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A joiner friend of mine dropped into the conversation last week, he had 2 faulty Makita 18V cordless multitools, do i want to "have a look at them" and if I can fix them one for me one for him. I was astonished at how easy and cheap they were to repair. In both cases it was the front bearing of the motor had failed, the gearbox and everything else seemed fine. Very easy to dismantle the tool. The motors did not appear servicable but replacements were found for just under £20 each. When I took his repaired tool back today, he told me that these were both replaced FOC under warranty by Makita at under 3 years old and they didn't want the faulty ones back which is how he ended up with them. I just thought people might like to know how easy they are to repair, and how cheap and readily available most spares seem to be.

Buy a decent fridge to begin with. I replaced my fridge/freezer a few years ago with an American style Beko model, it was a horrible noisy poorly engineered beast that seemed designed to promote early onset macular degeneration. Appliances Online agreed to take it back and the smaller more expensive Samsung is whisper quiet in comparison, the reviews mentioned a new technology powering the Samsung compressor.

If none of the four plots have sold and have been on the market over the last 12 months I would personally avoid. Either the plots are massively overpriced or there is a serious issue maybe related to the utilities as discussed above. Alarm bells ringing as basically they are still for sale in the biggest sellers market for decades. If one or two of the other plots had sold and you could discuss with the owners the various costs/issues involved then you have some comfort/knowledge as to what to expect.

At the mo I guess your nice new steel is resting on that algae covered concrete? ? It'll scrape all the paint off the corner and rust. Also it might dig into the concrete as you're twisting it around or it might slip! Get an old rubber car mat under the bottom corner, carpet tile or rough bit of timber at a push. Rubber best as you know! Or did you mean the bit I've drawn, clamped on? To act as a lever. ?

Built-in fridges/freezers and pretty much any appliance is all about the install when it comes to noise. Recently installed a neff unit and it was really noisy, loosened a couple of the screws that were making the side panel act like a drum and then made even quieter with a block of timber stuck behind the kick board to stop that resonating … after that couldn’t hear it at all.

This is 'efficiency' from SAP score perspective and have little bearing on thermal comfort. Also efficiency is one thing, maximum output available (needed do maintain desired temperature) another: dial heat pump temperature down to improve COP and on cold morning it will not maintain comfort any more. Dial it up on a frosty day and even if flat out (and rubbish efficiency) it may not be enough to bring in more heat than comes out.

hello and welcome, Attached are the BRE conventions for most situations, specifically pages 19-21 for what you are looking for. BR443-October-2019_consult.pdf

It’s time consuming so watch out when you say you want to do a lot yourself running a business and looking after the kids is hard enough, but then going down to site after family time and spending hours on site and sometimes not seeing progress can be demoralising. Sometimes it’s better to earn and pay a trade.

Then get a new decent one, I have an 12volt deWalt with two batteries and it does everything I ask it, torque is so strong if a large drill jams it can hurt your wrist. Other good ones are available, that and a good hammer will do you well. There is a lot of difference between a cheap hammer and a good well balanced one. https://www.screwfix.com/p/dewalt-dcd701d2-gb-12v-2-0ah-li-ion-xr-brushless-cordless-drill-driver/422hp https://www.screwfix.com/p/magnusson-claw-hammer-20oz-0-57kg/7689v I recommend a 20 ounce hammer for framing 16 ounce is too light.

Yea i realise that this is the starting point with the Architect, we had actually given him a pretty good start with what we were thinking with this rough mock up the house is inspired by this design we found: https://trendsideas.com/gallery/stories/country-chic-6/167432-te-arai-farm-estate-mangawhai The house sits on a 5 acre plot, the area around the house and garden is grass, trees etc. but i only want to have to cut a small area of grass all the time so have done a small grass section which will be manacured and the rest of the plot will be left to the wilderness, but there is much more of the plot that we can pull into being a manacured garden if we want, we get a lot of deer and wildlife crossing the plot as there is a massive woods to the North of the plot so want to keep a lot of it wild. There are no other buildings or neighbours in close proximity so even though the plot is North East facing we hope the small grass area i have done will still get a good bit of sun although i do realise that even though the house is only 1 story the builing roofline will block a seciton of the garden but when we have been up to the plot thinking about the sun, we hope that the afternoon / evening sun will cover a good chunk iof the grass area as due to the L shape where the west end is open but like i say because the plot is 5 acres i can just make the garden bigger so we can sit further out from the house on a nice day if need be

I've updated the image below with a very crude representation of house direction facing. Front door is on the side with the car and the reason the house is facing that way is because we want the windows in all the rooms facing out onto the garden and then the views past this

They exist, but they charge a lot more. Energist for one. You can talk to the assessor, argue your case, provide details and they will include it if it helps. They also point out any reason why your assessment is worse than you thought so maybe you can change a detail. Not all that goes into the BRE assessment programme is logical, but they have to use it, hence you can choose to do what is best for the job or the rating. But they of course charge a lot for their input. I'm sure they will discuss your aims without charge, and probably enjoy it. There are other similar companies too, but not tested by me.

Easy peazy.

24kW will suffice. I've seen the ancient Ariston 23MFFI's ( micro--combi ) doing a church vestry and a bunch of much bigger rads after them, which is about as adverse as it gets. Don't be tempted by the 32 it's just not needed. If DHW isn't a huge priority ( as you have only one mixer ) then it'll be fine when servicing both, but my recommendation would be to rid yourself of at least 1 of the remaining 2 electric showers and get the hot water flow up via the UVC. If you find you're struggling for DHW then, just change from S--plan to W-plan and you'll be fine.

Fresh air is about 20% oxygen, a tiny fraction of a percent is CO2. It takes days in a sealed room for O2 levels to get low enough to affect you badly but rises in CO2, even though very small, affect us quite quickly. I think that's why there's little interest in measuring O2 levels - it's very hard to run short of it simply from breathing, even in a highly airtight house.

It may be wine o'clock in chez @pocster

@pocster, missed this thread (been busy) I am coming to Bristol Monday and can give you a hand if you don’t mind waiting, I have some short scaff poles (that fit in my car). Let me know ?

Better than a fooked back.

Get 3 estimates and show him the biggest one and ask him to take it off the price .

10% off Screwfix orders over £50. https://www.screwfix.com/

An update I asked SEPA by email for clarity. I asked at what stage a discharge licence was sought, and whether I should send the drainage proposals to them or simply with the Warrant application. Have had a helpful response which I will paraphrase. Some Local authority Building Standards may consult SEPA for comments, some will not at all, some will advise applicants to contact SEPA with details and to provide our comments to them. The requirement to register the discharge with SEPA is prior to it taking place, as it is the discharge from the system to the water environment, that requires authorisation. Specific details such as how the ground investigations have been carried out, location, design and sizing of system are really the remit of Building Standards rather than for ourselves. Esp re the last sentence I am taking this to say, don't send anything to us if it is straight-forward as the BCO should handle it, and we do marginal and complex stuff. And no licence until the proposals are approved and the treatment is about to be used.

Can only echo most of what has already been stated. We budgeted at £1500/sq m and it looks like it's coming in at around £1800/sq m at present. We have an excellent builder on good rates but the increased cost of materials is the main reason for the increased build costs. Do not underestimate how much time effort and emotional drain that a new build places upon you. I am project managing the built as am self employed (part time) from home and on most days you are going to have to make key decisions - some of which you may know or others you will need to research before coming to a conclusion. I am not hands on (build labour wise/construction jobs) with build other than tidying up and moving things around the site. We are building in our garden so lucky (or unlucky) enough to be on site all the time and living within an existing house.

Historical use may help a bit but without a building there you are almost starting from scratch.

...and under, as well. most fridges are pretty open underneath and a nice reflective tiled floor will cause issues for sure.

I'm sure you're aware of this, but for the avoidance of any doubt (and for anyone coming along later who doesn't know), the insulation is put onto the surfaces of the walls around the fridge, not on the fridge itself. A decent gap is needed between the insulation and the fridge to allow airflow to take the heat away.

Best get them to survey the property, do the heat loss calculations etc and then propose something

There is an industry standard (read average) given for every kW generated. I believe it is 0.223Kg per kWh, it falls every couple of years as more green energy comes online (another joke). Therefore it is based on this, and therefore it will be inaccurate. Like these firms who tell their customers their electricity is 100% green, that is very misleading because that is not true, all they are saying is they only buy energy from the renewable generation producers. What comes out your socket may very well be coal or nuclear generated power. So many of the facts and figures we are given are terribly inaccurate. I used to do a fair bit of electrical energy analysis and CO2 calculations and what not and I came to the conclusion that so many of these things are just a big circus. If I wanted to advise on energy reduction with savings and payback calculations I needed several key pieces of information, the first I always asked for was known cost per kWh, then I would review actual survey data of loads, from that I could certainly make a good start, but where it all fell down was when you would ask an estate manager for office hours or for lighting, burning hours etc and to get the reply, oh just call it 09:00-17:00, now unless you are a government entity no office only runs from 09:00-17:00 bang on. So by the time you threw in all these assumptions and "just make it" parameters you had a document that was largely a work of fiction. What I used to say to people was if you take a 100W lamp out, and fit it with a 6W lamp you will save 94W - that is a given. The cost will be the cost and you cannot put a cost on environmental benefits - you will save energy end of. Where it becomes screwed up, particularly in government & local authority buildings is the disgusting figures that the DLO's (direct labour organisations) or approved contractors will charge to fit a new LED downlight in a school corridor. Something that should save over 50% on energy consumption becomes financially unfeasible because the fit price will end up being £100 quid, so... 32W fitting = 31.25hours lit for every kWh - call that 23p. Or 0.8p per hour Replace with: 15W fitting = 66.66hours lit for every kWh - also at 23p. Or 0.345p per hour Immediate saving: 0.455p per hour of burn time. Cost of fitting and labour - £100 - Say £45 for a downlight and £55 a fitting install. So length of time to save £100 would be 21978hours at 12 hours a day is 1831 days, or 5.017 years that is assuming, 12 hours every single day - not likley. Product warranty will be up within 5 years for a good fitting, so the whole thing falls on its face as bean counters cannot allow for payback after warranty period. Having said all that, they will still come out with some totally inaccurate, often unfounded line about low energy this and environmental this. All total rubbish the lot of it. So much like your original question of how can it know, well it can't it's all just tripe, pure and simple, tripe! Where I saw a success story was on a building with 16,000 luminaires, £17.50 a point installed cost + various costs for the different luminaires - payback was about 2.5 years and product warranty was 5 years with a sort of further 5 year support package.

Think it uses a default number i.e 230g/kWh.

Dont over estimate how much you can do yourself. I regret taking on a lot of the "hands on" jobs myself. It just take so, so much longer. Arranging trades, buying materials, equipment hire, keeping site safe and tidy are almost full time jobs. Ecology is THE place to go for a self build mortgage. I was aiming for £850/m2 at the start of our build last August, looks like we're going to come out at about £1300. That's with me working part time and doing 12hr days on site. I think £1500 for a good quality, modest home is about right, assuming you'll be subcontract all of the works.

Hi jenny, were in rural Angus as well, our broadband has just gone in and we're getting 35mb down and 17mb up so not too bad. I work from home so was also considering 4g and https://www.starlink.com/ I have a friend that is going with this and it’s spendy but fast. Another option is https://www.marykirk.com/ I would also recommend Ecology for mortgages, there are not that many availble in Scotland compared to rest of UK. It sounds like your architect is being a bit more realistic than our orginal one was but I think you would have to do a fair amount to hit 1500/sqm i think we will end up at the 1800/sqm including fees but not land. We are using a central contractor but we fixed priced the job some time ago. I reckon we would be looking at 2000/sqm if we were doing that today.

1.The plot already has full planning permission , we would just need to make some design changes to meet our needs, how long could that take? 2-5 months once you have your changes in your hand. Depends if they are minor or major. 2. Anyone had success with getting decent broadband into a rural area? How did you do it? Running a business and 2 kids makes this as essential as running water! Yes Others will comment on your area. 3. Living on site? If we bought a static, how easy is it to get connected , permission to live on the site and can you have a caravan as an address so you can get post? Living there seems to be JDI in most of Scotland. Usual for power on Buildhub is I think to connect to a kiosk at the boundary, then get your lecky to run what you want where you want it. 4. Self build mortgages for people who run their own business, where to start? Small building societies UK wide, search on here, esp. try Ecology BS, or a broker. Avoid Buildstore. 5. We intend to do a lot of the work ourselves, what is a realistic cost psqm? My architect reckons with current rise in costs the lowest we could aim for is 1500/sqm. Others will comment. 6. ANy other general advice? Take time to get it right in your head. Cheaper than building it and having to live with a cockup or redo.

thanks Jack Im relatively new here so still finding my way around where to post

I'm older. Resurrecting old threads is A OK, and much better than starting a new one to discuss the same thing.

https://www.cef.co.uk/catalogue/products/4501996-8w-led-downlight-white-4000k These are the 4000k daylight aka natural white ones I’ve been fitting lots of lately. Also find the following… https://www.cef.co.uk/catalogue/products/4471520-8w-led-downlight-4000k non fire / acoustic shallow depth fittings, and https://www.cef.co.uk/catalogue/products/4471505-e5-4-5w-led-fire-rated-downlight-4000k shallow, fire and acoustic rated fittings. These need bezels to go with them, and I’ve been buying Matt white mostly to match the ceiling paints.

Purely if you needed a sense-check “Measure twice” and all that jazz……

Wouldn't taping the joints of the PIR form a VCL in itself?

Found myself in the very same position, I have done many things and am just about there. Happy to message you a phone number for a chat if that helps.

I’ve not thought that far ahead!!

And a quick image.

I hate recessed lights, there are now a reasonable number of very slimline surface mounted luminaries

When Hornby/Scalextric moved abroad, when we stopped making tellys here, when sub 6' policemen were allowed into the force...when text speak became acceptable, when the 3 R's lost their importance. The rise of fast food, when kids stopped getting off their ar5es to wash M&D's car for their pocket money...

I have been installing Brink Flair 325's and 400's via CVC Ventilation and am super happy, as are my clients who are now living with these systems and report near inaudible operation when on trickle. Boost still very much acceptable with mitigatory provision such as inline sound attenuators at the unit ( before the manifolds ) to further reduce any nuisance noise in the rooms. Very effective combination when combining a good unit with such additional measures. Nicholas Vaisey ( PH designer ) will happily look after you re designs / flow rates / specification etc, great service to date, and you could also inquire about the Brink Comfort units I am now routinely installing for 'cooling' as I've found them very cost effective (where an ASHP is being reversed for cooled water only ) to manage unwanted summer ambient uplift, but also to drip feed a tiny amount of 'heated' air into upstairs rooms where full on heating isn't justified.

Did you use the MVHR design spread sheet? That's what I used. I worked out the total volume of the house, multiplied by the Part F 0.3AC/hr and that gave me a "standard" ventilation rate of 260m3/hr (72lps). I then populated the sheet with this as a target rate for the minimum. I then went room by room and added individual flow rates using the passive house guide (Kitchen 60 m3 /h Bathroom, utility room 40 m3 /h WC 20 m3 /h). And added 33% for boosting. After all that, it showed I needed a system that would be maintaining a standard ventilation rate of 260m3/hr, and a boost capacity of 345m3/hr. Doubling that to get combined flow means a 700m3/hr unit. There aren't many. There is the Airflow Ardoit which meets this, and the Zehnder Q600 which is a little short. My design only roughly calculated pressure drop, so to be safe I've gone with two 400m3/hr Salda Smarty units. Two units does mean a lot more ducting, which adds significantly to the cost and complexity of installation. Either way, definitely oversepc your unit so fan speed and noise are minimised.

I have the Airflow Flexi DV1100. On paper it would be over-sized for your needs (as it is for mine), but that allows it to run at a gentle pace and well within its PH Certified range, and, with scope for a good boost above the required rate. Airflow will do your design free of charge and provide a bill of materials with a target price to take around to their distributors. I found you can do a lot better than their target price, and also that some distributors had much better terms with Airflow than others. For me TP was the best price, although they had no idea what they were supplying, just a bunch of part numbers to them. Airflow keep the unit in stock (in normal times), so delivery is reasonably quick.

@CalvinHobbesthe main factors for the thermal performance of your new build are: Wall Insulation Attic insulation Floor insulation Glazing thermal performance Air tightness MVHR Heating system Natural solar gain Solar panels Apart from item-1, these factors are independent of your timberframe or not choice. In the case of masonry walls a wide cavity will get you a decent thermal U value. I have read many of these timber frame debates over recent years here and concluded the best argument for timber frame is that it simplifies project management because you would contract out the creation of a weather tight shell to an expert contractor. The erection of the shell happens in a blink of the eye relative to the rest of your self build. Current material price instability is particularly acute for wood which is a transient negative for timber frame.

If they had used better air tightness methods then the big bad wolf would have been dining in KFC instead of some tasty pork chops.

Tell that to this lot: ?

We do, on a daily basis! If we can't add any value and our skills aren't needed or suitable we pass work on to others who might be a better fit

+1 for Samsung, even when the house is deadly quiet you do not hear it, also my Bosch dishwasher is silent, if you forget you’ve put it on you only hear the bleeper when it’s finished

Is the fridge not integrated anyway rather than free standing, and going to be box, and have an end panel to hide the side and rear of the fridge? the mass of end panel should be enough rather than a whole stud wall.