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Thanks for input everyone. I’ve got it up and running with a Willis heater off amazon (labelled “Tesla” rather unexpectedly) and a cheap mechanical timer. The manifold + pump was the main outlay around £400. It took about 3 days continuous running the get the slab up from 18 to 25deg. Now I’m running it only from 12.30 at night till 7.30am when I get cheapo electric. The floor doesn’t feel “warm” but it no longer sucks the heat from your body when you walk on it and everyone’s stopped moaning. The house feels remarkable warmer! Temp is hanging around 20deg. Here’s a pic. All the gubbins is under the counter in the utility room next to the Sunamp

Get some quotes before you start dreaming. And some advice on which ones are practical. For bigger ones it will take 2 growing seasons. Have you considered commissioning an oil or acrylic painting of it? When mum and me left their 40 year house after dad died, we made a predetermination to be grateful and pleased, but to walk away with no regrets. It is a good perspective.

Now that the main part of our house is finished, I sat down and added up the build cost, excluding land cost, design, planning legal and professional fees. Total cost £141K House floor area 147 square metres So that's a cost of £959 per square metre. Well chuffed to just get in under £1k /m2 That is just the main part of the house. The sun room is yet to be completed (though that cost above does include the shell and the roof of the sun room) and there is still outside work to complete like decking, driveway to finish etc.

Switch stacking is the normal way to do it. Use 16 or 24 port switches and build the stack. You can get fanless PoE switches but limited to about 90w normally. Also check if your end components need PoE or PoE+ which has a higher power requirement.

I watched this recently, maybe it might be of interest to you @zoothorn I have the little Humidity reader in the image below, would recommend that.

So are you wanting to move them onto your new plot ? if so get pruning and move them with an excavator so you can take more root than if you where hand digging.

Since the cavity (layer 5) is fully ventilated layers 5 & 6 are by convention not included but the external resistance, which is actually at the outside of layer 4, can be increased to 0.13 because the reduced average air movement increases the thickness of the external surface layer. See page 12 of attached pdf. BR_443_(2006_Edition).pdf

Solicitor didn't set out your house or have any part or care where you put your house checking that was on you. The Architect may have some blame in not knowing that moving the house would put it off your plot but hard to say not knowing how he was engaged or what information he had. I'm afraid it seems to be on you unfortunately. The Farmer would have course for legal action if he so wanted to but assuming he gave you the site for free so is fairly close or related to you so I'd doubt that BUT no one will be able to buy it unless you own the ground your house sits on. Talk to the farmer blame your architect and see what you can agree you have no other option. If he gifted the site I can't see him wanting to stick his arm in at this stage.

We’re getting there! flooring, kitchen and stairs, just bathrooms to go. It’s great to see it all taking shape as the finishing jobs get done. Not that it’s all gone to plan. The first job we tackled was to get the floor down. We wanted to get it done before installing the kitchen rather than having to work around the units. As the kitchen is part of the open plan living area on the first floor it meant doing the whole area some 70m2. It’s a lot of flooring and we needed something that was easy care and tough. After a fair bit of looking at the options, we opted for lose lay vinyl. There seem to be three vinyl options, adhesive plank, click and loose lay. I didn’t fancy sticking down such a large area and we have a couple of floor access panels that I wanted to keep access to. The click version is not dimensionally stable and requires an expansion gap and it’s not designed to have heavy objects such a kitchen units on it. Loose lay ticked the boxes, dimensionally stable, OK with heavy objects and as it turns out the simplest to lay. Karndean and Amtico both have loose lay options but they come in at £30-£40 per square metre. By lucky chance we found a commercial flooring supplier Quadrant who have a loose lay flooring system Salto with a spec pretty much identical to Amtico Access but at £22 per square meter. The planks get laid onto a three metre grid of tackifier, a non setting glue that just stops the tiles from sliding rather than actually gluing them down. If a plank gets damaged you can simply lift it out and replace it. Laying the floor could not have been simpler. In a couple of places we found that the tackifier was just not enough and we ended up fixing one or two end of row planks with a patch contact adhesive. With the floor down we could then start on the kitchen. With no stairs in place we used our electric winch to get the cabinets and appliances to the first floor. We bought the winch to get the 80kg MVHR unit onto the second floor and it has been invaluable in getting flooring, doors and many other heavy bits safely upstairs. With the units all upstairs we made a start putting the kitchen together. We had gone through a couple of design iterations and of course the one we settled on meant that the electrical sockets we put in when plaster boarding required moving to meet the 300mm minimum distance requirement. It’s easily fixed with a splash back so not a real problem. Our appliances are built in, a first for us. So we started out by getting the fridge freezer into its tall unit. There certainly is not much clearance, having carefully got the fridge correctly located I discovered I could not fit the hinges with the fridge in situ, so had to drag it out of the unit. Unit doors fitted and fridge shoe horned back into the unit. You then have to connect the fridge doors to the unit door, a bit fiddly but it all working nicely. Pushed the unit into place only to find the lead was a couple of centre metres short of the spur socket installed for it. Dragged the fridge out, made another hole in the carcase and re-routed the cabling, put fridge back in unit, push unit back into place only to remember the unit had not been secured to the wall after the second cable hole had been made…needless to say there was a bit of cursing as the fridge was dragged out again! A least if we ever have to fit another we’ll know how to set about it. The kitchen has a long set of linear units, which should have been a doddle to install against a nice straight wall. Unfortunately the wall they were getting installed against was the one that didn’t get braced properly on the final pour. Needless to say the units all required spacing out from the wall to form a line. A task not made simpler by the design which has two rows of bridging units over the hob. These are mounted on a wood frame constructed to fill the gap, which of course I cut before remembering the wall was not true. It didn’t take much work to re-jig it thank goodness. We also had to construct the shelving unit as this was a bespoke piece, to make the position of the boiler housing correct. With the linear section of the kitchen built, it was time to build the island. As it turned out this was a much more straight forward proposition as it didn’t involve and dodgy walls. It did involve cutting down a unit by half and cutting the composite worktop. We discounted doing an under-mount sink as we were cutting the worktop and any router chatter would ruin the worktop look. In any event the island went together nicely and the kitchen looks the part. One by-product of having the kitchen done was the completion of the electrical circuits. We duly called back in our electrician to do the final checks. With a couple of minor changes it was all passed. A significant mile stone to pass regarding building controls. Our electrician has been brilliant and supported our work through the build. Not something that all electricians are prepared to do and we were fortunate to find such a good one. It’s been cold and despite the high level of insulation in the house we were getting uncomfortably cool and decided it was time to get the gas boiler connected. We calculated our structure requires about 68w/degree input so very minimal heating should be required, making heat pumps not cost or energy efficient, hence the gas boiler. The boiler feeds two towel rails, no radiators. All the pipes had been put in place long ago before plastering and painting. A bit of a risk but we pressure tested everything before we put the plaster board up. When we finally got round to filling the system and pressurising it we found we had a leak and water was running down behind a radiator. Careful removal of plaster board revealed the cause, I had put a plaster board screw straight through the pipe! With the damaged pipe cut out and fixed, plasterboard and plaster re-done. I put the radiator back up and pressurised the system again only to find another leak. This one took a little longer to find. Again it turned out to be pipe damage, this time on the other radiator, and was one of the radiator mounting screws. Not impressive and something we’ll conveniently forget. At this point the system was holding pressure and all looked good, time to call in a gas safe man to commission the boiler. Called a couple of local gas fitters only to discover they were not prepared to commission a boiler they had not installed. Tried “check a trade” and one of the gas fitters replied saying he wanted to see the installation before taking the job on which is fair enough. Well, he turned up looked at the installation and said he was prepared to do the commissioning, he also pointed out that pipes within 1M of the boiler should be copper and not push fit fittings. We’ve been reciting building regs in our sleep since starting this project and had completely missed this requirement. We had done the gas pipe in copper of course, but why the water pipes? Still no point in arguing….so out comes the carefully installed kitchen cupboard and pipes replaced. Pressurised the system and guess what a leak, this time in a push fit with the new copper pipe. The pipe had caught the o-ring and cut it in two. Easily fixed but none the less annoying when you can’t see any benefit from changing the last meter of pipe to copper. All fixed time to call the gas man in, only to discover his colleague had a covid contact and they were all waiting on test results. Two weeks elapsed before he could come back and the boiler was commissioned at last. Bliss watching the room thermometer slowly creep from 9C to 18C. It certainly makes turning up on site a lot more welcoming. Last but not least we got our stairs in. We had bought the stairs from Fontanot last year and had agreed that the manufacturer would store them until we could take delivery. So they had been sitting in packing crates in Italy since last June and we didn’t get them delivered until October. They were well packed and all we did at the time was a superficial check of the contents, no damage, all present and correct. The stairs are modular and very minimalist, they give the impression of floating in air. Each stair tread support is connected to the next with an M20 bolt through the steel tread supports and spacing shims. It gets built from the top, so you start by installing the head bracket, then each tread until you get to the bottom step where another bracket secures the foot. On the ground floor this is fine, on the first to second floor it isn’t as the stairs don’t terminate on a horizontal floor. The manufactures representative had been on site so was well aware of this, the drawings also showed this but the stair kit shipped was identical to the lower stair. We contacted the supplier who was very responsive and would get back to me with a solution. Time ticked by with no word, so we contacted them again. They rather sheepishly admitted they had no “stock” solution and would have to make up a special bracket. Time ticked by again and we contacted them for progress. What they came back with was not elegant to say the least and would have spoilt the line of the stairs which are a feature of the build. We took a look at alternatives and realised that modifying one of the standard head brackets and mounting it inverted would provide a much better looking solution. New head bracket ordered from Italy along with a tread support. The tread support was modified to bolt directly to the head bracket. Progress at last. Modified bits arrived and unpacked, modifications just perfect, but they were the wrong colour...doh! So we are not out of the woods yet. It will get resolved just it is proving a rather painful process. Back to installing the ground floor stair. Working from the top, the steps adding one at a time using hand rails rods to maintain positioning. The bolts get torqued to 140nm, even so the stairs moved around rather worryingly. Every third step we put a wooden prop to support the construction. By the time you get the bottom step there is a LOT of weight in the structure and it did not feel at all firm. The bottom tread support bolts in to the floor. In our case this is an insulated concrete raft, which is fine as it is strong and plenty deep enough. However it does have a lot of re-enforcing rod, needless to say we found it on two of the four holes. Drilling through with a masonry drill should be possible, but we didn’t manage it and ended up ruining two good quality 12mm HSS bits to get through it. I’m sure there are better ways to do it, over an hour per hole. At last we could bolt down the bottom step. With all the steps secured we left the props in and installed the had rails and four stabiliser brackets. With some trepidation the supports were removed and a tentative test at climbing them was made. They were solid as a rock! Result.

Just exactly what I thought as I was reading, has zoot changed his username ?

On our build we poured over 5m (when I say we I mean the professionals did) - this was for the second floor and the apex up to the roof ridge - 6m I seem to recall. At the time (three years ago) the woodcrete people I was talking to were recommending 1.2m poor maximum height.

Like you I am not sure if it’s “wrong” but I lined my cabin shower room in wood as I also love wood ! Been in for 6 years and no problems.

I got a small brain haemorrhage reading the first bit of the original post. I dearly hope that zoot is not behind this. Can I confirm the TLDR as "I knowingly bought a bit of a shitter and am now having a moan about tradesmen who I have hired to sort it"?

https://www.thefpa.co.uk/news/fire-safety-advice-and-guidance/do-fire-doors-need-to-be-self-closing- "In private dwellinghouses, a self closing device is only required if your home has an internal garage door. Both ADB and the Local Government Association’s publication Fire safety in purpose-built blocks of flats state that no other fire doors in your private home require self closing devices – although it is recommended!"

They don't in England. Not certain about Scotland or Wales.

It looks amazing..and massive! That's one hell of a gable window and vaulted ceiling. Good luck with weeding out the samples.

@zoothorn I am trying to "un read" your last post, and expunge from my mind, a rather horrifying mental image of your damp, brown and yellow Y fronts. I think I need therapy.

So how many PoE..??

And see about changing the locks to keep the other builder away!

But remember you said it was cheap ??

It sounds like you are new to house renovation. I think each of these issues needs to be broken down into a thread of it's own where it will be easier to offer advice.

???, I think you need to do more reading/research.

we used rockpanel, in grey they do it in a lot of finishes . Its very hard wearing and looks great,

Haha - don't shoot the messenger, I'm just repeating what I read on the internet Apparently Penrhyn Heather Blues adorn Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street!

Going through a block wall with a 100mm duct does not require a lintel unless you had a high load on the point above the duct. Imagine if the wall was built and you drilled a 100mm diameter hole in it, you wouldn’t then install a lintel. But anyway lintel or no lintel you are you are talking about £20 for a couple of lintels so not really any point in even adding that up, put it where you think it will be best used. At the most it will require a 100mm diameter hole in the floor with a 25-32 mm pipe sticking out of it, try to get it close to a wall so it can be clipped up neat. Its next to no room at all really.

It looks like you may be correct. After being told, politely, that they were talking sh*te and could pay the penalty fees for late completion they magically booked it in for next week.

Cheers, that ups the U-value to 0.22.

This is the crux of the matter. I think I would have gone for two connected columns, each orientated for each portal frame - or as you say, not have a moment connected from B3 to C2 and rely on the C3/ C4 portal frame in the up/down direction. There's something of an ongoing debate in the structural engineering world about whether steel frames in extensions can rely on the stability of the existing building (if enough walls remain) or whether they need to be independently stable. I have tended to use the existing building where possible...

It's just all too tight, I would lose the door to the wc and have that accessed from the hall, and just run the kitchen along the full width of the back wall - kitchen islands work well in big spaces, you'll be falling over that all day - the pinch point is where you have 778mm right where you come into the room, what width is the door, and presumably it's an existing one? could you not move the laundry cabinet and have a door which opens into the dining/lounge at the end of the corridor and get a u shaped kitchen in? It would be good to know what the existing layout is and what you are trying to achieve with the alterations!

I'd be concerned. I hate to scaremonger, but you need to start talking to the land owner, I've heard of cases where an over hanging guttering has resulted in people loosing their entire house due to legal parasites and stubborn neighbours. If he wants £10k, snap his hand off, more likely it's worth £50k+ to get a amicable resolution of things maybe more. What is the house worth with that side of the house blocked off and being a semi-detached to a farmer's shed? I know I'm painting a bleak picture, but expect the worst and hope for the best outcome Good luck

No. Wood fibre boards in your own numbers are nearly twice worse than PIR - and as a result you need nearly twice the thickness for equivalent conductive heat transfer resistance. Decrement alone does little, it is how it then translates into phase shift - and that only helps if >10h (so the morning heat only starts flowing in the evening, peak midday heat would only spread in the night and is being cancelled), requiring larger thickness than 100mm. On top of that it stabilises heat changes during daily cycle, but does not affect long term heat loss - here low U is still what matters. My advice: - stick to PIR, if desperate go phenolic (0.018) - but that comes at a price - improve air tightness - if there is any void between ceiling boards and insulation you can use reflective film better than the face of PIR boards - but this, like phenolic, gives you diminishing return

Buy more than the 4m. Buy enough to make a decent small garden on that side. At least wide enough (another 4m?) such that you can work on your house easily, and can guarantee privacy.

i get it calculated to 0.21, you can get it to 0.19 if you use a lightweight block of R value 0.25.

A well compacted surface of type one will stop the sand flowing issue. A lot of builds on here have same foundation type and used sand, they all seem to still be standing?‍♂️ when I trimmed all the perimeter eps off the sand under it all was still there and damp. That's after 10 months - my experience is albeit limited so I may be proven wrong but I can only comment on what I've seen done on here and with my own two eyes on my build. Ref getting your dpm down John, if you can then I would as belts and braces. The sand isn't going to be trashed overnight but if you can get it down sooner rather than later its one less thing to be concerned about. If the sand was dry then yes, you could screed the full width easily. Wet sand is a different beast and just harder to manipulate. I did wack it after, didn't really move it much tbh.

The sand won't sink. If it does there's going to be and awful lot of people's slabs on here sinking! ?

https://www.uvalue-calculator.co.uk/calculator/ https://www.changeplan.co.uk/u_value_calculator.php You add the R values for each material and then 1/R = the U value.

Yarp, as @Onoff says. I made a mistake here though, as I didn't think things through properly at first. Needed a 50mm sand layer so I bought 50mm timber battens thinking ill lay them flat and that then gives me 50mm of sand. No. Your hardcore layer will be +/- 1" maybe, so this pushed my batten too high in places. What I then did was rip them all down to 25mm thick. Was able to use a lazer then to pack them out to the required height and any undulations in the hardcore didn't matter. If your sand is damp it will be harder to screed so don't set the rails too far apart, maybe 2m? Use a 'stiff' pole or timber to screed it so it doesn't flex in the middle. If it does, it will ride high in the middle leaving almost imperceptible humps. I did that and couldn't get the EPS to sit right at first, I ended up pulling it all off and redoing the sand. The sand layer will make things easier with the EPS if it is done well.

This crops up on the Brickie social media groups time & again. The consensus is that it’s built vertically,with a steel rod running through & then lifted into position. @ProDave I think giving whoever built that a level or some lines would be a hopeful in the extreme-the phrase “you’ll never be a bricklayer as long as there’s a hole in your #%*e” springs to mind?

Much appreciated to you guys. My worries have subsided. Just glad my house hasn't! ?

It was passive standard so airtightness of 0.56 ACH, triple glazed passive certified glazing from Gaulhofer. Walls were 0.12, roof 0.1 and basement 0.1 also. https://www.mbctimberframe.co.uk/passive-house/passive-house-technical-detail/

Hi Andy The wall uValue was 0.14 and the windows are double glazed (though quite well specced for the time, we do have uValues for them somewhere if you’re interested). The big win for us had been airtightness, which tested at 0.296 from memory.

You seem to be seeing invisible ink. I am not after free...but then a good number of merchants offer "free" delivery. Pick the right product by all means. But I expect to pay a reasonable cost. And yes I do know how much artics cost thanks.

Isn't it all kinda bull$hit anyway, given you (customer) can stand in their conservatory (Which I assume did get approval)... and look in on the neighbours garden..... it's the same height as the deck.... or am i missing something? Neil

Probably too expensive but how about investigating the new permitted development rules that allow houses to get an extra storey? Need not be a full extra storey? https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects/158/additional_storeysextending_upwards

@scottishjohn morning John, you keep spouting on about woodcrete blocks not needing any bracing, I would suggest you get some more hands on knowledge not just from talking to the rep selling the product. My knowledge is based on having built one icf house using a poly type block. But also I am currently working on two woodcrete block houses. one has the walls up the other is halfway up. Both the woodcrete blocks have needed significant bracing, the one built has some very poor walls, the one being built has a huge amount of bracing on it as it’s a struggle to keep it straight. I think people need to do their own research and not listen to the rep selling the product. if anybody tells you you don’t need bracing they are talking out of their backsides, or they are suggesting you pour a 1m strip at a time.

@Adam2 @tanneja Here’s a couple of quick vids of the blinds. We made a space for the blinds by recessing the timber frame above the window heads and then standing the cladding off the face of the timber frame by 100mm, that gave us the void we needed to instal the blinds and hide them in the cladding (they are fully accessible for maintenance - but it’s not a 5 min job!) Of course they are not particularly cheap, our worked out to circa £850/linear meter. The width/drop doesn’t affect the cost much, it’s the motor that costs and they all have the same one. EDB9A4ED-A943-4670-9827-9953FED1C6F9.MOV FE27F836-3388-4208-AE8F-51C83D01A543.MOV

I have only ever had them done once for a loft extension. As soon as i popped my head up through the loft hatch, i found that the existing ceiling joists were running in a different direction to the drawings that had been passed by building control. At that point they went in the bin, and i have always done my own since. I have always found building reg people fine. At my daughters last year, i had re-done the bathroom upstairs and fitted a new downstairs toilet. This involved moving the stack from the back of the house to the side, and doing some new drainage. When i started the rear extension, and bc came to look at the rear extension footings, he asked about the new soil pipe at the side. I told him with a bit of a smile that it had been done before we bought the house. He said, with a smile, stick it on the back of an envelope and he will include it with the extension, so we won't get any hassle when we come to sell. Top fella. Most of br drawings are cut and paste imho

My house is built entirely of timber, plasterboard and insulation. The only concrete / brick is the foundations "hidden" under the insulated suspended timber floor. Yet my house takes very little to heat it, keeps it's temperature very stable, does not heat up or cool down quickly at all, and has a thermal time constant of over 13 hours. It does this (if you believe that paper) without any Thermal Mass. When they have explained that one, how my house can possibly maintain a comfortable stable temperature without lots of thermal storage capacity, I will start to take what they say seriously.

What a late Christmas present, came through today!!!!!............. Wokingham Borough Council, in pursuance of its powers under the above Acts and Regulations, hereby Grants Permission for the above development to be carried out in accordance with the application and the accompanying plans submitted to the Council subject to compliance with the following conditions, the reasons for which are specified hereunder. Many thanks for all your help and advice, I was a bundle of nerves when i hit this site but everyone of your replies really helped. Thanks again, have a good new years eve and like the great Arnie, i'll be back...soom