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My DIY H or C manifold under test using my DIY tester at 2.5 bar

By way of 2016-17 prices, our village plot was worth about £150-200K, bought-ins about £350K, labour and profession fees save by our contribution maybe another £120K giving an effective total of £650K which was about what roughly comparable houses were selling for in a village setting at the time. OK, splitting the plot off probably lost us only about £50K off the selling price of our old farmhouse. We have no CiL then and saved on stamp duties so probably saved ourselves maybe £250K on buying a "comparable" previously built house in the area. Except of course that you could buy a passive-class house and certainly not the exact spec that we wanted nor to the build standard that we actually achieved. There were some major cost elements imposed by the LPA, e.g. local stone exterior skin, and natural slate roof, that added to our bought-ins. At today's prices we would probably be looking at £750-800K to do a custom build to this spec. Can I suggest that it might be worth looking at an MBC twinwall TF build as an alternative to ICF at least for the main living space? Their warm slab and TF design patterns have been well tuned to a passive-class standard over more than a decade's refinement. I agree that if you've run your own building company, then you and whoever else in your family that worked in it will have lots of relevant experience, and you will have many areas of expertise in-house that you can either use directly or to enable a decent level of quality control. One thing that many here evangelise is achieving a passive class build as this has major running cost savings, as well a far more comfortable living environment. We are in our early 70s now, so we appreciate this as we age. We keep our entire house at 21-23 °C (the first floor bedrooms are a couple of degrees cooler than the ground floor) 24 × 7, and really miss this when we visit our children and other relatives. I personally would recommend that you or one of your close family really gets their head around the implications of building to passive class: where the heat goes and (through solar gain) where it comes in. Relevant contributions of: slab losses, external walls, roof, fenestration, air exchanges. Get a good feel for the impact of U values and how these reflect unit costs and performance; air-tightness and air exchange losses, and so on. You will need to make various trade-offs to optimise costs vs achievement off your overall spec, and you or someone you really trust has to make these decisions. Achieving this class of house requires an attention to detail both in design and in construction. It is not unusual for two houses with the same nominal as-designed spec to vary in as-built performance by a factor of 2. An example "close to home" is that my daughter's living room is impossible to heat economically: the large panel of bifold doors leading onto the garden have a poor U-value and leak terribly; areas of wall and ceiling insulation are missing. You haven't mentioned your age, but I infer that you are getting close to retirement and therefore this will be your property "to retire into", so living comfort will be important. You've mentioned a gym and workshop but what you have mentioned in bridging space to the exterior: a conservation or atrium. I am not talking about the 5 × 4m bolt on the side of an existing property, but in your case you have lots of area to include a decent spacious environment that to could properly integrate into the building fabric, and that could connect you to the garden. OK, not needed in the summer where you are planning to build, but this could extend you comfortable "outside-ish" space for another 3-4 months of the year. BTW, even Nick (@SteamyTea) would admit to being a tad irascible at times; yes, he is also very particular about units, dimensions etc., because the implications of kW vs kWh, etc. are a lot more than a little "h". He is also well respected for his contributions here by the forum regulars. 🙂

That looks right. The cable entry detail on the outside ASHP unit is not the best and getting multiple cables in is not easy. It is better if you can get a length of say 12 core control cable and run one length of that from the ASHP unit to the inside wiring centre.

To be clear. The outlets are close to the bottom of the wall, above the ground outside, below it inside. I like the fence.

Eventually the salts in the blocks and mortar will run out. If you add some weep holes it will be drier and leach out more slowly, and it is good practice anyway. Some bits of drain pipe pushed through flush with the garden side and as spouts on the outside. Holes that size are fairly hard work but ok with a good drill and high quality bit. For now, the salts will brush off or wash off and eventually you will prevail.

I mean weep-holes to allow water drainage from the retained land behind to reduce pressure on the wall.

You can use either but I would go 22mm. Egger Protect is good.

In my case, I use them on cat6 when they are going into screw terminals to provide a bit more for the screw to hold on to, but as @Dan F said, not necessary if they are going into push in terminals.

I never used any ferrules on cat6, or anything solid-core for that matter.

I use 0.5mm for cat6A

Matters have taken a turn for the worse! Previously the noise from the MVHR was merely annoying - yesterday it became louder and I have to switch it off at night. I ordered the bearings from Bolton Bearings so should be here in the next couple of days. I had noticed that the bearing has extra clearance and will report back if the clearance is an issue. It's a surprisingly common bearing and used in lots of application which presumably is why it is so plentiful and cheap. The next generation of fans will probably have bearings that are not removable and are a custom size - after all you want people to buy the expensive fans.

that's for 4 bearings, may as well do both fans even though outside air induction one seems fine at the moment, pain to strip it all down. Heat exchanger amazingly clean - guess all that filter didn't catch was on the rotor so not complaining 🙂

Someone screwed the pooch on this one. Company have gone back to the glass manufacturer and told them to redo the glass to the correct specifications. I think someone is in trouble as that’s not going to be cheap. i’m so glad I noticed as that could’ve been a massive safety issue. lesson learnt to never trust the manufacturer sticker!!

I just used white solid plastic pipe

Following a few threads and a YT video, I decided I was competent enough to create an air pressure tester for plumbing purposes. I will not be using this beyond the pressure shown in the picture as I deem this more than enough for the H&C water pipes it will be used to test in the house. Its first use will be on my DIY H&C manifolds - more to follow. This is designed to used on 15mm or 22mm pipework. The bend are because I used leftovers from old repair work in current house, but should allow connection to mounted equipment to be a little easier

DIY H or C manifold being tested

There are weepholes thankfully. Ironically one is where the worst of the efflorescence is, I believe the wall was built correctly, I just couldn't understand this! I would like to say a MASSIVE THANK YOU to everyone who has commented, I am so grateful 👋🏻

As above, you can try. But don’t expect them to expedite the process just because you have realised you need Planning. In the nicest possible way, that isn’t their fault and there are processes to follow. It can take up to 8 weeks, even longer.

Worth a try, but depends a lot on your LPA.

Liking the approach of Alto Energy also. Will be interested in what they come back with also.

It'll likely outlive all of us, looks well made. Only issue is the lack of water proofing that's causing the leaching, it won't weaken it. Of it really bothered you, you'd need to dig out the gravel, install a dpm, and fit coping stones to the wall. Hard work.

Sorry, should have been clearer - they're attic trusses designed to be usable rooms (bedrooms and bathrooms).

The first Starlink we installed at Christmas crapped out. My son called them on a Weds night. A guy called back from Starlink in the US pretty much as my lad hit send on the email. Customer service was amazing. Complete new kit arrived on the Friday morning. By way of apology they gave us a month's free subscription. Sent the old router and dish back on prepaid DHL. They said to hang onto the new long cable (circa £80 worth). Then the other week it just "stopped" a quick phone calll and they fixed it there and then. Price has come down massively since Christmas. You can also rent, about a tenner a month rental plus the £75pcm.

Yeah, I have it. Previous was FTTC with a copper cable that managed about 16Mb DL on a good day. Average between 120-200Mb, and latency between 25-40ms. Son plays fortnite on his XBOX and doesnt scream about lagging now, so all is good. Bought the refurb kit in December at 50%. Have bypassed, and connected to my own LAN. I'm not in the new build yet, but am debating on running some conduit with the Starlink cable down to where my rack will be, I do need to think about what changes there will be with Starlink, hardware and how they connect in the future, as its a bit non standard, and the cable run will be completely closed up. Migrated the landline telephone service to A&A. So the Openreach cable can go in the bin for all I care now!

Welcome, I am probably one of the few people with a similar sized house on the forum. I think this is quite a general discussion and if you want advice on anything specific such as ICF then it is probably best to create a specific post referencing that. This kind of intro post is likely to become quite rambling. To some extent you are really building three houses which makes things more manageable, but I would not underestimate the costs and time require to maintain such a large building. I would maybe try and decide this within the family before going ahead. There is always something breaking, not working as expected, needing replaced etc. it takes up a lot of time and money. Think of the maintenance on 10 standard three bed houses. How will it be owned, costs apportioned etc. My house is around 1000sq metres including the integral garage. It cost around £2m to build 8-6 years ago. We just finished a smaller house for my parents last year and it cost around twice as much per square metre. I would be quite concerned that your budget is low and already seems tight. In my experience I got constant questions from the architect and builder over the course of construction. The questions always went along the lines of we can do A that costs X or B that costs 2X. 9/10 B was the right decision. It would get very stressful if the budget was tight.

@Steve W Appreciate this relates to fans in a Vent Axia, bit hopefully give you the push to try bearing replacement.

Yep. I measured a couple of them. One 12.02mm and another 12.09mm. The wife will be speaking to the company today.

Agree, but the OP is having a basement and I thought I’d make him aware to set expectations before he went to MBC.

Thanks Nick. The direct distance UVC to stack is ~3½ m so even with the elbow reductions we are well under the 9m limit for 22mm.

It probably depends on the lender, but in our case they wanted full details on costs and potential contractor long before we were in a position to confirm this, so it was suggested to us that you show as much detail as possible from a QS service and include an outline quote from a reputable contractor to avoid any delays and back and forth. The other things we learned from the process is that the lender has a 'tick-box' that needs to be completed at this point to weed out the hopeful from the realistic self-builders and that means as much detail as the lender asks is needed and no debate!

@MBT6 Been building new house since 2020, and still going. Current budget sheet is showing a projected cost per square metre of £1183.10. That is based on actual work done and projected future costs. To be done - electrics, plumbing, plastering, upstairs UFH, ASHP (although should get that via grants), sanitary ware, exterior cladding. Kitchen is bought so costed for already. Trades I've had in so far: concrete pourers steel framer window fitters GRP roofer groundworker Trades to get in: Electrician (but only because it needs certifying at the end) Renderer (before stone slip cladding)

Some types of timber cladding can be really poor, there is a self build with timber cladding near me that in the winter the cladding just soaks in the rainwater, and ends up looking like a cheap soaked garden shed. I have never been a fan of cladding "left to silver" as it rarely fades evenly and often looks tatty and worn after a very short time.

I entered this thanks to a poke from @MikeSharp01. What @NailBiter is going through now is a journey that we started back in later 2013, with us moving into our new build in Dec 2017, a 3-storey passive-class (almost) house were we live on floors 0+1 and my son has bedsit style area in the warm loft on 2. This is about a quarter of what NB is planning. We've been living in the place for over 6 years, and we are still amazed at how well it has all turned out in terms of performance as built against design expectation, and also in terms of its extreme durability and ease of maintenance. We build on a split plot by selling the other ½ with its 17-19C stone farmhouse. We saved a lot of money by doing a lot of the design, procurement and internal trades ourselves. So the entire process was extremely profitable My rule was only to take on tradework where our standard of build / finish would be at least as good as we could get from local tradesmen, and since we kept a very tight control on compliance and quality, the overall build standard is consistently high. Overall we put in over 3 person-years of equivalent effort. This was a big percentage (effort and therefore saving) of a 230m2 build, though it took us years to recover from putting in this effort and the general strain/stress. Our sort of input just wouldn't dent a 1,200 m2 build. You are going to have to rely on buying in at a realistic commercial rate a far larger percentage of trades and professional services. Also guessing your extended family size, I suspect you have an expectation of a lifestyle, per-person use and general quality of finish that is also on a different level from what most members here aim for. I make this comment with no criticism intended, but more of a level-set from my experience and costs at 2015-2017 prices: my instinct is that you are at least 100% out on your budget expectations. I would strongly suggest that you have the entire project plan and scope independently reviewed and costed by an experienced quantity surveyor: your overall project scope needs to be realistically matched to your finances, as there is not point in running out of cash with a half built project. I have a few technical comments, but I will defer them to later posts.

Works no problem, I even have 300mm pipe spacing, 100mm concrete and again no issue. But they are a bit of a learning curve. Few things I found through experimenting, you need to be aware of. Changing floor temperature and house is quite a long process (many hours), so a normal thermostat is just rubbish and you get big under and over swings. You really need to use a 0.1 Deg hysterisis thermostat. You cannot use room compensation as the algorithms cannot cope with the long reaction times. Don't bother trying to do temperature setbacks, they generally don't work the way you expect. You cannot switch the heating on at work and hope to have a warm house when you get home (unless you do when you arrive at work). There is zero point zoning, run as a single zone. Two options of how to operate, charge the floor and use like a storage heater, or continuously feed the floor at a low temperature. I have done both and they work equally well. 5 degs difference in flow temp is the difference in the two methods. I am on E7 with ASHP, battery and charge the floor at 33 degs (overnight), for between 7 and 12 hrs depending on outside temp, automated with a timer thermostat. Generally it takes another 12 to 18 hrs to cool enough for the heating to come back on again. The wife was quite shocked the other week when it was near freezing outside (6pm) and I told the heating actually went off at about 10am and was not coming back on until after midnight. You can't do that with 50mm screed.

When I was modelling my last house, I ran my house design through the PHPP with a range of air infiltration values to see what the effect would be. Pressurisation Test Result (ACH) Specific Space Heating Demand (kWh/m2a) 0.2 12.1 0.4 12.3 0.6 12.5 0.8 12.7 1.0 12.9 2.0 14.0

Ooh, now I know I've got a target for mine 🙂

Oh, and in a property that size you should do much better than 0.6 ach. The smaller the volume the harder it is to get a good score. Last few MBC TF jobs I’ve done have got 0.26, 0.27 and 0.25 results, as their airtight team are very meticulous, but I am even more so and bolster that with a bit more tape here and there plus AT foam anywhere that it looks like that would further improve things. @Russell griffiths got .28 on his DIY Nudura build iirc. That correct Bruce?

I used polystyrene duct - UBBINK AERFOAM INSULATED DUCT

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I'll wrap this up for you, as I do not have capacity to recall all the insurance jobs I've been through and everything in between. Apologies if this is a little concise. A 'plumber' with 30+ years of experience, now working mostly in 7 figure properties (very few have a 1 or a 2 as the first digit) is telling you something is a very bad idea, stop questioning it . Ringing a manufacturer to ask if there's a problem with their fittings / or a way it's fitted...........surprise!! They said it's fine. That's because their competitors spout the same shart and they want the sale. If I am saying you can avoid this with 50p worth of copper pipe and you wish to seek advice elsewhere then of course that is your prerogative, so, for the last time (please) do not do what you're suggesting. End transmission

Your house is pretty much the same size as mine, although mine a single storey, so most likely a bigger heat loss; way more floor and roof to loose heat too. Whole house is done with 7 loops and one zone, pipes are on 300mm centres. Even before Christmas at -9 our flow temp was only 34 degs, housecat our chosen 19 degs. We have just over 500m of 16mm pert-al-pert pipes in the floor. Mine started with loads of zones and it just didn't work. Doing it again I would do 200 to 250mm centres to make the floor more responsive. Things to do A heat loss calc. Your max heat loss could be closer to 3 to 4kW. Download a copy of loopcad, and build your house and do a proper design your self. If you single zone or two zone with the correctly sized heat pump you should not need a buffer. Electric towel rads. Do bathroom at 150mm centres, you can get them warmer than the rest of the house on same flow temp. Or electric UFH. Once you know size of heat pump shop around, call people once you have internet prices, they will all try to beat others prices. I ended up buying a 6kW heat pump for £1300 the other day, from eBay, so there are bargains out there. Viesmann sell the same heat pump for over £4k.

£100k for not having a carpet would feel like a fine to me, unless I was the one getting the tax free cash, then it would be a Porsche and holiday in Barbados. And a lot of laughing at the neighbour. I would laugh so loud it would keep them awake at night.

Is it the case that the planners will not let you demolish this? It is certainly not pretty. It does have a pyramid vibe though so you could decorate with hieroglyphics.

You only regret buying 22mm when you are carrying them up a ladder .. or carrying them anywhere come to think of it.

Was she in her late 70s?

You have the 2nd highest comment count in the thread but it seems you are focusing on quantity over quality. Can I please ask you again to go and troll somewhere else. I have no interest.

And as if by magic I appeared …

I used to live in a city centre apartment complex that was plagued with seagulls. bought a plastic hawk off the internet, put it up high in the roof. Was surprised at how effective it was. Eliminated the issue permanently. *plastic hawk as in a moulded plastic bird with reflective eyes, not as in what you would use for plastering. The latter probably wouldn’t work and your neighbours may think you’re mental*