Leaderboard

Greetings! Apologies for the crass title but I am still a kid at heart. ? After a brief delay due to Covid-19 the carpenters were able to attend site and erect our timber frame. Thanks to the accuracy I insisted on and ensured for the coursing blocks the sole plates were a doddle and were done in no time at all although we did have a bit of rain and I had to get the puddle pump out! We used Flight Timber for our timber frame and they have their own lorries with cranes built in and so each stage of the build was delivered by the lorry and then craned in to place. Here’s the ground floor panels arriving. It took them just 2 days to finish all the ground floor external and internal wall panels. The speed of it all is very impressive. Then the posi-joists arrived These took a few days to do but thanks to the 8mm designed deflection and 300mm centres they are rock solid even across the 6.2m spans. It’ll be a bit of a nightmare trying to run MVHR, electrics and plumbing but we won’t have any bounce on the floors! Plus when the sun shines through it creates some lovely lighting effects Next we had a weeks delay as Flight didn’t have any chipboard flooring in stock as they were let down by their suppliers. This was a frustrating delay but with the current material shortages not one that I should really grumble about too much. It was eventually delivered and the chippies got on with laying it and the first floor panel starter plates. And then it was on to the first floor wall panels. These took 2 days to do as well and so within a couple of weeks of starting we had both floors done ready for the attic trusses They were also a couple of days delayed due to Covid-19 but arrive they did They didn’t take long at all to go up and I love the symmetry of them Then it was another week or so getting the roof finished and building the vaulted ceiling in our entrance hall etc and then they were done! It was 18 days on-site from start to finish. Amazing to see. I took some time-lapse footage and you can see the video below: And so we have a superstructure! The roofer is not far behind so my next blog will be about the roof slates and Solar PV array. Thanks for reading and until next time…

Heating has been on for 2 weeks and the cold seems to be a distant memory! I suppose I had better check the gas meter to see how much its costing to keep the house warm..

The ducting can be bought separately from the MVHR unit and can be metal, rigid plastic or flexible plastic. The ducting design can also be serial or manifold. I designed my own system which was a serial, rigid plastic ducting design connected to an expensive Danish compact unit. You can choose what you want.

Angle grinder- use a hoover dust problem sorted. why waste expensive resin? Mortar will be fine

I foamed our insulation boards but also I screw little bits of wood underneath the joists, these would span the joist, to support the boards on each side and resulted in each board being supported by four bits in total. I used a mixture of PIR and glasswool to fill the joists, our boards sat flush with the bottom of the joists, with the bottom exposed to allow the timber to breathe. There are probably other ways of doing it.

Yes, we did this. To be honest, we rarely keep doors closed long enough for it to make much difference. We were a bit worried about noise transfer, so we lined the inside of the aperture with some corrugated sound-absorbing foam (peaks and troughs aligned in direction of air travel). There's very little noise transfer, but I can't honestly say what impact the sound absorbing foam makes.

Looking well cool!

Don't know what happened to my previous post above as it seems to have got included with the one I am quoting from, so repeating here: I've got one but sadly I am unable to "speak up for them" ! In fact may be the poster that contributor Jilly refers to in her post (5th Nov). Yes you will need a thermal store. My wood pellet boiler worked well as long as I was happy to regularly maintain it every 4 weeks (i.e. strip the burner assembly down and lubricate the moving parts) and get used to some of its quirky properties. Add to that the multiplicity of additional controls that I incorporated over the years. Both the installer and the manufacturer have gone bust so there is no chance of finding anyone locally to service it anyway and getting spares would be difficult to obtain now. I suspect mine is not a unique case as I know of others who have (/or are) waited/waiting for the RHI payments to come to an end before pulling out the old boiler and looking at alternatives. Sadly I have reverted to oil which is what we had in the first place but I wanted to be "green" so replaced it with a pellet boiler (we are not on main gas). Now of course I have come to realise that burning wood pellets is not exactly 100% "green" anyway and the notion that it must be, because it consumes renewables (i.e. wood), is false. My advice to the OP Mike 2020 would be not to do what I did and stick to the oil boiler until he sorts out the insulation and draughtproofing, observe the oil consumption for a year or two, and only then decide on the heating system.

Excellent work. Great to have a time lag video. I am not so technically minded. We have just poured our third and final concrete into the ICF above the large steels for sliding doors. Our mono pitch roof starts next week.

No, the PH concept is that all rooms are the same temperature. In the PHPP there is one temperature input data which by default is 20C but which is a variable.

We have wall mounted taps in a single block wall if that helps.

You were too open. Should have perhaps left it as one big room (either bed/office or loung/office), and added in a stud wall later after the build had been signed off.

Thanks all. Overthinking - possible, paranoid, maybe. I have a big soakaway and drainage pipes all prepared, I could just pump any excess water into there. cheers, -Dean

Thats the one. Drill a perfectly vertical hole (7mm) through a block of wood (2 by 2) Attach that block to the wall, and drill the hole for the bar through that hole. (so the hole is perfectly level) Remove the block Repeat three more times Now you have 4 perfectly level holes for you to resin. Pop the threaded bar in , slip the block over the threaded bar again so you can support the threaded bar with the block Now you have four perfectly level threaded bars ready for your sink. How deep to drill? My guess is 100mm. Use a pooter (blower) and vacuum to clear out the dust. Threaded bar about 75-80mm long. Sit back, tea, medals, Brownie points. Tell her you'll get the plumber to connect up the waste and taps soon(ish)

No problem, old bricks are often too hard for concrete screws. I would go with 5x75 screws in plastic plugs. If when you are drilling the bricks crumble or you bust an edge off then you can drill oversize and use resin and 6mm threaded rod.

It'll amount to much the same thing in an airtightness house with MVHR. Heating the supply feed will heat the bedrooms/living rooms first but the hot air will need to travel through the house to get to the bathrooms/kitchen. Putting a heater in a central hallway will heat the air locally, then it will travel to the bathrooms/kitchen and back to the MVHR where most of the heat will be recovered and be distributed to the bedrooms. Get a cheapo plug in heater and experiment if you're unsure.

I have been through the process. Instigated a Stage 1 Complaint over the council's handling of a parking issue. It hinged on them saying I hadn't supplied required evidence with an appeal. I had via emails and recorded delivery. They chose to ignore this and escalated the matter and costs until bailiffs were threatened. This was pre Covid and it was pretty grim dealing with them, receiving faceless letters with no point of contact. I won and got a formal, signed apology but it was pretty stressful and something of a hollow victory. Helped no end having a brother who's a barrister and had worked for an LA in that capacity.