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I am watching the highlights on channel 4 later, so turned the radio off so I don’t hear which Mercedes won!

You are an absolute hero/saint. ”people” as in those ***** I live with. Here it’s “WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO has done x/y/z”. My mother in law is like that with towels.

Is there moving water in the ditch Or does it not go anywhere It is wet most of the year and eventually ends up in the Tamar (so the environment agency tells me).

No,, I shall get the data off when we balance your MVHR.

Don't design your house like an engineer ? Design it to make the most of the plot, views and light and make it work as a house that fits your lifestyle, just because one layout is dysfunctional doesn't mean they all are. I'm all for rational, efficient floor plans but there has to be some delight too, you want to exploit the opportunity you have

SWMBO said the same . Oh sorry , you mean that link ....

OK, I found one thing. The pool has two big LED lights that create a really nice effect. They work off a wireless remote control, but the transformer is just plugged into a normal socket in the plant room. The transformer uses 20W when the lights aren't on. 51W when they are on. So that's around 175kWh a year. I will switch it off and people can flick the switch before they use the pool. It has had an unexpectedly high amount of use this year with lockdown. My wife likes to compare the house to a cruise ship where you can always sit somewhere else and find something else to do. In this analogy, I may be the cruise ship maintenance people! My daughter says the cost of the projector for her endless watching of The Simpsons is totally worth it, but she might try not to turn on all the kitchen lights every time.

Don't you just hate it when you turn the TV on and someone has left it on the news channel and the first words you hear are "Hamilton/Botas has won the xyz GP......". Why can't that start with "and in motoring news..."? At least that would give me time to turn my ears off.

On solid clay with no ditches there aren't many options. If there is no convenient ditch you might propose a storm surge buffering tank/crate system with discharge into the foul water. A soakaway mound (or storm surge buffering tank and soakaway mound) might work if there is some surface permeability, but they can need a large area ideally down hill from the house. You can try not collecting rainwater and design the roof so water shoots off away from the house all around. After all before you build the house rainwater will just be spread on the ground. I think in some countries shooting water off the roof into large soakaways all the way around a house are used. Think the UK rules specify they must be a minimum distance away.

With ours I even argued a soakaway or attenuation was a waste of time and granted permission to dump straight to a ditch.

Already doing that - stairs continue to loft level, and I've got a Velux in the top (cathedral ceiling). There's a ~300mm gap in the middle for the light to come down - should also help with stack effect in summer.

OK, I have put various devices into a spreadsheet depending on either tested consumption or the EU energy label. There are more to add such as ovens and microwave. I still think the most surprising one is that a Sky Q box uses more electricity than a fridge/freezer. I already have accounted for around 11kWh here, I would expect the dehumidifier to be another couple and the various heating pumps to be quite a bit. Device Consumption.xlsx

I have noticed the exact same thing re the use of soap toothpaste etc. At the amount I use it would last three times longer

Thats a lot of power. I recall as a child my dad telling me to turn the lights off behind me...it would do his box in. I never understood what the drama was. Some rooms we had were running 8-10 of those old 80 watt reflector bulbs. I never understood till I got a house and had a bill to pay. As a general approach to reducing usage I think we as a nation don't realise how wasteful we are and how little changes can help. E.g. I use facewash every morning..normally for years three pumps on the thing to get the foam, don't know why it was three but thats what I always done. The penny dropped one day and I used only 1 pump - face clean as normal. But now my face wash lasts three times as long.. hundreds of wee simple changes add up. (Bit of a random story,lol)

Could try something like https://www.amazon.com/CrocSee-CRS-022B-Frequency-Multimeter-Transformer/dp/B07K3S4K9L/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=clamp+on+kwh+meter&qid=1596964572&sr=8-6 (The UK version of it obviously - too lazy to search properly) and clamp it on the wire going to the pool for say a week. That would give you a pretty good idea of average pool use. 200W sounds a lot for an LED system - how big is your kitchen??? Does your dishwasher take hot fill? Most do, and provided you're not on a combi that will give you both better cleaning and reduced electricity consumption at the same time. If you're running the drier every day then depending on the type it might pay you to upgrade - the heat pump versions use a lot less power than older types.

And I complain at our average base load of about 300W I would suggest you turn the pool off completely for 24 hours and measure your base load for that period. That will tell you how much the pool is using.

I thought it time I updated this forum as you were all very helpful coming forward with advice. I bit the bullet and used Potton Homes (Kingspan) to take the project forward. We are nearly at watertight stage but not without significant amounts of trouble and alteration. As soon as Potton have signed off from their participation in the project I will post a more detailed review. Unless things change significantly it wont be a dazzling review and should be of help to others venturing into the world of self build for the first time!

That is trapped. Will have a removable ‘flap’ at 45 degrees inside for maintenance.

Inside roof, Cuprinol Shades is a great product And we are nearly ready for the BBQ tomorrow

First of all, demo & rebuild qualifies for zero rated VAT, so your budget goes 20% further. You also hopefully have a less complicated build experience as it's all going up from scratch. You'll need to quantify the cost of demolition - get standalone quotes plus combined with your groundworks. Have you done an asbestos check yet? If it's not riddled with it then you're hopefully looking at 5-10k to just pull it down and cart away. Put a caravan in the back garden and live in that during the build (provided you can get it out again at the end). Worked for us and saved a lot of money, plus allowed us to be on site continually which also really helps. I built to passive standard, I am also an engineer. I did not bother with certification - it costs money, restricts some of your product choices and is a large waste of time, no-one will ever care and it won't help your resale value (will probably reduce it bizarrely). Get your satisfaction from owing a comfortable, low energy, cheap to run house. My only caveat on the design is including a large garage as part of your likely insulated raft foundation and whether you extend the low temp UFH circuit into it. You will need an airtight door into the garage as while you can get nice insulated garage doors themselves, don't think they'll be airtight. @HerbJ did something similar, MBC timber frame system & insulated slab. From a design pov, it's broadly square which will make it cost efficient to build. Small children quickly become teenagers and having 4 beds sharing one bathroom may be restrictive in future. I'd see if you can squeeze in some more en-suites - those bedrooms are quite large. Maybe drop that 5th bedroom and use for ensuite and the hall facing part as storage. I'd also plan to have that GF study to work as a guest bedroom for your parents should they start to find stairs a challenge - good that you've got a downstairs shower room. Last comment, you only have one GF lounge space - again, when the kids get older they'll want to congregate somewhere - maybe you're planning a summerhouse or similar but if not, you don't always want them needing to use bedrooms as social space.

Is that maybe a back inlet gully with the grating removed? In which case it *should* be trapped, as long as the rodding insert hasn't been removed from it...

Hi we just re roofed our entire house, converted to a warm roof, used 120mm PIR on top of the rafters, then 125mm mineral wool between, at the eaves we joined the cavity insulation to the rafter infill. Our airtight layer is on the inside of the rafters, we used Tyvek Airguard, taped to the inside walls. Most of rooms are up to the roof slope. It was fiddly in places but hopefully worthwhile. You need to invest in the correct tapes. If using a warm roof design, then think about windproofing it by sealing the roof membrane at all laps, and also tape it to the eaves protectors. Loads of good info on the Tyvek website

We have blackout blinds in the bedroom windows and they don't seem to do much to reduce solar gain, TBH. What seems to happen is that the inner pane of glass gets very hot and then continues to release heat for hours after the sun has gone down.

We have a triple glazed roof window in our bathroom and I chose low (32%) solar transmission glazing. As a result we don't have a problem with overheating but it is slightly darker in there in the winter. The room faces ESE.