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There was not much in the way of progress from the last entry as we were already close to moving in. The plumbing was completed in the last entry and connecting some final electrical fittings was done soon after. After a decade since putting in outline planning it was time. Our furniture delivery has taken longer than anticipated and we are living with a bean bag for the living room seating and a mattress on the floor for our bed. But we are here. The first few days were spend getting used to living in a new space. As a family four we had spent the last six years living in a relatively small space, it is now great to have a room for each of our children and an extra bathroom. I am pleased with how the house is performing from an energy use point of view. We don’t typically get really high temperatures here and the external average temperature has been about 12c over the last few weeks, the house temperature has remained a comfortable 20c. I have been monitoring our electricity units on a daily basis and we are using between 9 to 10kw which is promising as my hope is that we can go six months or so in the year without heating. The real test will come in the winter as the electricity usage will probably be double, but we plan to make good use of our centrally placed wood burning stove. Once we are furnished, I’ll post some more photos. For the moment just enjoying the new house with the family. The next jobs are: - Ordering decking for a small decked area and for our access ramp - Spreading gravel around the house site - Gardening - Putting more material on the access road - Order some down pipes Thanks for reading.

I have a somewhat vigorous mature Clematis and Wisteria, rambling over a frame dividing the leisure garden from the kitchen garden. This is an exchange from during lock-down with a friend, but I would welcome any further comments before I tackle this. These are a few "high summer" dripping wet piccies from this morning: o This is the type of frame that is under all that greenery; a 2m tall horse fence. And these are the replies from a friend who posts as "Cyclefree" over on http://www.politicalbetting.com/ Thanks in advance for any comments.

So this one has been 10 years in the making, which is when I originally built this extension, and not long after i'd built it, the outdoor bunny became an indoor bunny! So the glorified rabbit hutch has now become the kitchen it was intended to be. Worktops just been installed. Will crack on with tap, dishwasher, hob, and oven later this week. Really pleased with it all, just need to choose some paint, but will sort that in the autumn, as I've got the old kitchen to rip out and the room to bare brick, and floor to replace first!

We only agreed that we would explore the possibility of building our own home in January, and now somehow seem to be well and truly on our way to seeing that happen in the coming year. Very exciting, but also quite daunting. Like most self-builders, I watch episode after episode of Grand Designs, Build the Dream etc, wondering why people fall into the same financial pitfalls almost every time, and more importantly, how we might avoid doing the same. Having found a plot with planning consent pretty much straightaway, we are now making great strides with our potential builder, Dan, who is a passivhaus enthusiast and all round eco-builder. We think we have arrived at the actual design, and will be in touch with the planning department shortly to see if we can have the changes to the original planning consent considered as material minor amendments rather than making a fresh full planning application. We have copied the scale and footprint of the design that won the original planning consent - a rectangular box that is both generously proportioned and an efficient use of space - and are designing in efficiencies where possible to make the best use of our budget. Three weeks ago we went down to the plot for the first time since having completed the purchase to began clearing debris and strimming the long grass. My parents, who live 10 minutes away, just over the border in Devon, gave us a hand. After four days of physical labour we were all absolutely exhausted, but very satisfied with our handiwork (see photos). We also met several of our future neighbours who almost all were absolutely lovely. We had a remote meeting with eco-builder Dan yesterday to discuss timescales and the build method. He proposed that we consider a stick build due to our very tight access (a 50m long driveway to the plot with only 2.2m width and restricted height in places), and to begin next Spring. With the likelihood of a second wave of Covid striking in the winter, and with me working for the NHS, we think that planning the build for the spring is probably sensible. It gives us plenty of time to deal with planning and do some thorough research on the various options for AHSPs, MVHRs, windows, external finishes etc. Below are photos of me, my parents, and my husband Darren, all hard at work. C63ACCAC-732D-438E-A3D4-11048661E3F6.mov IMG_7771.mov

After around 18 months of planning things have finally been moving a lot faster over the last couple of weeks which is great! I'll try to summarise the interesting bits: Type 2 vs. Type 3 Our EPS was installed on a sub-base of 150mm MOT Type 2 and 50mm sharp sand for blinding. Structurally this is absolutely fine, but there was an awful lot of and fro with the foundation designers about if permeable type 3 + grit should actually have been used as specified in the system certificates. I believe the only potential down-side of this approach is the potential for capillary action causing water uptake in the EPS and reduced thermal performance, but, given we upgraded to 300/400mm EPS this shouldn't be a significant concern. Drainage below EPS While it was a challenge with the invert levels (especially with the 400mm EPS) we decided to try and ensure that all drainage went through the sub-base and not through the EPS. This resulted in a redesigning the drainage runs as well as ensuring we use inspection chambers without drops, but it all works in the end, with just small notches being required in the underside of the bottom 100mm of EPS in a couple of isolated locations. "The bend at the foot of the stack should have as large a radius as possible and at least 200mm at the centre line" One warning when putting drainage in. Make sure the correct shallow bends are used! Our building inspector had, in theory, given us a pre-pour approval, but then when he got the drainage photos it was clear that the correct bends hadn't been used for first floor SVP's which he flagged up, so we had no choice but to mine through 300-400mm EPS and change them! Why so much EPS? Given our house design has stepped sides (something to do with street scene according to our architect) this means there are numerous steels and load-bearing walls internally. What this meant in practice for the foundation design was that around 60% of the slab needed reinforcing and would have 250mm concrete and only 200mm EPS. We had a u-value calculation done based on our actual foundation design and as we expected the u-value wasn't great, so we decided to go ahead and upgrade the EPS to 400mm which ensure there is a minimum of 300mm EPS across the while slab. It might have been overkill, but the price to upgrade wasn't that much and our PHPP calculation was already assuming 0.10.

Demolition, site clearance, reduce dig and installation of pre-insulated pipes for ASHP and potential future garden room. The pre-insulated pipe we used in the end was "REHAU RAUTHERMEX 25mm+25mm/111mm DUO PIPE". The ground was luckily fantastic, apart from one area with some roots and a couple of soft spots left over from the demolition. So we managed to avoid the extra 800mm reduced dig that had been specified based on 2 trial holes in the old front garden. At over 200m2, that would have been a lot of muck-away and hardcore..