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It's interesting - you virtually never hear that question on BH (zero results on a BH search) . There are many variants of the same question - and I'm sure we've heard many of them. But my God I'm sick of people asking that question : the conversation usually runs something like this [random example] " I see you aren't using a nailer to fix you cladding: Hell of a lot of work screwing all those (apologies 'them') screws in innit". or "What, yer ducting the foul drain through the house and out under the floor ... why dintcha jus' purrit straight out the 'ouse and down 'n side?" or (this is a good one) "You aint sanding the (plastered) walls before painting - be 'ell of a mess if ya dunt" I've realised that my answers vary by the degree of irritation I feel - and probably by how tired I feel Pleasant : " Thats an interesting thing to to say - tell me what you mean.... " An attempt at humour [on the cladding job]: "Here's the screwdriver, and there's a loada screws: just follow the chalk-line - two per plank, please" Annoyed: "Because I'm not you " Really annoyed " Wanna a job - cos if you do, you'll do the job as I want it done" P!ss off please " You the expert then? " And - equally tart - I'll get a cheery (or sneery) " Well, good luck with that then " in return. Serves me right: I should learn to keep my mouth shut. Leave them wondering what I think. Choose your battles, says Debbie. Right as ever.

1 ready for UFH 1 to go. UFH going in on the first plot tomorrow and Sunday 🙄🙄 No church this week.

That's great. Thanks for taking the time to help out a new boy 😁👍🏻

Well not on my own build, but wiring a new build not far from here, I had a stand up finger wagging argument with the joiner who wanted me to route the cables his way and did not understand safe zones. I won the argument but we never got on for the rest of the build and i ended up getting the plumber to tell me when the joiner was not there so I could go and finish off in peace.

I got my rope from Screwfix on a 500m drum, super strong, very, very long and not expensive! (https://www.screwfix.com/p/polypropylene-rope-blue-6mm-x-500m/76432) If you need the full 450Kg SWL then you have something very wrong in your duct (Oh and While I remember - I capped all the ducts off to stop rodents taking up residence! - or worse eating through the pull rope!!!!!)

I just noticed that my last entry was 1st June and now it's mid August. Where does the time go. Once again we've lost time on the build, HID did too much breaking and hurt his back and we got a new puppy who is a huge time waster. Although I WFH I also have to visit clients so quite a bit of puppy sitting going on. Then there has been the weather, total opposite of last year. So, down to what has been done. The first main wall is now up to lintel level. First all the door frames then the inside skin This one has the external wall on one part and the insulation so is covered. HID has found fixing the string levels tricky, hence some of the early blocks are not totally level, but improving as he goes through. We have also been breaking up the floor of the hall & snug to be Layer 1 already gone, now layers 2, 3 & 4 to break and clear as well as knocking down the 2 internal walls that are not in the right place being corridors to feed the pigs. Also lots of drain pipes and heavy duty foundation concrete. getting there done and digging on the other side to start prepping for under pinning, the current foundations are 200mm They need to be min of 500 and possibly deeper, until we get to good ground as agreed by BC The nearest soil is definitely showing hints of clay. of course we have an issue though, if you look just above puppy, you can see the drain culvert, totally buried in concrete. We knew that there was a drain, but how deep is it and how much effort to dig out The other necessary task was clearing the space for the water pipe trench. After booking the water they came and inspected and showed us where it joins us. That turns out to be behind the long shed so we had to clear. Not as bad as ScottishJohn, but a small area similar that I can't find the photo of, but completely covered in brambles and a sloping bank dug out to be level enough for trench digging. Anyway this is the after the pile of bricks turned out to be an old culvert, we dug out brick by brick to 1m then just decided not to go any further. It was solid laid bricks about 1m square, so not a well as solid and not foundation as nothing there, but laid properly so must have been for something. The sheds on the right are storage from the last 20 years and will need to go as that will be our driveway as we don't want to share the existing one . We are holding off digging the trench until we get and answer from OpenReach about their ducting as we want to lay that and both water pipes in one trench. NSW water are happy to see photos of trench and pipe and they realised that digging all 120m trench will probably collapse. When you note what you've done in a 2 month period it has changed, but it's not much for that length of time. If it does continue at that rate then I reckon about another 4 years 🙂 Thanks for reading. Jill

If the water pressure is low, fit a 28mm single check NRV with 22mm internal reducing sets to go onto the 22mm pipe. https://www.monsterplumb.co.uk/yellow-brass-fittings-plumbing-3-part-reducing-set-28mm-22mm?gclid=Cj0KCQjwuNemBhCBARIsADp74QTP_RTBfjKXlco3sqsVMfzwwNM2VZD6XPgsquJDBtCMdL0ZOrihwYYaAsvyEALw_wcB

This falls into the realms of an UVC retro-fit. Done loads of them. Get the PRedV at the stopcock raised to 3 bar, as at 2.5 it will be quite restrictive. Install the control group / PRedV as per the MI's, local to the cylinder, but the one thing that all buffoons forget is to add a single check NRV to the hot outlet of the UVC. Do that and you are 100% kosher. . Warranty will be intact with that all done.

We’re still cladding. But it’s looking great.

Well done, at least you are moving forward!

That's not bad blockwork for an amateur. Line pins ( footprint) and corner blocks are your friend. Not expensive but essential.

No they would not fight each other. Air is slippery stuff, it just takes the path of least resistance. As long as extract and supply match each other reasonably well all will be good. dMVHR, can work out quite expensive and if not careful with selection can be more noisy than you may want

Because 7⁰C does not happen very often. Go for the larger one, less chance of frosting up.

Because they are using statistical averages. Take a simple journey in two very different cars. A small diesel and a heavy petrol. The journey takes the same time, but the small diesel uses less fuel. But we can also measure it another way, the speed variations. Say the small diesel never goes above 50 MPH, but never below 20 MPH, but the the large petrol does 70 MPH but also 0 MPH. Mean speed is the same, 35 MPH. Then we can measure how the speed us distributed, this may swing the the MPG figure in favour of one or the other vehicles i.e. lots of town driving or lots of open road driving.

Shocking experience….. bunch of cowboys who will measure an inch smaller all round so they don’t have to spend any time hacking off render, then they cover it all up with shitty trims…

I do not have an answer for that.

In the brochure that I shared the link to, you have the outdoor unit with either 1 single indoor unit, 2 indoor units or 3 indoor units. The system with 2 indoor units having a better COP than the one with 1 indoor unit, but this only when they work in tandem. P.S. Yet it will be more efficient to run 2 separate systems, than one outdoor with 2 indoor(multisplit) if you need to run the upstairs and downstairs separate.

I normally use a 50/50 mix of trade contract matt emulsion.

I did some work for a mate including plastering which was (IMO) good, not too polished so paint would adhere and no ripples at all, returned the next weekend to him saying “I have sanded all the plaster for you,”, I wanted to say “why the feck did you do that “ but I didn’t. However when he painted it he complained about all the scratch lines he could see so I told him he did that sanding, if he left it alone it would have been ok (we still speak 🤣).

It may be the difference between a breathable insulation and not breathable (PIR in this category)

Well I had that conversation with our BCO and when I showed him the bba certificate for full fill he changed his mind. Another example of no common policy throughout the country on these matters 🤷‍♂️

Interesting, as we are at the point of think if we should add some sort of leak detection. Obviously there are the simple discs which create an Alarm, but has anyone had experience of something like these which are a bit more comprehensive https://www.grohe.co.uk/en_gb/smarthome/grohe-sense-guard/

do it right: https://www.drainagesuperstore.co.uk/help-and-advice/product-guides/underground-drainage/what-is-an-inspection-chamber/

If they are not responding then give them final notification as you will be starting works within one week, then just get on with it. If you were fixing to or altering a garden wall or works directly onto an inside PW then it’s a different matter

I always like to" assume" that my foundations are only going as deep as my own, and my neighbours. If they have to go a bit deeper, dig it and get if filled with concrete. I understand however, if you need to insert beams etc into a party wall.

Most rear extensions would only need a PWA if the foundations need to go deeper than your neighbours foundation (in a terrace that normally means deeper than your own) or if you were building off their extensions or something like that. What reason did the surveyor give for needing one.

https://www.shelly.com/en/products/shop/flood

Is this the start of the turn: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/your_money Who knows. Marvin

Somewhere I have a paper on this, looking at cycling/running time intervals and determining the overallimpact on efficiency. It was certainly not a binary answer. My initial search can't find the paper so I don't know whether I actually saved it, unfortunately.

A did see a video the other day where the guy was recording flow temps and CoP. In theory a flow temp of 30 would have been good, but the reality was 35 gave him a better CoP over the period, due to how the heat pump cycling occured. Difference in CoP was 4.0 compared to about 4.5. So not always that straight forward.

Mild cycling is fine, with run time 10 mins or over. Its all to do with the amount of energy expended to heat things up, like compressor, heat exchanger and piping, all of which are not useful heat and get lost to the outside, between cycles. Think of opening a tap, the water will heat the piping and displace a load of cold water before you get hot water on your hands. Do the same 30 mins later it's almost a repeated process. In that case heat is lost to house, so who cares. The heat pump does the same but a big chunk of heat is lost to outside. Any machine has micro wear during a start or stop cycle, that doesn't occur during steady state running, this happens on bearings and any surface that doesn't normally touch during running, due things like hydrodynamic lift that support a shaft from a bearing surface... Equipment life is normally rated in number of cycles not running hours.

I can't answer any of the above, and suspect some of it may be outdated religion. However there is one concrete thermodynamic argument namely that cycling inevitably means that the flow temp must be higher than if the pump were running continuously in order to deliver the same energy on average from emitters to house. This compromises efficiency. I can't quantity by how much however, because I don't have a model to estimate the rise in flow temp required. It's probably not too difficult to work out if one put one's mind to it, which I may do in an idle moment.

What about headroom and how will you fit a proper staircase? Headroom above the stairs needs to be 2 metres all the way. If you can't achieve that, no point even trying.

Could it have been caused by nitrates concentration increasing due to the heave rainfall recently. Farmers have a lot to answer for. Never worked for me when I had a pond.

We won’t need the connection for some time but they still gave us all the ductwork and a great drawcord used for all the services. The guy who came out understands we’re self building and could take years as we just wanted everything in one big trench. and he just said that’s ok by the time you’re ready to connect we will probably be on the better cable.

Yes SIP would be my last choice.

Update….beam and insulated block time. I didn’t know what time they were coming so I went alone and planned to wait there and unload them when they arrived and go and catch up on paid work. The weather wasn’t good so I opted to stay and move the beams around on my Tod. Not a bad day in the end but I was ready for a pint when I got home. Today was a bit slow. The insulated blocks fly in but the cuts take a while. Hopefully we will have one house completed tomorrow. A76C3DCA-8293-4180-BEC6-3F803568637B.MOV

Welcome For everything you must do, there is another rule to say you must not do it.

All the grey pipes and joints replaced with orange. An inspection chamber where the bend is. Pipes supported on a bed of fine stone <10mm (or whatever the local requirement is) and covered with same before backfilling. Tbh it's more of a job for a groundworker than a plumber. No offense to any competent plumbers reading this 🤣 It'll cost you more now, but will save you the hassle of digging it all up again in a few years time.

I do like a Demo video. This one was put together by my daughter. Last one I promise. Today we move on to excavations. 4a4c26f5-54e6-439f-8e26-4670eb6b9664.mp4

And there it was......gone

Yes it is.

Thanks for the reply. I was slightly concerned that I was being too vigorous in my feedback, but most of us here lewarnt long ago that it is far better to get too much early rather than living for the next 25 years with a window in the wrong place. Can I add a bit more about the Au Pair space that I had not noticed. I am not sure that a basement room with a light well is adequate. I think it needs windows, or moving to a secluded spot on another level. One possible option would be to move your "secondary means of escape" round the corner to be outside the Au Pair room (or give the Au Pair room a wall on the end facade), and turn the "secondary exit area" into a possible mini-patio garden (maybe only 4mx4m, easy maintenance, say coloured pavers, where an au pair could put a table and chair and a tub plant for private sitting out), and have the secondary exit going through it. Have you considered your personal lifecycle? I can't imagine a nuclear-family couple retiring to a place this size, unless you are from a background where extended family living is the norm, as is also becoming more common amongst tradition caucasian-British communities. You could do something wild like provisioning for easy conversion to 4 apartments, you keeping the Ground Floor one to .. er .. "decline and die in" (Copyright Lord Morris of Castle Morris *). Ferdinand * Quotes from a column. "I have bought a small Manor House in Derbyshire to decline and die in" by Lord Morris of Castle Morris circa 1991. It was (and is if Lady Morris is still extant) in the village of Foolow near Edale. I knew the Deputy Duck Warden, who supervised the ducks on the village pond, where Lady Morris was the Honorary Duck Warden, who got the prestige but did not have to let the ducks out and put them away in the village duck house each day. Just thoughts. Ferdinand

@SelfbuildNovice have you got someone onboard with passive house experience? If you do still plan to go down the route of Passive Haus certification then the PHPP will greatly inform the design. Currently your east elevation has a lot of glazing which will lead to significant overheating without suitable shading as will the roof lights over the kitchen/snug (that is likely to be a very light/bright room, do you need those roof lights?) Regarding the garage, I’m guessing it’s never going to have a car in it so is it necessary? The garage door is not the only problem regarding passive house, it’s also how you get from outside to inside without creating a huge thermal bridge at the floor. Good luck revisiting the plans. 👍

Hello and welcome - you find yourself in a very familar position to many on this forum. Most have been in this position, me included, whereby the uncertainties can be overwhelming. Sadly the stark truth of the matter is no one really knows! So in order to try and understand whether a project is vaiable and affordable, one has to research, read, enquire and eventually " gamble". Obviously the more research one does, the less of a gamble it becomes - hopefully, you may get to a position whereby is it becomes an almost cert - !! We started our project 5 years ago and a lot of what you mention, we encountered. Like you we had no idea but a limited budget! Have a read of my blog, it may help albeit the figures are 5 years out of date. One thing is for sure though. You will have to start spending some money, in order to progress your decision making, so good luck with it -

I got planning permission for conversion of three barns into a home in 2007. I converted a small byre, part of that project, in 2010 to comply with the condition to start work within 3 years. Building control signed the building off, which in hindsight was a mistake as It should have been part of the whole project and signed off when the rest was finished. Fast forward to 2022 and the entire project was nearly finished ( I was forced to get my Architects Certificate signed prematurely as the Architect was retiring at 88 !) I didnt know if I could make a successful VAT claim because the project had essentially started in 2010, been signed off, and no claim with the required 3 months made. I came across Andrew after some online searching. Andrew McDonald MAAT FCCA SELF BUILD VAT 33 Ocean Way, Pennar, Pembroke Dock, Pembrokeshire SA72 6RA Tel: 01646 687599 He is a self builder, and an accountant. He talked me through the rules and advised that I had a good chance of a claim, on all the building work EXCEPT the small byre completed in 2010. He was clearly used to challenging the revenue- in court if necessary, if he felt they were not applying the rules correctly. I sent him all my invoices, and he prepared the spread sheets and made the claim, with appropriate covering letter. As my build wasnt finished entirely due to my elderly Architect forcing my hand, I continued to rack up bills after the claim was made, which had significant VAT attached. After about six months of waiting for my VAT refund- to no avail, I contacted Andrew and mentioned I had more bills. He argued that the claim process was a two way street, and it was unreasonable for the revenue to refuse to add these claims to the original claim, as they had been keeping me waiting so long. A further collection of invoices was submitted, the VAT element of which, came to over 3K. Twelve months after Andrew lodged my claim with HMRC, I received a full payout of 16K, with no queries or rejections. I am of course delighted, and felt I should share the details of this superb professional contact. Andrews fee was a very modest £500.00. This account is entirely my own personal experience and I have no other relationship with Andrew other than as client. In fact I have never even met him in person ! I hope my experience is of interest to other self builders. Simon.

But, by the looks of it you are still driving the same van!

I slung a geezers hammer into the bushes at the bottom of the garden. Told him that when he paid for the granite, he could leave his hammer on it. Flung a painters radio and mobile out the first floor window. He had them sat on a £15k piece of furniture. I have calmed down a lot since those days. I'm amazed i never got the crap kicked out of me.

Oh for the days before YouTube experts 🤯

A pike.