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There was not much in the way of progress from the last entry as we were already close to moving in. The plumbing was completed in the last entry and connecting some final electrical fittings was done soon after. After a decade since putting in outline planning it was time. Our furniture delivery has taken longer than anticipated and we are living with a bean bag for the living room seating and a mattress on the floor for our bed. But we are here. The first few days were spend getting used to living in a new space. As a family four we had spent the last six years living in a relatively small space, it is now great to have a room for each of our children and an extra bathroom. I am pleased with how the house is performing from an energy use point of view. We don’t typically get really high temperatures here and the external average temperature has been about 12c over the last few weeks, the house temperature has remained a comfortable 20c. I have been monitoring our electricity units on a daily basis and we are using between 9 to 10kw which is promising as my hope is that we can go six months or so in the year without heating. The real test will come in the winter as the electricity usage will probably be double, but we plan to make good use of our centrally placed wood burning stove. Once we are furnished, I’ll post some more photos. For the moment just enjoying the new house with the family. The next jobs are: - Ordering decking for a small decked area and for our access ramp - Spreading gravel around the house site - Gardening - Putting more material on the access road - Order some down pipes Thanks for reading.

The Spinklers ! The Sprinklers ! (Code for: you may as well consider making it open plan ? . You will understand that one as you learn the ropes. ? ) Sprinklers inhabit the nightmares, and trigger the dreams, of self-builders in Wales. It's actually a really good example of how regs can guide your decisions and help you be more creative because of external limitations. I'll explain tomorrow evening when I am back from hospital treatment. Your Mission, should you chose to accept it, is to find out what is distinctive about how self-builders handle Fire Sprinklers and Fire Alarms in Wales.

Well done. Try and find some time out to be proud of and reflect on your achievement. That will be hard to find as by now you'll have realised that island living is very rewarding, socialble and a great place to bring up kids. All the best.

Only if you made the stairwell fully protected for fire, which would need all of the doors to be fire doors, and potentially you may have to include secondary protection such as sprinklers. You may find if you made the upstairs gallery narrower and provide a protected fire corridor to another room, they may let you do that. Would need an understanding BCO.

Interesting comments, thanks. Its quite a big house, 320 m2 with 6 bathrooms, so a combi probably isn’t going to do it. We’ve UFH throughout the ground floor but no plans for radiators upstairs. We’ve just finished the roof, doors and windows are going in now, so could easily change plans at this point. Even keeping the unvented cylinder, a decent sized system boiler seems to be less than half the cost of the ASHP, so I’m sure there’d be a saving on the build cost as well as the ongoing running costs. We’re not in passive house territory, although the house will be fairly well insulated (it’s a 140mm open panel timber frame fully filled with frametherm + 50mm PIR on top across the studs) and good airtightness. According to the SAP calcs we need about 12,000 kWh of heat input per year for space heating and hot water, so with some rough calcs using a very conservative COP for the heat pump, I reckon there’s about £200 annual saving for gas. But as some have said it’s not just about the pounds and pence and electric has much more potential to allow us to meet some of the environmental goals of the build. Hopefully the gas connection quote will come back really expensive and it’ll be decision made!

^^ I like that much better, everything just flows so much better. Plus it is nice to have the route to the garage covered.

Install the gas for now, and leave it all set up ready in anticipation of the fitting of an ASHP later down the road if the numbers make more sense then. If it's not a massive property you could get away with a decent high-flow combi boiler at £1500-£1800 plus fitting. Do you have rads or UFH? Most other M&E's I've spoken with still advocate using gas if it is available.... Your conscience is your's to deal with and your's alone. Also your money is your's to spend, and not others who may aspire to better things ( when it's not at their expense ). Do what is right for your budget and expected living costs, and if it becomes viable later, you or a new owner could retro fit the ASHP with ease.

I'd generally avoid making decisions based on what it does to the SAP rating unless your financing is dependent on it. As has been discussed elsewhere on here, SAP has some flaws in low energy housing. The only benefit you mentioned in using gas is the potentially lower running cost, but even that is only based on current prices and you can't guarantee it would continue. Like everyone on here, we've made many decisions based on what's important to us, rather than trying to cost-benefit everything to death. Assuming your house is fairly well insulated I'd imagine your all electric costs would be pretty low in an absolute sense ? If that's the case, I'd not be considering gas.

Sounds like you need to call them back again and thank them for their efforts so far, but it is still not right. With the hot tank sitting, and no hot water being drawn off for a while, feel around the tank and see what (if any) pipes feel hot, and post some pictures. There is definitely something wrong still but we can only guess at what.

I'm not sure what pump it is to be honest, when I activate the lux mode it sounds like a different pump turns on which is ever so slightly louder. However what is clear is that the water tank gets full of hot water after a cycle and then slowly over the course of the day the tank seems to run out of hot water. AFAIK the hot water should last much longer than 5 hours when not in use.

Thanks again everyone. I have pm'ed scottishjohn to ask for his contact.

Fwiw I just put down a deposit on 8.5kw Ecodan with OSO 300L Geocoil tank for just over £8.5k+VAT installed, Inc all the intermediate pipework, ufh hookup, external groundworks (concrete base), and the usual MCS additions like room by room heatloss calcs, EPC, and industry body guarantee. This is in the expensive SE England, I'd hope other areas can beat this price. Caveat: nothing actually installed yet! So can't make a positive confirmed recommendation (yet)

Why not go for wooden frame for the base. A few fence posts either sunk or sitting on a block on a pad. Wouldn't be a lot of concrete needed and it's very DIY friendly. Then build it like a deck using 8*2,9*2 joists and board over. Put them at 400 centres and they will be rock solid. You have went from near £6k to probably not much over £1k.

A quick update for anyone that might be interested: I now have the MPAN number as of yesterday, so today it should be on the national database - anyone know who is installing meters for free at the moment? I also have the electrician coming to installed consumer side pieces prior to WPD (DNO) doing their connection work on the supply side.

Good advise there They can be so dangerous in the wrong hands I’ve seen a TH tip onsite and also piece the top deck of a bus Preston City Centre Driver decided not to use a banks-man

Price sounds ok

Thanks, I do appreciate your thoughts. The generosity of buildhubbers’ contributions is something I never cease to be touched by. It really does make all the difference when embarking on a project like this. We have an unusual preference for upstairs living, probably generated by having lived in upstairs flats for upwards of 25 years. I’ve amended the design to add in a back door into the utility/laundry room for wet dog entry, and potentially to a tea-making point so that when we’re gardening we can pop in to make a cuppa and have a wee without having to take off our muddy boots. The downstairs has been in part designed so that it could function as a semi self-contained living space, should my parents need a bit of TLC (we are moving 250 miles to be nearby as they approach old age). We plan to put a wooden balcony on the first floor outside of the French windows by the dining table, for a small table and two chairs. Just an outside space to sit and have a coffee in the morning, or a glass of something cold in the evening should the sun be shining. The planning application for that will be done a bit later on as we’re trying to get the plan thorough as a minor material amendment to the existing consent (which is free of CIL due to its age).

Sorry typing on the go this morning Dressing Room Bath Room The reason I say Building Control and Vary Wildly We had an issue with the drains on our build Hardly any cover next to the house One said we should drop the Treatment plant outlet The other said it seems a bit extreme and the drains are on a walkway so unlikely to get damaged I think common sense can sometimes chip in Usually with the more experienced BC Dave makes a good point in that you could build the a fire compartment to allow access to The Bathroom to remain clear Cheap fix

Dressing room/wardrobe, Bedroom and Upstairs Landing maybe? Btw, Building Control would not allow you to utilise an escape window in which you’d have to access via a dressing room and en-suite. You’re also not allowed to have a door between Bedrooms and Dressing rooms as a DR is considered to be habitable and without a window, it’s escape would be through an ‘access’ room as the DR would be an ‘inner’ room. If the Bedroom cannot be provided with an escape window, your other option is to provide a protected staircase. Just out of interest, how will the Bedroom meet the ventilation requirements as per AD F?

Leave all the fillers out and just foam / bond EPS insulation to the high points. That'll allow air to shift behind the insulation and keep condensation in the middle from being so problematic. Buy some sticky neoprene 50mm x 3mm insulation 'tape' and do the 3 sides visible of that 40?mm box steel, as that'll be your biggest cold bridge from outside to in, doubling up on the very inside face(s) only. Foam all of the corners and make it draught-proof as best as you can, but still maintaining clear open ends for the sheet profiles. Them being mounted horizontally makes this airflow a bit less 'natural', but shouldn't be a problem. Use foam / other suitable bonding agent and hold the sheets of EPS in place with 8x4's and some temporary battens, like shuttering. Try not to let what you store touch the outside walls and that will promote better mould prevention, but ironically you'll probably need to have some ventilation there in the summer to stop it sweating. Have you insulated under the floor yet? If not, you'll need to address the junction where the walls meet the floor as that'll be the biggest problem area if left unaddressed. Foam will be your friend here, just choose low expansion grade and minimise the wastage / nuisance contamination from over expansion. I don't really see the point in going to the expense of PIR tbh. EPS is pennies by comparison,.

Certainly in terms of fixings etc the likes of GSE are very definite about the number of nouting points and batten sizes etc to stop even their flush mounting system being sucked off the roof. There's detail in the MIs

A piece of orange string, set out front of building first then the critical side square to it then c/l of trenches then the rest of it I mostly used ancient Egyptians 345 and double checked by measuring the diagonals os any rectangle ?

I did chuckle when I read Bar I grew up win the 70s when it was fashionable for people to have a bar in the corner of there lounge Martini optics and party seven ?

As this building will need building control approval, are you sire that is deep enough? BC will have to approve it.