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Got the drone up yesterday. First time the flat roof has been clear of stuff since April. Also did another tidy up so the whole site is now clear with the spare materials organised by type in one corner out of the way. We should have been getting the drainage finished this week but the flooding in the local area has held the team up on another site. I suspect there will be another delay due to the coming storm. Interesting comment from someone yesterday. I had the magic mastic man have a look round to get an idea of the size of the job. I can apply mastic well enough but he’s a bit of an artist with the stuff and his work is impeccable. He asked me where the heating was. I told him there is nothing in the house yet. He couldn’t believe how warm it was.

You have our sympathies. I'm sure some LPA's are OK, but ours is similar to yours. I agree that the system seems to be designed to perpetuate the 1940s or earlier - as though everything built back then was worthy of being emulated. In truth a lot of our building stock is atrocious thrown-together cheap garbage, and the last thing that should happen is it being copied. p.s. which LPA are you, I'll look up their stats?

You can probably do it yourself with the JS Harris spreadsheet.

Hi all, I've just realised I started a thread before saying hello here so hello ? We have had an offer accepted on a nice plot near Blairgowrie that has planning in principle. I am just going through my due diligence at the moment before parting with any money. The plot won't be the easiest plot to build on as it's on a slope, drainage will be private, the electricity supply estimate is higher than we expected, and the water supply will be via a borehole although the land owner is going to cover the cost of drilling the hole. We are currently looking at two options in terms of build, one is using a local architect who has a good reputation and the other is a slightly customised Heb Homes Longhouse. Very early days

Properly chuffed with myself how far i've progressed this year, but its a good time to take a break i feel, before the last huge job of doing the new bathroom, hopefully next year. Finished the external wall insulation off in the courtyard area, and got my new set of water butts all connected, should provide enough for the front garden and car washing (when i have the energy!) during a prolonged dry period. Just got the silicone to do on the corner and the join. Probably the most important job was the lower parts of the roof, to ensure the insulation was all good, and to stop any mice from getting in, which has been an issue the last couple of years around this time. Took off 3 rows of tiles and pushed the 4th row up, which got me to the natural overlap of the second row of felt, allowing me to take off the old battens, and put a new layer of felt under the overlap and down to the bottom. Also replaced the end of the dry valley, with a correct formed end, tiles need a little tidy up at some point, but its watertight. This was the mesh i used. It was then fully packed with insulation and overlayed with some ventilation trays which i didn't take a photo of. And the front was even worse, including the weather, of course it decided to pour it down the second i had the old felt off. Front existing felt was in very bad condition, and one of the battens appears to be fire damaged, no idea how The valley needs repointing, still on my to-do list. And a small indulgment, a bit of colour for the driveway, also filled with spring bulbs so hopefully will remain colourful right through to next summer

Trouble with a leakage rate done at 50Pa, that's basically the same as gale on all 4 sides of the building at all times, which isn't real. From a SAP report a leakage rate of 7 at 50Pa, is an infiltration rate of 0.4217. So use that, plus any forced ventilation and MVHR efficiency of 0 if you don't have that.

Very timely, and relevant report from the NIC today https://www.building.co.uk/news/infrastructure-body-backs-massive-heat-pump-roll-out-but-spurns-hydrogen/5125834.article Tl'dr electrifying heating is the most important national infrastructure project of our time, and hydrogen boilers are BS.

It’ll help the heating respond quicker, but it won’t help the room hold it’s heat for as long once the radiator is no longer emitting heat.

Yes, my man shed 😎, only till the door arrives 1st Nov 👍

>>> Unfortunately I have very little idea of just how bad it is in this house. You can get it measured if you like. You can probably even diy it if it's for your own use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_changes_per_hour about 3/4 of the way down.

Unfortunately we are right on the edge of it. 100mm forecast for us. I’ve been helping digging out culverts today. I’ve made up 25 sandbags and built up my problem areas. I also got some of those water activated snake things. I’ve moved everything that the wind might have picked up and secured it. Not much more I can do. Will head down to my site early tomorrow to keep an eye on things.

@joe90s is optimum for cost I'd say, as a diy project. I looked at this and similar suppliers. @Kelvin steel kit can be good value, esp for bigger areas because steel jumps big spaces very efficiently. Ready made timber kits can be quite expensive. Timber stud built on site is stronger than a t & g kit, but needs designing, and much cheaper than a kit of parts. Here's ours using free family labour and newfound skills. No contractors or designers engaged at all ( except that i looked at the sketches and said ok). The bco agreed that it was below his threshold area and that the canopy isn't a building. NB the pin jointed column bases and home made garage doors. The pedestrian door is unnecesarily flash as was free, as supplied wrong for the house. Cost? I'd have to check but about £4k materials. Labour say 30 man days. Commercially then that is about £10k, and add oh &p. Plus vat. Total £18k. @Saul your turn. What cost range are you getting?

Yes it will help keep the heat in.

From here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-planning-application-statistics You need tables P154 - quality of non-major decisions i.e. how often the LPA is over-turned at appeal. And P153 - speed of non-major decisions i.e. how often the LPA hits the 8-week target. OK in 2021/22 Elmbridge had 43% appeals over-turned, 22/23 was 29%. (29% btw is the national average.) In the 24 months to end of March 2023 Elmbridge turned around 86.2% of their 'non-major' decisions in 8 weeks. (Note that this excludes any 'validation' period.) That is, they're a bit below the middle of the pack. BTW the theory is, that if they go below 70% they go into 'special measures'.

Nice

How much is insane? Stick built on-site or block built will be cheapest traditional build method or do what I did and build an insulated steel building. Mine has 80mm insulation in walls and ceiling with insulated doors. 100mm insulation under the slab. 2G window. 10m x 6.5m

Computherm Q7RF, Amazon was the best price I found. Works pretty well for heating and cooling. If you are getting big overshoot turn the flow temp down a degree or so.

I got mine from bare metals - www.bearmetals.co.uk

We had the first Isoquick system installed in the UK in 2010. It didn't initially go to plan. We fortunately videoed the whole thing. We had the type1 and fines extending out 750mm beyond the edge of the insulation all the way around the slab. These are entries from my blog at the time. Sorry about the quality of the pictures.

You can, of course, do this just in the app my making one profile and adding all zones to it.

I do but I don't. I heat up my DHW cylinder with off peak electricity using my heat pump.

Often called 'pig-nosed' bolts.

Made2Measure.co.uk do them

Or we concentrate on tidal and offshore wind. One offshore wind farm came on line today which can provide Scotland with electric for 2/3 of all homes. The next big one to come online is 4x that size.

I have not seen anything as small as those. S3i do a large range and may be able to point you in the right direction.

Which is why in a few jobs I preferred glulams to steels 👍

Remove the bead and if there is still any damp, replace with stainless steel, otherwise just new galv one.

A Sunamp Thermino is working well for me: https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-solar-DHW-for-16WW-UniQ-and-PV-diversion.html Rgds Damon

… and cooling. Often summer cooling is a greater challenge for a passive house than winter heating.

Mine, for reference..

How do they define a "dormer"? I hate the things, difficult to detail correctly, and you lose headroom. So this was my solution instead, "gable ends" One at the front ant 2 at the back. Full unrestricted headroom. much easier to detail in all respects compared to a traditional dormer. See if your planners would accept something like that?

Following a couple of posts in other threads on the forum – this is the first time I’m actively posting after almost a year or so away. I guess this post is mainly going to be a summary of what’s happened in all that time and mainly acts as catharsis for me as it’s been a very up/down journey since we started the whole process in Aug 2021. Application #1 As some of the members may remember, our planning application went in Mar 2022 after we started the design in Aug 2021. This was outright denied by the LPA with no engagement at all, no clarifications sought, no comments invited by our architect and planning consultant. Applied in Mar 2022 and denied in Aug 2022. 1 year from starting the process. Very disappointed as we didn’t know until the day of the refusal being received which way the planner was leaning. Application #2 Picked myself up after a couple of weeks of moping, engaged with the architect again and decided to go in for pre-app. Booked a slot in Dec 2022 just before Christmas and went through 3 options wth the planning officer: Option A – Plan that we presented and was refused. Too big and bulky and too contemporary. Option B – Halfway house between what we wanted and what the council wanted. Option C – tamest design, basically a new build dormer bungalow that the LPA wanted us to build to retain ‘aesthetics’ Went back and forth on the options and both parties (me, architect, chartered planner AND the planning officer on the other side) agreed that Option B with some tweaks would be acceptable. Worked the design based on their inputs, got the new ecology/tree/bat surveys done and submitted in Mar 2022. Decent engagement through the application (as we had paid for the pre-app, which seemed to unlock access to the Planning officer) – major rework throughout the consultation period and were given a verbal agreement that our revised design was acceptable. They needed to run a 4w consultation again in the middle of app – which we agreed to. On the day that we were due to hear back with a rubber stamping of the application – complete gut punch, it was refused completely. The reason was basically the LPA team leader overruling the planning officer’s advice and telling us that Option C would be the only option acceptable. We asked for them to refuse so we could appeal. This finally arrived in Jul 2023. 2years in with no next steps clear. Application #3 3. Decided to appeal the refused application as architect + planner thought we had a very strong case to appeal with costs. Submitted in Aug 2023 and still waiting to hear back on what’s going to happen. Been 2m since the application went in and it hasn’t been validated as yet by the Planning Inspectorate. Could be another 6-8m before we hear leading us well into Q2 2024. Application #4 In the meantime, we submitted Option C drawings to the council to get them approved anyway for the sake of a £500 application fee. This was done and came back last week so in theory we do have plans approved on something my wife and I both dislike. Summary: • 2 years and 4m in – we have approval to build a rather boring dormer bungalow replacement. • No idea on whether the slightly more contemporary design we want to build will be approved – won’t find out for another 6m or so. • Realistically, earliest time we’d be able to start building based on whether we win the appeal or not would be summer 2024 – 3y after getting the plot. In the meantime, life and the world has moved on. The primary driver for doing this was for schools for the kids – and the fact that its been delayed so long means they’ve started school locally where we are already. This massively reduces the drive to move as it would mean disruption to their academic calendar and the 7+ prep exams that the older one would be preparing for. Engagement from the council made it clear that they’re not interested in high quality contemporary design – all they want is to cling to an aesthetic from 50-70y ago, and any risky decisions should be taken by the Planning Inspectorate rather than the LPA itself. Cost of borrowing and building has gone through the roof – really putting the viability of the whole thing into question. Do I really want to borrow at 6% rather than 2% (realistically higher as self build mortgages are riskier) to move to a place where the council don’t want us, when it would cause so much disruption to our personal lives? Also, do I really want to invest so much right now given that end prices have stalled/crashed so the break even may not even be possible? Like I said – there’s not much point to this point apart from summarising what’s happened over the last 2 and bit years and I can see why people are put off on ever taking on a self build. The whole planning system is broken, understaffed and not fit for purpose. All this talk of building our way out of the problem blah blah blah I see is complete and utter tosh. We have a system that bottlenecks any such endeavours and it doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.

I get funny looks talking to myself. I'm asking questions not saying the system is no good. It is all easy enough to understand, thanks. I don't want to annoy you any more, and can see you are v defensive of the system. I'll say goodbye.