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Is that all, come on I’m bored stiff sat here pictures of the big hole please picteres of progress c,mon c,mon I’m about to kill one of the in-laws if they ask me another stupid question about my polystyrene house.

15% off everything on ebay today use the code POWPOW15 Only 8 hour, be quick. I have just saved £45 off my solar PV inverter.

Here's a link to the heat loss calculator spreadsheet, just download it, rename it to change the .txt suffix to .xls (the forum software has a problem with .xls files) and open it in Excel, LibreOffice Calc or something similar: Heat loss calculator - Master.txt If you also want to look at your UFH efficiency etc, then this spreadsheet might be useful, too: Floor heat loss and UFH calculator.txt

But I am getting ahead of myself here... Whilst the purchase was ongoing, I was assuming a number of roles in the project. One of which was the "architect" (and yes I know I am not an architect, and not allowed to call myself such, hence the quotemarks). So, I bought a piece of house design software and spent a week playing. I came up with what I thought would do nicely... a big box with a pointy lid and some windows (and doors). On paper at least it ticked all the boxes, and fixed all the problems we had with our present house (poor flow, not enough space, the usual reasons people dislike their present house and want to move). So, having designed a house, we submitted a planning application for it (the plot only had outline permission). I spoke to a planning officer and was told the sort of things they wanted to see. That included: - a full EPC calc for "as designed" and "as built" - borehole records because there might have been shallow mine works under the plot at some time in the past - an arboricultural study because we were going to have to cut down a few wonky goat willows that sat close enough to the build area to be a problem We did all that, at a not insignificant cost, and bundled it with my designs for the house, shown here for your amusement... Clancutt Lodge - Floor Plans - CL_FLOOR_01A.pdf Clancutt_Lodge_-_Elevations_-_CL_ELEVATION_01A.pdf

So where are we now. Blockwork keeps on going, we've got all the *big* lintels in place now so the guys can just keep on plugging on , each course is shorter than the last now. Chimney stuff is here, sills are here (and look gorgeous, really fine finish on the concrete) and we're lifting the big Keylite windows into place tomorrow. SHMBO needs to be making final decisions on the position of sanitaryware and then it'll be first fix city. Window guys return 9th, roof stuff arrives that week too. Moving on...

Don’t bother trying to find a 10mm pushfit manifold - just use a standard UFH one and a short leg of 16mm UFH pipe and then use a reducer or see if you can get a manifold with 15mm eurocones on it and 15/10 is an easy size to find in pushfit.

I doubt there would be any significant beneficial impact at all, in reality. The heat would be largely absorbed by the surfaces in the room, then a bit of it would end up in one extract duct, which would then be diluted with cooler air from every other extract duct in the house. The net result is there might be a very tiny increase in the temperature of the air entering the heat exchanger, and around 80% or so of that tiny increase in sensible heat would be recovered and passed to the incoming fresh air. As MVHR only ventilates at a relatively slow rate (typically around 1 air change every two hours or so) there is loads of time for surfaces to absorb heat before the air in any room is changed. Normal passive MVHR always cools the house in cold weather, just not as much as conventional ventilation.

Erm…...the cylinder doesn't deliver the heat, that big white box sucking in gas does Your cylinder could be a 15L low loss header and still provide all the heat your boiler does, because its coming from the boiler VIA the cylinder. As I said, the 140 will do it, but only if the boiler is allowed to replenish heat to it via the cylinder stat. As far as DHW is concerned, if a big boiler is connected to it then the 140L TS will be able to give you constant DHW to 2 showers with ease.

Ps If you are worried about the durability of the pb You could order one Abito board and rip it into strips More solid than timber

I don't think a plasterboard cill will be very durable. Cement board or MgO board would hold up better, and can be plastered over.

Are you wishing to use the 140 litre cylinder as a thermal store solely to supply the heating? If so, then if charged to, say 65 deg C, with a UFH flow temperature of, say, 28 deg C, the cylinder would store around 6 kWh. This would run the UFH at 2.5 kW for around 2 hours 24 minutes before it would need to be recharged.

The 140L cylinder will work, but only if you maintain it at 75-80oC which will be ridiculously high on losses with a vented setup. That kind of flies in the face of building to a low energy standard, so I think I'd look at reverting back to sealed and pressurised in one much larger cylinder and get a G3 sign off. You can go 'all Sunamp' to reduce losses, ( expensive additional costs ), but the header tank will still remain because you bought the open vent boiler. Can you get an MVHR extract duct to the location of the F&E ( header ) tank? May as well recycle that heat as much as the MVHR will afford you to. edit : the MVHR will also help manage the excess humidity local to the F&E tank, as that may well become an issue too.

Have you seen my thread about window boards? I used spare leftover oak floor boards with a bit of trim over the edges. The cill is flush, just the thickness of the trim overhangs. The small overlap of the trim covers the inevetable crack between the cill and the plaster.

Grp roof on our current place, was trying to avoid doing this as I want to knock it down, but it decided to let go in a spectacular fashion on Boxing Day two years ago?? i did this with only the wife helping in very far from ideal conditions in January i think grp and all trims came to about £700.

My reading of your post skidded to a halt here....... You need to get a grip of the asbestos. Find out how much that will cost to dispose of - properly.

Hi. Assume you mean to remove and dispose of the asbestos sheets and start from scratch?

Search out the heat loss spreadsheet that @JSHarris has produced, download it and enter all your dimensions, U values etc and you will get a proper idea of heat loss. And the ventilation loss is a red herring, that would be the heat loss if you just ventilated with simple extract fans, but you are using mvhr so probably 90% of that "heat loss" will be recovered.

As @ProDave says - thermal store needs to be bigger rather than smaller as it’s acting as not just your DHW buffer but your heating buffer too in this instance. I would bite the bullet and add in a much bigger TS, lose the PHE and pump as that’s just things to go wrong, and use an in tank coil. I would add a pair of immersions - one 1/3 up and one 2/3 up and use them to offset the PV or even use on E7 as backup. Other option is to add a second “solar coil” at the bottom of the TS and link to the ASHP and the UFH. - would give low grade heat to the tank from PV driven ASHP and you could divert this to the UFH for heating, and then isolate it for cooling.

Locally - thats the extent of my experience - charges vary widely. Its normal to ask for three quotes in every cost heading during the build.

Having nearly finished a Logix build under the occasional supervision of someone widely accepted as an ICF expert, I have a layperson's take on these... I am staggered an SE would mention any of this TBH! 1. Typically you would never inspect the poured ICF wall. Your SE should be engineering the steel in the walls to the point that crack widths become largely irrelevant except in relation to water penetration (which itself should be a non-issue). A good SE would realise that the concrete will be a LOT stronger than the stuff they make blocks out of (our mix came out at around C68 for the basement walls - 10× the compressive strength of dense concrete blocks). As for waterproofing of ICF, tell them you will either go with a waterproof concrete (like we did), or simply render the outside of the house... 2. A 25mm diameter steel bar can take a LOT of load, and you can get 6+ into a 158mm ICF wall with little effort so long as you assemble the blocks around them... the biggest problem then is making sure that the concrete pour properly fills any voids between bars. Beyond that diameter you are getting out of the realms of rebar and into dedicated members (as they rightly point out), but then you benefit from not worrying about the pour filling voids between members, so it's swings and roundabouts. Don't forget that (provided you have lifting gear on site) you can thread ICF blocks onto bigger horizontal steel members with the steel in midair. 3. Forget about fixing kitchen cupboards to the ICF walls. Line the walls with either a double layer of Fermacell or a single layer of 18mm or thicker OSB/ply (screwed to the ICF webs) behind 15mm moisture resistant plasterboard. Either approach should be more than sufficient to hold up a few wall cupboards using e.g. 5x50mm wood screws. Why would an SE care how you hang cupboards - that's nothing to do with them?!?! 4. Uhm, surely that's the job of the architect and the SE? Is the SE seriously trying to dodge that? 5. I would expect the SE to produce drawings to show where to tie the rebar, and doing the tying really isn't a very skilled job. Clearly this SE hasn't been on any ICF build sites, or they would know how easy it is to tie rebar... I did nearly all of the lintels, including one over a set of 6m wide bifolds, on my own (and that included 4no. 25mm rebar, 7.2m long, with 35 H12 links around them, all set into 2 courses of Logix 6" blocks). It's helped by knowing that typically links are placed either singly or in pairs per web spacing in the ICF blocks. If you want some photos and exemplar SE drawings to see how they marry up, I can provide them from my build. As for pouring of concrete, I don't think it is massively skilled either. It's more about understanding the process. The bigger problem is obtaining enough bodies to help, because really you want 2 people moving the pump hose around, 1 person or more vibrating the concrete behind the pump hose (carefully so you don't damage the ICF blocks), one person indicating when each circuit of the pour has reached a suitable depth, and one person looking for blowouts and bulging. I had helpers on each pour, because it's a 4-6 man job, not a 1-2 man job. FWIW my first SE was worse than useless when it came to ICF construction... he was specifying steel that could never work within the limitations of the blocks. He wouldn't listen to me, so I took my ICF expert to talk to him. Wouldn't listen to the expert, so I had the ICF company phone and email as well. When he still refused to listen, we parted ways, and I found an SE with ICF experience. The difference was night and day. 8 weeks of grief with the first SE, and under 1 week turnaround with the second SE, plus plenty of phone and email assistance afterward. Happy to recommend our SE though, via PM, if you can't find one you are happy with. Also, speak to the ICF firms - they will have a list of preferred SEs that they have a working relationship with. HTH. Neil.

Just a heads up to everyone, the blog has now started... Clancutt Lodge 3 entries so far, you will find a bit more detail than in the posts above... At the moment I am working on my phone, so hopefully the grammar isn't too appalling! When I get home in a couple of days I will start pulling together more photos etc, and writing with a bit more thought. Enjoy!

Naaah, probably the handset was too big and wouldn't fit between their legs when they were trying to wash their arse crack. ?

Here's a direct link: Heat loss calculator - Master.txt and, whilst I'm at it, here's a link to a simple spreadsheet for calculating heat floor loss and UFH output: Floor heat loss and UFH calculator.txt Both of these are Excel spreadsheets, which the forum software won't allow, so they have been renamed to fool the system into thinking they are text files. Download them somewhere, then rename them, replacing the .txt suffix with .xls and they should open in most spreadsheet software OK.

The bed in the middle looks bonkers to me. If you move it back you could have a sofa / chaise longue / table and chairs / dressing table / study area or whatever.

If you are worried about the loo flushing bothering Bedroom 3, make that a thicker twin wall structure so the 2 sides are each their own structure if that makes sense, with insulation between.

Just double up the wall board and it should be fine - or use soundblock

It really depends on many many factors, the simplest obviously is to have the window of the room facing the sun - generally we say South facing however it depends on the use of the room. Often a well designed building will make good use of natural daylight (where requested extensive 3DS Max (or similar) daylight modelling is carried out) for the particular room in question, hotels may have breakfast room facing East and evening dining areas West. The next thing is overhangs, a high summer sun may be partially blocked by deep roof overhangs but a low winter sun may penetrate well - the size of the opening and the placement within the wall is important to counteract a deep overhang on a sun facing wall. So it's a how long is a piece of string sort of a question. Your possibly better to suggest your requirements and or parameters and then it can be answered from there. Your room is already built, but are you looking to add remove change doors, windows, skylights etc. can you improve natural daylight by adding glazed doors? Light finishes on surfaces help to reflect light, natural or artificial. Also bear in mind that a domestic kitchen shouldn't really need to think too much about glare as you are not likely to be sitting working at a PC or watching TV or spending long periods of time sat in one place with the sun bothering you so my thinking is include loads of natural daylight, get it all in and then design in appropriate shutters, blinds, curtains etc. to suit.