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Hi all, Have been reading advice here for a while and thought I'd join. Bought my first house 2 years ago (victorian end of terrace), thought it needed some light remodelling. Long story short is turned out to have some major structural issues, fixing these, led to destroying most of the interior structure, and, given I was already recking it I decided I may as well make it future proof at the same time, in the hope that this will make it nice to live in and recoup some costs in the long run. Its now fully insulated with and ASHP, UFH and MVHR. Kitchens in and currently on bathroom. Doing majority of the work myself to make it more affordable. Not a builder by trade, but have learnt a lot from forums, badgering those in the trade, and extensively quizing technical departments. I'll post any questions I have, feel free to message me if anyone is thinking on embarking on something similar.

I've dealt with planning in perhaps 12 councils. Scores of applications. Applications in 10, and also meeting them in working groups in 2 of these. I think they were all behaving honestly. Of course they are people, and some are less competent, organised, modest, strong willed, hard working than others. Some will tend to bend as required by bullying councillors, developers etc. Do they respond to bribes or threats? Not that I have heard. Parish councils are amateurs. They can't be made to go on training courses. Some are there for their own ends, there is no doubt, and will bully and lie and use their position. Most are there for the best of reasons but can be bullied by the former and by the public...and often will leave. Is that corruption? No, but bullying is as bad. Parish councils can't control planning anyway, only advise. Bigger councils have more clout. The elected members are usually also politically linked. You are into the world of lobbying and lunches. Most are doing the best they can. I think it's too easy to assume corruption is behind decisions we don't like. The ones who cast blame are those least likely to put themselves forward for public service.

Sorry to hear you are not satisfied with the service. As an SE myself I write my reports for a particular audience. I could write a report that deals with say complex structural behaviour that is intended to be read by other professionals who would be expected to have a basic knowledge.. even then I would summarise my explanation so it could be understood on a basic level by a lay person... who could be a Judge. When I write a report for a Domestic Client I ensure that I explain not least: 1/ Why I was there... the context of my appointment and the concerns that have lead to my appointment. 2/ What I saw when I arrived (photographs). Who the movers and shakers are.. You the Client / Builder and so on. 3/ What background research I had carried out before I attended site. 4/ What I was able to observe visually. If I take any measurements what were they, sometimes this is not easy as folk have furniture / the garden is full of stuff! Now that sets the scene. The detail: What can I see and also what are folk telling me. Frankly I tend to take everything folk tell me with a pinch of salt! I listen everyone and look at the evidence. Construction disputes are a bit "excited" at times. My report: There is a recognised SE reporting structure which I follow but then adapt for my audience. I'm a guts and all SE with 40 years construction experience under my belt so most of my reports use simple language and I take pride in using simple stupid basic English. I got my inspiration for simple English from Professor Barry Hassletine, who is in my view an exponent of this art of communicating.. and I'm still learning. For example a builder or the NHBC may need to read this. The NHBC are an insurance company so we need to make it simple for them, many builders have a higher level of understanding.. but not all. @ThomasB.. your builder seems a bit streetwise hence bringing in an SE. And here I smell..shite as you probably do! If there is testing required then this should agreed..what needs tested.. the scope and who is going to intepret the results of the testing. Who pays for this? In the round I can see why you may be naffed at the £700.00 but that is not bad for a basic report well written.. but it seems you are not pleased with your SE's command of simple English? If you want to take this further then post the report and more detail.. who is going to front the cost?

The Commissioning chap came round yesterday, checked the system and listened to our tales of woe. He said that the flow temperature was 10oC lower than recommended and the water temp was only at 44oc when it was specified at 50oC. But apart from that, all was okay. After some tweaks to correct the temperatures, he left. The house is warm enough and Dad seemed to listen to his advice re maintaining a fairly constant temperature, rather than trying to turn off things then expecting them to warm up when turned back on. (Even though I had explained the same several times before - but then I'm just his daughter! What would I know........) So we spent £7k, plus a £7.5k grant from the Government, and from start to finish it took from 11th November till 3rd December to install and make it all work satisfactorily. Not really the best advertisment for ASHP's but if it keeps the old folks warm enough and saves some money from the old system, then I'm happy.

That's going to limit your audience a bit I'm afraid. Whilst we're lucky enough to have a number of professionals who keep us on track, this is more where the half-a$$ed amateurs hang out when we're not trying to rectify the last job.

My husband and I moved into our 1960s bungalow two years ago and made the decision to change the layout of the house to have the living area at the back. Having been interested in passivhaus and self-build and have OCD relating to waste, the simple renovation turned into a retrofit project and resulted in removal of gas and the old heating and water system. We’re doing most of the work ourselves. So far we have replaced all windows and doors with triple glazed uPVC, making airtight, and the front two thirds of the house is complete(ish). We’ve insulated the suspended floor and made it airtight as we’ve progressed, started reinsulating the loft after painstakingly adding an airtight membrane, and installed infrared panels and electric instant hot water at the taps/shower (no more waste water!). We’re on the last room (woohoo) and still have MVHR to do once the building work is done and EWI to add after extending the roof overhangs, I’m extremely hopeful it will be before next winter - we were very cold last winter, this year is a little better and improving with every session in the loft. All the decisions have been made after lots of research, which of course has involved scrutinising forum posts and the related advice. We’ve probably done some things over the top using the belt and braces approach and very likely made some mistakes, which may not reveal themselves until we’ve finished! Hey ho. I’ll be happy to share experiences of products and approach, etc.

Build the new house properly insulated and air tight and you won't need heating upstairs.

Send the designer the photo as that's got 3 phases going in and 3 cables coming out of the back going to 3 isolators....looks pretty 3 phaseish to me. SPEN upgraded our transformer last year to 25kva single phase just for us. If that's 50kva single phase for 4 houses then that sounds relatively underrated for an electrified future......unless it's actually a 3 phase unit. Maybe they've got their records wrong!

This is about competancy for designing building regulation compliant work rather than CDM. The new Building Safety Act requires those designing work to be competant. This is really to try and prevent another Grenfell situation and to make sure complex buildings are designed by those who understand them. This however is a house. I presume your architect has done the building regulation drawings and got approval? If so then the design work is done and they were the competant designer. Since you have done two self-builds before I would suggest that you are competant to organise the build using competant contractors. At the end of the job your BCO will ask you to sign a form confirming who were the competant persons - the architect was the designer and you were the contractor. Ultimately unless the whole thing collapses around your ears no-one will be interested in any of this after 12 months. Recent experience suggests that unless you are building an 18 storey block of flats, life is going on very much like it was just with more paperwork to sign.

That sounds very dodgy to me, £700 for 9 lines!!!!!. What tests is he talking about? When we sold my parents house after they passed away the buyer got a survey done and they made unreal assumptions condemning the place, I wrote to the buyer and the surveyor telling them I had lived in the house for some 25 years and was witness to work that had been done and the assumptions were just plain wrong and not worth the paper it was written on (rant over).

Were you there? I’ve found it helpful to be present at inspections as you can discuss the significance of findings and ask pertinent questions. SE charges can vary a lot.

Help ma boab ( Scottish expression for surprise / aghast)! This needs investigating properly. Agree. Send them your marked up photo as I think this will grab their attention. Also send a photo unmarked. See what the NHBC and the manufacturer say first.. let them do some leg work before you get an independant SE involved.. which may not be required... but you may want a second opinion anyway.. will be cheeper for you if the donkey work is done by those who build it and underwrote it. Question is.. that's the bit you can see.. what about the rest that you can't see! Sorry to say it but..

Gas migration, shrinkage, cost, off gassing,thermal bridging through the foil, recyclability, durability, permeability, hydrogen Cyanide gas when burnt. Grenfell.

Yes next step is to get a monitor up there and log in Will update once I’ve sourced a monitor, sorry for the poor explanation, useless with this stuff! But really can’t see it needing all new cameras and NVR at this stage

Be careful, collecting and analysing data can become an illness.

Could it be that vertical timber is helping support the ceiling by hanging that binder from the purlin? Removing it may make the ceiling below start to sag?

Secret. https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/ITAVIS24/table/2024-12-3/2024-12-3/daily The solar sensors are usually pointing directly upwards, so they show less of a peak than your modules will receive, but they do cover the whole sky. There is always some inaccuracy with amateur weather stations, but good enough to get a decent picture.

There is no reason for them to evaporate. Read, read a lot more. Building a house, isn't rocket science. You do one thing at a time step by step. We did ours during COVID, so made it easy to have single trades on site, because it was that or nothing. I revised and made sense of drawing most days, to make things easy for the trades. Using nothing fancy, just PDF editing. This helped us as client, make design decisions easier and ahead of the obvious question coming. Most important job, is being a dog's body tidy up after everyone has gone home, get rid of trip hazards, litter etc. double check what's been done is to your satisfaction. But you are there to answer questions, without them being answered in a timely manner means delay.

I'm not going to discourage you engaging someone to do this for you. However don't assume that they will be good at it, or that you won't. Splitting the job up and getting risk assessments from each trade is a simple start. Even on big projects I tried to do this as the greatest risk was the interfaces between different trades.

The pin on the radiator control valve was indeed stuck! Fixed. Thanks

Air tightness layer, 50mm service battens, plasterboard. Did same treatment on walls and ceilings. Low profile down lights used, where fitted. 50mm also allows the led inverter thing space.

Sometimes the plunger on the trv valve sticks. Try removing the TRV and manually manipulate the plunger, should free up if stuck. Edit: The TRV can be removed without opening the water circuit. Shouldn't require tools.

Not corrupt. Essay may follow.

I've never seen block and beam close up. It's ground bearing slabs all the way near where I'm from. Our first floors are precast hollow core planks. An elephant wouldn't disturb them but I think it's an overkill for a house. I understood that on some clay soils b&b was required due to ground heave etc.

Unless you go and take the grant - then it's mandatory. Pro UFH, can have low flow temps with very little thought about design. Materials wise can be cheap to install. but you could pay an arm and leg to install. Neg UFH, very slow to heat up and cool down once up to temp. So if you have an elevated temp before going to bed you will likely have that temp for sleeping - like it or not. Pro rads, can be cheaper to install, they are more reactive than UFH Neg rads - use wall space. If going for a grant Have a design flow temp of 50+ (most big companies want you do that), design temp in bedrooms as low as allowed, that will allow small radiators in bedrooms. Then switch them off once commissioned and follow what @ProDave says. Then run the system as a single zone. Make sure the install does not include a buffer and the heat pump isn't massively oversized.

@Omnibuswoman you’re orientation isn’t quite right unless your roof is a funny shape? Either way I guess your east facing array is slightly north of east and your west facing array is slightly south of west. That string of figures that Steamy posted show that at 10:00 the sun was circa 70-80 degrees off the east panels and 12.2 degrees above the horizon. At 14:00 the sun was circa 50-60 degrees off the west panels and 12.7 degrees above the horizon. Some 2 hours either side of midday the sun was close to the west panels and slightly higher so if the arrays are equal the west should have produced more at those times. As your west facing array is larger they should definitely have produced slightly more. Houston - I think you have a problem.

If I go to a site and try and work out who the idiot is and fail, then I know it is me.

Thanks @Alan Ambrose understand where you are coming from but as @SBMS says, I think that the gist of it is that the planning officer has discussed with his superior does suggest that this should be OK. I will, of course await the official approval before being 100% convinced.

My makeup: walls - brick and block, 200mm cavity eps blown beads a- 0.15 u value floor - 200mm pir (two layers of 100mm) - 0.09 pitched roof - 304mm posi rafter, cellulose blown insulation with 22mm wood fibre sarking and medite smartply as inner airtight and vapour control - 0.11 u value flat roof - warm roof, 200mm PIR over 225 posi joists with medite smartply again - 0.10 u value SAS aluminium windows and doors average 0.75 Uw value SAS sliders and bifolds average 0.9 Uw value MVHR throughout wall hung floor posi joists with passiv purple around hangers (just in case) aerobarrier throughout target 0.6 ACH ASHP with downstairs UFH. Currently deciding between fancoils upstairs or traditional rads with AC units for cooling. Spent a fair amount of time detailing the above and I think it represents a high performing traditional masonry buildup. Would be wary of things like PIR in your roof. Whilst theoretical u value is 0.11, I doubt this would be achieved unless you’re all over fitting. And even then wood shifts and gaps open up. Opting for things like pumped beads and cellulose designs out any potential issues with workmanship - even the most diligent builder might have a crew on a Friday afternoon that rushed something. You’ll live with that Friday afternoon job forever. Have a look at your thermal junctions as well. Make sure where your roof and walls meet is continuous for example (beads and blown cellulose work well for example here). Check or design your thermal junctions at doors (thermally break across your cavity for eg don’t use concrete fill cavity to sit your doors on. It’ll bridge. ) Learned a lot on last build and have tried to design out my mistakes from last time!

Congratulations! Appreciate @Alan Ambrose’s points but from my experience the conversation between planning officers and planning consultants is fairly reliable. I would say if they’ve indicated they will pass it, your parish council were supportive and you didn’t have any pertinent objections it looks like a reason to celebrate. I remember the feeling, so savour it and get ready for the hard work! 😂

If you clip the cable to the stud it will help, as timber is not as insulative as insulation. I think this is only an issue if you have high loadings through the cables. In the past we had to use 4mm cable for power circuits but it seemed really OTT. Your sparky is the one responsible for this call.

@Jilly I think they both meant the planning departments. My feeling is that Parish Councils are mostly irrelevant i.e. having little influence re planning but I may be wrong.

Despite having fought planners a few times (and won) I have no evidence of corruption but I would call them generally inept, full of self importance and blinkered in their approach. I am sure they are also underfunded which can’t help.

Item 1 on the latest list is complete 😁

Any particular reason for that extra complexity? For less cash you can get a super insulated UVC like OSO SX Electric, with lower heat losses it will perform as well as the mixergy but not need a cloud internet connection or risk going obsolete if the manufacturer turns off their servers. a2a will work fine if you size it correctly - main thing is being comfortable with blown warm air heating rather than something that warms up the fabric of the building. This is a doubly important question if using a2a, as a draughty building will be more susceptible to losing the warm-air heating before it does useful work (vs fabric radiated heat from UFH). And MVHR is best thought of as a solution to solve poor air quality in a highly airtight building.

If you need to ask whether to isolate before removing a cover, there's no question you should isolate before removing the cover.

All done. Bloody hell, suggestions to rip up oak floors, hire all sorts of machinery, all for it to end up taking 15 minutes, and 5 minutes to clean it all up. Barely any dust gets loose if you one-hand the grinder and hold a decent dust extractor right next to the cutter. For anyone else who ever comes across this thread during a Google search, here's what worked for me: 1. Set yourself up with a bit of plastic that you can tape off the room with. Takes about 5 minutes total. That way you can zone out 90% of the room and protect it from dust 2. Remove as much from the room as possible, and open up the top and bottom windows to create an air current 3. Make sure you set up all of your tools to go on the right side of your sealed off area - you don't want to open it up again while this happens. 4. With your vacuum or dust extractor in one hand and the grinder in the other, work at a moderate pace, with the vacuum attachment about 50mm from the cutting dust, and 90% of it will be sucked straight into the bag. 5. Chisel out everything with an SDS, chisel into the cut so as not to blow plaster 6. vacuum up all leftover bits, including the chase, and use a dustpan and brush for the big bits. 7. Leave room for at least 30 mins, then return to vacuum up the rest of the settled dust. A mask is essential. You wouldn't want to do this in a room with carpets, or, I guess, in a room you weren't planning to decorate again, for obvious reasons. The dust increases dramatically if you cut into brick, but then you just go slower so that the vacuum can catch more. It's an easy job, but the dust is definitely a nightmare. I cannot imagine how much you'd produce if you didn't seal off the room and work with an extractor. It would be like a sandstorm.

I painted some tiles (can't remember which tile paint now as it was 25 years ago), I was quite surprised how good it looked afterwards. Just get a small tin and try a bit, you can easily scrape off. Generally, when I use gloss paints, I use a gloss roller (one of those sponge ones), quick to do and gives a smooth finish.

I’d suggest a 1:1:6 mix is about right for aerated. In summer months,I ideally like to wet the top of the course below before bedding out,to kill the initial suction grab much the same way as old school plasterers would.

Looks the the one outside my house. As you have a disabled child, see if you are on a priority list, or if any grants are available.

Hi Richard,haveing lived in Scotland,Peterhead for a short time myself,may I say hello to a lovely side of the country..... Having to cope with a rather heavy need of energy is always a challenging thing...adding usage is even more,while the goal would be reducing energy needs.Imho you have got three options: You try to add panels and storage,where ever you can,maybe you could build a support construction around or on sime sides of the house to have some bifacial's near ground,for ex. east/south or east/west, to cover longer hours of harvest.The second option would be a hybrid system with any other energy producer like wind or water.....The third option and maybe the most interesting and economic way,would be to get together with some neigbours and have a storage system installed which serves all.In this case you could concentrate on producing....and harvesting🤑Best regards Frank

We had a similar email from our architect once we sacked the idiot. they are covering their arses and trying to con you into paying for them during build. Ours wanted to install roof safety systems and a A1 fire protection system as in his view it protected his role as principle designer.

We're at the end of a 1/2 mile long 11kv supply with a dozen or so properties including a couple of farms but I've no idea if that means we got export consent automatically. You can build as big a system as you want if you implement export limitation. That way you can use all the power your system generates but your inverter will throttle its output to limit export to whatever your DNO allows, if you're not using the power

My DNO was fine discussing things and over a couple of days we verbally agreed the limit I then formally applied for. PVGIS will give you hourly forecast generation so you can get a good idea how much you'll generate, for how long and at what time. I suspect you'll be generating a fair wack for quite a few months but only you can guess at how much you'd be able to use

That sounds like a good idea - are they happy for you to chat to them to see whats possible? Yes thats true, but I guess it would only be for a few months of the year? I wouldn't be adverse to getting batteries, but I think the economics of them is poor when you can't charge them cheaply in winter.

If you want to go above 3.68kw potential export to the grid, you need permission from your DNO so you probably want to speak to them to see what they'll allow. Without knowing what they'll allow you'll be guessing at how you should expand. The other thing to consider is if you're going to have circa 9kw of panels all facing the same way you'll end up with a peak of generation over a relatively short period of time. It might take a bit of effort to use much of that without being able to pack that into batteries.

personally would remove the swept T and replace with a 90. Then boss the shower waste directly to the stack using that tailor made spare boss you can see.

A buffer is just an extension of the heating system, it give the system more volume. The heat pump has to run longer to get it from temp A to temp B. Once the return temp of water to the heat pump is at a level to hot for the heat pump, it stops its heating cycle. The circulation pump continues running. When the return temp is within limits again the heat pump starts. There are two ways to manage a buffer. No thermostat Within the period of time from heat pump stop to heat pump start, the heating system draws heat from the buffer, the buffer temp rides up and down within a few degrees of it's set point, the same as the heating system. With thermostat Heat pump heats the buffer to a thermostat set point, this thermostat only managed the buffer temp, this is set hotter than heating system flow temp, works the same as a thermal store. Heating system sucks the heat from the buffer. Buffer is recharged by heat pump it doesn't know or care what the heating system is doing. A bigger buffer gives a longer the run time and longer the off time, less cycles more efficient heat pump operation. Heating system 0.1kW to max HP output, it doesn't care. The heating system is a seperate system, you could have a 10kW heat pump driving a 2kW heating system, with a correctly sized buffer. Down side is slightly high flow temp with the thermostat system, some vessels heat loss also.

Maybe have a good count up of your fingers this evening, just to be sure!

@SteamyTea Ah, that explains it all. ⁉️