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There's no real maintenance needed for 316 stainless in a non-marine environment, and even in a marine environment all that's normally ever needed is a wash and rub down. One thing that may be causing the staining is if the manufacturer either used a ferrous polishing system, something like steel wool, or a ferrous contaminated non-metallic polishing system. What can happen then is that minute particles of steel/iron get embedded in the polished surface of the stainless and corrode. The fix for that is to re-polish the stainless using clean green Scotchbrite pads to remove the contamination. Looking at the fittings I think they'd need to be removed in order to do a decent job. There are polishing firms around who could do this, but it might be an idea to test one handle first to see if this fixes the problem.

As long as the wooden floor is glued to the concrete it will transfer the heat like tiles. You can go for semi solid or bamboo as these are more stable so less likely to twist. For carpet you need to get one with a low tog rating. Same for the underlay, it's different to ordinary underlay. My underlay want much more expensive but my carpet choice was limited. Don't buy either underlay or carpet without seeing the data sheet which will tell you the tog rating. A rating of 2 tog is what you should aim for but obviously even less would be better.

QQ. Why would you want to do something ‘temporary’ for the test as surely if you remove said lubricant etc afterwards it’s not giving a realistic measure of how airtight the house is in normal use?

£5 off £40 at Toolstation until the end of May using code TOOLECNMAY19 from the electrical contracting news. Toolstation are not always the cheapest but are convenient and some things like Leyland contract paint £14.88 for 10l are good value. Works once per account.

I'm building with ICF... To go from BC standard to "passive" will cost about £10k extra in insulation and upgraded windows. It means my heating system can be a lot smaller and simpler, saving me in the region of £5k. The remaining £5k extra will pay back in heating cost savings (£500pa) in 10 years. But tbh the comfort value of having a house at a constant 20c most of the year is worth way more than that. (I could be really brave and forgoe central heating entirely and use storage heaters, saving even more)

Hi, Can I ask self-builders what U-value you went for for Floor/Roof/Wall ? Is it worth spending more money on insulation to achieve better U- value than Building reg spec to save some heating cost (and of course good ecologically)? I am going with UFH and it is a single story detached house with plenty of outside walls, it would be great if someone could quote the example result on heating bill, house size and U-value combo.

You’ll be getting arsenic in that cuppa if you’re not careful ? ☕️

Your not videoing any cock up I make ?.

Hope this helps. Nothing like a photo to assist. It shows our roof having been fixed with Sarking and then a "loose" or floppy fitted membrane attached.

The only thing I would say is buy them all at once so you can mix up the packs as they are laid, if you buy 5 packs and lay them and then go back and buy another 5 packs, I bet you a pound to a penny you can see a difference in brick shade, colour.

Anything will sell at the right price, take a hit on your asking price for a quicker sale? If you have enough ready cash to get to first fix, that isn't going to happen overnight, why not start work and while that is going on have the house on the market at a price more likely to attract buyers.

You can have him for a few months if you like - just make sure the WiFi is good...

In practice most DNO's wont want to supply a 200A single phase supply without a very good reason. Try finding a domestic CU rated at 200A or even a single phase meter rated at 200A. Just not going to happen.

@Mr Punter It's not a cheap product but you could try this: https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Steel-Rust-Remover-Cleaner/dp/B071Y37HND We used it on a commercial job where some SS had gone rusty after the client's cleaners used bleach. It worked really well.

Its not about what I need as building regs are so awful if I don’t pass them I am jumping off the roof head first!,!,, it’s about holding my head up on this forum ?, I think I have done well but Monday will tell. If I disappear from the forum you know why!

Perhaps @pocster may want to look at this before he orders his front door.

I'd agree, it's not 316. It's probably not 304/A2, either, as although 304 is less corrosion resistant than 316 I'd not expect it to show signs of ferric oxide like that in a non-marine environment. Might be an idea to test it with a magnet, as 316 is non-magnetic, 304/A2 is slightly magnetic and "Chinesium stainless" is almost strongly magnetic. The "Chinesium stainless" seems a curse that we have to live with, as I bought some supposedly "stainless" shed bolts that are now as rusty as an anchor.

Yup it would be a full new application. They would def notice as it would be about 20 metres away Ohh and just remembered , they have changed the rules now so can't talk to planners without paying them, pay for 30mins they will talk for 20 and allow 10 for writing up the info. Very helpful.

If there's ever a Buildhub annual puntest - bags me you as a partner

So maybe - OSB as the board, stretch MEmbrane over that, vertical battens and counterbattens (per @JSHarris) then the final roof covering.

The membrane needs to go on top of the sarking board, or else any wind driver rain or moisture would get onto the sarking board and soon turn it into a mess, membrane on top to protect everything from the elements. It would also also depend on your roof finish, slate tile, metal sheets.

A good test is to get a piece of paper and put it between the sash of the window and the frame of the window. Close the window, if you can pull the paper out, then the seal is not hitting the frame hard enough and your going to get air leakage through there. You'll need to adjust the pressure of the sash against the frame if possible with the type of window. If you can't pull it out without a good bit of resistance or not at all, then it's a good seal. Handles with spindles are a weak point & key holes are a weak point, put some vaseline/silicon over the key hole. You can also put some lubricant over the seals on the windows and doors, it creates good contact and can be wiped off after the test but does no harm being left ?

that seems wrong to me water proof/ breathable membrane is last thing before tile batons surely?

Gas usually come up on top in terms of cost over heat pumps. Obviously you have the carbon emissions aspect that requires deeper consideration. But can't get around fact that mains gas is (currently) 3-4x cheaper than electric, and gas boilers are much cheaper than heat pumps and have proven reliability and predictable service costs. I think it will swing the other way in a few years time, but in my case I'm going for gas as it's a much lower capital outlay and there's little difference in running costs. Possibility to change to heat pump in the future will be there tho.

Vaseline the keyholes. See @pocster. ?

The spreadsheet @ProDave mentions is here: Heat loss calculator - Master.xls It has the U values, areas and airtightness figures for our build, but these can just be overwritten.

All our walls roof and floor are in the order of 0.14 150 square metre 1 1/2 storey house (upstairs room in roof) total winter heating bill £234 using an ASHP and UFH and this is in the north Highlands so would be lower in less harsh climates. Triple glazed and air tight with MVHR is the bit you need to consider as well to get the energy down. If you don't detail the air tightness, your heating losses might be dominated by ventilation heat loss. @JSHarris has produced a good spread sheet to model your heat losses and it certainly came up with figures incredably close to what it has actually turned out for my house. Don't be afraid to over spec the floor insulation as you will lose some of your heat to the ground.

https://sse.com/communities/communitytrust/

Definitely get a quote from the DNO. As above, they will use concentric cable so only 2 cores and the cost of that will be less than SWA of the same conductor area. The important thing is they can use it on their network, but you can't use it after the meter for your own supply. But whoever supplies it, it will be a big cable. Have a search of the forum, I am sure somewhere, someone found a grant scheme in Scotland that will cover part of the cost of a new supply. Again that would not apply if you had the supply terminated some way away it would not cover the cost of your own cable. The only comparison I have is a local near here had to have 2 poles worth of 11KV overhead line taken down and re routed underground around his plot. That cost him about £10K. So on your measure that's £5K per pole for 3 phase 11KV underground. So a single phase 230V supply should be a lot less than "£5K per pole" One way you might get the cost down, is do a thorough and accurate estimate of your actual electricity load and you might get away with a lower rating supply, e.g if you only asked for a 12KVA supply.

I remember on my school work experience placement I had the job of finding these for a site and removing them. Perhaps a little underhand. But we also burnt down a refrigerator trailer to scrap it so I’m not sure legalities where high on the business priorities.

This is why DNO don’t use SWA for power supplies - they use concentric. At 500m you are looking at a fair cost whatever you do , but they tend to subsidise and in Scotland it’s also cheaper sometimes due to grants. Not sure why you want 200A supply though...?? May be cheaper with 2 x 100A supplies.

Most cables are sold by the area of each core not the diameter of the cores. It's just that sometimes they are lazy and drop the sq or ^2 in the description. Eg When they say a cable is 2.5mm they usually mean each core is 2.5 sq mm in area. So I'm afraid if the calculator says you need a 300 sq mm (or just 300mm) cable I'm pretty sure it means "300 sq mm per core".

This was the first 300 sq mm cable I could Google with pricing.. https://quickbit.co.uk/300mm-4-core-swa-cable £80 a meter * 500m = £40,000 Ouch.

I wouldn't worry too much TBH. I'm bemused about how they found out but I don't think they will do much. They will not want you to do something that might devalue the property, for example turning a 4 bed home into a 2 bed but if you are adding value I don't think they will do a lot. They probably just want to know what you are doing and how you are financing it as they won't want another secured loan on the property (you're not doing that anyway). Out of interest I picked a lender at random and looked for information that would explain that you needed to tell the lender if you were renovating the property. I simply couldn't find it on the website. If it is there it's not obvious. So firstly I would have a look at your lender's website and try to find that info. If it's not on the website use that in your defence. It may well be in the very small print in your mortgage pack but TBH not that many people read the small print. I also stumbled across this 'guide' from Barclays Barclays Home Improvement Guide Rather amusingly under section 5 'get permissions' it doesn't mention getting permission from the mortgage lender They will absolutely not repossess your property if you are paying the mortgage. When you buy a property you own the property, not the lender, however the lender will have a financial claim on it until you pay off the debt. If you are paying the mortgage they will not repossess the property, and indeed they cannot decide to do that anyway, only a court can decide that and there is zero chance that a court will issue a repossession order if you are paying the mortgage. So apologise, explain that you are adding value to a house in very poor condition, and I reckon you will be ok, especially if your LTV is only 60%. Do check out your insurance however as not many 'normal' insurance policies will cover extensive renovation work so you may be uninsured at present.

Have a look at my thread about DIY solar PV Re ASHP / GSHP. For a GSHP you have to bury a lot of pipework in the ground. Even though I had my own digger at the time, I decided it was a LOT of work. then you have to fill that pipework with quite a lot of brine. I worked out the pipe and brine would cost more than the actual heat pump. An ASHP you just site close to the building and connect 2 pipes and some cables. a LOT easier and a lot cheaper. Ssomebody worked out that although a GSHP was more efficient, but the difference was small and the saving in energy over it's lifetime would never pay for the additional install costs. There is another subtle difference. A GSHP puts the works inside the house, so you might get noise problems (like having a large fridge running for a lot of the time) But an ASHP puts the works outside so far less likely to be heard inside the house.

Great answer Absolutely agree We we’re so looking forward to heating up the 150 square metres of porcelain on the ground floor In reality we hardly have the UFH on The radiators on the first floor where on for half a day testing But haven’t been switch on since moving in last December I would agree Fabric of the build is everything

Yes, the main ducts will be covered too. The unit itself is basically a big lump of polystyrene, not much more to do there.

https://www.e-paint.co.uk/Compare_colours.asp?cRange=RAL Design&cRef=RAL 000 45 00&cRef4=S 6500-N&cRange4=NCS 1950 its giving a different ral not 7037 as best match

So, I just remembered that I actually had this blog. I'm killing time waiting for a phonecall, so, updates! Over a year later! Stuff has happened. Lots of stuff. Lots of money. Many tears. Some moments of "FFS, what?!", many moments of "HOW MUCH?" and "how the feck does this bloody shower fit together?" and a few, rare, beautiful moments of "woah, that looks awesome". The last entry ended on a lovely "woah" moment of the successful pouring of our beautiful concrete floor throughout the ground floor plan. It pissed down the next day, obviously. Then MBC went away, laden with cakes, pies and phone numbers of eligible single ladies from the area. A week later, they came back. My new job is a long commute away, and I had to work that day. On my way to the station (hideously early), I saw a truck drive past, laden with bits of house. "That's our house", I thought to myself, I just knew it. I text my husband to share the momentous culmination of our wonderful joint enterprise and was mercilessly mocked that it probably wasn't our house, as it was far too early. Ha! How I laughed when the driver called him approximately 10 minutes later to say he was stuck in the narrow road outside our site, couldn't turn the lorry sharp enough to get into the access point and was blocking every single (extremely angry) person in our medieval town from getting to work. That was a brisk drive to site for him. There were many people in hi-viz, a lot of shouting and gesturing, a lot of sharp intakes of breath, a few calls to the police to track down owners of badly parked cars and a huge amount of car horn tooting. Oh, and a LOT of apologising. But, the truck made it into the site. Just. To the never-ending delight of my small son, there was also an absolutely ENORMOUS crane. I was later informed this in fact this is an embarrassingly tiny crane, the smallest one that you can possibly hire and really hardly worth the bother. I feel like the driver may have had some adequacy issues with his crane size. So, whilst I was in a meeting, they just wacked the house together. At lunchtime, I called for a catchup FaceTime and the ground floor was pretty much finished! I mean, WHAT? The speed was insane. By the time I got to site later that evening (about 7.30pm), all the ground floor panels and internal partitions were in. My husband and I just walked around rooms, giggling insanely to ourselves at the ridiculousness of the whole thing. The next day, second storey on. Unbelievable. By the end of the week (in fact, I don't even think it was full week) the whole frame was up. We were a little shellshocked, to be honest. There was a lot of head scratching about how to run the falls on the roof. This had been discussed and obviously designed in, but our roofer had some input whilst MBC were on site. They were very good and spent a lot of time working out the best way to make it work for what we needed (singly ply membrane roof, adequate falls, hidden box gutters) and did a lot of extra work in conjunction with the other trades. Our roofer also risked the wrath of his wife by coming to a site meeting on a saturday and was subsequently late for a family BBQ oops. Oddly, once the frame was up and see could feel the room sizes in 3D, they suddenly felt absolutely massive again. Such a convincing illusion - it's very hard to visualise 3D space from a 2D footprint. Next up? The joys of roofing and zinc cladding And winter

Welcome to the club. Can you give us a rough area where you are? Say County or nearest town. My top tip is to give yourself headspace to make sure it is right, even if that takes more elapsed time - most self-builders only do it once so you have to get it right first, rather than learning from your mistakes. Ferdinand

How often that happens ... ?