Leaderboard

Well it’s been an exhausting and rewarding three weeks. The plastering work started on the 25th February and finished today the 18th March. Keeping ahead of Shaun our plasterer has been a real challenge and has meant we have not had a day off. Our internal doors arrived from Germany intact which was a welcome diversion, we've stored them safely in the garage until we get the painting done. The heat and humidity that goes with plastering has been interesting to say the least in a relatively air tight house. We don’t have our MVHR balanced yet but it’s been a real life saver being able to increase the fan speed and get a surprisingly comfortable working environment. Getting the MVHR up and running early in the build is not something we had planned, but in practice needs to be done as soon as you start making the structure air tight. The filters will be trashed but it’s a small price to pay for comfort. One things for sure getting plaster board up focuses the mind on the details of first fix work right. We had left plenty of wire at the sockets we thought but some were a close call after cables were fixed into place so they didn’t interfere with boarding. The water pipes were more troublesome. Our build uses wall plates (timber bolted to the ICF concrete) that support the joists. The wall plate is 50mm thick and ends just 30mm before the ceiling, so pipes have be bent round a tight curve, too tight. We ended up notching the bottom of the wall plates and even then some were a really tight fit. One other problem we had to overcome was a curved wall. The curve is a “design feature” and like a lot of things looks great on paper but rather more troublesome to turn into reality. The curve has an outside diameter of 1800mm. We took a look at the options and decided against using doubled up 6mm sheets of mdf as the long term stability invariably results in cracking. After a bit of internet research we found a plasterboard product “V-Cut” that looked an ideal solution. The boards are standard plasterboard cut every 10mm with a fine kerf saw. The result is very flexible in one plane, they were rolled into 400mm tubes. When it came to using them however the very fragile nature of the sheets became very apparent. Plaster board is very friable at the best of times, cut into 10mm strips makes it nigh on unusable. For example the plasterboard screw driver would simply pass straight through it. We ended up using the solvent free version of pink grip to hold it in place. The curve is in our hall so it’s exposed to potential knocks and needed additional protection. After discussing it with Shuan we decided to apply rendering mesh with a base coat plaster and then apply a skim over that to complete it. The end result looks and feels durable. It would have been a far better product if the boards were laminated with an additional layer of mesh and paper before they get cut, as it is I would not recommend V-Cut in it’s present form. On the positive side it’s been immensely rewarding seeing the house turn from a building site into something that looks like living space. It’s quite curious how your perception of the space changes, it looked smaller and the ceilings lower before boarding, then got bigger again once plastered. At times it’s been reminiscent of the track laying sequence in “the wrong trousers”, needless to say we’re going to take a couple of days off to recover. Next on the list of things to do is mist coat the plaster to seal it before applying a spray of latex mat white.

Your are quite correct Certainly for England Our local Authority BC mentioned it to me I told him while the manufacturer -supplier is Fencer registered Its a self build and I’m fitting them myself He was fine with that Though he did mention the trickle vents

My HVLP sprayer in the Apollo 150, it's been a useful bit of kit. I've not had problems with it putting a lot of paint into the air. Having setup to try it with emulsion today it's proved a step to far, it simply doesn't generate sufficient pressure to atomise the paint. After a fair bit of trial and error I've decided that it won't work and have bought an Wagner airless sprayer.

Got a volt meter?

Sadly any knowledge I've acquired is a consequence of being badly let down! I knew nothing about boreholes or water treatment until ours turned into a long-running saga, that delayed our build for a long time. Finding the problems and then fixing things led to me getting advice from a really helpful chap in the USA, somewhere where lots of people have their own borehole supply (more common than municipal supplies in many areas). When it comes to cost, there are big variations from one area to another, and for drilling through different types of ground. There's a pretty big upfront fixed cost, to mobilise the drill rig, compressor, settling tanks, waste skip, bowser etc to the site and set it up, then there's usually a fixed drilling and lining cost to a minimum depth, plus an additional per metre cost above that. The per metre cost is based on the time it takes to drill, plus the cost of the casing, and varies a bit with the geology. Finally there is the cost of test pumping, installing the pump etc, and the required pressure tank, controls, filtering equipment etc. The prices I have are a bit old, as our borehole was drilled in 6 or 7 years ago now, but were initially: We ended up having some problems and so there was a reduction in the price we finally paid because of those. The above prices, as well as being a bit out of date, related to drilling in our area, through highly compacted gault clay, with the greensand aquifer about 40m down, then a layer of hard Purbeck stone under that. The drill hit the Purbeck at about 50m down, and nearly stopped dead. In error they carried on drilling through it, after changing the drill bit, and it was really slow going. They didn't think they'd hit water, so after half a day when they'd only drilled about 3m or so I called a halt, as we knew from the hydrogeology that there wasn't any water underneath the Purbeck. As it happens, they had drilled right through the greensand aquifer without noticing, and one of the drillers came back the next day to double check, as he wasn't 100% sure that the hole was dry. We test pumped it and found that the yield was way more than we needed; we could pump at 1500 litres/hour and the borehole kept up with it, and we only need about 400 litres/day.

Contemplating the minor challenge of our foul drainage piping : and came across this little video of how to ensure the correct angle of fall. It's brilliant Nice bit of gentle weewee extraction too. Want to go straight to the technique? 2:58 Recon my laser spirit level set up correctly in the middle of the pipe will do fine. But I betcha @Declan52 will tell me how to do the same more easily.

Wassail ! Drink Heil (or rather "Drink Ale")! (I won't get a Sieg quip in there and survive Deletion by the Buildhub Cyberman ? ? ?.)

I just used a digital spirit level set at 1.0 or 1.5 Degrees.

Thanks. I think our sustainability credentials should be up there, apart from the concrete basement that is! ?‍♂️ Make like Hitachi, or .. er .. Albert Speer, you two, and use a 1000 year time horizon in your calculations. Then it is suddenly sustainable. Abracadabra !

Hi Keeko, Our house is all electric ( no gas on the golf course where we are ). We have just recently replaced our 2 x 5kW SunAmp PV’s ( somewhat troublesome ) with a Uniq12 (actually 14kWhr capacity apparently). Up to now very impressed. We have a 6kW solar PV East/West split, an eddi solar switch (was Solar Cache also troublesome) and use E7 to top up Sunamp. So definitely sold on the SunAmp PCM technology. Your gas boiler could be used to charge the SunAmp Uniq12 of course! I designed our house to Passivhaus (PHPP) standards so not much space heating required. Zehnder Q600 MVHR with Comfocool unit added to provide summer cooling. 3kW electric duct heater (running at 2kW) plus 700W IR panel. Floor area 230m2, volume 700m3. No radiators other than towel rails, no UFH, no ASHP. An ASHP would reduce the running costs to around that of a Modern gas boiler. However our total energy costs (not just space heating and DHW) are around £1000pa. We could reduce that with a Solarwall/Moixa battery system but ROI not good. We only get circa 4.5p FIT for our PV (about £320p). So about £700 net energy costs in total. House temperature set to 20.5C. Comfocool keeps temperature <= 24C during summer. We use more power in summer keeping the house cool than heating in winter! Anything I can help with let me know.

In respect of both your original question and Temp's response, a 'dwelling' does not become a dwelling, in Planning Law, until it is occupied as such. Technically therefore: a) It has no permitted development rights until it is occupied and; b) It does not benefit from the 'householder' planning application fee until it is occupied. ... although in some cases, the LPA may either turn a blind eye or not recognise the distinction themselves. The proper way to deal with it, however, would be as a Section 73 'Material Minor Amendment' to the originally approved design.

Passive House plus free to read, in print & digital, due to Covid-19 crisis Dear reader, To ensure anyone who wants to read Passive House Plus can do so easily during this challenging and disrupted time, we’re making the new issue of the magazine completely free to read, both digitally and in print. You can read our new Irish edition digitally for free here, and our UK edition here. And so that any of our readers who are working from home or self-isolating can get the print edition, we’re happy to post a copy to anyone in Ireland or the UK who requests it, free of charge, while our stocks last. Just tell us where to send it.

K blinds on the avenue rd lurgan so pretty close to you.

@Ferdinand - coincidentally, 1,000 years is about the same timeline for our energy savings to pay for the project!

yeah I need a new head as well, this one look awful in the mirror in the morning.