Leaderboard

Yeah loads . Abuse , lies . Criminal damage etc . Welcome to the world of fu*kwit neighbours when you submit planning applications. Don’t worry about it - (expletive deleted) ‘em I find telling them to get (expletive deleted)ed to their face a good way to deal with it ( I feel better anyway )

Unless you have it on good authority that your Brickie is massively OCD with regard to insulation,ditch the rigid insulation boards. In fact,ditch them anyway.

Reading this thread remands me one of the best design decisions we made was to make it a warm roof, with 100mm of insulation over the top of the rafters and then no need to ventilate and you can full fill the gap between the rafters, we used Frametherm 35 for that, an easy job. I post this for the benefit of anyone at the design stage, it won't help in this case now unfortunately.

Hello everyone, Ive only just found this forum but what from I have read over the last few days it seems like a good place to be! I am a few months into a full gut and refurbishment of an old council house 2 up 2 down semi detached, bit hard to find out the date of construction but I think it was 1930s. The house had been abandoned since 1998 so needs a lot doing to it. At the moment the house has no central heating system and the wooden suspended floors on the ground floor have rotten away. So basically a new build just with the old external walls still standing! I have stripped out all the old stuff in the house and now have bare walls downstairs and just the old stud work timber from the old internal walls left upstairs! So I am ready to start ordering the plasterboard and insulation! Im doing most of the building and planning work myself so looking for as many practical tips and suggestions as possible, need to keep the costs down as much as I can! I am planning on installing an air source heat pump (no mains as here), wet underfloor heating downstairs and lots of insulation and new double glazing. Then if all goes well I may put an extension on the back in the future!

I would rather see it wired into a fused spur outlet if it were me.

An objector had the suggested the motivation for our application was pecuniary gain and we were using my wife's disability to further our cause rather building the dwelling for her particular needs. I strongly objected to the council and asked them to remove the offending and discriminatory comments which they ignored until my appeal was presented. Needless to say, I used the LPA's inaction to demonstrate their unreasonable behaviour to the planning inspector in our cost application, which no doubt help paint the picture of the journey we had with the counsel. It is referenced in our costs award decision, see attached, paras 6 and 12 PPG guidance states: Paragraph: 033 Reference ID: 16-033-20140306 “Can costs be claimed for the period during the determination of the planning application? No, but all parties are expected to behave reasonably throughout the planning process. Although costs can only be awarded in relation to unnecessary or wasted expense at the appeal or other proceeding, behaviour and actions at the time of the planning application can be taken into account in the Inspector’s consideration of whether or not costs should be awarded…” Costs Decision - 3198387[100338].pdf

There’s a lot of confusion with soundproofing Many of the house builders have us filling bathroom and toilet walls with 70 mil of loft insulation Which does hardly anything We fill office and split student rooms with 25 mil Party walls between blocks with 50 mil As long as you use Acoustic (ISO) 25 mil Will do the job 100 mil lap at the top and bottom Staples to hold it in place

What kind of air test results have you seen from insulated plasterboard? Insulation is easily solved. Just widen the cavity. A 50mm insulated plasterboard is €11.30 more per m2 than plain plasterboard with lots of waste. Widen the cavity by 60mm and you're in the same place thermally for €5.60/m2 in EPS beads and zero waste.

Hello again, it's been a while, and thanks for all the advice I received back in 2019. I now want to update my topic with the outcome - which is that I did put in a wet UFH loop - and that I'm very glad I did. Initially I decided to hedge my bets and lay in a PEX loop as well as some ducting for air-to-air during the construction of the extension. Neither were costly and meant we could decide on the heating solution once we had gained experience using the room. This didn't happen until summer 2020 during which we occasionally had outdoor temperatures in the high 20's peaking at 32. The garden room mostly behaved very well with only the period between mid-morning and mid-day seeing too much solar gain from the S.E. elevation. Jeremy Harris was right to point this out as being potentially the more significant issue. However, by opening both sliding doors a little way to get a crossflow (on the N.W.- S.E. axis b-b on the plan) the room could be kept comfortable. If the house wasn't occupied we would simply close the doors to the rest of the house. So far, so good. Winter 2020-2021 wasn't particularly cold so we employed a 1200W halogen portable heater and continued using the room whenever we wanted to. This was very encouraging and by October this year, having had another comfortable summer, I decided just to hook-up the UFH and leave the air-con ducting buried in the wall. Now we've had a few sub-zero periods since then it seems that we have a good solution. On a sunny but cold day the room is benefiting from a solar boost in the morning so generally it comes on overnight and goes off after between 4 and 12 hours depending on weather. The only issue I have had is that my boiler only modulates down to 10kW so if the UFH is the only load it would short-cycle too much. Rather than install a buffer tank I simply modified my control algorithm to modulate the zone valve serving the central heating radiators which now get a tiny pre-heat in the early-hours. My zone valves are custom servo-actuated home-brews operated by a Raspberry Pi which means I'm also logging all the temperatures and energy usage to keep on top of things.

Grab a cricket bat and pop round to sort the f*ckers out for a chat - old skool style!

Yes our neighbours were furious that I named them (but the council did nothing ?)

I have found some objectors to be shocked to find that their names are published and it was clear they would not have said the same thing publicly. Yes tell the council and they will remove them.

Nothing defamatory but definitely untrue, I would get the council on it pronto, nothing worse than gossip to start a rumour. I countered our neighbour (and actually named him and her) on the planning website to give evidence of their claim as I had documented evidence to the contrary. Mind even our planners made statements that were not true which is probably another reason we won hands down at appeal ?

Yes they should remove them immediately. They inadvertently published some personal details on an application we made but removed them swiftly when this was pointed out.

Loxone is driving the DMX dimmers so knows when any channel on it is set to >0 brightness, so you can split this out to a big OR block to say "if any of these DMX channels are non-zero, turn on the relay to power up the dimmer bank" I use something similar to shutdown the 24V LED lighting power supplies when not in use: Yes that works fine. One tip is as dimmers work by modulating the L feed, not N, I did figure out I could route the N from the LED fixtures directly back to the RCBO not via the dimmer, and then if I used a relay on the N terminal of the dimmers only it was only having to switch a much lower current (i.e. just breaking the current needed to power the dimmer internal logic, not the current needed to drive the LED fixtures themselves). This is a sneaky trick though (generally switching N is frowned on, right). I'll look out for the PM ?

i would roll back the carpet from the edge, remove that bead (get a handyman in if you can't do it yourself) and you will probably need to re paint the skirting. Then get the carpet fitters back to resolve it. With the bead gone, they will not have an excuse for it not fitting properly. The damaged backing to the carpet is probably not an issue, it is not often they lay with a stock edge against a wall, usually all sides of the room are trimmed to fit and that less than perfect edge will have been cut off.

Been living in house for the a couple months with MVHR, and still can't get over how quite it is. Especially when you go to the toilet, put on the light, no noisy fan starting up, just quiet.

Welcome welcome. I have a thing for small simple projects on a tight budget so please keep us updated! Do you have any plans to share and an indication of your budget? When we built I costed everything to the last and nothing was cheaper than strip foundations, eps floor insulation, wide cavity wall with eps beads or mineral wool. Medium density blocks are half the price of celcon and don’t crack as badly. wet plastered inside and out. Trussed roof. PVC windows. There have been some horror stories of PIR board insulation in cavity walls on here recently. Personally i would avoid. Larch cladding is not cheap but ideally suited to timber frame. Have you costed block vs timber. On a small project it may not be as much difference as you imagine. A stick built house is an option to save money too. TF will save you lots of time installing services later on too. Carefully cost the ASHP. Unless I diy’d it l couldn’t make it payback in less than 25 years due to our very low heating requirement. A2A and an E7 cylinder and modest PV was the best for us. Airtightness is the best money you’ll spend, MVHR is a definite too. So nice to have a quiet draft free house full of fresh air. Good luck!

I think you will find most opinion here is based on real life usage (like my own).

Have a quick look at the diagram including he labels and dimentions. its just the way i had to draw it in the calculator that it looks like a separate batten.

I read this too, if the screws are longer the timber can shrink and the longer screws are deeper in the wood leading to popping!

The sf40 R value of 3.47 equates to equivalent to 75mm PUR insulation or 115mm mineral wool the YBS equivalent to 55mm PUR insulation. the sealed air gap, reflective surface and additional surface resistances will also contribute a little more to overall U value you don’t quote the cost per m2 so don’t know if it’s good value these foil insulation’s were the subject of protracted legal cases over false advertising. They were unable to prove that they performed as advertised (using the recognised BS hot box test) therefore they should quote R values for comparisons. But this is often hidden in small print. And although they may show BBA logo on advertising you will find it difficult to get hands on actual BBA certificate for their independent information. although I’d usually advise against a hybrid roof make up I doubt the lowish performance of the foil will be a concern with interstitial condensation but best do a condensation risk analysis

Fact Check #1 - no you won’t, it is around 30% increase in output and many rads are already oversize so do the heat loss calculation first. Fact Check #2 - for Gas at 88% efficiency and Electricity at CoP 2.5 average (which is low) then it will be around 20% more. How insulated the house is is irrelevant when comparing heat input sources. If you have a big gas bill now, an ASHP wont reduce your heat demands. Fact Check #3 - modern units are around 52dB or less. Some it is near impossible to hear them from 4-5m away.

I'm guessing that the beading is there to cover a gap between skirting and floorboard. Personally, I'd have taken it off and filled the gap first, then the carpet could have been fitted neatly at the edges. Not sure you can really blame the fitter for that. The two-tone stuff looks like a join, maybe with the pile running the wrong way. If they had to put a join in, they really should have made you aware.

@Oxbow16 if it is 1-1/2 bsp then this makes it much easier and I would leave it in place. Might be worth getting a couple of fittings and with a bit of fettling get a connection to work.

A TRAP screws onto that fitting. Have you tried finding a trap that fits? You can't just join that to the 40mm waste pipe.

Glazing onsite, Rehau Rio flush casement, clotted cream colour still quite white, was hoping for more of a yellow tone but still looks good. when you hold it against white it’s totally different so fingers crossed it will be nice when fitted. May end up changing the opaque bathroom glazing as the frosting makes them look to different to a normal window. First fix this week for alarm and cctv

If there were such a thing, you'd find it on this site. We haven't got one because it's too complicated a job - they vary too much. Customers want to reduce risk, and builders know that. So they build in obscurity. So you build in specificity. So they build in their margin in more hidden ways. All you can do is follow the Due Diligence Process, and be as specific as you can. Its a messy uncomfortable process. Good luck. Ian

It's the diplomacy of keeping the area tidy and whodunnit when it resembles a yard sale! !! For noise isolation I would scrap the sliding doors. build a proper separate room. Thermal bridging isn't rocket science. You just need a completely continuous layer of insulation. If you can draw with a pencil anywhere on the plans where you can go from inside without bumping into a good layer of insulation you'll have a thermal bridge. Concrete is bad, steel is terrible. Having a look at the plans I'm beginning to wonder about the wisdom of the non aligning front wall. It'll add a lot of steel to the design, a lot of cost and be very hard to get right thermally. I would propose something like this. You'll end up with the same floor space but much less hassle. I appreciate the aesthetic value to the front of the house as is, but a good architect should be able to overcome this pretty easily. Also while we're at it bin the PIR in your roof between the timbers. It's difficult to fit (rarely done right), shrinks, leading to thermal bypass, offers poor heat protection (decrement delay), is poor in fire, burns toxically, is expensive, and offers little noise protection. Blown cellulose, mineral wool batts or woodfiber will be much better in real life. Have a look back at @ProDaves roof or @Jeremy Harris for good examples.

If anyone is interested in visiting just let me know. We will be on hold for a while whilst we try and sell our house to fund the remainder of the build. The Isotex blocks are very much on show internally - see attached picture. Also, I have dropped in a picture of a the largest box gutter roof I have ever built. The fibre glass is attached to a 36mm deck of OSB3 with a separating layer of VP400 (to reduce rain noise - separating the layers of board).

Has anyone any experience of having had defamatory comments about them (made on their planning application public comments section) removed by the Council? I reviewed our simple S73 application last night, and found 8 new comments made by members of the public, many of which contained wholly untrue malicious gossip about us. I am astonished that the council did not do a better job of vetting what was published. Has anyone else had personal comments made when commenting on planning applications? How did you handle them? Thanks

Ahem..unless you run a busy plastering firm ?

You know it.