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Welcome Being an ex lecturer in Environmental Science and Renewable Energy, I am interested to hear about your Eco Refurbishment teaching. Sounds fun.

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I've done a stable conversion (half way through now, but liveable) and have watched your blog with interest. I also couldn't get proper quotes or reliable people at first, I think partly because a conversion is so tricky to price up. Lots of people advised me to apply for demolish and rebuild but it seemed that the council were very keen on reuse here. It can end up like Trigger's broom. Class Q must be stressful because you are supposed to finish in 3 years, so full planning would give you more time. My architect had a good relationship with the planning officer and discussed several versions of appearance. My neighbours managed a rebuild of a barn with living accommodation and a couple of internal 'stables' by playing the rural worker's dwelling card. pm me if you would like details.

Nothing ever is

We used Speyside Stoves (NE Scotland)

What is the mesh required for? Generally the A type meshes are to control cracking only rather than acting a true reinforcing bars like you would have in a reinforced concrete beam or floor slab in an office floor. You'll often see on a drawing A142, A193 or A252 meshes specified. If this is the only mesh shown on the drawing and there are no other individual bars attached to the mesh then it is likely for crack control only. The are other types of meshes called structural meshes and these start with the letter B. If you have an A type mesh then as @saveasteading says explore using plastic fibres as you could save a lot. Post more info if you want to investigate option further.

Try Central Rebar in Alloa — they wholesale to lots of other places and commercial sites, and are happy to do small orders too, cut to size, the works. VASTLY cheaper than Travis/etc. I feel like they'll have shipping/contacts for you as well. Worth a call.

We have been getting sensible delivery costs for 25 miles out of inverness, from HIS, Travis, MKM. And better (£15) from the nearest merchant who won''t cover you though. The mesh itself is very expensive. £32 and £82 / sheet of 3.6 x 2m For half our floor slab we are going to use fibre-mesh (plastic fibres in the mix) this will cost £1/m2 and free delivery with the concrete, so is a huge saving. It depends on many other factors, but we only need crack control. Why only half? too late to convince the SE, who I don't think even knew of the existence of the product.

But as I said above it has to be installed with unventilated air gaps either side of the insulation, as to get the thermal conductivity advertised it relies on low emissivity of the reflective coating.

Hybris has changed over the years. Data sheet currently says the Thermal Conductivity is 0.033 W/m.k The equivalent for PIR/PUR insulation is 0.021 to 0.028 W/m.k. Rockwool is about the same as Hybris 0.035 W/m.k. Lower numbers are better. These number are for a unit thickness (1m thick!) so you can (only) compare them if the thickness of each is the same. Before you buy your garden room ask what thickness of insulation they provide or what the U-Value of the wall and ceiling will be. Hybris is available from 50mm to 205mm thick. So anywhere from poor to pretty good depending on how thick they use. If you insulate it yourself I'd look at Rockwool between studwork and possibly a layer of PIR/PUR or insulated plaster board on the inside. Rigid insulation like PIR/PUR is hard to cut accurately to fit between studwork where as Rockwool can be cut oversize and squashed in.

Yes I came to the same solution too. 52.5mm seems to be a standard depth for insulated plasterboard: 12.5mm plasterboard, 40mm of PIR insulation. Looking at YouTube videos, its seems easy to chase-out channels for cables, back boxes, etc., so you can use it even in areas where you have services. I am not yet at the stage of installing plasterboard but am thinking of using this when I do.

The next stage of the setup of the site took place over the last 3 weeks. with some good progress. The trip up North, 433mile from our current rental in the NW of England. I set off on Wednesday morning in the 7.5T truck, and the 2 dogs for company. I took some materials with me, and had a gut feeling I was overloaded. I had worked out the approx. weight of what I was taking, but was unsure of the TARE weight of the truck. so I didn't take all I was planning. Luckily the nice guys from VOSA, At Carlisle (Todhills check site), confirmed my suspicions when the invited me in for a check. I was over weight, but the truck and my paperwork were all in good order, and they give the truck a thorough looking at. The upshot of this was me renting another 7.5T truck for storage, offloading the excess weight, driving the remaining 333 miles, unloading, returning the next day with the empty truck, re loading and driving back to site. 1100 miles in 38 hours. not what was planned, but you live and learn.... I arrived back on site on early Friday morning, 02.30am. and slept in the cab of the truck, until I was woke up at 05.10, by the guy delivering the Static, he was at the end of the road... Here's a screen grab of our new home arriving to site, this was 05.25 am... I hired a contractor to carry out the highway works for the site entrance, basically as he had the correct insurance and RAMS it was easier to get this stage subbed out. The idea was he would open up the site, with a 5 T digger, start the initial road and stone this up with around 60T of type 1. I would then meet on site and hire his man for a few days to assist with the pecking of the treatment plant. This didn't go to plan, they had to use a 13T machine, as it was available, so when I eventually get to site on the Thursday, due to the size of machine, the operator has completed the initial works, then pulled out approx. 60M of the road, and pecked the treatment plant hole, and I got this for free... 😁 Having a 13t machine on site, with operator for the Friday, I needed to make the most of it, as I was only paying for the rental of a 5T machine. Mikey the operator, made short work of pulling out the remainder of the road up to the location of the house, in total this road is around 90M. Next I had him strip the area for the house. The house is around 13M x 7M, so I wanted to strip back a working area around the house, my thought was we would hit the bed rock so this was the plan, we marked out a 16M x 11M rectangle, and he set to it, it took him about 2 hours to strip the land and scrape it clean. The above is the bedrock where the house will be, and the road coming up the side of the house. (I used a geotextile as a separation layer for the road, although in sections the road is on bedrock anyway,) You can make out that there is a fall from the top left falling to bottom right, this will be made up with type 1 stone, raising SW corner of the house around 700mm, I will raise the road in this section and use some of the top soil to level this out a bit and soften the impact. The last Job for Mikey was to dig me the trench for the services, he dug a 600mm wide trench about 8M short of the Treatment plant (to allow me access to move the spoil, and a similar distance short at the other end for me to connect to the water. just shy of 60M. Friday was a busy day on 3 hrs sleep. The treatment plant also arrived as can be seen above, I went for a Tricel unit, this was based on cost, treatment, dimensions and availability. Last job for the day was to move the caravan, Mikey helped me with this and we stripped a bit more land and located here temporarily for the night North / South. Saturday I decided to get the water connected to the caravan, for this I needed to complete the trench from the standpipe to the large service trench. I never dug this on the first trip as I was concerned about the electrical supply to my neighbours property. Cables seemed to run across my field at around 300/ 400 mm depth. I used my contact at SSE and he arrange to get the cable moved / deepened. This was carried out a few weeks prior and we discussed the position of the new road, and he made a site visit and we talked about me extending the water pipe trench in both directions so that I could also lay a utilities duct to the road for broadband. So to say I was a bit surprised, and p***ed off when I cut through the neighbours supply cable. The cable was as I was worried about 400mm deep, and the marker tape was next to the cable.... How to upset your new neighbours by having their electricity supply stopped two times (1 for the initial connection, 1 for the remedial works), only for me to cut the cable for a third time.... At least they were very prompt, they arrived after about 40mins, and it took him around an hour to re-joint the cable. I then removed the water standpipe and ran my new water main up to the caravan. It will tee off for the pods at some point, and then continue up to the house. SO now I had running water in the van, and gas for the water heater and hob / oven. Sunday was glorious, so I caught up on my sleep, and had a restful day. Scottish Power were due to fit the meter on the Wednesday, so I needed to get my service cables from the meter box into the service trench and up to the caravan and to the pods. I dug a trench across the road and through to the service trench. I used a 125mm Duct, and inside here I ran some 6mm SWA to supply the pods and some 50mm Duct to run a service cable to the caravan and ultimately up to the house. I pulled the cables through, and I have put a caravan hook up point next to the static. Tuesday / Wednesday, I had 80T of Type 1 MOT delivered in stages, I spread this out using the Back hoe, and vibrating roller. so by the end of Wednesday I have the base in for the road. which will give me good access for deliveries. Scottish power were a no show..... Discussing the caravan with the neighbour they advised turning the caravan 90deg, so it was end on East / West as the stronger winter winds tend to blow from the West, and being side on would ultimately be unstable. I dug out another section of land next to the caravan with the idea of swinging the van around at weekend when Mandy Joined me for the last week. It took me and Mandy all Saturday to move the van, using the backhoe to pull it around. and most of Sunday to get it jacked up off the ground and levelled. We dug 4 pits later on in the week and concreted some anchors in to chain the van down. The van in position with Mandy getting the best job of the week to squeeze under the van and start to insulate the water pipes... Scottish Power let us down again with a missed appointment on the Tuesday with a promise of Friday.... They actually turned up late Thursday and fitted the meter, so we had power on the Thursday night. We spent a couple of days moving spoil around the site to create a mound of earth to shelter and soften the impact of the pods, this was also a planning requirement for the neighbours amenity. Still work in progress and there's 10's of tonnes more to move. Last job before packing up on the Friday was to level the base of the treatment tank pit. At this point we were still waiting for the building warrant. so couldn't actually install the plant. We end the week by getting the Building warrant approved, and the certificate for discharge for the treatment plant both on Friday. Thanks for reading..

It's probably not a bad place to start to get some understanding, it helped me. Be aware its costs are probably a bit out. If you can, visit some self builders. You'll start to get a feel for what it's really like- pitfalls, sequencing, additional costs etc. At the beginning you have a number of directions you can go in - location, size of house, build type, extravagance etc. But once you've made those decisions you're committed to a particular route, so the early decisions are key. Hence the benefit of getting a broad a view as possible on your options.

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/hbfile/pdf/HH702230.pdf full installation manual available there. Looks like burying it in the screed is ok.

Get a ferret with a big bushy tail. stuff him in one end and waft some rabbit flavour crisps at the other end. Clean duct. Dirty ferret winner winner chicken dinner.

Ah, lol, can't blame a man for trying I do forget who I 've said what to, as there is a huge amount of traffic on BH these days. Solar pergola?

Do you mind me asking what kind of price the install was? We've not got round to putting one in yet but a mate had some quotes in our area and they were north of £8k for the install alone.

I can, but I went to Public School.