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This is a copy of Andrew Jones's on stage presentation at The Home Building & Renovating Show in March 2024 at the NEC (Suggest you watch on youtube) -

When I signed the contract for our timber kit I hadn’t fully appreciated the financial exposure we’d let ourselves in for. It wasn’t clear in the contract that for several months the timber kit company would have 80% of the total kit price. I tried to get them to put some kind of financial protection in place in case they went bust and despite them saying they would look into it they never did. Fortunately it turned out fine and the kit turned up etc. However during that period three companies went bust with clients losing significant sums of money (some documented on here) so my fears about it were real enough. There are a few kit companies that put your money in Escrow so you have protection and I’d only do it that way in future or stick build on-site as I’d at least own the materials regardless.

Fuse replaced and retractive switch tested and working! 😊🥳

No it's fine. I think it's clearly a change of use.

You’re pretty much spot on here. this is the view that I want to keep to myself (no neighbours 😉) There is an existing slab from the former agricultural use, in place, that I’m attempting to keep undisturbed, for several reasons. Doing this also constrains the building shape to long and narrow. As mentioned, not the most efficient, but sometimes form needs to override function 😊. When we have planning approval I’ll post a layout and elevation plan. @Bozza I am a similar age and recognised this is pretty much my last chance to do this before I get too old. I’m taking 12 months off work to dedicate to getting a watertight habitable shell . It’s gonna be tough, but most things worth having are… One of my best mates is a builder, and my partners son is a carpenter, both want to help with the build so I’m not totally on my own. @NailBiter we can take advantage of the long roof space for PV and HW solar, as it’s south facing. Solar gain (both negative and positive aspects) will be accounted for. My other best mate is purchasing director for one of the UKs leading boiler/renewables manufacturer. He’s promised to help get some free equipment (thermal store, inverter, etc) to make the whole heating/power installation more affordable, along with free design services from their in house team. Thanks all for the advise and encouragement so far.

Greetings on a miserably rainy Sunday October morning. Perfect weather for catching up on some blog writing! As the title suggests this blog will be about our external coverings of the house and, by the end of it, the outside of the building will be pretty much finished allowing us to crack on internally. We started many months ago by battening the outside of the buildings. As we are having external blinds and they have a requirement for fitting the blind cassette we needed a large gap between the house walls and the outside of the cladding. This meant 50mm x 50mm timber battens and counter battens. We did this ourselves and saved many thousands and, even though it was slow going (as, it seems, everything is when you do it yourself!), it was very satisfying with the carpenter saying that it was good work and he’d seen chippies do a lot worse jobs than we did. Nice warm fuzzy feeling ensued. We are having a mixture of burnt Siberian larch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakisugi) and, to contrast the black, standard Siberian larch on the ‘arms’ of our property and entrance porch (all will be revealed in photos below) and I ordered all the cladding to be delivered on-site prior to the carpenter starting. The carpenter started on the garage using the standard Siberian larch which we bought from Jewson at a very reasonable price, and quite a bit cheaper than we could get from the usual timber cladding suppliers and we are very happy with the quality of the wood. He then went on to the black charred larch (which gets everywhere and he and his tools looked like they’d been in a coal mine by the end of each day!). We purchased the charred larch from Permachar (https://permachar.co.uk) who gave us a brilliant price. The wood itself was burnt and delivered from Lithuania (https://degmeda.eu) but they will only sell to the UK via Permachar. It is stunning wood, but incredibly fragile and any sort of dragging or scraping will cause the black char to flake off. While he was busy doing that and while the scaffolding was up I thought it a good time to get the guttering started. Our architect specified Zinc guttering and after a lot of thought and looking at stainless steel and zinc we also decided that zinc was the choice for us. We ordered it from Rainclear (https://www.rainclear.co.uk/guttering/copper-zinc-guttering/guttering-fittings.html?color=235) who offer next day delivery if in stock and were incredibly helpful and very well priced. It’s also a clip on system which even I managed to install without any major issues! Around the same time and while the carpenter was busy putting the cladding up our external blinds got fitted. We bought those from a local company called Powell blinds (https://powellblinds.com) who stepped in brilliantly at the last minute after we were seriously let down by Cornerstar Aluminium (long story which I won’t get in to here). The blinds are fitted up behind the cladding above the windows but externally so they will be hidden from view when lifted up. We absolutely love them and during the heatwave this summer we lowered them and this drastically reduced the temperature inside the house. There was still one large south facing window that didn’t have blinds that needed shading. We wanted and the architect designed a Brise Soleil in this area but all we had to go on was a 2D drawing. I contacted a few companies about getting one made and installed and the quotes came back at between £6k - £7k! A figure we simply could not afford. So I did research and spoke to a local forge called Horsham Forge (https://www.horshamforge.co.uk) with an idea I had. He said ‘that could be done but how about this instead?’. He suggested brackets with a pole running through them and vertical timbers slid on. Genius! On to Sketchup where I draw up the brackets and gave them to the forge to be created and spoke to my timber manager at Jewson who procured me some thermowood at the size I needed and got my carpenter to fit it and it cost me £1700 in total. So we saved around £5k by doing it ourselves and we also enjoyed the journey and got a solution that we designed (with the help of the forge of course). We think it looks fab and it does a good job of shading from the sun apart from a couple of hours when the sun is directly facing that side of the house. So we will still get some solar gain but it is definitely reduced and it’s a brilliant architectural feature. 😉 Right, while all this was going on the chippie was finishing up the cladding and now that it is all finished and I have put the downpipes on we have an almost finished external facade to our dream home. We love it and think it’s stunning. So very happy with the carpenter’s work (http://www.kmlcarpentryandroofing.co.uk). Kieran’s attention to detail at the junctions between the 2 types of wood is fabulous as it is in other areas too. He would also discuss any issues and potential solutions with us to make sure we were happy with them rather than just doing something he thought was right. Hopefully the pictures below do it all justice! (Note: please ignore the 110mm brown downpipe in the below photo! It will eventually be a rain chain but this works for now. 😉 ) Thanks for reading and we hope you like what we’ve achieved so far.

My initial plans were to have rainwater harvesting, build hub taught me no.. so with that scrapped I needed an alternative, soakaways are difficult due to bed rock levels. In addition to this we have lots of run off on the croft, and the track to the house floods. We have already installed a pond for the ducks and this has a large berm to the back and sides so that the runoff is held back and slowly soaks away, but this winter has proved it overflows regularly, that's around 3000L extra. So the plan was to install an overflow pipe from this pond to a new larger pond. The larger pond also acting as rainwater run off capture. The larger pond will have 2 levels, a pond and then an extra layer to act as a overflow that can evaporate and or be pumped to the rubble drain in drier times. I got a big carried away with the backhoe and ended up with around 10M x 8M and over a meter deep. The overflow capacity will be around 30k - 35k L. We had to peck out some of the rock to get depth, and at the front used "as dug" rock from the quarry to form a rough and rugged stone wall, quite in keeping in Caithness. Time will heal the scars and soften the edges with planting. Due to the two levels we came up with the idea of hiding the liner under some camo net, that we intend to plant up in time. Not sure how this will stand the test of time. From the house the rainwater enters a rock filter, an idea loosely based on a post from @ToughButterCup- thanks. From the rock filter we have created a little stream that the rainwater will flow down and into the pond. In addition to this we have a pump that will take the water via a home made skimmer from the pond and filter the water from the pond through the rock filter and stream constantly. This also has a diverter to pump the water past the house and into the field to reduce the overflow capacity in drier times. This is the rock filter, and some of the pipework yet to be buried. Getting to this stage ticked a box for building control as we now handle our run off. We got our completion certificate on the house this week, yeah. There are some things to finish, the second bedroom needs decorating and trim work. And a few small jobs here and there, but in general the house is decorated, and fully functioning. We started the build in earnest around May 23 I think, so quite pleased with the effort and timescale we achieved. It's was built by me and Mandy with the odd person helping with concrete pours. 3 months in summer were busy with the cabin rentals that saw Mandy spend 3-4 hrs a day turning them around for the endless NC500 travellers.😁 We're embarking on the VAT reclaim soon. To summarise the build: 89sqm True bungalow Floor 0.094U (300mm EPs 120mm concrete) Walls 0.139U ICF with 50mm EWI and 25mm PIR IWI Cold roof 0.1U 25MM PIR 400MM mineral wool. UPVC triple glazed windows and composite doors MVHR, 4kW PV in roof, 5kW ASHP, UFH. EPC A103, Airtightness 0.83 ACH.

Recirculating hob / extractor. No need to complicate things with direct extract or ducting in to the MVHR system with complex and expensive filters etc.

Can you elaborate? What do you know now?

47x47-0 4.8 lengths

As Dave says, but I have the extract at the other end of the kitchen and have a foam filter mesh inside to catch anything that may get into the duct work. Rarely need to use the cooker hood.

100% One of the TF companies was still taking orders But we new that we were on stop for the second faze

Recirculating cooker hood with carbon filters and MVHR extract vent nearby but not directly coupled. Boost the MVHR rate while cooking if you want to.

I totally agree. Its just too much a risk with the money and time involved.

Knowing what I know now I’d never build a timber kit or any construction method where you are financing the build up front if there’s no financial protection in place.

We’ve had a couple of jobs held up due to TF companies going into administration and Scottish building company Stuart Milne have gone also shutting three sites local to me A lot of companies are left quite exposed A site I’m doing the render on has a million pounds of quick stage Scaffolding Which hasn’t been enough to keep in front of us and the Brickies They bought at the height and will have to sell half of it at a loss when the site finishes in December

Well, the pallet with 2×SunAmps is no more. I now have a small pile of steel scrap, a smaller pile of copper scrap, a small pot of eWaste and as with @Cooeyswell a row of 4×SAT Cells and a stack of vacuum panels.

What is crazy is that in terms of physics and engineering it would be really easy for a lot of us slightly more IT oriented folk to "roll your own" using the basic approach used in the PV, but keep it real simple N × PCM cells in a well insulated otherwise passive box with water feed and out. Use a Willis or other reliable inline heater and basic circulation pump, one-way valves, etc. so that you can both do flow through and internal recirc for heating, plus the control board that I discussed in my recent Microcontroller based power switching topic (these sell on AliExpress for ~£50 and you can use a python-like language if you want to implement all of the control logic locally); this plus a couple of 20A SSRs. Keep all of the pump and pipework on the outside so it is easily maintainable, and so you don't need a ticket on advanced laparoscopic plumbing. 🤣 I'd be tempted to do this as a "fun" project except that I don't need this myself now, and I've got other stuff on the TODO list. Even suggesting it might get me a severe blast of dragon fire from someone very close to me. Marital harmony is far more important to me. 😇

If you watch any of Robin Clevett's many roof cut videos, this is exactly what he does.

That's my bad, downstairs I've got permission to lower ceilings as the ceilings are higher to begin with / the rooms don't have sloping ceilings cutting into their height. I do need to find out if in the 30cm side of chimney breast I can drill 2x 9cm holes for the ducting (as drawn above) without weakening it. If not then I need a big rethink for how to get from the garage to the dining room.

I would never mount a CU on plasterboard fixings. Mark out the exact size of the CU on the wall, cut that shape out of the plasterboard, and extend the cut out sideways to reach the centre of the adjacent studs. Fill your hole now with a sheet of at least 12mm plywood, securely fixed to the adjacent studs. Fix CU to plywood. I would probably even attach a batten to the inside of the plywood in line with the mounting holes so the screws can go through the plywood into the batten. Fill joints and paint plywood.

@Thorfun that is what I have done on my test circuit and it works. There is a slight delay from pressing the switch to the light turning on, which is a bit annoying.

My house and many others have proved you don't need "thermal mass" to keep a house a constant temperature. It's insulation and air tightness that does that.

It's my assumption. Nothing has changed we set the heat pump up set the thermostat and off it goes, it was cold and windy in January so it wasn't a change in outside temps, so my assumption was it must be the concrete core(ICF BUILD), and the drying out of skim plaster etc using more heat. Once it was stable then the heat demands dropped. I've changed to Octopus energy now so can't use the same chart for February and March. But the electric figures are holding now at around £70/m - £90/m depending on cabin usage and PV utilisation, which I'm delighted with. Makes battery storage a harder justification now.

All this talk of nuclear fusion makes me laugh. Our area has been connected to a local nuclear fusion plant for ages and myself along with a few neighbours are already connected. The benefits certainly compare well with other forms of energy. Unlike conventional sources there are no wires or pipes because the transmission is wireless. It’s hard to imagine how that works, but the energy is sort of beamed across the airwaves. It is necessary to have line of site from the reactor to the receiver so this may not be available for everyone. There was no cost to actually connect to the source reactor although the receiver was fairly expensive at around £5,000. Possibly the major benefit though is that there is no charge for the energy supplied as it is beamed, free of charge, directly to the receiver. In these times of hugely expensive energy, it seems impossible that this fusion power can be free but it’s true, there is no charge for the power and no sneaky daily charges either. Furthermore, the price is fixed at zero and it is guaranteed that there will be no price increases ever. On the downside the transmission has been fairly erratic and a bit limited over the winter. This deficiency can be largely remedied by having a battery to tide us over the downtimes. So far, reliability of the fusion reactor itself has been good and I’m told it is unlikely to fail for well past our own lifetimes. It is comforting to know that it has never been known to fail; unlike some other supplies. So, you may well ask, if it’s free energy with free and quick connection why isn’t everybody doing it? Well, it beats me but I have noticed that a few savvy people round here have got the message and have fitted receivers to their rooftops. You might not have heard about all this because the big energy suppliers want it to be kept secret. So, keep it to yourself. Mum’s the word.

Well it could be an autocorrect typo.

Sometimes the simple solution is best. You want one discrete space warmer, so boost it with an electric heater on a thermostat or timer. Or a radiating panel beside the comfy chair.

Surely the worst case scenario is that you use a fan heater to heat up the room quickly whilst the heat pump is providing background heating? But then why is the room colder in the first place if you have asked the heating to maintain a constant temperature? To me the central issue is whether the heating for the rooms housing the older person is compatible with the heating you want for the rest of the house. I like it cooler at night so I set back my heating. If I wanted part of the house at a constant temperature 24/7 then I would have to make that a separate zone. Hard core ASHP enthusiasts abhor zones because they tend to make running the ASHP a bit more expensive. So you pay a bit more to keep an old person comfortable; is that so terrible?

I've gone over this a lot, and there's 4 reasons I've headed to MVHR The location. We're in an exposed coastal location and when the wind hits, it wind-washes the house by finding a path between any openings. I want to avoid trickle vents on new windows and remove existing extractor fans. AFAICT dMEV/dMVHR cannot prevent this wind washing, because the openings are on different aspects of the building. With MVHR, with the intake and exhaust on the same aspect the pressure should equalise Avoiding adding trickle vents to the new windows Air filtration. We have bad hay fever which meds don't fully combat, and the idea of keeping pollen out of the house for much of the year sounds wonderful. High internal humidity. We've had a dehumidifier running 24/7 this winter which has made a big difference. While many systems help (the standard solution around here is PIV) I figured a flow through the house is going to be important, not just room by room and we need ventilation no matter if it's windy or calm outside. This is complicated as external humidity is often high (both RH and absolute). But, autumn-spring, should be lower than indoors As an aside on 1) our kitchen extractor fan stops extracting in bad weather if the wind's from the south west. Better than it was 4 years ago The home made blower door has done great work, and sealing first floor joist penetrations this winter has made one room airtight and a big difference in the others. When it's not windy outside, the rooms I've worked most on get stuffy and need a window opening. This year we're replacing all external doors and double glazing which - after extractor fans - are the leakiest part of the house. I'm lifting the suspended floors this summer and adding airtightness and insulation. EPS cavity fill is coming, and the chimney was removed this winter and will be draft free once we remove the fireplace and seal it up. All of which is to say I don't have a figure, but I have an ongoing programme to make it better.

Had a bit of fun playing find the good bits of metal with the MIG and the inevitable running out of wire on Easter Saturday. All together again and back to doing the landscaping. Going to need to do a few more repairs over the next winter I think but all OK for now.

Looking good! Finishing this job off myself and can say that Steico do indeed make a very detailed document saying what you can and can't do. I spent ages reworking the design to minimise joist penetrations and keep the holes away from the edges and the other (electrical) constraints - it was like doing circuit board design all over again.

Yeah it cuts both ways. It helps if you are familiar with the county court system though - I can file a new money claim in about 5 minutes. A few days later the client gets a formal looking writ from the court with a deadline for response. This won't phase the professional non-payer but will often help the casual non-payer 'come to terms with their priorities'. Don't let your receivables build up unnecessarily, collect as soon as you can. Act professionally and on a timely basis with quotes, invoices, statements, payment follow up, discrepancies, complaints, final notice, letters before action etc - if you signal that you're careless about being paid ... then guess what.

I heard about a plastering contractor who wasn't getting paid for large housing estate. After much negotiation it was apparent the developer was going to leave him high and dry so his crew did one last days work. Shortly after the first house was sold the developer received a complaint that the house was making an intolerable beeping between 4-4:30am. Mystified, they eventually spent a night in the house and after much distruction they found a very annoying battery alarm clock inserted in a stud wall. Thinking he had won the petty battle the developer rang the plasterers to gloat. The plasterer apologized for forgetting the alarm and asked for his bill to be paid. The developer laughed at him. Soon the clients of the second house rang, and then the third. It turned out the plaster had "forgotten" several alarm clocks per house in the entire estate, all set for different days and times. When the second house was almost demolished to try to find the offending alarms the developer remorsefully called the plasterer. Paid him in full for his work and included a bonus in return for detailed map of the lost clocks.

To make sure the roof leaks in future I imagine. 😮‍💨

Well I did it on mine and on every cylinder I have wired. NOBODY should be using a 3 port mid position valve, the work of the devil. 2 or more 2 port valves for me always. I wired the hi limit stat in mine because that is what you are supposed to do, and one less thing for BC to find to fail it if they are looking hard enough. Just because a lot of people don't bother is not reason to copy them.

WHAT temperature does she need to be comfortable? In a well insulated house, forget the concept of fast heat. A properly well insulated house will keep it's heat for a very long time, so forget the old concept of turn the heating on in the morning (when you might well want it to heat quickly) and turn it off at bed time and let the house cool down overnight. A well insulated house simply does not work like that. It heats up and stays warm. So just choose what temperature she wants and set it. It does not matter if on first heat up it takes a while to get there. It barely cools down any overnight so takes little time in the morning to heat up again. Or just leave the ASHP running 24/7 just controlled by a thermostat.

@CalvinHobbes What room temperature are you trying to reach? This is what determines your heat source. You can if you want do a combination heating systems i.e. wet ASHP and an A2AHP. I was at my Mother's Care home yesterday, noticed that there is a number of ASHPs on the building. Had a little route about and it seems the place is heated with them, why the radiators do not seem hot, but they are near enough on all the time.

Yes, because ASHP,s heat slowly and at low temps they work in well insulated houses, where they fail IMO is where the heat loss of the house is greater than the input.

See Also I guess Granny is not going out much so will need heat 24/7 so I think most ASHP and UFH works on the principle of constant temps not neat up and cool down. Therefore a well designed ASHP system will work with additional Granny’s instant heating.

It'll work fine. Just get the ASHP and be done.

All plumbing done. You can just about see our tundish behind the new OSO UVC. The small extension to the consumer unit contains the 240VAC power relays to switch the Immersions and the slab Willis and pump. Everything neat and tidy. Jan is a happy lady. We've also had a couple of deep baths to celebrate. Still got to tidy the last power lead. The shelf above is my "network rack" 🤣

Absolutely. But when a client says" I'm not paying, what are you going to do about it?" this perhaps is very tempting. He is never going to get paid. I've met a few small builders who have had this. One went back and demolished the porch he had not been paid for, but only after discussion failed. The rich go to court. The poor, and becoming poorer, get the sledge out.

It’s just a meaningless box ticking exercise When you are all built and ready for sign off You will have to go back to this guy or someone else for the final sap report Which is totally reliant on the information that you give them For example You they will ask you if you have updated insulation and u values for your cheap safe style windows that you put in Never mind you can always send them the expensive quote that you could afford with the treble glazing and double seals He won’t need payment details Just the U values Money for old rope

Just to add to this with a bit of experience of what I would do differently "next time". I had installed 50mm twin wall duct for the electric supply. After completing the raft that duct was extended by the groundworkers to the electric kiosk with the meter some 20 odd metres away. Only later did I consider the cable needs - 3 phase 25mm. Upon picking it up from the suppliers I could immediately sense a problem coming. A) it was heavy and B) it didn't bend well. This week I discovered drawing it through a 50mm duct was not practical - should have used 80mm at least. Also the bends in the duct made pulling the cable through a nightmare. Luckily, after a struggle we got it outside the raft (all of 3 metres) but had to dig down to it and cut it open to get past the first (of several) too tight bends. Finally have strained back trying to pull it the last 5 metres - can't even bend over at present! Resourceful wife asked two random men in a family of four passing by to help and they very kindly stepped in and pulled it the last bit while I sat on the floor in a lot of pain. So, 1) work out cable needs in advance. 2) use a bigger duct than you think you need 3) consider running the cable through the duct laid out in a straight line, then placing both duct and cable in place in one go so you know it will bend where you need it to! 4) just get someone else younger and fitter to do it!

Well, when I have done a cut roof I use the “template” one and make sure it fits everywhere first, if you offer it up and it’s 10mm out make that adjustment for that one (not that any of mine were out of course 🙄)

Yeh, found it now... LG aren't the easiest things to find details for. It's nicer in some ways than the Cool Energy, but much worse in other ways...

well, we've not finished the house yet but the cladding is done and we love how it looks. it is pretty fragile though so unless your chippie is extremely careful with moving boards etc some of the blackness comes off. that's on the really charred stuff btw. here's a blog I wrote on the subject

Typo ? Years surely ? 🫤🤣

You won’t have excess solar when it’s wintertime though. Plus, trying to operate a heat pump on sporadic pockets of sunshine is just barking mad.