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I am planning owl boxes around us, we have at least one barn owl that is resident near us and I want to encourage them. We already have bat boxes built into my workshop and many bird boxes dotted around, we enjoy having breakfast watching lots of different bird types on our feeders. Next year I am looking forward to sowing the meadow (currently a soggy bog) with wild meadow grasses and flowers ?.

Well, we’re very pleased to report that our full planning permission was granted this afternoon after 13 months, 5 completely different designs and 2 full planning permission applications. It was particularly difficult as our plot is outside the development boundary, i.e. classed as open countryside, so became an NPPF paragraph 131 (para 63 in old money) application.

Got the urinal set at the right angle too. Top man!

Ooooooo yes....

I never got warranty documents as I refused to pay the final instalment. To be honest I think the warranty would be worthless judging by the terrible service by both ecoHause Internorm and also the lack of input from Internorm themselves. They are great windows but I would not recommend anyone to use Internorm or ecoHause Internorm.

Personally, I'd put in a gradient. Wish I had, although it would have been near impossible during build. Putting a wet car in results in a nice flat puddle of water with nowhere to go. Just a small fall would allow most of it to run off.

This company has an interesting foundation system. I don’t know how far they travel. https://www.abbeypynford.co.uk/our-services/housedeck/

I hadn’t thought about bird boxes around the place before but starting to love the idea. Our elderly cat rarely ventures out so for the first time in our lives, we are safe to encourage birds into our gardens. Currently putting out fat ball things which is attracting all kinds of birds (and squirrels) and going to collect the dog fur when they are trimmed for nesting. What a lovely thread - has brightened my morning on a very dark day in the world.

I've been 'lurking' around here for a few months now but thought it time to make it official. We're in planning for an extension and renovation in North Herts, with goals for EnerPHit. I found the site via searches for UFH and cooling in a PassivHaus and stumbling on a whole world of opportunities and challenges I didn't know I needed in my life! So yes you'll find me mostly posting my questions in the Energy sections.

It does not pose a problem. Partly because we are on a sloping site so where the ramp has to end is higher than other outside areas. I have a plan and a design of the ramp, I just need to get around to building it.

As @nod says there is a maximum gradient allowed and there is a maximum ramp length too, so because of this and the rise from the pavement to the front door it meant that I needed 2 ramps connected together to make the required height. https://www2.gov.scot/resource/buildingstandards/2017Domestic/chunks/ch05s04.html

Great news ..!! Blog time ..??

Just seen this from Bulb: https://help.bulb.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/360025359271 Looks like they are trialling their own scheme to pay people to export electricity when the FIT and export payment scheme ends in April.

I have my own Internorm thread so perhaps it could be moved there?

I doubt you will get a decent ring beam without form work. Have a look at

Just a performance update. It has been nearly 2 weeks since the dump controller went live. In that time the PV has generated 74KWh. 18KWh of that has been sent to the immersion heater, with only 1.99KWh being exported. The rest self used on house stuff. I can probably improve on that 1.99 KWh that has "escaped" in due course with a little calibration tweak.

Funny that Lizzie. You know our installation has been a nightmare as well and to add insult to injury we now have a leak in one of our windows which I am sure is water getting behind the aluclad exterior, bypassing all the tapes and then pooling on our timber frame but Mr Hagen is not convinced and cannot come out till May!! We had some water seepage after the storms recently at the bottom of the sliding doors and his comment was that this is acceptable after a storm as long as it does not leave the threshold. I am absolutely gobsmacked by the lack of concern over our window installation. Not finished ranting but realised I am hijacking the thread, sorry.

I have a feeling this is it... And there will be solutions, both short and long term. Fingers crossed you get the root cause and then focus on solution.

Astute observation about the master bedrooom suite....really not sure that it functions well as you have noted. Our old place in London you walked through the dressing room to get to the bathroom which would work better. Good advice about working through the week. Funnily enough when you say that about the boot room in your house being narrow, the last iteration of this plan the boot room, pantry and study were all a meter narrower....we’ve made the house 1m wider for that very reason.

Cannae beat honesty and integrity. Once you start compromising on those it’s a slippery slope.

Ah and they told me that they only had satisfied customers.....mine was a one off aberration - odd that

I’d just do it flat and put a 1:10 gradient on the front edge up to where the door will sit and use one of the rubber threshold strips under the door as they stop 90% of the problems.

Maybe only useful for a few but an option not many know about: I have a “wires-only” broadband service where the copper pair coming into the house has only broadband on it, no voice telephone service. There's a recorded announcement on the line saying is in use so BT engineers don't think it's unused and reuse it for somebody else. For my “landline” connection I then use a voice-over-ip (VoIP) service. Per month it's £10 for the copper pair, £25 for the broadband service and £10 to upgrade it to VDSL/FTTC. The VoIP service I use (sipgate) is free though you, of course, have to pay for outgoing phone calls which are at reasonable rates but don't have the various cheap/free rates that BT has. You can make emergency calls on the number when you've registered your address with them. The downside is that phone calls go through the modem/router and either a telephone adapter box or a computer (which may be a smartphone) so you need power to do that. The advantage for self builders is that it's easy to move your telephone number when you move to the house and for a transitional period when you might want to be answering the phone on site during the day and where ever you're staying in the evening that's easy, too. More: https://edavies.me.uk/2018/08/telephones/

Not sure what the concrete Mix is, But i've generally used closer to £100 per cube as n indicative cost. I stand to be corrected from anyone elses real world experience of course. Again real world I would frequently have to order a couple of cube a time, and that would push £160 occasionally, but only when very last minute and with additives like Xypex (no idea how it is spealt but I think its a waterproofing agent.)

I've been trying to codify such a concept, which I have called "Lifestyle Diary" - like a daily food diary but recording for a week who visits, how many people, what they bring, what you spend time doing - structured like a food diary. That, plus common variations, can then be reviewed against the design or with the designer. It won't fix everything, but it gives a top-slice through the heart of your life. Not mushroom in the mudroom, thenm @jack. (Runs and hides)

Years ago I had a car "stolen". It was a few months after my first wife had walked out, and I woke up one morning to find the car gone. The police traced it, and found it parked outside her parents place, but refused to do anything, as they reckoned it was a domestic. The car was a well-tuned and tweaked Mini, but was shortly due for an MOT and I knew it needed new cills and probably a new rear subframe. However, it had a newly rebuilt engine and gearbox, a pair of decent seats, leather rim steering wheel, Revolution alloys, all the Paddy Hopkirk bits (pedals, extended seat brackets etc). A friend and I went around to see it in the early hours, when no one was home, and stripped it bare, leaving just the shell sat on the road. I bought another Mini with a shot engine and just swapped all the bits over. Probably cheaper than getting my original car through the MOT.

We have several fully populated sparrow terraces. The sparrows roost in them all year round and they are charming neighbours. OH built the boxes which have perches beneath the entrance holes and hinged bases to make it easy to remove old nesting material. The sparrows have a habit of including lavender and bay leaves in their nests. Here's a selection of the boxes on our current house - sparrow, swift and starling. The swifts haven't taken up their boxes, but the starlings love them.

Aim for house sparrows.

The answer is provided in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. In paragraph 56 it says: "...(2)For the purposes of the provisions of this Part mentioned in subsection (3) development shall be taken to be begun on the earliest date on which any material operation comprised in the development begins to be carried out. (3)The provisions referred to in subsection (2) are sections [F861L(5) and (7),] 85(2), 86(6), 87(4), [F989] 91, 92 [F10, 94 and 108(3E)(c)(i)]. (4)In subsection (2) “material operation” means— (a)any work of construction in the course of the erection of a building; F1 [(aa)any work of demolition of a building;] (b)the digging of a trench which is to contain the foundations, or part of the foundations, of a building; (c)the laying of any underground main or pipe to the foundations, or part of the foundations, of a building or to any such trench as is mentioned in paragraph (b); (d)any operation in the course of laying out or constructing a road or part of a road; (e)any change in the use of any land which constitutes material development...." See here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/8/part/III So if the garage is part of the consent digging the foundations for the garage would appear to be sufficient. But for the same reason, as it is part of a single consent I am not convinced you are right that you would not need to deal with Building Regulations. That said, I am not sure you need to have started, I have seen many examples where reference in a planning decision is made to an extant permission that has not been enacted. Hope that helps. Randomiser.

Told BT I wanted to leave as my broadband deal was to expensive and she reduced it from £60 for broadband, landline and BT sport to £27 for the same bundle.

Well we'll have to see what Debbie has to say about that then, eh? 'She's welcome to 'im, long as 'ees back on the build on Monday 7.30 sharp ' I have such a hard life folks....

Just made a switch, and today's joint lucky winner is.... @JSHarris Thanks Jeremy, and apologies to the Octopuses; close, but no cigar...

My very grateful thanks to you all for your help. Engineer has been and swapped exchanger for enthalpy one so fingers crossed for improvement there. We spent the next 2 hours trying to sort the air flows. My system is shown in Volts (German technology!) so we have had to convert volts to the various other measurements to work back to Building regs, fortunately there was a chart in the handbook that helped with that. It seems my system automatically calculates the flow through each vent back from the manifold so it adjusts each one once you set the benchmark level so no individual adjustment of vents necessary. So we worked out what I should have for the volume of the house using @PeterStarck table (thank you so much) and fractions for conversion then we measured the flows with the trumpet and converted that back to volts. We then looked at what I did have relative to what I should have which was a revelation. As suspected my system was hopelessly out of balance....by a very long way. I was extracting a great deal more than was coming in and I had negative pressure. Its likely this is what has been causing me the breathing issues, feeling like it is stuffy and I cant get enough air. System has now been rebalanced - calculated using @JSHarris and @HerbJ helpful info. Spookily it worked to the rough chart I had done following the @PeterStarck formula too. Engineer said it was spot on. I now have a balanced system and have been advised to run on level 2 and only use 3 as boost as and when necessary. Level 4 is a blow your socks off job and unlikely ever to be needed. Engineer is coming back in a week or so to hopefully get UFH sorted and give gas boiler it's first service. We will live with new MVHR settings in the meantime and if any tweaks needed he will do then. Thank you all once again, superstars.

We laid all the UFH pipes ourselves in the last house. We bought a designed system (too scared of getting the wrong things to buy the components separately ) from nu-heat so paid a premium for their design and supply but it was all really straightforward. Yes, the pipe was unwieldy and because it was a designed system, the pipe was cut to length which did make it more manageable. However, even now, 10 years older, I have no qualms about doing this ourselves again, buying all the bits we need separately, other than finding a cheap way to hold the pipe reel to make life easier. I intend to talk to Insulhub (Isotex supplier) about doing the passive slab largely by ourselves, buying in some labour from them to check what we have done before the pour.

I have several cameras outside using POE. I used a screened cable rated for outdoor use made by Equiniti. My cameras are from Hikvision and came with a socket on a tail like this... I wasn't convinced the socket was going to be waterproof so I used used some small boxes to hide the connections in under the eaves. Biggest issue is spiders. The IR in the camera reflects off their webs at night blinding the cameras. If doing a new install I would probably try disabling the IR in the camera and use separate IR lights a few feet away.

A planning consultant saved our application but not in the way we expected. After nearly a year at the pre-application advice stage we were about to give up. However we decided to hire a planning consultant to look at our plans and see if what we were trying to get approved was as unacceptable as the planners had been telling us. So we opened Yellow Pages and called up the first one in our area. After explaining what what we wanted him to do and agreeing a price we sent him out site details and drawing package. Few days later he called us and said he had done work for a previous owner of the plot and had a letter that would be very helpful to us. It turned out that the planners had told a previous owner in writing that the sort of house we wanted to build would be a "better option" for the plot! When we showed the planners the letter they gave in immediately.

Its fine - plenty will nest there as it’s away from predators such as cats.

If you have a small garden and don't like ivy, honeysuckle is a good alternative. We are also going to grow pyracantha along part of the fence, it is evergreen but spikey and the birds like it for nesting and the berries are a good food source.

Can you plant native hedging around the plot? Once it gets established, it can support lots more wildlife than a few nest boxes. Mature ivy is fabulous, too. A rich late season nectar source, provides berries through the winter and nesting/shelter provision all year round as it's evergreen. It's also beautiful grown up posts and pillars to give an architectural impact to a garden.

I am going to build a sparrow terrace this month and site it under the eaves on the NNE side of the house. A lot of boxes are positioned in the sun which can be a problem for young birds that only receive moisture through the food brought to them.

Our permanent bat boxes will be put onto the west face of the stairwell section at a height of 5 metres. It certainly is more than a replacement for the lost summer roost previously there, as it was in a bungalow! For swift boxes, the orientation of choice is north to keep the boxes cool when the chicks have hatched. West or east at a push. You can put them on a south face but the boxes need to have their roof designed to deflect sun. The same goes for many bird boxes - we have some highly successful sparrow terraces on the north east corner of our current house. The recommendation for schwegler vat boxes came from the ecologist. Natural England said that they had no preference for any particular type as long as it was suitable for the species likely to roost.

The preservation of swift birds is very important in the area I live. A university student did a research document on them a few years ago. Got a grant to do more research which developed into more grants, involvement by the professors and now the local authority and local area is the main swift conservation area in Ireland. Had to work with the local authority, heritage officer and conservation officer on a few projects where we knew they were nesting. They've a lot of info on the swift boxes here. http://www.swiftconservation.ie/nest-box-advice/ The huge advantage of swift birds is they're very quiet, they don't shlt anywhere near the nest or building like other nesting birds and are generally very clean. The elliptical hole (for which specific dimensions are available) into the bird box ensures the bird box is only used by swifts and not other birds. As for bats, loads of info is available for them. On one project I worked on we had a bat conservation specialist. We called him Batman!

Specific bat requirements come from the ecologist who has applied for the bat licence. Ours has recommended something on each elevation of the house, except the side with lots of trees, i.e. some elevated weatherboarding, and a couple of special tiles. No problem. Except the cost of being told this. And the fee for surveys to see if the critters have decided to use the boxes. Or not. I might have mentioned before, I'm a bit sore about the £3K...

Hope that's a joke, as bats are mammals. Bat boxes for roosting should be sited facing in different directions, for instance the north facing ones will be used in the summer and the others at different times of the year. When I was a trustee of the local woodland trust we installed a lot of bat boxes for roosting.

So the EBLV-1 virus from a Daubenton bat killed a chap in the UK a while back. At the end of last year EBLV-2 was detected in a serotine bat in Dorset... Basically either virus cause rabies in humans. Almost makes the much vilified brown rat look cute and cuddly!

I've got the Omine Torfloor system and was advised that I needed the auto air bleeding vents because of the manifold being downstairs and as others have mentioned, theres not enough of a flow rate to flush out the air. There pretty easy to put in, but in hindsight. I really should have put the manifold in upstairs, which ironically would have been right next door to the new boiler. Live and learn I guess.