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redone the first relay. is that better @Dan F? thought I'd better post a photo before I do them all in case I've f****d up again. Relay 1 doesn't have the perm live yet as I need to run it from the RCBO.

I entered this thanks to a poke from @MikeSharp01. What @NailBiter is going through now is a journey that we started back in later 2013, with us moving into our new build in Dec 2017, a 3-storey passive-class (almost) house were we live on floors 0+1 and my son has bedsit style area in the warm loft on 2. This is about a quarter of what NB is planning. We've been living in the place for over 6 years, and we are still amazed at how well it has all turned out in terms of performance as built against design expectation, and also in terms of its extreme durability and ease of maintenance. We build on a split plot by selling the other ½ with its 17-19C stone farmhouse. We saved a lot of money by doing a lot of the design, procurement and internal trades ourselves. So the entire process was extremely profitable My rule was only to take on tradework where our standard of build / finish would be at least as good as we could get from local tradesmen, and since we kept a very tight control on compliance and quality, the overall build standard is consistently high. Overall we put in over 3 person-years of equivalent effort. This was a big percentage (effort and therefore saving) of a 230m2 build, though it took us years to recover from putting in this effort and the general strain/stress. Our sort of input just wouldn't dent a 1,200 m2 build. You are going to have to rely on buying in at a realistic commercial rate a far larger percentage of trades and professional services. Also guessing your extended family size, I suspect you have an expectation of a lifestyle, per-person use and general quality of finish that is also on a different level from what most members here aim for. I make this comment with no criticism intended, but more of a level-set from my experience and costs at 2015-2017 prices: my instinct is that you are at least 100% out on your budget expectations. I would strongly suggest that you have the entire project plan and scope independently reviewed and costed by an experienced quantity surveyor: your overall project scope needs to be realistically matched to your finances, as there is not point in running out of cash with a half built project. I have a few technical comments, but I will defer them to later posts.

These were my thoughts exactly. He's actually about 20 years younger than me so I'm surprised he's such a copperphile. I think I'll be insisting on plastic pipe with hep20 from manifold to wet rooms. Copper + manifold seems daft and I'm defo heving a manifold in the plant room next to the UVC.

35 years in the tree business single storey garage extension, probably built on inadequate foundation, cost value £12-15 grand. oak tree value £250,000??? There is actually a scale you can look up to value a tree. arborist report, blame the tree it’s an easy scapegoat. what was there first the tree or the garage 😂 garage should have been designed for its surroundings. conclusion, knock the garage down and build it better, repair garage and move on. prune the tree lightly to try and lesson the water uptake, this is debatable if it actually has any bearing on water uptake, the tree is definitely the cause of the ground shrinkage, but is it the cause of the problem? the actual problem is a building of inadequate design and construction has been built in an area of shrinkable soil leading to the building movement. if the garage hadn’t been built the problem wouldn’t exist. the amount of people I’ve seen who put a £5000 greenhouse under an apple tree, and then moan that the tree drops apples and breaks the glass, then wants the tree cut down. prune the tree and live with some minor cracks. when you can see the neighbours having dinner through the cracks in the house walll then start worrying. this must be bothering you a fair bit though to be at the stage of an engineer and arborist report.

Self adhesive neoprene hvac tape. Stole a few rolls from my mate who installs Daikin vrv systems… you can get it from eBay.

With my 6kW, I just batch charge the floor, I run my ASHP flat out, can run 7 hrs straight no issues. Have a target flow temp of 35, knowing it never get above 33 before the thermostat switches it off. Not the best CoP, good enough, on cheap rate, so still cheaper than gas. Various ways to get around size issues.

Works no problem, I even have 300mm pipe spacing, 100mm concrete and again no issue. But they are a bit of a learning curve. Few things I found through experimenting, you need to be aware of. Changing floor temperature and house is quite a long process (many hours), so a normal thermostat is just rubbish and you get big under and over swings. You really need to use a 0.1 Deg hysterisis thermostat. You cannot use room compensation as the algorithms cannot cope with the long reaction times. Don't bother trying to do temperature setbacks, they generally don't work the way you expect. You cannot switch the heating on at work and hope to have a warm house when you get home (unless you do when you arrive at work). There is zero point zoning, run as a single zone. Two options of how to operate, charge the floor and use like a storage heater, or continuously feed the floor at a low temperature. I have done both and they work equally well. 5 degs difference in flow temp is the difference in the two methods. I am on E7 with ASHP, battery and charge the floor at 33 degs (overnight), for between 7 and 12 hrs depending on outside temp, automated with a timer thermostat. Generally it takes another 12 to 18 hrs to cool enough for the heating to come back on again. The wife was quite shocked the other week when it was near freezing outside (6pm) and I told the heating actually went off at about 10am and was not coming back on until after midnight. You can't do that with 50mm screed.

The Q450 only has one mode and the frost protection works As @JohnMo said, I looked on the app in the cold weather in January to see what it does. I think about 6 or 7% at -5 but I guess depends on humidity levels.

Facebook ‘randomly’ showed me this . Looks interesting … https://cozyhoome.com/products/silicone-thread-seal-tape?variant=48130347630866

I have a pre-heater on my Zehnder unit in France. Without it, in 'standard' mode the unit would shut down if the incoming air drops below around 5°C (there are 3 other modes, including an 'eco' mode that plays with the ventilation rate to switch it on as late as possible. I'd guess that all Zehnders would do the same. I'd rather pay a little extra on the electricity and have the unit working all the time, but you can probably track down some weather data for your area if you want to evaluate roughly how much it would be.

We have the Q450 in a 260sqm house in Devon, we are running at about 75% of building regs flow rate. This is normally about 40% humidity which is fine. The unit goes into a frost protection mode when below freezing, it just reduces air supply by a few percent. The unit is in a cupboard in my sons bedroom which has been soundproofed a bit. The supply vent is louder than the unit.

I live in NE Scotland, we have days at a time at -9 without a preheater (never bothered to install and zero issue. Enthalpy exchangers - we don't have them either - our lowest house humidity hit 37% and we average just over 40% in the heating season. Not sure you really need them.

A lot of solar PV. In simple terms it generates more power than it consumes.

I would approach with these options as required. First get the drains checked. They are a likely culprit and a repair/replacement should reduce effects on the soil. The issues are often linked because tree roots can ruin drains, but I've seen many times a tree isn't causing problems for a long period of time then suddenly it does - this to me indicates the tree has damaged drainage rather than the tree suddenly causing dramatic volume change, even if the weather is unusually dry/wet (this opinion was actually proposed by a correspondent in a recent issue of he IStructE magazine...). Secondly, if the drains are fine and the cracks aren't causing critical damage you could consider installing a root barrier. This will lessen the effect the roots can have on the subsoil supporting the structure. They generally aren't used because they're not infallible, especially for the design life of a habitable structure, but for a garage and to protect a valuable tree it is a good option. Lastly, or in combination, crown reduction can reduce the water demand. This creates ongoing maintenance but done right can keep a tree healthy for longer. Indeed - if I think a tree does need removing I would generally recommend it ideally is done over 2 or 3 years to allow the soils to gradually adjust (although the weather is a bigger factor).

I don't like the earth wire under a fixing screw, should have used the Banjo's and nut and bolted the earth through those.

Of course they can ask... Real question is would it be successful. It obviously depends a lot on the area and demographic of potential buyers. In 2021 a local estate agent said ours could achieve up to 25% premium for the "right buyer", which apparently wasn't unicorn hunting, at least he claimed he'd already had people walking in off the street asking for a passivehaus. That was 3 years ago.

Looks fine to me 👍

Couple of sheets of plywood and I could drive it around the outside of the house. inside it rumbled around nicely on the block n beam. I even lifted a couple of 80kg windows up into place 4m up in the air with it. The windows in this pic

I'm fairly sure it's a certified Passivhaus, I know the architect and build team and it's what they were aiming for. It's one of a small development of three. I can't see it on https://passivehouse-database.org/ yet - certainly would make sense from a sales PoV to have it listed and details included in the advert. Price in this area is largely defined by distance to nearest mainline train station and quality of the local schools. The guide price is in line with the going rate, so on the low side of what it will raise if a PH motivated buyer turns up. EDIT: bit more pre-build info here https://www.adpractice.co.uk/st-albans-passive-houses

Not getting into an argument but the Nudura alignment system and access platform is designed to go on one and four so that you can board(3 board configuration)into the corners with both directions fully supported. Obviously, if you didn't use the platform, it's a moot point but not sure why anyone would advise differently. I know what it says in the manual and got over 100 pours under the belt. Only trying to help for your next pour.

Make sure you locate it below the top of the cylinder so the hot pipe comes out of top of the cylinder and then downwards as soon as possible for at least 150mm. This will form a heat trap and stop a circular flow of heat within the pipe, which slowly make the cylinder cooler.

Plus i am a hep2o user, best kit by far IMO. Only downside of plastic is scratches that can lead to leaks, if your plumber is new to plastic make sure he is aware NO scratches where fittings are used. (I used to tape an oversized piece of pipe over the first 6” of pipe before feeding thro gaps/holes 👍).

Loctite string is favourite at the moment.

Thanks for these tips; I like the idea of redirecting rain water etc - will look into this! Yes, I really want to keep the tree if possible (in fact it was me that instigated the tree preservation order when the first set of cracks appeared in 2019 - my worry even then was that the quickest/cheapest option suggetsed by the insurers would be to fell the tree.) The TPO might of course now be coming back to bite me....

Just looked up the one I had genie 150. working height 6m weight 1000kg. straight up n down lift no slew.

Not really much change although we did lose an area of lawn to parking immediately in front of our house... The only other change is the physical growth of the tree itself. I guess we maybe panicked when we first spotted cracking in 2019 and reported straight to our insurer at that point. They have been monitoring the ground level since early 2021 and movement is slight, hence they are not suggesting any preventative work, other than tree removal. What do others do if they get regular cracking with seasonal movement? Self repair in some way?

If there is a TPO and it is not on your land I don't think that it can be easily removed. If this is just for a garage, do a few cracks matter?

In a word yes to all you propose. I used what appears to be an identical fitting from Screwfix, works fine. To avoid cracking the bricks I put the hole through a T-joint in the mortar and got 3 good fixings in the 3 (almost undamaged) bricks. Most worrying step was cutting to length and fitting the elbow on the inside, bc to get the pipe to run close to the wall I used a Tectite fitting partly buried in the plaster and they are not re-usable. I see no point in insulation through the brickwork, will serve little purpose, in coldest weather you will have it drained down anyway.

In this case it sounds like the tree. A 250 year old oak will have a very wide and significant route system which will draw alot of water. I do feel your pain as I'm sure its impressive and you'll be sorry to see it go.

I used them, or the screwfix equivalent i forget. Did what you suggested, 22mm (or 25mm, i forget) hole with the SDS, hammer in some plastic pipe for sleeving and then insert. The mounting screws are close to the "hole" but it worked just fine I chased the inside, so as soon as it comes into the house i soldered a 90degree and straight down the chase to under the floor where i convert to plastic and take it back to the manifold for isolation. Bit tricky to solder in the chase without melting the sleeve but it worked just fine. No insulation inside the wall, seemed pointless really, i just siliconed outside and foamed the inside.

DHW, I tried various way to be smart, but found letting it sort its self out, worked best. My heating regime is simple Heat house and summer house first. This uses E7 and battery and solar if available, DHW is allowed to heat between 12.30pm and midnight via the ASHP. On a dull day heating DHW tends to be by ASHP, bright day like yesterday all DHW was heated by solar diverter. Solar diverter to DHW only when the battery is charged from solar. This just picks up export via a CT clamp once battery charged.

Yes this is what @TerryEdoes only using Willis heaters. His decrement delay, like yours & ours I suspect, is very low so it matters not that we don't run the thing full time and anyway at some point we will need to put some of the the output into the DHW - which is now going to be a UVC (or some such water filled device) because I cannot get happy, given discussions here and elsewhere, with the Sunamp unit I had originally thought I would use. Talking of DHW I have been wondering how best to control around that. We will have about 6kW of Solar so I am thinking I would want to top the UVC with that. Obviously the ASHP is the best thing to do that with, given the COP, so feed the ASHP with power from solar when the sun shines BUT once the ASHP reaches its max temperature switch over to the immersion heater fed by the Solar to give us some more stored energy.

Quick update (for SAS as much as anyone) - builder has agreed to remove and refit an Ubbink UB47 6" chimney-style vent, with 6" ducting from the unit. If we can minimise the use of (corrugated) flexi, I think we're there - there's only about a 3-4' drop from the vent to the rafters at that point, and less than that horizontally, so it'll be short tubing anyway. The vent tile soudns well weatherproofed so I THINK we may get away without a non-return valve, and I'm just trying to work out if I need a condensation trap or not. Thanks for all the comments confirming the need for more ventilation - that really helped, and I'm now confident we're not going to muck it ALL up! ;o)

I’ve been buying and selling cherry pickers, especially spiders for over 25 years.

I had a scissor lift for a year when I was putting up the shell, whizzing about indoors with it was excellent. I only got rid of it when the ufh went in. sold it for what I paid for it £2500.

Mine is divided into two rooms, so the max span is actually 3.5m! I used 6m 2x7s for the joists with them resting on the interior partition wall.

Worth getting a structural engineer to look at. Without seeing the rest of the house and surrounding site it looks like thermal movement. Often seen on return walls, long panels and at corners. The extension probably has contributed to this as it will have thermal movement which differs from the house brick. I would monitor in the short term. It is unlikely to get worse.

@George good point, I never considered a shear load at the corner, this would explain why the joint hasn’t opened / bowed the outer leaf

The inverter and solar panels are both in the shed. It's a Sunny Boy string inverter, and connected to the house via AC cable. We are lucky enough to still have the old disc electricity meter in the house which runs backwards when we are generating, but not using the electricity.

Misery really loves company. I had to have an ecology survey including bats, newts, etc. together with an aboricultural (tree) survey for my house renovation together with an archaeological report penned by an archaeologist who was on-site whilst all of the foundations were dug - the same archaeologist also did a full report on the structure/design of the house as it was to be added to the heritage asset list - it was built in the 1750s and the conservation area it's in was mentioned in the Domesday book - the land dates back to the Romans as well so I didn't mind the archaeological report to be fair but the total cost of all of the surveys was quite something. OK, so around a year later, I then wanted to demolish a dilapidated garage and replace it with a much larger outbuilding. Despite the fact I had all of the surveys from just over 12 months before, the council demanded that I redo the ecological and the arboricultural ones (no archaelogical survey required, luckily), despite the fact that the earlier reports had found no bats, newts, etc. and the old garage/new outbuilding, were nowhere near any trees. I asked if the previous reports could be "updated" but was told that wasn't an option. The ecologist visited and decided that while he found no evidence of bats, that the old garage, before it was to be demolished, needed to have a bat survey done as there were places where they could easily access the garage, though that would only happen in roosting season. I was told to have another survey to check if bats were using the garage to roost but I'd have to wait as it wasn't the right time of year, delaying me by several months. However, I then repaired the roof/eaves of the garage to be demolished so that if bats did turn up to roost, they wouldn't be able to, obviating the need to conduct a roosting survey (so I thought) - however, I was told that wasn't an option either! Fast forward to roosting season, two people turned up, sat in their car watching for bats to enter/exit the (now fixed) garage roof and eaves, walked around the property a couple of times and left after a couple of hours. Despite it only requiring a tick box to say "Bats present - NO", the report was delayed and took over a month to complete. Money for old rope indeed.

Hello and welcome, as above, search first and if nothing suitable as the question/s ideally with some pics and specifics because subsidence/underpinning etc. has many variables and loads of causes and remedies.

Welcome @Allyzap The forum search is a good start, or you can Google "subsidence site:buildhub.org.uk" for slightly better results. If you want to post something, the "Foundations" sub-forum is probably a good place to start: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/73-foundations

I would take a blend of both. There are a lot of very well versed individuals on this forum, and I for one have zero ‘credentials’ to relate to building a certified passivhaus. However, I recently engaged with a PH certified architect, 25 years of PH design experience, and I got my design in at 88% efficient vs his 87%. He asked me a lot of questions, I gave very robust and reasonable replies, he conceded and the client then changed the MVHR design (well, the entire MEP design) and supplier on my say-so (and agreed to accept they’d lost £1k on the 1st design deposit). A PH certified home builder now builds differently, after 30 years of PH experience, after meeting me and hearing how I have approached creating homes that consider M&E etc and how we’ve integrated things on other clients previous builds. In terms of qualifications, I have a clean driver license, that’s it. But I do have bucketloads of tenacity, a passion for what I do, and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Most of the stuff I’ve learned has come from exchanges here, with invaluable input, argument, reason, and real-life data (there’s a HUGE amount of it here if you want to spend some time digging). One PH certified architect overlooked insulation in the foundations (😮), also didn’t have any clue about MVHR or space heating. Credentials coming out of every orifice, none that they understood or practiced well afaic. 💩 I’d rethink your confidence in ‘all that glitters’, as only a select few turn out to be gold… but I certainly do hope you have some of the best at hand. You’ll need it, as there’s a LOT to correlate and execute correctly at yours.

I don't think the 10M length is a problem. The limits on a side extension under PD appear to be the width, which is up to half the original width of the house. However the issue I see is the proximity to the boundary fence. I think that could be a big issue for planning. With no dimensions it is just a guess but it looks to me the gap between the extension and the boundary fence is tapered and very thin at the bottom end in that drawing. I see an issue with how do you build it, and how do you get access to maintain it. Planners might not be happy with that situation.

As I've said several times, as have others, the pullout isn't a problem but the rotation and aluminium hardness might be. I'm not saying it again and will drop out of the conversation.

Agreed. People have died when balustrades have given way. This must be specified by the balustrade company or a structural engineer.

Looks to me as if Timberlok is specifically for joining wood to wood, hence the long shank. The area of thread is what resists pullout and these have much less than a coach screw. They are not interchangeable. Both will have rated pullout strengths. The head size may also matter. Balutrade supports and fixings have to withstand very high forces from pushing out at the top, and guessing isn't a safe option. It needs prove detailing (balustrade manufacturer) or calculation (SE).

Yes we fitted one (the largest size SK06 114x118cm) in our build just before Christmas and I think its great, although I'm no expert on velux windows. It was heavy, perhaps because of the extra (5 in total) panes of glass. These windows need the additional (BDX I think) fitting kit so the size of the opening needs to be increased by about 10mm but check with Velux for the exact size. We didn't fit the Velux airtight collar, we just taped intello plus to the frame and that seems to be ok.

ICF hidden benefits? Here's a thing.. sometimes rather than comparing each individual element try if you can to look at the design in the round. It's hard to do but just have a look at the house you want to build and trust your intuition.. never be afraid to ask questions at the early esign stage as you are doing. Take a two story house with big open plan spaces on the ground floor and lots of glass... especially looking out to the back garden. When the wind blows it wants to push the house sideways.. we call this lateral stability. If you build a brick / block house then you end up often on the rear elevation with lots of glass with not much length of masonry wall between the glazing panels. You have a series of piers that want to not "topple over" sideways in the plane of the wall.. part of the problem lies in that masonry can't take tension forces that well. When you push a masonry pier sideways you get compression at one side.. and often undesirable tension at the other which can "burst the ball" SE design wise unless you have a lot of load above. If you start to push the amount of glass and fix some of that to the masonry piers you invite the problem where the masonry has to carry the wind pressure /suction loads from the glass.. it can go horribly wrong here as an SE and you then need say to say.. we wind posts etc... you go from hero to zero! In summary masonry is good at carrying vertical loads but not so good when you need to rely on a small length of wall to resist the sideways wind force or suction / pressure loads from glazing. It can / does work well when you have a good length of masonry wall though. Traditionally when faced with this problem we introduce a steel goal post which works to resist the sideways forces, take some of the vertical load and the pressure suction from the glass. We do this lots when folk knock the back out of an existing house. But there is a cost attached.. you need to fix the steel goal post to the rest of the structure and you need often to do some work to the underbuilding.. it gets messy and expensive. Now ICF has hidden advantages that can potentially save loads of cash. Imagine you have a wall with two large glass panels.. 5.0 - 6.0m of glass and 700 - 900 mm of wall each end, 700 -900 mm between the galss panels and say 500 - 700 mm over the top of the glazing.. this 500 - 700 mm could extend up into the second floor (you need to sequence the pour if you do this). The concrete core is just say 150mm thick. You do your ICF wall but around the openings you add a bit of extra reinforcement. Here what you do is to create a concrete portal frame (goal post) all hidden in the wall and in the concrete you are going to pour anyway.. the goal post all for a few extra rebars.. Another gem is that you can sometimes get the extra rebar that form the goal posts hidden in the concrete to resist the pressure / suction loads from the glass. Hope this helps. If you fancy post some drawings and I'm sure we will all chip in with further thoughts.