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As they should be if your not aware of how to prevent them from being dangerous, my first apprenticeship was as a forest worker and i received full training through the forestry commission, later in life I spent two years wielding them on a daily basis for six months at a go cutting everything from fully grown hardwoods to commercial felling. Seen a few nasty injuries but thankfully never injured myself. Can’t think of another common bit of machinery that is more dangerous.

Great feedback @NSS so glad to hear it is working so well and hopefully Mrs Nss is still feeling the benefits. It has taken me nearly a year of perseverance to get my mvhr properly set up.....I must admit there were low points during the last year (usually from hospital) when I just about gave up and thought it would not work for me and the whole point of the build was wasted as I have had a lot of bad bouts since moving in. However the last month or so since it has been properly working has been a revelation and at last I can feel some benefit from it even in a short time. My docs are pleased but not half as much as I am.

A little anecdotal addition to this thread (on the original topic rather than kimchi!). My wife had a group of old friends round on Thursday evening, one of whom is an asthmatic. As she arrived she was clearly wheezing and said she was currently on steroids as her asthma was particularly bad at present. Four hours later she left, reluctantly, having not needed to take her inhaler once whilst in our house. As she left, she said to Mrs NSS, I didn't think it possible, but I now see why this place has been so helpful to you.

Thanks! Website is www.thewalledgardendevon.uk

Paul is a great guy and very into his house build, particularly the eco credentials. He way very persuasive in his use of clay as a render, even though it'd have been far easier to get a traditional plasterer in. He was the first one Laura and I met in fact, us wandering onto the street when it was strictly a private area and still being warm and welcoming despite our ignorance. I think his materials first philosophy isn't as far removed as mine or the rest of you, it is just that he values the natural sources and processes above performance which we tend to favour instead. I am not going to fault him after having seen him spend three months hand making and filling in his walls with hempcrete. That is a dedication to a cause irrespective on philosophy.

What to do on a boiling hot day? I decided I was going to find the cess pit today as SWMBO out shopping. An route to buy a second set of drain rods a rather expensive looking cat ran out in front of me. I recalled the BiL asking if I'd had a note through our door as he had about a missing Burmese. I rang him as he still had the note and the owner drove to meet me. BiL decided to cycle over to lend a hand cat catching! With said moggie safely caught I mentioned the cess pool and BiL offered to lend a hand if I rang him when I got back. Nice having A N Other on hand just in case and I tried to keep him well out of the way whilst I got sh!tty...really sh!tty. So from the top end: Unused manhole No.1 with the piece of 8mm galv chequer plate on which I had knocked up when the digger went through doing the water main. Used to have a clay soil coming in from the left from the old outside wc. Next manhole No.2 down in front of the 110mm soil (temporary off gutter downpipe) is where "everything" goes at the moment. Next manhole No.3, down at the end of the ladder, just after the rods, has a rotted cover that sits over a clay P trap. This was overflowing. Beyond that is the cess pool cover. Lifting that and the "crust" was about 2 or 3 feet below ground level with no sign of it overflowing. A slight detour as a slow worm had fallen in and was lying a bit stunned atop the crust. Hauled him out and hosed down. Seems OK. Blockage appeared to be either in the P trap or between there and the cess pool. I actually lent down into the cess pool to rod back up to the P trap. Also rodded / plunged from the P trap down. Eventually things started moving. Follow the line of the black rods and you'll see the clay "stopper" from manhole No.3's rodding point. Left that out for now. The rotted cover of manhole No.3. In the foreground. As in the steel "cups" below the bars you hook to lift have gone! That vent lying upside down to the right...not sure where that's from... Went to manhole No.2 and with the second set of rods I can reach all the way to No.3. Bit of a back up so I rodded down to No.3 then checked there. On a positive note the cess pit isn't as big as I though. Guessing 8 -10' in diameter. (For some reason I thought it'd be rectangular). Arched brick construction and seeming fairly intact except around the entry / hatch. I could claim a fair bit of garden back should I choose. Downside the crust is only about 1" below the bottom of the inlet pipe so it needs emptying. A bit of breathing space at least now and a pictorial record of where it is. All wcs flushing. All the tools hosed down but not yet disinfected. Two showers later and I'm having a beer!

I am looking at combining an insulated raft foundation with SIP. Just rereading some of the earlier comments on this thread, I find myself scratching my head as all of the negative aspects apply to a standard TF build as much as they do to SIP.

We've just completed a new build "house for life" - it started as "Passivhaus Principles" as we didn't want to commit to certification during the planning process because of its challenging form, but our Passivhaus consultants (Peter Warm) felt that with a few tweaks it could make it and, as of this week, it has been certified. We also had to go through the "Paragraph 55" (now 79) route to get planning permission, where you have to go to a Design Review Panel of professionals who get to decide if your design is "exceptional architecture". They unanimously approved it while Planning rejected it and also said they didn't want any further discussion on it. However, our forward thinking local councillor took it to the development committee where Planning was over-ruled (a story in itself). To be honest we are not hands-on self-builders in that we used architects, builders, etc to do it and it was an expensive build, but we were in a position to do this because what we actually hands-on self-built was a successful software company that was then sold. We were very involved in the whole process, living 250 metres from site, and especially in selecting and pushing the eco kit and we also had a planning condition to put a photographic record of the build in the public domain, which being a keen photographer I have done: www.thewalledgardendevon.uk Eileen designed the landscape and is now implementing it with muscle from local ex-marines. So it's a certified Passivhaus with private water supply, a positive energy house through solar and using both electrical and thermal batteries, with an EER of 101. We started a bit late on Buildhub as we were having problems with our Sunamp thermal batteries and we got a lot of help from @JSHarris in particular and others. However, happy to answer questions about our experiences if that's useful.....

See, now I really like the ali clad / glazed bit! Weird what ticks for different folks. Lighting scheme inside just "works" imo, lovely spreads are a feature on their own.

If you follow the link above (https://thewalledgardendevon.wordpress.com/ ) and then click on "photos" on the top menu it takes you to a page with a link to a lot of photos. The direct link to all the photos is: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nigpic/sets/72157688294789963 (for all the construction photos) or this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nigpic/sets/72157704667571174 (for all the completed photos).

Afternoon All, I joined a couple of years ago and benefited from some great advice and discussions on here, but after a while researching the type of build my partner and I have our hearts set on (modern barn-style new-build or Class Q conversion) we decided we'd be better off saving a while longer and reducing the amount we would need to borrow before going any further. I've popped in for the odd read but have mostly had to force myself to stay away from self-build scheming in the meantime after realising I was spending all my free time looking at suppliers, build methods, technologies e.t.c. that would probably have doubled in price or disappeared completely by the time we were actually ready to start. Fortunately we're a bit better placed now and I'm getting my head back into things with an aim to secure either a plot or a barn to convert by the end of this year. Just wanted to say hello and glad the forum's still going strong. I still work as chief technical at a decent-sized company in the glazing industry so without wanting to stick my nose in, if anyone would like input on any window/door/glass related issues, I'll be happy to assist if i can.

Congratulations. Lovely build and interior fit-out. I quite like the character of the brick facade whereas I'd say the aluminium-clad / glazed section (nicely built though it is) looks more or less the same as is designed for every contemporary high-end extension/annex/winter garden I see down here in the South East.

Love the inside. That brick facade is imo soulless. Each to their own.

As others have said, go for the largest that will fit. I fitted a 600mm long by 250mm diameter attenuator as that was the longest I could squeeze in on the supply side and it's silent.

@Eileen An excellent blog, great photographs. I guess you are very proud.

yes go as big as you can - I also ended up making my own and it has reduced the noise on the supply side to inaudible

I'd opt for the biggest silencers you can fit (and afford) as my experience has shown that running without silencers was noisy, and with limited space I ended up having to make custom ones to fit. They are as large as I could fit in the space available, but we still get some very slight noise when the MVHR is running flat out, not annoyingly loud, but as the house is so quiet it is noticeable at times.

Fantastic design. The interior joinery is stunning. A question: What was your driveway gravel choice?

Your house is stunning. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you. Lovely browse this morning of your photos All really wonderful, well done it’s fantastic

Thanks Ferdinand. I think, without heading off and re-reading the details in the NPPF, that a planning authority has to have an independent and professional design review mechanism in place, but no particular one is mentioned. The one that our planning area in Devon had in place at the time (along with a lot of other local authorities) was called the Devon and Somerset Design Review Panel, but I don't think they used them exclusively and they are not the only show in town. In my 3 minute oration at the development committee meeting I basically questioned the point of using such a professional panel if you then went on to decide whether or not you liked what they said, and the committee accepted this point of view 11-1, although I had been expecting them to say, as I'd heard them say in other decisions: "we pay our planners to make decisions so we have to trust what they say".

Looks the dogs

Welcome ! Sounds like you’ve got a lot of info - blog is very good too !

@PeterW It's Cedec self-binding gravel - scarily bright gold when laid but then soon calms down to this pale look and hardens up with rain and footfall.

Gosh, what a fabulous house! Amazing attention to detail.

@Eileen looks beautiful. Is that hoggin that’s been used for the paths..??

I really don't know. I should have perhaps looked all around the sides inside but it's pretty precarious balancing over the open manhole on a ladder laid flat. My guess is that the solids stay and the liquid element is simply meant to leach into the soil as the cess pool has no bottom. I'm guessing though.

Gorgeous house @Eileen, well done!

So pleased to hear you're at last starting to feel the benefit @lizzie, you must have begun to wonder whether my accounts of how it's helped Mrs NSS were fairy tales! Yes, if anything she's benefitting more since she was medically retired last year (the osteoarthritis finally did for her efforts to keep working part time) as she spends more time in the 'bubble'.

@Eileen It is stunning, well done.

Great house @Eileen... well done!

It's easy with hindsight to say he should have paid someone to do the work, but I bet he never thought for one second things would take as long as they did. I'm definitely guilty of that and I'm sure I'm not the only one lol

Just thought I'd update this thread with some real life observations now our own SIPS house is in place. Really surprised at the comment above re 1st floor being supported *on* top or inserted into the panels - they should really be using joist hangers so there's no penetrating the structure at all.This is kind of fundamental to take advantage of all that insulation really. Even where we had to have steels in because of some.large spans they've cleverly been terminated without going through the wall (big strong upstands on massive timbers) The only things that go actually through the construction of our SIPs (done by clays) inside to outside (that is to say exposed in the 55mm cavity between the sips and the stone outer wall or under the roof slates) are 2 beams where we have a very large roof window I believe called a cabrio?) which needed that extra support, and ditto on our really large dormers, which would not be a feature in a normal 2 storey. However, even then since we are applying a layer of insulation inside too, nothing in fact will be cold bridging dorectly into the interior of the house. We certainly don't have any of those massive timbers referred to acting as cold bridges. There are large timbers involved but have quite cleverly been designed to be *within* the envelope. As for gaps, so far the only air gaps we have been able to discover were some timy ones between the sole plate/DPC and the thermal blocks it is sat on - and I think they were down to slight irregularities in the blocks/block laying actually. But these were sealed and we've gone over it all ourselves again and silicone the edges above and below the DPC even though it wasn't really necessary. Similarly since we'd bought boxes full of sealant, we sealed all the joins in the panels ( which was pointless to be honest as I saw how they were sealed together but attention to detail seems to be key, and I've tried to provide jobs that everyone in the family can feel part of available for them to do) Where you may see expanding foam used is I watched when they fastened the panels together - talk about thorough... the panels were spline joined, so no big timber cold bridges (the splines also being SIPS themselves), and they "glued" the insides first with low expansion sticky type foam, then the panels were pulled together under a lot of pressure with a device that reminds me of a fence tensioner, so a lot of the foam squeezed out at the joins of course then literally about 100 nails were fired in each edge( I stopped counting at 100. I reckon those house must weight an extra ton from all the nails ?) I was quite genuinely amazed how thorough the guys were - particularly when we got torrential rain and they were literally soaked to the skin through their waterproofs even. Needless to say, there's not been a lot of gap finding to do despite us going over quite literally every mm of join - but I do have to say that the guys were unbelievably thorough, I mean to a degree *way* beyond my expectations and possibly not all firms will be quite so exacting. I also think bridging from big timbers had been thoroughly thought about, because you *could* build it in a simpler faster way for the builder, but have those timbers bridging between the cavity and the interior. I think our checking out of the various firms for a few months paid off. One thing I have noted is that the breather membrane touted as waterproof for up to a few weeks has not stood up to some of the heavy rain we've had amd has definitely let water through... but the roofers started today and being a belt-and-braces type is actually felting over the lats too! So even if we lost a slate at some point in the future there would be 2 layers in fact between the outside and the osb face.

Now you can check the dodgy stuff your boys have deleted too ? (assuming they haven’t permanently deleted them lol - I bet they’re a step ahead of their dad!)