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After my horrid time earlier this year I am now going to post something more positive. As of yesterday, I was offered a job, not ideal (is any job ideal), rather than working from home I must go to the office which takes 40mins each way and hubby is disappointed that he will be left on his own all day. That said even with time out for funeral 250 miles away and wet, wet, wet we have progressed. Some pictures. hardcore & binding (take 2 after previous issues) now the expansion foam around the sides The heave protection next then taping next was the rebar here is the pour on top of the rebar - 200mm drying concrete slab with no hint of everything underneath, typical building, lots of expense and nothing to see. the first row of outside blocks added showing the cavity first blocks over DPC with all the rain we have created a bit of a swimming pool It was at this point that we purchased a puddle pump as hubby really didn't like having to kneel and build low in water going up with some windows & doors framed insulation going in joining the existing walls to the new part this is where some of the kitchen cabinets will be hung, so although internal we are using heavier blocks to take any necessary weight On the left hand side you can see part of the existing barn that will be staying. The roof is currently being held up with barrels and wood building from scaffolding is a real milestone, makes it seem like we are getting somewhere. To protect the insulation, we have the original insulation from the barn roof cut up to provide a 'roof' over the cavity. Having made the frames for the remaining to windows these need to be placed in situ for building around. This area will be our front hall and snug. Of course, the front door will only be used by visitors, but we will go through the hall internally to get into the snug. With all the cavities it is smaller than I hoped, but with all the insulation it will be much warmer than our single skin house. Hope you enjoy the pictures, next time I hope to be at lintel and wall plate level, but we would like the weather to improve. Thanks for reading Jill

Before now I did a jedi mind trick of reducing the width of the panels each one by 10mm to gain the 70mm shortage. Wasn't noticeable from either end 😂

Well done on the house and getting the job!

Photos as promised.

I like Pert-al-Pert as it has no memory so is easy to work with. Modern UFH I would only use 16mm - easily available, carries plenty of energy, low pressure drop. Anything else size wise is just a bad choice.

Thanks very much. Have spoken with the ICF company again and they've advised that it'll be fine. As you say it was the reinforcement that comes up through that had us concerned but have been advised to paint on Remmers mk 2K.

I'd be going rigid board as it gives more insulation for a given thickness. Another thought is the foil type insulation such as Actis. Personally, I'd send your picture which illustrates exactly the situation, to the company's technical department and let them suggest a solution.

Why should you have to manually submit smart meter readings? Mine is not a smart meter, and nothing I read in this thread is making me want to have a smart meter.

I don't have this issue with Octopus. I submit a monthly reading on the last day of the month and they produce a bill based on that reading. Why does it have to be difficult?

Fewer units. 😉

More like over a decade ago. No idea what the structure of the energy market is in Germany, but if it is like ours, then it is being supported by central government (we have a price cap based on wholesale prices, and they are not in the customers favour but keep the energy companies viable for the time being). So with a bit of PR, it is not hard to concoct a narrative that blames something, regardless of the truth.

One good thing about technology is that things get better over time, so devices on standby use less and less. Is there a Moore's law that says that every 2 years new devices on standby will use 50% less? Some of them certainly get smaller, e.g. the Sonoff or Shelley wifi or zigbee switches. In the new house, we've got a lot more of that kind of device but we're still using about the same as in the old house which had a lot fewer... But fundamentally yes, if you want to use less, don't use things that are on all the time. Simon

That is basically the secret. Don't leave things on standby that don't have to be, and if they must be on 24/7, make sure they use as little as possible. For me it is easy as I am all electric resistance heating with mechanical, or very low energy, time switches. I have a couple of web servers, but they use under half a watt each when running, and when I leave the house the laptop lid gets closed.

Same here 😞 Unless you go down the @SteamyTea route of unplugging everything, then the key to lower costs, now there is no FiT, is to make sure you use as little normal rate lekky as possible. The PV for 2/3 of the year for DHW is a good start. If you add a diverter that can schedule a nightly cheap rate boost of the DHW then there's a saving there. Doing the DHW at night with an ASHP reduces that again. Installing say about 15kW of batteries also allows you to shift your daytime use to the night time tariff. All of this can be done on Octopus Go which is cheap rate for 4 hours at night. Moving to Octopus Go Intelligent (you need the right kind of EV point for this) get's you onto 7.5p for 6 hours at night as well as 15p for export. So there's longer for battery charging etc. at night and from about now, for 6 months, you should be exporting enough to cover what you've imported and on good days, also the daily standing charge. There are ways to self install the PV and get onto Octopus Go to avoid the MCS surcharge. And you don't really need to own an EV to get onto the Intelligent version of Octopus Go. All you need to do is to connect an EV to get the charger recognised. So if you haven't got one, borrow a friends for 30 minutes. You can do all of the above in stages, we did. Last week, we didn't cover the standing charge but we did earn enough on the export to cover all of our usage. We're all electric, so that's all the house energy needs, heating (yes, it's still on a bit), cooking, washing, dishwashing, hot water etc. Moving onto Octopus Agile should better what you can do on OG Intelligent but it's another level of complexity in terms of controlling when things should charge etc. Simon

Just to complete this with pictures. The top picture is the Diy online kitchens under sink drawer. The second picture is the U shaped Blum under sink drawer that didn’t fit as it fouled the bottom of the sink and the Quooker wouldn’t fit behind it. The bottom picture is how we fixed that problem with the two half depth drawers one of which I cut down at the back to get it to clear the sink.

The elicia has a collection bin for liquids in the extractor exactly for this . There’s a drain tap underneath or you can remove the bin . It’s all easy to do .

Res bar on the ceilings with two layers of sound block is one of the most cost eftive ways of achieving a high level of soundproofing

All the suppliers are fairly hopeless, I had one who took 4 visits to swap out a 3P meter. And another where I accidentally exchanged some digits in a meter reading … apparently ‘using’ 2 years of power in one month. Their system wouldn’t let me, or apparently any of their staff amend the reading or put in a lower reading the next month. Yes, that’s right, their system designers hadn’t allowed for anyone ever putting in a wrong reading. It took nine months and a letter to the CEO to sort that out. In the meantime, I was being pursued by collection agencies for a couple of £K.

Or their circumstances changed (like mine did 🤷‍♂️).

Elicia =status