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Having been in the tree business for 30 odd years, I would go for a walk around your local area and look at what sits naturally around there. Get a good tree id book and see what would fit in with the task you need it to perform. Tall and thin to hide a telegraph pole. Big and spreading to block out the nosey neighbour. What is good for wildlife, don’t forget hedges, you get far more living in a hedge than most trees. Try and stick to indigenous, and if you plant any conifers for hedging stick to western red cedar. If you plant any leylandii you need a swift kick in the gonads.

I enquires about the lead for our roof on Friday All four places that I’ve accounts with have bombarded me with calls Yesterday and today All for a 2 k order How things have changed Six months ago I’d have been lucky to get four quotes As a self builder it’s tempting to put all your eggs in one basket But it’s better if the reps realize that you are shopping around Even a commodity like lead varies ing pricev Only £28.59 per 6 meter roll But x it by ten and it’s a nice saving for the sake of four phone calls Im a long way off tiles But buy on a daily basis Even tiles and adhesive have come down in price The diy market has disappeared over night

Barcham Trees & Majestic Trees both have very good Web sites which includes mature size and soil conditions for different species etc. I've purchased 8 Trees from Majestic over a two year period and all are going well, even after the scorching summer we had.

I believe in England, it is indeed the highest ground point that counts so on sloping ground it could be higher and still comply.

There are lots of garden designers who will do the work for a very small fee. I once had a garden designed and was very impressed by the plant knowledge and the the design. She did the drawing by hand and wrote out the planting list. I could not have done it myself but I learnt a lot about plants and shrubs and where they like to be.

I generally like that, certainly good for buildability. But the kitchen / dining / family has no south facing aspect. I provisionally sketched some ideas when we might have bought a north facing plot like that, and it would basically have been the kitchen / dining / living occupying the left half of the house from tv corner to study where it would have had north, west and south windows, lounge where you have it having east and south windows, and all the utility stuff in the NE corner. Even better would be to mirror that down the centre, so the east side of the house front to back is the kitchen / dining family getting east, south and north windows, you are more likely to use that in the morning to benefit from the early sun. and the living room to the front bottom so south and west windows, you are more likely to use that in the evening to benefit from the west sun. And utility stuff to north west corner.

Why ….?? Would never install gulleys internally as they need a water seal to make them work. Stub stack in the plant room with a boss head to take overflows etc. Garage - depends what is going into there ..? But again, sealed is preferable.

We have 4x Geberit concealed cisterns as per the video, and we had one for 10+ years in the last house. And you can service them through the hole. My choice was made based on the fact we have the same ones in the office I work in and they lasted around 4 years without showing signs of needing repair, this would equate to about 40 years of domestic use. Also noted on you photo it shows a full height tiled wall, which whilst looking better, takes away 6" of valuable space, A shelved wall is useful, especially in a small room.

There may be some with fake DS18b20s shipped with them, but you can swap that out for a genuine one. The display will only be reading of the probe, so should be as accurate as the probe. @TerryE and myself have both calibrated them independently, and via different method, and found the DS18b20 to be very good.

At the weekend I did a little experiment to see how well I could heat our garden room using excess PV generation alone. I say alone which isn't quite accurate as this side has 9m2 of patio doors pointing S.E. so we also harvested about 2.5kWh of solar gain on this occasion. It had gotten up to 24oC by 11:30AM and everyone was sweating buckets: The import power total (magenta plot) flatlines between 9AM to 1:30PM as the excess PV is diverted to the 2kW convector (except for the kettle going on for elevenses) I haven't started logging the PV output to the database yet but we generated 8.6kWh on this day in the second half of November - which is frankly better than I anticipated. At least the robot cat (mouser) was enjoying the heat.

How it's measured is mentioned in the Householder Guide for Permitted Development. It's from the highest point adjacent to the building. Just beware that a shed and adjacent deck might be treated as two developments. Measured at different places.

Yes it may well be. It was for us. I say may be ... will a couple of barrow loads of earth make up the level to less than 2.5m? If so, do it.

Give me a bit of time and I'll post something.. need to finish something on the day job first. Yes they are not pleasing to the eye right enough.

It does, but today was 7°C outside so I don't think it was on. Peaks at ~200W when it is on. There's also a "keep the circulating water above freezing" mode that I *hope* is turned off, because we've got antifreeze in the circuit. I'll just turn the heat pump off half an hour early next time.

K Rend will be 15 mil rather than 25 Rest sounds good

Hi. You don’t need an air gap internally, more a service void for pipes and cables etc. You can get liquid membranes also, such as Passive Purple ( check out Intelligent Membranes online for more product info / suitability etc ) which can go internally. Other than that, it sounds as though your on the right track. What nasty stuff is currently in the cavity? Beads or wool? If wool, that needs professional removal first, as this can have problems later in life which you may not be insured against if not removed ( and certified ? ).

Easy enough to learn to drive a digger, several of us on here have bought our own, used it for the build and then sold it. I would not want to contemplate renting out one you own, too much risk and red tape. Though one guy in our village does rent his for not much per day. I have never heard of an electric one, I guess they do exist but like EV's at a premium price I expect.

Reckons 196 MWh is enough power 300,000 homes for two hours: 327W per house. Not at around 6PM it won't.

Appreciate what you’re saying. Thinking was to have the k/d/l have morning and evening sun and the study and lounge to have morning midday and evening sun. Plus trying to get rid of steelwork and make it a lot more simple to build. I’ll play about again and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the comments.

225mm posi’s leave very little space for services, so beware. If you look at the chord depths, and discount 2x from the overall height, you’ll see that you’ve around 120mm or less, and a soil fitting knuckle will just about, or if less won’t, fit in there. Have you planned your M&E layouts / large bore pipe runs yet ( FW & MVHR ) ? Leave the steel alone and get deeper joists would be my advice, unless your services are boxed in above / below the joist voids….

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-63707463.amp That has to be a better way to load balance.

I'm putting in a basic shower trap in the corner of my plant room, connected to a soil pipe by a 40mm waste pipe. This is to mitigate a burst / leak from the manifold, heating system etc. I don't think BC will allow you one in the garage due to the risk of oil/chemical contamination.

Why indeed? My paid professionals told me I should install a gulley trap in the plant room, which I took at face value, what with them being the professionals 🙄 There's actually already a stack in the plant room to service the en-suite above, so a boss strap to that for the tundish and overflows then? That makes far more sense for far less effort. As for the garage, is there any BCO requirement for a drain in the floor? I'd like a cold water tap in the attached garage but there is space for a small sink with trap in waste under the sink that seems far more sensible.

The problem with balconies is that they seem like a good idea and something you think you’ll use but ends up being something you rarely/never actually use.

Never liked balconies - especially in our climate.

I allocated a 5M by 3M space (roof space above garage) as "plant room" In reality very little endued up in there (now used as a workshop) The only thing of any size in there is the MVHR unit and the distribution plenums. Other than that it's just a pump and some small control gear for the heating system. The ASHP is outside (apart from the controls mentioned above) The DHW tank made no sense there as it would be too far from points of use, so that is not in an airing cupboard off the spare bedroom. Following on from that the distribution manifold is in the ceiling void above the utility room accessed from a hatch, again to keep all the pipe runs as short as possible. So how much plant room you actually need depends where it is and if it is suitable for everything together, or if the layout of the house favours a distributed layout of "plant"

Lose the first row, haunch the aco drain with concrete and leave a gap to the wall then fill the lot with 20mm gravel. It will protect the DPC and also provide localised drainage

Got all the manifolds, shower pump, controls, 300 litre tank and a 100 litre buffer with expansions into a 1600x800 plant room so it’s about how you plan it out.

Now I’ve looked at your plans you’re probably ok at 950mm as you have double doors across most of the width to give you access.

1.2m*1.8 ish basically just an annex off the utility with a door if seeing the cylinder ever bothers me, will only house the cylinder and manifolds for water distribution. MVHR is up in the loft because I didnt fancy mucking about with 6" pipes between the pozi's. Job, jobbed! Heatpumps will be outside.

You'd want it at least 1200mm deep - 600mm for the cylinder etc and 600mm standing room. How will it be accessed? You could get away with narrower if you had sliding doors or something along the long side -that's what we originally planned in ours - plant room a partitioned off strip in the basement hallway. Would have been the same depth s the stairs and we'd have a couple sliding doors so it could all be accessed face-on. In the end a separate plant room was chosen as we have loads of room in the basement.

Having spoke to my SE, he has reviewed this beam and has now specified 203x133x25 UB Thanks again for all the replies

If you have the room A little wider won’t hurt We made our PR 12.5 x1200 and have gone bigger this time

Personally: 1. I'd move the pantry and combine the utility, boot room and pantry into one large space. The current pantry seems to block the flow and makes your large open plan area look smaller. 2. Swap the position of the kitchen and dining so that the kitchen is at the back and looking out over the gardens

I like it, typical traditional appearance to the front, more contemporary to the rear. The only thing I would want to change, for me and after all it's a house not for me, would be access to study/music not off the main living area for noise. If it's an office it would be distracting if the wife has the girls over for a drunken Tuesday brunch. Or if you're trying to teach yourself three blind mice on the piano come an evening and the wife just wants to sit curled up with a book. You could combine plant, boot and utility to allow a small hallway here with a door in to the space here. It then becomes a totally private space and if really needed an other bedroom.

ASHP, shouldn't require anymore gubbins than a gas boiler. A monobloc heat pump will live outside - the gas boiler inside. You can use the same cylinder for either gas or heat pump, as long as you get one with a heating coil sized for a heat pump. Ideally you should operate the gas boiler exactly the same way as a heat pump this will ensure you are always condensing. Allow for a buffer cylinder, 50L to 100L should be fine as long as you don't oversize the heat pump. A buffer is worth specifying even with a gas boiler, to stop that cycling. So plant room will have a cylinder, buffer and possibly a manifold, if the MVHR is being located elsewhere. Your door sounds huge, mine all went in through a loft hatch.

They are serviced through the button panel have a look on you tube

Texecom Ricochet wireless - really good kit and easy to install. Can also be put onto a maintained contract if your insurance company wants it. I had an issue with a PSU board about 2 months after fitting and had one in my hand next day - after sales and their forum are really good for support. Have a shop around for prices - they do a couple of different sensors for PIR and also their micro door sensors are tiny, and come in different colours !

Thermal paint. Something to do with nano-technology I was told at an exhibition some 6 years ago. When I asked for proof I was shown the vague sales leaflet again. I would love it to be true, and I could paint all my underinsulated walls. The whole world would benefit so easily. So if you have seen lab test results then please share.

I doubt the lack of insulation in the sloping ceiling bit is responsible for all the heat loss. You need to look at every bit of the structure and work out what you can realistically do. With care you can get some insulation down there as long as you don't block all eaves ventilation to the loft, and improve the loft insulation as much as you can for a start. Thermal paint will probably do next to nothing, there is not thin paint on miracle cure.

Ah, 203UCs, saving SE's bacon for generations. Two other options that may work: A pair of 203x133x25 UBs - similar steel weight to the 203UC but easier to handle on site, minimal extra fabrication but may be too wide - although I think there is scope to just shift the beams downwards on plan If there's a wall above to push the 254UB up into it (but I suspect there's a doorway somewhere along the beam span so that's no good) Anything else requires excessive fabrication/cost as Gus says.

@JackofAll Have a look at these posts. See if it makes more sence?

If you have a modern boiler it may have a modern pump that along with the boiler modulates down so it then makes it harder to get heat to these further radiatiors when the rest f the house is satisfied.

The internet is full of people who know too little, but are happy to give their opinion and those who know a lot and are too scared to share. I take pointers as to aid my understanding in ultimately making a call on it. If I've paid for time, it's different, but someone being kind enough to share their knowledge can't be expected to have 'checked their working' as they would if one the clock.

Hi, Reasonably accurate thermometers are not inexpensive. I bought a second hand Tek DTM900 for not much years ago and it is quite useful. I've used it to set the temperature adjustment on about a dozen Heatmiser stats. The deal is that simple temperature sensors (thermistors etc) are cheap but only accurate to say +-2 degrees C. Thermocouples are better but they generally read with respect to room temperature and so they need 'cold junction compensation' and it's pricey to do that well. RTDs (e.g. PT100) are much better and simpler and the sensor itself is £10-100. So, there's no free lunch. The thermistor in your Heatmiser stat probably cost a couple of cents. Now, you probably only need your Heatmiser stats to read approximately the same number to indicate approximately the same temperature (i.e. they don't need to be absolutely right) - so you may not care much about the accuracy of your measuring device - just that it is reasonably repeatable. Alternatively, as you only need to do this once - could you rent or borrow a more accurate thermometer? Alan

Agree with the above, having set and tested literally thousands of chem anchors (plus had hundreds checked and signed off by Hilti) I’ve learned a lot. embedment is very important, hole cleaning and effective mixing are musts. I always spin the rods in backwards (drill running anti-clockwise) so the threads are pushing and mixing rather than pulling the resin out - this is especially important with glass tube systems because the tube forms part of the anchor - I have seen ground workers breaking the tubes and pouring the contents into holes 🙈. but chem anchors are convenient and when set correctly (in a sound and suitable concrete/stone/block etc) are only surpassed by cast in caged Holding down bolts

Absolutely. I was very keen on tubed resin when it was fairly new, thinking that the mixer nozzle made it idiot proof. Wrong. I had personally tightened a nut onto a 30mm foundation bolt and seen the bolt lift out of the foubdation. The groundworker (not ours) had not mixed the hardener in, and i found it nearby. Column down again and report to very nasty main contractor. Moral don't use 2 parts that need manual mixing. But then I found how the first few mm, cm, foot? of stuff isnt always mixed in the nozzle and has to be thrown away. And how pushing the rod into the filled hole just expels the mixture. Etc I do worry that this process is not supervised closely enough. For general interest, the pullout failure of a bolt in concrete is a cone shape. I saw this in action when a vehicle hoist failed due to insufficient anchor depth by the specialist installer. Thus the failure plane area increases dramatically with depth. The top 25mm of concrete should be discounted because it has often been overworked.

Do you have a wife? I'm in the same boat @jack is sailing in.

We've had our level entrance some 15 years and would build one again even if it wasn't part of the regs. Much easier getting appliances into the house or anything on a sack trolly. Just this week our son broke an ankle playing rugby and is on crutches. So much easier for him going in and out to the car.

This is what the filters look like in ours: They are a tight fit into a pair of channels top and bottom, with a neoprene seal at either end to make sure nothing gets past the filter.