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maybe and most definitely quicker! but why have a 3D printer if you're not going to use it? 😉

Who would win in a fist fight Spider-Man or Batman Self build questions don’t get tougher than this 😁

You've given me an idea I'm going to salvage the wood, hire a roofing torch and try Shou Sugi Ban or Yakisugi. A traditional Japanese wood preserving method by charing wood then re-use it.

Well you have enough gap/air this end 🤣, it looks like the gap further back if stuffed with something 🤔, you only need about 10mm continuous (mostly) fir air. Is the other side ventilated (crossflow).

Looking good. A cable tie and a couple of self tappers would be easier than printing perhaps.

first pipe done. should keep the little buggers out. 2 more to do once I've finished printing the collars

Buy yourself a pair of 15/22mm pipe slices and strip all the copper from the brass - it’s worth more as pure copper than brazings which is the mix. also, leave none of it on site - get some £1 buckets from Wickes or wherever and strip and cut it into the buckets then take them home - it grows legs !!!

If you have no other home for the metal in that lot you’ll get a few good bob from a scrap metal merchant. Try and get all the wood out, could come in handy during the build, I built a couple of sheds out of wood from our bungalow among many other other things.

welcome! good luck with the build and we look forward to seeing the progress. we do love a photo or two. 🙂

Definitely less spiders etc, they only ever get in when a window is open. But the big one for me is NO MICE. Every house I have lived i before, with the usual air bricks and other means of ventilating cold roof spaces and cold floor voids has allowed mice to get in. particularly into a cold loft space. It was just something you accepted and dealt with with traps or poison. But the new air tight house with a warm roof has not had a single mouse in it ever. That is a way better result than fewer spiders.

something like this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/255271428161 as the rubber seal works commendably well. I did however glue a washer onto each flap, to weight it a bit more and ensure it *only* opened with the strong flow from the hood. For motorised, you're probably looking for a spring-return fire damper unit, as the cheap chinese motorised units require an odd switching logic that would be difficult to integrate with our way of wiring things, IMO.

https://apple.news/Al4u-EmdXStyfo8_xV41qFg

I can't see the drawing but think the answer is yes. After all the first floor is always way above the DPC 🙂

There are many ways to skin this cat. As a minimum I would recommend putting a WiFi Access Point on each floor connected by RJ45 cable back to a modem located where the phone line comes into the house. So for now that would be just two RJ45 cables. I would also put a power point in those three locations. Eg to power the WiFi access points and the modem You could also consider running RJ45 from the modem to the main TV area? Possibly even one outside so you can put a WiFi Access Point in the garden. As @MJNewtonsaid a wired network can be very useful but if really on a budget the above is the minimum/priority I would go for.

pic above to help clarify

If you’re heading that way then I’d urge you to look into the PHPP. Very DIY’able if you have the time and patience or you can chuck a chunk of cash at a consultant - but check their credentials. Carefully. As mentioned, it sounds like overheating will be your biggest problem. Our issue comes from east facing windows, but we’ve got a workaround for those now. West facing windows can also be an issue, south facing - not so much especially with the large overhang’s you’re planning. External shading will sort all those potential problems. As for heating a passive house, ours has a Willis heater for the ground floor UFH (which wasn’t working properly last winter due to a valve on one of the circulation pumps not being fully open) and that sufficed. I’m sure it will be more than sufficient this winter. Electric UFH in the two bathrooms plus electric towel rails and that’s it. You basically don’t need much at all, and it doesn’t need to be complex. Courtesy of @TerryE

How will you be heating water? I'd still be tempted to go for some form of UFH if only for the cooling function in the warmer months.

What are the bets that there are going to be some rather large unforeseen and unintended consequences as a result of the rapid knocking up of the rescue package?

Don't tell them that hospital have them. I think it is about time that everyone realised that power is not delivered from just one source. All countries need a mix of sources, it is just the fraction of each that seems to be misunderstood. I can play with figures and create a number of different scenarios to achieve the same end i.e. adequate power 99.9% of the time. I could show prices and delivery based on historic data (it's all there for anyone to look at). I could even throw in environmental issues. But it will make not one jot of difference to most people as they take no interest in it, and even less willing to learn about it. The best thing would be to let the National Grid sort out the size and location of generation installations (they know how to manage what they have incredibly well), then invite tenders from the generation companies. So planning rules will have to be overturned, but it is about time individuals realised they don't, through a fluke of wealth and location, have the right to deny others what they can easily afford. To show, in an odd way how fickle people are, the tourist figures for August came out yesterday. Allowing for rounding, Cornwall had 1 million less visitor trips. So about 20% down. Cornwall has not changed, except we had very little rain this summer, prices have not changed much, no travel restrictions and the people down here still hate the Emmets. Where did they all go, abroad or stayed at home?

I wrote out my own budget sheet on excel showing as much detail as i could, some lines i referenced quotes i had received and others i just entered a value i had estimated myself through online pricing and my own calculations. i then just added a line for 10% contingency and this all went through with no issues. as long as you are realistic i don't think they will have any objections

That roof has “spread “, needs pulling back somehow, what’s the other side like?

Forgot i'd done this for some reason 😂 Been a long time coming, but finally decided to get on with it, heres a few before and after and during pics, I did use wall anchors too but for some reason didn't bother taking a photo at that point. Pleased with how it came out, not only looks better than before with the conduit for the wire which is now buried, but should also save some £££. The plinth insulation will get rendered at some point in the future in black, but the tubs are of a size where i kind of need to be able to do all my sections at once.

All good advice from everybody, so I will chuck a different angle on it safety first, get your site fence up with appropriate warning signs. Guessing you want to do this as cheaply as poss, your main massive cost will be disposal of all the debris, so make a list of everything and work out a couple of ways in which you will get rid of it all the first item you mentioned was the roof tiles, so ol mate down the road will take them for free, if you stack them neatly in his crates, so that will cost you loads, the time to remove them and stack, plus any hire cost. So the opposite thing to do is not save any, can you use any of the hardcore on site, access road, hard standing for your site hut,etc etc if you can use it on site then I would say the way to do it is soft strip the house, as has been said, all non structural parts out. Skips for plasterboard, loft insulation, roof felt, timber on free cycle dig out areas you need the hard standing smash it down with an excavator and move to the dug out areas. Things that could bite you in the arse. THE FOOTINGS. have you had a little it down the sides of the footing to see what sort of thickness they are ? this has recently happened to me, see my blog on cockups, i was fortunate in that once I realised I had substantially underestimated the amount of concrete to remove i knew how to deal with it, and I also had a big hole to put it, so all in a larger excavator for a week and I was finished. If you need to shift them off site have an add up of the amount of trucks to shift it and also the size of the excavator to physically pull them out of the ground.

The other thing to consider, is there anything saleable in the house, doors, light fittings, kitchen units, flag stones, Next is anything givawayable? The more you can get rid of at this stage the less you have to dispose of. Next talk to disposal companies, ask what is their preferred waste segregation method? everything in skips, or do they just use grab wagons, or tippers to be loaded on site, do bricks need to be separated from wood, what about windows and plastic etc. Consider general waste options for carpets, curtains, paper, glass, If its it’s an old house you might find that the bricks come off cleanly, could these have an resale value, it’s worth asking. Is there any architectural salvage of value, fireplaces, stone Work, leaded windows?

I thought your keyboard was broken 🤣

Slates

It did turn into a DIY demolition, as much by accident as design... We removed the roof tiles and slid them down scaffold planks that were laid on ladders, it worked very well, and they remain stored on site because we couldn't give them away. I"m sure we'll be able to use them to make some paths through the mud that is now EVERYWHERE on the site. The roof timbers were removed and are stored on site. I'll use them for various things, such as a frame for a shed etc. Then I started getting overtaken by events... A friend of mine owns a skip firm and, despite my protestations to the contrary, he was convinced that he would be able to get a 20 yard ro-ro skip up the VERY narrow lane to the site. He gave me a call a few weeks ago and told me one of his drivers would be round in a few minutes to have a look. Well, "have a look" actually meant squeezing his lorry up the lane, I had to climb up the back of the cab to lift a telegraph pole stay over the top of the ro-ro mechanism. He had inches to spare on each side but somehow he got to the end of the plot and completed a 98 point turn so he could drop the skip, the problem was that we had nowhere prepared for the skip to go so it just went straight on to the grass and after another 98 point turn he headed back out of the lane (with me lifting the telegraph pole stay again) so, after him "having a look" I had a chuffing great skip in my garden - I was somewhat bewildered but grateful. I then asked another friend who has a mini digger if he could come and lift some of the paths around the edge of the bungalow. He arrived and promptly started pushing the bungalow over, completely ignoring the footpaths! At this stage I realised that it was probably too late to worry too much about the Method Statement for the demolition which I still haven't submitted. We started loading the bungalow into the 20 yard skip and made a call to get the skip replaced. It was another nerve wracking creep up and down the lane for the skip lorry and, of course, since the first drop the weather had taken a turn for the worse and now there was much slipping and sliding of the lorry. The only solution I could see was to throw bits of bungalow under the skip lorry, which did the trick. We only had 20 minutes between the skip lorry departing full and returning to dump another empty skip during which time we threw loads more bungalow onto the grass to provide some hard standing for the skip and the lorry to manoeuvre. Yes, onto the grass, I should have called a halt. Stripped the top soil, then thrown the bungalow onto the garden and then got the skips back but I didn't, not until later, but by then the damage was done. Anyway the bungalow is now gone and the plot looks like Passchendaele.