Leaderboard

Look at this another way maybe. If you can afford or even contemplate building a 500 sq m house then you can afford to talk to an SE that knows a bit about design and costs. I'm at the other end of the country but wear two hats, SE but also a designer hat and have Clients coming to me that want to build big stuff. We maybe spend half a day chewing the fat and then I say hey I think this will fly but if you want high end then I know Architects that will make it work. The big thing is that you get a different viewpoint and a down to earth one! Post more and you'll get loads og help and advise on BH.

Hi. I'm just about to start on my self-build project. Planning passive-house (ish); from ICF with stone outer skin. So many questions and queries it is untrue...! Also champagne ideas and beer budget.... Today's problem is finding a passive house consultant - I need PHPP, and someone to talk to who knows more about the various product options and thermal-bridge avoidance than I do. PHPP seems to come with eye-watering quotes. If anyone has any tips, please shout! Speak soon!

Add one of these to your existing trap https://www.screwfix.com/p/mcalpine-v33s-compression-domestic-appliance-tee-piece-connector-white-40mm/4167p

Our plant room is combined with the utility room - utility one side (washing machine, sink under 1000mm unit and spare fridge/freezer) and plant the other (hot water cylinder, heating manifolds/pipework and MVHR unit, circuit breakers. There is room for a cupboard and hanging coats etc. It's on the ground floor with one of the doors connecting to the garage Two walls were ICF and two blockwork. We had them plastered and the screed floor is covered in LVT. Room is 3.9m max x 3m max

Extremely selfish, but good news for me. We plan to kick off our renovation in anger next year.

This used to be a favourite of mine. If i remember rightly, one of the energy systems you could build was a satellite to receive microwave energy from space, that was generated by giant PV in space. Well, it seems some scientists have been playing a little bit too much of this simulation game: https://news.sky.com/story/scientists-discuss-using-satellites-to-beam-solar-energy-collected-in-space-to-earth-12752937 If i recall correctly, if something when wrong with your microwave satellite, the microwaves would hit a neighbouring supermarket or, even worse, school. It was a fun game. Doesn't sound so much fun in reality though!

Combination ‘appliance’ traps are horrible gurgley noisy things. Can you get a washing machine up stand in there to take both discharges? Link You simply fit a compression T into this and create 2x up stands for both discharge hoses to ‘poke’ into. You can go ‘posh’ and fit one of these; Link on top of that single up stand to be completely silent ( very close to ) during discharge. A client of mine has recently employed a 2nd fix plumber, and he’s connected their washing machine to a combination waste and it’s noisy as feck. 👎. A good reminder to never do that.

https://cvcsystems.co.uk/our-products/brink-flair-400/ 750 x 650 x 560. I fit these on every single one of my M&E projects. Excellent results and reasonably priced for what they offer / how they perform.

Yes that works better for me and is the sort of thing we were considering when looking at a north facing plot.

Relax. You havent been cheated. A hiab capable of doing that lift would be much more expensive. The hiab used is unlikely to have the strength or reach to lift onto the roof. Also, the delivery company are not contractors so the driver won't have the skills or insurance to do it. Best take the realistic view that the delivery cost was low, using the best and cheapest vehicle for the job, so you have not been overcharged. Really, you have not lost out or been treated badly. Can I point you towards risk assessments? If the hiab was going to lift onto the roof, then you should have previously discussed the process with them in some detail. As you now should do for the hoisting.

I think that'd lower the trap outlet too much. Personally I'd remove the current setup and replace it with a McAlpine SSK2 double bowl space save kit: It gives two appliance inlets and a third universal inlet should it be required for something else. It also pushes all the gubbins out of the way (often to the back wall but obviously you've got pipework there already but it could sit in front of that) thus freeing up loads of cupboard space.

For completeness, you will not, I repeat NOT, be putting in the gulley pots that the fannys have recommended. 👊.

Hi @Stoph43 and welcome. I'm now living in Class Q conversion that I got Approval for 6 or 7 years ago. My Approval was in the early days of what was then Class MB and there were no Appeals to get a wider legal opinion on the interpretation of the rules. My LPA wouldn't accept the Class Q Approval being material to a full planning application for a knock down and re-build. There are now Appeals and case law that say a Class Q Approval should be taken into account when considering the merits of a full planning app. If I did mine again, that's exactly what I'd do. The existing steel structure compromises the Engineering of the conversion and the compromises either need to be accepted or you need to spend money to resolve them. I chose the latter, and am very happy with the result, but it would have been cheaper to do a comparable new build. This is not a reason to walk away from a Class Q though, the compromises should be priced in to the value of the plot. Costs will be dependant on your aspirations for building performance, levels for finish and site related costs for Services hard landscaping etc.. It's not likely to be less that £2K/m², but could be more than £3.5K/m², unless you plan to do a lot of work yourself. I'd suggest you speak with an SE sooner rather than later. The existing structure is unlikely to take the loads of a habitable mezzanine, and possibly not the framing to hold the insulation. Yes there are insulated profile cladding options, but think carefully about these and how you would use them without exceeding the existing buildings dimensions, achieve reasonable air-tightness and mitigate the thermal bridging of the existing frame.

MVHR flow rates are way to low to move heat from A-B, it will move some but the don't count on it. The air you supply to a room, will wash though that room, out an open door or under it and make its way to an extract point, so supply air moves the air anyway. You UFH manifold will be at a low temp so not much warm air to move about. Study I would make that extract only in your case. You can do the kitchen either way. But watch for grease mist entering the extract terminal, I have mine about 4m away from the hob, so grease is filter by the recirculation extractor first and have a foam pad in the extract terminal to capture anything missed by the recirc extractor.

Anything grid-connected above 3.6kW requires a G99 application: https://connections.nationalgrid.co.uk/g99-connection-procedures . It costs to apply, and they may just say no.

Looks great. A couple of minor points, which are probably just details that haven't been finalised yet. 1. I would have the shower in the en suite the same as the large one in the main bathroom. those little corner showers are only for circumstances where nothing else better fits. 2. The front door shown on the elevations looks totally wrong for the style of house. I suspect this is just a standard one stuck on the drawing. 3. The hall cupboard is probably still too small. Maybe it could go under the stairs depending on the stair design.

Good job. I really like it. Another ensuite may be useful for when the sprogs get older. Quite a few trees proposed close to the house, which may get a bit oppressive in 10 years. Have you had it priced for construction?

Ours is in an insulated airtight roof section, walls and ceiling are nice a shiny airtightness vapor control layer - heavy items are mounted on off cuts of 18mm ply. Floor waterproof 22mm chip board. Under that is 200mm of Rockwool Flexi. Access through airtight insulated loft hatch with integrated stairs - all help keep noise away from the living space.

Nope. We use a waterless trap for connecting things which don’t discharge daily / weekly. https://www.toolstation.com/mcalpine-macvalve-1-self-closing-valve/p26058?store=JT&utm_source=googleshopping&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=googleshoppingfeed&mkwid=_dm&pcrid=&pkw=&pmt=&gclid=CjwKCAiApvebBhAvEiwAe7mHSFZxKSNNne-U_rdi4E9jpOrsCTjoaEruvU6gpyuCuMDJ7XT1oiycNRoC8kgQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds#full-desc Commonly known as a ‘fanny’ trap….. ( your M&E guys should be familiar with that phrase ).

As a counterpoint , we had texecom elite system professionally installed in 2021, and I find it antiquated and unreliable. https://ajax.systems/ is a much more modern system, supports wired and wireless sensors and camera capture. Can be DIY or monitored install. Not used it myself but seen good reviews

Yes, it would be crazy. Do not underestimate the amount of force and pressure even a 1.2m concrete pour exerts on formwork. Youll need a lot of extra support and bracing. It would also take much, much longer, defeating one of the big selling points of ICF. Look in to Amvic, Nudura and Integraspec as well for a full range of options and prices.

We/builder hired a crane, straight off the flatbed onto the wallplate for the joiners to do their stuff. Maybe missed in dialogue or smallprint, frustrating but put it down to experience.

Pretty standard I am afraid. If it were single storey, the hiab on the delivery lorry might reach and you could suggest to the driver a few £££ for him to lift them and stack them at one end of the roof, but I doubt the hiab will reach a 2 storey house. A crane will lift them one at a time and spend the time to get them right, braced then lift the next one. A delivery driver would never take that much time so the best you just might get is all the trusses at one end of the roof still to be handballed into place and braced.

No it’s not, in fact you may have to unload the lorry yourself, read the small print and contact the firm to find exactly what they do and can do (if you pay).

They mix up definitions there, so their statement is essentially cannon-fodder. What they refer to is a single rising foul pipe that terminates at an appliance without 110mm ( or any ) need for ( or presence of ) air admittance. For eg; You can have a foul connection to a ground floor WC which simply has a pipe rising out of the slab that a bent pan connector is then fitted into. Then the WC pushes back onto that pan connector. Job done. The gotcha is, that at, or lesser than the aforementioned 1.3m, you will not get sufficient vacuum in the vertical pipe ( caused by the flushed water / solids forming a pellet and sucking air downwards behind it as it falls to the invert ) to require full and proper air admittance on that particular connection, or indeed cause any detriment whatsoever. If for eg, you repeat this on the 1st floor, when you flush and the pellet heads south, there will be a significant vacuum created behind the falling pellet and any traps, plus the throat of the WC itself, will all be sucked dry. That then leaves stench to enter the room via the foul connection as the trapped water in the traps is no longer there. So; If the external groundwork’s are very deep you could still require an AAV on even a ground floor WC, but NOT if the invert of the outlet of the WC and the invert of the external soil network are at, or less than, 1300mm apart. Note, the term invert refers to the lowest point where the flushed items turn to horizontal after falling vertically down. ( in a nutshell 🌰). Stub stacks are normally seen boxed in at around 1200mm off the floor in bathrooms of yesteryear, and typically will have a removable top / panel to gain access for service of, a full 4” ( 110mm ) AAV fitted atop the stub. These are often introduced where there is also a basin, or a shower / bath / sink connected to the same rising foul pipe. These need to be protected from the vacuum, so a knee-jerk AAV on top of the stub stack will be fitted for ‘Justin’, sometimes even if completely unnecessary. Best to identify where these are necessary so as to avoid ugly boxing-in in bathrooms etc. Justin case.

Our plant room walls are Fermacell. Annoying to fit, but very strong, and allows some quite heavy things to be mounted to it without the need for a plywood backing. I think a single screw can take something like a 30 kg vertical load. I've never had anything move once screwed to Fermacell (we have it in some other places in the house too). Floor is cheap cork tiles (on sale at Wickes when we bought them) over concrete. Do think about having both heat and smoke detectors installed.

How did people finish off their plant rooms? Flooring, walls etc. I have 2x ICF walls and 2x stud walls. Did you plaster the walls? Plywood instead of plasterboard? I haven’t installed the UVC or MVHR yet. Bare concrete slab right now.

1. A to d. It might run down the wall and erode it, cause salts to emerge, reduce insulation, cause mould. Ditto to windows. 2. Likely to splash up the wall leading to b- d 3. Might erode the ground 4. Constantly wet ground more likely to settle differentially. 5. Unpleasant on visitors' heads 6. Noisy. All that being said, it is not unheard of, compensated by oversailing eaves and a gravel drain to catch it.

Very comprehensive, thanks @Ferdinandmuch appreciated. I think the point that was most scary to me was a new gov taking my cash (not that I am in anyway a Tory fan to be clear!) Also @jack we did indeed think along the same lines, smaller and better is probably the trick. Thanks all. Plenty to think on here.

2m, not 6ft/1.8m.

Hi, Pleas see attached service manual. Regards T puhzw90vha.pdf

Yes our plant room is designed to be quite central for this reason but it does mean all the MVHR ducting has to be threaded through the ceiling.

Just to add, Cool Energy do heat pump water heaters... might be worth a look. They are a helpful bunch up there. https://coolenergyshop.com/collections/ecostore-ecosyn-exhaust-air-heat-pumps

Rods will cost you £50 jetting will cost you whatever call out they charge £100 ???? £200???? i just like to do everything myself, I don’t trust anybody to do a decent job and I generally learn something doing the job.

203x203x46 UC is a substantial column with a massive load bearing capacity, they must be there for something other than supporting a garage door. assuming this is a really good, heavily insulated garage door, it is likely to weigh around 300kgs which is nothing compared to the structure and occupancy. so my feeling is your builder is talking rubbish and omitting two large UC columns is going to affect much more than just being able to have a garage door.

This is structural design territory. Your drawings should therefore also specify the stud sizes, and even the fixings.

This isn't where I found the advise to install the extracts above the showers, but says the same thing. And also from Scottish building regs, support guidance for ventilation Sect 8.8, d, states the extract should be above shower head or bath. 2030716736_Buildingstandardsdomesticventilationguidance2CNovember2017.pdf

It depends so much on the barn condition and what you intend. I have seen some professionally, and declined the work, where the remains of the building is of no value and a huge hindrance. (I didnt want to be involved in an illadvised, underfunded project). Our family project is 400m2 and the projected cost comes to about £1,000/m2. Looks like ending at about £1100 despite many setbacks. BUT, a local Engineer (obliged to use one) said his fee must be based on £2,000. I think he would be right if we did not have family design skills plus a lot of diy. So what sort of barn is it and what condition? If it is several buildings , you could , of course, phase the work, also learning and optimising as you proceed. Esp you will have ended up with a team of builders you are happy with for phase 2. Sacked some, learned of others.

The only time I tried dealing with an architect, they estimated a build cost way over anything we expected or could ever have afforded. As it turned out, we built it for half what they estimated.

+1 Most services are standard rated and not reclaimable. If there is any material supply on the same invoice (eg supply and fit) then the whole lot should be zero rated to you. It's always best to get a quote changed before you accept it. Much harder after the work has been done. Tip: If you don't have planing permission yet, include a landscaping plan in the drawing package and you can reclaim VAT on any trees on it (but not plants?).