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Lots of nice machines around for £12000 ish. after 3 years you will get £10000 back on it.

I would take a planer to it and loose that 5mm,, packing the rest WILL be a ball ache.

They also yield the same U value at the same thickness. I used Celotex as it was cheaper at the time. Be careful using anything these AI bits say, they can randomly make stuff up, verify yourself. Also floor U value changes with perimeter area ratio.

If you just want to to clean them out what about a gutter cleaner & extension wand for a power washer? Do it all from the ground, Safer. If repairs are needed then a two part ladder with a standoff but I wouldn't like to mess around with resting it against that glass or trust resting it on a spongy gutter climbing up and down. Tricky. You can hire a van that has a bucket in the back for a day but unlikely to help around the back. Or just pay the local leaflet crowd who do the cleaning for you? There's always someone offering those services around the area.

as above....sounds like general "standard" builder as that's "how they've always done it" 🙄 if the build is to sell on then i get that but if you plan on living there for any length of time then maybe plan to build in a way that makes it a better house. e.g. insulation levels, airtightness, solar pv etc. some people out there call that an "eco-home" but on here we just call it common sense! 😉 personally i wanted to build a house where i didn't want to spend my pension heating it

JCB Insurance were recommended to us but we never used them in the end - our ground worker hired the Telehandler so it went under their insurance. There’s lots you can’t control on a build but having the right insurance seems a no brainer to me. I wouldn’t risk not having it.

Also,.you will find 5t plus machines cheaper, as you can't tow them on trailers..factor in a transport cost and I reckon £10k will get you a great machine with good re sale costs..it will be cheaper than hiring, and a god send to have on site 24/7.

TBH you’re breaking this down and analysing it because you have seen the quote. if they just told you it’s £4500 to connect your water you probably wouldn’t question it.

Add it to your self build policy. it’s far too expensive to get it separately. have you thought of buying your own machine.

I have hired plant cover as part of my overall site insurance, was a relatively modest extra if I remember.

Have a look at Recticel they are often cheaper like for like u values

Seems like a bargin to me. I got a quote for £17.5K + vat for an electrical connection thats 50 feet away on my own land with me doing all the work. But as Conor suggested, they just look up a table. Theres no common sense or reasoning applied. Just before i moved a new build in the next village needed a water connection. Much like this one. Mains in the verge. Almost identical in fact. Traffic boys turned up, set up their traffic lights for one way working and retired to their van for the rest of the day.. Except it was a single track road. So the passing traffic was three feet from the guy doing the work, just as it would have been without the traffic lights. Except it was now chaos because, having seen a green light you entered the section only to be greeted by another car waiting at the red light with nowhere to go. Its not a busy road, but still chaos nonetheless. A classic example of the utter stupidity of the people in these organisations. This excercise gave the chaps doing the work no additional protection at all, cost the homeowner an extra bunch of cash, inconvinienced everone using the road, and lined the pockets of the traffic management firm.

Liquid water has a specific heat capacity of 4.18 kJ/kg.K. Water vaporisation is 2,260 kJ/kg. At phase change, water expands 1600 times. Phase change can be virtually instantaneous. So it is easy to see how easily a drop or two of absorbed water can cause mechanical damage when heated.

There's a trick you can play with Worcester - or at least there was a while ago - you could take out a service contract which could be cancelled after 6 months and wasn't that expensive - certainly less than al the call outs, replacing random parts and never fixing the problem. The service contract meant that Worcester had to fix any fault and if they couldn't, I think they had to replace the boiler. We took one out on the boiler in a rental property that several local plumbers had tried to fix but had never succeeded in really getting the bottom of the problem. After a couple of Worcester visits on the service contract, it was finally sorted and we duly cancelled the contract at the end of the term. Simon

That is a great quote and stands out for me! insulate the bollocks out of it, make it as airtight as you can, have a ventilation/heat recovery strategy, also with big glazing think about how to keep out solar energy in the height of summer, and will you want cooling too. Don't let the unknowns put you off, research, and research some more, ask questions, have fun, embrace it and enjoy the ride!

I think we know they are. It's not as if you can get someone else to do it. You're doing the best thing in getting options from them, then choosing the best for you. Is there any justification for the nesting birds survey? If the works are between now and April? Prove it by quoting the nesting season from the Ladybird book of birds. And I apologise ashamedly for a grocer's apostrophe in my previous message. A serious error.

Kingspan and ‘higher fire safety performance’ - words I never thought I’d see in the same sentence following the Grenfell Tower fire. All PUR foams burn.

Cousin fell off ladder cleaning gutter, now he feels nothing below his chest.

What about a ducopole with attachment and keep your feet on the ground?

You need a proper spec done by your designer. What's been specced by the builder is basic and you need to looks tour overall heat loss and heat gain on detail. It'll be a struggle to get a comfortable house that amount of glazing, especially if it's min.spex double glazing.

The best windows with the best install are typically still worse than the worst new build wall by about a factor of 4. Depends on your window frames. I would leave say at least 10mm of the frame exposed. Beyond that fit as much insulation as you can.

£90k for DG windows. Aluminium are also rubbish U value. £22k for your plumbing and heating. You need a better ventilation strategy. Only 50% of light fittings are low energy. Looks like a bear minimum building regs build, I would consider upgrading insulation, ventilation, this would make the heat pump half the size. Possibly the best way to get poor insulation, sounds great on paper, but if not done really well performance is poor. If you are building to sell on quickly, ok. But if you intend to live in it, I would look upgrade quite a lot.

Scaffold Canopy is expensive. Scaffolders will need to ballast / secure and provide certification and calculations, (and insurance) to cover the additional risk of building a giant wing on your house. Requires far more bodies, or fewer people but more days to complete. External sheeting is also essentially a consumable as it gets bashed to buggery in all the '100 year storms' we have these days. You are paying extra upfront for convenience and speed for the rest of the works. I doubt you'll find it much cheaper from a reputable scaffold company. There are still some monkey scaff companies around if you want it cheap - you pays your money and takes your own risks.

I think you need a bit more meat - what kind of insulation standard, for instance? Is there a spec somewhere or are is this a rough quote with a lot of the detail left out? If the latter, there may be a lot in there for 'builder's contingency' for stuff left unspecified.

afaik class Q should be zero rated for VAT so i'd look in to that first as that's a massive saving!

If a new build zero vat for one. Other than that stupid expensive

4 guys x 3-4 days to erect. Similar to remove. Equipment hire, disposables, vehicles, fuel, insurances, inspections. How much do you think it should cost?

In daylight

Just found the reference document average for all domestic is 7.3kW, driven up by the older housing stock https://tools.bregroup.com/heatpumpefficiency/dwelling-heat-loss

Pulling a post into square before fixings will help it to stay put, but without bracing a “table” structure will sway and pulling one leg into plumb generally results is it pulling another leg half way so the stresses balance.

At this stage sorry, no, as it's a tedious drawn-out (sorry!) process with my level of un-technology. @Iceverge has drawn my answer for me, in any case (Thank you!). For future reference in such situations, take the line which terminates at '3,373'. Angle it R or L and for a good while you still have the 3G window 'interrupting' the potential heat-loss. Then move it a little further till the line intersects one of the pairs of studs on either side, and the only thing between inside and outside (apart from the external sheathing boards and membranes) is those studs. That then shows you where action is needed. Similar diagonal lines on a ground floor/foundation section often highlight similar lack of 'cloaking' to potential thermal bridges. Edit: Interestingly the 0.83W/m2K which @Iceverge's detail shows is probably v close to that of a high-spec 3G window, which is good compared to the 'base case' shown, but not as good as better 'wall' insulation. What are the actual dimensions and could you perhaps get say 40 or 50mm PIR on the reveals (or use v expensive Aerogel as I mentioned)?

Morning all, Great to be here and thanks for accepting me into the forum 😊 So our story; we bought a 1950's 4 bed detached house in Bristol in 2015. It was perfectly liveable but had so much more potential, so the plan was to lots of work to it. But with two young kids, time and money wasn't really there. Roll on 10 years and we're now picking things back up. This summer we appointed an architect who has worked up a kitchen extension and new utility room. Planning granted in August and now we're on our way to getting a contract in place. Hoping to start work in April '25. Here's an overview of the scope: - New triple glazing to replace existing tired DGUs - MVHR - ASHP to replace exiting 15yr old gas combi - 100mm EPS EWI over the exiting '50mm cavity walls with bead insulation' - Dig up 80% of ground floor to lay UFH over 100mm PIR - EV charger (with EV eventually!) We currently have 6kWp of unobstructed PV facing SE connected to 16.4kWh of battery storage. Current stats: - 200sq.m (Net internal heated area) - Gas cons - c.15MWh/yr - Elec cons - c.5.3MWh/yr - Elec gen - c.5.1MWh/yr The house in its current form is pretty leaky. Lots of the DGUs have warped and when the wind blows we go into thermal-sieve mode. I'd be tempted to take tape to them, but I reckon the infiltration is keeping the house dry. High energy, but healthy! So there we go. Lots of questions to ask and loads to learn from the forum. Looking forward to learning and thanks in advance. Bowsers.

All finished now and all housing matters concluded. It was worth it in the end even if it took longer and did not happen quite as planned. The overall result makes it all worth it. Now winding down my electrical business and retiring.

Hi, We are in the process of starting a build adding a 2nd storey to a 1970's bungalow near the sea in Cornwall. We've got lots of RSJ's and it's quite a build, mainly on here to explore heating options as it's a definite weak point for my knowledge set. Great to be here. Thanks for reading.

And gas movement, why they vapour 'openness' is important. The further towards the cold side, the more vapour open it needs to be to aid evaporation.

I honestly can’t remember. Less than a tenner a board I think? Buildup was the 16mm board, then primer, tile adhesive and tile. So basically 16mm more than a standard tile job. If you went 10mm porcelain, 5mm adhesive you’re 31mm all in. Plus any levelling you need. I had plus 10mm in the lowest, but next to nothing at the high spots.

We have a large garden and developers circling; looking at self build options

https://architecturaltechnology.com/find-a-practice.html?q=Sheffield&search_by=location

Couple of issues The W/m2 looks huge for your heat loss value. With MVHR your ventilation heat loss, drops to 100 to 150W. Not 1.5kW. So reality your W/m2 should be half they are quoting. The dT quoted is rubbish, you would be in 3 to 5 range heating the floor direct from heat pump. The smaller the dT the higher the output for a given flow temperature. So would really be flowing 30 or less. It also makes the flow rates quoted as rubbish, the lower the dT the bigger the flow rate. The other thing you need to look at is your house design temp, is -5 low enough, really depends where in Inverness-shire you are. I am in Elgin, we had a month worth of days that hit -9 last year and the year before.

I have a feeling it varies from tray to tray. Good luck with the next 2!!

Hah, no, I laughed too - as the ringing in my ears subsided. Got it built to the full 7M working / 5M platform height today, and discovered that close-up there's a hell of a lot more pigeon on the roof than expected. Also discovered that the roof is actually a bit more than 5M high, the feet on the access tower make for an uncomfortably wide gap between 5M platform and roof, and that the access paths up each side of the panels are uncomfortably narrow anyway. Long story short, I've sacked it in and will get some professionals to sort the pigeons out. The tower seems fine for wall-related jobs, though; I'll keep it around for the foreseeable. I hope your efforts go better than mine!

Behold the draft finder mk 1

Fast forward a few weeks, we received our first on-site Nudura training day, during which time this is what we got done...

I'm not sure many can say this, but we've just had the easiest planning journey, despite what appeared at the outset to be fairly complex surroundings. Our plot is a 1-acre garden split, leaving just under 0.5 acre with the original bungalow and just over 0.5 acre with our plot. We are a stones throw from a conservation area, most of the trees in our garden can be seen throughout the village, our pre-plan noted highways access issues that we were only half-heartedly able to 'solve' and there were 27 neighbourly consultation letters sent out. The plot is about 4 miles from the centre of Norwich. Despite this, we sailed through in 8 weeks to the day. No public comments at all, nothing from Highways, nothing from the District Council. Just one comment from the Town Council who said that we have a good design and our approach could serve as a lesson to all. Relieved is a massive understatement, we have been hugely blessed with this opportunity to build our forever home. We attribute at least part of our success to the fact that we weren't greedy. The plot could have sustained so much more, 4 houses, even 6 or 7, but all we wanted was ours. This was never a cash cow for us. So, here is our design... View from the West... View from the South West... It's just over 193m2, plus a 24m2 carport. It'll be built from ICF. The scheme will save 5x 70ft Scots Pines, a 50ft Hornbeam, a 70ft specimen Lime, an 80-year-old Black Mulberry plus various others from the chopper. Despite the whole unsplit plot having 14 direct boundary neighbours, nobody overlooks us. We plan to do as much as possible ourselves. My small niche recruitment business won't survive the pandemic, it's hanging on by a thread now, so this will be my full-time occupation until it's complete. If we play our cards right, we'll be mortgage free and living in our dream home. Anyway, just using this as a means to try to consolidate our excitement. Now to set off on a VERY steep learning curve!

Something I have been wanting to do for a while is see how air tight I have managed to make the house, but without paying £hundreds for an official test. So take one old desk fan. Some bits of wood. A large piece of cardboard and a roll of duct tape. The first thing was just to run the fan on full speed and go around the house looking for leaks. I found a leak under the front door where it was not sealed to the floor properly. A leak in the loft at a tricky detail between the ridge beam and the OSB cladding, and a leak around where the mains comes in and cables go out under the floor. All fixed with a bit more tape and detailing. So now I have a house where there is no perceivable leaks coming in anywhere. The flow going out of the fan seems very small, and it's certainly holding a good pressure (if you open a door you can feel the rush of air enter, and hear the fan note change as it is no longer working hard) Time to try and measure something? Firstly the pressure. Normally an air tightness test is done at 50Pa. It was only when I looked up the conversion I realised that's a tiny pressure, about 2mm water gauge. So I set up my manometer, one side connected to "outside" the other side vented to the room. It's very hard to accurately measure 2mm on a U tube manometer, but I am sure it was somewhere between 2 and 3mm. So in the right order. How to measure the airflow? Simple. Just measure the air flow rate through the fan. Well my little anemometer would not register the wind speed entering the fan, it was too low to get it's impeller turning. So I had to do something to increase, the airflow. Decrease the area, AKA the "flower pot" principle. I didn't have a 15" flower pot, so I made one. The hole in the "top" is 110mm (because a bit of drain pipe was handy to draw around) Now the air flow was high enough to measure. 2.9 metres per second. A 110mm diameter hole has an area of 0.038 M2 So that gives a volumetric flow of 0.11M3 per second That's 6.6 M3 per minute or 396M3 per hour. Now my house has a volume of 480 M3 So that equates to 0.825 Air changes per hour. I'm actually a little disappointed with that. I had hoped for better. But let's not kid ourselves that this was in any way an accurate measurement. At least it enabled me to find and fix a couple of air leaks, and I am now reasonably certain there are no air leaks of significance. Feel free to tear the method or results to pieces.

An agent I have panicked and called out an official Worcester boiler engineer. He couldn’t fix the fault so just charged the call out fee of ….. £350 !!! Which is insane !