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Hello all, just introducing myself. I'm in the process of undertaking a barn conversion in rural Wales. Adding a small end extension to the barn part and the other end as a garage. One of the remaining walls is collapsing, so will be renewing that and replacing current tin roof with reclaimed slate. Desire is to make this place highly insulated and as enviro friendly as poss (GSHP/solar etc). I'll be trying to do most everything bar brickwork or at least giving it my best effort as budget is minimal. If nothing else I will make a great labourer/slave/biatch Already finding value in this forum as I didn't knowI could reclaim VAT

James Hardie. Sooooo much cheaper than Cedral, and comes with a 10 year paint G/tee unlike Cedral.

Not raining, so a bit more cladding done. Pleased with the contrast between the cladding and the doors and windows.

Don’t feel that rich

If you feel rich many glass shops will make one for you using low iron glass to reduce the green tint on the edges.

I do know someone who fitted a 'domestic' rotary unit (not sure of make). They really struggled to see anything above 60% efficiency, and no end of tinkering with control settings helped. They had been steered down that route on the basis of the larger air handling capacity of the rotary unit compared to a fixed HE core.

I use access panels on-site sometimes as mad a a dozen on one ceiling So they have to be pretty airtight They are also one hour fire rated (metal) Massive array of sizes I would use one of these and buy a cheap lift ladder separate

A separate aluminium ladder, plus DIY hatch. See my post in this thread: You need to choose a ladder that doesn't oversail the hatch when retracted, so it doesn't foul the hatch - or mount it higher than the loft floor level to provide clearance, or choose one normally intended for a hatch on a vertical wall, which will fold entirely out of the way.

I went for a wall drain partly to keep the drain away from my UFH pipes. I was going to have a floor drain in the very corner but worried the trap could dry out due to heat from the slab. What clinched the wall drain was SWMBO wanting the corner mitred which effectively kicked the floor drain into touch. In an ideal world I'd have had the wall drain at the bottom of the mitred section (but wall drain is wider than the chosen tiles). Tbh I don't think the trap drying out will be an issue considering the time one child spends in the shower. More worried about how often I'll be taking the wall drain cover off to clean hair out of the trap!

You could always cast your own to falls and fit a nice wall drain... Just hope it works! Still might need a screen (s)!

FWIW I went through this decision-making process for our shower room. We (she) wanted a big shower area, and having made a few scale models (complete with 1:50 scale model lady in a bikini in the shower - I kid you not) we (she) settled on a minimum acceptable shower area of 2000mm x 900mm. I made the shower room 2010mm wide, and then had a long, hard think about how to construct the shower area. In the end I chickened out of fitting a wet room former, as I know my tiling is crap, and unlikely to improve (I hate tiling with a passion). I found a local supplier offering a 2000mm x 900mm low profile shower tray (not cheap...) and opted to fit that. I set the tray on a flexible tile adhesive bed (it was one of the very heavy ones, ~70kg) and then fitted 9mm marine ply to the rest of the shower room floor (glued and screwed to death) and had 12mm travertine laid over that. We're very happy with the result. The tray only projects up about 20mm above the travertine and so there is no feeling of stepping up into the shower. I did have to fit the 50mm drain under the floor though, but as this was on the first floor it was reasonably easy. The Gods were with me, too, as the openings in the Posijoists allowed a straight run to the soil pipe stack. Probably of more relevance to your case is the shower bath I fitted at our old house. That had a larger, lower, shower area, and the floor beneath was concrete. I didn't find it too much work to Kango a channel across the floor for the waste pipe, and make a hole under the bath trap. After fitting the waste pipe and testing it, I just fitted floor tiles over the top of the channel. That lasted a bit over 10 years with no sign of any problem. Finally, because I hate tiling, I used AB Building Products Multipanel, both in the bathroom of our old house and in the bathroom and shower room of our new house. I'm dead impressed with this stuff. Far quicker and easier to fit than tiles and no nasty grout to try and keep clean. The only snag with it is that the standard bottom edge seal is complete and utter crap, and should have been binned as an idea years ago. Easy to get around though, just space the lower edge of the panels up by around 4 or 5 mm with tile spacers, then just run sealant into the gap. Let that cure and either run a finishing bead of sealant, or, as I did (I hate cleaning grotty sealant too) fit a PVC trim bedded on clear sealant.

Yes pretty bad here also We had lunch in Sootys and thought we where going to loose the roof

Most expensive trade? Kitchen fitter. He snapped a 3m length of worktop, holed a water pipe, damaged a cupboard door and an island end panel, and cut into the control panel of a brand new Bosch dishwasher with a multi-tool. Thankfully, it was expensive for him not me!?