plasterboard on top hat rails (disconnects plasterboard from joists to stop sound. ) we had an embarrassing moment the other weekend, my mate had a bit too much to drink, his wife went to bed early (so us blokes could chew the fat!). And he was moaning to me about his wife. When he went to bed she was awake and told him she could hear every word he said. Breakfast was a bit chilly ?

I've left a credit card size gap between the bottom of the wall tiles and the floor tiles. I'll grout then wipe flush and finish with a white, good quality silicon that I can replace as and when. Can't remember if @Nickfromwales said to CT1 and wipe flush after the grout but before the white silicon? My bath doesn't abut the walls as such but sits on a marine ply deck that will all be tanked. That'll be flat tiled first. The bath will sit on those flat tiles. The wall tiles will come down and sit on those flat tiles with the same 1mm gap as elsewhere. In case anyone's forgotten what's under all the crap and temporary boarding:

I'm sure Onoff's lines are from a MPython sketch, ripping yarns or RutlandWkndTv.. I can't quite put my finger on it, sure it was M.Palin tho in yorkshire accent.. Great colliedog pic btw newhome!

Principles can sometimes be costly things to hold.

Wouldn't have been many names on a neighbour's petition!

That’s bloody cheap. ??

I'm severely disappointed, @JSHarris, that you haven't made your own triangular blinds that reef like a boat's sail at the bottom.

I have that provision on the landing (plumbing etc). The intention was that the downstairs washing machine would do dirty work clothes, dog beds etc and upstairs the cleaner stuff but with just me here now I haven't bothered installing a second washing machine and dryer as it seems OTT. I do agree however, I spend time carrying the clothes and bedding downstairs and then back up again so I think it's a good plan.

Exactly what happened using explorer, date and time were ancient and causing the problem

Lamps set on timers?

Years ago a neighbour planted a row of conifers right up to the boundary between us. Needless to say they all 'died'.

I did that in a previous house and it worked well, in our new build i put the washing machine in the plant cupboard in the cloakroom which has enough room for a pulley maid drying thingy (the room has MVHR extract) and room to use an ironing board.

With your "all off" switch, is it worth leaving one or two lights out of it so you can leave them on to make it look like someone's home when you're out? In our kitchen, we have a pull-out bin to the left of the sink, and the dishwasher to the right. You can dump dirty dishes above the bin if you're in a hurry. Scrape them into the bin when you're ready, rinse anything that needs rinsing (or dump in sink if it needs hand washing), and the rest keeps going in the same direction into the dishwasher. It's a very small thing, but it works surprisingly well. All our plates, cups and cutlery can be put away within a single step of the dishwasher, which also feels efficient. Think about a boiling water tap. We've had one for three years and it's just awesome. It needed a repair under warranty after two years. The three weeks we were without it were incredibly frustrating - imagine having to wait for water to heat on the cooker to quickly cook some broccoli and peas when you've forgotten to put any veg on for the umpteenth time!

Check your computers date and time. I have known this when the clock got corrupted and it thought the security certificate had expired.

Nothing like a bit of really powerful, commercial grade, stump killer, applied discreetly to the roots in the dead of night. Far easier than raising your blood pressure by having pointless rows with a recalcitrant neighbour, and it has a high degree of plausible deniability as well...

Yes, it is fundamentally different, if you use excess PV generation as a source of charge. The Sunamp PV would accept charge no matter what the state of charge of the heat cells. All it cared about was keeping the unit hot, as far as I could tell, and it controlled the cell temperature by controlling the water circulation temperature, using a variable speed pump, heating element, flow sensor and water temperature sensors. If excess PV was available the unit would try and charge, unless the water circuit was above a threshold temperature. The Sunamp UniQ eHW will not accept any charge, from any source, until it is either 50% depleted or 90% depleted (programmable in the controller). This means that you can have up to 50% of thermal storage capacity available in the heat cell which you are completely unable to utilise from excess PV generation, which is ludicrous, especially in winter, when excess PV generation is sporadic and you want to maximise the utilisation of it whenever it happens. This is far worse than a thermal store or hot water cylinder, and is a very serious disadvantage for those who wish to use these units as heat stores driven largely by excess PV generation. Unless this is changed I can see that we may well still need to use grid power to heat hot water in summer, as if we were to take bath in the evening the Sunamp may well be out of energy for morning showers, as it may only be just over 50% charged at the end of a sunny day, due to it not having reached the charge acceptance threshold. Right now I'd recommend that no one fit a Sunamp if they intend to charge it primarily from excess PV generation.

You're kidding right? I had no heating in this house for ages and it was bloody freezing. I got by BECAUSE I had an electric blanket and a heated throw. It would have been intolerable otherwise IMO. And @Onoff has his share of 8 degree rooms on and off (see the name even fits ) so no stranger to living in a freezing cold house, so no superiority at all. We KNOW what it's like cos we've been there . We don't laugh AT anyone here, we laugh with you (and at ourselves) through a bit of light hearted banter. Tis that sort of humour on this forum. Out of interest what did the EPC show when you bought the house? I know they're often not worth the paper they're written on but what did it suggest as improvements there to improve the score?

Hmmm... crap supplier answer, sorry ..!! That’s like Worcester Bosch [other boiler makes are available] saying there is no point outputting the error codes to the LCD as “customers won’t know what they are”... Diagnostics are useful, as are basics such as indicator lights ...! Sounds like a number of people on here have purchased them (PV models especially) and find they don’t actually do what they say on the tin. I also find the 3kw immersion thing very “binary” and they should have thought this through better. Units with a series of 1kw immersion’s, each with a controller, would be better as a failure becomes less of a problem as you retain redundancy.

I'm not at all fussed about having a SoC indicator, all I MUST have (and this is not at all negotiable) is the ability to charge the unit with excess PV generation whenever there is any spare heat storage capacity available. The present system is ludicrous, and significantly poorer in this regard than the old Sunamp PV we had. That would always accept excess PV charge if there was any spare capacity in the unit, not refuse to charge when there was still ~50% of the capacity sitting there uncharged. I may just as well have a 4.5 kWh heat store, as that's all I've got, in effect, if the damned thing refuses to charge from excess PV until it's 50% depleted. If I sound annoyed, it's because I am. Compared to the Sunamp PV the Sunamp UniQ eHW 9 is only using a fraction of our available excess PV generation, and instead it's costing us money to charge from the grid most of the time.

Chainsaw. My mates neighbour had a row of conifers between the houses and they basically kept growing out and blocking my mates path. He asked nicely, they got trimmed. He asked again, got ignored. He told the guy, cut or lose....your choice. 48 hours later........ziiiiimmmm.ziiiim. Phut. Mates out there with his wife pleading for sanity, whilst he felled every last one of them. He then dragged them into the guys front garden and simply, and politely, states “the offer was there”. Said neigbour asks for ‘permission’ to put a dwarf wall up. Mate says that’s more sensible and agrees. Mate comes home to find two brickies cleaning up and packing the van. Neighbour has built the wall, wait for it......completely on my mates path, reducing it to 3/4 of its width whilst neighbour enjoys a full width path. When asked he says it’s becsuse he paid to build it.........wrong answer. Mate then proceeds to pick each brick off and lob them into the guys front garden. Guy knew not to come out until he was finished Ask for the cost of replacement used panels to be met. They’d ask you in a heartbeat. “Do unto others as they would do a shat on to you”. No retreat, no surrender.

I had this phone call, literally yesterday, and after an hour of deep conversation, with one of the most helpful guys on their books, I was informed the logic has ( past tense ) been amnended for the options of charge / call for heat to go as high as 20% discharged = calling. There are some clever folk working on and developing the SA units and controls and I have already had a few simple suggestions, that I made, rebuffed. In the light of the responses I got as to why those ‘ideas’ could not be implemented, I now know a decent bit about the product and the huge hurdles that have been jumped to get the product this far. I’m going to afford them some credit for that tbh. Their aim is to have a reliable, off the shelf item that can go into a domestic dwelling and then require no intervention whatsoever. When I was asked what I was going to do with a SoC ( state of charge ) indicator / display I was a little stuck to reply. It’s not like anyone is going to sit in all day staring at it, what would be the point of that? It’s also impractical to ask an end customer to check in on it daily to see if it needs boosting or not. Not going to happen. Boffins, and folk ( such as myself ) who are curious enough to want to know will naturally be disgruntled at not being afforded this insight, but the product simply isn’t aimed at us at this moment in time. It is something that’s on the cards, possibly for Q4/2018 - Q1/2019, but it’s not a high enough priority is what I’m led to believe. My own perception. I aired my own frustrations re more complex controls / status monitoring etc and was simply told that that is / was not on the immediate list of things to cater for due to ( deemed ) lack of necessity / practically. Remembering that PCM doesn’t stratify like water does shows the complications of obtaining reliable temperature readings throughout the charged / part charged cell. Also let’s remember that the PCM gets killed by overheating it. As PV is introduced via a 3kW immersion, it’s imperative that that does not get over-energised as it’ll only serve to cook and kill the PCM immediately local to ( surrounding ) the immersion element. I dont envy SA”s task in achieving the middle ground, but looking at it kW for Kw, it’s still the most efficient way to absorb and store excess electrical energy ( E7 / E10 / PV ). Looking at the alternatives it still seems to rank highest AFAIC. Some fleas do seem to come with the dog, but hopefully with the newer logic, eg more varied SoC / demand control and some basic indicators, ( personally I’d be happy if each thermistor ( ~33% - ~66% - ~100% ) light an led, would be better than nowt ), it should appease the ‘general public’ accordingly. I’ll get my tin hat.

There’s a couple of points here: Firstly the manual is woeful, it’s incomplete (in places) and parts of it are impossible to follow. I emailed them recently to point out the they even had the description of the status LED’s D5 and D6 the wrong way round in the manual!! If they are serious about this being a main stream consumer product they really need to put a bit of work into the manual. It currently comes across as something of an afterthought. But the second point is the larger one; the lack of meaningful user feedback from the controllers is a massive problem. Even the most basic of devices actually tell you they’re switched on! As I think is mentioned on this thread there is a new controller with better control and better feedback in development but it has no release date.

That’s what made the BSI Report for those IVT units quite interesting reading @JSHarris as they did a wide range of tests and you get a real world example - or as far as you can in a lab. IVT / Mitsubishi V90 They were getting sub 2 scores on CoP in tests 19 & 20 which are the near freezing and high output tests, but that is still double the CoP of direct electric. What is also nice is they explain the full calculation for CoP at the beginning ..!

Have you looked at honeycomb/cellular blinds? Look good and are supposed to be effective at insulating.

Saw these in Lidl today: £12.99 with 3 year guarantee.

Maybe that's the way to go. Just run a smaller hp for longer. I could give the tank a 2 hr bump in the evening and then another 2hrs in the morning. We are all shower in the evening types. Think I would drown if I took a shower in the morning as I am not exactly alert first thing.

Definitely a quality bifold door, one of the best if not thee best on the market and engineered to passivhaus standards.

Those were the days, those were the days......

Asbestos?

Well this has really fu**ed my Saturday morning up! Apologies to @richi for a start. @richi kindly donated 3 solar thermal panels to me the other year. I put them "safely" in the corner of the old ramshackle stable block that came with the house. Utter crap the way it was built. Adjacent to the stable a neighbours tree (ash?) has grown and was pushing against the wall. More than a few times I've suggested nicely it (the tree) be taken down but haven't been overly fussed as the whole stable really needs to be demolished & rebuilt. Neighbour calls round this morning to tell me the wall has collapsed. Two panels out of the 3 destroyed. I'm really quite upset. Bad enough their fu**ing conifers are so high.