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It doesn't worry me, I quite enjoy the process and the chat.

So plumb for the outdoor shower and decide later. The cost of the plumbing is a few quid at this stage. If it's cold and wet outside, you've already been walking in it with the dog for God knows how long. A few seconds extra for a quick rinse isn't going to hurt you. Worst case, you have the indoor shower anyway, so use it when you want to.

Submitted a form ST4 to land registry. (statement of truth) describing the prescribed easement for parking and dustbin storage that has been ongoing for the previous 25 years. Also submitted a report to the planning department to report the fence for its size, proximity to the footpath and road. Will keep the thread updated with any updates, many thanks for all of your help and advice.

We are building a four-bed detached house in the south of England and for a whole host of reasons (well mainly privacy!) I thought I’d try a blog in a slightly different way. I’ve been making notes of “lessons” we’ve learnt along the way and I thought I’d try and write them up whilst we progress before hindsight has the chance to alter them too much! Some of them are things I wish I’d known or realised beforehand, others are just little things that have worked well for us, but hopefully they might be useful for others at a similar stage and I’d be interested to hear how they compare to your own. The first chunk are my notes from finding land through to gaining planning permission… There’s no doubt luck is required to find a good plot, but you can give yourself the best chance to be lucky. Research planning applications, look for areas of land on Google Earth, use Land Registry, write letters. Don’t just wait for Rightmove. We paid a lot of money for a site without planning permission – many people told us we were breaking the biggest self-build golden rule. We were clear with ourselves about the risk we were taking, understood exactly why the current owners didn’t want to put planning in place and, importantly, we made sure the price we paid reflected the risk. Neighbourly relations are hugely important and you likely need to be prepared for people to object to your development no matter what you design. Disruption, noise, loss of green space, loss of privacy, and just change in general are all very real worries for people. We wrote letters to everyone in the immediate area outlining our plans and kept them up-to-date with our progress. We worked really hard to always be polite and courteous, even when we weren’t always getting that in return. We can now happily meet any neighbour know we’ve always done our best. Everything takes longer than you think! During the design process the weeks seemed to tick by very quickly – every iteration needed our architect to re-work something, and then come back to us a week or two later. Be open to your architects ideas and suggestions, think things through and question your own presumptions, but also don’t be afraid to push the design in the direction you think best. Our plot is in a conservation area so our plans were always going to come under a lot of scrutiny. Read up on planning applications in your local area and follow the applications as they progress, in particular read the statutory consultees responses (highways, trees, conservation). You can learn a lot by seeing what amendments or information they’re requesting and how that might translate to your own application. We used our local authority’s planning pre-application advice services with a fairly mature set of plans. This cost as much as a full planning application, and took longer, but was invaluable for letting us get feedback from the conservation/planning officer away from any neighbour scrutiny. We’d agreed at the start a fixed price with our architect through to full planning submission, this proved very worthwhile as significant re-design was needed on the basis of the pre-app feedback. We listened to our neighbour objections, and tried to mitigate their concerns where practical, but at the end of the day we knew we’d be submitting plans with things they wouldn’t like. We made sure we explained the rationale for why alternates weren’t possible, but otherwise pushed ahead with the design we wanted that stood us in the best stead for planning. Despite all our neighbourly relation work our application attracted objections (as expected!) but went through smoothly as we’d addressed all the material considerations from our pre-app. Importantly we remained on good terms. If the shoe’s on the other foot - and you’re objecting to a neighbouring application - make sure you focus on the material considerations. One neighbour picked up on the aspect of our design we were least confident would get through but then buried their remarks on it in the middle of long-winded list of other non-material objections. Had they clearly presented their case and focussed on the material considerations they likely stood a much better chance of influencing the planning officer.

I sense your obsession 🙂 Well Markc - you make is sound too easy. I hope you are right. I'll let you know how I fair. Speaking with my fabricator tomorrow to see what he is thinking.

This is what, I think, is the most useful take-home about baseload - when it represents the minimum power draw from a house. Dynamic loads like fridges, lights and central heating pumps are all very dependant on occupancy and time of year and are best represented by averages. But the minimum power draw is a figure that we can use to spot problems that are costing us unnecessary expense. Having read how @jack had a UFH pump running unnoticed I've now implemented a node-red function that monitors daily minimum and sends me a notification if it's exceeded by more than a threshold value over a 24H period. Going to be a bit of fine-tuning to get it to the point where it's useful but I haven't seen any obvious problems yet.

You can’t have 101% 🤣

To be honest, I don't think there's any point worrying about it now. Sounds like a few months isn't going to make a difference to the condition; I'd wait until the roof is sorted.

I don’t think you’d really notice it, and you could always fit the dishwasher hard to the right and take up some of the excess with the door on the left. If you can see it then remind yourself how much worse would’ve been had it been the other way and you were a few mm short!

@markcthanks - been looking at hole saw or annular cutter as a step up. Not sure there is enough space to get a mag drill so would need some other bracing. Doubt I could apply enough pressure. You are based in west yorkshire 🙂 fancy a trip down to Cambridge. The SE designed the beams for max of 3 90mm holes in centre of beam and we are less than than and off to the edge which is better. Challenge is just making the cuts. @Moonshinerectangular cuts would be bad for the steel at the corners so I'll steer away from that but keep um coming. I was wondering about drilling needle holes and then hacksaw them connections. Labour intensive.

£60 gets you a external shower fitting designed for camper vans with a hinged cover and removable hose that adjusts temp. a couple of double check valves, isolation valves, drain valves later and you have a dog shower. got all the bits just waiting for the motivation.

I think you will need to render the blocks first or at least get a slurry coat on them.

yeah. that's a fair point and you're right! if I did have a warm shower outside I wouldn't then shower him inside. sorry for the confusion.

I'll second the use of gel crimps. Cheap and very easy to use, you don't even need to strip the cable.

I did some more testing on my cupboard full of stuff today. I tried powering it all up via a little inverter from a 12V battery and measuring the actual DC power used. First issue, the start up current of the printer tripped the 200W inverter I was using. Clearly I would need something bigger to account for things like that. So everything else apart from the printer, consumed 7 amps at 12V DC so that's 84 watts of DC into the inverter to power my cupboard full of stuff. That's not as high as I initially though, confirming the simple ac VA measurement was highlighting a lousy power factor.

Just had this month's bill in. My export rate over the last week has been 9.14p per unit. Previously it was closer to the 15p, but since it is now minimal export month, and I still have other things to optimise (takes beady look at dodgy horse chestnut tree that needs to be removed before it starts dropping things on my roof), I'll not play with a switch yet to Fixed Outgoing. Presumably if it stays low, Octopussy will reduce the 15p back down a bit. My other interesting point is that I have been running the gas manually for an hour or so in the morning before the sun is up to prime the house a little, and having forgotten to switch off on a couple of occasions, my gas bill has rocketed to .. er .. £47, of which about 50-60% was forgetting to turn it off. Guess which days 😁. Time to reprogram the wotsit. Low export season (but I do tend to run the heat pump a little if I am exporting - ideally for 2-3 hours in the morning to get some heat in). The are export vs consumption for the last month. Obvs the missing one is solar self-usage. Yesterday may have been thrown off because I had quite a nasty hypo for about half of it, and the middle of the day was just lost, so I would be less aware of what was going on; it took some time for instinct to kick in and OJ to be drunk. And there may have been some things left on overnight by mistake from Saturday. Plus it has also been dark during the days with the sun on holiday somewhere.

I thought about it but price and availability ruled it out. It is already a palaver having 2 different sand colours so mixer needing thorough washout if they change from blockwork to face work.

I used GPO gel filled crimp connectors, quick to use and worked very well. https://cpc.farnell.com/tuk/xjya-100/gel-crimp-2-wire-orange-capped/dp/CN22298?

In the past I have done B using normal plastic waste water drainage (110mm?) pipe with umpteen holes drilled in, and weed membrance as the liner, folded over the top, with a bit more gravel and pavers over to make a path. I now wonder about the Wickes heavy duty membrane and lifting the pipe slightly off the bottom of the drain via a layer of the gravel.

Do you need the stack in the corner for other reasons such as an upstairs WC? It can be tricky to connect a shower into the pipe at a WC. Especially if it comes up through the floor right where the WC is going. I would consider buying pipe and fittings to do a mock up of the arrangement before you are committed. The Architects stack in the corner approach allows you to defer thinking about the details a bit but you still need to think how the shower will connect into the stack if you don't want it raised on a plinth. You could also consider running 110mm under the floor to where the basin is going. Otherwise it appears that's also going to mean raising the shower so it can go under the shower to the stack.

Option B without a doubt. As well as the point re silting up, the wet gravel is very attractive to tree and other roots, which would soon fill all the gaps. It is a pain to do and needs to be quite organised, but worth it.

Cavity material is excluded - it is combustibles within direct line.

At the moment of course when the sun shines this base load will be powered by the sun. But I am talking here of shifting this collection of stuff onto an off grid supply, so it would no longer benefit from the rest of the solar PV. And the other side if the equation, on a day like today, not a breath of wind and grey overcast sky, the off grid system would not be doing a lot so the mains charger would be kicking in. So savings will not be as much as the theoretical maximum, and harder to actually quantify.

Gravel will pass water but unless the ground is very well draining it will build up behind the wall unless you give it somewhere to go.

I conclude that this was a day with a "D" in it 🙂. Welcome. The statement in the 'Best Practice' doc seems strange: My standard approach is to pair a PIV with a continuous trickle ventilation fan or two downstairs (preferably an HR, though sometimes DMEV). That may be combined with an IWI reno, including a warm-side vapour barrier, and perhaps underfloor insulation too, plus the usual 250mm rockwool in the loft. That ensures that warm wet air is ventilated rather than "pushed into the structure". Is that not blatantly obvious that a PIV setup needs outlets, given their comments about sometimes incorporating a vapour membrane and sealing the place from draughts? I've been doing this for 10 years, and it has proved robust. F

Good stuff - KISS. I think you may have to prod planning again in a few weeks. For now I would suggest a quick one para email to your Local Councillor with a copy of what you submitted. It should make it easy for them to forward to the boss in planning, which will give it some priority. Then forward a copy of your prodmail, too.

There's no termination resistor required for tree cabling. Main thing to remember is that you can't have the tree bus connected as a closed loop anywhere. Also, for every retractice switch (assuming it's a single pole push type) you will need to feed it +24v (from orange tree wiring) and then take the return from the switch back to the panel as a digital input using one core of the cat6a cable. This means you can have a maximum of 4 digital inputs (e.g. retractive switches or door contacts) per cat6a if it is used as a tree cable but that you also then have no spare cores in case of any wiring issues later (e.g. plasterboard screw through cable!!) I love that you have a dog shower in your boot room.......

I’d go 300 so you can harvest a lot more lower grade heat as useful energy, eg utilising that to reduce the amount of energy taken to ‘recover’ back to the stat set-point. A bigger cylinder will promote a longer, more definable ‘burn’ for the oil boiler too so will be better for you all round ( imho ).

That’ll learn me. The point I was making was they were very very effective. I don’t recall how often we cleaned them but don’t recall it being any more arduous than other cleaning chores... … on the proviso you have inwards opening windows of course otherwise I suspect it would border on the impossible.

Not wanting to do your project for you, but point you in directions where you can research. You need to build an index of topics you need to cover to justify MVHR, steps to design, choices for the design and implementation, costs 'v' cost savings etc. You will need to know each circuit pressure drop, what noise suppression you need and MVHR unit size you would select, what features the unit will incorporate and if boost will be automated or manual, reasons why any cost and/or user implications. If automated on humidity, what downsides there are in a UK climate and high summer time humidity and how to overcome. If manual what is a user never boosts what impacts on the building fabric. Also look at the UK implications of low internal humidity resulting from MVHR in the winter. Is this an issue in the UK or is it more a cold climate thing. Look at the Passivhaus Institute, building regulations, for the country where your house is sited. There is also plenty of information on this site. You should also demonstrate how your flow rates compare to house volume and overall air changes per hour. Comparing building regs with something like Passivhaus guidelines. Advantage/diadvantages of various system configurations dMVHR, MVHR and hybrids between the two such as Fresh-R. Again look at costs, ease of implementation of new build and retrofit.

Really depends on the blocks, I would go with holocore blocks then they can be placed over rebar starters and filled with concrete. Also you really need weap holes at the base of the wall or a French drain behind to relieve hydraulic pressure behind the wall

There was a time I had no idea how to make one. A DS18B20 based temperature logger was the second project I did. The advantage of making your own is that code is easily available (could post mine up) and if you use a Raspberry Pi W of some sort, you have bluetooth and wifi built in.

Yep - take a piece of C-Stud and turn it over so it’s resting on the edges and use a bolster to put a bend in the back. Then flip that inside the two pieces you want to join and put a couple of wafers either side. You can also use it up for noggins

Did this exercise over a decade ago. I have virtually no parasitic loads now. Rather than look to power it renewably, is there anything that can be properly switched off i.e. printer. How about a bit of electronics that senses one half of a co dependant bit of equipment that turns on the other bit i.e TV and satellite box or sound system. As nice as it is to have everything instantaneously available all the time, a few seconds wait is not a killer. Was only 45 years ago we had to warm up the TV.

Sounds ok, just always think of how it will flow and that a rod will get aling it. 2 x 45 together can disrupt flow / catch a drain rod. A short straight between might help. Why 45 though? 22 or less might work.

A guy who used to work for me part time whilst pursuing an acting career in Corie etc Loads of stories there No has a scrap business we collect sCrap

Have tried to get indemnity insurance? One issue might if the question comes up about who you have told about the restrictive covenant... but it's probably worth a go. I'd have thought your conveyancing solicitor would have flagged this at purchase.

We have been obsessed with CO2 reduction for some time, and not been watching fundamentals. Closed all our coalmines, closed all our coal power stations (though one still burns wood and thankfully a couple have not been decommissioned so can be re started and still used) We are building wind farms as fast as we can but we all know they need wind, that does not always blow. This created the "dash for gas" as burning gas to produce electricity is a little less harmful than burning coal. Great. Except we don't have enough of our own gas. No problem, we live in a global economy now, we can buy anything from anywhere, why bother going to all the trouble of producing something ourselves when someone else will make it or produce it and sell it to us. Oh look those Ruskies have a lot of cheap gas and they are even building a nice big pipeline to deliver it. What could possibly go wrong with such a global trading situation? Oops. Someone forgot to think about "Energy security" let alone security of anything else we import, like food, certain high tech products like microchips, even steel and other raw materials. Oops indeed there are very few things now that Europe is self sufficient in, let alone the little old UK. Now our government is talking about drilling for more gas in the North Sea. About time but will take some years to come on stream. Lets hope the environmentalists don't stop that as we are really stuffed if they do. Re the forecast power cuts. They will be a nuisance. I don't see they will actually save very much power for the average domestic user. We might get a few hours power cut, they don't predict how often, but apart from not being able to watch the telly and the lights will go out, that is about all it will save in terms of power. The fridge will warm up a little and use the same electricity when it comes back on to cool down again. Heating with an ASHP, the house might cool down slightly, but hardly measurable, and the ASHP will fire up again later if it needs to when the power comes back. If there is really more demand than supply, you have to remove demand, which really means industry, which means not making things that take a lot of power to make. I know, lets just buy those things from abroad instead..............

We've moved in and loving it!! Old house, adjacent, completed sale yesterday so can now pay off the build debt. Getting used to running ASHP and MVHR but no heating needed so far. Here's some pics

I've been gone for some time, around 9 weeks. I'd had a stroke back in August whilst at our caravan, getting us ready to move in 2 weeks later. For the technical people (everyone on here!) I had a dissect of the artery in my cerebellum. Artery opened for a few seconds, which caused a clot and then caused a stroke. The change was instant and I spent 5 weeks in hospital, however home now (well was home for a week now in the caravan, which im very happy about). Its affected me physically on my right side. 9 weeks I couldn't walk, but now I can so very happy. It's just one of those things, I wasn't doing too much (even though I was doing a lot) sometimes it can be caused by trauma, but well never know the answer to that. I was only 39 (now 40!) , fit and healthy, as above its just one of those things. I'll make a full recovery, and no more likely to have a dissect than others are which is low so all good. I've been positive throughout and intend to be, just another hurdle which is no problem.

LAS8001si - £24 inc vat (https://www.noberneseals.com/product/lorient-las8001si-acoustic-threshold-seal/) LAS1212 (for all jambs) - £13 inc vat (https://www.noberneseals.com/product/lorient-las1212-batwing-seal/) LAS1011 (for all jambs) - £13 inc vat (https://www.noberneseals.com/product/lorient-las1011-firtree-seal-4mm-blade-las1011/) about £50 with some added on for delivery. The drop down seal is fitted by making a 36mm deep groove along the centre of the bottom of the door with a router, and drops with a push button onto the door lining when the door closes, hothing really that complex https://www.lorientuk.com/files/resources/LAS8001K-si-fitting-instructions.pdf

As an aside I follow this YouTube plumbing channel https://youtube.com/c/UrbanPlumbers. The guy is pretty clever and he has a bit of a thing about people fitting over-sized boilers. He’s done several boiler installs where they modulate down to quite low outputs for heating, but ramp up to high outputs for hot water. Worth a look to get some ideas.

I would start at square one, and ask the installer just why he thinks it will need a 24kW boiler to feed one UFH loop and one radiator.

Had a quick look over this again. The system has worked well, only used the heat pump and no expensive use of the backup immersion heater. A few comments were made on the post regarding the amount of air needed to come into the house, even trickle vents howling with the air movement. This has not been issue and we don't notice the temperature in the house decreasing when the system is running. It runs for about six hours a day to heat the water for two adults and two children. I've said a few times before I don't see why such large external heat pumps are required in a well insulated self build. With no underfloor heating, heat being extracted from the house into joule aero and trickle vents, we never had the temperature drop below 18c since we moved in. Usually around 20c to 21c.

With friends like you who needs enemas?