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We've got one towel rail in our master bedroom ensuite and TBH we don't use it. It is really hard to really understand what it is like living in a PH unless you do so, because the experience is so counter-intuitive to all of your pre-PH experience. The whole fabric of the house is within ±½°C or so of the mean, and even if you are topping the heat up overnight there is still maybe about ±½°C ripple on this at most. There aren't cold spots; there aren't cold periods. I've got UFH in my slab, and nothing else (other than that towel rail). My HA system does some sums each night and calculates the kWh input needed for the following day as a simple function of the average forecast temp for the following day and the delta between the target set point (we have ours as 22.4°C) and the overage over the day. So let's say it calculates this as 12 kWh, then the Willis is turned on from 03:00-07:00 so that we use E7. That's it. I do have a few tweak that I want to do: when we have visitors then we should really offset the heat demand for the extra heat from their bodies, but we don't so the air temperature will heat up a degree or so because of the extra walking radiators, but this rapidly goes back to normal when thy leave as the fabric temperature doesn't really move. I also "cheat" by having a small oil radiator on a Sonoff timer in Dec/Jan when I need more than 7 × 3 kWh heat, so I use the rad to add extra space head during the E7 window. It is all really simple: if your house loses X kWr/day at your target environment temperature and with the current outside temperatures, then if you put X kWh heat into the house, (and it doesn't really matter too much how you do this), the house will stay within a small tramline of that target. As the others have said my whole system for my reasonably large 4/5 bedroom house cost ~£4K to install, and that included the UFH. I have no maintenance costs. My total energy costs for the warm 7 months are less that the annual maintenance on the Gas CH system in my last house.

We have had several discussions in the past about how to protect large purchases against the supplier going into administration, with the favoured option being to pay a small deposit by credit (not debit) card if at all possible that will protect purchases of between £100 (per item not total invoice amount) and £30k. This protection is provided by Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. Often however it seems that the supplier won't accept a credit card payment so what to do instead? I came across this website and wondered if this has a place in the self build community? It's neither a recommendation nor an advert for the company as I haven't used them and nor have I heard of them before, but the fees seem pretty reasonable (assuming there are no hidden costs). The supplier will have to agree to the arrangement too of course. Their website claims that they are FCA regulated. So caveat emptor but it may be worth a closer look the next time you have to pay a supplier a large amount of money in advance of goods being delivered. https://www.transpact.com/

Thank you all so much for the warm welcome and advice already. I’m flexible and open to ideas. I’d love a round log cabin but sooo expensive. Second to that I have fallen for A-frames but struggling to find any uk suppliers. I like the look of Avrame but too polished a finish for me. I used to work in a straw bale building and we talked seriously for some while about that or cob but I don’t have the physical wherewithal for that anymore as it’s just me. I guess my vague idea is a kit house and a builder to put it together. But I'm also toying with the idea of community or co-housing to build an extended family for us. Or even a place for us and my folks. So so many options, just trying to put some facts to ideas to help with decision making. Is it naive to not worry too much about future mortgagebility (is that a word?) as this will be cash and I don't plan to sell on? I'm so sorry to hear of others effected in similar ways to us. Cancer is cruel and indiscriminate. I count us fortunate as he could have died at diagnosis as it presented violently or any one of several near misses after but we had six years so my little girl has memories of daddy. I’m now determined to make the life for her we always wanted her to have. I'll post some other specific questions in the timber frame section unless anyone tells me a better suited place. thank you all again.

Much improved! Still some details like above the window to the PV I'll get them to adjust, but much better. Will show more once the final two pitches are done @Cpd Thanks again for all your helpful advice. I'll be DIYing my carport myself with these sheets!

Yes, and the new Tesla... We'd already planned things so we have what we think will be enough of a savings buffer, together with our pensions, to sustain us in old age, plus a "holiday fund" that we've been saving towards for years, so we can have holidays each year. The inheritance came with instructions to not just put it into more savings, so I've opted to spend about half of it now, and will decide later what to do with the rest. Mind you, it's anyone's guess as to how much we may need in old age. I just hope that neither of us ends up like my grandmother, who spent her last few years not knowing who anyone was, or even where she was. If we had a pet that was in that state we'd do the "humane" thing, perhaps.

I agree with all said above. Ours is not quite passive (but sheds loads better than most builds!), we were warned about overheating because of our large south facing conservatory and bi folds into kitchen and lounge. Yes, in the (brief) summer it got a bit warm but no hotter than the south of France, so saved me paying for a holiday there!. Today the kitchen got down to 19’ first thing in the morning (had a ground frost) and the heating kicked in for a short while fir the first time this year, HOWEVER, lovely sunny day and kitchen and lounge quickly up to 20’ because of the solar gain, quicker that the UFH could raise that temp.!!! Actively thinking of going E7 to warm up the slab and DHW tank overnight. P.S. Note to self, get a room stat with smaller hysteresis!

Welcome @Rob Johnson. I find the intake filter (F7) tends to get very grubby after 6 months. Sometimes I can vacuum it out and re-use it, sometimes it's too grubby to clean that way so gets replaced. The room extract side filter (G4) barely gets dusty, and can easily be vacuum cleaned a couple of times or more before replacement. Filters are an odd size and spec, and very expensive from the UK Genvex agent (as are the Genvex units themselves - their markup is massive). I had a batch of filters made up by Jasun Envirocare a couple of years ago, and am just about to have another batch made, as I'm down to the last spare intake filter. In my next order I'm going to get twice as many intake filters as exhaust filters made up, as I still have four exhaust filters left over from the last batch I had made. The last batch cost £12.19 + VAT each for the F7 intake filter and £5.50 + VAT for the extract side filter. The filters that were supplied looked absolutely identical to the Genvex ones, apart from the label. Quite how the UK Genvex agent can charge £41.87 + VAT for the intake filter and £12.15 + VAT for the extract filter I don't know. It seems that rip-off Britain is alive and well!

If run at typical UFH flow temperature then the towel rails wouldn't even feel warm to the touch, I think, plus you may well find, as we have, that in the heating season the UFH only comes on for an hour or two every couple of days. I opted to fit electric towel rails, wired to a circuit that includes a time switch, so that circuit comes on for a couple of hours each morning and evening. Seems to work well.

@PeterW be careful that you don't repeat what JSH did once - - which was to crank up the heating to try to get back to setpoint quickly. If you do that then you'll get there reasonably quickly; and the temperature will the over shoot, and then oscillate as the slab vs the rest of the fabric get back to equilibrium. IIRC Jeremy overshot to something like 26°C.

Nope those Grundfos units can do a 6m head comfortably.

Ok so go with a PU bodied Grundfos at £72... https://www.euroboilerparts.co.uk/pu130-5-grundfos-pump-1-12-plastic-body-replacement-for-grundfos-bronze-pump-1205-p.asp

Check carefully, I have a Wilo Yonos pump in mine. They come in lots of different versions, and one of mine has a plastic body so would fit your "non ferous" criterea

How about a trial block up just for this winter? E.g., take the plastic cover off, sheet of plastic behind and put it back. See if it's more comfortable or causes problems.

The issue is how quick an ASHP can get heat into the water - even an 18kW will struggle as it’s about a small volume of water getting the heat so the response time is slow. With a gas boiler, you’re getting a rapid heat up which is what is expected with rads.

I got one of a batch of FooBots being used as part of a research project on ebay. I also wanted something off the shelf and not fiddly like the Raspberry Pi. Unfortunately they are no longer sold but are developing a next gen model, no idea of availability. Some second hard units are available on ebay from the Netherlands but a bit pricey @ £160 ea. USB powered. They can log to an app on your phone and the internet which is great for tracking activity. See the available measurements in the screenshot below. That's my bedroom CO2 I've focused on. It's certainly possible, depending on your budget....

We have exactly the same thermostatic valve system, with a remote capillary sensor that fits in the flow manifold. Two things I've discovered are that the calibration of the valve head is pretty rough and ready and the dial-type thermometers are very inaccurate. I've looked around in vain for anyone that stocks replacement thermometers, in the hope that I can find some accurate ones. In the end, I just stuck self-adhesive liquid crystal temperature measurement strips to both manifolds. Not easy to read, but they do seem to be consistent with each other. The ones I bought have a scale that runs from 18°C to 34°C, in 1° steps.

Definitely a big improvement, it’s a shame you had to be the customer they got to “learn” from but at the end of the day it’s done. When you do your car port I think you will wonder what all the fuss was about as it’s ALL in the preparation and planning, putting the tin up and fixing it is the EASY bit. Anyway glad I could have contributed something to the forum.

Heating my modern well insulated house with low temperature UFH works very well. Thinking back to a previous 1930's house I owned, and how much heat it needed, and how quickly it cooled down, I very much doubt you could get enough heat out from UFH to keep it warm in the middle of winter, so it needs radiators to pump enough heat into it, which a heat pump is not really suitable for. I am glad not to be pumping that much heat into a leaky box any more.

PTO was a standard option for Series Landrovers so no doubt I could source and fit one. I find chainsaws to be high maintenance. That might be because I have a rubbish one. Chains need regular re sharpening and I find I can only re sharpen them a few times. Then they stretch and wear, Adjustment of chain tension is a regular requirement. Then the bar wears and the chain starts jumping off (this time I have prolonged it's life by turning the bar upside down, so the worn bit is in a different place. That has stopped the chain jumping off for now but another new bar will be needed soon.) I might try buying a couple of the really stupidly cheap chains from China on ebay, then I might not bother faffing with them so much if they are cheaper. But I like the simplicity of a large circular saw blade with little to go wrong and a blade you can sharpen? or just replace when it gets blunt.

In England, October is free will month. You have until Wednesday. ? ? ? ? If you last that long ? Google it. Everybody else has free will month at different times. F

Buried IBCs will need to be in some sort of shored up hole, as they probably won't tolerate the pressure of the surrounding earth without collapsing, I suspect. If worried about them floating up, then some concrete sleepers over the top should work OK, and form a solid lid on the hole, one that can be lifted in sections for access, if need be.

At least you are not paying Cornish water rates to get rid of rainwater. Rained every day for 31 days here. Not a record by any means, have known it to rain for 66 days. Probably still worth putting a bit of mass into it, just in case. Or making sure, that if it does rise, no serious/expensive damage is done.

I hope not to be like that as most people do I imagine. Maybe we should all look at making a living will too. My mother is 85, still living alone independently and went on 3 foreign holidays last year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that's me too!

Yes, been there with my Mum, as my brother said at her funeral “we lost her twice, once to dementia and once to life itself”. Might sound daft but when I had my old (17 year old) Labrador put down, not only did he have cancer but I was sure he had dementia as he didn’t seem to recognise even me and I had him since a puppy. I hope someone shoots me if I get that bad. (I agree with dignitas!).

The custom sizes I used last time were 417mm x 220mm x 50mm for the F7 intake filter and 417mm x 220mm x 25mm for the G4 extract filter and these fit the Premium 1L unit we have OK. However, I have found that the filters tend to get slightly squashed, lengthwise, by the neoprene seals, so I'm going to get the next batch made up 2mm shorter, 415mm long rather than 417mm long. I've measured the filters after they've been in the unit and they seem to compress to a bit under 415mm long.

Indeed. I arrived at 48 degrees as that is the hottest I can (just about) hold my hands under for any length of time. I see no point in having it hotter than that. If I need really hot water for some specific and unusual task I will boil the kettle.

I can't figure how that would work. Typically when heating DHW I observe a flow temperature of about 55 degrees and a return temperature of about 47 degrees. Under that scenario the HP would be doing nothing and it would just be a gas boiler heating my DHW. On that basis the HP would only operate when heating the UFH, and if that is the case surely you might argue to have 2 separate systems for UFH and DHW? What I am saying is these systems that claim to heat first by the HP then boost it with another heat source require a massive delta T that never happens in practice.

+1 That is the logic we use to only empty the septic tank or treatment plant in a period of dry weather.

Rob, can I just emphasise a fundamental characteristic of at least our PH. Nothing happens quickly. If you stopped heating it in winter it would only drop about 1°C/day at most and heating it up again is pretty sluggish as well, so its just far easier to keep the whole house at the same temperature all of the time. The one caveat here is if you've allowed your architect to persuade you to have "acres of glass" especially south facing, because a serious dose of solar gain can turn a PH into a greenhouse in hours. The other thing is the lack of zones controls, radiators on various walls etc. The rooms are simple and clean and the walls are for hanging pictures, bookcases and putting furniture against.

Perhaps worth considering the likelihood of a high water table event coinciding with an empty tank event, too. It seems probable that the only times the tank(s) may be empty is in dry weather, when the local water table will almost certainly be low. If the weather's wet then there won't be any need to use water from the tanks for watering plants, plus the tanks will fill up fairly quickly, .

One of these days I will have time to write all of this up but my major post-build hobby is acting as the lead developer for an IoT firmware: I am upgrading the firmware to a Lua 5.3 version and fighting getting a £2 chip to run 15K lines of dense test vectors ?

Hi Welcome to the forum and so sorry to hear about your loss. Self building is very rewarding but it is stressful, all-consuming and not for the faint hearted. Even if you are not physically building it yourself, you cannot over-estimate how much of your time it will take. Land is always the the biggest hurdle for self builders - you will normally need to be able to buy the land outright as getting a mortgage on just land is not easy. It is why self builders are typically older (generalising of course) as we have built up savings over the years - even if we have to sell our house to live in a caravan, releasing capital whilst we build. Not sure what type of log cabin you are intending to build but you need to be sure that once it is built, it is mortgageable so that you can sell it on. The house we are currently living in, was built and lived in about 5 plots away from us. We believe it was a built on site rather than a pre-fabricated building that arrived and was put together. When they completed their permanent build, the previous owners of our plot, bought the house and they transported it in two halves across the various plots in between (it is too wide to fit down the lane). It is perfectly liveable and when they first decided to sell, it went on the market at a value assuming it was mortgageable. After several prospective purchasers pulled out when they could not secure a mortgage, it was placed back on the market for over £160k less. As we were cash buyers, we could buy it, but we’re only interested because there was also planning permission for a replacement dwelling. Good luck and I truly hope you can make this work for you - you deserve some luck after everything you have been through.

kW

No kit at all. I have a couple of DS18B20s in the wall fabric to get the average house and the external temperature forecast is a NodeRED HTTP request to datapoint.metoffice.gov.uk. This goes into a NodeRED function node (~60 lines of Javascript). The estimator has two linear terms with coefficients starting on my modelling of the house performance but then adjusted base on a fit of historic data. My HA system is an RPi + SSD, total cost ~£70. All the data logging and relay control is done through ESP8266s, total cost maybe £20. The most expensive bit were the 16A SSRs used to switch the Willis and SunAmps at around £45 each IIRC. Sure, but why don't you start the ball rolling just @ me so I pick it up ?

Part G of that tends to refer to twin wall flues and the like, not masonry chimneys. You’re right to question, but also go back to the legal definition of “reasonable” and apply it here - what would the ordinary man think is the answer ..??

Welcome. Not sure where to start with this, but that’s a background which I’m so sorry to hear. It sounds like you’ve had a lot of challenges, and self building somewhere for a future is an amazing goal. Purely on the practical basis, timber or log cabins rarely meet building regulations without a lot of work, and when compared to the costs of a more traditional build, you’ll find they don’t stack up well. There are a few members in the south west who may be able to help on the practicalities - plots and budgets will be where you need to start first.

I hate alarms. Maybe a good idea on a not-so-secure building site but there should be no straightforward way of breaking in to a new house. Almost always false alarms, caused by user error or alarm fault. Car alarms are even worse and it is often low value cars that seem the worst culprits.

Why not pour some gravel into the IBCs, a third of the way up (or so). That should stop them floating away when the water table moves.

I guess if you have a hot water tank that is ported for hot water circulation (our Telford UVC is) then you could pipe hot water from the DHW tank through the towel rail. We run our DHW tank at 48 degrees so that would be okay for the towel rail. But someone will come along in a minute and tell us why that would not be a good idea. Rusty brown hot water? Might need a Plate Heat Exchanger to prevent that. It sounds an awful complication to avoid just having an electric towel rail.

Hi and welcome. With a CV like that you should be answering all the questions. I am sure @JSHarris will be along shortly.

In the South,Id say over 90% are self employed. What tends to happen when you’re in the first say 5-10 years of your tradeis,you get a start somewhere (through an advert,hearing through contacts or just walking on site) and,if you’re happy & the brickwork firm are happy with you,they’ll offer you work on another job once the one you’re on is completed or close to being so.

Well I got to the bottom of it There was very little water going through the inspection chamber I basically did as above and ran gallons and gallons of water down every outlet at the same time, very little making its way out 5 mins later I heard something slowly moving down the pipe outside like a rat crawling down it, until... Well you don't want to know what it looked like, Needless to say it was massive, it was brown and it stunk.. It spewed our of the inspection chamber base broke up and was followed by a torrent of water Diagnosis Baby wipes, bits of plaster, bits of plastic all probably places there whilst pipes were open and kids could get to them I am smell free!

Having a slab means you can charge with heat also means you can almost always load shift from off-peak electricity, ‘injecting’ heat into the slab once or twice a day. Even heating by direct electricity is palatable with such an effective heat store, subject to the house performing well of course.

In fairness we don’t use the UFH that often either It just shows how poorly insulated mass produced houses are Compared to what we are all building

+1 for the concrete screws, these are the best option you have. Full details here if you need http://www.timco.co.uk/fasteners-fixings/multi-fix/mf-range-screw Express nails are ok, but more light duty, more suited for battening etc. and aren't as easy to remove should you need to reposition.

MBC used something like these https://www.orbitalfasteners.co.uk/products/8mm-x-110-express-anchor-steel-zinc-plated as you just need to hold the timber against the concrete, drill through both and hammer this home - there is no additional fixing and the timber goes where it is supposed to - quite quick way of working. They're pretty sturdy as I saw when one needed to be removed - did not come out of the concrete.

I have to ask what is the point of a burglar alarm for normal people, that is those who are not going to be targeted by professional thieves? If it's not monitored and just makes a lot of noise all it will do is annoy the neighbours - if you have any. It will almost certainly not put off the burglars or generate any response from passersby. If it's monitored the thieves will be long gone before anyone can react effectively. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/18/former-burglars-barking-dogs-cctv-best-deterrent gives anecdotal support to my view. We've inherited one with this house and it's just a nuisance.

A mate who fitted alarms for a living swore by Texecom as Peter suggested

Try one of these - fits the bill with a couple of add ons and you could always move it to the main house.