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So, this heat pump thingy... One of the advantages of getting all the kit up and running is being able to monitor and if necessary reconsider things. And so after a couple of weeks running we came to the conclusion that the two bigger upstairs bedrooms- both North facing- did need radiators after all. Pipes were already laid in so a quick trip to Screwys for a pair of 600x1200 double convectors and... done. I raised the flow temperature from the ASHP to get meaningful heat and paradoxically this has improved economy. I'll probably need to explain that bit. So I'm trying to be all things to all men without using any fancy control strategies. Flow from the heatpump passes through the TS at all times. But when there are no demands the TS coil is gated/bypassed, to stem any convective losses. Return from the TS is available to both the UFH and rad manifolds. If neither of them demand, an autobypass ensures there's still flow. All the pumps stats and zone valves are on a separate RCBO to the ASHP so that in emergency/power outage the heating system can run off the TS- heated by the boiler stove. The ASHP controls on DHW tank temp, and also on buffer/ return temp. It has programmable hysteresis and overshoot for each. The upside of this and fitting the rads? Flow from the ASHP is naturally higher than return so more energy into the bottom of the TS. The ASHP setpoint is 32c (return) but the flow could be up to about 40c to get it there. Hence the TS now has enough energy in it to impart heat to the house. Nice. And the extra heat in the two upstairs beds means no cool air falling into the hall. Even nicer. TLDR: That extra energy means that the TS actually buffers, so the HP is running less and longer. Whole house is at an indicated 19c but the slab heat makes it feel much warmer. Almost too warm already... and that's at a consistent 10kWh/overcast day and cool night. Clear sun is already getting the top of the tank up to 75-85c on the diverter and on days like the the ASHP consumption is down at around 5kWh. And I've finally got the monitoring software set up for the PV. Yay! Took a while but we got there...

Build Vs buy: for us it was all about location. We could get a house the quality we wanted, OR in the location we wanted, but odds of finding both together vanishing close to zero (and the cost would be incredible). Plus we felt build (deep renovation) allows really meeting our specific needs like no purchase would Finally Pulling the trigger: mostly because after 2 years we were tired of talking about it and wanted to move on with our lives. At that point We'd realized a full rebuild would be about the same price but even better quality/choice, but couldn't face another 2 years to reset and replan so pushed us to go on. Still very happy we did, although with retrospect of course the COVID delay meant it went slower than we wanted after all that. Things that can go wrong. For me the underestimation was the energy it requires. Nervous energy. After 14 month build, keeping tabs on contractors and trades (or lack of) almost everyday, my nerves are shot. The financial side was kept in pretty good shape throughout really, but constant feeling of predicting what might go wrong next and putting stuff right when it does is unbelievably tiring. No idea how I could have insured or hedged against this, except quit the day job. (without a doubt the only way I could do a build again is if it was my sole full time focus)

Here you go mate. As you can see from the box they came from Manthorpe - the merch will be able to source them for you. The sudden summer makes life hard on site when it comes out of nowhere btw!

First house we decided to build as we reckoned we could build something twice the size of anything we could buy for the same money, most things went well with it but it did give an understanding of what could go wrong, mostly with tradesmen, never ever wished we hadn’t done it. second house had many problems, again mostly with tradesmen but also with money, we built a far bigger house than we could really afford and at times thought we’d never afford to finish it but we did after using every penny we could get a hold of. this house was supposed to be perfect as we thought we’d experienced everything we possibly could, unfortunately not and we faced lots of challenges with things we’d never given a thought to but we worked through them all and gained a whole lot more experience. would never wish we hadn’t built any of them, the original £40k we spent in 1992 has now got us into a house worth at least ten times that which wouldn’t have happened if we’d bought an off the peg house way back then for the same amount of money. I have loved everything I have learned in the last 30 years and would start another tomorrow if the right plot came up!

Yes. I used some on a freestanding wall that was prone to getting saturated. It has been very efffective. I also intend to use it on a new build South facing brick flank wall on first and second floors.

I'm not too fussed now, although the pigeons have bombed it, leaving holes to fill later. Its warm and sunny here so I've just watered it and pulled over a plastic sheet thats almost as big as the slab, will take it off tonight.

Ask them to suggest who that "someone" should be. Tell them that you know nothing about it and are relying on their knowledge, help and advice.

Not what I would be using. You want something solvent based that goes off quick so it bonds and doesn’t come off. CT1 isn’t the answer there.

And more suitable as you only need a construction adhesive here. No moisture or sealing, no real need for a hybrid polymer adhesive. Why do you think you should need CT1..?

Don’t use CT1, just use solvent based no nails type adhesive at £1.50 a tube if you are doing it onto OSB.

Yes the preparation makes the difference. When I lived in shropshire they block paved the bus station and over the 10 years I was there it still looked flat after all those busses.

As @Declan52 says, its all about the base to prevent wheel loads creating ruts. Dont forget to use a Geotextile - terram etc to prevent the mud coming back up

It's all in the base. To ensure it's not going to sink you need a lot of very well compacted hardcore under the drive. You could also use a sand cement screed for under the bricks.For a drive your edges need concreted in to stop it spreading out.

I think this is just for the piling mat, nothing to do with the buildings. This is just temporary works to support the rig, concrete lorries etc. I would bat this back to the piling contractor as the OP is not in a position to take design responsibility for this. You don't want the rig falling over and finding it is down to you.

Here’s our bungalow conversion no increase in footprint (we took down the conservatory), same foundations using timber frame above, we still destroyed a lot of it. Hardly groundbreaking design but we are happy. The planners are conservative round here & even outside a conservation area they tried to get us to use ugly brick slips (fortunately the NMA worked). By all means it’s not perfect probably would of only got that if we’d have rebuilt & done everything ourselves and spent ALOT more time thinking everything through but ok for a first go. Timeframes worked for us this route & we lucked out when we accidentally bought something known as an empty property so wasn’t an obvious route for rebuild on VAT. The footprint is 110sqm so was an expensive foundation to replace round here. FYI these photos are 1 year apart before we’d got planning or even spoken to builders.

I believe there are also various kinds of mat products that you can lay down on top.

LPA’s do vary on their ‘Do not scale...’ policy. One of my LPA’s state... “All plans must be given a drawing reference number and ‘do not scale’ disclaimers need to be removed from all plans.” I get around this by having the following note... ”Do not scale from this drawing, except for Planning purposes.”

Now that, that takes guts. Welcome

@DamonHD, Thanks for the link; the site needs a proper review. IMO some form of demand-side adaptive use is a good tool to help get us towards a zero carbon goal, and ToU pricing is one good mechanism to implement this. AFAIK, the Octopus Agile tariff is the first such UK offering available to consumers. I also believe that members of this site -- those with the drive to self-build -- will tend to be early adopters of ToU services. This particular thread is branching into various facets, because of the various usecases that might apply here, and the sweet spot is going to be different depending on individual circumstances and abilities. For example in my case, my annual energy bill is about half of my annual council tax bill and my current energy solution doesn't need third party maintenance or material related consumables , so another 30% savings, say, would be a very small change to our overall outgoings. So to the usecases: Many here will have PV and some Tesla PowerWall-style storage. Maybe more so in the future the "powerwall" will be a flatpack with a wheel at each corner and only plugged in when not taking the occupants out and around ? These are capital intensive and complex systems, and merit a separate thread / discussion, I think. At the other extreme, many will find the challenges of adaptive demand to match ToU in the "just too hard" category. Many will be comfortable with adopting essentially static time-of-day strategies that can be implemented with simple timers etc. That's what we do to make best use of our current E7 tariff: Most of CH, all of our DHW, our washing machine and dishwasher use E7 cheap rate electricity, and this drops our energy bill by ~30% compared to an equivalent single rate tariff. Where things start to get really complicated is when you wish to adapt your household demand truly dynamically to daily ToU pricing, and one option here seems to be the way OVO is going and to use a third-party (e.g. energy provider) AI-based service and allow it to schedule your devices and internal services through technologies such as Alexa. This will be the simplest option for many consumers but this one gives me the willies, personally, because of the security, privacy and 3rd-party continuity risks. Another alternative is to have a largely independent system within the household the executes control locally and only depends on open (therefore easily replaceable) and usually free external services, but with all of the smarts running on a computer within the household. I am also IT literate and a strong programmer, so this is the option that I am most comfortable with, and one that I wish to promote and to support /help any other members that are thinking of going this route, but again perhaps the details merit a separate thread / discussion. What I will say here is that there is now a bunch of cheap and incredibly powerful options (e.g. RPi, Home Assistant, ZigBee / ZWave and loads of devices that employ these, REST-base webservces) that make this very feasibly for anyone with some IT literacy and very basic programming skills to go this route. Perhaps others can expand on cases that I have missed.

Thanks very much everyone. One thing is very clear, the chances of us having achieved this without buildhub.org.uk is close to zero. If we had tried on our own, our bank balance would have been even emptier. There's something very empowering about knowing that, sometimes within minutes, you can have informed opinions delivered straight to your laptop. When the soft and smelly hit the fan we were immediately supported with sensible advice and good wishes, as well as reassuring stories of similar calamity. A virtual group we may be. But the support experienced is very real. Very personal. And very C19 - safe. Thanks everyone.

They just don’t understand us ?

42 tubes of it

Just checked and it seems the £15k quote was from Crittall.

Problem solved