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I've come across this before. Its like the planners have as short memory. Once you demolish a building its as if it never existed and your plot suddenly becomes a green field site on which their policies don't allow new houses to be constructed. Heaven help anyone that has a fire and needs PP to rebuild their isolated cottage in the greenbelt. So under no circumstances demolish or allow the shed to fall down until this is sorted. I think I would submit an application to demolish and rebuild with the new building being _identical_ to the approved conversion in every way externally. That way they cannot argue the new proposal is too big, wrong style etc etc because those issues have effectively already been addressed and approved. If necessary take or threaten to take this to appeal including to remove any new conditions you can't live with. Then once its established that you can replace the existing building with a new one, submit a new application to make the replacement slightly bigger, different shape, or change materials etc.

Well, it’s been a month since my last blog update. We've witnessed out first concrete pour and now have floor joists so we are all set to build the next floor. The bracing plan we have from JUB looks like we have the potential to pour the second floor and gables in a single pour. This is a decision I'm only too happy to leave to the builders who continue to impress us with their ability to get on with a job regardless. In my last blog we had got on really quickly and had the ground floor pretty much ready for a concrete pour. We needed to wait as there was no rebar on site for the cantilever lintels for the first floor. Our structural engineers had provided a revised structural plan toward the end of February, but it did not have a bar schedule. One was requested and sent through quickly. So far so good, we had the second lot of blocks scheduled for delivery on the 24th March. The original schedule allowed the pour and joists to be in place prior to the block delivery. At the same time as this was progressing the pricing for the next phase was finalised and we gave agreement to proceed. A hiccup with the joist delivery delayed work on site. On a small site the second block delivery pretty much took up all the available space. ICF blocks and a cramped working site are not good news. The ICF is pretty dense but it’s easily damaged when it gets in the way. We ended up playing shuffle the blocks to get the remaining work done and for the first pour. Our builders did a splendid job and just took it all in their stride they were careful with the blocks and didn't complain about the site restrictions once. We had been warned that pours are not for the feint hearted, thankfully in the end ours went pretty well. The only real surprise was the bottom courses of blocks on one side of the build started to move outward on the raft. Fortunately it was spotted and the pour was suspended while Mike and the other lads added some more shuttering. With the new shuttering in place the pour continued and was completed without incident. Apparently it's unusual for the bottom row of blocks to move, but given they are not keyed into the raft and are subject to the greatest concrete pressure it's not entirely surprising. The blocks on the second floor will be keyed into the existing blocks so they should not suffer. With the pour done it was time to get the ledger beams in place to take the first floor joists. Our structural plans had the ledger beams fixed by bolts at 500 centres with the joists at 400 centres. Sounds OK but in practice it’s not ideal as it means you get clashes of beams and bolts, so the plan was revised and the bolts put in at 400 centres so they would not clash with the joist. Ledger beams in place the joist went in pretty quickly, transforming the house. Once you get past the ground floor you need to get scaffold in place for an ICF, not to build from but to prevent possible accidents if someone were to fall through the blocks from the inside. Our builder wanted us to arrange the scaffold, not sure if this is the norm, I suspect it’s liability related. We have used a local firm ROM Scaffold. Their guys arrived on Wednesday and pretty much had completed their work on the Thursday. The scaffold will also allow for our window installation and rendering. Looking forward to getting the next floor up and starting work on the roof.

I don’t know why everything has to ‘fit in’ as if the style houses were built in a few hundred years ago is the only style that is acceptable in certain areas. Are our minds so closed that we cannot accept new innovative designs too? How do new designs become classic styles if they are not allowed to be built?

As it's not retrofit I would design in hidden external blinds or shutters but if the cost is okay I would rather consider something like SageGlass like I believe @NSS used.

The lovely man who sorted the mvhr has been back today to look at the ufh and service the boiler. Turns out that although I could see actuators up and bobbing red things on the other bits (forget what they are called) some of those zones were turned to a very low flow so hardly any water getting through hence cold floors and no matter what I turned room stat to I couldn't get the place warm. We did have some warm bits of floor and that is explained by areas where there are two loops and one turned up and one at min. The temp of water coming in was quite low too. All now reset and I can live with it for a week or so and if not right he will look again when he comes back to do another small job after Easter. Why couldn't the installer have either left it properly set up or told me where to look and what to do. No-one has ever explained to me how it all works until this man. Now I have some basic understanding after being at my wits end for the last 12 months trying to work it all out.

I thought it was all over and then you show us your dirty little secret!

Cheapest 3 bed detached in Bicester according to Right Move is currently £295,000 About the price of a BARE PLOT at Graven Hill now. That makes £100K about right for a plot, and if you are careful, your self build house may cost no more than just going and buying one. A £300K plot needs to be a large plot in a stunning location with stunning views and no neighbours (and no fear of new neighbours) not a small plot on what is going to end up a very big housing estate. I am sorry but I think the project has "gone wrong"

no

Yes these scams have been going on for a while but they are getting more and more clever making them harder to detect. Never hurts to remind people and make them question everything they do financially. I even hate transferring money into a brand new savings account these days when it’s a substantial amount.

Just make sure that your UFH pipes are very well secured so they don't lift / bend and end up poking through the top of the screed.

I'm sorry. That is a shame as I like the design. Can you find out the actual planning reasons for each of their grounds and perhaps modify the location or show in context / justify or modify the materials etc? Often a few small compromises is enough.

Personally, I would try to get your 1.5% overheating risk down a bit. Its way lower than the PH requirement (10%) but I would aim for less than 1% myself. There are many examples of 0%. As you may have read on this site, with a near PHs, summer overheating can often be more of a challenge than winter heating.

The advantage of ASHP, UFH and pipes in the raft is that it can easily be used for summer cooling, if that is needed (ASHP in reverse). Gas will likely be the sensible choice. ASHP will be tech-lovers choice for flexibility.

My first thought would be to reduce the amount of glazing as a wall be be cheaper and more thermally efficient without glare. If the architect is any good you will still have loads of natural light and the place will still look sexy.

Sadly for fans of the latest tech, having sensibly-priced access to mains gas usually means you should use it for heating. An old fashioned gas boiler and unvented cylinder. You just won't use very much of it.

Just waiting for foam to go off ; then will cut excess followed by foil tape all joints . I don’t know ; feels like my build consists solely of pir with some cladding ?

He said it would be more level with sand & cement

You don't need to do any prep before you tile it and if the screeder is good it is smooth and flat enough to lay any flooring (LVT etc) whereas sometimes you can get little ripples and bubbles with liquid. https://www.ukscreedsltd.co.uk/preparing-liquid-screed-floor-tiling/

Tuco in the Good the Bad and the Ugly…

I called your claim "extraordinary" because it contradicts basic physics (or at least what I understand of it). I didn't say you were a liar, I said that your arguments as to why there might be variations in measured O2 don't hold water, so "clearly something else is going on". Nothing you've said changes my opinion. I'm done with this thread. Apologies to the original poster for contributing to it drifting so far from topic.

For a ventilated space under the floor, then the "under slab soil temperature" needs to be changed to be close to the outside air temperature, as it will vary pretty much in line with that, so will be colder in cold weather and warmer in warm weather. The losses in the heat pump from either the fan power or the circulating pump are pretty small. The biggest impact seems to be from defrost cycling, as in cool, damp, weather, with the ASHP being asked to run at a high heat output, the external evaporator tends to ice up, and ASHPs have a de-icing system that often just runs the heat pump in reverse for a short time, to transfer heat from the house back out to the evaporator to melt any ice. I've found by experiment that if the ASHP flow temperature is kept to 40°C or less, the need for de-icing is dramatically reduced, which improves performance a fair bit. Icing isn't a problem in cold weather, as the air tends to be quite dry then, it's at it's worst when it's cold and wet. I run the UFH with a lower flow temperature, using a thermostatic valve. The ASHP charges a 70 litre buffer tank and the UFH can draw from that as needed. Typically our UFH flow temperature will be around 25 to 26°C.

As someone who isn’t religious and lived with my partner for 23 years before we married I agree with you. We were perfectly happy to not be married and no doubt would have remained so had my hubby not got ill. When he was diagnosed with terminal cancer we did get married, initially because there were things that were more straightforward as a wife rather than a partner, for example being automatically treated as next of kin in hospitals rather than having to explain our relationship constantly, and the probate was easier. But somehow it just felt like the right thing to do which is something hard to explain.

Whats the total floor area? Take that and multiply it by £800 (basic fit out, doing lots of work yourself) and £2000 (higher spec, handing build over to a main contractor). The answer will likely be somewhere in the middle depending on how much you can do yourself, either in hands-on building work, project management, sourcing materials etc. A good starting point for a budget is £1500 per m2, assuming you don’t have any complicated foundations. EDIT: oops, I hadn’t noticed replies on next page so it looks like I just repeated everyone else ?

@Onoff, Just found this info on the Renusol Console mounts: https://www.alternergy.co.uk/renusol-console.html It states that they are OK for a roof that has a reserve from 15kg/m², which isn't massive. Any roof you can safely walk on should have a reserve that's greater than this, I'd have thought.

The fact remains that the best atmospheric scientists in the world are reporting data that's at odds with your ad hoc observations on a garage gas analyser, so which is most likely to be accurate?

Just shows a constant error, though. Climate scientists have been monitoring atmospheric gas composition changes for decades now, and no one has ever recorded a significant variation in O2 concentration from urban to rural areas as far as I can find, from an hour or two scanning the literature. There are tiny variations as a consequence of displacement by variations in atmospheric pollutants, but these are really tiny. For example, doubling the atmospheric CO2 concentration causes a displacement that reduces the proportion of all other gases in the atmosphere by roughly 0.04%. The pro rata reduction in O2 concentration from this would be less than 0.01%, a change that a vehicle gas analyser wouldn't be able to resolve.

FWIW, vehicle gas analysers are only required to be accurate to +/- 5% of the reading, so a reading of 21% O2 could be anything from ~20% to ~22% in reality. These things aren't by any stretch of the imagination lab quality measurement instruments, they are pretty rough and ready garage tools that give a good enough figure for the purpose for which they were designed.

Yes, we know that. You were originally talking about the proportion of oxygen in the air. We're sceptical that the proportions measured by exhaust analysers are a reliable measurement and wondered about other sources of information. It's you that brought up the irrelevant experiences based on air density from temperature and altitude effects.

I don't agree, as I was quoted a price that was around the same again as the cost of the ASHP, just for an MCS install. I did the job myself in around half a day, and I cannot for the life of me see how any company can justify around £2,000 for half a day's work, no matter what their overheads.

I noticed that too - another reason for our Isotex choice ?

I think the issue would be pressurisation and providing continuous circulation ie lack of pumps. Waste some time here: https://fet.uwe.ac.uk/conweb/house_ages/services/section4.htm

I am also wondering about a slipper bath. Then I can pretend to be Clint Eastwood and murder people who barge in.

We really need one of those emojis where the head actually rolls as it laughs.

Not entirely sure what you are building but Isotex (which is similar to Durisol) have column blocks which we will probably use in our build for 2 columns supporting the overhang on the first floor. The website is Insulhub. I may have completely the wrong idea about what you are trying to do though.

I did'nt think that you were allowed to KASPLOSH. I think your connection branch is going to have to go "Down, down, deeper and down" and join up with the existing at the bottom.

+1 to the above. Our ASHP performs very well indeed, and the performance doesn't noticeably change in very cold weather at all.

There is a lot of nonsense talked about ASHP's by people that don't understand them, or who try to implement them in the wrong way. In a well insulated house they work very well. They work best at low temperatures so are ideally suited to under floor heating, but will work with low temperature radiators. They will work with an unvented cylinder for hot water but are not well suited to a thermal store for instance. I have been using one all winter up here in the Highlands where the temperatures are a lot colder than where you are and the heating demand is higher because of that, and it has worked without issue. Mine is only a 5KW unit which is plenty if your house is well insulated (peak heating demand when -10 outside and +20 inside a little over 2KW) Where people have problems with them is when they try to replace a gas boiler with an ASHP in an old leaky house, and try to run it with the old high temperature radiators. I have a 300 litre unvented hot water tank, and run the UFH directly from the ASHP, though some recommend a small buffer tank for the UFH. You can buy a kit to to do that for under £3K. A lot of these high quotes that some people get are from MCS installers so you can claim the RHI. It is worth looking to see if that is really viable. I bought my kit and installed it myself for a LOT less. I don't get the RHI but overall is worked out cheaper. You need to see the SAP assesment for your new house to see what the worst case heat input is before deciding what size heat pump you need.

Sounds like a reasonable plan to me, especially if you can fit the PV without too much expense. You can get simple flat roof PV mounts that pretty much anyone could install, as all they need is a bit of ballast: http://www.windandsun.co.uk/products/PV-Mounting-Structures/Flat-Roof-Mounts/ConSole The only thing to watch is the roof loading, so it would be useful to make the flat roof a bit stronger, perhaps, to take the additional load.

So that went well, picked up the two gennie lifts at 8 am and beam in position at 12 ish not a job for the faint hearted this is how I work and have done for years do a risk assessment for everything not one on paper, in your head, look at what you want to do and work out your plan, then add in everything that could go wrong. Then work out the better way reducing the chance of a cock up. I decided to lift the beam and build the scaffold as it as it went up, lift beam build a bit more scaffolding

I just got round to watching these. Someone should keep a copy of the second programme and play it to the VAT tribunal if HMRC refuse their VAT reclaim on the basis that when a house is occupied you are accepting that it is habitable. That was an extreme example but wasn't far off where we were when we moved into the house here. Kitchen / family room complete and the downstairs shower room sort of complete, and there was hot water but other than that nah. We stuck in a bed and a sofa and that made the house at that time. It was still more spacious and comfortable than the caravan. The floor wasn't even down upstairs. Had a few boards over some of the joists. There was an absolute ton of stuff still to do. That's the reality for many self builders especially when they have to sell their previous property to release funds to finish the new one. That programme brought that to life really well. I admire the guy whose partner left him but he still got on with the build, and he knows that he will need to complete the rest as and when time and money allows. It's a pretty lonely experience trying to finish a build on your own and he was on his own for most of it.

I like the idea of external shutters or blinds. Shutters would be more robust in windy conditions.

Updated plans and 3D renders. My parents are over the moon. WC adjusted to add a cupboard. We might lose the other hall cupboard for a larger dressing room.

I am posting this in case it is helpful to anyone on this site now or in the future. We have just had the last bit of asbestos removed from our 1960s bungalow and demolition is now able to commence. If you have asbestos it needs to be removed and disposed of appropriately. Some asbestos is not as bad (chrysotile for example) and can be dampened, double bagged in heavy duty polythene and taken to a tip that accepts asbestos (many don't). But if you have the bad stuff (we had amosite) it has to be put in sealed containers and shipped out properly and the work has to be done by licenced contractors. The Health & Safety Executive needs to be informed 14 days prior to work commencing. Our contractors did that for us. We suspected asbestos so got a couple of samples tested a year ago. One was chrysotile, the other was amosite (asbestos insulating board used on our soffits). At that point our demolition costs went up by a factor of 6 ? You need an asbestos survey before demolition. These are invasive and leave your house with holes everywhere (ceilings / walls). They can repair the damage and allow you back in once it is done but most surveyors we spoke to didn't recommend it. We moved out permanently before getting our survey. Sadly our survey showed up even more asbestos than we knew about. We knew about the soffit boards and the roof edging strips and the artex ceilings. We didn't know that every vertical wall strut in the outer walls of our timber frame 1960s "flat pack from the NEC" would be lined with a strip of asbestos. Our asbestos contractors have been in for a week in April and then again for most of May (had to give an additional 14 days notice to HSE for the newly found asbestos). First a protective plastic "bubble" was fitted around the house, encasing the soffits. Extract fans were placed to filter the air before extracting it to the outside world. An airlock of plastic encased boxes was built to the front of the house. A shower unit was permanently on site for the guys when they de-suited each day. The soffits were removed, then the house was sealed from the inside so the internal asbestos could be removed. At all times, all the guys working wore masks and full protective suits. After all was removed, an asbestos analyst attended to ensure that the air was clean and the asbestos was removed and all areas appropriately cleaned. A certificate of reoccupation was then issued to officially allow people to go back into the house without all the suits and masks. A contractor has done all this for us and we are glad that we haven't attempted any of this ourselves. They finished yesterday (though the chrysotile roof edging is still in place and will be taken off with the tiles). Some photos attached. Hope this is helpful to someone else.

My architect spoke to the planner today who told him that they plan to reject the proposal. We are quite annoyed as this is the first contact we have had with him. The decision deadline was 28th March and he did not return any calls from the architect or ask for an extension. He gave various reasons including that they want the house hard to one side of the plot, that the area is too large and that they don’t like the materials. My strong suspicion is that in fact he was going to approve it and then when he put it to his manager they said they didn’t want it approved. This explains why we didn’t hear anything from him, giving us no opportunity for discussion. The architect could yet request a meeting with them which they may deny. We can let it be refused and appeal but as they have passed the determination deadline we could also take it straight to review although I don’t know if that would be a good or bad idea. The application was made in January with a 28 March deadline and I think it is entirely unreasonable to ignore us until this point. It did change from awaiting assessment to awaiting decision at the end of March which is what makes me suspicious that he intended to approve it.