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Jesus. I leave you lot alone for a few hours and now we have a bath with a heated blanket. 65°C out of a bath tap is no longer permissible. That’s lunacy. The most a bath hot tap or mixer can have coming out of it is 46°C, above that is an instant b-regs failure. So “NO”.

Easy fix, shower, or don't spend ages in a bath

yes you do, "Dpcs should be provided below timber partitions where directly fixed to floor slabs, even if there is a dpm beneath the slab. This is to prevent residual moisture in the concrete affecting the timber." https://nhbccampaigns.co.uk/landingpages/techzone/previous_versions/2011/Part6/section3/sitework.htm

No pain, no gain "If it was easy......." Temp has zero to do with it. It's about hydraulic resistance, and the resultant flow rate in l/p/m. Most ASHP's require a minimum l/p/m of circulation for them to switch on.

ICF hidden benefits? Here's a thing.. sometimes rather than comparing each individual element try if you can to look at the design in the round. It's hard to do but just have a look at the house you want to build and trust your intuition.. never be afraid to ask questions at the early esign stage as you are doing. Take a two story house with big open plan spaces on the ground floor and lots of glass... especially looking out to the back garden. When the wind blows it wants to push the house sideways.. we call this lateral stability. If you build a brick / block house then you end up often on the rear elevation with lots of glass with not much length of masonry wall between the glazing panels. You have a series of piers that want to not "topple over" sideways in the plane of the wall.. part of the problem lies in that masonry can't take tension forces that well. When you push a masonry pier sideways you get compression at one side.. and often undesirable tension at the other which can "burst the ball" SE design wise unless you have a lot of load above. If you start to push the amount of glass and fix some of that to the masonry piers you invite the problem where the masonry has to carry the wind pressure /suction loads from the glass.. it can go horribly wrong here as an SE and you then need say to say.. we wind posts etc... you go from hero to zero! In summary masonry is good at carrying vertical loads but not so good when you need to rely on a small length of wall to resist the sideways wind force or suction / pressure loads from glazing. It can / does work well when you have a good length of masonry wall though. Traditionally when faced with this problem we introduce a steel goal post which works to resist the sideways forces, take some of the vertical load and the pressure suction from the glass. We do this lots when folk knock the back out of an existing house. But there is a cost attached.. you need to fix the steel goal post to the rest of the structure and you need often to do some work to the underbuilding.. it gets messy and expensive. Now ICF has hidden advantages that can potentially save loads of cash. Imagine you have a wall with two large glass panels.. 5.0 - 6.0m of glass and 700 - 900 mm of wall each end, 700 -900 mm between the galss panels and say 500 - 700 mm over the top of the glazing.. this 500 - 700 mm could extend up into the second floor (you need to sequence the pour if you do this). The concrete core is just say 150mm thick. You do your ICF wall but around the openings you add a bit of extra reinforcement. Here what you do is to create a concrete portal frame (goal post) all hidden in the wall and in the concrete you are going to pour anyway.. the goal post all for a few extra rebars.. Another gem is that you can sometimes get the extra rebar that form the goal posts hidden in the concrete to resist the pressure / suction loads from the glass. Hope this helps. If you fancy post some drawings and I'm sure we will all chip in with further thoughts.

Building near protected trees can be quite a challenge which is fascinating if you are an Arborist or say an SE.. less exciting if you are the one footing the bill and on a budget. Building near trees on BH crops up a lot and loads of folk on BH have made some great comments / given good advice. One common problem is that of soil shrinkage when the trees suck the water out the ground, another when you cut them down and the soil starts to recover and swells up. This recovering process can take a few years at times in certain clays soils. But the reality is that sometimes the tree protection orders (TPO's) can significantly impact the design and if you don't play by the rules you could face a big fine and get your job stopped. Ok lets look on the bright side.. who doesn't like some good looking trees round about? That said with a bit of careful thought it can work.. it doesn't always need to be a show stopper. If you are the SE you need to first embrace the challenge. Here are some things that require consideration and how you progress a design. The starting point is to look at the tree. What kind is it or do you have more than one also maybe of different species? Roughly some trees have a tap root that goes down deep.. can be right into fractured rock below. This root collects deep water and provides structural stability. Closer to the surface it has thicker lateral roots that follow the nutrient source in the soil. These also provide structural stability to the tree as they get a grip of a wider lump of soil that acts partly as ballast. Thin (fine to very fine) roots grow from these roots and do the grunt of the collecting nutrients and water in the soil. Some trees don't have a tap root though. The first thing you have to look at is that if you run machinery over the ground you compact it and that can cause a lot of damage to the fine root system.. the soil compaction stops the fine roots from regrowing and this could kill the tree... not right away but you can weaken the tree and it is thus more exposed to disease. Next is that if you put a building over part of the root zone you can reduce air infiltration into the ground, exclude water.. as you have taken it away in the gutters and the worms will move off or die. The above often results in the authorities drawing a big circle around the tree and saying.. no heavy machinery.. no building.. no cutting strip founds or drain / service tracks pretty much no nothing in this circle., oh and you need to put a fence round the root protection zone to show compliance. However, sometimes if you spend some time investigating the tree and species you can understand how and where the roots grow for that type of tree. Next is to look carefully at the ground. Tree roots don't grow in a perfect circle around the tree.. they follow the water and nutrients. Once they know they are stable their aim is to propagate so why spend time and energy growing unwanted structural roots. This can be a key.. if you know more about the soil type, the nutrient bearing layers, where the roots are growing and where they need to grow in the future you are on the right track. It may be that with a bit of time and effort you can show that the area of ground the tree needs to maintain health is away from where you want to build! .. and presto .. your project is much more back on track. In reality what happens is you try and change the shape of the protection circle if you can and do a bit of clever SE / geotechnical design to reach a compromise that suits all.. even the tree.. if only they could talk? If you want post more info. Don't despair!

Yup Galway I think. I would include a silencer on the house supply side of the unit and put it somewhere you can't hear it in the bedrooms but I imagine these are common issues to most units. No problems otherwise.

Mainly due to the retaining clips that are 10 - 12 mm wide and also there is no room to get a trowel in at an angle to remove any snots from the back of the masonry.

Hi All, New to the forum and just started work on renovating a property that was built in 1995, in West Cumbria. The property is in good order and was an upsize for me and my young family. We are undertaking medium size work, reworking the floor layouts mainly, but also installing some large sliding doors and a new staircase as well as upstairs wall movements, with the luxury of everything upstairs being stud walled. Will also be building a brand new large garage and trying to improve the insulation of the existing house to make it more efficent. I am trying to do as much as possible myself to learn new skills, and with my partners dad a retired joiner, it helps.... ! But I will not be able to do it all. Stumbled across the forum whilst doing some research on various parts of the renovation and it looks a great source of information. I would like to have the majority of work completed in the next 18 months, but I am quickly learning everything takes time, and working full time in motorsport it means I am often out of the country! Look forward to getting into the forum discussions! Thanks Rich

Everyone to their own - it's a weird world where 4x the price means status. I'll bet you're a B&O status person as well....

I have just purchased 4x Philips Hue Light Strips (with free 1M extension) Giving effectively 12M of lighting for £320. (for those who have used Philips Hue they will know how good they are also has integration with Alexa) Also (not necassary) but brought black aluminium profiles/channels from UltraLED (£100) in Manchester to fit the Hue in. Should be router-ing the underside of the worktops to fit the channels this weekend/next weekend - I'll let you know the results 👍

You really need to know the heat losses of the building. This is not difficult to calculate, just tedious getting all the right info. You say the UFH is working, but the radiators upstairs are not. This could be as simple as a valve not opening. You also say the the bill has gone up to £600/month. That is very worrying, but to be honest a gas bill of £200/month seems high. Do you have any idea how much insulation there is under the floor? You could be loosing vast amounts of energy there.

There are a few discussions on BuildHub about how to finish off the EPS upstand (generally, not just where things pop out). Take a look at these threads (and links to other threads they contain):

I knew I'd done a sketch, but apparently I did one in quite a lot of detail! You do need to think about how you're going to neatly finish this area, as well as ensuring the EPS is protected from rodent attack.

July 2020 we started. Yes & No, We paid a builder to get up and roof on, I then bought the windows, so that took us to approx £165k. I've got a little bit of capital left, so we are doing as much first fix work as possible on what's left of the salaries. Material costs are just about manageable if taking your time - take a month to do the studding out, plumbing the next month etc, I refuse to look at what it's cost to date in total, in a way it's almost meaningless to us (ofc it matters though), it will cost what it costs it's just a matter of how long it will take, and of course trades cost money as they've got mortgages and bill to pay too! Trying to pick up bits and bobs from peoples finished projects also helps the pocket money stretch a bit further. I also refuse to become a slave to it. If I start a part of the job, I'll finish it. But, I do like to take some time out and spend it with friends and family too every now and then for my own sanity. Almost ready for FF electrics and plumbing.

Shot is an understatement! It looks like it is about to pop! It needs junking / replacing. If you do recycle, then stick in an airtight plastic bag so that if it does pop then the lithium won't get exposed to air and spontaneously combust.

If the MCB tripped earlier and a switch welded, that is a short circuit somewhere. Most likely explanation is a pinched cable in the back box of the switch you have just replaced, and in the act of replacing the switch it is no longer pinched and causing a short circuit. Prime candidates are too tight behind the switch in a shallow back box, or one of the fixing screws pinching a cable.

Managed to sort it. Replaced with a new double switch and all seems well again!

Finally got around to digging out my old solar power battery banks. This one seems shot. Not sure what to do with it. May set fire to it just to see what happens. The other one was ok. So fully charged it last night, it took 26 Wh. Then put it in the power line for my back garden temperature logger, popped a couple of energy loggers on it, and waiting to see how it goes. So far it has drawn nothing from the mains and almost 2 Wh from the battery/solar. Got it set up on a little stand on the back (NE facing) window cill. Shall see what the meters read tomorrow.

If you find out please let me know. But we maybe going to KBB and Elica are there so if we do I will find out from the rep. With minor spillages the Elica seems evaporate them in the filter, for major spillages there is a sump and a sump plug you can access from the draw below [assuming you haven't blocked up access fully].

Same with the IKEA one - you could have 4 IKEA ones in your kitchen for the price of the Elica! Bramco

We always do it when fixing metal studs

The elicia has a collection bin for liquids in the extractor exactly for this . There’s a drain tap underneath or you can remove the bin . It’s all easy to do .

We had to route our ASHP pipework from one side of an attached double garage (on a raft) to the other and then a couple of metres through the house (also on a raft) into the plant room. The insulation under the slab is 3 x 100 mm EPS, so I got the guys doing it to leave a pair of channels in the middle layer. I laid some cheap drainage pipe (50 mm?) in the channels and used some expanding foam to hold them in place. They then did the last layer of EPS and proceeded as normal. I used a block of offcut EPS where the duct came into the plant room to keep the concrete away from the duct when it was poured. Once the concrete cured, I broke out the EPS, leaving me with a duct entering an open chamber in the slab at the edge of the plant room. When it came time to install the heat pump, I threaded 32 28 mm Hep2O (with oxygen barrier) piping through the duct. A 90 degree elbow in the chmaber and we had our flow and return in the plant room. At the ASHP side, I used elbows to come up the side of the garage wall. This is one detail I don't think I gave enough thought to at the time. I should probably have converted to copper right as the pipe came out of the EPS, and done everything from there in copper and then stainless braided flex, but we went with plastic. I was concerned about rodents etc, but it's pretty well wrapped in insulation and nothing's ever shown any interest in it.

This one with a solar panel. https://m.reolink.com/gb/product/argus-eco/ Need a WiFi network.

Yes you may as well for the very low cost. Slab will be moist for a long time.

Ahh i get what you mean, i thought you were floating this over the top to get rid of both the gap and the thermal bridge from the internal blockwork. How about something a little bit like this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175408005770

We have the Elica Switch recirculating, and its great. If you haven't decided yet and you are close enough to Birmingham, a day at KBB show is worth it. kbb Birmingham | Europe's Leading KBB Event Ensure you lock up your wallet, there is a lot of high end stuff there, as well as the middle and lower ranges.

Your heat pump should have a minimum distance from a wall. Orientated "back to the wall" so blowing away from the house, mine had to be a minimum 150mm from the wall, which seems really tight. I went with a position where the ASHP is 500 from the wall, and brought the pipes up in between it and the wall, towards one end. I also went with the Ø32 twin pipe in a Ø150 duct (Rauvitherm from Rehau). From memory it was an R750 bend radii, so the trench does need to be quite deep. Penetrations through the raft should come through perpendicular, so my trench was at least 750mm under the bottom layer of EPS. My ASHP states Ø22 Min for the flow and return pipes. The installers wanted the Ø32, and as I have a longer route than ideal to the UVC and Buffer, I was happy to go with it. I placed the pad for the ASHP after the pipes were installed, so no issue with pipe positioning on the outside. Within the house, it depends on your construction method and how flexible it is to accommodate out of position services, but that does for all penetrations, not just the ASHP. Foul drains to toilets and showers gave me the biggest head aches as the tend to be close to a wall so more of an issue if they are 50mm out of position.

Hi Ant, there is a way to meet regulations with mineral wool: build wider cavities. @nod is an expert here and if he says you need more than a 10 mm gap then he'll be right. Though @nod why not just go for full-fill cavity instead of leaving a gap in new construction? No, it's the difference in the materials. Mineral wool can't compete with the U value of PIR boards. So you have to use much thicker mineral wool to get the same effect. Got it in one. If you use Kingspan or other PIR boards, be aware that the quality of installation makes a difference (from the data: seemingly quite a big difference) to the thermal performance. Gaps between the boards let air circulate, negating the benefit. This paper on thermal bypass is well worth a skim through to get the idea of the effect. If you care about how well the insulation works, figure out a way to ensure your builder spends time installing it properly. Then patent and sell your approach, as controlling builders is like herding cats

Probably better sticking with ridged insulation The brands are pretty generic 10 mi cavities arnt workable That needs to be increased

Fcuk me! 🤬. It would have been a few tenners to replace that all with solvent weld at the time. Assholes. Compression will be fine, just make sure you have the pipe marked with a sharpie so you know the pipe is all the way into the fitting. Boss fine. Go for it. Tell the oldies to disengage from these cocks and to stop upsetting themselves. Life is too short, and these bell-ends aren't coming back. Upon reflection, you wouldn't want them back, let's be honest?!?

Hello everyone. I'm Gareth, I am new here, and thought I would introduce myself, since there is a section for this. I have a number of hats where this forum is relevant - I am looking forward to contributing and learning lots from people who may have already gone through similar! 1.) I am currently renovating my poorly built, poorly insulated 60's semi detached family home. It has nice views, and we have lovely neighbours, which helps make this project worthwhile, but every room is being worked on, whilst we live in the property! This is a slow process, and perhaps we may finish it by the time the kids are old enough to move out!! Still, I'm enjoying the process! 2.) Much to the annoyance of my wife, I have a tendency to interrupt our own home project by buying property that usually requires an element of work - to either sell on after developing, or to keep and rent out. 3.) I work for (and am an employee owner at) the National Self Build and Renovation Centre (NSBRC), and should be able to answer any questions raised about our resource. (please note, I am not a technical expert - I have colleagues in the Centre that are!) Incidentally, I come from a family of self builders - my parents commissioned a self build in the 1980's (when there was virtually no support out there), and again about 10 years ago, and my uncle completed a barn conversion for his family. I am looking forward to being involved in this forum :-)

Makes sense

Good stuff. Don’t underestimate the amount of time this takes. It’s taken me several months to work my way through every element. Also get several quotes for each element. ‘They’ say normally three but that’s not been working for me very well for some things (roofing in particular) so have been getting as many quotes as I can which has paid dividends. Many won’t reply or go cold after initial contact. I contacted and sent the plans to 6 groundswork companies and got quotes from three and two of those took weeks to get. Once you get someone on board have a chat to them about other trades. That’s really helped me. I’ve also had to be flexible on material choice due to availability in my area so worth finding that out early as it caught me out. I don’t know what your area is like but there’s no evidence of a slow down in demand in my area. Everyone is saying they have never been as busy hence the weeks for quotes coming back. I’ve also had three companies say their order books are full for the rest of the year!

Loss of functionality in 2 way or 3 way circuits is usually down to a loose connection (rare a conductor just breaks) on one of the link wires. Carefully pull the switch fronts away and there is a good chance the offending wire will pull out of the loose connection

Most lightly not unusual in your location. Contact some local groundworks companies and they'll soon give you chapter and verse.

I have an L-shaped bungalow and have 26x screwpiles because of tree roots. And then a concrete raft foundation atop. I can provide the benefit of my experience if desired.

I got a sample of this stuff ages ago and it’s rather crazy, you can screw into it like timber. you should be able to fix it to the inner leaf, either with metal screw and washer, or you could use a shortish plastic external wall insulation fixing like these: https://www.toolstation.com/fischer-dipk-insulation-render-fixing/p42435?utm_source=googleshopping&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=googleshoppingfeed&mkwid=_dm&pcrid=&pkw=&pmt=&gclid=CjwKCAiA_6yfBhBNEiwAkmXy5wOfdWzUTcYgnzaAqhy3S3hBgsFY4-7cYfyyzzq_fauWaT1pXgvM9RoCTeQQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds you may well need to look for a smaller pack size tho!! 😂

screwpiles can be cheaper depending on the depth traditional piling needs to go down. Also worth getting another SE opinion. https://www.screwpilesltd.co.uk/

Some SEs prefer mini piles others hate them and would rather deep We were surrounded by hundreds of trees on our previous build and on clay We used deep strip foundations Around two meters and Clay board to help with the heave Came in at around a third of the cost of piling

Our whole groundworks is £50k for timber kit plus large garage. That includes all drainage, treatment plant, retaining wall, longish drive to give you some idea.

What size is the building? £50k may be excessive or may be cheap! Mini piles and ground beams is not an unusual foundation system so you should get three quotes to get a true feel for the cost. There are many factors when pricing work and one data point is not enough. If the issue is the roots of the trees then you will probably require some sort of pile. If the issue is heave then a raft (the concrete slab) may also require significant groundwork. Unfortunately spend on foundations is the most unsatisfying part of a build. But it is one of the most important to get right.

Gypsum liquid screed has many problems (surface laitence, drying times to name the first few). You can get traditional sand and cement screeds, mixed with additives to make is strong enough at 50mm over PIR insulation (PCT XTreme is a good one) that offer a great thermal mass and heat retention.

Two things there that would make me walk away. "eco-houses" "going forward"

@carou the PHPP is an Excel spreadsheet, a big one but an Excel spreadsheet non the less. If your PHPP has already been done, in other words the spreadsheet has been populated, then minor changes take very little time. Making a window smaller in PHPP would take a matter of seconds. Definitely ask your architect for a copy of the PHPP it sounds like s/he may be pulling your leg. Regarding the heat requirements, as others have said, you don’t need much. The last three nights here have been sub zero but the days have been sunny, consequently the heat has not been on. In this passive house the sun has done its job as advertised. Our heating comes on if the internal temperature in our hallway drops below 20. During the day the sun has warmed the house to around 21 and overnight it’s fallen to the low 20’s. it’s bloody marvellous actually.

Our previous build was started six years ago My wife 51 and myself 55 We did virtually everything None stop for nearly two years and came in at £815 m for a very high standard of finish 390k spent 800k valuation Great Five years on we bought two excellent plots and a 2.5 acre field at the back Lets do it again But with a difference Let someone else do most of the work We even looked at TF But the costs where considerably higher than Solid build and that was before timber prices rocketed We pushed the boat out with the design Three vaulted ceiling’s Two feature windows Arts and crafts design roof with a 50 degree pitch Then the price and labour increases hit We found ourselves at a similar position to you Whilst we had no borrowing It was pretty obvious that bringing in trades wasn’t an option Re designing the roof and using tiles as apposed to slates would save us thousands and lots of time We decided to push on with the design we had Whilst we did the slating on our previous build We decided to get a quote for the house and workshop slating With over 60 meters of lead valleys we new it wouldn’t be cheap But over 30 k came as a shock But not an option We started putting the loose rafters in over three months ago and we still have about a 1000 slates to put in Both of us work full time but we will have to carryon in the same vein Suppliers are chasing us rather than the other way round There can be 50% difference in price between the same products as not all But many suppliers like petrol stations have jumped on the bandwagon and have and are overcharging Ill not bore you with examples but there’s lots of them out there Shop around

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).