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Reading this and other Sunamp threads, one could be tempted to conclude that Fischer's customer support may be carp, but at least they have customer support ?

Cheaper option for you, @pocster, might be to get dressed.

Git

Lifetime ISA might be better (not checked if that includes land but think it replicates Help to Buy) as you can plank £4k in a year compared to £200 a month with Help to Buy.

I think it is even simpler. So very simply, a 1.75 storey upstairs will have a floor area the same as downstairs, accepting the edges of some rooms will have limited height. Whereas a 1.5 storey will usually have a boxed in "eaves" area and the floor area upstairs will be less than downstairs.

Since our last entry we've been concentrating of getting the standing seam roof covering on. It's one of those jobs where it would be nice to do someone else's roof before doing your own. We're using a roofing system from Blacho Trapez, broadly similar to the Tata colourcoat. It requires no crimping and minimal special tooling. It's around half the price of Colorcoat. The HPS200 coating we chose comes with a forty year guarantee. Our first impressions is that it's a quality product that's really well thought out. I'll raise a topic thread on the roof system with detail information from our install.. Here's a link to the Blacho documentation for more info: https://www.blachotrapez.eu/pl/26/instrukcje It was another Buildhub find. Back in April we came across an entry where one of the members @Patrick Who wanted to buy his roof abroad and was looking for someone to share transport cost. Enter Patrick, we exchanged emails and found we were going to need a roof on a very different time frame as Patrick is still in the site clearance phase and we were going to be ready to start in around six weeks. Lots of emails were exchanged and there was much head scratching over which components to order, In the end it turned out that three Buildhub members wanted roofs making sharing transport even more attractive. Patrick had been in contact with Blacho for some while, he's multi lingual himself and has a Polish wife. Without their help it would have been just too complex to sort our way through the parts catalogues even with the help of google translate. Having managed to get a list of parts we thought would do the roof, it occurred to us it would be good to get the guttering from the same source. It proved to be a step too far, we decided against it as the chances of getting all the required components correct the first time round was just too daunting, All is not lost though as it now looks as though there may well be an opportunity to get some steel guttering from them in future to replace the UPVC we have. Back to the roof and installing it. The three roofs were ordered and transport arranged to collect them from the factory on 03rd and deliver them to the UK on the 6th. The other Buildhub member ordering a roof is Greg, who is a builder with a yard with plant to unload and was happy to store the roofs ready for collection. The initial plan was to have all three roofs delivered to Greg's place and then we would collect, again Greg could help out as he has a lorry. The only slight problem was some of our roof sheets are 7.2M long and too long for the lorry. More negotiation with the transport company and they agreed to do a second drop off for a an additional 200Euros. All set for an 11:30 delivery on the 6th, we had arranged to have help to unload, no machinery just bodies. To our surprise and dismay we turned up on site at 7:40am on the 6th to find the delivery lorry already waiting...with just Pat and I to unload...by hand. Help was at hand in the form of the two guys who had come that day to do our roof insulation spray foam. They were brilliant, and between the four of us we had the roof sheets off their palettes and safely stacked on site. In addition to the sheeting there where also two smaller pallets for the other roof components, such as barge boards, eaves edges, screws etc. The lorry driver was getting a little fraught by this stage as it was all taking longer than it should have, not aided by lack of a shared language and the delivery documentation all being in Polish. Having unloaded and sent the driver on his way we started to look at the delivery documentation, this time under less time pressure. It turned out we had most of Greg's and some of Patrick's accessories. No big deal as we had already arranged to follow the lorry to Greg's yard to say hello and to borrow some roof tools that he had kindly offered to lend us. Meanwhile the delivery of the materials for our render arrived, 72 x 20kg sacks plus 20 x 25 kg tubs all to be shifted onto site..Just got that cleared when our MVHR system arrived, hotly followed by a soffit board delivery. Once done we set about loading the roof bits, only to find the length and volume of bit's overwhelmed the Jazz and we had to borrow a van great for volume but not so good for the 2M lengths and required me driving with my seat fully forward. Two and a half hours of agonizing cramp we arrived at Greg's, said our hellos and exchanged parts so we had the bits we needed to complete our roof. Finally got home around 10pm, oh the joys of a self build. A day to draw breath and it was time to start putting the roof on. The sheets themselves are 540mm wide and supplied to the customers required lengths up to a maximum of 8M, Being just 0.5mm thick steel they are not heavy but they are fragile, picking up a long sheet badly will result it it creasing, so care is required handling the sheets. The sheets had been packed at the factory front to front with polystyrene packing spacers which had stuck to the surface of the sheet requiring it to be cleaned prior to installation. After a bit of head scratching we decided to use a ladder to support the sheets. With the ladder tied to the scaffold we loaded each sheet, one person pulling the sheet from the top and another raising the bottom of the ladder we managed to slide the first sheet onto the front of the roof. All a bit “Heath Robinson” but it worked. Each sheet was then fixed in place and the process repeated. Soon we had a good part of the front roof in place. Cleaning loading and fitting was taking about an 90 minutes a sheet. Doing uninterrupted areas of roof with decent access proved straight forward and the front part of the main roof was done in a couple of days. Then we started on the rear of the house. This part of roof has two large roof lights and requires sheets to be joined as the roof length 10M exceeds the 8M max sheet length. The roof has two sections one slightly shorter at 7.2M, the largest of the sheets we had ordered. It quickly became apparent that there was no way we could get a 7.2M sheet onto the roof from the rear of the house. At this length the sheet is very fragile and requires multiple supports to stop it from folding. We quickly abandoned any hope of using them. Fortunately we had ordered some surplus material, so not the end of the world. We decided to start on the side of the roof with the roof lights to allow us to minimise sheets cuts. Partick had kindly volunteered to come over to get some first hand experience of the Blacho system. We started framing the roof lights. All did not go to plan and found that we had a 10-15mm alignment problem, nothing to do with Patrick just a bad datum line. No easy way to correct this so we removed the sheets and started again from a more accurate datum line. Second time round was a better result all round and we were able to continue across the main roof section. A lot of work but worth it..now we just need a good downpour to validate the flashing. . By good fortune a thunderstorm provided a test for the flashing, all was nice and dry round the roof lights. Sigh of relief all round, the roof is now on.

The wet room is getting there and the back of the house

Really pleased for you, onwards and upwards.

Our architectural company just rung us today, the Council contacted them to apologise for the delay, they have approved planning and the materials and the full report will be with us at the end of the week (they have a backlog). Couple of conditions (which they think will relate to the ecology, bat boxes etc) but I so pleased the Council ignored the ridiculous comments from the consultancy stage from the Canal and River Trust who basically didn't like anything about the plans! Once we get the report we can then start to look at tendering and crack on with some major research, building reg plans etc and finding a builder for next year...... It's almost 12 months since we approached different companies, architects etc....

Not only is Orville still in mourning for Keith Harris, now you have made him cry as well. You brute.

We are in the same kind of position, Aberdeenshire prices are coming back up and you pay a fortune for a box that is exactly the same as the rest of the street. We are also 1st time builders doing a kit house in aberdeenshire ? good luck with your project

The ISA is deemed cash - just has to be used as part of a property transaction. You will need a mortgage for the rest (dependent on savings etc) and that is where the fun will start....

No one likes chunky cheeks ?

We've got some fairly tricky little areas to 'mesh' and noticed the roofers using EPDM sponge under the ridge as an insect mesh. This would be ideal for our needs and I've found a supplier who will cut a 2000x1000x50 sheet into 50mm strips so we'll end up with 50x50x2000 strips of the EPDM sponge to squeeze into a 30mm gap and let it expand and do it's job. Does any one see a fatal flaw in this plan before I go for it? Here's a small section of the sponge the roofers used (the stuff I'm looking at is flat, not undulating).

It is very subjective. Planning here won't normally allow a full 2 storey house in the countryside, it's against the local vernacular, so insist on 1.5 or 1.75 storey. But I have seen one passed and built where the walls went up to about 2 metres upstairs with only the tiniest bit of sloping ceiling, way above normal head height.

Perhaps, but better to be warned now that in 6 months time reading @AnonymousBosch post on how to stop the "unwanted messages" that keep appearing downstairs.

One of the frustrations I find is looking for a tingumywhatsit when you know exactly what it looks like and does, but you don't know what it is called.

Anyone with kids over 16 should consider opening a Help to Buy ISA for them even if you just put £1 in. That's because the scheme ends on 30th November 2019. You can continue to put money in after then and use it to buy a house until 2030. You need to be over 18 to start a Lifetime ISA but it's 16 for Help to Buy ISA.

I'm sorry, but don't beat yourself about it. Worth opening ASAP and then it's up to you how long you wish to save and wait. Pretty much everybody on the forum has stuff like this. So, so, so much to know. You really have to be a sponge. And soak up as much information on the forum, read books like the home builder's bible and pretty much google every week for 'self build' to see if you find any new news about self building.

I recommend it. Was really easy to deal with ?

I can do that. Would certainly recommend it as no hassle at all to set up, deal with or claim ?

I had a 1st time buyers ISA and received the 25% government bonus to purchase the plot.

I did a "layering up reno" on a 1970 bungalow in 2017 ("Little Brown Bungalow"), which has many similarities and a couple of differences (mainly suspended floor, and I did not use overlay ufh *this* time - I will do so next time as I have enough answers now to give me confidence), that we chatted about on here. But let me make like Eric Morecambe and answer all your questions, but not necessarily in the right order.. For ufh imo there are two things: the overall output is modest, and you lose a lot of heat downwards. For it to be effective and affordable, you need a house with decent quality fabric, and that must specifically include the floor. If you have not got those, then you either need to mitigate, not bother, or accept a potentially cold house and / or high bills. The target I adopted was current new building regs standard for the fabric, and accepting that I would need to compromise so would still hopefully be better than renovation regs standard. My compromise was that I accepted the existing walls with a poor u-value of 0.55 (=brick with cavity insulation), but did better on the roof, floor and windows.` 1 - You need to consider how far you can "profile up". I discovered that doors with trimming margins of more than 65mm are hard to find without going custom, and I still have a 1m high stack of 50mm celotex sheets to remind me. You need to work to 50-55mm in your spec, not 65mm, unless you have doors I did not find or have solid wood originals that can be cut back more. In addition to your extra floor, you need an opening / ventilation gap, and also a trimming contingency for eg if your carpet is fluffier then expected. If not you could be up a gum tree without a kangaroo, with your doors disintegrating because you had to cut off too much. My doors came from Todd Doors; other suppliers are mentioned on the forum. I had to trim an extra 5mm of 2 of mine, due to higher quality underlay and carpet than planned. There are ways to make floor surfaces thinner, but you may need eg something over your ufh system before you put a carpet on it. Will leave that for another post. 2 - Will you personally fit your lower ceilings etc? My doorways ended up as 1.92m, reduced from 1.98, but I am only 1.75m so it is OK. If you happen to be 1.93m, then you will be doing in a policeman's bob everytime you go through a door, which is not OK. Similarly ceilings - mine came down to 8ft exactly, but eg 7'6" would only work in a cottage. 3 - IMO 30mm of Celotex is not enough. You want something more like 75-100mm or equivalent. But there are alternatives. These are all dependant on having decent insulation everywhere else. a - Use a product like 25-30mm of aerogel, say Spacetherm or ThermaSlim. But that will cost at least £75 per sqm. How much do you like ufh? b - Raise the height of your door frames by one course of bricks if your ceiling heights can take it, and have enough insulation. c - Use "perimeter insulation" - installed as a 18" to 2ft deep ring outside your walls. That will cause the heat to stay under your house, and act like more insulation as the ground is warmer 2" down. d - Accept that the ufh is background and that you will lose 30-40% of your heat downwards, and fit eg a log burner for winter. e - Fit rads. (I would do these in order bacde or bcade depending on the project.) 4 - It sounds as though you should take a look at the other thermal elements - wall, floor, windows. 5 - Whatever you do, thorough attention to airtightness detail (and appropriate ventilation) is important. Also consider what will be done when you have to move on from Gas. 6 - Recommend that you thermally model it using the @JSHarris spreadsheet. In summary - yes you can make it work, but if your fabric is going to be largely unimproved then perhaps go for oversized rads. But it is worth doing the fabric properly if you plan to stay. My opinion is aim for an EPC of C (=75-80) or better. The two threads that might be useful, which include before and after photos on the LBB, and also my actual floor buildup, and the one I would use for ufh, are: Ferdinand

I suspect that much of the perceived difference is just from the way we tend to sense body heat loss. One of the first things I noticed with the 3G in the new house was that there is no feeling of it being a bit cooler when standing in front of the glazing on a very cold day. The inner pane of glass is very close to room temperature, and this fools us into thinking that the part of the room in front of the glazing is warmer than would be the case if standing in front of less efficient glazing. This isn't wholly explained by the difference in U value, either, I think much of the perceived difference comes from having two low e coated panes of glass in 3G, versus just one in 2G. The low e coating only reduces the radiated heat loss out through the glass, by reflecting it back inwards, and I think we can sense that reduction in radiated body heat loss.

Just to be clear about all this stuff about radiated heat etc. Our UFH operates with an absolute maximum floor surface temperature of 23.9°, when the room temperature is 21°C and the outside air temperature is -10°C. 99% of the time the floor temperature never exceeds about 22°C I challenge anyone to feel any difference at all between the floor at 22°C and the room at 21°C. I can measure it, but certainly can't feel it. I doubt that anyone could feel any noticeable radiant heating effect, either. Not even my thermal imaging camera shows anything up.

Are you over complicating this for the application? I would fit one of these https://www.hyco.co.uk/products/hot-water/speedflow They are supplied with an over pressure relief valve that must be connected to a drain (no mention in the instructions of a tundish?) And under some circumstances it may need an external expansion vessel. I know of at least 2 of these in use in an office environment with the one heater feeding the sink in the kitchen and the wash hand basin in the toilet. It sounds perfect for your application.

We have a 1 and 3 quarter story so our external walls will continue up into the 1st floor for about 1m before the sloped roof starts. In a 1.5 story the sloped roof starts at the point of the first floor meeting the ground floor walls meaning the internal walls upstairs are normally built in and floor area is reduced.... I may stand corrected but this is my understanding

Got to be better than the small instant heater hand wash units, that's for sure. My experience of those over the years at places I've worked has been like that of @SteamyTea, they are universally rubbish. I suspect that the snag is that a small Sunamp would be far too costly for an application like this, as it would need the same charge control system as a big one, and I suspect that's where a fair bit of the cost is. It may be that they just haven't thought about entering such a low selling price market yet. I suspect that it would be possible to make a very small Sunamp, with maybe a litre or two of PCM, that would very much outperform the existing electric units.

The "lower room temperature" with UFH stems from the fact that with radiators, in a room with a poorly insulated floor, the temperature at floor level will be lower. So when sat down, your feet will be in cool air so you will feel cold and turn the thermostat up. UFH gives a much more even temperature including being warmer at floor level so you won't feel as cold so can turn the thermostat down a bit. Whether that reduction in temperature (which will lower roof and wall heat losses) is enough to compensate for the higher heat loss through the floor depends on many things, it some cases it might, in others it might not. But if the floor insulation is marginal to poor, I suspect the running cost of UFH will be higher.

Interesting as his "commercial flat pack" thermal store in his image is actually a chill tank that is used as a buffer in big AC installations - that image belongs to Sirac who manufacture large scale heat pumps for industry... He also contradicts that he doesn't use any pumps, yet has an image for a solar controller that has a pump on it... So his "no pumps, no controls" system has pumps and controllers... It smells more of £5 for nowt..!

Re the efficiency discussion comparing UFH to radiators, I’ve found with our UFH that, for the same levels of comfort, we can set the thermostat to a lower temperature than would be the case with a conventional radiator system

What do your calculations of the heat loss through the floor show, then? Are there factors other than the total floor U value, the surface resistances and the temperature differential that we are all unaware of (including those in the business of specifying and installing heating systems)? If you know of specific factors that everyone else is unaware of, then it would be useful to state them here, so we can all correct the mistakes we've been making for decades.

Search for movable acoustic walls... We have a similar layout and will be using them to Seperate the kitchen from living area. Need to design them in from the start.

Thanks for the compliment. The details are always the difficult bit and I've little to no experience of sheet metal work. The roofing system is well thought through, however I'm sure I've done some things that Blacho would have done differently. I think Greg will do his roof next followed by Patrick both of whom will add practical knowledge to help other buildhub members who go this route. Patrick is getting setup to act as an agent which will make it much easier for members to source their roofs from Blacho.

It’s a Samsung French door fridge freezer , more or less totally silent,only time I’ve heard it is if I get up through the night and go into kitchen for a drink and you can hear a very faint noise from it when the house is totally silent

Unvented gives mains pressure hot water, vented gives just tank head pressure. Unvented needs a G3 installation (widely, almost universally, ignored, IMHO) if the capacity is over (I think) 15 litres, and in theory an unvented system over 15 litres is supposed to have an annual G3 inspection (again something that's pretty much universally ignored). Unvented is the better system in terms of hot water delivery and energy efficiency, but does need some key safety precautions, including limiting the inlet mains water pressure (usually to around 3 bar) and having a proper pressure relief valve, visible tundish and overflow pipe.

Another year on and we're getting closer to resolution. I put a temp probe in the render cavity a few months ago and have been logging every minute so clearly saw that the temp inside fluctuates with the external temp, no build up. Render company boss came out today along with Brendan from MBC (who co-incidentally was working on a build not 10 mins away from us) and looks like root cause is that the render battens hit and miss the wall studs behind the external weatherboard, so as the boards expand, they're pulling out the fixings on some battens. Next step is to chop out the render on a small side wall and see for sure. Then the only remedy is to strip it back to the blue paper and start again! Obviously they're less than delighted but have committed to do the right thing and the fact that they're back on site 3 1/2 years after doing the work is encouraging. So, if you're rendering a timber frame house, make sure the render battens are aligned with the structural studs....

well in that case we must have a 1.66 storey- the bedroom wings have full floor area but the bathroom has a deep storage void to the eaves each side of a dormer...