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The pros and cons of using a main contractor v individual trades are not just financial cost. A brilliant main contractor with a good reputation could end up cheaper than individual trades. If something goes wrong with one trade it could have a knock on effect on others. Any £ savings could be written off if you need to redo work if you subcontract an end up with a bad tradey. a good main contractor will use good tradesmen. however if you have a good knowledge of building work, and a network of good trades, you can project manager yourself and save some money. My advice would be to apply a sliding scale of building knowledge to your decision. The worse knowledge you have slide that scale towards a main contractor. The more knowledge slide towards sub contracting. if this is your first rodeo: Ensure sure you have a written contract or at very least detailed correspondence emails quotes etc. Having an email chain that asks “is there anything that is not included” can be helpful to you. Eg waste disposal. Utilising a trade or contractor without due diligence is risky. Online / social media reviews should be treated as fake unless you have verified them. A good tradesman will have no problem in you wanting to getting references. look after your tradesman. I pay mine immediately as they’re tidying up. They tend to come back. Keep out if their way as they do their job. If you’re delighted with their work drop them a line a week later saying so. trades are not cheap if you get good ones. If quotes are noticeably cheaper than others be wary. don’t forget if you think OMG he’s getting £40 per hour or whatever, I only get paid £15 per hour working at my company / I went to Uni / blah blah, he’s ripping me off. Don’t forget he only gets paid that when actually at the job, not all the other stuff he has to do when he’s getting £zero per hour. Pays for expensive tools. And he’s probably not in a workplace pension scheme, gets 28 days paid hols etc etc. yes some tradesmen are doing ok but few are super wealthy. This forum is good for advising if your quotes sound fair, when you get them in. Oh, and where I say “he” I include the great female tradespeople that are coming into the industry,

Impossible to get a fully compliant staircase there. It would fail on insufficient headroom on the "landing" (and the top few stairs) If you are going to do that, do it AFTER BC sign off and keep quiet. If you sell be prepared to remove the fixed ladder and call it a storage platform that you access with a portable ladder.

If you can only install internal wall insulation, then you will probably want to install a vapour control layer on the room side. This VCL stops the water vapour condensing as it hits the colder structure if the house. "Insulation" or to use the proper term, thermal conductivity has 3 measures. The intrinsic material properties, the k-Value. This is measured in W.m-1.K-1. When the thickness is taken to to account, it becomes resistivity, thickness (length) in meters divided by the k-Value. R-Value = length / k-Value. The size nits become m².K.W-1. To get to the more useful U-Value, W.m-2.K-1, the reciprocal of R-Value is used. U-Value = 1/R-Value. It is generally easy enough to get the k-Valueb of a material, but realistically you need to be looking a foamed phenolic sheet. There is no reason why you cannot mix and match insulation types, as long as moisture transmission is thought about and catered for. So you can put IWI (internal) on the front, and EWI (external) on parts that the public don't see. The biggest problem with EWI is size of roof overhangs and around window and door openings.

Not complicated, just surprisingly difficult. I can't make it smooth so have settled for the Mediterranean rustic look of deliberate trowel swoops. If you want flat, then for a pro it's quick and easy. They do that and only that every day, and get good at it.

If your thinking of a new electrician then use this https://niceic.com/find-a-tradesperson/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw57exBhAsEiwAaIxaZll6AVV04VztOTTJQfczT8BO4CBYuAh4_aTWx4D1Hui2-Vc7d8WicRoCLZwQAvD_BwE you would be best with someone approved not just domestic as they are more likely to understand 3 phase, I’m not sure yours does. Explain your a new build as it will make a difference. We are approved and only work in commercial and industrial we don’t do domestic as too many times the electrician is called in after plastering or we are told can we do it without making a mess. Luckily we’re based in Trafford Park Manchester so can still pick and choose our jobs. Depending on your area an approved contractor who also says domestic next to the search results is your ideal contact. if the annexe is virtually self contained ie own kitchen, washing, lounge etc then think of it more like a small house on its own phase. If you only have one meter the solar can reduce the metered units for everyone as they are all set for net metering. also worth considering a time of use meter e.g. economy 7 not sure about the wait time for these meter installs (3 phase economy 7) our was more complex and took a long time, due to lack of competent installers at EDF.

For peace of mind, personally I would want the intake up-wind unless the separation was say 3m or more. I would not be too concerned about duct resistance assuming you're using big fat ducts. My MVHR uses external insulated Ubbink foam ducting that is 160mm internal diameter (190mm external diameter), which is comparably huge. The resistance is such ducts, which falls by the square of the diameter, is quite low. I roughly calculated the internal flow rate within those ducts in my case to be 1.9 m/s (2.1 m/s on boost) which I considered acceptably low and should not cause problems of either pressure-drop or noise. You could do a similar calculation.

Welcome aboard folks, just scan the forums and ask questions in the right sections please, and the answers will flow by the bucketload. Ask away!!

I must emphasise how much you don't want this to happen. PIR floats. The screed keeps coming. Seal any laps or tears.

Pay someone for a days work Your going to be looking at messy render for a long time

Hi all, As the title suggests, I'm a DIY enthusiast and have worked on every house I ever owned and discovered life is just one huge learning curve! There's never a better afternoon spent than with a hammer and chisel (a wall that needs to not be there), some decent music and a cold cider to quench a dusty thirst! 😂 I've been reading (and reading) this forum about solid walls and the thorny topic of insulation 🤯😳. Never did I ever think such a simple sounding proposition would be such a biblically huge can of damp worms! Having done 2 things I've never done before: 1. Buy a house at auction 2. Buy a solid walled house with no cavity. I've now realised that it's not going to be the sailing off into the sunset cider glass aloft that I thought it was! 😂 Heading over to the other bit of the forum shortly to see if you knowledgeable peoples think I've made a big booboo or not.

Hi. I’ve recently joined the forum so thought I’d introduce myself. I’ve been a carpenter for 23 years and worked as a set builder on films and music videos. Then a was a project manager at a busy woodworking firm. About eight years ago I set up my own company taking on bespoke woodwork projects. Now I’m getting into house building/construction and I’m planning to make a granny annex for my mother to move into. Ive got a fair bit of experience with carpentry but not much in the other areas of building/planning so I’m hoping you guys can give me some advice and hopefully I can share some woodworking knowledge. Cheers. Jacques.

What I proposed to do for one client, where there was a pair of heat pumps; one for house and one for the swimming pool. Didn’t need them in the end, as the pool temp was pretty much kept at a constant (indoor pool within its own airtight envelope, and a near passive residence). If this is all designed properly before laying a single ‘brick’ then the heat pumps can be almost inaudible. Client could hear a neighbour’s combi boiler flue 30m away over the house heat pump when it was -6°C outside, with us standing next to the HP. Pool one was timed strategically, and would only boost at very early morning on cheap rate or midday off peak PV excess. Design, design, design. As this thread mentions a retrofit into a refurbished dwelling, then the question needs to be, what target is the AT score going to be, how well insulated, and how good (efficient) an MVHR system is going in. Refurbs are a pita to get up to a high standard, and this needs serious consideration.

The whole house trench was laid out on the ground and yes the base level was marked on a post which was still in the ground last time I checked. They marked a few levels around the plot as a check.

Our site is on a significant slope. They dug it out (cut and fill) to get level ground. Survey guy used the CAD foundation drawings to set it out and marked it on the ground. This was also loaded into the digger. Digger driver dug out the trenches back to original ground.

We had a thread about 3 phase net metering a while back. There seemed, at the time, to be a lot of confusion, but from what I understand, it is something you need. Then you can easily add different amounts of generation, including zero, to different phases and not loose any because your phases are not perfectly balanced all the time.

Most people are with trades, and sadly it's an expensive education everyone will have gone through at some point. Buildhub.org is a great resource to check and seek advice... Just pitty those that don't have this resource to guide them on their builds!! (though you could say ignorance is bliss.....). "trust, but verify"

For installation under permitted development the noise calculation is done by the MCS installer, yes. Basically he/she must survey the immediate vicinity and do a calculation based on what he/she finds. The resulting calculation must meet a noise criterion set out in mcs-020 and the installation as a whole must meet several other criteria specified in law for it to be 'permitted development' (IE for it not to require express planning consent). To be clear the criteria to be met are set out in law and mcs-020, the role of the MCS installer is to do the noise calculation and compare it with the noise criterion. They are probably supposed to check the other criteria as well (as part of their professional standards requirement, not as a matter of law), I have no idea whether they do. Where express planning consent is sought, it's for the lpa to decide what criteria (noise and other) to apply, based on the 'local plan' (a set of planning rules created by the LPA) and 'other material considerations'. The two sets of rules may be quite different, although if an lpa imposes rules which are significantly more onerous than the pd rules it may be possible to argue that 'fallback' is a material consideration (basically an argument that if the lpa refuses express consent, a worse development could legally take place under pd, and thus the lpa would be wrong to refuse). I'm currently testing the 'fallback' argument for my own installation, which has been refused by the lpa and I am appealing. It's sometimes used, with success, for major developments, I have as yet no idea whether it will work for a heat pump.

We had exactly the same with our sunflex, blue brick step out. Pic below is what we did. Set back a blade drain, enabling tiles either side of it. Not as surgically attractive as it could have been, but soon Iver looked....

I don’t see the blue bricks. I wonder if you can do it the same way we did. I set an Aco drain below the door drip and then used pedestals for the patio. All the water off the door goes into the Aco and the patio goes right up to the door. All the water on the patio falls down the gaps in the tiles, thanks to the pedestals.

But in cooling mode especially with flow temps of 15 (suitable for UFH) power input is tiny, so running speed and noise is also on the very low side. Last summer I had to walk right next to the heat pump to see if it was doing anything. 25 degree day and 15 flow, the unit is doing an EER of 6+, so next to no work.

Says the regulations for installing a heat pump as a permitted development. So of course this doesn't apply to new build projects where the whole development needs planning permission and the grant of planning permission encompasses the heat pump.

However, the objection has to be relevant (excess noise levels measured) and how will a neighbour know the heat pump is being used for cooling? My heat pump was timed to heat DHW in the warmest part of the day. Also I have a neighbour now that has an oil boiler that is way noisier than my heat pump was.

Greenguard is an extruded polystyrene thermal insulation. Compressive strength of 500kPa is ultimate ie at failure. Safe long term static load may only be 1/5 of this value. Not sure it’s the correct product here and doubt manufacturer would stand by this application.

London soon cured me of my affection for car ownership. I'd imagine that most of the residents of the upper floors will be just as unpolluted on a breezy day as anywhere else. Besides, we need more homes.

Look up a product called kingspan green gaurd. Get it in the thickness you want, then run it through a table saw to 125mm, it has a load rating of 500kg/m something. you can drill through it and bolt your sole plate down on to it. polyurethane adhesive under it onto the concrete, and below the sole plate.

If you want weather compensation almost all do it straight out the box, you don't need internet connected anything for it. Are you doing a new build or refurbishment?

@CalvinHobbesthe microgen export tariff is pretty much the same as the economy 7 night tariff. So the cheapest way to heat water is to use the ASHP off peak. It'll be twice as cheap as using a solar diverter. I've my timed from 7-9am... on a sunny morning at this time of year I'm generating 1-2kW from the PV, so double saving. Plus you save the £200 or so for the upfront cost of an Eddi or other diverter.

I've done (specified and then installed via subbies) a number of 3ph CU's in domestic residences, and "safety" as a reason 'not' to do this is just nonsense tbh. Also, you'll need the PV to be on the 3ph so it can deliver to the EV charging, if going on diversion controls; My Energy do the eddi but it's a part of a My Energy family of products so you can go for their Zappi LINK EV charger (1ph and 3ph 'rapid') which allows them to communicate, but also now they do the Libbi LINK battery setup too, so the lot will talk and you can optimise this end of things far better than cobbling together different bits of kit that all speak different languages..... May be a good idea to ring My Energy and run this by them, at least for another yardstick on price vs advice, if nothing else.

Another thing with GSHP's with anything other than a borehole, you can't do cooling as they cook the ground and it shrinks away from the loop (so when you need heating the ground loop is less (very much) effective). Cooling needs a bit of human influence, prediction, and planning in its execution imo. Just having it working away in the background, in anticipation, is a better strategy than just 'switching it on' as the damage is usually then already done (house has become uncomfortably warm / hot) and then there is a huge amount of energy to shift. These types of heat / cool arrangements don't react anywhere near as quickly as A2A (air to air) A/C can, so beware making uniformed choices which then are integrated into the fabric of the build and then cannot be altered / changed retrospectively without huge costs and disruption etc. Fan coils are noisy, but so is A/C, so decide which services your home best; if you already have an ASHP for heating (that can cool) then use that + "cold" UFH + fan coils in that ascending order to do the same job. A full PHPP analysis should show you what your overheating risk is (as a %), and this should be known, understood and investigated, before designing / specifying diddly-squat! "Fail to prepare...."

That being said.. He might not have been wrong about the best setup for your house. Just had his own reasons for it. Get more quotes. Be sure of the advice.. Not everyone's right, including me

Things that stood out. His reluctance to believe a house was 3 phase. It shows his tendency to only be installing in 'standard' installs rather than modern or commercial. It shouldn't be something he would be surprised about. He gave you a price, and then a deadline. That's a salesman's technique of wanting you to not think and just handover money. The 'excess straight to immersion' option doesn't factor in the complex variables in modern builds. He's probably used to pushing the add ons for retrofitting older houses. Birds don't worry me. Their nests are seasonal. Rats are a bigger problem and chicken wire does not stop them. Chicken wire is ugly, lazy and cheap

It is normal to set the batter board a convenient height above ground level, both for eying between them and for an easy sum. so 1.5m is ok. the one at the top of the hill points into the ground, showing the cut. There is a lot to be said for them as they work from one side to the other , with no need for calculating the finished level at each spot. if you also make a 'traveller, of the same height (1.5m) then it simply eyes through and you now roughly how much to excavate. you can make feet for them so they stay standing they don't steam up in the rain or cost hundreds or more if they fall over. for the precision stage you either pull a fishing line tight across them, or then use a level. primitive but a good option. they look cool on site too. especially painted red and white. or get someone else to do it. I resist because I don't need to, and because they've made expensive mistakes on my sites when made to use them. Always step back from your or another's setting out and decide if it looks right.

Welcome DeeDee, I only joined today also, kinda keen diy'er but not very skilled tbh.

Find a very local surveying company you want them on site probably 4 times. 1. They will set out the site strip roughly 2m wider in every direction. 2. They set out the foundations to 50-60mm accuracy 3. They set out the walls onto the concrete foundation to mm accuracy. 4. Drain locations within the house footprint to mm accuracy. . we had one more visit to plot the location of the piles. £400 well worth it.

I was the main contractor on mine (garage and loft conversion). I did everything but the scaffolding and gas. I wouldn't recommend it if you can afford to hire someone to do it. The stress and extraordinarily exhausting work is not healthy.

Personally I think they are superb and used many times , yes fairly expensive but worth the cost i think

I think I would be tempted to buy some base-coat EWI-type render. If you have never done any before I would suggest use a 10mm toothed trowel, then let that coat stiffen up a little before doing a second coat with an ordinary trowel. The 1st coat will act as a guide for the 2nd. You may not need mesh but I think I would use it. Lightly 'float' the glass-fibre mesh over the 'peaks' of the toothed coat , the=n trowel on render till the mesh is no longer 'ghosting through', or as close as you can get. You may need to do a final base coat to lose all the 'ghosting'. Final final coat (after 4 days, IIRC) is self-coloured top-coat 'gritty' render. Lots of people sell this stuff - sometimes local merchants, but I have used EWIStore a lot.

As long as the reviews aren't from "checkatrade" and they have a legitimate website hopefully you'll be OK. Just be very cautious as I find good tradesmen don't need to advertise, don't care about the self praise review culture, and are nearly always found by recommendations from a close friend who's used them and not via Facebook recommendations. Someone in my village recently posted on Facebook asking for someone to clean her gutters and carryout a small roof repair. Within hours she had 57 recommendations!!!

Well mine didn’t, his two guys worked on mine for a year and he introduced me to the electrician, window and door makers, painter and sparky. I fitted windows, most of the carpentry, tiling, plumbing etc Go with your gut feeling (and review) I did and no regrets.

If you use a main contractor He will bring sub contractors in for most of it So if you can find your own you will be cutting out the middle man

Welcome. 25mm of (breathable) wood-fibre could give you a U value (heat lost in Watts per sq m of building fabric per degree C.) of around 0.85W/m2K - around half of the heat loss (1.7W/m2K) for the uninsulated wall. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick but the Bldg Regs target of 0.3(or as close as you can get without seriously risking interstitial condensation (condensation within the slices of the insulated 'sandwich') ) is a lot better. 100mm would give you about 0.35.

Not specifically, the reference to the “first inch” is that the first inch gives X amount of benefit, 2 inches will not give 2 x X benefit (diminishing returns). There’s some on here that built and insulated a 300mm cavity, I compromised and full filled a 200mm cavity (near Cornwall is quite mild). With regard breathability there are others here who know more about interstitial condensation when insulating and where to put airtight layers and will be along shortly….once insulation is up to a “good“ standard droughts become more of an issue to keeping a house warm.

I have to ask, how would BC know the ASHP was configured to cool, others here have said all ASHP,s can be reverse engineered to provide cooling 🤷‍♂️

Hi welcome. 1000 ft2 or 93m2. Compact house. Are you planning to actually build yourself or get a contractor in, to do the work? SIP are good in principle, but you really need to add further insulation to get them to perform well. Once design on paper there is really zero flexibility. I would work with a design the local work force use every day - timber frame built on site, cellulose filled, or block and brick - deep cavity then full with poly beads. Go to town on good insulation and airtightness, and then use the smallest heat pump you can get,with under floor heating on the ground floor only to heat.

I installed the MVHR unit this week and got someone to commission it. It’s very quiet. You can hear a gentle hum from the kitchen terminal when standing underneath it but the others are silent. The external terminal isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to look but it’s still by the front door. I regret a bit not changing the whole floor plan of the porch/lean to bit of our house putting the plant room on an end elevation. In hindsight I ought to have combined it with the utility room with a wall separating them. The benefit of where it is that’s it’s right in the middle of the house though. The other small issue is the board on board cladding creates a void behind the terminal where the inside cladding board is which could allow rainwater to sit. I’ll need to add a block to fill it in. The board on board cladding has caused similar issues like this across a few areas of the house. Worth thinking about for anyone else considering board on board. Downstairs bathroom nearly finished. The Aqualisa shower was straightforward to fit but we pulled the speed fit hose out of the connection inside the rail which was a bugger to get back in. Bit concerned it came out so easily. I’m not massively impressed with the Aqualisa Optic Q shower control given the cost of it. It all feels a bit loose and plasticky. We have two and both the same. The rest of it is well made. The mixer and diverter are in the coomb upstairs making it really easy for future access as I made the coombs slightly wider and higher by removing the coomb completely on the opposite side of the roof. We gained a bit of floor space and it allowed me to widen this coomb by 150mm. I did this to make fitting the shower controls up here much easier. It would have been very tight otherwise. Doors and skirting fitted. Doors and hardware are by LPD. Unfortunately they don’t do smaller doors to fit the wardrobe. However Deanta do a very similar door (looks identical in the pictures) which can be custom made. Not cheap unfortunately and the lead time is 20 weeks. Also removed all the dust protection from our lights in the vaulted ceiling so it’s the first time we’ve seen them up properly.

There really is nothing to the design of a heat pump plumbing. Single zone (if you want zones you need a buffer). You need around 40 to 50L of water engaged at all times. Let's say a 6 kW heat pump. Flexible hose attached to heat pump, then 28mm pipe to a 3 way diverter valve (not a mid point). Normally open port to heating system, normally closed to cylinder heating coil. If UFH either direct to manifold (from diverter) or via a mixer and pump (general it needed. Common return pipe. Heat pump cylinder (3m2 coil).

The interesting question has to be, if vector sum metering means that any electricity exported is offset against any electricity imported, how is a battery economically viable? Are we not just as well allowing anything that we don't use ourselves to go to the grid as an offset against what we have used? Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding how this works, and wronly assuming that any electricity exported in any given 24 hour period is offset against anything imported?? @Dan F @Nickfromwales

At least C19 nonsense has evaporated sufficiently now. It is manageable now, site CDM etc, but I just pay a site manager to do all of this remotely for me these days. RAMS is just a copy / cut / paste affair, and takes my chap about an hour to format site to site. Biggest issue with HSE will be fire, first aid, and dust control. Keep a cheap cyclone vacuum on site, and encourage hoovering vs sweeping up wherever practicable. Tags on scaffold is an absolute must, as a death from scaffold without a tag will result in a manslaughter charge.

Not really. You need toilet, wash basin, and somewhere warm and dry to rest. First aid, and fire extinguishers. They don't have to be in an expensive self contained unit. In my opinion a site diary is adequate on most projects, doubling as accident book. The diary, kept daily without fail, is the best value of all your project expenditure.

For our selfbuild we bought a cheap shed, cheap toilet and cheap basin. Plumbed it in via a hose pipe [froze a couple of times] , and run it to the sewer. All the trades thought it was luxury compared to the usual Porta Loo. Problem with Porta Loos:- 1) Expensive - you will require it for twice as long as you think. - You don't want random tradesmen christening you nice new porcelain. 2) Hot in summer and smell so much people avoid them and p!$$ behind them. 3) Smell even in winter. 4) Soon get dirty 5) Smell