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It's very moving to read posts like these. When the phrase thats not today's problem as in is used , it puts my own insecurity and stress sharply into perspective. And maybe other peoples too. My experience tells me that it takes a high level of persistent stress and anguish to get to the point where just getting through that day is counted a success. Thanks for posting @lizzie and @Moira Niedzwiecka, I am sure you can count on our continuing support. Have an appropriately modest man-hug. (each) Ian

At the moment I have done stress & am now advancing rapidly on to full nervous breakdown Having suffered nearly 2 years of hostility & harassment from some of our neighbours who we had previously counted among our friends, we commenced our build last January. Just as we had finished the ground works my husband was diagnosed with cancer, inoperable & incurable but he has had some really intensive treatment & we are waiting now to find out if it has been effective and what the next step is. This has meant that I have needed to continue working full time as it is our only income. Along with dealing with illness, financial pressures, a demanding full time job and trying to manage a self build, when I don't really know what I am doing half the time, I am spread pretty thin at the moment. Still, it has given us both something to focus on. However, we have had to adapt and changed our method of building to a closed panel timber frame system. The timber frame company PYC have been great. They pulled our project in really quickly and have been so supportive. My husband really wanted to see the house built & as we may be short of time & I cannot thank them enough. The roofing contractor has not been great & has caused me a lot of sleepless nights over the last couple of weeks. Also the neighbours reported us to planning enforcement saying we had not built to the permission & had built in the wrong place, extended the footprint & built too high. Enforcement were very surprised how accurate our measurements were & wrote back to them saying 'The development as constructed is in accordance with the plans as approved.' I think we are now back on track. The windows arrive on Monday & PYC are coming to fit them & finish the airtightness detailing & a few bits of insulation that could not be completed until watertight. I think I will then be able to breathe again. I think the camaraderie & support on build hub is so helpful. It is stressful & there are times when you just want it all to go away. But there is also excitement & sense of achievement and knowing that lots of you have said it is all worth it in the end. Good luck to everyone!

We've been quoting for MVHR's left right and center these past few weeks and have come to several conclusions: We're confident we can DIY the installation We think we can design the layout of the ducting (for a radial system with semi-rigid ducting) We have no idea why spec's (and therefore costs) being quoted to us vary so immensely (suppliers & units below) Calculations for Whole Dwelling Ventilation Rates (Table 5.1b) Calc 1 (# rooms) 4 bedrooms: 25 l/s = 90 m3/hr Calc 2 (internal floor area) 0.3 l/s/m2 * 184m2 = 55.2 l/s = 198.72 m3/hr Calc 3: (max # inhabitants) 14 * 4 l/s = 201.6 m3/hr (given our plans, we can sleep up to 14 people at peak times like Christmas and Easter) That leaves us with a unit requiring a flow rate of at least ~200m3/hr. Clearly we don't wish for the system to run at 100% due to noise and maintenance, so a unit with a capacity greater than this would be ideal. But is 50, 60 or 70% the best measure? And what pressure differential should be be considering? 50, 100, 150 or 200? There seems to be no standard way to compare these units! I'm an aerospace engineer by trade, so I'm certain that we can go ahead with the installation ourselves as well as the design. Then again, the same profession makes it difficult to select THE unit we should go for without thoroughly understanding that is it indeed the correct specification for us. Another compounding factor appears to be that Genvex is highly recommended in previous posts despite the units purchased by @PeterStarck and @JSHarris being almost double the cost of the units above (~£4k). Is this due to the inbuilt heat pump or combi boilers? or am I missing something? Edit: I should add that the total internal volume of the house is about 586m3, larger than the typical volume per m2 which makes the sizing even more tricky!

Usually not enough pipe to see the print as its repeated every metre, so just get a 15mm olive and see if it's snug or loose.

There are loads of ways of demonstrating compliance, but you often need to do a fair bit of work to track down enough information to keep BC happy. Bear in mind that, as mentioned above, what we loosely refer to as the "building regulations" are really the Approved Documents that suggest some ways that the building regulations may be complied with - the Approved Documents are not the regulations, just guidance, in effect. For example, for structures, then Approved Document Part A gives guidance based on standard details that are known to be OK, but equally you can use very non-standard details (like our passive slab, that sits on load-bearing expanded polystyrene) and show that this meets the regulations themselves. In that case demonstration of compliance with the regulations was by a structural engineer's report, plus the specifications for the EPS, concrete floor and steel reinforcement. When designing light aircraft (a hobby job I had for a time) I constantly had to battle a similar problem. The UK CAA has a set of regulations, and a set of guidance documents, that are exact parallels to the way the building regulation system works, but maybe a couple of orders of magnitude more comprehensive. I regularly had to show that materials and components imported from other countries, that did not have a recognised UK CAA or EASA (the European equivalent of the CAA) approval were OK. Sometimes this was easy - for example AISI material specifications ( the US standard) often had a near-enough direct read across to European or UK standards. An example would be that the common US structural light alloy, 6061-T6, was accepted as being equivalent to the far more common in the UK 6082-T6 alloy. Sometimes I had to go back to basics, and compare tests showing material properties undertaken in another country with tests that would be more normal in the UK. The most challenging job I did was convert all the data for a Hungarian aircraft design (before Hungary was in the EU) into the equivalent UK spec - it involved a fair few hours translating Hungarian to English and convincing a UK CAA surveyor that the materials used were equivalent to UK materials. I doubt that there will be any significant problem if you are importing building materials from anywhere within the EU, as they will almost certainly have some form of specification and certification that can be read across. There are a lot of agreements in place to accept certification from other countries as being equivalent to BBA. For example, the Irish certification scheme, NSAI is almost always accepted as being OK in place of BBA certification (just as well, as our entire house and garage only carries NSAI certification for all the structural materials!). You may need to provide evidence to show things like this, though - our building inspector wasn't aware of the read across from NSAI to BBA, for example, until I pointed it out.

Glad to hear you can have a nice night at the theatre for £80 and that you got a good win on the price match.

Hi Conor - like @ProDave I would suggest the best course of action would be to pressure test the loops. I would expect any damage would have been caused to the exposed pipework at the manifold so I would check that first. Removing the manifold will create you a few issues but I would want to test each loop to a minimum of 4 bar wet pressure and leave it for 24hrs to show any leakage. You may end up digging out some of the pipework near the manifold to extend the existing loops if they were damaged but that is par for the course in this sort of situation.

Hi Conor I have split this post into a new thread as it was not really related to the existing thread you posted it in. My gut feeling is since most UFH uses plastic pipes, it is highly likely the pipes may have been heat damaged where they exit the floor slab into the manifold. A careful examination of that area, and if they look okay a pressure test will confirm their integrity.

My parents in law have a number of wealthy friends - sold their businesses for £10-30 million type of well-off (after years of raking in hundreds of thousands of quid per annum from these businesses). All are retired with huge houses, expensive cars every couple of years, large holiday houses in France, trips all over the world. Yet to a person, all they seem to care about is foreigners, benefits cheats, regulations inconveniencing them ("health and safety gone mad!") and the amount of tax the government "steals" from them. I have a lot of difficulty sitting in the same room hearing them talk about how hard they worked to get where they are, as if every poor person just needed to a work a bit harder to get everything they've had. Oh, and it seems they all read the Daily Wail! I think the problem is that selfishness makes you unhappy. All the research shows that true happiness comes from giving, not getting. If these people spent a bit less time (and money) trying to fill the voids in their own lives with "stuff", and a bit more time trying to make the lives of others better, I'm sure they'd be happier. Not really a conversation you can have with them of course!

I did look at getting a caravan but most I saw were pretty crap and certainly insecure if you wanted to part use them as storage. In the end I'm getting a 50/50 office/storage container for 25+vat/week - decent space for the guys and secure storage for some gear. Delivery is 125 each way