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I have found during our self build that we have gone against the norm for what you would expect a new self build to contain. One area was how we would heat the house. The main concern I had as we entered the winter was whether we did the right thing in disregarding the need for underfloor heating and radiators. I have found that during the day we do not need to heat the house as having sufficient true south facing glazing provides the solar gains to heat the house during the day time. When you are outside and it's -5c wind chill it's a pleasant feeling to come into a house that is 20c with no heating. At night time the temperature would slowly drop without any form of heating. This is where our centrally placed stove surrounded by dense concrete block is used. Stoves in the self build community are loved by some and loathed by others. I feel if they are used in the right setting they can be a perfect addition to a self build project. For us it was a best choice as having access to wood, space to store and being willing to provide a little bit of hard work results in the heating bills being zero. When we designed the house having a centrally place stove was one of the first items on our list. For our stove we burn a trug load of home grown logs each evening in the winter. I would never have imagined how satisfying it can be to spend an hour on a Saturday morning splitting wood to keep my family warm. It's a great way to keep fit and can be an enjoyable hobby. Recently we cut back some alder and birch trees which will be left to season and will form next year's winter wood. Using coppicing as a woodland management will allow the trees with their established roots to regenerate quickly in the spring and perhaps be cut back again in ten years. It has been an interesting learning curve over the last few months regarding heating our house with wood. I have learnt a lot from my father-in law and also from this book which I would recommend. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wood-Fire-Handbook-complete-perfect/dp/1784726192/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+wood+fire+book&qid=1613167239&sr=8-1 The garden is currently a blank canvas and this will be the focus for the spring. One job that I am working on at the moment is sorting a load of old stone to build a dry stone wall. It's hard work but a perfect remedy after a long week of crunching numbers at a computer. Hope to provide an update in the Spring. Thanks for reading.

I’d ask them to pull the 40 out then and use 50 - shouldn’t take that long and should be done as requested.

50mm as a high flow shower can gurgle and stall with 40mm waste.

RHI takes 7 years to pay back... it may work out with the GHG but you'll need to move fast and find an installer who would install using that grant. Best thing you could do in the short term is a new condensing oil boiler and new rads sized to operate at 45 degrees (where condensing boilers can actually reach the 90% efficiency rating); get the loft insulated; get air tightness improved and install whole house positive input ventilation + single room MVHR units. Do that straight away and you'll have a nice, warm house with good air quality. @Jilly Beware survivorship bias! Old oil boilers clunk on, but the effieicny drops and pollution increases. Best off being replaced when they reach end of design life.

As much as I like ASHP's I would not be suggesting one for this property, particularly as you might be selling in a few years. It's main problem is no or poor insulation anywhere and with it's age and construction it's going to be very hard to get it anywhere half decent in that respect. So your main problem is going to be a high heat demand and large heating bills.

Thank's @Bitpipe size is relative to what is comfortably operation wise. We can do 1 fixed 1 slide, 6490 x 2650. The max sash weight for the sliding section is going to be 400KG. You can increase this weight and therefore the size, by using a double gearing setup and or electrical operation but electrical operation adds a fair amount of cost. External venetian blinds have a maximum span width of 4000mm, so the above sliding door would need two external blind boxes split equally. A lift and slide 4 fields (2 slide, 2 fixed) 12850 x 2650, again same rules apply and would need 4 blind boxes. The biggest issue that needs to be taken into account, is the span. Sliding doors are not weight bearing in anyway and cannot have deflection from above compressing the head of the slider. So the deflection in steel needs to be taken into account.

We have windows from Gaulhofer with great external integrated blinds (from Roma) - they make a huge impact on privacy and solar gain - no curtains needed! @craig can advise on max span for that system.

Ive said this till I’m blue in the face to pick your choice of icf supplier go to jobs where it is being used and pick it up, look at it shake it work out how it will perform, ask the lads installing it. Whatever you do don't choose it by price and don’t choose it by what the rep tells you. Some of them would sell their granny if they could make a quid and some of them are just downright liars. My rep took me to a site on a pour day, he was obviously confident in his product. I asked him loads of questions and he basically said it was for me to do my homework, not for him to push his product. He told me not to bother asking if there was any movement in the price as there wasn’t, and for me to call him once I had done my research if I wanted to place an order.

I've used this before. Only really works well when you have own VAT registered company.

I have a frozen vent pipe at our rental in an inaccessible loft space that has defied any attempts to defrost it. I am awaiting tomorrows "heat wave" to see if it thaws it then see it there is a burst. Don;t underestimate how cold it has been and for how long up here.

Have you moved in or is it still empty? Your builder must start work before you move in to get the vat reduction

yours may be for whatever reason BUT there are many of us here that have no problems with an ASHP, So don’t blame ASHP,s, blame your designer fir a system that’s not fit for purpose (as I keep on saying).

Unfortunately it doesn’t mean this. The only way of getting VAT @ 5% is to get a VAT registered builder to do the work on a supply and fit basis. If you buy materials to do the work yourself you will have to pay VAT @ 20%.

Quite serious. I'll put a score in towards his piv fund. Intentionally unkind btw.

Hi there. You might have it sorted now, as I see this post was a while ago. I had a lovely set of bespoke sliding doors from Elegant Doors in Nottingham, and they did folding doors too. https://www.elegantdoors.co.uk/piazza-crittall-style-doors

Good thing you didn't buy it then!

Table 4E2A (non-amoured in conduit in insulated wall) seems the closest. 89A (25mm) and 68A (16mm). The electrican didn't ask where the duct went, so he has probably assumed it's in-ground and is thinking he'll be OK with 80A, which isn't good given it's actually wrapped in EPS. I'll have to talk it over with him Monday, make sure he knows and find out what fuses he was planning to use. 60A 3-phase would be enough for our needs yes, but we had planned to try to keep most things (including ASHP) on one phase for battery backup, so it's not really ideal as it means less will be able to go on the backed-up phase. If I do insist on 25mm, but SWA won't work in MBC's 63mm duct, is it possible to get hold of 25mm 5-core non-amoured? Everything online seems to be only SWA...

@SimonD I’d love to design it myself but the lack of experience and confidence is putting me off. But saving £8k on a £150k build is huge! That’s the ASHP or roof paid for. after all, no one knows better how we as a family live or would like to.

No rules, just courtesy to tell them. The new Engineer might wish to contact them as well. You'll have to ask BC but they may charge. To them it's just a design change, they don't really 'check' calculations.... they just check that you have had them done!

I don't have much to add except to say it looks to be in a lovely spot and you will love renovating it. I have an old boiler in a rented property and they don't make them like they used to, the old and simple technology just keeps going, so it may not break down as soon as you think.

We got the idea from our last house, which was a 1700s stone farmhouse which had similar reveals.

Knowing what I know now I'd probably go radial, but branch worked ok and was way cheaper. A lot depends on the layout/joists directions etc - mind I routed everything through the loft, downstairs loo was a straight run down, so all relatively easy.

In simple terms treat it as any other 16A radial circuit to a 16A "load" Only in this case it does not consume 16A it produces up to 16A. That gives the rather interesting problem that "volt drop" manifests itself as volt rise. So if you have a long circuit with a poor Zs the voltage at the inverter could rise above 253V where most inverters will shut down in some way. So calculate your volt drop in the normal way, and add that to your typical supply voltage and ensure you don't exceed 253V As well as all fusing. rcd's etc for any normal circuit you provide an AC isolator switch next to the inverter and also a DC isolator switch for the PV panels (some inverters have the DC isolator built in) Most 4kW inverters will have the panels as 2 strings so you would need a 4 pole DC isolator, or two separate 2 pole DC isolators. In days gone by for the FIT you would have a generation meter next to the inverter to measure how much you have generated. Without a FIT that is not strictly necessary but still a useful thing to fit.

If it’s a build on a budget as per the first post, get a joiner to build it on site. I did this for a 60m2 extension, worked out well, I also got to paint every end of cut timber with green preservative which ticked another OCD box.

@JFDIY thanks for the top tip however I’ve got the nuts and it’s in ?

If the chrome arm will stand a lot of thread inside it, I'd be tempted to cut a 3mm or so wide slit across the end face about 4-5mm deep so you can wind it in with the side of an angle grinder spanner. Your double nut idea will do the same, if you haven't got a spare nut, for 1/2"BSP the nuts of most 15mm compression joints will go on the end.

Looks really smart btw ?

The lift and slide type doors seem to be really good with large openings / heavy sliders.

Main bathroom wc in, also the obligatory iPad for when in the bath

We purchased our bifolds from from Duration I think each panel of integrated blinds was an extra 250 south facing so used every day

I'm not sure what others have experienced but although we know that concrete of a certain spec and width should be impervious to water HOWEVER I've not met a a warranty company that would accept it as a waterproofing method. Additive isn't necessarily the answer as discussed in several places previously.

Logix is an American product, the distributor in the UK is Build Homes Better https://buildhomesbetter.co.uk/ whom are also the distributor for Isoquick the Insulated slab product. Lasst week I attended 2 x 2 hour web training sessions held by Logix America. They were very good covering all the main points most of which is relevant to other suppliers ICF blocks. I was able to get questions I had answered during the web session. Logix is sitting high on my list as ICF choice but I have not yet commited and am waiting on Covid restrictions lifting so I can get to a site to handle the product as recomended by @Chanmenie and others.

So it's not a pump issue it should be passive. So I can't think what else it could be other than the cold feed to the tank had frozen.

A picture of the bits I started with: As it was going to be hidden in the wall "forever" I changed the bib tap connector to a solder type. Ditched the random m/f bit too between nipple and bib in the above pic. My proudest moment: Would this get you out of trouble (no hex mind). A local plumbers merchant might stock the hex type: https://www.toolstation.com/brass-shower-arm-connector/p91988 Don't know if the brass bit in this would have a hex? https://www.screwfix.com/p/wall-union-elbow-chrome-75mm/903fh

Do you need the internal hex? If not a 'running nipple' is basically threaded tube, upto around 4" long, which you could cut down if needed I'm assuming that is 1/2" BSP thread like a backplate fitting (on the wall) would take?

On the south facing glazing I was lucky in that we only did minimal modelling on the solar gains. I just wanted as many windows for the views. Having moved in during the summer I am happy that overheating won't be an issue in my location, but I am lucky in that regard. We do have plenty of velux window upstairs to ensure good cross ventilation can be achieved. Managing trees, splitting logs and enjoying an evening stove, these are simple pleasures, in an otherwise complicated life riddled with technology.

No Idea, Much pricier than tile paint I'd wager! They paint rooves the time on the continent. I don't think the render do a whole lot for the dormer. It draws attention to the irregularly spaced and sized windows. I did draw a wider porch but given the extra cost involved It didn't add too much to the aesthetics. If I was to spend more cash I'd probably put it towards doing something to break up the vast brown flowerbed /rockery as as well as the paving. If it was me I'd start with a tub of tile paint and PVC paint and see how it went.

Okay, this probably isn't a direct answer to you question but if it's any help, our architect took us through what we thought was a good process to generate ideas and find out what we liked when we designed our place. Given that we've got something we really like in terms of design and looking at other projects he's done, he's pretty good at this part of his work. First he got us to to go around and have good look at properties wherever we went. When looking at those properties we were under instructions to note down the elements we liked about the houses and what we didn't. Then, once we knew what we liked or didn't we looked at different architectural design styles. A good start is, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_architectural_styles We spent a whole load of time looking at the styles we liked, and then again whittling those style down to elements we liked of those styles and what we didn't. So for example, we both like Georgian style but what we particularly like about Georgian architecture is high ceilings and big high windows (we've got this upstairs). We wanted easy acces to the garden from the kitchen/dining area, which, because our house is on a hill, meant turning the house upside down and building bridge to the flatest part of the garden. This whittling also brought us to a couple of architects, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright where again we found some elements of their design we liked, and some we didn't (some Le Corbusier stuff I loved some I absolutely hated). This influenced the design of our house. So for us it was finding general styles we warmed to and refining from there. I was also lucky in that I was working with a client in London and would regularly walk past the RIBA offices and would pop into the bookshop to browse books on my way to the train home!

Forget the Parge coat It’s a waste of money for airtightness I use miles of the stuff for sound blocking If the dot and dab is done correctly air will never get through Using Parge will encourage the plasterers to be lax with sealing everything off Where a stud runs parallel to the floor joists nog under the floor every 600 Changes at this stage at this stage are good They don’t cost time or money Dont worry about the builder being upset He will get over Looks like a great project

Well done you for developing this up.. design is a journey! Often you draw something (professionals often) and realise it can be improved once you have slept on it. One thing to take account of is that you need to tie the timber frame down. When you don't have a heavy outer skin of masonry to provide ballast this gets a little more tricky. Some say.. there is no way that the wind suction on the roof will lift the building off the founds.. and yes you don't see too many failures like this... but if you live in a windy spot with certain pitches of roof then you can get uplift when you don't have a masonry outer skin. Often if you have an extension with big doors on the front and small panels each side (no goal post) which may want to tip over, like a column, they need to be anchored to something heavy. Sean.. If you can post some of your elevation drawings then you may get some more pointers, I'll give you some if I can. Have a look for tie down (holding down) strap details etc on BH. You can embed tie down straps into the founds but they can get in the way, folk can trip over them. It''s also hard to get them to line up with the stud positions, but here you can introduce dummy studs unless you are using SIPS... this means that you don't need to be so accurate when pouring the concrete. You can also fix the holding down straps to the top of the founds and there is a way of doing this in your case which will work as you have plenty edge distance for the fixings (strap to concrete found) and so on. Draw in your tie down straps on the inside of the frame (5.0mm thick) with a bent leg facing in fixed to the founds if you can, to see how that might work. Put a big washer ( 50 x 50x 6.0mm thick) that extends to the inside of the bend of the strap. Depending on what tensile loads you have in the strap you may be ok.. if not you may need a bespoke strap... not a massive cost issue. Much will depend on what tension you have in the strap, hence my point about the elevation drawings. You can also try and use the slab to provide the ballast.. but as you have only light anticrack (A142) reinforcement in the slab it becomes an issue in terms of technical design and justification. Happy researching. Well done again for sticking with it.

thats Getting better, gone from 10 out of 10 shite to 4 out of 10 ?? the way to picture it is imagine you have a big pointy stick, this stick is the cold, look at any areas that that stick can penetrate into your structure, then you have another pointy stick, this ones heat loss, look at where this can escape from the building. You can do loads more, but you need to be realistic, I think you said it was an extension. Tell us a bit more on the design. For example if you have a freezing cold stone cottage on 5 walls and this extension is just forming 1 wall it is pointless building this to passive spec if the rest of the house is air leaky and cold. As as opposed to an extension that will wrap around 75% of the house so is worth upgrading specs as it will improve the overall house.

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.

If you have any specific questions I might be able to help. There are a couple of online tools to estimate Greenfield runoff if they might help (one is called UKSUDS or something like that).

In some ways, it may be better having 2 heat pumps, one to do the house heating, the other just for DHW. A non inverter type for DHW would be a good option. Trouble is, we all want one device to do everything i.e I want my car to have the acceleration of a Tesla S, the economy of a Nissan Leaf, the handling and road holding of a 911, but the comfort of the original DS5. And the ability to do 1000 miles between fuel stops. It must also get me home when I am drunk (though I found the forging handing and 70 profile tyres on my old 309 helped here), and it must not cost any more than a Dacia base model. Needs to tow 2 tonnes as well, and be convertible into a camper, with bog and shower. Can't see even the best gas boiler doing all that.

Awful to read this. Wish I could offer some words of wisdom, but we're now contemplating our project so not as far ahead as you. Should we abort mission?! Seriously though, as others have said, you need to find a way to turn this around. The time of year and pandemic can't be helping either. Is it just the contractor and his work that's getting to you? If so, can't you address that somehow? Shame if its one entity that's ruining it for you.

When you fall of your horse in the depths of self build Hell you just have to dig deep, refocus and get back on top of things.... I am trying to do that right now after realising nobody was listening to my snivelings, Best of luck and as as big Jimbo says life is to short to be wallowing around In a bad place for to long.

Also consider egger protect / D4 joins, my floor was a padling pool at times but it seems to have survived.

@gc100 It can be done but not ideal, I suggest you give Paul Gribben a call at gribbenroofing 07881095628, he has been very helpful to me

Good points from George showing how you can make a small change that could have a big impact on the cost and buildability. George also mentions the debate about how a steel frame interacts with an existing (assume masonry walls for simplicity) structure. I'll have a stab at this.. to all, please feel free to comment. If you go back a bit, before the days of reasonably priced bifolds etc you often added a modest set of French Doors that maybe were a bit wider than say an existing window. Here, you still had plenty masonry each side to keep the building stable horizontally when the wind blew. Often you could just put in a concrete lintel or a modest steel beam just to hold up say; the wall on a second storey, floor, roof above.. you only had to deal with the vertical loads. But now we are putting in much larger openings and are left with much less brickwork to stop the building from moving from side to side. When you do this you can end up with masonry each side of a large opening that looks more like a column than a wall. One problem that starts to crop up is that a column is much easier to overturn (push over) than a longer length of wall. Also, you have a shorter length of mortar bed to resist the sideways (shear) forces and a few other bits and pieces. @George "I have tended to use the existing building where possible..." The key bit in Georges good comment for me is "..where possible." If the remaining walls won't do the job then often the SE is faced with a dilemma. Can you (SE) say.. well the remaining walls will take a bit of the sideways load and I''ll introduce a steel portal / box frame to take the rest and keep the steel sizes etc down or do I assume that the remaining walls don't make any contribution and design the steel frame to take all the load. Theoretically you can assume the former but a brick wall (and what is attaches to) behaves in a different way from the steel. Steel is more elastic than brick and it (steel) does not suddenly crack. An easy way of explaining this is to imagine that you connect together a plank of wood and the same size plank of steel with the strongest and stiffest glue you can imagine. Put your composite plank over a river and walk over it. (how you do that I don't know ) Both the steel and the wood will bend by the same amount as they are connected together. But steel is less elastic (stiffer) than the wood (called the modulus of elasticity, Youngs Modulus) so the steel will take more of the load than the wood as the wood is more "stretchy". This principle underpins the design of a flitch beam... it's very clever really but simple when you think about it. Suddenly the analysis becomes very complex and thus expensive design wise and even then the structural modelling of this is still only a model. Most SE's for practical purposes on small domestic applications (where the remaining walls are not enough) will design the steel to take all the vertical and sideways loads and limit the amount it moves by, so they don't crack the masonry excessively. This may seem like the SE's are being lazy.. but many know that while you could undertake a more refined analysis you will get tripped up when it comes to designing the connection between the steel and the masonry.. so back to square one. There is also the issue about how confident you are as to whether the builder will actually do what they are supposed to do. For small domestic stuff where supervision may be not as robust the simpler you make it the better, not just in terms of cost but also in terms of safety. To get the best value for this type of work you maybe want look at this in the round. Do you for example need to live in the house while work is going on, how hard / complex will it be to prop and so on. Will the size of the steel connections start to interfere with your window / thermal details ect. How much of a ceiling height can you live with vs downstand of a beam. I often find that the cost of the actual steel is not the main issue, it is the labour and complexity of the fixing of the steel to the existing building and the cost / labour involved in the temporary works. Sometimes you can skin the cat in another way where it's more economic to take the wall down above , take the load of the propping, put your steel in and rebuild the wall after... any takers?

If I'm reading this correctly then the middle of the room is the issue. What I've done previously, so as not to raise the floor level at the door, is to lift all the floorboards and get the room back to the exposed joists. I then fitted full lengths of 3x2" on the inside face of each joist, as parallel ( sister joist ) rails, set to the height of the lowest joist -18mm. A laser is your friend here for sure, but you can use a level and get good results ( like the good old days ). So say the lowest point is your doorway. You measure down 18mm from the top of the joist, and clamp a full length of 3x2" accordingly, level it as required making sure your start point stays exactly where it should be. Double check as this will dictate the rest of the floor level ! Screw that to the joist using 10x3's and put plenty in. Gluing will help too if you can work quickly enough. Cut 2 pieces of 3x2" narrow enough to fit between the joists. Clamp another full length of 3x2" opposite the first one and repeat with levelling. Sit the off cut of 3x2" from the first rail onto the next and then sit your 600mm level onto that. That'll allow you to make sure that each rail on each joist is level with the previous one. The purpose of the 3x2" off-cuts is to allow you to bridge over the joists when you get to the middle of the room, where you should find the joists higher than the rails plus 18mm ply. Repeat until you've railed the whole room, then get a piece of 18mm ply on its side sat on the rails, to use as a guide for trimming the joist tops down to suit with an electric plane. Once you've got level rails throughout, and they're 18mm lower than the lowest point in the room, you can then rip 18mm plywood down to i film inbetween the joists. Once that's done, ( plumbing and tray etc omitted at this point as it's a separate subject ), you can glue and screw 6mm plywood in full sheets over the top of the lot. Loads of PVA spread around with a floor layers comb ( 3mm notch ) and 1"x8's BZP screws at 120mm centres to fix the ply down nice and tight. By the time you tile, and posibly UTH ( under tile heating ) wire too, you'll not have pushed very far past the existing door level. You can plane the joist tops down after the plywood goes down, up to you. My 2 cents. PS if the joists are at all loose or excessive movement is detected, alter the 18mm dinension to 38mm and I fill with 3x2" on flat instead of the ply. You can park a car on that