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Just a quick update for those interested in following the project. We have now installed the Izodom 2000 insulated raft foundation ready for our ISOTEX walls. We have a few details in the roof structure to finalise but we hope to be onsite with the blocks in mid to late September. Anyone who is interested in looking at the insulated slab let me know. Tom

Trivial and irrelevant, but how do you convert a mass of 405 kg to a weight of 3924 N? That would imply a gravitational force of ~9.688 N/kg (i.e., an acceleration of 9.688 m/s²). The more usual figure to use is 9.81 N/kg so the weight would be ~3973 N. Is there a 405 vs 400.5 kg confusion in here somewhere? Or are you in another Leicestershire on a slightly lighter or less dense planet, but still with a higher surface gravity than that of Venus where CF would presumably melt, anyway.

You would have to start with you generally not owning the view. BUT 1 His PP. What does it say? If in breach you may complain. And a nice letter from the PO may work. If it is a dev then they might have done a Visual Impact Assessment, which could be leveraged. 2. Council nuisance. I think light pollution may be addressable that way. 3. Dark skies is a sexy thing these days. Especially in a Nat Park, or if you have local enthusiasts. May help. "They will all go and visit Kielder instead." 4. You could approach them directly. Surprisingly effective sometimes. Perhaps they are nice people who will agree to a change. Most people are reasonable if approached reasonably with a genuine concern. It may be cheap, but they may ask you to pay eg for cowels. Problem here is that ‘will change the bulb type next time’ now means up to 5-10 years if LEDs. 5. Local astronomy group maybe willing to do something. 6. You accept that you now have a permanent conversation starter over your supper time cocoa and shortbread. Imagine 2055. “Remember, Shona, when those buggers installed that lighting back then .. nice people but I sure miss following the mountain rescue team on Ben McSavage by their lights”. Whichever way, leave it 1-2 years and your chances of change may be 80% less. Imo act now to mitigate, or grin and bear it forever. Your call ?. It may seem strange to mention contributing, however that can be useful if asked .. I find that going halves on fences or materials or shared chimneys (done all 3 in last decade) even when not technically necessary means that I get an input and a decent job. Ferdinand

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This is the attitude to have, and one I'm trying to bring myself to. When we bought last year we thought we'd be half way renovated by now, in before Christmas! LOL. We've not started anything yet, now starting to think about temporary remedial renovation work to get us through another winter before we pull it all down.

How about a lift shaft (at least preparation for it)

Or a well compacted sub base and structural concrete slab top? Comfortably get 150mm insu then. To answer your question OP you might overpay for 120mm sheets. I'd price up 100mm and 25mm (if can lose 5mm) as quite common sizes. Otherwise if 120mm in one board same price then just go with that

Thanks v much for all the input. I hope that the blown bead will be pretty resistant to soaking water as well. How about this? Notice I have't extended the tray entirely across the inner leaf to avoid plaster cracking. Thanks@ @joe90

True . Walk on glazing ( for example ) already available in the UK is a good bet .

And it will take longer to deliver if item is not stock (e.g. Windows)?

Why not use a 50mm concrete blinding and then 130mm PIR and 100mm concrete over the lot ..??

Try Sterling Build https://www.sterlingbuild.co.uk/product/rooflite-duro-apx-b700-white-pvc-centre-pivot-roof-window

Indeed, typo corrected. Thank you.

Please keep the discussion on the topic of how Brexit might affect cost and availability of building materials.

Can we please keep this topic confined to the impact of no deal on self building and renovating?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/09/brexit-utopia-receding-dream-food-shortage-fruit-veg-supplier ?

To thin for semi dry screed Ok for liquid screed

I've found my Lidl chain hoists very useful for this sort of thing. Bit worried I haven't seen them on sale for quite a while, hope it wasn't too many liability claims.

@Ed Davies thinking about making a drum of it (or using a fish pond filter) in the kitchen extracts to catch some of the grease before it heads into the ducting

Looks like a picture from one of those HSE reports that ends with the amount of fine the company got for unsafe working practices.....

Gosh, I think it was this from Screwfix https://www.screwfix.com/p/no-nonsense-decorators-caulk-white-310ml/57568

Don't feel bad. Mine is always switched on WITH the windows open

Looks like a step in the right direction...

Eeep, copied the wrong figures across - I included some extra frames either side in the mass but forgot to update the N. Thanks Ed.

Not quite finished but ... “ Necessity is the mother of invention “ Indeed the worlds first sliding staircase . Top half slides up over bottom half and will eventually lock in place Looks like an @Onoff monster

Yup!, no slip plane and DPC 150mm above ground level. I would like others opinion on this, may be missing something.

The weight of the window will often be held by chocks or packers so the effective bearing is hugely reduced. Your slider is less than 100kg per linear metre. A single skin single storey blockwork wall is about 500kg per linear metre. All looks fine.

That's a good point, i hadn't thought of that issue arising.

Yup.... I was working in the highlands above 1000m building mountain tracks, it would sometimes be a glorious day when you arrived at the bottom of the mountain and then you would walk up into pish and spend the rest of the day wet..... when it was to cold / snowy to work high I would go to the west coast and build stone walls all winter in the pishing rain.... this went on for two years ( I worked for 10 doing this sort of thing but this was two years of hell weather) and it nearly broke me. Booked a one way ticket to Australia for £150 and never came back for 10 years.

85% is fine for the MVHR, it's a pretty typical figure, perhaps slightly on the low side, but that's OK for estimating heat loss. 7.5 kW seems close to what I'd expect for a house the size of yours, built to typical building regs insulation and airtightness levels (ours is a great deal better than building regs requirements, hence the much lower heat loss). As others have said, 16 kW seems way more than expected for a house of your size. ASHPs come in set sizes, so I'd be inclined to go for one the next size up from the 7.5 kW you've calculated, say 9 kW, to give a bit of a margin (although the spreadsheet does really give the worst case when it's -10°C outside and the house is empty, with nothing on except the heating). That should be fine, even allowing for the slightly higher heat loss from your windy location (@Stones has observed that wind makes a significant contribution to heat loss; he's up in Orkney).

Don't butt them, offset one bay by using a block widthways in the first row of one half, so the beams are staggered on the sleeper wall. You may end up with a few odd bits where you can't use full infill blocks but you can fill this with concrete.

I can throw a practical data point into this mix. A few weeks ago I installed a (recirculating) air con unit in our bedroom. It tries to maintain 20°C at its air intake, using its thermostatic control. We leave the bedroom door open all day (it opens to a landing above a 6m high, 5m long, 2m wide entrance hall in the centre of the house). The MVHR temperature sensing and control is on the landing, the floor heating/cooling thermostats are on the ground floor in the hall. In practice the air con holds the bedroom at close to 20°C all the time, the landing is very slightly warmer most of the time (perhaps 21°C) and the same with the ground floor. Both the floor cooling and the MVHR cooling tend to come on a bit later as a consequence of the effect of the air con cooling, but this seems to work very well indeed, as we end up with the ground floor rooms around 1°C to 2°C warmer than the bedroom, which we find about right.

I have always been amazed that i appeared to be the only person in the world that worried about the slippiness of surfaces. We laid our first patio - cheapest slabs we could find in a lovely (?) 80’s style checkerboard of pink and white slabs. When wet it was like ice! We always had the paddling pool on the patio and the kids slipped over regularly.. We replaced it with a riven textured slab a few years later which was better but not great. When we built the last house, I was determined. This time we had slabs that had a gritty type of surface. We made them wet in the BM and tried them out for slippiness before purchase - they were great. Wooden decking - a little dirty and wet and it is a slip hazard. Indoors I chose a vinyl tile that had texture to reduce slipping. As @Ferdinand mentioned - cleaning the floor does become more difficult and four times a year I needed to get the steamer out and scrub the floors with the little nail brush type attachment that comes with the steamer to get the dirt that the scooba washy thing missed. The floors would be washed every 3 days (a little rota of three areas so i’d set the scooba off every morning in one area). Laminate floors should come with a health warning. It was all over the house we currently live in. We tried little socks for the dogs to stop them doing the cartoon running on the spot or sprawling in a heap when they turned a corner. In the end we put cheap carpet on top as a it was causing too many issues for them. Vets have issued warnings about laminate and linked it to an increase in joint and ligament issues in dogs.

I can’t see a breakdown on costs Our house is 250sqm but it’s old stone build. EPC C/D (depending upon which one you read!) Our heat loss came back at 13kW. There’s no way you should estimate this. Do it properly our 14kW Mitsubishi Ecodan plus 120l buffet plus 300l DHW tank was £10k ish plus vat. That’s with cloud monitoring and 5yr warranty. Also, I’d go for a biggish water tank then you can keep it at a lower temp (say 47c) which is more efficient to heat than a smaller tank at 55

Been there..... Done that.... Didn’t work.... Created lots OF work ( for volunteer staff members who had better things to be doing )..... Went away..... Not coming back....

Round 2.........

This was the question folks. Can we keep on topic please, as we've already had one train-wreck of a brexit thread go 'bye-bye' and I'm getting an itchy trigger finger already just by the way this is picking up pace ( in all the wrong directions )? I will ask that anyone who hasn't got anything relative to the OP to say, types nothing at all So simple an idea, it's almost perfect. This is not, nor will it become, a 'Brexit thread'. Go to the pub and discuss that over a few Stella's. Mods shall lock this for 24 hours to allow some time for reflection.................."Strike 1"

Just been looking at other markets. Supermarkets have been mentioned previously, so here are the top 10 supermarkets in Germany: And here are the top 10 supermarkets in the UK: The pattern seems broadly similar to cars, in that Germany seems to have a strong preference for German-owned brands.

Good luck on the extension - you have come to the right place for advice. it has certainly helped me many times with all sorts of enquiries. We are just finishing an extension to a bungalow for my parents. we had to wait 6 months for the builder that we wanted but it was worth it as we knew he would be an excellent job. most builders are not as careful or exacting in their standards so take your time to find a builder wth a good reputation but then be prepared to wait for him/her. if they are available to take on your job straight away, you have to wonder why - all good builders are booked up months in advance.

No, not your fault, as the regs are just a wee bit obscure. There are two different requirements, the most significant one (in terms of sizing the unit) is the background whole house ventilation rate. This is no less than 0.3l/s per m² of floor area, and refers to either the fresh air supply flow rate, or the extract flow rate, for the whole house (extract should be equal to supply). So, using our 130m² house as an example, the whole house ventilation rate should be no lower than 0.3 x 130 = 39l/s The other criteria that have to be met are the minimum extract flow rates from the kitchen (13l/s), bathrooms (8l/s), utility room (8l/s) and WC (6l/s). In our case we have a kitchen, two bathrooms, a utility room and a downstairs WC, so the sum of the extract rates from these rooms needs to be 13 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 6 = 43l/s. However, it's allowable to have the MVHR on boost to meet the extract flow rates, (whole house rate has to be at the background fan speed), so if you can't quite meet the minimum extract rates at the normal background fan speed it is acceptable to boost the unit to show compliance. In practice I found that we got around nearly 46l/s when running at the background fan speed, after I'd balanced the system, and this exceeded the figures required for the rooms with an extract. Balancing has two aims, to match the fresh air flow rate for the whole house to the extract rate for the whole house (ideally within about 5% or better), and to set the extract flow rates in order to obtain the building reg minimums for each extract room. I found the latter the hardest part, as I needed to throttle our kitchen extract down a lot, as well as the downstairs WC and utility room, in order to get enough extraction from the bathrooms.

Thanks. How do you adjust the flow rates? Is this done in the plenums? Whats the difference between 'total background ventilation rate' vs ' total airflow in/out?

The price range was £22000 to £6500 depending on the specification. We had to have piles ; but our SE reminded us that there are piles and piles.... We chose to use stone improvement columns (piles by any other name) they were much cheaper, much quicker than steel sleeved concrete (specified by the ground survey company) and far less hassle. The company that did them was superb. PM me if you want a contact. The bottom line - no hassle or worry and 17k cheaper. And we now have 64 soakaways under the house ?

On the back of Ian's wise words I've just ordered: Stone Grip Non-Slip Floor Treatment 900ml from Slip Doctors. £34.99 so not cheap but rather that than my £17/m2 ceramics catching me out! Also timely as my 89 year old FiL has only just broken his hip and had a partial replacement 2 weeks ago. Tbh healing well, medical team astounded and back home and walking albeit with a stick / sticks. His pre fall relative fitness helped massively I'm sure, him being super active for his age. (He is I might add on methotrexate which I believe makes bones brittle? He does take calcium supplements to compensate).