Leaderboard

Our architect asked if we would talk to a journalist in the local paper for a bit of publicity. I said yes as they have been very good and I was happy to do them a favour. It turned into a full feature with photos and much more quotes from me than I anticipated. I cringe a bit reading it but if you are interested it's here https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/lifestyle/property/3974146/inside-black-fox-barn-a-stunning-new-build-woodland-home-in-angus/ There is a paywall wall but just hit the blue x on the bottom banner and you can access it.

Could be quite area specific. We have a similar group and whenever someone asks for recommendations it's just friends/wives/sisters/cousins touting their relatives business every time. You reach the point of losing any trust in those so called recommendations, unfortunately.

Here's the installation manual, albeit not in English so you'll have to run the text through Google translate or similar! Edit: There are a couple of photos here too which may be of use, although it doesn't look all that difficult.

Needs tat to make it homely imho. Just shout if you need acres of poor quality shelving adorned with knick-knacks, covered in a layer of dust. Ditto ornaments that can't be gotten rid of because so and so bought it for Mum 60 years ago. That and her ever growing collection of cardboard boxes... 😉

Seriously need to de-clutter, there’s stuff all over the place. 🙄 Don’t visit my house whatever you do. Looks a million dollars, well deserved recognition.

It certainly looks like condensation and should clear up with improved ventilation. I don't understand the first photo though - what's the black membrane coming just past the rafter? The grey stuff looks to be breathable but I don't know what the black stuff is. A point about your boarded area: is it laid directly on top of the truss chords (horizontal timbers spanning the top of the house)?

It's fine that they're including IR panels in their experiments, but this stuck out: Two competing heating systems are being tested inside: an electric-based system utilising infrared panels, some of which are disguised as ceiling coving, as well as a water-based system that uses heated skirting boards combined with an air source heat pump. “As we put these really warm coats on to our homes, we don’t need as much energy to heat them,” says Novakovic. “So the big question we’re asking is, do we do it with heat pumps and hot water or with electricity?” Aside from the fact that both ASHP and IR panels are "doing it with electricity", it seems ridiculous to bill this as the big question that justifies the £16M project... Once again the main story about fabric first build quality has been lost in the debate around which bit of fancy tech we can add on top to heat an already low enery demand building.

yep although they need to be tight into the block so if they are hanging I tend to leave them an inch or two long into the cavity and screw them to the nogs or the strong back, and when the blocks are up take the screws out and pull them tight into the blocks and nail into place. Don’t forget to go back and seal round them properly..!

Nope - if the outside skin isn’t up then you can stitch drill a row of holes and push it through from the block side. If the outer skin is up then you may need to drill a bigger hole to take the leg and the push through and rotate it to hook behind the blocks. Those straps are stabilising your walls and tying the middle of the house together - you don’t want to be missing them out of frigging it with a few screws and plugs …

Thank you @MJNewton

It’s really clear in the documentation you get what you need to do if you are going to make any changes. We made some non-material variations to ours after gaining planning approval, spoke to the planning officer who said they were fine, submitted the changes and paid the £200 fee. It seems to me they reckoned they could get away with building what they originally wanted and once built the council would accept a retrospective planning amendment. It’s right and proper this was refused. I’m surprised such a large monstrosity ever got approval in the first place.

+1 to the above, timber used for the extensions does not need to be full height of rafter as the additional overhang and associated loads are minimal

Yes, we wanted to increase the overhang of our roof and we just nailed pieces of 2x5's onto the side at the end of all the rafters, stung a line along them and recut the tail. Job done.

MVHR nothing to do with UFH or ASHP so don't be going to a single supplier. Is this a new build or renovation? Lots of factors to consider and it helps to have as much as possible detailed before speaking to different suppliers so you can better compare and contrast quotes.

I would say you are generating nearly enough from PV and the diverter is flicking between about confused. Look at it tomorrow.

I would say it is broken. How long was the guarantee?

I would fit boards to the long walls (3.5m) and run joists across the short way (2.5m). Think I'd probably use mini joist hangers to attach joists to the wall boards. No need to tie into the existing ceiling if they are large enough. That woukd also minimise noise transmission.

Stunning,

But the OP has DHW on this so unless he’s got split temps set on the ASHP and this is set up as W plan using a pair of 2 port valves and can only do DHW or UFH, then you need the blending and the pump set. That leads to overheating of smaller zones - only works when you have a single large zone. Much better is to use self balancing actuators that reduce flow to balance to the d7°C or similar. Agree however the best practice is to have the pump on the cool side for longevity and pull through valves so the flow pump would be removed. Yes it’s why best practice is to include either a large volume LLH or buffer in systems needing heat when the min output of the heat source is above the max input needed into the circuit.

Not his money.

I don't think so Some other game going on.

Not sure what looks more fantastic - the house or the plot.

Hooks, hooks are the way to go. We're all manically busy people, nobody has the time to fiddle with hangers in the 21st century. Put a few rows on the back and side wall. 300mm depth would do you then.

Cheers, we went for standing seam steel for the roof and 1st floor. Zinc was a bit pricey for us.

I am using beads in a 150mm cavity with facing brickwork. I am going to apply a coat of Stormdry masonry cream to stop water penetration.

You don’t need 300mm if it’s an unheated space, and you don’t have ufh.

If we are doing digger pics, this was mine. That was digging the hole for the treatment plant, almost at full reach down into the ground, a smaller digger with less reach would have struggled. And on the subject of maintenance, the astute will notice a steel bar forming a temporary pin for the boom. It had just sheered it's original pin and this was the best I could muster up to get the job done until I could replace the pin properly. It was somewhat floppy like that!!!! It was a very old 3t Komatsu. Not what I was really looking for but it came up on ebay, and I put in a silly low bid and won it for £2500. It was old and worn but it worked, did everything I asked it to and I sold it for £2500 when finished.

After nearly 5 years, we've never had any condensation on the inside of our triple glazed windows, anywhere. I think this is entirely down to the MVHR

I think you've found it! Seriously, I can't imagine a better place to start than a (sub-)forum dedicated to the subject. You'll learn far more through ploughing through old threads on here than any book would likely tell you. Sure, it'll be very unstructured and out-of-order but you'll be covering nuances and aspects of design that would be overlooked in any attempt at a concise summary. Just have a meander through letting things flow over your head as familiarity grows and before long you'll be an 'expert' (okay, a self-proclaimed one but the label is only being sought to give yourself confidence that this is DIYable, which it most definitely is - and to a potentially better outcome than getting the pros in).

Another vote for doing this in a house that remains unquestionably leaky - we've been very happy. I can understand the argument above in that in a leaky house you are getting background ventilation anyway, but in our case we were also routinely pulling in a lot more cold air from outside through bathroom/kitchen extract fans every time I had a shower etc. For me I suspect the energy savings from being able to take all the extract fans out and not send warm air out the window is the key saving, the fact that energy then remains useful is just a small added bonus. Also love the fact that the smell after a roast dinner just disappears...

Happy with my Alu-clad Internorm windows and doors. No drafts to be felt and sub 0.1 ACH on the air test. Lot's of tricks to get car doors to seal, and the main seal into the shut-face of the door opening allows for around 10mm of compression to cover all tolerance conditions. Nearly all modern automotive (front) doors also have an additional outer lip seal to seal off the gap between door upper frame and bodyside, plus moulded rubber, multi-lipped flat seals in all the corners to handle the transitions. Front side doors are generally manufactured with an over-bend in the upper frame so that it's only once the force of the compressed seal acts on the upper area of the door that it bends out to the right shape to match the bodyside. The form of front edge of the upper door frame is always a couple of mm under-flush to the A Pillar. There's so much development work done to get automotive doors to silently seal and allow the doors to close.

Hi, Sorry for the long delay. The site is https://www.fiverr.com/

First fitting off the stove looks to be upside down? Shouldn’t it be female down facing over male spigot? This shows a female union with the socket upwards instead of the spigot upwards.

Your island and roof height sounds similar to us. We have vaulted ceilings. We just don’t have an extractor. We did the same in the last house as well with normal height . I can’t say I’ve ever missed one in 10 years. With MVHR in this house any smell of gone within 10 mins. We put the vents above the island. Ugly things.

We have traditional foundations with a Hanson jetfloor slab. The below ground blockwork is topped with Foamglass Perinsul to mitigate cold bridginging. We used a local builder to carry out the groundwork and emphasised the need for the perimeter to be mm accurate (both dimensionally and level). UFH pipes were laid direct over the Jetfloor and a 70mm fibre reinforced structural slab poured before the TF came to site. We chose Scandia Hus to supply and erect the timber frame. From our very first contact with them we were allocated a project manager and he remained our main contact throughout. Ours is not one of their 'standards' designs, but a completely bespoke one-off to my design. They took my drawings and turned them into working ones, handling structural calcs, as design SAP, even the submission of the detailed planning application. We felt completely comfortable and involved in the process and greatly appreciated the benefit of the experience that SH and our PM brought to the project, suggesting minor tweaks that would ensure the final design/layout was the best we could achieve for our purpose. Scandia Hus effectively offer a menu of options which can be added to the basic frame, including (if desired) windows, doors, UFH, MVHR, staircases, joinery items, etc. I understand they can even offer a full turnkey package for those who can afford to go that route. We chose a relatively basic package of the frame (including erection) to sarked and breather membraned roof, plus supply of all the insulation (thermal and acoustic), all timber for the internal studwork (structural internal walls were erected by SH), timber for wall and ceiling battening, t&g chipboard flooring for 1st floor and all 224 sheets of plasterboard (all 15mm). Our builder delivered a near perfect perimeter for the timber frame to sit on, such that no shimming of the soleplate was required (according to the SH erection crew that was pretty unusual). On the appointed day said team turned up - both of them. Yes, the SH timber frame erection teams consist of two guys (aided for 2 days by a crane and driver to lift the larger cassettes for the first floor walls). They were on site for just 14 days and the work ethic of the guys we had was exemplary. So, all fine and dandy - well not quite. One of the wall panels was made the wrong size and one had an incorrectly sized window opening, but replacements were ordered (the factory is in Sussex) and delivered to site within 48 hours so any delay was minimal. We also had a problem with floor joists not being level in one area when we came to lay the flooring boards upstairs. Turned out that they'd craned a very heavy load onto this section and some of the joist hangers had buckled under the weight but this was not visible at the time due to the temporary 'deck' of 22mm OSB that had been loose laid before the heavy load had been deposited. As soon as the issue was identified SH sent a crew to rectify. Finally, we discovered much later when battening the vaulted ceiling in the lounge that the rafters (cut to fit on site) had been set at a slightly different angle than they should have been. This would have led to a tapered line between the ceiling and the top of the (angled) windows. A call to SH and (again within a couple of days) they supplied a set of battens planed to size to add as shims to the ceiling battens so as to bring the ceiling line parallel to the window frames. We're delighted with our now (nearly) finished home and are loving living in it. Are Scandia Hus perfect? No, but as others have said, it's not so much whether problems occur but how they're dealt with. Do they build the most energy efficient homes available? No, but we have no complaints and with our EPC of 96 it's hardly going to be an expensive home to run. Would we use Scandia Hus again? Absolutely. Sure there are probably cheaper TF suppliers out there, there may well even be better ones, but you pay your money and you make your choice - and we're very happy with the choices we made (which is all that matters really).

My parents used the term almost daily when I was younger to describe our inability to turn off house lights "house lit up like Blackpool illuminations/lights" and I use it to describe anything that has lots of lights on it, and use the same term if I see lights on in the house unnecessarily - I realize I'm turning into my parents!

Agreed. I've met people who made it. No further comment.

So nice to hear the expression 'like Blackpool lights/illuminations' again... Growing up in the North I think I might well have heard it almost daily in reference to lights being left on, control panels gone wrong, car dashboards etc (funnily enough, rarely if ever to describe street lighting!) and whilst I use the expression down South it doesn't have the same effect and inevitably results in quizickle looks/responses. Sorry I can't help, but I did want to thank you for the nostalgia!

Great article. I hope you don't get the "Field of Dreams" effect and find everyone turning up on your doorstep 😉

Looks like a doctors surgery !!!

That's nice of you to say so, thanks. Unlike the person on the paper's Instagram post who said it was "another featureless laboratory" followed by a crying angry face emoji. 😃

Electric bill final reminder wedged in letter flap? Vent on log burner open? Wife won't pause for breath during conversation? Air vent ducting hose fell off from extractor fan? Son's girlfriend can't close her leg's?