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Hi and welcome to the forum. From what you’re saying here, and above, you may already have the horse and the cart the wrong way ‘round MVHR cannot be ‘on the table’ if the intention is to go for air tightness that is excellent. You’ll choke on your own fumes without MVHR, for one, plus to be “green” or “eco” ( terms often used very loosely, and more often with a complete lack of understanding of what that is supposed to deliver to you in this reasonably unique build ) you will 100% need to be actively recovering waste heat for re-introduction through the MVHR system! Building control will demand your as built air tightness ( ventilation / infiltration ) results to be sure you have adequate numbers of air changes per hour. If all the above is known, how do you propose to meet those requirements? Make the house AT and then fit loads of trickle vents? ?. All these questions need firm and robust answers BEFORE pressing ANY more buttons. I’m currently providing M&E for such a dwelling ( pool etc ) and the design work was enormous. The pool hall will need its own envelope as the dehumidification and heat recovery system typically runs at a slight negative pressure to preserve the build fabric, therefore it should not be able to ‘share’ the air volume of the residential section of the dwelling. Forget recovering heat from the pool hall, as every ounce of that will be absolutely needed to maintain the temps in the pool hall!! How big is the pool? Is it a pre-fab that you are “dressing” into the house Lots and lots of things here will impact on the others, so measure twice cut once ?

Hi guys, newbie here. Be great to touch base with like minded people, potentially picking your brains for and pros/cons you may have encountered on your building journey. We are just about to start an eco build, quite a large build with a pool. I work for a construction/civils company and have access to all plant etc, but never done a selfbuild, nor tried to claim back the VAT. So, any advice as to whom I should be in contact with, avoid etc would be more than welcome. Likewise, if I can off any advice, especially gong into the ground, I certainly will. Have a great weekend too

They basically want to avoid a situation where you have a compartment that can fill with gas, mix with air, and go ka-boom. You cannot run a gas pipe up a wall which is random dot n dabbed, but you can do that if the gas pipe is fully encapsulated in the dab from floor to ceiling. The point being, any puncture ( nail / screw / drill ) would only result in gas being discharged into the habitable space where it is assumed the inhabitants would smell it and realise there was a leak. For any other spaces or compartments where your nose would not be sniffing about, it's no-can-do. I'd argue that pouring grout ( self levelling compound etc ) down that 100mm duct after pulling the Trac pipe through would satisfy that requirement, but then they'd ask you to prove that every inch of the pipe had been successfully encapsulated. Bit tricky that one. I'd check though, as the void is ventilated so it's a bone of contention.

Some architects do yes. Our first one was insistent on having the big windows facing south because that's the convention and it's also the side people arrive at. Problem is that it's also looking across the field to the farmers industrial barns. He had only a few small windows looking at the view which was what we bought the plot for. We just could not make him understand that we wanted to sit looking out across this in the evening. Second architect was an entirely different experience.

Search tension rod - have had pricing from these before https://www.brooksforgings.co.uk/products/tension-system-components

Your's is a world away from the canning on Grand Designs.

That was tongue in cheek about the pool, if you want it then fine. The pool brings it's own issues with humidity, but there must be a way to recycle excess heat from the pool room to help heat the rest of the house? Research Ground source heat pumps before you commit. Most find the extra cost of the ground pipes makes it way more expensive than an air source heat pump and the small extra efficiency will never repay the extra capital cost. Also an ASHP will do cooling as well so no need for a separate air conditioning system.

Not convinced it'll settle and level out enough over time to be markedly better than it looked in the programme. I appreciate the issues are many in "why" it happens, and also, that even the best installers cant necessarily say what (if any) single or combined reasons have lead to the effect on a specific job. My thinking was more that, on spending £500k on a cladding job, I'd be disappointed to see it as widespread and obvious across the entire structure. I'd have imagined the team behind the designing and installation could have considered a solution that reduced / removed the potential of such an unpleasant outcome.

At that size of build and budget you would have thought the gym would have had it's own changing room and shower.

Yes but what was an architect doing putting the shower so far away from the gym??? HE is supposed to be the expert ?‍♂️.

I thought externally it looked an absolute jumbled mess. Internally, attractive enough in places, and stylishly finished here and there too, but still somehow lacking on a £2.5M house. When our Kev was looking at plans and asked where the nearest shower was in relation to the gym, and got the reply of "there" which was about 50 metres away, I actually laughed out loud like I was watching a comedy routine. It seemed obvious the owners had not had enough input or discussion with the architect on "how" they wanted to live in the place, which I found utterly astonishing. As others have noted, £120K on the kitchen was a complete joke. Swanky, unnecessary overpriced shite. Half that spend could have done an outstanding job I'm sure. Also, the canning on the zinc was pretty bad. I'd not have been pleased if I'd aimed £500K at it for it to end up looking like that. A really good company and skilled people should surely have been able to come up with a plan or design to minimise that. Not one for me at all.

What a magnificent scene

So its a "eco-just-in-the-name-build" ? . Welcome to the forum. It is the most helpfull source of information out there. The great thing about it is, that each can find their own type of "mentor" to listen too , some like it more technical - others, like me, are illiterate idiots and need everything explained with pictures or videos... Both can be found here.

In July also the I-Beams for the timber frame and the OSB (or should i call it GOLD - prices went through the roof since i first had some quotes)arrived. https://tintabernacle.blogspot.com/2021/09/1-house-on-1-lorry.html

After the Transport of the Materials was done , It only needed the beams spreading, bit of insulation in between and above , Underfloor heating in and a bit of a plinths wall built around the whole thing... and done. How long can this take - maybe 4-5weeks ? https://tintabernacle.blogspot.com/2021/09/plinths-wall-garden-wall-bricklaying_3.html

It’s scratching that you have to be careful off as this can lead to leaks around the rubber O rings.

The first one was refused because... Q.1 Development is not permitted by Class Q if— (f)development under Class A(a) or Class B(a) of Part 6 of this Schedule (agricultural buildings and operations) has been carried out on the established agricultural unit— (i)since 20th March 2013; or (ii)where development under Class Q begins after 20th March 2023, during the period which is 10 years before the date development under Class Q begins; The second one was refused because the Council were not convinced that the subsequent splitting off of the Barn from the original Agricultural Unit that had done the Class A(a) or Class B(a) development after 20.03.2013, into a separate Agricultural Unit, had actually happened. So, in short, no barns/sheds that are part of Lower Barn Farm Agricultural unit will qualify for Change of Use to Resi, under Class Q PD, until 10 years after the date that Class A(a) or Class B(a) development was completed. Doh! Your Consultant was correct. Class Q is off the table. Edited to add: Lower Barn Farm appear to have built a Hay and Straw barn and an Implement shed, untillising Class A(a) or Class B(a) Agricultural PD between 2014 and 2016. Since this is after 20.03.2013, it starts the 10 year clock running before Class Q can be used on the Agricultural Unit.

A cold-water pool is the key to health and happiness. Yep, its a shock to the system, but it's addictive. Cheaper too.

Unless even poorly covered ( with a building of sorts ) then the expense will be eye-watering to keep this warm, forget hot. Ouch. My advice would be about 15kW of solar thermal dedicated to just this, with excess diverted into the domestic hot water ( DHW ) cylinder, so at least it’ll have the chill off it for most of the year. Heating during the colder parts of the year would need a direct ‘pool’ ASHP. Did I say ouch?

Have you had an outdoor pool before? Never, ever again for me. Although, mine was a '90's built Penguin pool, with an uninsulated concrete tub. So, on top of the time it took keeping it looking OK, the cost to heat was ridiculous.

Architects, in my opinion, only really care about the visual impact on the street scene. That comes first and they fit everything else into it. Our architect placed our bungalow, on a plot with no restrictions to it, so that the rooms all faced North and East while the hallway windows faced South and West! He was more concerned with kerb appeal than giving us heat and light and views from our habitation spaces. When we pointed this out he said "oh you could turn it around but it would mean driving up to the rear of the house rather than the front". So? This goes for so many people that they design and build a home to impress other people.

That works out as £6.50/m of wall uplift to timber plus resilient channel at around £6/m of wall.

If you can drill a hole through, what about Wedi Fundo Primo, veritical drain? https://www.wedi.de/en/products/building-systems/floor-level-showers/fundo-primo/#group1-15

Should still be OK as you only need 150mm x 150mm x 40mm. Can you ask the slab guys designer if it is OK?

Welcome. sounds like a great project. please share photos, drawings, designs etc. we love that sort of stuff. ? I'm going through this exact thing at the moment. quotes for AC are coming in at between £2k - £3.5k per room! so I've been reading a lot about Fan Coils on here and I know that @joth is going through some DIY experimentation with his at the moment and I am waiting with excited anticipation to hear about his results! I also echo the above comments about taking a step back for a short while to decide what it is exactly you want and to investigate/design the MVHR now and consider insulated slab over traditional foundations etc. yes it will add a delay to your build and as I'm about 5 months in to my build and aren't quite finished in the ground yet (we're building a basement) I know all about how frustrating delays can be but sometimes they're unavoidable and the best thing to do. my experience so far is that things come at you thick and fast and you can easily get caught up in it all and miss important details. good luck and we look forward to seeing the progress.

The pool makes no difference to the SAP calculation. It is just considered extra space. You need to know the U-Value of the pool basin for the SAP calculation and that seems to be it. When I ran the calculations I just considered it to be an extra room constantly heated to 29C as that is the water temperature. The heating cost aligns well with that calculation. SAP does not take into account the use of energy for the pool pump and dehumidifier which I reckon is larger than the heating cost.

With a timber wall, you're looking at starting around STC32 and going into the 40s at best without using resilient bar (aka resilient channel) or doubling up on timbers. Timber highlights from IR761: Page 26: 406 c/c, 90mm timber studs, double layers of 13mm plasterboard, mid density insulation STC 38 Page 178: 610 c/c, 90mm timber studs, 16mm plasterboard, lower density insulation, resilient bar one side 406c/c STC 50 Page 218: 406c/c, 90mm timber studs, double layers of 13mm plasterboard, lower density insulation, resilient bar one side 610c/c STC 57 Page 350: Double timber wall, 610c/c, double layers of 16mm plasterboard, lower density insulation STC 69. Good below 125Hz (e.g. 26.7 @ 50Hz) Some MF highlights (copied from previous post): Page 89: 610 c/c, 90 steel studs, 16mm plasterboard lower density insulation STC 50. Page 93: 610 c/c, 65 steel studs, 13mm plasterboard (double on one side) lower density insulation STC 51. Page 120: 610 c/c, 90 steel studs, 16mm plasterboard (+13mm on one side) lower density insulation STC 55. Page 124: 610 c/c, 65 steel studs. two layers of 13mm plasterboard each side, lower density insulation STC 55. Page 245: 406 c/c, 90 steel studs, two layers of 13mm plasterboard each side, low/medium density insulation, resilient bar one side 610c/c STC 60. Page 350: Double timber wall, 610c/c, double layers of 16mm plasterboard, lower density insulation STC 69. Good below 125Hz (e.g. 26.7 @ 50Hz) So looks like you get about the same result using 90mm timber studs with single sided Resilient Channel as you do using 65mm metal studs. Mapping to the UK that would be 95mm timber and 70mm MF. The timber option is about 40mm thicker and currently more expensive. 70mm MF is around £1/m of material whereas 4x2 is above £2/m of material and would need the resilient bar on top of that.

Yes...but... I have low heat loss/gain, so for heating only require a low flow temp. For a 21°C target temp, I have around a 31°C flow temp and keep the slab at around 21.5°C. ie. the slab temp only needs to be slightly above the desired room temp. For cooling, similar offsets are required. ie. I take the slab down to around 19°C with a flow temp of around 14°C (avoiding dropping below the dew point and causing condensation problems) and it keeps the indoor temp stable. The caveat is, that with a low flow temp heating system it is slow to react, so you can't wait until it is 27°C degrees in side before taking action on cooling. And for me, because I chose to have a fair amount of glazing on south-east and south-west aspects, I need to mitigate the solar gain risk, which I've done with external shading. AC does have a quicker effect on cooling, as it works directly on the air temp, but as soon as you switch it off the temps will rise again as you are unlikely to have significantly lowered the temp of the building fabric. If I was doing mine now, with the knowledge gained from this forum, I'd be considering adding some fan chillers cooled by the ASHP to get the same quick benefit as AC, while still getting the stabilising effect of the UFH cooling. When I was asking timber frame specs, it was in relation to being an "eco build". ie. what level and type of insulation and what air tightness target. I have an I-Joist structure with 300mm walls and 350mm roof, filled with cellulose fibre insulation and sitting on an insulated raft foundation with no cold bridging, and a sub 0.1 ACH air tightness. Nothing high tech at all, nor particularly expensive, but good value for the energy losses it delivers. If you drop below 3m³/m²h @50Pa buiding regs will require you to have mechanical ventilation.

Am I reading that right, an 11 metre RSJ over a window / door opening. That is a subject in itself, that is a seriously big span and a seriously large joist that is probably going to have a big deflection. Think long and hard about that aspect of the design. Also that will be a lot of glazing to lose heat in the winter and over heat you in the summer.

There's more energy to be saved with the spec of the timber-frame (and foundation) than with the renewables you choose to heat it. What stage are you at? is the detail design done? Have you a view on an energy loss target for the building fabric? What spec of frame and foundation are you considering. +1 for cooling via ASHP (or GSHP if your loads justify it). AC can be avoided.

What low energy performance standard are you aiming for? Have you considered u values, airtightness, solar gain, MVHR etc..? Correctly designing & building the fabric to minimise the heating and cooling requirement (both energy consumers) plus understanding how the house will perform year round will be key to delivering on your 'eco' objective. Be wary of 'green-wash' tech that make unrealistic claims and have a very long payback times. Further to VAT comments above, you need to ensure that anyone who does work for you zero rates their invoices (you may need to provide your planning permission to satisfy them). You cannot reclaim VAT charged incorrectly on services. You can only claim VAT for eligible materials bought by you, in your name, delivered to your address and you can only make one claim at the end of the project when the build is considered complete (e.g. BCO sign-off). Therefore to optimise your cash flow, the best approach is to get trades to supply & fit and zero rate at source.

“the project will significantly enhance its immediate setting and be sensitive to the defining characteristics of the local area”. My arse it will

Internal. I have two kids and like the sound of mechanical clocks and a good read ?

Hello @ukjamie and welcome "Eco" build" conjures up all sorts of options. Are you sticking with the practical "low energy" options, or venturing towards earth homes or straw bale walls and composting toilets.

Having not had the best of years health wise this year, which has unfortunately made the decision for me that someone else will have to build the side extension, i thought i'd get a bit more work done, but rather than the norm of a room taking me 3 days tops, i've spent weeks on this one, slowly picking it apart and now putting it back together (admittedly it is the biggest area of the bungalow). This is the last room which needed everything out, so I can finally say goodbye to woodwormed timbers (and this one didn't disappoint). This one was quite a bigger task than some others, as I've reopened the chimney breast, which I'm going to board out and put my AV receiving, and bluray/tv box, and in a few weeks when i've had a rest, i've got an acoustic partition to install which will cut sound down between mine and my next door neighbour. Heres how far i've got up to now... This was a before after i'd taken the fireplace out (to be relocated into the to be built dining room) and opened up the chimney breast Discovered a LOT of soot, one of the owners must have had a coal open fire at some point, so cleared as much off as I could and washed it all down. Will put a tube from under the floor into the chimney stack to provide a ventilation source, chimney pot is capped, but has ventilation built in. This room is probably the worst for rubbish out of them all, so a good clean out... Quick re-wire, and new joists in place... Base layer 20mm insulation... And topped up... The top layer was re-used from what was down, hence it being a bit worse for wear, but the 20mm layer is well sealed below. Some of the bits have popped back up a little from when i foamed them, but i couldn't move at this point my back had totally gone, so will sort it out when i do the next stage. Next to do is airtight membrane, and then the chipboard back down which was taken up. The floor in the chimney area will be formed when i've done the main floor, life without a TV is slightly boring lol! So yeah more to follow when i can actually move again and do the work

Main floor practically done, just two tiny boards to put down but I’ve ran out of screws ? also taken the window board off ready to repair the wall, just need to stick a bit of wood to support the window from the outside whilst I do it. This window is getting replaced when the extension gets built with a flat window. more importantly I’ve got the TV hooked back up!

Location 1. And instead of all flexi pipes coming from there, have a single 125 or 160mm vertical riser to the next ceiling so you have a manifold for each floor and fewer penetrations. That's what I'm doing.

Your proposed details might be rejected, and something quite different required. (Most planners have bigger decisions to worry about, too busy to go into these details.) If you have spent money installing the rejected details, Enforcement might make you undo the work and follow the new details. That is the worst case scenario. The more likely scenario will be that the planner spends a few mins (between big jobs) looking over your details. Approving them, with caveats where necessary. If they find something seriously objectionable they will let you know.

don't start anything before sending commencement notice re CIL, that's much bigger risk than planning discharge. And of course that may be an issue with starting before discharge.

Totally agree. There is nothing good about this design and build. Everything is so bland.

Not my idea of a house design but each to his own, if you have deep enough pockets. Worst case he would have to sell a car or 2. He operates in a completely different financial world to normal people. Yes I thought the cladding with all it's ripples was not the crisp look he wanted? And I guess every episode in this series is doing to have the Covid delay factor in it. But how did it go from an unfinished abandoned shell to a finished house at the end with no documentation of that part of the build and how they overcame all the previous challenges?

2.5 million you could have more land than you'd know what to do with. With the two other areas in the photo it would be OK, but he already owns next door, so guess he is going to sell that and imagine if someone builds on those two fields. Setting is something when you are in the countryside surely.

Wendy's comment was that they should at least have have the bins housed somehow and that at 70m it was a long way to go to the loo.

Have a look at the website linked further up by @Alfie if you want to see the mere essence of pretentiousness - https://www.huxshard.uk

If the surface is concrete block you don’t need a base coat If it’s one of the thermal blocks (High suction) you will need a base coat and mesh As I previously said It’s worth using mesh above and below windows Typo Should have read PU

Thank-you, almost bailed on the bricks as when I first got a few out of the pack they were just red bricks as below! i was absolutely gutted as spent ages deciding on them. Thankfully once the packs were mixed there are great variations! Unsure on the lintels, assuming at least two courses above? Not sure what’s normal? One if the lintels is missing a section of polystyrene insulation, not sure if this matters?

The great Rockwool myth of 'denser = better' busted!! As a bit of background stone wool (Rockwool is a trade name) will always be about twice as dense as glass wool for the same thermal and acoustic performance. Any stone or glass wool in the normal density range, say 10 kg/m3 (glass) to 60 kg/m3 (stone) and at a given thickness will have a similar acoustic absorption value. There will be slight differences in these figures (only picked up in laboratory tests) but they are swamped, once installed in a wall, by the effect of the studs (metal or timber) and plasterboard facings. Look through Appr Doc E of the Regs, the Robust Details, the BG White Book and the above referenced document. Very dense stone wool compressed into a partition wall will have an negative affect on the acoustic performance. Low density products and/or an airspace acts a 'spring' between the 2 (or more) layers of plasterboard. A high density product, compressed, effectively couples the 2 layers of plasterboard so sound energy can be transferred much more efficiently.

This is my work area, I can do 200 meals in 4 hours from it. Go temporary. And freestanding.

You can pump sand and cement screed also Most semi dry used on commercial jobs is pumped up to each floor Might be a good option 100 m is fine

If you're not undermining the foundations of then the risk is low. However, in some circumstances you need to consider the footings can become a small retaining wall if you excavate the soil along one side so safest is to do it in stages, excavate a length, backfill, then the next section. It's a lot of 'it depends' - footing size, soil type etc but whenever you deal with ground conditions, excessive caution is never punished.