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An update, not really because there is anything particular new to report, but more of a diary. I had the heavy wind driven rain followed by sharp frost that provoked the start of this thread. Not long after my last post we had another sharp frost, and no blistering issue. And since then we have had a lot of cold weather including right now, where it has been well below 0 for several days, the whole north facing side of the house is covered in a glistening layer of frost and not blister, bulge or any issue to be seen anywhere. This reinforces my view that the problem occurs when we get heavy wind driven rain that allows some moisture to get through the top coat, that then freezes, expands and blisters, possibly cracking the top coat in the process making it easier for more water ingress. The fact it does not blister again when it freezes a week later, suggests whatever moisture has got in dries out fairly quickly. And the fact that now even after a lot of sub zero weather, there are no other signs of problems suggests there is no other underlying moisture issue apart from the occasional heavy wind driven rain, which is a bit of a relief. So now it's a case of wait and monitor what happens to see if there are any other issues that need remedial work or not. Still fuming that Baumit are not interested in even looking at the problem or giving any advice.

Hopefully with photographic or video evidence of the offence taking place. you might want to inform the field owner of what your nice neighbour is discharging onto his land. He won't be best please I am sure.

I would. 1. Strip the roof and battens. 2. Consider reinforcing any rafters that look poor. If your roof isn't sagging I don't thing they look too bad otherwise. 3. Install a good quality roofing membrane. 4. Batten. 5. Reslate with fiber cement slates. They're about 20kg/m2 Vs 35kg/m2 for welch slate and 45kg/m2 for concrete tiles. The fiber cement slates (asbestos I think) are 71 years on my parent's house still going strong. A lighter roof will give the roof timbers a good chance. 6. Sell any welch slate you have left over.

Going through similar ourself. 100mm PIR gets a u value of around 0.18 (I think) , 125mm gets you a 0.14, 150mm drops it to around 0.11ish. Law of diminishing returns & cost needs to be factored in, and its prob several years+ payback. Anything more then 150mm is overkill for 90% of people (IMHO)... But this is a forum for enthusiasts! However, if you can... I'd always opt for more. We are just facing a £4500 bill (builder supply, fit & overheads) to upgrade from 100 to 150mm in our bungalow, as build already well under way! Probably will, but its a tough call balencing all other aspects of the build costs

Left over from my build, all using protocols I decided not to go with in the end 1x GIRA KNX bus PSU (2nd hand from ebay) 1x Theben ts8f-2-e 8 way KNX digital input 7x Osram 350-1050mA constant current DALI LED dimmers (2nd hand from ebay) 1x 32 way modbus digital input (aliexpress special) Yours for the cost of P&P (or free free for collection in Herts or N1C London). If you feel compelled, or there's strong competition for any item, donations to buildhub coffers or shelter welcome ?

Leadwork for the blue arrow, soakers/secret gutter and cover into diamond cut slot above water line

Chemical anchors and galvanised studs at 600 centres.

Fail...FYI don't bother with ridge vents in snow country! Ridges either need to be vented at both gables or you need little chimneys on the ridge to vent the ridge. I'll vent at the gables with assume features in the yet to be added cladding. Win for failing to finish that before winter... ?

It only depends on two variables. Unit price of energy and length of tenure. Here is a crude approximation with equal insulation roof, walls and floor. This is for our house using cheap insulation (0.037W/mK) in a mildish area in the South of Ireland. For most people building a futureproof house isolated from the worst energy price hikes to 20 years+ . Southern coastal areas 200mm is enough. Most of the British Isles 300mm is a solid bed. North of Scotland 400mm insulation is best.

He won't even check if it's accidentally half-closed?

To get rid of the visible crack I would: Dig out the grout. Half fill the bath. Redo with white C-Tec BT1 and tool it flush with the tile. https://www.toolstation.com/bt1-tribrid-ultimate-bathroom-sealant-adhesive/p74523? That's BT1 not CT1. Let it set.

? fingers crossed mate.

If the RHI scheme is like the previous grants for solar panels/ turbines/ green stuff generally then the approval process costs a fortune and the approved installers charge accordingly and take the money. I'm sure there are installers who give best value, but they will be very busy. It was the same with lottery funding to schools and trusts....they had to use an approved architect to propose the scheme, which then generally ended up costing more than it would without the funding.

Good news then. Thanks for the update.

RHI is paid to the homeowner directly, the installer doesn’t see any of it (directly)

@Cpd, no air gap increases the heat loss by conduction A 25mm air gap without reflective surfaces has a thermal resistance of 0.18m2.K/W, an air gap with a low emissivity surface 0.44m2.K/W. 25mm of PIR has a thermal resistance of 1.09m2.K/W and 25mm of EPS about 0.7m2.K/W. pages 19/20 of attached PDF BR443-October-2019_consult.pdf

Hi all, I have read this forum many times whilst searching for information relating to my build and its been incredibly useful, so thanks all. I am building a room in my garden which i hope will also serve as a small art gallery. A few interesting(ish) facts about me: a) I love bricks and collect them. Particularly, wire cut, gas fired bricks, that have purple headers i guess you would call them multi stock in the trade. b) I love drawing things with straight lines. Building plans are right up my street. c) I am training to be a gardener and would like to work in horticulture one day. d) I love drum and bass and jungle and plan to build a massive sound system one day so the whole neighbour hood can enjoy it too. See you around C

Generally good people who would like to make the world better, but constrained by under-resourcing and politics.

My ex partner lives in the house and claims family tax credits to top up the care work she does, just being on the register made her eligible and as I do not charge her rent I did not have to pay towards the upgrade.

It can make a huge difference to just go hybrid, adding 100mm of EPS under the 100mm of PIR Chesp to achieve if budget is tight with still high performance and good results. Folk here who have done passive rafts are all using EPS @ 300mm NOT PIR. Good thing with using EPS as the underlay, is being able to do that with 25+75 and raising the DPM up atop the 25mm to keep it completely free from punctures. 100 EPS + 100 PIR would be a good outcome and save you a considerable uplift in costs.

The ones that are pictured where put in for sound While pir stats may look slightly better The rock wool give a tighter fit Behind the gypliner and around the brackets

Taking an educated guess here, days of high humidity should cause more frosting up, but that may not correlate to a different CoP as it depends on how the HP defrosts. Modelling solar gain is tricky. Easy enough though windows, but not so easy though walls as they can take too long to warm up to affect the losses/gains significantly. Worth looking at wind speed and direction though. Generally the SW wind is warm and moist, NE is cold and dry. The SW winds tend to be faster than the NE ones. But, SW tends to be cloudy, NE not. I modelled my house for wind speed and direction a few years back think the charts are over at the other place. where I am we have so few NE winds, and the speed was pretty slow anyway, that solar gain did make a difference, but the SW winds dominated so much that it was not worth the worry.

For anyone looking, I used this one and adapted it. https://digital.flintshire.gov.uk/FCC_Planning/Home/NewDocView/165043#:~:text=1.,be taken down in stages%3A&text=Any persons working on site,safety boots and hard hats.

I remember the rather ambitious project and iirc the concrete bridge to the bigger house cost them dearly. He was in the music industry and it was fairly clear from the start that he had bitten off way more than he could chew. Not surprised that it broke up his marriage.

Think you need to check your measurements as 38mm on the flat is too little and 63 is too much if you’re going down the route of 50mm (which can be 48-53mm) PIR. I am thinking flat plats of Ply - think of a T shape - which will also give you some rigidity.

You've linked to EPS rather than PIR/PUR insulation; that's quite different in terms of performance, and as @PeterW suggests, I wouldn't use anything less than 3x2 (75 x 50mm) for studwork.

Yes you would think so but utility companies are generally too incompetent to do it that way. I'm actually having 2 separate road closures just for Anglian Water - 1 for the water supply & 1 for the sewer connection! Different AW departments, you know, so of course they can't organise both jobs under 1 closure...also, each closure costs me around £2k for the license from Highways.

Usually, but not always

OK actually, this may have been wrong. Sorry I'm still getting used to this - bear with me and I'll double check the temperatures in/out tomorrow when the system comes on. I just need to double check which pipes come from the boiler. Thanks for ongoing advice.

Ouch !!! That’s about 10-15°C more than it should be depending on the floor finishes.

My temp gauges on my manifold (Wunda) just pull out of a pocket, if yours are the same just swop them round to measure the input temp

Separate lintels for me every time inner and outer alternatively check lintels which leave room for insulation in the head.

Having an in-slab UFH implementation helped us a lot and made everything pretty simple. We've got a 3 storey detached house with four largish bedrooms and one storage / drying room with the heating requirement peaking at around 30 kWh in the winter months (and little solar gain because of our house orientation and planning constraints). If we heat only in the E7 window, that's just under 4kW net heating, and the thermal mass of the interior is such that this gives us ~1°C ripple on room temperatures. If we don't heat the house (an accidental experiment) then it cools overall by around ~1°C per day. This all depends on the "devil in the detail" during construction: all insulation installed to spec; decent air tightness, MVHR; no oops thermal bridges. A constant heating strategy would peak at ~1½ kW so IMO a typical small 8 kW ASHP would be total overkill. I don't know what the true replacement life of an ASHP is, but it would need to be 10 years or so for us to justify its procurement and installation cost. Over 4 years in and I have made a few tweaks to our system: The CH + DHW is controlled by a dedicated RPi using Node-RED for sequencing etc. We have added a Home Automation System (HAS) running on another RPi and using Home Assistant with lots of ZigBee devices doing the usual home automation stuff. This system also controls an Oil-filled electric radiator we have on our 1st floor landing which we run 0-7 E7 hours in the winter; this uses a smart plug which also reports actual power used. This rad plus E7 Willis Heating keeps the whole house nice and toasty. The HAS and CH systems use MQTT to swap set-points and logged data, but it's all set up so that the CH system will still run happily if the HAS isn't available. This automation approach might seem complex, but the H/W and install costs were in the few £100s. It all works pretty much automatically with minimal maintenance. The biggest wobbles to our system are caused by visitors staying, such as one of our kids + family, as this adds an extra 4 bio-radiators that move from room to room and can cause local over-heating if we all sit in one room for too long. The simple answer here is passive-house heresy: open a window or two for a bit to dump the extra heat.?

good idea. We have a blowtorch here and some ply that has stayed unaffected. I’ll do a controlled test - one Japanese charred and one not. See what happens! However, for my workshop, I don’t favour the “had a fire” look, so will be trying the zissner paint first.

Yes, video and photgraphic evidence has been taken. The guy who owns the field was not best pleased when he came round to see it all in 'action' as it were. I feel like this neck of the woods has been kicked back to 1950s France Maman: Gaston! Ca pu la merd ici hein? [Mother: Gaston , it stinks of shooshoo 'round 'ere] Gaston: Beuuuuffff [ Gallic shrug tr. I don' giveafooketyfook]

I'm weird, I'm doing 50mm EPS and 150mm PIR.