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Just buy a stopcock key ( around 1000mm long iirc ) and you shall never lay on the pavement ever again. https://www.screwfix.com/p/faithfull-stopcock-key-universal-1140mm/656RH?kpid=656RH&ds_rl=1244066&gclid=CjwKCAjwo7iiBhAEEiwAsIxQEdTh58QlJMtgXjKI7eQqETR6Nq7CqmY3F4KvCvpcOzG9-xfOaW0I7RoCIPIQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

If I may enter this. Passivhaus is good for providing strict, proven methods and attention to detail. Far too many houses are flawed because of corners being cut, lack of attention to detail, and basically not being a holistic design. So an option for control of this is a good thing. My own choice would always be to design the building I want. If that means that the big windows face south for the view, and have bifolds, then that is the priority. A wood burning stove too, if in the country. Then make it work efficiently, but appreciate that sometimes the doors will be left open, or the windows opened on a whim. But I don't trust 'others' to get it right and so I interfere and observe throughout. Not everyone can do that. And then there is the cost. It isn't available to everyone. Passivhaus is good design. Non Passivhaus can be good too, perhaps even better.

I've never built anything wonky or flimsy in my life, as I am an OCD freak of many belts, and a comprehensive selection of braces to boot. The 3x2's will feel solid and I'll get a great result from them, sister-ing up the internal 3x2's will pay big dividends and it's only an extra 4 dozen lengths, not exactly bank busting and prob £150-200 worth at most. With those being more solid than a single 4x2, and the single external studs being tied at the half height marker to these sistered pairs of 3x2, accompanied by lashings of glue and gas nails, and more gas nails, followed by more gas nails.... I'll be happy to proclaim; "She'll bee reet, laaaaad"

I spent some time yesterday playing with the design and the architect has done an aesthetically nice job really. Although not the cheapest or easiest to build, the stepped sizes of the 3 blocks are quite harmonious. Anything I drew became quite plain in comparison. See this sketch. The original is nicer. Eliminating the chimney might make it tricky to look well although maybe a box dormer or similar to the ensuite/dressing room would make it work. I've been playing with the ground floor. See what you think. Swapping the "cut" in the gable wall will give a nice covered and hidden area outside the utility for any welly boots etc. Getting rid of the small corridor by the backdoor would keep it the same size . Make the utility a long "walk through room". It'll naturally keep itself tidier then and you'll have plenty of wall space for storage/work areas. I would dispense with the separate plant room and put the MVHR, water/ASHP/Boiler in there too. A hoist up drying rack could be included in the vaulted ceiling in the North End too maybe. I've done rationalising of the windows too. Hopefully eliminating a need for too many depleated carbon uranium diamond coated nanotube spacegel skyhooks which architects like to use to hold stuff up. The corner windows are gone too. Mainly because I'm a dryballs, but also they're hard to get right thermally and structurally. Perhaps before you commit to them explore how to build them without serious cost or thermal bridging.

That will depend on whether you have mains or a tank in the loft. With a new syphon you get 2 plastic cones to insert, one wider than the other. That's how low tech it all is. Other surprises in first time work on a wc. The seal from cistern to pan is primitive. Just plumbers mait (gunk) and gravity, and maybe an adjacent metal bracket. The syphon mechanism is just a bit of polythene that flaps up and down. Dual flushes include a hidden screw to unlock the lid. Screws to the wall will probably have rusted and not come out.

Looks like a generally shoddy job all round

Installation instructions.. See cross section bottom right of last page. There shouldn't even be a gap.. https://www.europeanplastics.co.uk/_files/ugd/a1adc3_ae879888910049cb93079fa54eb2232b.pdf?index=true The sanded strip down the middle is to provide a key for the mortar to stick to.

Hello everyone. I preemptively posted a while back asking for a little help and those that replied were super helpful, so thank you. Now though it’s time to say a proper hello. So, hello! My wife and I (plus our 7 month old) are in the initial stages of building our own place. We’re incredibly lucky in that my parents have enough space in their garden for us to potentially build our dream place. I’ll definitely have more questions regarding that in future (shared access, shared sweage treatment etc). I’ve spent a lot of time researching and reading up on here, and it seems the best option for us would be a TF supplier - specifically MBC and their insulated slab too. The plot is within a conservation area, which I’m well aware can cause a plethora of issues. We do currently have planning permission to turn their three car garage into a single dwelling, so we’re hoping this can play somewhat into precedence for a new dwelling on the land. Trees are an issue, but thankfully we have a potential design that navigates them and their root protection areas. We have a version 2 design from our architect which I will post up in the applicable thread soon. Looking forward to learning more and chatting to you knowledgable experts!

Is it just me or is drifting into the realms of OTT? The slab is for a single storey garden room, not a great big multistorey house - all this talk of ring beams and the like is a lot of unnecessary time/cost. Yes to how its being insulated etc, no issue with the thickening per se....just stick A142 across the whole thing in the top layer, I really wouldn't bother adding layers in the 'ring beam' - this is basically a big shed🤷‍♂️

Sorry @Nickfromwales your posts don’t seem to be appearing correctly. Wonder if I can do what you’ve done but with other 4 letter words ? 🤔

IMO, this whole issue of where to place Air Tightness Layer (ATL) and Vapour Barriers (VB) is not settled in terms of proper scientific investigation informing building advice and guidelines, so at the moment there is no right answer. Note ATLs and VBs are not quite the same in that a VB is breathable but generally moisture resistant. As I said in an earlier post, our MBC house adopts the approach of having a minimally breached ATL as a racking plasticised OSB layer on the inside, allowing to frame and insulation to breath outwards. @ggc's seems to flip this. As I said , this isn't settled so we can't say one is right and the other wrong. As I see it, the MBC approach has the advantage that the temperature gradient from inside to out goes uniformly from house to ambient temperature to the relative humidity gradient goes from low to high helping to keep moisture out of the frame itself. But I might be wrong here. However I can make some observations. If you want an airtight (+MVHR) build then you need to have a robust and simple strategy / design for ensuring airtightness from design through to build completion. Tradesmen will not understand this and can easily compromise it. So you need a simple rule to enforce. In our case there is a 45mm service void in front of the ATL, so all wiring, cabling, plumbing, etc. was run in this void; flush to plasterboard pattresses sat in the void, and we personally fitted any through viod ducting. Tradesmen were not allowed to break it. If you don't do something like this, then your as-built house will end up leaking like a sieve. Any twin wall void needs to be breathable on one side. Double ATLs are an absolute no-no, because if there is any water ingress then it has nowhere to go; it can't dry out and rot will set in. Someone on the build must fully understand this strategy and police it. This could be you, a PM or an architect, but this needs to be done preferably on a daily basis, because even with the best intentions some tradesman will make mistakes, and these need to be picked up and remedied before the mistake is hidden and buried. All of the above also applies to the thermal insulation design, thermal bridge prevention, etc. Same arguments apply: Maybe trust, but always verify.

Yes, replacing the whole thing has been the plan, just didn't know how to get t it. And the isolating valve would not be available until the cistern is lifted - and I doubt the source flexy it sits on is long enough to close it off if lifting the cistern first. So cutting through the wall was inevitable it seems. OK, could shut the water to the house - will create a separate thread on this one.

Turn the water off, empty the cistern so it is not heavy, then cut the sealant and lift the cistern off. Probably wise just to buy a new fill valve assembly and replace the whole thing.

You don't have a fight on your hands. You need to tell the builder to put it right. Remember you are paying. From our previous conversation what did the builder say when you pointed out that he had fxxxxd it up ?

@ETC Great job.

The neighbours new roof is going to leak. That cut tile nearest the guttering is tipping up to the point that any water ingress is never going to reach the gutter. The neighbours new roof does not look like it has been done by a propper roofer. More like somebody chancing it. I am not a roofer, so i dont know if your tiles should have been mucked in.

As ProDave says. When exposed, lift the float and see if the water stops. That means a very simple adjustment may suffice. Where does the water go next? To overflow or disappearing into the pan? A cause of the latter can be muck in the syphon seal (which can be amazingly primitive) , causing it to keep dribbling into the pan.

You do intelligent installs, you do close spacing for given reasons, the UFH warehouses that do paperwork design are really doing sales based design, they just want to sell products, so all designs come out with a house full of pipe, every room has a thermostat and it needs a buffer.

Really they should outlaw S and Y plan, and make hot water priory or X plan mandatory for all new gas installs. They should also make low temp emmiters run on weather compensation and 3m2 cylinder coils mandatory, so all gas installs are HP ready, but make gas boilers condense in all conditions, to give efficiency over 100%.

I prefer threaded bar in epoxy, at least a week after pouring.

One quote was more expensive, probably mostly due to the distance they'd have to transport the kit and accommodate the site team. I'm still awaiting 2 other quotes.

So we've hit the nail on the head here, haven't we? Given the choice would you really want to open up the heatpump market to a load of plumbers/heating engineers, local or otherwise, that are unable to rationalise simple design/installation proposals and explain it to their customer? No, of course not, which takes us back to the nub of proper education and standards, including regulations that are in place to maintain those standards. This also highlights the weakness of separating design from installation and permitting customers to choose different contractors under separate contracts and could potentially end up with a situation tantamount to employing the best architect money can buy and then asking a cheap shite builder to build to the design as if the design mitigates the installation cababilities and skill of the builder. The good installation of a heating system requires good design knowledge as well as good real world experience of how to build that system into a retrofit situation - which is a skillful pursuit. So more skills. I would question whether any of those who quoted you would be willing to put aside their egos to upskill both knowledge and experience only to be told by a designer what they need to do. Is this an intractable situation? No, but it is a tricky one. See above. I think I've been at pains to explain this from the very beginning...... For example: I think that in the first instance the government needs to completely revise the grant funding arrangements and fund the training and development of system designers and installers. The government needs to create and support industry with sufficient long term demand with stable long term policy that isn't going to vanish overnight due to the whims of a PM or Chancellor and bankrupt a load of companies. In parallel there needs to be an overhawl of the education system to promote flow into the trades which becomes a respected and valued career pathway. This should absolutely be on a par with academic education and should be just as rigourous in terms to the required standards so if someone decides to go the route of a heating engineer, it means learning the maths and the engineering principles within the relevant systems. Fundamentally the problem is a socio-cultural one (which includes education) rather than an engineering one and therefore simply looking at an engineering solution isn't going to get us very far at all. If you look at any of the countries with much better heatpump rollout, you'll find that what underpins the policies to support that rollout are socio-cultural approaches, long-term perspectives and often more generous funding arrangements. However, many of them have invested properly in their electricity grid and supply infrastructure whilst our various governments have tried to rely on the free market. And so fro a socio-cultural perspective, I go back to education. If I were to be pushed, I'd also suggest it more sensible to conduct a process of optimising ff central heting systems to run as efficiently as possible before installing a heatpump (like @JohnMo did with his system), and this is what is now required within building regulations for new heating systems, but should perhaps go further to include measures with replacements. Another alternative is to instal mini and hybrid heatpumps running in parallel with ff boilers providing the majority heat demand but being topped up by ff where absolutely necessary. This would be a transitional phase.

No need to compact the pea shingle, just rake it level. I'd say you don't need 150mm of hardcore, 100mm - 120mm is enough with the type 1 you have on top (save the dig). A142 mesh is fine for horizontal, but I'd use 6mm or 8mm rebar vertically in the ring beam at 300 centres, tied to the mesh, then a long horizontal rebar 25mm from the bottom of the ring beam tied to the verticals. You could pierce the DPM and push the verticals into the EPS, and stick some Duct tape around the holes you've made. It would help stabilise the rebar for the pour.

That I doubt ! And you didn’t say that in your original post which is why we may have not understood quite what you meant.

Wall is about 9-10 cm to left of where it should have ended if it was straight, after a length of 9.8 metres.

Thats really not anything to brag about. Rip it up and start again. Schoolboy error.

+ / _ 5 mm

Some builders don't take advice from anyone. Seriously, anyone. It doesn't sound complicated. You are 90% sure you will find clay. Calling it high plasticity will increase the foundation depths for trees but that is cheaper than site and lab tests. I would be redesigning armed with the tree tables and bco agreement as I went along. Dig your footing as designed and check the strength at the bottom. How to, later. This is traditional building, but you have multiple advisors on here. 99% of advice on BH is good. The other 1% just aren't agreeing with me. Because you are being sensibly cautious we don't expect you to cut corners so can give this pragmatic advice. Ie if you weren't, we might be saying to get an SE. In any case, your house will have normal founds, and it isn't always great to build extensions much deeper.

Yes and no, as they will likely go nuts on this to cover their arses. Expense. If it was me, I'd just dig down a bit deeper "there", buy a pair of 3600mm pre-stressed concrete lintels, and lob them in during the pour with the middle of the lintel at the centre of "operation stumpy". Treat it as a set of services that you are bridging, like a clay soil pipe and water / electric. This has the potential to grow an unnecessary set(s) of horns £££ Reports of how the neighbours have managed fine fortifies a cheaper 'sensible' solution AFAIC. Seems to work fine; when a row of builders at the pub bar at 8PM all get a text. One look and they all drink up and scarper. One assumes a woman was involved in each instance

I think you will be somewhere in between Solid and TF We looked at ICF as an option It was only the material price hikes that stopped us TF costs are now ridiculous

I think this requires more careful consideration. There are a lot of Marketing forces at play and lack of system thinking. Encouraging people to change to electric powered heating creates extra demand, so you have to consider the CO2 output of that extra electricity. You can't use average generation figures as that is slight of hand. Gas heating is 185gCO2/kWh rising to around 200gCO2/kWh if you include grid losses etc. If the extra electricity is gas generated, then it's about 500gCO2/kWh. So you need a COP over 2.5 for an ASHP to *start* being more efficient, and that ignores the carbon footprint of the ASHP manufacture and installation. The UK is still using coal powered electricity to address high demand. That is about 800gCO2/kWh, so would require a COP over 4.0. ASHPs will serve to increase the likelihood of coal being used. I am a fan of the technology and am fitting an ASHP, but it is important to consider the complete picture. If you controlled the whole system (grid & boilers) you would roll out ASHPs at a rate that keeps the coal burning power stations idle. The problem is, ASHPs (and EVs for that matter) are ahead of the grid changes. The government etc can claim to be doing something about climate change by pointing at all the ASHPs and EVs and making absurd claims like they're zero carbon, when in fact they are keeping the worst of the electricity being generated.

Wish we put batteries in at the time, even though the economics are marginal... I did the calcs for us a month ago. Very similar to yourselves, all electric, last year we used 8.5MWh. 3 of which was self generated and we imported 5.3MWh. Exported 1.5MWh @ 8.5p unit. We've a 5pkW array, and economy 7. Heatpump only runs overnight. Same for dishwasher. Bill for the year after export payments was £1200. I worked out that batteries would save a max of £300 a year at current rates, by shifting to 100% economy 7 and solar. Meaning payback is at least 15 years. I think it's the similar in most other scenarios, the "payback" is much longer than on panels alone. Also think of what that £8k your not spending on batteries could be used for. Do you have an electric car yet?

I worked it out as 1.25 times more for walls of U 0.12. The higher the insualtion spec you are going for, the less of a difference. BUT openings are so much simpler and faster. And you don't have to worry about gaps in insulation boards, or damp/airtight detailing.

This paragraph says that there must be a single point of contract with the customer, therefore, if an installer is not qualified for design then the designer must be subcontracted. Likewise, if the designer contracts directly with the customer, then an installer would be subcontracted. Overall responsibility lies with the direct contracting party. Now, this does not prevent the customer from using preferred suppliers providing there is a single contract, which makes sense because if you have two contracts - one for design and one for installation, then if there are any problems you give rise to lots of potential buck passing - whose problem is it, the designer or installer bla bla. From a practical perspective, this makes a lot of sense, IMHO. So it is possible for a customer to select a high quality designer, who you would assume would e happy to select a high quality installer, rather than the customer having to rely on some random unknown local installer. No, the current regulations do not completely exclude the only workforce capable of scaling up to the required volume. And given that this workforce are very much in short supply (I know because I'm one of them) and reducing day by day, it's a very tall ask. In fact one of my mates, in his 60s has just got the design and installation tickets which only took a few days training and some exams. In recent research by Gas Safe, however, the conclusion showed that only 32% of registered engineers intended training on heatpumps. I'm seem to be repeating myself that the issue is structural, requiring a change in culture, training and policy. The MCS does have many problems - it's expensive and the standards reads like a corporate process and beaurocracy manual. It also seems to be a bit stuffy. Its existence creates a good number of hoops that installers and designers have to jump through, but then if the industry wants to professionalise itself, then hoops have got to be jumped through - what does it take to become a recognised and register professional in other areas the building sector? E.g. a structural engineer or architect? What is your evidence for this statement and how do you judge what is perfectly usable equipment? I can tell you that one of the primary reasons stuff is stripped out is because of the risk of problems over the short term that result in significant cost and resource demand both for the customer and the installer, not because of greed. In the last 2 months I've had call backs and headaches due to customers demanding components are kept because they seemed to think they were fine. One of them was a magnaclean that had originally been installed poorly so that, like so many of them out there, the composite thread was stripped starting a leak as soon as the filter was touched - result: order a replacement and because the model has now changed, re-pipe the installation. The next was a heat only boiler installation where the customer insisted on a heat only boiler as the existing pump was relatively new as was the motorised valve and other bits in the heating system. The pipework was so bad that on installation it took 3 days to clear airlocks and once it was running it lasted just 4 months before I get called back due to a no flow error on the boiler - I should have torn all the old crap out and fitted a system boiler which was what I originally specced as this would have avoided all these problems. Problems that impacted my customer, my reputation and they ultimately have a significant carbon cost too. It's a very difficult balance deciding what to keep and not to when you want to leave a system that works well and reliably for a customer. They're not excluded from the market, they just need to go and get the relevant training and pay the money to get the right tickets. Why they aren't doing so is more the question. Almost all of them need to be trained as low temperature heating systems require a fundamental change of mentality and this is not a technical question. But also it's very difficult to install a heatpump as a one man band due to size and weight of a heatpump. For example, a Vaillant aroTherm 5kW heatpump has a net weight of 85-90kg. This is not something you can carry and lift into place on your own so you need at least one more person. Costs then escalate. The changes you've suggested would do nothing for improving standards and innovation, nor would they improve supply of resource which needs to be trained and experienced. The industry badly needs new blood that has a desire to maintain a decent career, whether as a business or as an employee. This is where the focus needs to be rather than some tinkering with PD, for example. All the current competent person schemes could set up alternative schemes to the MCS as it stands. No regulatory changes are required. The question is: why don't they already? Which is exactly why we have to ensure we think for the long term and don't implement short term solutions that from a life-cycle perspective demand more resources than necessary - such as energy generation, network infrastructure and natural resources. Unfortunately, it's on this kind of statement that I lose respect for the entire premise of the thread. There are plenty installers and designers out there who have their customer's best interests at heart. And the costs, while unpalatable are not always down to people making excess profits, but reflective of the demands of the job and costs of running a business. This is often poorly understood, even by competent DIYers and self builders on this forum. If I now go back to a quote I received a few years ago for the installation of a 7kW heatpump with unvented cylinder, knowing what I do now, I know what work has to go into designing, installing, commissioning and tuning the system. I don't think it was unreasonable any more! The reality is that if a customer wants to forget the BUS grant, then there don't seem to be any preventions to installing the system themselves, or having a non MCS installer doing the job. The risk, however, would be with product warranty.

Has anyone actually check how much power a CAT5/6 cable can carry? Probably a lot more that 5W. Oh, lots more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet

There's no reference to a sealed vapour control layer here. There's a danger that you will get interstitial condensation. That means that water vapour (like steam, exhaled moisture from your breathing/cooking etc) will be able to pass through small gaps in your wall. If it meets any cold solid surface ( which it will outside the insulation) the vapour will condensed into liquid water. Because it's now cold and a liquid it's stuck there, it can't evaporate. Rot and mould are the result. The Kooltherm would work fine if it was a continuous sheet inside the house but it's not. There'll be holes at every plug socket and gaps between the boards where they're butt jointed as insulated plasterboard. Given you have a U value target of 0.15 I'd do something like the following. Rocksilk 140mm £16.78/m2 50mm PIR with taped joints as VCL £9.05/m2 50mm Rocksilk £5.50/m2 With 50x50 battens £1/m2 15mm plasterboard £5.25 Total £37.58/m2 Or use a layer of 11mm OSB £4.71/m2 and 12.5mm plasterboard instead of 15mm plasterboard. Nice and solid to fix to vs PB alone. Total £40.76/m2 Compare that to the current buildup. 100mm Kooltherm k112 £58.40/m2 37.5mm Kooltherm Insulated plasterboard K118. £ 29.58 Total £87.98. Less labour but twice the price. The free german website Ubakus makes Kooltherma poorer K value of 0.021 than the UK kingspan declaration . I don't know why, but I trust them about as far as I could throw them. Even with a K value of 0.018 you'd be optimistic to hit 0.15 and that assumes perfectly still air in the cavity which would be almost impossible to achieve.

Your Architect has been taken out for lunch by the Kingspan salesman I think. To get a sense of what I mean lets look at some £/R Values or how much insulation costs for a given heat blocking ability. All prices from insulation4less. Please feel free to check my sums but I think it's accurate. Lets take the k112 and something like the Flexirock slabs. So what I hear...... its only £5. What s that between friends!? For your walls of a u value 0.15W/m2K or R 6.6. However that rises to an R value required of 8.25 by the time you account for 10% timber framing. Its a £5.46 hike from the Rocksilk to the Kooltherm per R per m2. So £5.46 X 8.25 x say 100m2 of wall area = £4005 more expensive. Now there are less costs with reduced thickness but nothing like this. We haven't even considered the substantial waste with fitting boards between studs. I think the salesman might have had a week in the Algarve too. Find out if you can return/exchange the K112 would be my first port of call.

The wording I was refering to is in the BUS regulations rather than PD - there's a need to be a clear distinction here between the two as well as joined up requirements Where is it stated that this must be the case? In the BUS regulations, which appears to be the relevant regs here for the grant, it simply says that an installation must meet the required scheme standards, which from a design perspective mean designed by someone competent to do this job according to MCS or equivalent body and then installed to those standards. Nothing I've read so far prevents a customer from engaging their own designer and installer. Maybe I've missed something spurious in the MCS rules. And if you read the regs, the MCS doesn't have a regulatory stranglehold, just a free market one - so to break the strangehold, you can just set up an equivalent body! With respect to this, and being someone who has completed the low-temperature heating system design course, the design rules are not particularly complex. Onerous perhaps.... I am of the view that the last thing we want to do is relax the design requirements of new heating systems, simply because good heating system design makes sense from both environmental and economic perspectives. I also think that the last thing we want to be doing is chucking in heat pumps as if that's what's going to save us. You only need to look at UK and European policy on Diesel engines and numerous other ones to understand how that goes. My humble view is that we need to actually take the time and make the investment to do it properly, With my professional background, I've been involved in enough global change initiatives within multinational companies where they've forged ahead with what seems like a good idea in a state of panic because they thought they didn't have the time to do it properly. Rather than proposing a relaxation of standards, I would propose a scheme whereby the customer is provided with a design voucher and told they can choose their own designer and that design cost is covered by the government as part of the grant scheme. Not only would this enable a better non-risk assessment of heating system suitability but also a huge amount of data to be gathered to shape both policy and practise going forwards. Including to shape resource planning. As has already been raised, the complexity does however lie in the retrofit of the heating system and dealing with the historical real world crap of UK central heating systems - look in enough houses and it is something the behold. Some of the ideas and suggestion here that it simply requires a couple of pipes and might just take a plumber and electrician 1 day to fit really do not demonstrate an understanding of working with heating systems in this market. For me it simply has to go back to the reality of good training and development, as well as promoting a cultural shift in how we view 'manual' labour. The reality is that the number of qualified heating engineers is reducing year on year. The reality is also that government policy over the last 25 years or so has kicked this can down the road and it has come back to bite us. For sufficient training to become independent and efficient in this space, you really do need a good 2/3years of onsite experience, even more if, like me, you live and do this work on lots of old victorian and georgian properties. I'm sorry if this doesn't match the idea of getting a fast roll-out, but the whole thing touches upon a lot of complexities that, like it or not, do take time to resolve.

@Kelvin you can see my window profiles on my blog: Window and Door Detailing. I could take this route of moving my frames out to the outside of the TF because we had an outer stone skin, and we'd spec'd the TF with 60° inner reveals. This all worked well for us and gave the house a fairly light and airy feel despite the planners limiting window sizes to conform to "local cottage style". No probs after being in for nearly 6 years now. Works well in terms of weatherproofing, airtightness and thermally. Whatever approach you adopt you need to make sure that you address all three of these aspects. My first reaction to your TF is that it is similar to by MBC TF -- except that the panels seem inside-out. For the MBC profile, the OSB racking is plasticised and on the inside. This forms to VCL and has a battened out service cavity within it. The outer covering is panelvent with is breathable. OSB is sufficiently moisture and air tight to form a decent VCL, so if you have inner vapour barrier then you will get moisture problems over time as the frame and the internal insulation needs to breath. Perhaps you should clarify your breathing + airtightness + thermal design to make sure these points have been properly addressed otherwise you could have real problems in 5-10 years time. Where is your air-tightness barrier? You are going to have a lot of service penetrations, so you need to have a strategy for these as well. We plan all of ours ahead of time and used the appropriate sized ABS pipe to span the frame. We taped up these ourselves. The trades could then easily route pipes / cabling through these as needed, and the foamed and silicon-sealed these immediately before the airtightness test. Passed on first attempt. One last point. We used a riven slate covering on our entire slab. Jan got it from the Mrs-stone store online. No probs in procuring, price or laying. This was really cheap on it only took the tiler a few days to lay. No probs since either. We still like it.

r Have a look at the images above. It's a pretty crude representation of a window one properly in Therm would take me until 2050. What you can see is the effect of the reduction in heat loss through the header by moving the window inside it and by adding some external insulation to the frame . Like I say the window frames are thermally weak even on excellent windows. You can only do so much.

This is simplified actually. No need for the 19mm Battens to run so far down. Suggested sequence. 1. Install 18mm window boxes. 2. Install Windows 100mm back from the outer edge. 3. Tape the windows to some breather membrane and return to the outside of the sheathing. 4. Screw the 150x57 timbers in place as shown. Use this to line up to the corners of the window to ensure a consistant amount of frame will be exposed later. 5. Push fit some EPS insulation. Ensure it is a snug fit. 6. Apply the window head trim as shown with SS screws. 7. Finish the breather membrane overlapping as shown to ensure all drips go to the outside.

I have found another report on this from a different angle with pictures. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12026285/Man-reveals-toll-four-year-legal-battle-force-neighbours-rip-80-000-extension.html?ico=related-replace-2 Now we have a picture of this rogue extension: So just what did the complainant expect? The extension to be built with a 2 1/2" gap between the neighbours extension and their own that would be impossible to maintain and fill up with debris that would cause it's own problems? God some people can be so petty and vindictive. I am just glad my nearest neighbours house is 100 feet away and I will never face this situation with Mr horrible neighbour.

Use whatever you've got. A sketch of what you intend here and there would help. This is make it up as you go along land don't forget! I'd use penny washers with M6. With M6 you'll be able also to use flat wood bits and counterbore the timber so the washer/nut sits flush.

The pipe I used was pert-al-pert from outsourced energy, found it easy enough to use. I used this pipe for most of my plumbing. Hot/cold water is via a manifold. My cold water piping is buried below the floor insulation in the concrete slab, nice cool drinking water. Hot water is the same pipe. Once in a wet room I transitioned to copper pipe. I downloaded loopcad on a free trial. Did room by room based on heat loss and floor coverings. Ended up with 300mm centres. Flow temps vary between 25 and 34 (at -9). Just run the whole lot as a single zone. Once you get to low W/m2, pipe spacing doesn't make too much difference to flow temp. Heat pump generally don't produce hot water below 25 degrees, so having flow temps lower than that isn't an advantage.

Here's a credenza I made for my daughter. It's solid, not veneered, (cos she's special) but has bookmatched doors and back panel.

In case anyone is interested, I just received one of these, plumbed it in, and it really does work. Impressed! I ordered it as a test and have installed it on my temporary site toilet. Will probably now use it on the finished ones when I get to that stage. The model I bought is Samodra Minimalist Bidet, dual nozzle. I paid under £20 for it. Happy to answer questions if there are any.

T

Do you find you are now blacklisted with most BM's now?