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Sorry for the delay since the last blog. Things have been very hectic keeping a track of everything that is going on with the build and holding a job down ! As we approach end of January and move into February there are lots of things going on simultaneously on site including battening the roof in preparation for the roofers, finishing of fitting the smartply in preparation for blowing in the insulation and fitting the windows and doors. The first window goes in on 30th January. Many of the side reveals to the windows have splays to help spread the light from the window. We are using Green Building Store Progressions windows and Green Building Store Ultra doors. The Progression windows are expensive, but the narrow sight-lines give a lovely contemporary look and very little of the frame is visible outside, so it should be as maintenance free as you can get and seems like a good investment. The Ultra doors look very similar to the Progression doors and are of a similar thermal performance but are more cost effective to purchase. From the 12th - 15th February, the Warmcell insulation is blown into the frame. I hadn't realised, but you can do this before all of the windows are fitted, as long as the boarding out is completed inside and out. By 21st February all windows and doors are fitted. A lot of time has gone into ensuring the windows are fitted properly and are as airtight as possible. In parallel, the brick plinth is built. Whilst you won't see all of this once the ground levels are built up, I am really pleased with the quality of the job. Next job is and fitting the Aquapanel in preparation for the rendering. The roofer we had lined up pulled out at the last minute, but we are able to get a local firm with a good reputation to take their place at short notice. We took a lot of trouble selecting the roof tiles and we are particularly looking forward to seeing the tiles laid. The roofers are on site beginning of March after a small delay due to rain to do the counter-battening and lay the tiles. The roof is a pretty simple shape so the roofers make quick progress. We are using plain clay smooth machine-made tiles made by Dreadnought tiles and supplied by Ashbrook Roofing. We found out about them at a self build show we attended and have had great support from both Dreadnought and Ashbrook. We are using two colours - 70% staffordshire blue and 30% blue brindle mixed randomly. Before you know it, the roof is in place. Big Day on 8th March as it is our first Air Test. We'd put 0.3 air changes per hour (ach) @ 50pa into phpp so we were hoping for something similar or better. Results were: 0.08 ach @ 50 pa 0.11 m3/hr/m2 @50 pa Absolutely delighted with the results. Given building regs are 10 m3/hr/m2 @50 pa and Passivhaus standard is 0.6 ach @ 50 pa, this is over 90 times better than building regs and over 7 times better than Passivhaus standards and a great testament to the attention to detail shown by the build team. Flashings between the wood cladding and the render are fitted. These were made by a Herefordshire based fabricator. Work continues fitting the cladding. We are using Douglas Fir, supplied by Ransford which is literally 5 minutes down the road. Once the roof has been laid and the weather allows, the rendering starts. We are using the Weber system, with a base coat applied first followed by a thin silicon based top coat which will be sprayed on. The roof and detailing around the dormer window are completed Once the cladding is complete and before the scaffolding comes down, we need to treat the cladding. The gable ends need a fireproof coating due the proximity of other houses, so it's one coat of primer, two of Envirograf and two of Osmo. The front and back of the house get one coat primer and two of Osmo. It's one of those jobs that costs more and takes longer than expected. We hadn't planned on having to to apply so many coats of product and in my naiveity I thought it would be a layer or two of fireproof coating on each gable. The wood looks a little orange at the moment but that is typical when new and it does weather down nicely which is what I plan to allow the wood to do. Hopefully to osmo will help even out the weathering but I have no plans to keep on applying it. The guttering is attached whilst the scaffolding is still up (Lindab galvanised) The scaffolding on the house comes down and goes up on the garage to allow the roof to be completed on the garage. The second coat of render is sprayed on and the shell of the house is now complete.

Hi chaps, buying a 20+ year neglected stone cottage = a good few threads! some coinciding (whist I wait on gate quotes etc). I have a tricky sloped garden end. I want to level (for a log cabin) by putting in a retaining wall/ barrier RHS.. & pulling soil across to fill from LHS. Its an extremely important job to get the right plan & I've entertained many ideas (a prior thread too), builders out.. but something nags structure-wise of the retaining wall. So I'd like to refresh: perhaps some new ideas, maybe from a "structural landscaper".. would anyone best fit that bill on here? Its a narrow end area, & dips to a brook RHS. Brook swells quite significantly. Pink batons show the slope. The brook in pic1 is far RHS. I want the wall up, from approx where farthest Right baton's pointing down to. (Pic3 reverse view).. Thanks- zoot schmootzer

Another factual thread that we can all safely rely on then “Taxi for.......”

Not only is he not "the" founder of Greenpeace, despite what he says he isn't even "a" founder of Greenpeace. He's actually an extremely controversial figure, and it's worth do some careful reading about him before relying too much on anything he says.

@epsilonGreedy, I really don't think your graph supports the notion “that global CO2 levels are in a longterm decline that started with the arrival of life on planet earth”. For starters, there was a huge increase from 350 to 200 million years ago. It is true that over much shorter intervals (the 65 million years or so, since about when the non-bird dinosaurs went extinct) there's been an overall decline in CO₂ levels. Note, though, those peaks in @JSHarris's graph in box b around 55 million years ago. This was the PETM which was another mass-extinction event. Since then CO₂ levels have indeed been declining steadily resulting in the current ice age (which started 2.5 million years ago or so) and in which human civilization appeared in the current interglacial which started about 12'000 years ago. We've already put out enough CO₂ to delay the onset of the next glaciation by many thousands of years. It's even possible that humans had already done that via agricultural land-use change prior to the industrial revolution. So there really isn't anything urgent to do from that point of view. Long term (multiple millions a few billions of years) there will indeed be a problem with reduction of CO₂. The Sun is gradually getting brighter which will result in long-term feedbacks in the carbon cycle reducing the amount of CO₂ to the point where photosynthesis won't work. CO₂ is pretty long lived in the atmosphere but burning some LPG today isn't going to make much difference on these timescales. Humans, if still around, will have to come up with another plan then. Somewhat shorter term, current CO₂ emissions clearly are raising Earth's temperature and messing with the climate. As the graph @JSHarris quotes shows, the PETM is a plausible model for the results; compare the CO₂ levels in the various possible concentration pathways in box d with the bump on the left of box b.

Is this the intellectual equivalent to 'come outside and say that?'

Best of luck trying to predict how much hot water you are going to use and only heat just that amount. That is the essence of what this does. We have a 300L tank (only heated to 48 degrees) and some days that is only just enough,m other days it is ample. Only heating the tank to 48 degrees normally, still allows plenty of capacity for surplus solar PV

Who wouldn't? But I sometimes long for someone to give our J a really serious, well-argued run for his money: if only because we'd all learn far more from the back and forth. Expert power needs to be handled with care (because it's Personal power French and Ravens 1958 ish) . Otherwise, I do what Sue (above) does.

FFS, I just quoted the first link in Nature I found, as is, no editing, no BS, just evidence.

I love these posts where I understand absolutely nothing about what is being said. I had never even heard of 'Fake News' until Donald Trump so perhaps I have something to thank him for. On the other hand I avoid news and current affairs because of the bias or 'spin' as I last understood it was called which falls to whichever argument they are trying to put forward. Glancing at a Sunday newspaper recently, with its non enviro friendly packaging and six trees worth of garbage, took me all of five minutes before I realised that whatever it contained had no relevance to me and I was wasting my time looking at it when I should have been wasting my time doing something useless that I enjoy. Having said all that I would still rather believe Jeremy Harris than Trump or the BBC if only I could understand what he was talking about.

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Alas no. The only difference I could see from this set to the last was the relay type. These controllers were delivered in December so there is a good chance yours will have later software.

It looks like one of your runs starts outside your plot boundary. Also you may need to be careful with scaffold and eaves overhang with the neighbours. Roof area looks about 50m2

@Sjk I’ve been looking at this and I’m missing a bit of information ..! What limit have the sewerage company put on your outlet, and what’s the total roof area ..?

We had a verbal quote for a hydrobrake - far more expensive than I thought, it was several thousands. We dug down deeper and got drainage for a soakaway. Tricky for you - very little (if any) room for a soakaway.

as far as the comment on the roof and water penetration of house wrap --.maybe not overlapped enough or sealed at over laps or damaged by traffic on the roof in building i feel the real key is to make sure you have a good air gap under roofing slates /tin etc so there will be a good draft to dry things out between slates and roof fabric I personally do not like single batons on roof as horizontal batons only could trap water and debris -I have seen this on my present house and over 20 years it caused rot of some of the batons and i was amazed how much dust and junk was gathered up on the top side of them , i would always go for cross batons so there is a path for water to run off and not have batons acting as a dam . the extra cost of the cross batons is very small on the whole job

Indeed but my comments have nothing to do with marketability, and far more to do with the practicalities of family living. As it goes few accessible two and three bedrooms are developed by volume housebuilders principally because there's so little demand for it. Unfortunately older Britons only tend to move at the point of crisis. Which is why every new build estate is full of boxes which squeeze 4 bedrooms in and don't provide particularly good living spaces for their occupants (and will be redundant in two generations time). That said, if I was self building with an eye on resale and it worked for me then I'd consider a 3 bed bungalow as the undersupply means they come in at a huge premium to the market, in my area at least.

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.

Just walked into my plant room and thought "its cool in here". Then realised both of my Sunamps are cool to the touch. RCBO's fine. So perhaps I wont go outside and do what I was intending to do and instead fault find these useless piles of shit gooo AGAIN. ??????????