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You can't get a standard policy without declaring that it's not finished and doesn't yet have a completion certificate. Well you can but you probably wouldn't be covered if you tried to claim. Once you declare that the house is still in construction most insurers won't offer you a policy or will offer it at a much higher cost. £1000 sounds quite high though so maybe you can try to get a new self build quote using Protek or similar, or at least get another quote from somewhere else that you can use to bargain with. Be very careful about having moved into the property if you haven't yet applied for the VAT reclaim. It's becoming a lottery in terms of whether HMRC will allow a reclaim more than 3 months after you've moved in when often they deem that the property is habitable and therefore complete. Plenty of info in this thread.

@Miek , Relative to 70°C outputs at 30°C/13.5%, 40°C/32.1%, 50°C/53.0%, 60°C/75.8% for rooms at 20°C and 'ordinary' radiators

that sounds like a leak and not the brickwork getting wet. Sounds like there are no soakers under the edges of the tiles or they aren’t installed properly.

Good news, the council have issued a revised CIL liability letter for the amount I was expecting. Still a WTF letter, but better that it was!

My mate's indoor herb garden is a big success.

If you moved the new steps nearer the stairs and put in a quarter step you will get more height for the Cupboards. HTH Mike

@Moonshine this could be difficult to describe a tony tray was something a bloke called tony came up with? basicaly you will have a vapour control layer on an inner wall surface to prevent moisture entering your wall. So you have built the ground floor and have nice flat walls, perfect for excepting your vcl, then you interrupt this nice flat wall by sticking the ends of all your floor joists into it, this makes it a complete bugger to install your vcl, you will need to tape around all the joist ends poking it in little corners, just imagine a total pain in the bum. So a tony tray is a strip of your chosen vcl that you install horizontaly around the building at joist level so it drops down into the room below and pokes up into the first floor rooms above, you leave it all hanging a bit loose with a few staples to hold it in place. Then when you install your joists you trap this membrane in place and fit your floor, you will be left with a bit of vcl hanging down and a bit poking up, when you come to install the rest of you vcl you can then tape it to the tony tray to bomplete your floor to ceiling vcl. Hope that made sense

Here is the one they designed: The top floor had skeilings so the vents could not go in the corners. Timber frame designer unhelpfully put a strongback where it got in the way. This used 125mm rigid duct. I think the flexi stuff with the manifold boxes would be easier to do.

Like @ProDave we have an ASHP that does heating and DHW, the only problem with an ASHP is the slow heat up time , I have two thermostats, middle one for the normal two of us and bottom one for when we have guests, we also have two immersions (middle and lower) as back up, if all that fails I will boil a kettle ???.

To be off-grid with just wind and PV I'm certain you would also need a generator, just for those times when there's neither wind nor sun. You also need to be prepared to tinker and maintain the systems that provide you with power. I suspect that £12k wouldn't buy much of an off-grid system, TBH, unless you were good at DIY this stuff and happy to put a lot of work in to get everything to work. There are some very successful off-gridders, and it can work fine with care and some management of expectations. Worth having a look at this blog, as the author has probably more experience of living off grid than anyone I know: https://lifeattheendoftheroad.wordpress.com/ IIRC, until he got his hydro systems running, he was still reliant on using a generator, despite having a fairly big wind turbine plus PV panels, and living in a location that's reasonably well-endowed with wind (Raasay).

+1 on the filters - you need good access to these and the take out the heat exchanger to clean it. On the plans: I would do away with ducts to the basement - getting one down there would be more trouble than it's worth All duct runs on the ground floor and first floor have sections that run at right angles to the joists - try to minimise this where you can. The airing cupboard is well located but probably too small. Don't forget you'll have 10+ 75mm pipes that have to meet up in there. It will be like Clapham Junction on steroids If you locate the unit in a warm loft, you've still got to get all those pipes up to it. This might need the space of a HWC alone Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong advocate for MVHR as a cost-effective solution to controlled ventilation. But it need planning in now and you need to give up space to have it

Duct tape looses adhesion over time. Airtightness tape would last longer but is quite expensive. But I digress... I have quite a large MVHR (result of building a large house) Sentinel Kinetic Plus and it has a noise rating of 39dB @ 3m. The plant room is isolated from the neighbouring room by a standard stud wall insulated with rock-wool and a FD30 door and you can only hear it when you open the door. It is mounted on a concrete wall though so there is no vibration transference. Every UVC will have one or two immersion elements (mid and near top of tank) to provide top up heating via electric - ours are wired to a PV diverter which detects exported electricity and uses it to get the tank back up to temp - on cold but bright days we have noticeably more DHW. If you're getting decent levels of insulation and airtightness, then you may find an internal heat source like an ornamental gas fire chucks out an uncomfortable amount of heat. Our previous new build (2001) was just built to regs and running the gas fire there made it too warm very quickly. In our current passive standard house it would drive us outside in minutes. We made provision for a 'fake fireplace' ethanol burner and even the smallest generated too much heat. So now it has cut logs and twinkly fairy lights instead It's good to be green but be wary of those innovations that cost a lot of money both upfront and as a knock on to your build and then have a very long payback time and questionable environmental impact. In my view, always best to design & build an efficient house that has a fundamentally low energy requirement for space heating and has an efficient DHW, lighting etc approach.

Easijoists are lot easier to thread the ducts through than I-Joists An MVHR unit can go in an airing cupboard if it's big enough. Try to locate it centrally in the house so the duct runs are kept short. Remember you will need a condensate drain We used BPC flexi duct. It's typically 75mm in diameter - these can be doubled up where required Rectangular ducts are available and can come insulated, but I think they are more expensive The general consensus is the supply ducts should go in the opposite end of the room to the entrance door (so a flow of fresh air is provided through the room), and extracts located centrally or close to (not immediately above) the main source of moisture The MVHR will be on permanently; there is usually a humidity control in the unit that provides a boost eg during showers. Our en-suite clears within about 5 minutes after a shower

Rainwater is usually stored in a custom underground tank (3000-4000l) or if you have a suitable space you can DIY one using IBCs. Needs to be dark and cold or you get algae growth and risk of legionnaires. Also needs to run off to soak-away when full and needs to filter out leaves and other junk from the supply - which must be from roofs and not ground acos to avoid contamination. It will have dilute bird crap in it though so think if you want that flushing your loos. If you're using it to flush toilets (again, not as simple as it sounds, needs separate plumbing run) then you need a separate gravity fed header tank (usually in loft) that is pumped from the main source and has a mains feed incase the main tank runs dry. Adds up to quite a bit tbh and only gets you a few brownie points on the water usage calculator. Best to get a nice efficient dual flush system for your toilets. Grey water harvesting is even more complicated and needs loads of space.

Either have a ASHP or a gas boiler but not both. For a rarely used gas boiler, you'll need a heating design that will work with both and enable a means of cutting over, have to pay cost of boiler, install (more complex due to a dual system), commissioning, standing daily charge for gas, annual service etc. Hot return is simply running a wider bore (22mm) hot feed in a circuit around the house with individual feeds teeing off as required in either 22mm (shower, bath) or 15mm (sinks). At the end of the run, there is a 15mm return back to the UVC with a pump and either a timer / pipe-stat or in our case connections from PIRs or light switches in each bathroom (also triggers MVHR boost). All hot pipes need to be well insulated and there is a small heat loss of circulating hot water in a loop, but it's likely minimal in practice. When the pump is running (timer / pipe stat or someone has walked into the bathroom) the hot water is close to the tap and does not require a long flow to pull off the cold 'dead leg'. The end user experience is near instant hot water to any tap - most useful for hand washing, showers and baths less so as you're more tolerant to the 'heating up' delay. There are other ways to achieve similar experience - @Jeremy Harris has impulse heaters near each hot tap or you could use a lower bore run from the hot manifold to the tap (smaller volume of water to 'dead leg'.

Have driven a few all terrain forklifts, none of this type though and they are pretty good for what they can do. The lack of jack legs to help level the machine up is a pain. Glue a spirit level to the top of the dash and don't take any chances.

Mine has a humm from the MVHR and usual boiler noises. Occasional gurgle from the condensate pump (as it's in basement needs pumped up to ground floor).

Depends who you've locked in it and if you used the ball gag or not.

I was thinking something like below, gives approx 600-800mm extra width to the living space, and retains the full height cupboards (kinds off) and larder size. HOWEVER the stairs may need to go over the 'full height' cupboards to get the left to right rise.

But he is only shrinking it slightly. I think. 40% or so. ? Diet? It's very spacious. I think your suggestion makes sense because it gives you a second closed off usable room downstairs. I am not sure about the huge long bench - who will use that? Might a mix involving biggish storage or party sleeping alcoves (which are interchangeable) be a more useful mix? Or could you give another 500mm to the rooms (if there is no head height issue on the bench side of the landing). Might that second void waft all your cooking sausages smells upstairs? Depends crucially on your extractor setup. If you end up taking that out, then I think a bit of juggling may get you a 4th bedroom / hobby room. I also wonder whether the bite out of the corner of the Master for the landing could be squared off, to put that space in the master suite. Would increase utility of the space upstairs, though it may not be strictly needed for the master. Ferdinand

A few considerations. Your electricity meter can be quite far from the house (as noted, many of us have this in an external kiosk / box) but if you're on gas then that needs to be much closer to the house - ours is in a ground box right next to the utility room. Definitely plan to have MVHR inside and preferably in a central location to even out the runs (makes balancing easier), ditto UVCs which can take up quite a bit of space and generate a lot of heat even if well insulated. That said, our plant room ended up in basement under the utility so we broke both those rules we do have a hot return circuit so that minimises the impact of having some long runs to bathrooms. Gas boiler is in there also as is all the power distribution (i.c/ PV and diverter), incoming cold feed etc Can you fit MVHR and UVC in your loft? I recall an installation that @Nickfromwales did that had the UVC side mounted. They are the two bulkiest items.

Our cottage is built facing south west and so traps every last bit of bad weather. And the back door 'gets it' . The last month or so has pushed it beyond its limits. Its developed a curve that would make Beckham proud. Awful innit? Question is how to mend it? The vertical lines are strips of timber are fixed with nails top and bottom. What a silly design for an external door. But then nobody asked me ...? My instinct is to knock the vertical strips of timber all out and make a replacement ply cover for the hole. But it wont take long before the ply starts to delaminate. I'm all out of imagination this morning ....... I need a simple quick temporary fix that'll last until the summer, please.

So many ways ...... just of the top of my head as I’m on lunch brake ! assuming this is inside ? and your not wanting to spend money on it..,.. Orange - infill with some cross bars to a depth that will bring them level with the face of the door (ignoring the bow) the purple are attached to the orange but are longer so that they can be attached to the door face go outside and ram in a bunch of screws to pull the bowed door panels up tight to the orange , purple braces. if you want to make it a bit less draughty staple a bit of roofing paper over the inside before braces. right back to building.

Your new layout is just the same as ours. Works well!

In your last picture ... where will the toilet roll holder go ..??? Bath under the window is fine . Shower needs to be wider than 700 as they feel cramped otherwise.

Fine and cheers - but always better to say it just in case ? .

What i was proposing would keep the 1500mm between the stairwall and the island, as the 600mm full height units would relocate (Exterior wall) and larder would get smaller, and storage put under the quarter turn of the stairs.

Sticks out a mile. Snooker room and beer ? .

"Auxiliary" spaces. Meaning spaces where you do not "live" - non-habitable or circulation or service spaces.

We had catflap in our old bungalow back door which we didn't want. I took the catflap out and fitted a piece if thin plywood on both sides, painted it and it was still fine when we demolished the bungalow fourteen years later.

The vermiculite is used to insulate around the flue so is needed. It's used because it can withstand the high temps that you would get around the flue. Can you get a ladder out and check the top off the stack to see if water has penetrated the seal at the top and is working it's way down.

Oooooo, thats posh. I bought the cheapest one - and cant live without it. I would be a raving looney if our circuits weren't labelled. See if you can go for the absolute minimum , something like switch on (top left) type the label print (top right) cut (left hand white thing). Thats all I do with ours. If you want to throw it, tell me and I'll send you my address

In haste: for the same reasons you give, we considered it, got the answer wrong and this is how we got it wrong. I'll show you how we are solving the issue later to day if I get the time. In brief - keep it all in the heated envelope

You flatten it.make it come up in a wave form.

>Not sure I get this one, other than a joke ] OK. Explanation ? . You have designed your house to incorporate an essentially 10m high void, which requires to be maintained. Cleaning skylights, painting every so often etc. To do that safely you either work from the ground (no good for painting) or find a safe way to work from height, or another solution. Ladders are not considered a safe option for other than the lightest jobs. I would not do anything heavier than empty gutters from a ladder (but I am cautious). Which leaves you with hiring a pro, hiring a means of accessing height safely, a scissor lift, or a portable scaffold tower. That is leaving aside all the outside maintenance - gutters, render etc. It is also leaving aside eg doing your ceilings (esp. cathedral ceilings), plasterboarding, insulating, wiring, and all the other stuff whilst building it. Significant nos of BHers get a scaffold tower during the building process. That seems the practical solution for building and continued maintenance - including safely cleaning your skylights every year or so. A good quality portable scafffold tower would cost approx 1-1.2k new or £500-600 secondhand. Mine was £400 from a BHer for a 5.7m German made tower, and has been used in 2 years for building a car port, rendering a gable end, doing cathedral ceilings, repainting an industrial unit, and is currently doing the ceilings in a small cafe at a gym that i have a small stake in. It is about to be borrowed by my b-i-l to do work on his fascia boards and gutters on his house. To hire one will be £70-100 a week. Mine can be built by 2 people in 90 minutes and dismantles to fit in my estate car. I think it will still fit once I have an extra 2m stage, May seem surprising, but worth considering. "Partial justification" was aimed at the 9m high skylights adding another job to the 27 we can already identify. F

Very I'd warn! Being skylights they'll be magnets for flies in the summer who will leave poo specks on the glass.

Interesting, sounds like you have a site for more than 1 house, (like me) my council charges £85 per sq mtr for CIL times 1.85% for next years inflation. total for 4 houses is £94,000 my personal house is circa £30,000 cil . This I can get exempted. However the council have informed me that a "charge" will be put against the land until the whole of the outstanding CIL has been paid . Also ANY start on ANY part of the site means cil becomes liable, so I cannot start my own house, until I resolve the cil problem, ( I have put the other 3 plots up for sale as self build plots) This is a subject that is NOT to be ignored !! councils are trying every trick to catch builders out and make you PAY so be very careful !! ps if the council put a charge on the land, you cannot raise money, as a lender would have no collateral !! regards, Stephen

Our build sound similar, except 195mm frame. 100mm wood fibre on the outside then render. The frame insulation was originally going to be blown in wood fibre. when the budget got tight we changed to Frametherm 35 insulation in the frame. Hardly any difference in insulation value but a lot cheaper mainly due to being a DIY job vs employing a team with the machine to blow the other stuff in. The building is performing very well, heat loss (not much) matches the calculations, very low heating costs and very long decrement delay.

I was trying to work out what that meant. If there was a gap in the chimney breast, filled with sawdust, I would not be lighting the fire.

I concur that it does sound rather - um - unusual. I understand that @pocster once had a tenant who left items of a similar ilk.

I've got a fireplace app in the car. Can only use it when parked, but it displays a fire on the big screen and turns the heating on, to make things feel cosy.

Like something out of Mad Max. Not sure I would lift a pack of blocks like in the last pic without a change of underwear nearby. Let us know how fast you can drive it!

I would get a sucker-on-with-screw-or-lever one and put it on the shower screen. This is one that has been in a tenanted property for a couple of years so it may be @pocster-proof if he doesn't climb on it. ? eg https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01I98PWD4/ First review sounds just like our hero: Ferdinand

I've got the lesser manual model:

finally an actual justification for buying a Sunamp......................... .....................more shelving for your towels.

You need to be pretty airtight to make it worthwhile, but having lived with mvhr for 18 months, I think the 'heat recovery' part is possibly the lesser of the benefits. Having a controlled directional air flow through the house, constant fresh air into bedrooms and living rooms, and extract from kitchen/utility/bathrooms I think is just great. There's a gentle background noise to ours; just enough to tell when the the humidity sensor has detected our teenage daughters extended shower so I can shout up the stairs in a father-like manner. Our sons bedroom no longer smells like he's keeping ferrets in there. Stuff dries quickly; towels/tea towels, laundry dries over night in the utility room. If I had to live in a house without it now, I'd definitely miss it.