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Phew it's all in, had to come in through the window. Here's some pics of what it looked like before it was moved. We just need to try and sort through it all and get it hacked in. Odd couple of scratches we may need to get magicman to sort and then a worktop but we have a dressing room/walk in wardrobe!

Use a slate knife, anything else will not leave a good finish. Never use a stihl saw or grinder either, those are for people that can't slate. It will go through them but it leaves a very poor finish and wont look good.

If you had been doing any sort of modelling last year then the amount of really hot days a year we get would have been maybe a week at most. After this summer where we broke all records it's something that has to be really considered. Some of my rooms, kitchen and sunroom especially, hit 28 degrees this July. I had my blinds down and all the windows open at night including 4 veluxs in the roof and it hardly dropped a degree overnight. Having the option to use an ashp in cooling mode with ufh would have been great but when we where designing the house have a week of weather over 30 degrees just wasn't even considered.

Hey all, We've just submitted our pre-app for our potential forever home in Northamptonshire. Outside the village boundaries and currently on my OH's family farm so having to go down the paragraph 79/80 route. Ideally ~300msq, 5 bed, 3/4 bath, open plan. I've found this forum super useful so far and fingers crossed we get approval!

Well, I knew it was there, but hadn’t really considered its potential use. Its currently uninsulsted and about 1700mm wide, 700mm tall (to underside of joists) and about 1600 long. It’s directly below where the UFH manifold will be going. Is there any way I can use this space for buffer tank / expansion vessels / HW cylinder? there will be/could also be access from the side (the right hand side in the pic which is just stud/plasterboard) there will be no access from the top once the floor is down. pic below because I know you all love a good pic!!

Vaillant top of the range controller is the "sensoCOMFORT" (VRC720). There is a wired version and a wireless version. The wireless version allow for outside temperature sensor, main control panel and remote thermostats to located more freely. For remote control from Vaillant app, or for integration via EEBus, you need to also add the sensoNet unit. The sensoHOME is a slimmed down version of the sensoCOMFORT which has the core functionality, but doesn't support as many heating circuits or weather compensation with more than one circuit etc. If you want to ensure you get best efficiencies out of the system, I'd recommend you use a Vaillant wiring center (e.g. VR71) which allows you to setup mixed circuits meaning Vailant can use a configured heating curves and weather compensation to automatically adjust the flow temperature to optimize efficiency. You can play with the controllers here: https://simulator.vaillant.com/vrt380/gb/#/setup https://simulator.vaillant.com/vrc720/gb/#/setup

@John Keith where abouts are you that you should be worried about an ASHP not liking the cold? If mine works okay in a "sheltered Highland Glen" with a cold winter climate, I am sure they will work anywhere in the UK.

The erratic pressure is probably a sign of the expansion vessel bladder having failed or needs pumping up. When was the last time a plumber serviced the system including checking the expansion vessel? It seems you are choosing the wrong reason to replace a boiler that probably has a simple fix?

Nice idea but unfortunately The heat pump would move far too much air far too quickly through your poly-carbonate box to allow for any noticeable gain in intake temperature. A 10kw heat pump can move up 5000m3 air per hour through the heat exchanger. Thats about equilivant to an average houses volume every 4 minutes. Now if you had an industrial glass house handy it might work. However in that case you'd be better off putting the house inside!

Biggest problem with calling round is that the people you speak to (sales / customer service) don’t really have a clue about 3-ph smart meter availability. Some will promise the earth but then months later still can’t deliver (as was our experience with Octopus). I think it’s a bit of a gamble in reality. We ended up switchIng to SSE as they were able to quickly install a 3-ph meter albeit not a smart one. We needed this so the electrician could complete his testing and issue the documentation for sign-off. When I feel up to it I’ll switch again to someone who can install a 3-ph smart meter. Should be straightforward, just tell them you want a single phase meter installed on your 3-ph supply. I had a single phase smart meter installed initially on our 3-ph supply. However if you are planning to use the 3 phases later, I would start the process of getting a 3-phase meter now as you can always just use a single phase from the 3-phase meter.

Looking good mate - like the idea of the island though not sure what it would be used for. Might see if I can do something similar although time is running out for changes....

The angle grinder cut edges on my roof are hidden as they are either under the ridge tile or under the slate gable edge trim, I also used slate and 1/2 so that the alternative row ends had a larger slate as I didn’t want the wee 1/2 cut slates. Scottish roof so it was nailed directly onto sarking boards with a breathable membrane.

The void was about 1.5m deep until the in-laws came to stay. welcome to the hotel California….

I use one of these (well similar anyway) they leave a Proper edge (you cut the tile from the back) and leaves a ragged edge like they come with. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114928777104?hash=item1ac249f790:g:6KMAAOSwgZJf-zuR Yes an angle grinder is good but leaves a “cut” edge. When I had my roof done they used hooks and not nails, I was not sure about this but at least you can replace a slate whereas when nailed it’s very difficult. Try watching this….. I would not use nails again ?

I wouldn't enquire so closely. There is still space...

I have been lurking in this forum for some time, and I have to say, it has been a really useful source of information and advice. I am grateful to @Jeremy Harris , @Nickfromwales, @joe90 and many more for their many informative posts on ASHP, UFH, insulated slabs and so much more. Our plan is to build a masonry cavity two-storey passive house on a KORE insulated slab. Plans are approved, construction starting hopefully in the spring. The heating system will be ASHP to buffer tank to single zone UFH downstairs (to the horror of some of my paid professionals) with some electric towel rails upstairs (more tutting from the M and E corner). I'm keen to fit external blinds (architect not quite so keen) on the South facing glass but need to research this some more and decide pretty quickly. Warema? Internorm? Gaulhofer? KNX will ideally be controlling the ASHP and MVHR as well as lower the blinds and cooling the slab when the sun is out. Which after this summer looks like it could happen more often than one day a year, even in Northern Ireland. The house will be connected to 3-phase power, with two banks of solar on the roof. WIth divertor(s) to EV charging and immersion heater, this is way beyond my level of knowledged so hopefully my M and E guys can spec this all out to work nicely and balance the phases etc. Generally speaking I have no idea what I'm doing so expect to see lots of stupid questions from me in the forums in the coming months!

Do you want Smart meter? If so you need a supplier that has SMETS2 polyphase meter which are very hard to come by. I think some had success with Octopus recently? You'll need to call around and find out Smart meter is useful if you will have solar PV with 3 phase inverter, or EV charger and ever want to use a dynamic tariff. No you shouldn't. It will just take more time... (both calling around to get one, and likely for them to get around to installing it) Yes this should be possible. Happens all the time e.g. when large houses are split into flats. Caveat: not sure how this interplays with the MPAN (is that issued specifically for the 3 phases as a whole?)

I presume that you are Austrian......with a cellar? ?

When I did mine, I used a 9” angle grinder with a diamond disk, hot knife through butter.

The ACD figures for linear thermal bridges are worst case so would use dense block inner leaf at the floor/wall junction so the 'mistake' is covered in the energy assessment. The use of aircrete would improve things slightly.

Increasing insulation is always cost effective but it depends over what time period. If you plan on moving house in the first 10 years its likely to never return your investment improving from BRegs. From playing with PHPP the floor was the slowest for me to return the investment. Passivhaus standard doesn't specify any construction details rather that the psi value at every junction be Or That the (total internal surface area heat loss+thermal bridges) is less than the (total external surface area heat loss) Our house isn't certified so maybe someone with more knowledge could help more. Internal insulation backed plasterboard is a common detail in Ireland on our new builds over the entire wall area. However is expensive, wasteful of materials, and very difficult to get a satisfactory airtightness result.

On the 100+ showers I have fitted I never used a seal like that. I always sealed the tray to the wall with a quality sealant (785), then tiled down to about 2mm off the top of the tray, grouted down to the bottom of the tile leaving the 2mm gap, and then sealed the 2mm gap with no problems.

Always pir upstand for me

It doesn’t expand or contract - it is an utter myth ..!!! The 20-30°C variation in the temperature on a 7m slab is hardly measurable. The reason you can get away with 3mm foam is it stops bonding the concrete /screed to the concrete blocks and that causes stress cracks elsewhere.

I calculated this when I did ours and I came to the conclusion it was worth it. About 0.04(W/mK) improvement in the thermal bridge. For example on a 0 deg day with 50m perimeter it would be delta t 20deg* 50m *0.04 about or 40w on our heating load. However our heating load is only about 1400w so it was a 3% improvement. Ours is constructed to passive standard. If we had built to the building regs it would still be 40w but only about 0.07% improvement or 7 parts per 1000 improvement. Practically nothing. We used a PIR upstand. No issues. We wet plastered inside (20mm) and have a 20mm skirting board so any more than a 40mm perimeter strip would have been an issue for carpets or exposed concrete. Tiles or timber no issue.

Our Slater's only use a Stihl saw for cutting slates. For trimming corners etc they use snips.

Morning John . . . Have a look at this channel . Helped me no end

That may cause issues - 50mm will protrude into the room from below the board / skim / skirt so will make it problematic for gripper rods etc. If you want to improve the thermal performance use PIR. The thermal losses even doubled are tiny, and unless you’re building Passiv standards you won’t notice.

Yep seen it used / specified on commercial jobs and it does work - unlike @dnb I am a pyromaniac and we tried it on some offcuts with a blowtorch !! Quickest way of covering is to use a sprayer but allow for overspray etc and mask up windows etc if you’re applying it to a finished building. Has been discussed before

I assume this is a typical Scottish timber frame build? The frame would have gone up first, timber around the window opening on the outside forming the cavity closer, window fixed to that timber and then the outer brick or block built up to the window. So the window will be a little larger than the opening in the brick. Typical replacement window company would bodge that by making the window smaller and filling any gaps with foam and stick on bits of trim. If you want to get back to original, i.e. window in original place and original size you need to do it from the inside, so strip off the plasterboard from the ingo take old window out, fit new window with straps that fix to the window frame and then the timber frame around the opening, replace plasterboard and decorate.

I fitted my windows to check reveals with angled internal cavity closure. Stainless brackets fix window to outer leaf with expanding foam tape between to make airtight. Window sat on cill protruding into the cavity a little. I made timber pieces screwed to window sides and top to screw plasterboard reveal closure too. Expanding foam over brick/window joint. Plasterboard screwed to window/timber and plasterboard adhesive to inner blockwork.

Steel H frame between the roof lights and then build the remainder in with timber. You won’t get that in engineered joists at a 6m span. Your issue will be one of ceiling depth - a quick fag packet would indicate you need a 305x127 section that would be near 500mm deep when you’ve created a warm roof - add in your upstands for the roof lights and it wil be very thick. Cold bridging through the steels will be a problem so you will need to either use a cold roof construction - and ventilate it - with at least 30mm of PIR on the ceiling below the steels or work out how to lose the insulation height in fascias etc. as you’ll need a lot of insulation to reach a reasonable uValue due to the area of glazing.

Sounds like a rough ride, but you’re in the right place for advice. Loads of very helpful folks in here! +3 on the basement front. I’m still in the design phase of my project, but my architect is already trying to usher me toward an above ground garage block as he knows how pricey basement builds can be. If cost is a big concern, I’d scratch that off and give yourself some room to breathe.

Not sure what to say, very unusual to be stuck for words. Anyway, I’m Mark. I live in Cornwall and after a recent life changing event I decided to follow the dream (well mine at least) and create an off grid property and workshop to live my life and run my small business (I’m an electrical/mechanical maintenance engineer), to be honest I was toying with the idea of buying a canal boat and running away slowly but I’m a bit big for boats and I’m a hoarder of old machinery and electrical equipment. So this tied in with a good friend of mine sending me a text along the lines of “do you want to buy a bunker”, I’ve been involved with bunkers for almost 40 years so I know a thing or two about them and I went to have a look. Looking at it, meeting the farmer who wanted rid of it was another life changing event and so here I sit in a concrete room with my feet up drinking tea and writing this intro. It’s been quite a journey and there is much further to go so I thought rather than keep making it up as I go along I’d be better joining this forum. All I can say is the off grid bit works well (I don’t slum it) and I have no idea what the weather is doing outside. Cheers

I'd close the cavity with PIR/ compacfoam then use straightish brackets onto the edge of the inner leaf.

Back of envelope suggests that the junction performance will leak around twice as much heat with concrete blocks vs aircrete assuming a 25mm EPS upstand. Depending on the perimieter vs area, this might be significant for your performance goals. It was for mine.

Leave them.. and just make sure you use 25mm of EPS around the screed and you’ll be fine.

Is there an insulation upstand around the screed?

In almost all cases for a domestic dwelling (not flats which often share a common stack) it is a BC requirement. Here is some info which I hope helps BH members. In Scotland for example the regs point you to BS EN 12056 part 2 which is to do with drainage inside buildings. Comply with this code and you are well on your way to complying with the regs. There used to be great stuff and diagrams in the regs to help self builders /renovators but these are getting progressivly stripped out. Here are a few thoughs / observations. If you get a feel for the principles then you can adapt to suit your needs. Often you see a drain pipe poking out the roof..with a grill on top to prevent birds nesting and so on.. the top of the main stack. This open vent serves two purposes. One is to prevent excessive suction building up in the main drain line serving your house the other is to prevent over pressure in the line which will blow the traps.. and worse. Pressure can build up in a main drain line; if the wind is blowing the wrong way down stream (other folk doing daft things like facing a vent stack into the wind), if you have a blockage and a build up of gas (could be a gas leak too and the gas migrates into the drain! nice to vent outside than into your house) down stream if say your neighbour has been putting nappies down the drain. They get the drain folk in and they put a pressure washer down the pipe.. I'll leave the rest of the description for now as to much information can be uncomfortable. Commonly though it's suction that causes the issue. There are a number of ways you can design a drainage system. Some work on what we call "full bore flow" this is more common in the EU except for some roof drainage systems in the UK... you often see these full bore roof systems described as "syphonic systems" in the UK, some toilets work this way but just within the "bowl". Mainly though in the UK we design the drains in our houses (system iii) to not run full bore and thus they don't generate this true syphonic effect. But they do still generate some negative /positive pressure. When you pull the plug on the bath the water flows and pretty much fills the pipe. As the water moves down the pipe it compresses the air in front of it. If you don't relieve this compression it can blow the traps on say a sink in another room and thus fumes will enter that room. Some air passes over the top of the water in the pipe as it is not running full bore but often not enough. Commonly a sink trap has a shallow seal of water so we are only taking about a small amount of pressure, much less than say a car tyre or you blowing up a balloon. Once the bath is nearly empty if the pipe run is long then you have this body of water still moving down the pipe and this creates a suction effect behind it which keeps drawing water. This "residual suction" can be enough to stop the bath trap from filling properly at the end of the drain cycle and not creating a proper water seal. This means that when you say next flush the toilet the smells come out the bath trap rather than venting out through the stack. If the seal is completely broken (the trap is not filled enough) then you invite "lingering" odours from your own house and that of your neighbours unless you have your own private sewage system, in which case it's you own personal "gas". One way we get around this is to fit an air admittance valve on branch lines, say on a long run to a kitchen sink or ensuite bathroom. This works a bit like a snorkle in reverse. It is sensitive enough to let air in but not pressure (smells) out. This allows the trap to fill properly from say the last bit of water in the bath and create a seal. Now one problem arises with AAV's is that the regs require them to be set above the level of the spill over point. For example in a bathroom the idea is that the home owner will see the sink spilling over if they have a blockage rather than the AAV leaking and causing hidden damage. Now that all makes common sense. Some of the building regs are really good! But this does not fit well with modern bathroom and kitchen design as no one seems to want a "box in the corner" of their new sleek vanity unit or kitchen work top. I mentioned adapting previously. Sometimes you can implement an old solution that was commonly found in tenement flats. This is called a "loop vent". Here you create a circuit of pipe in a loop. The top part of the loop does not carry water, it just lets air circulate. Have a look on the internet for loop vent design.. kitchen designers with island units have picked up on this, reinvented the wheel and are punting this as some kind of great new invention. Ashthekid.. hope this give you and BH folk some background info. Oh, and there have been a few other posts on BH about pipe gradients etc...

I'm all for reinventing the wheel believe me but I did wonder why you didn't go for plastic eaves trays in the first place. If you read the instructions on some of the modern, breathable felts it specifically says about fitting 1/4" thick or so strips along the line of the trusses so the subsequent battens sit up off the felt and allow free drainage.

If you have your foundations and guttering/facia on your land then you will end up with a small gap anyway (which is what I would do). Best to just talk to your neighbours and discuss.

On this last point from Donegalsd. We have the budget, without a mortgage, to build something far larger more grand more bespoke but decided early on not to do this because we want the freedom to enjoy our 50s and 60s while we are fit and able. Instead we are going with a kit house from a supplier. We’ve been to see a few of them and we love them. There’s plenty of scope within their designs to make it your own and we’ve made quite a few changes to the basic design. What we will do is spec up the interior more. We will end up with a beautiful house in a beautiful plot for a reasonable cost without going all Grand Design about it.

I think that a tax on gas and heating oil could be used to persuade people, but you may need to subsidise electric with the proceeds.

This may not be what you want to hear, but you want cheap to build, then ditch the basement. The basement will cost more to build per square metre than the above ground storeys.

Welcome. You are among friends here: unqualified but interested and bearing the scars of a good few years' building experience between us. Yes, you are where you are. I'd venture to say that every single person posting (rather than lurking) knows exactly what you mean. Your post begs many questions. Help us with a bit more detail. Can you post the plans, and a site plan please? Can you give us more of an idea of what you mean by '... left with a hole in the ground.....' (photos) Exactly where are you in the Planning Permssion cycle ? '... get through planning as speedily as possible....' Please tell us you haven't started building without Planning Permission. As written , it sounds as if you may have (temporary accomodation... living on site ... hole in the ground... ) Now's the time for a calm, detailed look at the situation. We'll help you do that. Ian

...so now speaking from experience.... Plan A was to use the Illbruck TP600 product mostly in the 8 to 15mm size (and 20mm width). I bought 19 rolls ?. Stored it for at least 24 hours in the fridge, then took one roll at a time to the window in a cool bag. Ambient temperature was 15 to 20 deg C. The experience was really poor - despite the cooling, the product expended so rapidly I could not get decent lengths in correctly. As I cut off a length from the roll, I applied a clip and put the remainder back in the cool bag. I ended up wasting a significant portion of each roll. In the end I used it only for gaps that were 10mm+ and uniform gaps at that. I purchased more of the Pro Clima CONTEGA FIDEN EXO product, which expended much more slowly - giving time to get the product into the gap effectively and neatly. When fully expanded, the Pro Clima CONTEGA FIDEN EXO product has a darker appearance that the TP600 and if anything feels to be more impregnated. A note on gap sizes: Our gaps were designed to 12mm for most windows (with wider cill gaps in some cases). In practice the gaps tended to be slightly smaller as the render could be slightly proud of the timber frame opening, especially where the render overlapped with breather membrane in the window reveal as pic... So basically the gap to seal could be as low as 6mm in practice and in some sections even narrower. With the Pro Clima CONTEGA FIDEN EXO product I bought in a wider variety of sizes: 7 to 12mm, 5 to 10mm, 3 to 6mm (and 2 to 3mm but did not use). A note in Velfac V200E windows - I should start by saying I'm very happy with the quality of the windows. One challenge though when applying compriband is it needs to be pushed some way into the gap - because there is a void behind the outer aluminium profile and the wooden window frame behind it (see pic) and the compriband needs to adhere to the wooden frame. This is especially challenging when the actual gap is less than the 12mm designed.

No Topo here. I did my own surveys with laser level (at dusk) and a long tape measure to map important features like site levels at each corner of the house, road levels at spot points etc. Then did some basic maths to work out volume of excavated soil and predict final site levels as I used the excavated soil to build up the site low points. It all worked out well.

The Topo survey will also pick up the boundaries and cover the road outside the site. This is useful to work out sightlines for entrances if needed. It's several years since I worked on a project where we didn't get a Topo survey done. It will make the architects life so much easier and a lot more accurate. I'd get it done. If something happens onsite they can claim it's not their fault as they didn't get the survey they requested. The project I'm working on now is a large extension to an existing educational building. The surveys we've done include Topo, 3D building survey, utility survey, aspestos survey, structural timber defects survey and tree survey. That would be fairly standard for the buildings I work on. On one of the last projects we did a bird SHlT survey as the amount of birds in the roof created a high level of ammonia which was a health hazard. Bat surveys, environmental and invasive species surveys are also common. Getting off lightly if you only need the Topo

Very nice. Sounds as we are in similar situations. Off grid is a lot easier these days (I lived off grid in a house in 1993 and that was very generator based) and the technology is getting cheaper. I have, what an estate agent would call, “distant sea views” which in Cornwall can vanish most days. The view from my garden.

What a bloody fantastic project ! all power to you man, I am very envious!!!! I live on an island on the west coast of Scotland at the end of a non pubic road to absolutely nowhere with the nearest neighbour about a mile away, feels remote at the best of times. Not off grid as I have electric supply and phone line (which I dug in Myself by hand for a Mile....) but beyond that I might as well be of grid - no shops - no pub - nothing ! I intend to work towards less reliance on the grid as the years go by. The pic is of the view from the top of my garden. Best of luck with the renovations and look forward to seeing how you tackle things.