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So it’s almost 5 years since I bought my little corner of the national park and for the first time this evening after another weekend of slog I looked back at the house and thought.......shit......it’s actually beginning to look close to being finished. Then I remembered that tomorrow sees the delivery of another 120 tonnes of top soil (that’s over 500 tonnes now!) and the landscaping needs another month of graft. Oh and then there’s seeding and planting, the culvert needs building, driveway....OK just loads still to do ? But for just a brief moment in the evening sun I could see the finish line in the distance.

?OK, originally this was about TF pros and cons,

If this discussion is to continue could you please refrain from bringing it into the realms of personal attacks on another member. You are free to post whatever you like with regards how you think this specific term should be used and measured but constant digs won't be tolerated any more.

Having followed this from the start....... I can only hope that I will forget 86% of it by tomorrow but still cannot decide which 14% I should retain in my now befuddled head......

One of the last two jobs is just being done, the garden walls. The stone has taken ages to come. We fitted a strip of powder coated aluminium to match the windows onto the wall and put a slurry coat n before the render. Hopefully this will stop the render getting too wet and blowing. So many garden walls that I see have the render cracked and falling off. I have noticed at one point on the house where the render comes down to the arch around the front door, the bottom edge is starting to go green above the arch as the water sits on top of the stone and runs into the render. We need to find a way to stop this, either a mastic band or a small flashing. We may mastic the back edge of the bench seat shown here as otherwise we might have the same issue where water sits on the seat and runs back into the wall. The last job after that will be the front gate, which I am told is imminent. I have wanted to do a photoshoot, but wanted everything to be finished. I have bought myself a Nilfisk wet and dry vac, my wife has been laughing as I may have been vacuuming outside today after the work.

Thermal mass is one of the things mentioned on this forum that is easy to understand without all the scientific explanations. It is basically how effective a material is at absorbing and retaining heat. I think most idiots would guess block is better than timber in this regard. Whether the name is technically correct or not, it makes perfect sense to me. Not worth heated debate imo.

I never wear any, the reduced mass of water that is saved by not cleaning them is, just one, of my contributions to the world.

Back to topic : Tea needs to be made putting loose leaves in a metal tea leaf filter. Adding hot water and let it stand for 4minutes. Adding milk at the end, not before taking the leaves out. ?☝️?

Hi all Im starting a new build soon, and the bricky im using is getting the bricks on his account - but when i come to claim the VAT back, dont the invoices for nay materials have to have my name and address on them? i eman as far as the taxman is concerned, i thought i read that somewhere. thanks

Lovely in the evening light. These moments remind you why you started.

Stunning!

It was a nice but fleeting moment ?

The lad and I did a few more courses. We are not brickies by a long shot! . Made a faux pas! 7th course high is a few mm higher than it should be. There's an angle iron welded to the box section that the set back brick at course 7 should have sat on directly. I unfortunately put muck on it then the brick. Living with it.

A couple of tips if you are thinking of a DIY PV install. Firstly, have a read as to how @ProDave sourced his panels, mounts etc, as documented here: Next, if you live in England or Wales, where Part P applies, then get an external cable run from the consumer unit to an external connection box, and have that tested as a part of the main electrical installation. That way you can then do an entirely DIY installation without needing any additional sign off etc. The additional cost when installing an electrical system for a single run of cable to an external connection point will be peanuts compared with the cost of getting a Part P person to come along later and connect things up. Connecting an inverter to a terminal box is no harder than wiring a plug, just needs a modicum of common sense and care. The same goes for wiring up the PV panels and connecting them to the inverter, it's not rocket science, and just needs the same care as making the AC connection, with the slight added complication that the panels cannot be turned off. The easy way around this is to make off all the panels connectors without plugging any of them together (safe, as the voltage from each will be too low to be hazardous) and then wait until late evening to connect the panels up, or chuck covers over the panels to stop them generating whilst the connections are made.

You can't, only because I say you can't. So you are wrong.

To quote something I read this morning by Jae Cotterell (co-author of the Passive House Handbook, and the architect of at least one of the houses featured in Ben Adam Smith's House Planning Help Podcast) (my emphasis): Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/timber-passivhaus-unforeseen-consequences-jae-cotterell/.

I am not going to get too deep into this, but when I went to Jeremy's house while he was building it, the one thing that amazed me, more than anything else, is that it was very quiet. It had none of that echo that half finished houses have. If internal walls were constructed similar to the external ones, then sound transmission may not be a problem. Worth investigating I think.

I use a lot of expensive acoustic insulation in my job But yet used Wickes loft roll in ours The Acoustic insulation is there to stop the sound bouncing around As pointed out Res bar and single 15 board will make a big difference also

OK. With the husk off. Welcome. You need cast-iron proof (strong enough that you can get compensation if it is baloney) that the start of development has been accepted by the Council, which can I think only be a document called a "Lawful Development Certificate" that the Council themselves have confirmed to you is genuine. Then if you are happy that the existing design or minor mods to it will be acceptable to you as a Plan B should your new PP be refused, and that you can complete the design as is - perhaps with modern insulation standards though - then I would consider proceeding and doing PP changes after purchase. Otherwise, or anyway, I suggest get your head straight about what you want exactly, and talk to the duty planner for the Council's view. If you are PPing before purchase, you also need to worry about timescales and whether they will sell it to someone else first, or whether you do your PP first and trust them, or spend money on a legal agreement etc. My advice on that is *always* make it clear in agreement and law so there is no grey area. If you are dealing with strangers it makes the process clear; if dealing with friends it makes the process clear and prevents arguments that will make them non-friends or resentful acquaintances. It may well be worth taking pro advice from a Planning Professional. If you do not know one, either do the homework to find one or ask the oldest, most hoary-looking person (think Treebeard or Dis) in the back office of your local independent estate agency with a good reputation to recommend one. We need the full text of the Condition you are worried about to comment. The system for evaluating "sustainability" has moved on so its status may have been reduced to tangential wibble (ie it is now meaningless, rather like the law requiring you to offer a beached sturgeon to the monarch). Or perhaps not. You may choose to negotiate something new with the Council, or not. Ferdinand

Resilient bars seem to work fairly well and I think if you combine these with double boarding it will be better than rockwool. The British Gypsum White book has some details for floor / ceiling constructions and the sound attenuations. Even a couple of decibels makes a lot of difference.

Did you look at having the Kingspan inside the I joists? There was or is a rule of thumb that suggests that if you have more than one insulation type the less vapour permeable should go inside the more vapour permeable so that any vapour getting into the structure from the inside can easily diffuse out.

I agree that there is always going to be a degree of imprecision when modelling the thermal performance of a building, just as there is when modelling the performance of anything, in any respect. However, my point about the use of the term " thermal mass" is primarily to do with both measurement, and hence the units used, and the perceived benefit, in terms of comfort of the occupants, that it may, or may not, help to provide. The most common argument for including "thermal mass" is that it will help to stabilise the internal temperature, so that any rapid step change in external temperature will not be mirrored by a similarly rapid step change in internal temperature. I believe that this is what many people, perhaps most, would understand as being the thing that "thermal mass" contributes to a building. Do we agree on this, or not? Assuming, for the moment, that we are in broad agreement with regard to perceived comfort being a key factor for wishing to have sufficient "thermal mass", then we perhaps need to get back to the original point in this thread that created the diversion. How do different construction methods contribute to internal thermal stability? The definition that SAP uses isn't particularly helpful, as it doesn't directly relate to internal thermal inertia, my guess is that BRE came up with the term as a way to very roughly model the impact of diurnal temperature changes only. The SAP expression takes no account of the heat capacity of the internal structure, and I think that most of us would be in agreement that this is a key factor in terms of stabilising internal temperature. I've both modelled the way the internal structure of our house behaves, thermally, and measured it over a period of several years now, and have a pretty good feel for the elements that contribute the most to the measured thermal time constant, or thermal inertia if that term is preferred. Our house is of all timber construction, a twin stud timber frame, clad with larch externally and with a 50mm service void and skim coated plasterboard internally. The floor is a reinforced concrete slab 100mm thick, with all the floor insulation underneath the concrete. With an internal/external temperature differential of about 10°C and no heating, either direct or incidental and no occupants, the inside of the house will initially cool at about 1°C per 24 hours. It behaves in a similar way when the temperature differential is the other way around in hot weather, but solar gain through the glazing contributes a significant amount of incidental heat gain. I can measure no heat gain through the walls or roof, the internal surfaces just do not increase in temperature to any measurable degree (absolute accuracy of measurement around +/- 0.2°C (corrected), resolution of measurement +/- 0.0625°C). From the data collected by logging the temperature on the internal and external surfaces of the house, every 6 minutes for several years, it's clear that the two internal elements that contribute the most significant temperature stabilising influence are the plasterboard walls, followed by the ground floor. The plasterboard walls have both a relatively high specific heat capacity and a fairly high thermal conductivity, so heat from inside the house can fairly quickly and easily flow in either direction. The effective heat capacity of the concrete slab is almost as powerful at helping to stabilise internal temperature, but is hampered slightly by the poorer thermal conductivity of the floor coverings, furniture etc. This shows in measurements, where the slab usually remains very slightly warmer in its centre than the internal surface of the walls. The effect is small, perhaps no more than 0.3 to 0.4°C at most, but it is consistent. One other thing of note is that the real temperature stabilisation effect of any material inside the house is limited to a fairly shallow depth. The surface layer of the ground floor, perhaps no more than the top 50mm or so, has the greatest effect, and the lowest part of the concrete slab, 100mm down, seems to have very little effect. From this I'd (very broadly) conclude that it is probably better to have relatively a thin, high heat capacity and high thermal conductivity layer of material over as large an area of the inside of the house as possible. It may well be that doubling up on the thickness of plasterboard, for example, could make a very worthwhile contribution to internal temperature stability, as well as increase sound attenuation between rooms.

Total construction supplies, mention me, it’s my footings on their website

Well we're the worst consumers in the world here in Ireland, so it's €300 a tub (basically everything is double or triple the price of anywhere else), in northern Ireland the price is £150 plus VAT, I got it for a £140 and no VAT because the guy had plenty to spare....Special note when using TT, on ICF, it's goes waaaaaay further then the manufacturer says, that's why he got caught with so much extra Something to do with the clean finish on ICF

If someone supplies AND fits materials to a new build, they have to be charged to you zero rated.

I know what I call it, and it is the correct term. Thermal Inertia I (that is italicised and capitalised i) One may well catch fire, but if you limit the temperature then there is not a great deal of difference These are the figures for my experiment. Material Volume /m3 Mass /kg Density /kg.m-3 SHC kJ/kg/K Thermal Conductivity U-Value Notes I PU 0.0017 0.06 35 1.4 0.2 Boxes moved on 25/06/2018 3.143621 Timber 0.0017 0.88 518 2.3 1.8 46.29318 Concrete Brick 0.0017 3.83 2253 1 1.1 49.78188 You can see that Timber and concrete have very similar I values

Out of interest, what units do you use to measure "thermal mass", to enable one form of construction to be assessed against another as having more, or less, of it?

I'll post this reply here as it's the most recent but it does overlap with a couple of other threads. The previous Appr Doc L1A was the 2010 version, effective Oct 2010 and included the DER/TER measure (based on CO2 emissions). The next revision was the 2013 version, effective April 2014. This gave an average decrease in CO2 emissions of 6% compared to 2010 but also introduced the Fabric Energy Efficiency Standard, partly to plug a loophole in the 2010 version.The 2016 revision did not contain any technical updates. Not sure of the source of Table 1 above (shown in full in the other thread) but it is riddled with errors. See the original in Appr Doc L1A. These figures are not cast in stone, SAP gives a lot of design flexibility and it is possible to build a wall with 100mm cavity or U=0.28 and still get overall compliance (though not sure why anyone would build a wall with such a poor U-value!). Zero carbon homes by 2016 was a Govt ambition but was kicked into the long grass a few years ago. As regards the EPC Building Control only need this as part of the sign off - it is not part of the compliance paperwork, there is no pass or fail here.

It might not cut it for you personally but for others it might be more useful. E.g., a friend of mine and his wife both flew for different airlines so had weird schedules and, of course, possible delays getting home at odd times and likely somewhat jet lagged. Running the central heating for other than frost protection while they were both away, sometimes for quite a few days, would be a waste but getting home to a warm house would be very welcome so either of them being able to turn up the thermostat from Heathrow was something we talked about. Just for giggles I wrote a prototype shell script to watch for their flight numbers on some website or other with the idea that it could see when they landed. It amused me to think of directly (i.e., without human intervention) controlling the central heating off a 767 boggy tilt switch.