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I had a quote from Solo Timber and they made it to my final three shortlist. the other two that made the shortlist were Flight Timber and Timber Frame IT. in the end it came down to a choice between Solo and Flight and Flight won. From looking back at my notes it looks like Solo only supply the VCL if going for their fitted insulation package but their quote did include fitting of roof felt and battens. so the initial quote looked reasonable but when I asked to increase the GF ceiling height to 2.6m, upgrade to attic trusses and add an air tight membrane between the GF and FF those extra costs made them a bit more than Flight. And then we were a lot more impressed with the site visit for Flight Timber and so they got our business. and since we put the deposit down they have been very good with the TF design and communications with the architect and have been generally very impressive for me. we're hoping to break ground in a couple of months so the TF should be erected in April/May (?). But in saying that it was a close call between Solo and Flight. I also think that people are being a bit harsh on MBC. yes, they are more expensive than others but they do what they do very well. they will also guarantee an air tightness value which no other TF company I've spoken to will do. so if you want a turnkey timber frame with insulation already fitted and a guaranteed ACH then the extra MBC pay could well be worth it. if, like me, you want to do the insulation yourselves to save money then MBC will never be able to compete. Plus MBC offer the passive foundations so getting the one company to do both foundations and TF makes sense. if we have more money (or built a smaller house) we'd have chosen MBC without question. but for us it was a choice of bigger house and do more ourselves or smaller house and get someone to do it all. the bigger house won!

this is the one I sprung for https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001051426244.html "outdoor" antenna is in the attic, I'll probably get it outside when we've scaff up next. I've two indoor antennas on a T-piece, one at each end of the upstairs balcony. Without the booster, there is basically NO signal in the house. With it on, there's two bars upstairs and 1-bar downstairs, only a few dropped calls. there are variants for different frequencies, you'd need to check which bands your operator uses.

Got the hatch in this morning. If that's not good enough access I don't know what is. I can get up through there on a set of steps. I was making too much dust I thought with the multi tool, so resorted to a pad saw. Painted the cut edges with some D4 and left to dry. The FlipFix hatch is a doddle to fit: I filled where some old pipes went through with intumescent foam. Shot above the bathroom: I'll get BG back in now. Edit: There was some crap up there in the vicinity of the hatch, sawdust, bits of copper pipe and pb. That plus loads of bits of broken brick. Vacuumed it all away and left clean & tidy.

My guess is all the manufacturers of this type of insulation will be re branding and re launching following Grenfell.

I did have my garden designed, for a big birthday present, about thirty years ago. It was the best present I have ever had. The designer walked the garden with me and asked about the things I like etc. I told him a love trees. We have a large garden and he filled it with trees. The shrubberies were all measured and planted so that the large ones were at the back and they tapered to the ends. Roses over the door and climbers over the garage. The biggest reason I love it is because it stopped all arguments about what went where. Chris hates anything that spreads or climbs or really anything that grows! It is a constant battle to wrestle the mower, the slasher, the weed killer from him. He has managed to "prune" to within an inch of its life a magnificent spreading (!) tree that was supposed to shade out grass and weeds from beneath it in the front garden. He insisted he had to mow underneath it! I have asked for a garden design for another significant birthday present this year. Not so many trees this time due to all the leaves. A bit of a Japanese theme perhaps?

if floor tiles are thicker --then carve some pB away so they can fit flush once they are loaded with adhesive --can,t be much more than 2 or 3 mm to remove from thickness of PB not ideal but it would work might be easier to just cut out PB there and fit thinner ply or maybe 9mm cement board to get space needed to use thicker floor tiles for the upstand you want

Good catch - found some details here http://www.icopal.co.uk/Products/Pitched_Roofing_Underlay/Products/Vapour_Control_Layers/domestic-use-vcl/design-guide-airtightness/building-regulations.aspx I guess the take away is that if you are aiming for good airtightness then MVHR will become a core part of that strategy (as you'll need it not to suffocate), If you're not being as aggressive then it's a nice to have but be realistic about the cost/benefit, return on investment etc. Being Eco-friendly is a laudable objective but can take you down some less productive avenues. Investing in a good design, well insulated and airtight fabric, etc is often the best return for your money - shoehorning 'green' tech into a poorly designed and built house will never be that effective.

I was £15-16k for 23 windows and front/back door. Windows same product as you, but supply only no VAT. That included several fixed panels, six 2.1x.0.9 window doors, 5 full height windows for upstairs. No big sliders though. It will take a team of people to fit them though, they are very heavy windows. I’ll pm you my quote Steve

Yes that's just space heating. DHW is on top of that. I don't see the point of relating DHW useage to square metres. That is a function of how many people not how big and well insulated the house is. And just to clarify this is not energy usage for "stuff" either. The non heating and non DHW electricity used here is roughly double heating + DHW. So if all my heating and DHW dropped to zero, the electricity bill would go down by about 1/3 This compares to our previous house where our electricity usage was about the same as our total here but in addition at the old house we were spending over £1000 on oil every year.

I have just updated my monstrous spreadsheet of my energy usage. My daily mean usage is, so far this year, 11.3 kWh, so that will be 4,125 kWh for the year. Floor area (total internal) is 48m2. So that will work out at. 4125 / 48 = 86 kWh.m-2.

Great. You can decorate my porch through the letter box.

These figures seem pretty low.... I'm 24'650 kWh for the year (estimated by my supplier - but I double checked and ita accurate). House is 90m^2 internal area. So 274kWh/m2/year which seems horrific compared to others here. Bearing in mind, this is my current house that we live in, which is a 1975 thermaltite block house with brick outer skin, no insulation in walls. Insulation above upstairs ceilings but cold loft. Air bricks in walls, family of 4. Thats all our gas usage for heating, hot water and cooking. I'm looking forward to living ona SIPS house with insulated foundation...

On my prices I make that about £9000 worth of windows and I paid £2000 for the fitting of my lift n slide door plus 2 windows.

We bit the bullet and went for some composite in the end. With aluminium posts. Love the look of it as it fits our modern build. Got some caps and a capping rail still to fit. Really pricey but it needs nothing more than a jet wash and I might do that whereas I’m not going to paint a fence every 2 years. @Ferdinand we did consider the graffiti risk. In fact our teenagers also said it. But it’s just as likely with a timber fence and we hope that it won’t be done. If it is then at least we won’t see it from our side (though I would be very cross) photo attached. I’m sure it will look even better when the paving and landscaping is done.

We purchased our windows supply only So no idea what the fitting price would be However we ordered our bifolds from a separate company who also included a fitting price Which was £1700 For something that took myself and my trusty helper 3 hours to fit You could always go the supply route and pay your joiner a couple of hundred per day and get a far better job than what the window fitters would do

More any imbalance between input and output. You can have an uninsulated room, but with huge radiators, running at a low temperature, and the air can still get up to the temperature you want. Conversely, you can have a well insulated room, very small, but very hot, radiators, and still not get up to the temperature you want. Or Two identically sized rooms, both with the same radiator size in them, but the water flow to one radiator is greater than the other, so one room will be hotter than the other (this is how a thermostat on the radiator works). Why I suggest that you turn the ASHP on, get the flow temperature up to 50°C, open all the user settable thermostats to Max °C, including any that physically on the radiators. Leave it running, so no night time setback, no switching it off, and just see what happens. You may have to leave it like this for a couple of days, no good after a few hours thinking it is doing nothing different, and abandoning it. AND KEEP IT RUNNING ALL NIGHT. I shall repeat that. AND KEEP IT RUNNING ALL NIGHT.

The last tin of Dulux trade white satin I used said on the tin it was oil based and would eventually yellow especially if used in dark areas of rooms with limited exposure to sunlight. Dulux recommend water based to stay white. The trade paint coverage was better than standard Dulux but within a year I noticed it had already started to yellow when compared to some areas that I had to touch in. I have since used Zinisser water based white 'All Coat' which is highly recommended by trade and diy users on Screwfix feedback. It can be painted on wood, metal, plastic, needs no undercoat or rubbing down of gloss surfaces, dries tough in an hour or less but as with most water based paints needs some speed and skill to minimise brush marks. Says exterior on the tin but seems fine also for interior use and on the Zinisser website. https://www.screwfix.com/p/zinsser-all-coat-exterior-paint-white-1ltr/5946g

I’ve tried to read this thread from the start, but can’t make my mind up....... is there a page that actually advises the male and model of the ASHP? same with controller? has the Op drawn a general layout of equipment?

Why have you ..?? Just start by doing the bloody obvious stuff first please and not be negative. Decent fitting door, closed when you go to bed and the heating set to the settings requested ...

I did extensive research on stud detectors . My scientific and technical conclusion was they are all shit .

Even if that was in a building it would be 'treated' by simply removing or reducing the offending trees and monitoring. Ceanothus is not known for being damaging or thirsty. I would stop worrying and try to repair your relationship rather than the wall...

Wot e said! Really not worth falling out with a neighbour about... not worth stressing yourself about either.

Sorry but that’s hardly life threatening, if it bothers you rake out the loose Mortor and point it up.

I use EE and the local tower is an 1800 one here: https://www.4g.co.uk/4g-frequencies-uk-need-know/

Been in the house for nearly 6 months, but coming in at 25.92 That me taking the electricity energy units 1815 units / 6 x 12 / 140. Yes, I need to declare this, burn a trug of free logs each night as well.

Mine comes out at 1648kWh for the year, that's not any estimate, that's the current real world measured electricity usage. It's about 150 square metres so 11kWh per square metre. That's the electricity driving an ASHP so in terms oh heat input assuming a COP of 3 that would be 33kWh of heat per square metre per year. I hope that figure will drop when we finally get the sun room complete as I hope that will be able to add some solar heat into the house on a sunny day. Solar PV generation exceeds that amount.

76m^2 Last year consumption and generation figures: http://www.earth.org.uk/saving-electricity-2019.html 1992kWh e (consumption), 3855kWh e (generation), 3157kWh gas (DHW + spac heat). So final energy per m^2 * ignoring generation, exergy, carbon intensity, etc: 68kWh/m^2 * allowing for generation: 17kWh/m^2 * space heat alone (allowing 4kWh/d for DHW): 40kWh/m^2 for space heat Rgds Damon

Gas heating, DHW and hob has worked out at 60KWh/m2/year here averaged over 3 years. I suspect we don't bath and shower much though.

Ok i will play, 85m2 house built in ~1880 half refurbished, not exactly loads of insulation and far from airtight, ASHP feeding radiators/ fan rads 255L UVC, consumption is 42.8KWh/m2/year, generation is 89.6KWh/m2/year. The figures are higher than they should be, because for the first ~ 4 months of the year the hot water was being heated to 55 and the ASHP was in weather comp mode, i have since changed the hot water to 48 and set a direct temp of 38 from the heat pump i maintain the rooms at 20 degrees, planning to refurb the back extension next year which will sort out most of the poor/ missing insulation and draughts

If I exclude the area of the pool room as the pool heater also heats that room, I am getting around 40,000 kWh a year to heat 800 sq metres, or 50kWh/m/yr. This does indeed suggest that the airtightness is not having much of an impact. Having rooted around a bit, my suspicion is that in lots of places the builders have stuffed gaps with rock wool, which is enough to stop normal draughts/wind, but not for the air tightness test. So I opened up the area that I had found was an issue after we moved in and asked the builders to fix. Basically they had filled the partition with rock wool and put a layer of plasterboard on it, but not sealed the actual area where the air gets in. The problem is that this area connects to the area where the MVHR is above the ceiling on the ground floor and thus impacts most of the house. I took some pictures but its s had to see. f you look at the picture from outside, we have an area where a sloped and flat roof meet. If you look at that area from inside the hall you see a cross. There is a vertical steel in there that you can see from the pictures taken inside the offending area. So if you look at the pictures where you can see the airtightness membrane, that is on the end of the sloped roof, but the area of render board is not airtight and is open behind the plasterboard cross own the hall which connects to all the downstairs ceiling and the MVHR run to the WC. Effectively if cold air gets in here it can get all over the house and the unsealed area is large. Now how do I seal it? 'the gap between the end of the roof and the stud work is only around 100mm wide, effectively this is where the builders had sealed it, they foamed in some plasterboard (They also put some odd bit of plasterboard inside the studwork when they ran out of insulation!), but all the air above this could still get into the walls and ceilings. The only thif I can think of is firing spray foam up to the top of the gap all around the steel to seal it in. I don't like filling a massive void with foam, but there is not way to physically get up into the space and seal it up.

They average £280 per tonne. Been as low as £240 recently and as high as £340. They fluctuate to keep track of oil prices.

I agree but even a deal at this stage will be very thin wrt trade and there will still be considerable short term disruption and friction at border points which I suspect will surprise the majority of the UK public. I also think it will take 5 or so years for Brexit to properly settle once the rhetoric has blown over and the respective parties realise what they really need from each other and what they can do without. Financial services also seem likely to continue to rebalance towards Europe so the City will slowly diminish over time unless it can find an alternative activity source. I would also be very surprised if any other nation decides to leave the EU as even with Poland and Hungary pushing back against more liberal expectations, the reality is that with a now protectionist US (Biden says he will continue Trump's America First strategy albeit more sensibly) and China, belonging to a bigger club makes a lot of sense. EU sentiment is also at an all time high in Europe post Covid.

Thanks. I'm saying put the numbers in so we can see and adjust if we need, but as a separate line. You could argue the same for anyone who charges a vehicle which will make a material difference, or non-connected generation, but at present I think more here probably have connected solar so that is the important one. We could all have huge banks of off-grid solar and be keeping quiet, just to make you feel bad ?. F

42 all in

Ok so I use wood pellets and going by Google they produce 4.9kwh of heat per kg. I average around 1200 kg of pellets a year and my house is 220sqm. So this gives me 26.7 kWh per M2. This is for heating and dhw needs for a family of 5. My electric usage each year is covered by my PV system. Last year my bill was £589 but I got £636 back so not sure how to add that to the total.

How ..?? Softened water and inhibitor will protect from any galvanic reaction - otherwise any boiler fitted with an aluminium heat exchanger would fail very quickly (and there are many from the 1990’s still running)

It's been a few years from Sean Quinn lost control of his company and a lot of unsavoury incidents have occurred to try and force the new owners out. I'm surprised that it's taken this long to change names.

Roughly yes but prices may vary UK to ROI

As everyone else says, get a set of 1M long SDS bits. Done it loads of times. If the wall is rubble in the middle get a sleeve ready and an assistant to push the sleeve in from the other side as you withdraw the drill. 25mm drill and a bit of 22mm copper is a perfect sleeve for 15mm.

A few of my guys at work have an office in the basement of a building, lots of steel, concrete and underground. the IT guys have a booster that plugs into the internet and gives a phone signal to us, only for the network that our work mobile are contracted on though, works well for us. external yagi aerial, decent coax to a sim based 4g router would work.

I used 3 layers of Rockwool slabs, cross layered. 140mm,70mm and 50mm in the walls. Also 40mm Pavatherm on the outside of the studs. In the photo you can see the 70mm being fitted horizontally. The slabs are very manageable with zero waste.

Wasn't BREXIT going to make us all better off. How can charging, for what is currently free, making individuals better off?

I think you could add garden design to this thread

I would ask Scottish Power how much they would allow you to export without grid reinforcement and see how far you get without paying up. You can only try. Attached is pdf of how SP handle things, although it is fairly standard. All on site consumption is satisfied first, the inverter changes its electrical characteristics to reduce the output to just meet the onsite consumption + export limit if there is actually more potential available. It might be an idea to see if you can get a three phase supply, then you can get three times the export. Finally I think you should contact Home Energy Scotland, (actually the Energy Saving Trust) on 0808 808 2282 an see if they have a Renewables Officer with experience of this situation ESDD-01-008.pdf

Completely agree, any build method can be made airtight with the proper attention to detail, ditto insulation. Don't confuse future proofing with requiring a modern method of construction. B&B has the advantage of being the UK standard so easy to source materials and labour, the trade off against TF is the time required on site, impact of weather and the ratio of spend on labour vs materials. You also have the opportunity to get some real craftwork with talented brick layers. I don't believe planners can dictate how the structural fabric of the building is built and can only stipulate the external finish. A brick exterior can be applied to any structure (block, timber, ICF, SIPs) you just need to make sure the foundation detail supports it and does not create cold bridging. You can also look to see if brick slips would be an acceptable finish to yourselves and the planners. I've had no issues in re-mortgaging or insuring TF, even with a render finish, with high st banks and insurance companies. We chose it because as novices, there was peace of mind getting the whole structure and internals in one package and to a contracted insulation and airtightness standard. We just needed to schedule windows (easy to order off plan ahead of time as the TF is factory made) and schedule roofer and render contractors to be on site when the frame was erected and scaff was still up. That got us weather tight in 8 weeks and gave us a lot of confidence to PM the rest of the build. Do be aware that reclaimed bricks may cost you more than you save and are often shipped in from Eastern Europe or further afield. At the start of our build I found and cleaned over 1500 1970s stock imperial red brick on sites. I spoke to our local reclaim yard, who specialise in bricks, and they wouldn't touch them. They told me that pre-1920 bricks are the premium, especially if lime mortar was used vs cement (as that is hard to remove efficiently). They also told me that the vast majority of recycled bricks are coming from Eastern Europe as previously undeveloped buildings are taken down for new - the labour economics probably make it work there too. Extensive use of recyled materials can generate a lot of wastage and also slow your trades down if they're discarding every other brick or slate. The recycled plastic slates have had good reviews here by others but be aware that not every roofer will want to work with them. My advice (and it is only that) is to concentrate on getting your design as low energy as possible (good insulation, airtightness) and then choose a build fabric that works for you. Understand solar gain - where it will be useful and where it will be a nuisance and plan efficient heating and cooling systems from the outset that work with your house as an overall system. Cooling is becoming more and more relevant as our winters get milder and summers hotter. Acres of south or west facing glass can quickly make your house unpleasantly hot even in spring and autumn when the sun is lower in the sky. Consider how to minimise your need (and match to what you have available on site) for energy to space heat (and cool), generate domestic hot water and use of water through efficient appliances before you consider water harvesting technology and the like. Solar PV can still be beneficial if you have the appropriate roof aspect even without the FiT payments. If you use in roof trays you save on roofing materials. A split air con system can effectively run for free daytime in the summer when it is most needed etc. Anyway, you get the gist. We're a bit more practical on this site vs other green forums

Would recommend people read reviews for this site before ordering https://www.wish.com/c/5f23f92e7c363e2a618f53da? As very poor and a lot of unhappy people!

Yes, and it was my job to highlight it and put a stop to it. If you do not understand how data should be collected, cleaned up, tested and presented, I am willing to give lessons, they do not come cheap. That was about Boris, not BREXIT.

Opinion is the starting point, then it gets backed up with testing and data to see how it matches reality. Trouble is with this whole BREXIT debate is that opinion became the endpoint, with all the detailed hard work skipped. Would be like asking one of my old, first year, forensic science students to do a third year project in contemporary art, without any books, visits to galleries and not being allowed to speak to experts in the field. It would be a fail.

@LA3222 What you are doing is just spouting opinion. You even say If you want to be taken seriously, get the data.

Politicians of all persuasions have laid the blame for all manner of ills at the feet of the EU and its predecessors, as handy scapegoats to cover up for their own incompetence. If you spend 40 years painting an institution as the bogey man publicly while all along quietly at the front of that organisation pushing it in certain directions, then leave, your chickens are going to start to come home to roost. No good will come from Brexit, or it's discussion for it is a faith driven cause not seated in logic and so though I have tried endlessly to provide facts, figures, counter every argument with sourced well researched answers and asked for just one tangible benefit, no conversation has ever ended well. Give or take a few percent, one half of the UK will now have to live with what the other half wanted, I only hope that the Brexiters were right all along and confound the logic, I really do, for my own, family and friends sake.