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D'oh - there's me with a degree in Internet Computing, been on the web since '94, forgetting the very basics of hypertext and general social conduct online 😆 Thanks for the reminder! https://huffpuff.me/sustainable-self-build/

Why's everyone calling then Farko? I think they're Fakro, if you arks me

Hey everyone. Some might remember me, most probably won't, it's been over 3 years since I did any work on my build and at a crossroads now. I got my ICF walls up to first floor level and got the concrete poured into the walls. Then due to family stuff and health, had to put a complete hold to my self build journey. So nearly 3.5 years later and at 53, I have the very tough decision to make of whether to carry on or take life easier and settle for a normal house and probably no workshop. I love my plot and would love to live in the finished house (and workshop lol), but have to be realistic of how long it might take to get there. I write all this wondering how many of you guys have been in the situation of having to decide if carrying on is the best choice? Did anyone walk away and regret it? Was anyone close to giving up and calling it a day??? I'll probably post a few questions on the next steps of work, which could help me decide what to do. Hope everyone is good and made progress/finished their builds Vijay

I think peeps like architects mean well by suggesting companies that they’ve witnessed successfully building for others before, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best fit for your project/attitudes/budget/desires. It seems that finding a good solution involves a lot of dead ends, and that’s lead me to believe that good decisions are fuelled by pursuing each dead end as if it’s the best thing since sliced bread, until it’s proven to be bogus. I can’t comment on that company, and those that can can only do so from the prism of their own experience, but I would urge pursuing multiple solutions simultaneously. If nothing else I believe it accelerates the learning process.

That's an interesting idea. Water of course is also an excellent solvent and does no harm to humans unless the human is submerged. An alternative liquid would need these properties too. Of course we do already have one (sort of), namely aerated water, easily available by changing your shower head!

Hi everyone. Introducing our build. It’s a Dutch barn with full planning permission for a 6bed barn in the middle of Kent. We’ve just gone back to planners to do a demolition and build a 3-4bed barn. we want to make it a sustainable and forever home which we can afford to build with the same shape of the barn - the barrel roof is bringing challenges already! Had to get a tree report due to a few lovely big oak trees which we need to protect, so just waiting on that. It’ll have MHVR ASHP and be insulated to as high a spec as we can. We’ll be getting a contractor for the foundations and ground works and the timber frame company to erect it and fit windows/doors, then aiming to do the rest ourselves. It’s 100m up a track in a lovely location - but services quotes haven’t been much fun to read because of that. Looking forward to learning from you all…

Post up a link to it, I am sure many of us would like to see it.

Even if you get this glazing through planning approval you should get a quick check done against Part O Building Regs compliance for overheating calculations. We had to revise our plans because the overheating calcs meant we couldn’t reach compliance - and we had way less glazing than on your design. Mitigation might be through cross ventilation (on opposite sides of the room) or external shading or the other- have a look at the link. It doesn't look like either have been designed in your house yet. Once you get the changes agreed you then have to do a material or non material amendment to the LA, it’s a few 100 pounds each time. https://www.futurehomes.org.uk/avoid-overheating

No - do your own calcs, then you know what you are looking at

I think you come up against the laws of physics here. If you want to store energy reversibly in a domestic scenario it's either electrochemical (as in a battery), phase change (sunamp) or just heat. The latter is simplest and you need a cheap material with a high heat capacity. Fortunately water has that property. The alternative is to deliver the energy real time, but because water has a high heat capacity that's a lot of power, more than houses need to heat them. Of course you can combine the two (storage and real time heating) which is what the mini store does. Sunamp with phase change is fundamentally a good idea, but reputationally it appears to have been poorly implemented and of course the material is inherently more expensive than water There are various tradeoffs which can be made, but the physics defines some bounding conditions which don't satisfy the desire of infinite hot water for minimal energy use. That's why we need multiple solutions to fit various scenarios and a killer solution seems unlikely to emerge. If showers were built with waste heat recovery everything becomes much easier, because the power required halves, which brings the requirements nearer to the physical limits with cheap materials. But they aren't (yet) and it's a difficult retrofit.

The thickness of your tiles x2 No matting needed

Yes. Yesterday. Garage perfect. House just about ok. Not ideal in places. Awaiting SE reply re anchors still

Must say look quite close, but I did correct all assumptions made and all standard details and it dropped considerably at revision 2. But take from this is a ballpark of closer to 3kW, not 8kW and nowhere near 12kW. Looking at the spreadsheet the fabric loss isn't too bad, the ventilation losses are stupid high for MVHR.

Our Cemfloor was bob-on level, could have been tiled onto directly. Our tiler at the time insisted on a mat, I think because that's what he knew. I'm not convinced it needed one.

Straight on, once it's fully dried.

Cemfloor should be fairly flat. I have just had one poured and apart from a few surface imperfections, which will scrape off easily, it is very flat, so you could not slide a piece of paper anywhere under a 6' level.

There was rebar where the holes were drilled. Used a Bosch concrete rebar cutter drill bit, not used it much though.

Good move. We have a small 4 bed student HMO. Parental guarantor for each. Agent does all the admin. They also do all inclusive of bills.

hmo look out. the valuation office have started doing council tax bills per room for HMO's instead of 1 for the lot. Hello 8k pa council tax bill.

Someone dropped a ball there. I would 1 Add a small supplement electrical panel heater. Get one with a thermostat so it only heats when needed, £100 and will take longer to collect than install 2 Reduce WC to suit all other rooms, so all rooms run below the thermostat set point (up setting on thermostat to just above target room temp). This will leave the heat pump to run itself. Comment: Would suspect with most the house bouncing off thermostats the heat pump short cycles or has a buffer, either will affect efficiency The uplift in efficiency will probably pay for the electric panel heater. Dropping flow temp from 45 to 35 will save 0.5kW of input electric on its own. Less ASHP cycling will save also, how much? Using a flow temp of 35 would reduce the output of the UFH by 50% (ish) leaving a short fall of about 8-900W, so a 1 to 2kW heater, depending if they switch off during night and it has to recover the heat in the morning

At 400mm centres you frame around the opening probably needing doubles on at least one side of the opening. Regarding C16 vs C24, I was building my decking frame recently and accidentally found if I ordered 6 metre lengths they were all C24

There is unlikely to be any damp proof membrane under the concrete of that sub floor, so it is probably just ground water. That is why under floor ventilation of that type of floor is so important, so check carefully all the air bricks are free, not blocked, and most importantly, not covered by external ground level that has been raised too high and is blocking them.

We have a frght mixture of upstairs ceiling heights. The whole roof structure is hung from ridge beams so all rooms could be vaulted right to the ridge if wanted. But we only did that with one room, which has a mezanine above the adjoining small bedroom. Landing and bathroom we did a normal 2.4 metre ceiling to give us a just about standing headroom bit of loft space. And the master bedroom we did with a 3M ceiling height still giving us a feeling of most of the available height, while giving a further bit of crawling height loft space access via a step up from the main loft. If you want smaller joists to preserve headroom why not fit more of them at 400mm centres or even closer? At 400mm centres I used just 12mm OSB as the loft flooring to preserve headroom.

This is our master bedroom. We put in a ceiling 200mm below the ridge beam to allow for services. Still gives us 3m ceilings.

To need 210mm pipes your house must be huge? Use a directional terminal on the wall, these have the inlet and outlet pipes next to each other. Zero separation required. Use coanda supply nozzles, these can be situated anywhere in a room near the ceiling and air follows the ceiling for quite a few meters before coming down. So assuming you have the unit in the landing cupboard and ensuite ceiling is flat. Bed 3 duct would go over ensuite and out of the wall, bed 2 could have the supply nozzle above the door.

There are probably quite a few of us feeling a bit down at various stages some don’t get the planning they want others with health problems along the way. im a bit older than you and haven’t dug the foundations yet we also want ICF but struggled getting builders to quote. your closer to the finish line than me. Don’t give up on the workshop that could be one of the things you really want to enjoy at the end if even that starts with just 4 walls it will be your rest place and a nice place to go to.

If this is purely for storage reasons, a shed would be cheaper and more practical. We love our high ceiling and would hate the idea of them being so low.

I deliberately went completely the opposite way, our original drawings had flat ceiling had the architect change to vaulted. Every room feels roomy and airy, would not go your direction. What is the motivation? Seems a lot of work to possibly store stuff, you will not use or see until you move house.

Yes, to the extent of putting the half built house on the market, because I was pissed off with spending all my time working on the house. When we didn't have any interest, other than nosey viewers, we decided to carry on. We're glad we finished it, even if it did take us eight years. I think that if you don't finish the challenge you will regret it. It's important to split the tasks up into manageable bits and not to get stressed. If it is getting on top of you, walk away for a time and come back refreshed.

Yes. One wall collapse. Two hips replaced. (6 months apart) Every day now I look at errors that were made because I was in so much pain Family disaster(s) - no more than average : but significant and on-going A few very poorly behaved trades folk. Run out of money .... and still there. Self building is a test of character. When I'm down - which is once a month or maybe a bit less frequently - I remind myself of much harder tests that I survived and (more importantly) failed at. But learnt from. Make sure you have a support network. At the very least you have BuildHub. Head-Down-Arse-Up-Go.

Were they not submitted as part of the planning permission? If they were, you can likely download them from your LPA website.

Welcome back. We obviously don't know the details of why you stopped. That is personal that you may or may not want to share. All I can say is be positive and flexible with your plans. It would be a huge wrench for me not to complete. In our case it was unforeseen financial circumstances that forced a re think, and our revised plan was a very much slower "build as you earn" build with us doing far more of the work that we expected to at the start, but we completed and are now comfortable in our new house, and the eventual sale of the old house that caused all our problems actually left us better off in the end than we ever expected. So chin up, formulate a plan B and move forward.

Hi Chris, we are in final stages of build / retrofit of 250m2 house, aiming for as near passive house as we can with attention to air tightness, triple glazing throughout, removed chimney and have mvhr. Also underfloor ground and first floors with 28mm primaries etc. I approached a few MCS suppliers and was being pushed towards 11 - 12kw units. This didn't match my own calcs or how the house behaved when on gas boiler. The route I have taken is DIY install via an MCS Umbrella company. I am doing all my own plumbing and electrics. Headline costs have been £4k for 7Kw Vaillant Arotherm, £1k for Vaillant 250l cylinder and approx £1600 for Umbrella costs. ( All inclusive of vat ) This way you can still install via BUS grant but are not tied to crazy prices or forced into a heat pump that you don't want or need.

I know nothing about well-insulated houses but it looks to me as if the "shortfall" occurs because your installers think your UFH will not be sufficient to heat this one area of your house. In my house, which is entirely heated by radiators, this issue was fixed by adding an extra radiator. I suppose it could have been fixed by running the existing radiators at a higher temperature, which might then have required a more powerful heat pump but that is entirely the wrong way to go. So if the calculations are correct you would need an extra heat source. Is there any scope to plumb-in a wet radiator if there really is a problem?

I’m a geotechnical engineer and GI is my day job (though typically on large infrastructure) Previous replies have covered some points, but I’ll add/clarify some more. - Planning conditions usually only ever focus on contamination assessment. As said, if it isn’t a condition in you planning, you don’t need a GI for this purpose. - Phase 1: desk study. These range in scale from a quick look on BGS website, to £30k worth of work. Again, if not a planning requirement, don’t pay for one. Search BGS viewer and you’ll find the mapped geology (superficial and bedrock) for your location. You can also turn on the ‘BGS borehole’ layer and see nearby historic boreholes to get a feel for thicknesses of strata. - Phase 2: intrusive investigation should be validating outcomes of the Phase 1 e.g. proving presence of sand depth for bearing/ presence of water as risk, etc (not comprehensive). Your SE should be explicit on what he expects and provide a brief / scope for GI (usually based on the Phase 1 desk study) if he’s expecting you to engage and procure a supplier. To be honest, bigger SEs will work with geotechnical consultants regularly and would seek them to do this. However I’d expect for a house building SE this should be routine for them to spec and recommend a basic scope for you (or minimum what info they need!) GI Techniques: depending on what your SE needs and the ground risks for your site, I expect the most you’d need is a couple of window sample boreholes with SPTs and a trial pit or two. Day-rate for windowless sampler rig is between £600-£1200/day. They’ll do two shallow holes in a day easy. Your SE should specify if he wants an interpretive report or if he’s happy taking the factual data. The former will add cost (probably £800-£2000 depending on outfit). Tbh, I think overkill and most SEs worth their salt would know an SPT result and be able to make conservative foundation design decisions. All above is simplified for (what honestly) is low risk Geotechnics. The discipline is a skill as much as structural design and it’s easy to spend money that isn’t needed.

>>> it's currently a concrete-and-asbestos monstrosity with no public views of that elevation Ah, a valuable heritage asset built with authentic materials which needs preserving at all cost... 😀 - I've completely lost it with the planners at this point. Our current barn conversion was worthless (I paraphrase) to the heritage people and could be knocked down as far as they were concerned as they didn't care. Now they're all about preserving its barn-like qualities...

You were lucky I could have slid a 6’ level under a 6’ level on mine. It’s tiled now and nearly forgotten.

You've way too much glazing mate.