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No negativity taken at all. To be honest what mostly let's us down is the gym/garage door - It is insulated, and has a "seal" at the bottom, but is by no means a 'passivhaus' rated or designed door. Partly due to the fact that we couldn't find any roller doors which met this standard. And we couldn't have a sectional door overhead, as the MVHR ductwork was in the way. There was also no loft hatch in place at the time of the air test. Albeit the internal loft is sealed, the air tester said it would make a difference, but I don't know if that is true. Being first-timers, we didn't know that typically you can do an air test before everything is boarded/sealed up, to find and remediate leaks, and then do the final one at the end to get the as-is value. Lessons learned for next time, I suppose.

So after three years of planning shenanigans, plenty of back and forth over designs and a house sale that is (hopefully) completing soon, we're finally doing something meaningful on the plot. Last week saw us mark the foundation outlines, set up a few levels and work out a plan of action for clearing the site. First up is removing the leftover brick supports and plastic sheeting from an old summer house/chalet, then on to the the overgrown brambles and finally clearing a tonne of dead wood from years of blown down trees that were cut up and left in place. But the biggest and most precarious job will come when we try to move the tree house my late grandfather built back in 1992. It's stood the test of time, providing many adventures for both myself and my brother, and now our two young boys. The fact that three tress around it that were felled in numerous storms over the past 30-years managed to just miss it is a bloody miracle. So it deserves all the care and attention to move it to a new safe spot, and receive some much needed replacement legs, boards and felt. No idea how we're going to do that though... Next week we hopefully start the dig out, ready for the piles - but the rest of this week will be clearing, laying some hardcore and marking out some of the drainage/utility runs. More to come!

Hi Everyone, I’ve just joined the forum and looking forward picking a few experienced brains regarding my planned all timber framed extension. cheers

Consider you might want a high level alarm/indicator at house, which would require extra core(s) potentially. Always best to run a duct with a rope through in these situations if you can.

Get some 3x2 timber, make a cross brace inside the playhouse to brace it up and lift it with the digger, two large straps around it.

>To be honest what mostly let's us down is the gym/garage door That's not so surprising then, although what is more surprising is that the garage was included inside the thermal envelope at all, at design stage. As a garage you certainly wouldn't and even as a gym, I wouldn't expect it needs to be at the same temperature as the rest of the house. Can a more airtight boundary be made between garage and house - especially around any connector door? While it may not make difference to the bottom line airtightness figure, it may make a big difference for heating efficiency in practice. The thing about needing to know to do 2 tests is something every architect / builder / TF supplier / MVHR supplier _should_ know and convey to you. It's just a shame very few would. But to add to others already did say - very impressive build and such a strong attitude you both carried through it. Not easy to come through it unscathed - I know!

There have been situations recently of private inspection firms going bust, then having to revert to LABC anyway. Personally I have used both and happy with either. LABC probably do more jobs so more likely to know your ground conditions etc if that might be an issue

Well done All the stress behind you The enjoyable bit ahead Good luck

I've had awful problems with them. Egos exceeding their knowledge being the cause. I've always prevailed but it wasn't fun. It was worth maybe £50k. I think mostly people do what they are told, hence they weren't used to, and didn't like, me arguing. Is your builder spending your money or their own if instructed to do anything? I'd say LABC for traditional and simple house extensions, because they are cheaper. Private for anything more complex because they know more / or will discuss.

No, PD as under the height restrictions and less than half the garden etc. With the help of a very friendly SE who is a member here (who I will ask if he minds advising you) it’s on a consolidated base that was a parking space with gravel .

@Bruce The floor area relates to Building Regulations, not Planning. If it’s within 2m of a boundary and under 2.5m high, then it would usually be exempt from Planning.

Yes, since the introduction of the BSA in October 2023.

@mjc55 It's been a topic discussed a few times on the Self Builders forum on Facebook. Mind you, my LABC told me today that "our Building Control Inspectors will carry out inspections, and if you require any clarification the inspectors can provide advice on your project" so perhaps it is a local authority specific change (thankfully not mine).

Definitely the AC, also should lower humidity as it cycles the air, so will feel warmer in theory.

Running cost of electric UFH will be pretty much 4x as much as the A2A. Do some work on the A2A replace if needed. All the hard work had been done it's all ducted etc. 3. Storage heater, you would normally have a storage heater in bedrooms?

House is as you describe about 3kW heat loss at -9. But we also have a garden room attached to the heating system with fan coil. We now run WC mode on an ASHP. I am flowing to the fan coil at the same temperature as UFH as it works pretty well. I have the circulation pump on 24/7 and the fan in the fan coil at min speed all the time also. The house floor is basically used as a buffer for the heat pump. Fan coil gets a flow temp of between 22 and 24 most the time and when the heat pump runs up to about 30. A lot on here haven't bothered with radiators in upstairs bedrooms. But I would treat the gas boiler the same as the a heat pump. As in - Design the radiators for low flow temp same as the floor. Treat as one big single circuit and run weather compensation. The bigger the system volume, the longer the run times. Then you need no fancy controls, no mixers run the whole lot from the boiler pump. Do a system boiler not a heat only boiler, then with a decent boiler you will get a modulating circulation pump, ideally a 4 pipe one or one with external diverter on PDHW, so the boiler runs two flow temperatures. Do not do S or Y plan. Run away from an installer that suggests it. Cycling and short cycling are different, a short cycle will use plenty of energy and little heat to the house, normally in the range of a couple of minutes or less. A cycle is the just the boiler doing capacity control, you have a run time generally a good 10 mins or more. Run time defined by system water capacity and min modulation kW. I would look at Atag boilers also. Out the box WC enabled, even come with the sensor. 3 port diverter valve ready. Just need a temp sensor for the cylinder and a single thermostat timer (ideally from Atag) They work differently from most other boilers, as they slowly ramp up to temp, and you can define the rate of rise in degs per minute. You can get full flow temp instantly if you want. And while your at it, do a heat pump cylinder, 3m² coil, so two options keep flow temp down for full condensation the whole heat period or super quick reheat times.

Short cycling of heat pumps was a real issue, back in the bad old pre-inverter days. The rule of thumb was that greater than 6 start-stop cycles an hour was likely to lead to fatigue failure of copper joints near the compressor due to the start up impulse. I would expect that particular issue isn't much of a concern with a modern ASHP inverter drive, which I would expect to soft start. GSHP are often still on/off relay driven simpler units, I think as noise is less of a concern for them, so they are more likely to still suffer fatigue failure with excessive cycling.

Yes, Turners also provided us with an insulated roof - 150mm, in both the pitched and flat roof sections. They also provided us with the loft roll insulation (which we installed ourselves) in the raised tie truss areas. Double glazing U values vary, as the thickness of the frame contributes slightly - around 1.1 W/m²k.

It’s probably time to bite the bullet and get a planning consultant to submit for you Planning consultants normally run rings at round planners Planners seem to enjoy doing what they are doing to you

Prior to changing to heat pump, I would run the boiler and batch charge the floor instead of weather comp. So basically used a 0.1 hysterisis thermostat, set flow temp to 35, and let the boiler run, until the thermostat hit hit 20.6 (set to 20.5) boiler would shut off, would get about 0.5 Deg overshoot and house would settle to 21. From 9am set the thermostat to 20 until midnight then set to 20.5 to 9am. Boiler generally restarted at midnight, run for as long as need to get house back to 20.5. Generally 1 or 2 starts per day. This method definitely dropped gas usage quite a bit.

Mine uses the following technique: "Well how do I know what I want until I see what you've done? Eh? Answer me that?" I'm afraid I lost it, and answered.... "How do I know what I think until I hear what YOU say? Since you won't tell me what you want until AFTER I've done it, I'm on a proper loser here sweetheart" Silence. Rictus grin. Still married.

The event went really well. We had a lot of positive feedback and some clear next steps. Thanks for the advice and support. I think your idea of a community impact assessment is good @Bozza - we'll use that as a way in to the Parish Council when we see them in December. There's some issue with uploading the jpgs of the consultation boards, so I am going to have to leave it this time and figure out a way to do it when I have a second.

True

It looks quite serious to me. I wouldn't expect a wall to fail by vertical cracking. As suggested above, it has probably been built wrongly in several ways. I would drill drainage holes as a first step in risk reduction. They should be near the bottom. Best is to insert pipes which will act as spouts. That will stop it acting as a dam, and the load from the water will disappear. Because it may not be filled behind with gravel, but with earth, I would add some higher holes too. The holes should be fairly wide, to prevent them just blocking up again. 25mm? It isn't a high wall so any continuing failure will probably be small movements. Do the holes, patch the cracks and keep an eye on it. Otherwise it is best taken down and rebuilt with reinforcement, concrete infill and drainage.

After cutting the aluminium profile to fit, I primed and spray painted them with Tamiya gloss white, giving them plenty of coats. The paint finish turned out really nice. I then used epoxy resin glue to attach them to the cupboard. The glue also seals all along the bottom edge so no more steam or moisture will get to it. Here is the end result.

corrugated

we used medium density block and we went with full fill aAs there was a fire at the German factory where the insulation boards where made and all the major house builders bought the remaining stock I chose to use insulated plasterboard on the external was As I’ve done with the current build Magnetic plaster on the study and children’s bedrooms Wet plaster can have a cold feel to it I run a plastering business and we are still asked for sand and cement + skim on occasion Definitely better for fixing to and similar price to dot and dab

Sit rep, garage door finally arrived, looks good, now I can fill it with my toys, and I made a matching window to the rear 😎

Any advance on 5kW? Going once…..

Can you burn me a copy?