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My personal thoughts are that you should adopt a fabric first approach. That is make the actual building structure as good as you can. Design out as much of the Thermal Bridging that you can. Try and achieve very high levels of insulation in the floor, walls, and roof. Try and make the building as airtight as you can, and fit some decent windows and doors. If you do this you won't go far wrong.

Would have done but couldn't get the aquaduct or vomitorium past the planners...

Not normal historically but expected to be more typical. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/02/uk-heatwaves-lasting-twice-as-long-as-50-years-ago-met-office A house built today needs to deal with the future, not the past.

@lizzie, try it out on series of other things first. Get the feel of it. You could try @Nickfromwales 's new van for example . When he comes round, see how much you can take off it before he notices...... Taps - annoying things - maybe a bit later?

An overlooked point on this forum because leading contributors have pursued passive house performance with much enthusiasm. The House Builder's Bible has a useful table showing the energy costs for the book's model house if built to past, current and passive house standards. The model house is 1722 sq ft. Space and water heating annual costs using mains gas are: £3,680 1975 £800 2013 standard £224 Passiv House These costs exclude standing charges. The passiv house is assumed to have PV and if the 2013 house had the same the water heating bill would be halved which would reduce the annual bill by 1/6th. The same chapter then discusses other annual running costs, for example mains water and sewage for 3 people is about 2.5x more than the passive house heating costs. Then consider some domestic appliances: washing machine, tumble drier, kettle, dishwasher, fridge freezer and TV, the annual electric bill for these is 50% more than the passive house heating bill according to the book. The numbers demonstrate there is no passive house magic point where holistic household annual running costs plummet. There are however some unhappy regions on the passive house pursuit curve to be avoided. Somewhere between a tested air change rate of 1 and 5 there is a zone where MVHR is not a happy buddy with a fairly air leaky house. Then there is the subtlety of decrement delay, getting this right means you can choose when in a 24 hour period to top up your heat reserves depending on the availability of free or cheap energy. If however all this new passive house thinking is configured poorly due to bad design or ignorant trades onsite then you can end up in the passiv house pit of despair that requires keeping the house warm with electric radiators consuming evening rate KwH or sweating in bed at night due to runaway solar gain.

The worst thing about current building regs. is the airtightness requirement. If you aim for a maximum of 1 ACH the rest of the regs. aren't too bad. If you can improve on the insulation levels so much the better.

After rolling paint in one room I realised my shoulders weren’t going to make it. So I invested in this Aldi paint sprayer. It’s not an industrial one so coverage is only marginally quicker than a roller. But you don’t have to keep dipping into a tray and there are no streaks. And it’s brilliant for applying a mist coat onto fresh plaster where the ceilings and walls have the same paint. Best £40 I spent in a long time. Progress much quicker now and my shoulders are surviving. Takes about 5-10 mins to clean it for the next use. Took a few mins to get used to the ‘controls’. Still available online and free delivery. Still reckon we have 8 weeks of painting ahead of us. 1-2 hours a night after work just isn’t enough. But I love my spray gun?

To clean those they used to recommend unleaded petrol and a match .....

@Patrick We've got over 50% timber/composite cladding and had similar difficulties for site insurance. We ended up calling the BIBA (0370 number) https://www.biba.org.uk and they put us through to a broker and within a couple of days had a reasonable quote for site insurance. May be worth a try.

Though it remains to be seen whether I manage this with my own bathroom refurb, as it has to be stylish for what is a nice house. F

Do they have a 'Reader's homes' section or is it all professional photos. Asking for a friend.

You can avoid expensive taste in bathrooms problems by buying well, most of the time.

I have just been using the Lidl machine. Unfortunately, the airless sprayer I was using seems to be blocked and I'll need assistance with that. I'm on a tight schedule with painting this week and noticed the Lidl sprayer yesterday so I dashed out and got one. It's a brilliant little machine for the money. I can only get one nozzle size to spray, even with thinned contract matt, but one nozzle is better than none! I've just sprayed the landing walls and ceiling and the top part of the stairwell hole. The result is just as good as with the larger machine, but you do have to do frequent refills of the reservoir and I don't know how it would cope with vinyl emulsion. I'm tempted to give it a go, though.

Nice of them to make it so simple, clear and straightforward.

Best approach is to avoid overheating in the first place by leveraging existing shading and designing in your own, whether bris soleil, blinds, overhangs etc. A split air con would make sense, problem with MVHR is that the air flow is too low to appreciably cool a room so you need something more meaty. Assuming that it's used when it's sunny, PV would take care of the energy used. Quite a few here cool their slab by running the UFH cool via the ASHP and keep it just above the dew point so water doesn't condense out on it. I looked into creating a heat dump when excavating the basement but it all got too complicated. Basement itself is lovely in summer - never goes above 22 and has no heating or cooling in it what so ever. I travel to Arizona regularly and it's 40+ there during the summer, mid 20s in winter. Lots of homes and restaurants have chilled mist sprayers that don't make you wet but do take the heat out of the immediate area.

I like the retirement house name "Dunearn" or "Dunworkin" Sometimes I think this one should have been called "Neveragain"

Reflecting on this, it is a lie on 99.99% of occasions. (I will grant you 1 pr year where it may be true) Is there anyone who can prove that they are never going to add anything more to their house? You have to channel Hitchhiker, again: Mostly Dunbuildin' . F

Yes. It will almost certainly impact the design. eg how will you support it. "By drilling holes in my nice new house after the fact in places where I had not planned to do so" is the wrong answer .

was hardly a normal summer last year

When I lived down south in Oxfordshire, in a poorly insulated 1930's house, summer overheating was a problem, and very often the outside temperature was too high to cool the house, opening the windows would just let the hot air in quicker. The only solution was a night purge, all windows wide open after dark and shut at sunrise. Up here in the Highlands, the air is rarely warm enough to cause that issue and with decent insulation, overheating is not a problem we suffer.

https://www.labcwarranty.co.uk/self-build/ but there are several who offer this

I would have it in your name....it will be your cost whichever way you do it.

You, as a self builder, buy a warranty. We used Premier Guarantee but they have now withdrawn from the self build market. There are several other providers in the market.

NHBC provide structural warranties, which are required by most lenders. There are other structural warranties available from other providers that are aimed at self builders, so you do not need to be NHBC, just signed up with a warranty. LABC have one, but shop around.

that might work ,but you going to need a control circuit that makes your pV take primary role for DHW --or your boiler will heat it up and you won,t get full use of PV If i was doing this then I would have boiler primarly doing UFH and only when dhw tank is above 60c? would i divert it to UFH - maybe a separate loop in bottom half of tank for that and divertor valve and pump so you taking water at or below40c for ufh ? then maybe a coil for boiler to top up tank if top half way temp drops below a target temp - so 3 coils in tank ? DHW out uUFH out boiler in then your 2 pv heaters lot of control system needed could be complicated to get best out of PV- sure someone will have a solution

Your local council is the place - their Naming and Shaming Department. Guessing (from your screen name) here's Folkestone's DC's Street Naming Department And this is the search string (search terms) I put into Google (plenty of other search engines available) to find it change house name kent.gov.uk Good luck Ian

Passive or not, also think carefully about excessive solar gain and how to minimise it at the design stage. Even a house built to the regs will suffer overheating.

It’s arrived....looks like even I will be able to manage it......bring on the next wobbly tap!

You couldn't pay me enough to have that plaque on view anywhere in my house. From logo to colours to font selection to layout, I can't imagine how it could be made any uglier. Edited to add:

Yes, all up. It included: "Initial Check", "Design Assessment" (the biggest part at £1064 + VAT), "Completion & Certification Processing" and "Passivhaus institute fee for certification". The only thing it excluded was the house plaque at £75 + VAT! The PHPP modelling, etc., would be all be done by my PHPP consultant. I would estimate about £1,500 to £3000 + VAT for that. In the end I chose not to go for certification for my build.

Blimey I only went for a cuppa and all this info - thanks everyone you are very welcoming. It is the principle we are interested in not the certification. I have read as much of the forum as I can and absorbed much less but it is a fantastic source. I am already leaning towards Warmcel as Mr Harris' piece on decrement delay. thanks again

Child of an architect ?. The telltale is that I sometimes talk about "dwellings".

Unless you know the exact brand etc I would forget about trying to save the wall tiles, you could spend a lot of time being careful not to damage them for nothing especially if you are changing the layout. The floor should have been plywood or similar It could be tricky to get both a bath and shower in due to the sloping celings, but now is the time to get the layout right

WHB = wash hand basin. (I didn't know).

No. 50?

External window blinds are excellent at reducing solar gain, I regret not using them more but have them on all the east facing windows and veluxs on roof. Without the FIT, Solar PV is very dependent on the cost of panels - MCS installation no longer being required. If you have a flat roof then you have the option of getting a good orientation to maximise generation. Generated electricity can be used to run services during the day (washing machine, dishwasher etc) and to top up your DHW via a diverter to immersions. All you need to do to future proof yourself for this option is to run a decently rated cable from roof to your distribution board and you can take advantage of it when budget suits.

Re mvhr routes. Fresh air into rooms should be a lot further from the door into the room, to encourage air movement rather than leave stagnant air not going anywhere. I would not put an air vent on the landing.