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It's been a while since my last blog, but we've not stopped, the days are shorter and the weather skipped autumn🍂 and dived into winter with a few storms and loads of rain. Our windows are budget friendly triple glazed UPVC, and composite doors. The external EPS was sealed at the cill with EPDM airtight tape, the tape has reinforcement in it and can be moulded, it does crease but creates a water tight junction and sticks like the proverbial to the EPS. We created a cheek reveal with an additional layer of 50mm EPS and sealed the upvc frames against this, I then ran a bead of sealant against the face and edge of the EPS giving two seals. Then when clad a third seal. I used soudal air tight foam and I thinks it's LMA sealant, soudal's airtight solution. The winds gave good opportunity to test for air leaks when had several days of 35mph winds. This proved a good test with a smoke pen. The internal frame was sealed with soudal sf40 which adheres very well to the upvc and timber blocking, when cured it is like rubber. The cladding is larch boards in 2 widths 150mm for the bottom layer and 100mm for the top. We finished the top of the windows with a custom palistol coated drip The bottom of the EPS footing was finished with reclaimed slate. Inside we are having a cold roof. We needed to add 25mm pir under the truss cord to satisfy the tightened regulations in Scotland. We tapped the foil boards with foil tape, and the perimeter boards were pushed to touch the wall plate. Then used airtight foam between the PIR and internal IFC wall creating a seal. Under the PIR I used plastic membrane that I spray glued to the PIR, and this draped down the perimeter walls. The under ceiling was battened and counter battened, this created a service void for the cables and not penetrating the loft. The plastic was jointed with EPDM airtight tape on joins and walls. Cables were put inside Flexi conduit that was cut into grooves in the ICF. (All water pipes were run under the slab.) This picture shows the detail for the airtightness and the service void. MVHR ducts (7 plenums ) were run in the loft, and under 400mm of loft roll. The manifolds are also under the loft insulation. I made these airtight using the same EPDM tape. I made gaskets out of the plastic with a circle cutter and stretched it over the plenums, then air tight tape to seal everything to the plastic/ PIR. The walls also needed some IWI to meet the tighter regs, so decided to go with 25mm PIR. This also added another seal for the plastic airtight layer and walls. The poly steel ICF has these metal plates at 150mm ctrs that allow the cladding battens to be secured externally and the plasterboard internally, we used self tapping drywall screws and insulation discs to hold the PIR in place before installing the plasterboard. Picture for detail below. At this stage we've got a large airtight box. Now it's a case of installing the stud work. I lined the plant room with pre painted 12mm OSB, and the bathroom with 18mm OSB ( a Scottish building regs requirement needing the ability for future hand rails etc) Electrics are simple, a few Ethernet points and sockets and spotlights. One pendant over the dining( and if I get my way, and budget allows pool table). The only penetrations from the loft are a light, PV cables, TV aerial, and 4g antenna cables. These are in conduit and sealed both ends. All other cables run in the ceiling void or stud work. I've put a few sensors in the studwork for future Arduino projects to accompany the in slab sensors. The plant room is compact, and work in progress. The PV is up and running and to date produced just shy of 300KwH in 5 winter weeks With the first fix complete it was time to plasterboard, we got 80 boards delivered Wednesday midday, just as storm Babet hit, it was too windy to bring them in, I tried, I failed so it had to stay outside 😭, covered in plastic, tarpaulins, scaffold boards and the obligatory ratchet straps. 3 days of constant 35mph gusting 50mph gave opportunities to check for airtightness. I managed to install the flush shower tray during this downtime. Once the storm blew though we got the boards inside and cracked on, the open plan lounge, diner, kitchen was boarded first and as soon as it was complete I skimmed the ceiling, 11 boards was too big for me and my tennis elbow, that coupled with not plastering anything for several years. I split the room in two and used several layers of scrim tape to plaster up to, then remove the scrim tape and skim the 2nd part. It worked well, and it's painted and the join is seamless. The next few days we mixed it up skimming in the morning and boarding in the afternoon for the next day. Today is day 182 of the build, this is basically from the cleared site that was down to rock with the pecking already done. Currently the house is fully skimmed, most of the ceilings have been primed and painted white and we started the kitchen install today. All the bathroom is here waiting to be installed, and some appliances are here most arriving this week. This has been pretty much 7 days a week, with only around 12 to 18 days off to earn some money and pay off some labour debts. We're hoping to move in, in 2 weeks with a working bathroom and kitchen 🤞, the static has now reverted to ice box during the night🥶

Apart from the “picture from the mound” timelapse blog entry, there’s not been much of an update since mid September 2022. So, get your preferred hot drink (maybe a SteamyTea), and settle back for the next instalment. Where were we? SWMBO was still in recovery from her foot infection - you remember? The one that might have killed her? The second floor ICF had been installed, and the concrete poured. I’m still going to spare you any pictures of the foot, but here is a concrete pump truck instead. So, next on the list - a roof please. But before that, the final steel beams had to be installed [FX - thumbs twiddling in the foreground and whistling can be heard as we wait for the steelworker once again], but it wasn’t too long a wait, and by mid October 2022 we had the beams installed. In late October and early November I set to work with the ground worker to do some backfilling, and of course on the days I chose to have the digger onsite, Cornwall delivered some of its traditional autumnal weather so any attempt to properly compact anything was nigh on futile. In the meantime, more joists, endless sheets of T&G OSB, vapour barrier, 160mm deep sheets of PIR insulation, and some of the biggest screws are readied for ordering. The joists arrived in and in early December I had my supervisor and client (SWMBO) back on site 🙂, and she has graduated to being a mountain goat. She now refers to the site as her "happy place", even though we have a strong suspicion that the infection was started by a visit to a local beach. By mid April, with help from some now local family members, we’d installed the roof joists, and in mid May we were ready to start boardin’, vapour barrierin’, and insulatin’. The GRP was installed in mid July 2022 (by others). I’d also been readying the Great West Wall (GWW) to have the triple glazed sliding doors and windows installed (by others), and this took place in mid August, just in time for my significant birthday. There were some fitting errors, but I have to take my hat off to the installation company, they have been back to rectify their work, and have supported me with making the suppliers change some of the sliding door fittings as they were just not correct despite their protestations. In October, we had the mains electric and meter moved from their temporary location to inside the house. Over the ensuing autumn and winter months, we’ve been installing some of the final internal partition walls, running water pipes, installing more insulation around the GWW windows, and recently started on the ventilation ducting following some core drilling being undertaken (Tip: always ask for a hole to be drilled that is about 10mm bigger than you need - expanding foam is your friend. I donate my scar tissue to you all 😂) In December, I got made redundant. No worries, this may actually be a blessing in disguise. Next up on the list: Finish ventilation system Finish insulating the GWW Finish backfilling Electrics Floors Walls ASHP and HWC Kitchen Bathrooms The remaining plumbing Outer wall coverings But, in the meantime, we have the small matter of our daughter’s wedding. DOES SHE NOT KNOW WE’RE TRYING TO BUILD A HOUSE!? (Time to end: 2 years 🙂 )

In my topic Modelling the "Chunk" Heating of a Passive Slab, I discussed how I used a heat flow model to predict how my MBC WarmSlab heated by UFH + Willis heater would perform. What I wanted to do in this post is to provide a “6 years on” retrospective of how the house and slab have performed as built based on actual data that I’ve logged during this period, and to provide some general conclusions. In this, I assumed 15 mm UFH pipework, but we actually used 16mm PEX-Al-PEX pipework with an internal diameter of ~13mm. At a nominal flow rate of 1 m/s, say, my three pipe loops in parallel have an aggregate flow rate of 0.4l/s or 1.4 m³/hr. At this flow, a 3kW (2.88 kW measured) heater will raise this stream temperature by 1.7 °C. However, when I commissioned the system, I found setting the Gunfoss manifold pump at a high setting (roughly equivalent to this flow rate) gave a very noticeable circulation noise in the adjacent toilet, so I tried the pump on its lower settings and found that the flow was almost inaudible on lowest one with in to return delta at the manifold still only about 5°C, so I stayed with this. The actual as measured delta for two loops of 4.9°C and the third slightly shorter loop of 4.1°C (close enough not to bother balancing the flows out). This corresponds to an actual flow nearer to 0.4 m/s or 0.56 m³/hr by volume. When scaled to adjust for this lower flow rate, the actual measured temperature profiles are pretty close to those modelled. I measured the actual Willis heater’s heat input as 2.88kW. In analysing the actual slab heating rates, I found that this raises the overall slab temperature by some 0.45 °C / hour after the initial start up. Plugging typical specific heat and density figures for the concrete, this is empirically equivalent to heating 25 tonne of concrete (Cmass = Ewillis/ΔT/SIconcrete = 2.88*3600/0.45/0.9 kg), or 10.6 m³ concrete by volume (23000/2400 m³). In the case where the Willis provides heating for the full 7 hour off-peak window (just over 20 kWh), at the end of this heating period the flow input to the slab is +9 °C above the initial slab temperature and the flow return is +4.4 °C. The temperature of the concrete immediately in contact with the pipe will follow this same gradient, with this temperature excess decaying radially away from the pipe centres. By the end of this heating window at the slab surface, there is barely a noticeable difference in the measured temperature of the floor above the out and return UFH pipe runs (perhaps 1°C). These temperatures and gradients are also comfortably within the reinforced concrete’s design parameters. As soon as the Willis is turned off, the internal temperature gradients start to flatten and any unevenness redistributed across the slab; the rebar reinforcing has a thermal conductivity 60 × that of concrete and this accelerates this, so that within an hour or so of the heating turning off, the overall slab is left about 3.1 °C warmer than at the heating start time (actually about 10% less than this, as the slab has already started to dump heat into airspace). In my original modelling topic, I mentioned that my passive slab has ~73m² of concrete 0.1m thick (~ 17½ tonne of concrete with another ~10 tonne of perimeter beams, cross bracing and steel rebar, with the UFH runs laid in 3 × ~100m long standard “doubled back” spirals (common to most UFH designs) on ~150mm centres and roughly 50 mm below the slab surface. (Actually only 75% of the slab is covered by the UFH runs, because of the need to avoid proximity to ring beams, partition walls, areas under fitted cupboard areas, etc..) Nonetheless, this empirical 25 tonne figure is still consistent with the total volumetric 27½ total estimate if we assume that the rebar is effective at spreading heat through the wider slab over this multiple hour timescale. In conclusion, based on this modelling and observation: First recall our context: our house is near passive in class with a lot of internal specific heat capacity. We only need about 1kW overall heater input in the coldest winter months to maintain overall heat balance, e.g. either by a resistive heater such as a Willis or an ASHP. IMO, there are two extreme approaches to house heating: (i) “agile” tracking of occupancy patterns so the living spaces are only heated when and where occupied; (ii) a 24×7 constant comfortable temperature everywhere within the living space. Our warm slab design is very much optimised for this second case, and our slab supplier did a good job in designing an UFH layout to match the slab characteristics to this The slab is covered in “doubled back” spirals with each loop using up a full 100m roll spaced on roughly 150 - 200 centres (and avoiding partition walls and cupboarded areas) so that each heats roughly 15 - 20 m² slab. In our case three loops were enough, and there was no advantage in trying to squeeze in a fourth. Our 3 loops will happily take up 3 kW heat input. Circulation speeds between ⅓ - 1 m/s seem to work well, with the only real difference being the slower the flow speed, the higher the delta between in and return temperatures. The slab does just as its trade name suggests: it can be treated as a huge low temperature thermal store, but because of its extremely high thermal inertia, one that is not rapidly responsive to heat input. In our case, a heat input of 3 kW input will only raise the slab temperature by 1°C over a couple of hours, and radiating 1kW will drop the slab by only 1°C over roughly six hours. In a true passive class house, one key to heating economy is the high level of thermal insulation coupled with a substantial internal heat capacity. Trying to drive such a house in an agile manner is a fruitless exercise, so forget the traditional having room-specific thermostat control; forget having traditional time-of-day heat profiles. It is far easier to treat all ground-floor rooms as a single thermal zone to be kept at a roughly constant temperature. In my view, using a resistive heating approach (such as a Wills heater) as well as an ASHP can both work well. In this second case something like the 5kW Panasonic Aquarea ASHP would be a good fit as it uses a modulated inverter compressor so it can heat the slab directly without needing a buffer tank. The choice is a trade-off between running costs vs. installation costs. In our case, switching from a Willis to this type of ASHP would save me about £600 p.a, in electricity cost, so I would really need to do the install for a net £ 3-4K to make the investment case feasible. However I would like to defer this discussion to a separate thread because there are other issues that such an approach would need to address.

Around 11 months ago, we started from a stripped site, the treatment plant was in and running the cabins / static so drainage just required connecting up. we had to wait for the warrant to be amended (change to the certificate of deign) this held us back ma month or so until the BCO just said "get on with it, we can sort that later"- top guy!! If we had waited for the amended certificate of design we would still be building, it took him 5 months to get it to us. I've documented most of the build in blogs on here, partly to have a refence to remember the process, partly as pay back to Buildhub for the inspiration and pointers in the planning / design stage. I'm so glad I spent hours looking at and reading others blogs that we made the switch to ICF. I'm convinced there is no way I would have achieved the efficiency I have for the money spent. Budget was always tight, so some decisions have been made due to Hobson's choice, leading to triple glazed UPVC windows and composite doors. The front door, south facing GRP Composite with low threshold and a slim glass panel leaks with 40mph winds, this leaks through the gazing cassette, and the low threshold. as I know we wont use this door much, we went for a slam lock, another mistake, it blows a gale through. To be fair the company are re making, I'm just not sure if there re-making the panel or the full door, I did ask, if they were remaking the full door to change to standard handle and lock, so it can be adjusted to minimise the drafts. we will see what happens, a full door replacement will mean taking off the reveals in side so a complete PITA, but worth it for no drafts. We had the airtightness test carried out, and they used the front door for the blower door to mitigate any issues with that door. I had put caps in the MVHR. so he just cracked on, the back door is not perfect again due to the low threshold. He didn't seal the blower door to the frame, not sure what the procedure is but seemed a little frustrating. We achieved 0.88 Air permeability, which I'm very happy with, budget wise we didn't spend hundreds on airtightness tape, just designed good solutions, and the doors leak a bit . Our As built EPC came back at A103 , with a possibility of A128.. the report say A105 if we install Thermal Solar EST saving of £40 pa , and A128 with a wind turbine EST saving of £1100 pa, so pretty much the best we could hit. To finish we need to sort out some paths outside, ramp, and the rain water pond, but other than the second bedroom need decorating the house is done. Next week we will hopefully get building control around to see what he 'needs' to get a completion cert. I'm hoping for some flexibility on the ramp and pond, . We need the VAT refund to pay for this stuff. We are working our way through the invoices, but we built for less the 90K and we still need the VAT refund. I've enjoyed it all, and we both agree we have a home. Good luck to all of you with your current builds.

Finally made a start in earnest. The original plan was to stick build on site, but the cabin builds opened my eyes to the winds up here, and established concern for getting the house airtight. I priced ICF, and although the costs are higher in the begining I think, I can self build for similar money, but get a far superior product. This is a budget build, most of the nice to haves have been dropped. The only redline is we want to ensure this is future proof, so all on the ground floor. Around 12 months ago the area where the house is going was stripped down to bedrock. The initial plan was a DIY insulated raft, but the move to ICF opened up a more traditional strip footing using the ICF. Back in February we hired a 360 with a pecker to break out some of the rock to lower the NE corner, as the bed rock slopes to the SW. Bed rock exposed looking East NE corner We broke out and removed around 400mm of rock along the W and N elevations, the break out got shallower towards the SW corner. The main aim here was to reduce the height of the house on the SW corner, we will be bringing the ground level up to minimise the impact. We also need to strip some rock of the slab area to allow for the 300mm insulation. This week, thanks to an understanding BC officer, ( still waiting for the revised certificate of design to change the building warrant, but he's happy for me to proceed with the old warrant for the time being👍❤️). We made a start preparing. The plan is to shutter the strip foundation. First step was to level the strip with layers of compacted 40mm to dust stone, and also level the bedrock for the slab. Ready for stone looking W Starting on the North trench we barrow in the stone and compact. Adding more stone in layers and compacting, the backhoe loader was doing some of the grunt, but the leveling was all by hand, 100mm layers at time. looking NE Took the decision to build the sub slab to what will be the same level as the strip footing, this allows for the Radon barrier to be put under the strip up the side and then on top of this sub slab, then all services will be above the radon barrier and below the insulation in another layer of compacted hardcore. The main reason for, what will be a fiddly taks of having the radon barrier under the strip, is that the strip footing has 288 starter rebars and sealing these penetrations would be worse. Once the strip is poured we will finish of the back filling and install the radon barrier. More stone looking East So 5 days in me and Mandy have moved levelled and compacted 70T on 40mm to dust. And around 5 ton of quarry dust, this is used up here as an alternative to grit sand for blinding and pipe bedding. The shuttering is 150*50 timber that will be leveled then the radon barrier folded to form a tray, later to be joined to the slab. I'm going to use 6mm threaded rods to link the two shutters together, preventing any spread when the concrete is poured. Hopefully next week the ICF arrives, in I've got a 10 hour round trip to collect rebar. For a tank of fuel and a days driving I can save around £500 collecting from Central rebar in Aloa. For info, £930+ / ton direct Inverness suppliers (100miles away) we're after between 1250 & 1500/ton plus delivery charges ranging from £200 / £350 plus vat.

Since starting this build we've had a handy mound of "spoil" from which I have been taking regular photos from the same(ish) spot to remind me of progress during the "down" days which we self builders all suffer from time to time. I thought I'd share this with you. It starts in May 2021, when the major groundworks had been underway for a few weeks and goes up until April this year - about 2 years. First a picture of the mound of spoil for reference: and now the "timelapse": Since that last picture we've been putting on the warm roof structure, so any further photos from this vantage point don't show much sign of progress. so until something significant happens in August this view won't change much

So to recap: we bought an old house with a bit of land at the back. We tried to get permission to knock it down and do a new build passiv house in the backland. The council said no no no, we lost an appeal, then put in ridiculous plans for a massive extension with basement on the existing old house, plus a large stable block on the back land where we wanted the new build. Council said yes yes yes, thats fine, please go ahead.... Having never built anything major before, we hired a 9 ton digger and a small tipper truck and set about digging a hole. The basement would start over 4m back from the existing rear wall of the old house and as long as we graded the excavation where possible and used plenty of sheet pilings, it would work out fine. To get rid of the clay soil, we just spread it out on the land at the back saving quite a bit on grab lorries. We originally planned for a four week hire of the plant, but we ended up taking about six weeks. Prior to digging I made a few test trenches to check the soil and water level. We also found an in depth soil survey from a major development next door. Once we had the hole dug in the right place, and sorted some temporary drainage, we set about levelling and pouring the basement slab. This was designed to be 300mm concrete on top of a tanking membrane, with tons of rebar. We just followed the drawings and building control came a few times to check it all. The waterproofing was overseen at each stage so we could get the warranty as well. We poured the slab in winter of 2022 and had a few cancellations due to frost. In the end we made an insulated temporary roof over the basement and used gas heaters the night before the pour just to be safe. The concrete went in very well, i think it was two loads of waterproof concrete, then we could start on the nudura walls. The hardest part of this section was wiring all the rebar together and getting the 20mm OD L bars in place which connected the slab to the nudura walls. These were doubled up all around the perimeter every 8" and a pig to get in amongst all the rebar mesh. Assembling the nudura walls was very straight forward, once i got my head around the idea of a common seam - where due to the plan measurements, the nudura blocks needed cutting and joining together. We had done the nudura course and the rep was very helpful with all my questions. Once built up, building control came out again and we ordered another three loads of water proof concrete for the walls. Where the walls joined the slab, we used an expanding waterbar and kept it dry until we poured the walls. We hired a concrete pump for the pour and because it was a basement we just used the nudura walkways and scaffolding to allow the pump hose to get round the whole perimeter. I was concerned about blow outs- especially on the first load dropping down into the bottom of the wall so I over did the shuttering on the outside of the nudura - including 220mm x 50mm floor joists screwed all around the perimeter outer edge, plus lots of OSB shuttering at all the weak points. It all worked well and it was a major relief to get the walls filled up.

Just a very short blog to show the windy roost ( not fully finished, is a self build ever?) plant room. I'm quite chuffed I got it all to fit, and I think it's quite neat. It's full DIY and house's the UVC and combined buffer, UFH manifold, MVHR unit, inverter, consumer unit, network hub. All in 4M³. Plus storage to come. Yes, the printer doesn't fit, but it's coming to its end of life so that's all it's getting for now. Jobs to do: Ceiling Insulate MVHR ducting / box in Shelves on the left hand side Clothes Airer ( a Scottish requirement to have one)

My initial plans were to have rainwater harvesting, build hub taught me no.. so with that scrapped I needed an alternative, soakaways are difficult due to bed rock levels. In addition to this we have lots of run off on the croft, and the track to the house floods. We have already installed a pond for the ducks and this has a large berm to the back and sides so that the runoff is held back and slowly soaks away, but this winter has proved it overflows regularly, that's around 3000L extra. So the plan was to install an overflow pipe from this pond to a new larger pond. The larger pond also acting as rainwater run off capture. The larger pond will have 2 levels, a pond and then an extra layer to act as a overflow that can evaporate and or be pumped to the rubble drain in drier times. I got a big carried away with the backhoe and ended up with around 10M x 8M and over a meter deep. The overflow capacity will be around 30k - 35k L. We had to peck out some of the rock to get depth, and at the front used "as dug" rock from the quarry to form a rough and rugged stone wall, quite in keeping in Caithness. Time will heal the scars and soften the edges with planting. Due to the two levels we came up with the idea of hiding the liner under some camo net, that we intend to plant up in time. Not sure how this will stand the test of time. From the house the rainwater enters a rock filter, an idea loosely based on a post from @ToughButterCup- thanks. From the rock filter we have created a little stream that the rainwater will flow down and into the pond. In addition to this we have a pump that will take the water via a home made skimmer from the pond and filter the water from the pond through the rock filter and stream constantly. This also has a diverter to pump the water past the house and into the field to reduce the overflow capacity in drier times. This is the rock filter, and some of the pipework yet to be buried. Getting to this stage ticked a box for building control as we now handle our run off. We got our completion certificate on the house this week, yeah. There are some things to finish, the second bedroom needs decorating and trim work. And a few small jobs here and there, but in general the house is decorated, and fully functioning. We started the build in earnest around May 23 I think, so quite pleased with the effort and timescale we achieved. It's was built by me and Mandy with the odd person helping with concrete pours. 3 months in summer were busy with the cabin rentals that saw Mandy spend 3-4 hrs a day turning them around for the endless NC500 travellers.😁 We're embarking on the VAT reclaim soon. To summarise the build: 89sqm True bungalow Floor 0.094U (300mm EPs 120mm concrete) Walls 0.139U ICF with 50mm EWI and 25mm PIR IWI Cold roof 0.1U 25MM PIR 400MM mineral wool. UPVC triple glazed windows and composite doors MVHR, 4kW PV in roof, 5kW ASHP, UFH. EPC A103, Airtightness 0.83 ACH.

The timber frame arrived this week from the factory. There was a large crane onsite all day yesterday. Got decent weather, no wind and only a bit wet in the morning. The lads have the walls fully up, 1st floor done and a ridge beam in place. They are starting cutting the roof today as that is built in situ. Really surprising walking around the rooms after looking at drawings for years! The window openings are a LOT bigger than I ever thought though, huge would be the description! Had a lodger arrive already - neighbours cat performing 1st inspection! Thanks to everyone on BuildHub for their support, advice and inspiration from their own experiences to help me get this project off the ground after SO long!!

After my horrid time earlier this year I am now going to post something more positive. As of yesterday, I was offered a job, not ideal (is any job ideal), rather than working from home I must go to the office which takes 40mins each way and hubby is disappointed that he will be left on his own all day. That said even with time out for funeral 250 miles away and wet, wet, wet we have progressed. Some pictures. hardcore & binding (take 2 after previous issues) now the expansion foam around the sides The heave protection next then taping next was the rebar here is the pour on top of the rebar - 200mm drying concrete slab with no hint of everything underneath, typical building, lots of expense and nothing to see. the first row of outside blocks added showing the cavity first blocks over DPC with all the rain we have created a bit of a swimming pool It was at this point that we purchased a puddle pump as hubby really didn't like having to kneel and build low in water going up with some windows & doors framed insulation going in joining the existing walls to the new part this is where some of the kitchen cabinets will be hung, so although internal we are using heavier blocks to take any necessary weight On the left hand side you can see part of the existing barn that will be staying. The roof is currently being held up with barrels and wood building from scaffolding is a real milestone, makes it seem like we are getting somewhere. To protect the insulation, we have the original insulation from the barn roof cut up to provide a 'roof' over the cavity. Having made the frames for the remaining to windows these need to be placed in situ for building around. This area will be our front hall and snug. Of course, the front door will only be used by visitors, but we will go through the hall internally to get into the snug. With all the cavities it is smaller than I hoped, but with all the insulation it will be much warmer than our single skin house. Hope you enjoy the pictures, next time I hope to be at lintel and wall plate level, but we would like the weather to improve. Thanks for reading Jill

Day 31 of the build. (this is taken from the day we started shuttering the foundations) The weather up North has been spectacular for about 3 weeks, so we (Mandy and I) pushed to prepare and pour the slab before the weather changed, as I'm sure we will get a few weeks of low pressure, wet changeable weather after this spell. Following on from the foundation ICF walls, I'd already loaded around 20ton of 40mm to dust in a pile the slab area. Sat on the sand blinded radon barrier. Job one was to sort the drainage. I'd posted previously about my plan, and some constructive comments suggested changing my planned route, but with the extra length of run to the drain invert level I would have had to increase the floor height even more. So stuck with my original sketch. We ran string lines to mark the main areas, namely WC, SVP in the plant room, shower, WC and Bath, a need ran the drainage to the locations, as the utility backs onto the plant room I didn't add a drain in here as I'll run through the stud and use the SVP. Once the drainage was in place and is tested. We spread out the hardcore and compacted it. I used 10mm crush and run to bed the drainage and cover the pipes, I also ran ducting at this level, bringing in water, power, treatment plant feed plus some future ducts. To get the hardcore level / flat I used 3m lengths of galvanised conduit set on mortar pads all level to each other and used a 4M ally beam to screed the slab. I compacted the first layer then used another screed pass to fill in any deviations and used this as the level for insulation. I used a combination of 200 mm EPS 70 (50mm sheets and 100mm sheets all layed to stagger the joints, and used foam to seal to the ICF. The top layer was 100mm EPS150 this gives a firm hold for the UFH staples, and a firmer feel to the insulation layer. We plan to use a large shower tray and have this level with the floor, so I made this area sunken with two layers of EPS150 and a layer of 50mm PIR. As we were installing the insulation I installed 2 * 100mm ducts for the ASHP in the second layer of insulation these were only 800mm long, and a duct for cables. I also added flex ducts in the insulation for Hot & Cold services to the kitchen, utility, WC,Shower,bath, all these were cut using a hot knife. Lastly I cut some pipe for floor sensors in the kitchen, lounge, bedrooms and bathroom. The underfloor heating consists of three loops around 95M length, planned using Loop cad. The manifold was plumbed , filled and a pressure gauge to ensure no leaks. We have good water pressure so could pressurise to 6 Bar. ( With the heat ☀️ this rose to 9 bar one day). The above picture also shows K Steel screed rails. I used these to break the slab into smaller bays, and mainly will be under stud walls. The slab will for the foreseeable future be our finished floor, so I wanted to introduce expansion joints and force any cracking to these locations🤞. I also used Tibmix metallic dry shake topper on the concrete, the dry shake should help suppress the fibres and also increase the surface hardness. The pour happend on Friday 16th June, the first 5cube arriving at 8.30. we did the kitchen bay first which needed the 7t 360 to move / place the concrete, then, poured the WC / plant room and utility bay. This was an error, I wanted to pour the lounge next so both bays could be finished at the same time, but under the pressure of the pour took advice to do the awkward section next. This resulted in only a 3rd of the lounge bay having concrete, so this was spread out lower so the next load could fill the bay. By the time the second load arrived, the kitchen and utility bay was ready for power floating. The pan worked well and I had some time to start edging the slab, the rebar didn't allow the power float to get to the edge of the slab. By 13.00 all bays were in and leveled, but not floated, but the sun was very hot, and the kitchen bays was getting hard rapidly, I managed to float this but was struggling to to get a perfect finish. To dry shake makes the surface hard and this was apparent, the lounge and bedroom bays floated better, and to the main the dry shake suppressed a lot of the fibres but there are still some visible. The kitchen bay was rock hard by the time I managed to float again, and although it is fairly flat you can see, but not feel, the path of the power float. I used Setseal 6 as an acrylic sealer, which seals the surface and aids the curing process. By the time we finished the floor was rock hard, I mean hard, the idea being that the slab will slowly cure now but will not be affected by rain etc. Time will tell. Due to the temp, and the float not getting to the edge, I will have to carry out some remedial work on the edges of the slab, as by the time I go to troweling these it was too late. Today the slab looks great, it's flat and level, but the perimeter 2 inch will need some polishing, as will a section in the plant room. I'm confident I can get this fixed. Time will tell. The following picture doesn't do the slab surface any justice. It looks rough, but it's glass smooth. So 10.5 cube of fibre reinforced concrete. Power Floated, and this was non stop until 17.30. My chest and fore arms are wrecked from trying to tame the power float. I'm a little disappointed in the edge finish, but looking at it another way, it's way better than if it would have started raining, or the wind that we have today. I'm sure a few hours with a wet diamond polisher will rectify the edges. Maybe another hand would have been good. 🤔. Onwards to the ICF walls... .

Thanks to the relatively mild weather this winter i decided to start chipping away at the bathroom project, which is being extended into part of the extension which was finished over a year ago. This gave me the opportunity to install the bath, sink and toilet in the new bit, at which time I’d totally disconnected the old bathroom allowing me to strip it out and that’s worked really well for my as I struggle to do more than 4hours in a single day so I could keep doing a bit and stopping when I’d had enough. didn’t fancy tackling the ceiling for plastering in the new bit so got a pro in to do this bit for me, all done in a couple of hours which was nice. and made the most of the space and got the painting done after putting a layer of 10mm marmox board down ready to accept the underfloor heating mat Next job was to start making a frame to hold the toilet frame and the sink and cabinet Decided on making my own cabinet rather than paying silly money for an MFC one, got pine furniture boards, a pocket hole jig and a new router and came out with this which I’m pretty happy with that all got painted and the sink installed, wall mounted tap and the wet room panels that I’m using both for this and for the walk in shower area all installed. got to work cutting the OSB backing and wet room panel for the toilet in prep for the final big push to disconnect the old and commission the new, that was a hard days work! And then bath and toilet all installed once the shower area is complete the bath will be disconnected again to lay the underfloor heating, self leveller and the flooring before being put back in place, and eventually building the wall and plastering it. Made a start on stripping the old bathroom out Next job is to patch up the loft insulation where the old spotlights were, new wiring in place for a single light fitting this time, airtight membrane adhered to the walls and then battens before reboarding it ready for plastering. Floor is coming up also to be replaced with 22mm chipboard to match new bit.

Everything kicked off on January 8th 2024 finally after 8 years of faffing about and trying to line up finances, finding someone to sign off building regs and a year of selling the old house eventually succeeded. There was about 120 tons of muckaway judging from the number of trucks. The guys brought a 17 tonne digger and were glad of it. The big roller they didn't use in the end but went with a more compact diesel unit. hardcore was added and leveled. The trickier element was getting a rainwater harvesting tank installed. It had to go at the back of the site before we could block it off with the next phase of works. I found the office staff didn't have a clue about the dimensions so how deep to dig the hole?! They did the next best thing and sent a guy out to the yard with a tape measure and I passed these info on. The crane used was impressive - 350K worth to move a 4.5tonne concrete tank into position. They then crawled inside it to commission the pump etc and seal it up until the next phase of adding power (need to drill a hold into the tank but they provided enough electrical cable to go back to the house to hook it up later. It holds 4,000 litres and needed balast to stop it shifting as even at that weight it can move around!! Got a hose and friendly neighbours to assist and half filled it up!! Only 1 complainer - a neighbour around the corner giving out when the flatbed dropped off the excavator, there's always one! Did get a site inspection the next day but only to confirm we'd started within the terms of our commencement notice I think and he seemed friendly anyway! I left the mortgage a bit late, still waiting on approval so am spending cash currently. Hopefully that comes in this week! The Timber Frame prep is starting in their factory - I think I'll be ready in 5 weeks or so or on March 1st. Onto the exciting portion - Foundation Screws, 1.5 meter long and will have a 300mm x 300mm plate bolted to the top of the screw head. They spend an entire day prepping the holes, measuring and remeasuring to ensure everything was fine. There was some confusion around the height the screw was to end up but the groundworks team had marking the fence panel and I put them in direct contract with each other and didn't hear a peep from that point. All was good. I was hearing 100mm differences in the levels one day and this changed to 2mm the next!! I was sick with flu so not being able to be onsite was a curse, you just have to hope it works out. They pre drilled down to break up some rock but nothing too severe. The delivery took a bit longer than expected, so they started later than I'd hope which means I lose the groundsworks team for a week at the start of February but what can you do. Some start when they say, others, well, it's a moving target!! But once they started they've been onsite every day despite the cold weather and are making good progress. There are 89 of these to be driven in to a level set by the laser. They use an electric motor to drive in the screw with an arm braced against a previous screw they leave half way up. Eventually all you'll see is a field of square plates. A raft is to be poured around these and the Kore passive raft is being delivered to site later this week for use next month. Yep, there's a second raft going in on top of the Kore - like a Kore Concrete Raft Burger!! Enjoy the photos!

I'm kind of glad July hasn't been too warm, as its enabled me to get more done than i would have otherwise, but the rain has been the main issue, and surprisingly, hedgehogs which have been running all over the front garden, until they mysteriously all died, why i've no idea, felt very privileged having them here. First bit done whilst the hedgehogs were still around, the bit i've been wanting to do the most, around the boiler and gas box, where the worst damage to existing masonry was. June brought boiler service time of the year, so while the plumber was here, he fitted a new longer flue, and also a new gas pipe from the meter to the boiler, to accomodate the thicker walls. Around the flue, I have applied the required dual density rockwool wall board, heavy but really nice to work with, with the remainder done in the usual EPS. Fascia was also installed badly by a contractor many years ago, so i took the bad bits off to replace later on. Fascia repaired, brick slips applied and gas box has been resprayed and refitted. I still need to silicone around here and fit the boiler flue rubber, along with cutting the waste pipe down slightly to fit nice and snug. Rear of extension has been boarded, and mostly rendered, the top part is also fixed now, and just needs a render basecoat on, and brick slips. Front is also complete, and i have since popped a trim above the window to cover the foam, this also needs a bit of silicone when i get a tube. Below the DPC on all sections of EWI, i've got a tub of black render to finish this off, which i'm going to do all at once at the end. Really pleased i've managed to get this far, i've still got to take off 3 rows of tiles front and back of the original bungalow to put some mesh in to stop mice getting in the loft, ensure the insulation is bang on, and vented, replace the latts and felt and tiles back on, a nice autumn job i think when its a bit cooler still, minus the rain!!

Day 48 of the build was a big one, we poured the ICF ( PolySteel) walls. Following the slab pour 2 weeks earlier, we start on building the PolySteel ICF walls. I've no experience with ICF, and thus can only comment on the usability and quality of PolySteel. The process is straightforward, all the blocks are t&g on all edges, so you simply use a bead of fire rated foam and push the blocks together. Each block clips to the last with two **clips joining the metal mesh inside the block together. Our rebar spec, was I think over the top, but basically we had a pair of 10mm starter rebars vertically every 300mm centres so the first two rows we had to position the blocks over the starter bars. In addition to this each corner block( 2 left-hand and 2 right-hand in our case per course) have 4 off 10mm L bars and pairs of 10mm horizontally on 300mm centres. Our perimeter is just shy of 40M, so all in that's just short of 2KM of rebar. Point 1, the spec calls for 400 mm L corner bars, (which I had cut and bent) you can't fit these. You can get 1 in but the other 3 need to be shorter on one side to get in, this was more so on the first two courses with the precast starter bars in the way. I ended up cutting 1 to 400mm X 300mm and 2 to 400mm X 200mm per set. These were tied in place to the metal grids in the PolySteel. With so many starter bars I made the ones located at windows longer so that they were around 80mm below cill height l, (this was when I poured the foundation.) This saved me adding extra verticals bars after, and in the main worked out. To cut out the windows I had to figure out a good way to cut the blocks. The Steel mesh in the block has a 30mm plate that sits under the surface of the IFC to allow you to screw into with self drilling screws ( one of the reasons I liked this block) For window openings This needs to be cut, I had an old rage metal circular saw and this worked amazingly, if I did this again I would buy one for the job. But I'm never doing this again😂 The most difficult part was cutting the mesh, this is 3mm bars, I used a small cheap set of bolt cutters which worked but was difficult getting into the cavity of the block and then squeezing the cutters. The angle grinder was too cumbersome in the tight space, and ripsaw with metal blade just too bouncy it felt like a bodge, so patiently cut hundreds of 3mm bars to make the openings. I think a small cut off air grinder would work well, as I did try a Dremel type cutter but this was painfully slow. At two courses high it was time to start bracing. This was done by fixing 4x2 to the blocks on 1M centres and at every opening ( the 4x2 will be re-used for studding later) I secured the timber to the blocks with 100mm baypole screws 3 per block in pre drilled holes. Below shows a bit later on but a 4x2 ring beam tied to all the verticals. We also tied the long walls (N&S) to each other with long ratchet straps and more 4x2. A little security if the winds picked up. Once 3 course we're built, I made the boxes for the windows and doors, basically 6x2 screwed through the ICF into the timber. These we're then sealed with some silicon and or foam. On the back of the 6x2 I screwed in some coach bolts to act as a key to fix them to the concrete. Each course we added the corner and horizontal rebars. We then erected some Kwikstage scaffold around the inside perimeter. This is old rusty scaffold but wasn't ready for the scrap man just yet. The bays fit really well, snug if you like. When I purchased the scaffold I also got thrown in a load of 5ft tubes, swivel, couplers and clamps. So I went around and braced the scaffold and tied each section to each other with short sections of pole. This made the stage rigid, lastly used some standards to brace the North and South walls together, creating a mesh in the middle. The final course of ICF seemed easier to cut out the openings, not sure why. All blocks were screwed to the vertical 4x2 and then the vertical 4x2 we're plumbed and tied to the scaffold. This made the whole lot rock solid. I used string lines to make sure the walls were straight and plumb before fixing to the scaffold. Now we put in the vertical rebar, pairs of 10mm rebar on 300 centres. Pic below shows the corner L bars before the verticals were fitted. To pour the concrete, around 12M³, a pump was put of budget as they would have to come from Inverness, we were quoted 2K, so reverted to the 360 bucket method. I created 2 pour boxes and 1 corner box put of OSB, to act as a funnel for the concrete. We poured in 600mm levels and vibrated the concrete. Moving the pour boxes along as we went. The first wagon had 7 cube so this would be over all the cills, once the cills were full, we capped them off and screwed some 4x1 in place. All working like a dream... When vibrating I noticed some of the ** clips holding the blocks together pinged off.. I went down to check levels etc, and noticed that one corner block on the SE corner, between a long window and large lounge window had moved😱. The t&g was holding but the was a 15mm gap. Ok panic starting now. We stopped pouring here and moved moved on but needed a solution. I'm not proud of this, but we used a haulage strap, through the window around and out through the door and back and ratcheted the section of wall together with some timber on the corners to prevent the strap digging into the ICF. Followed this up with some OSB and timber straps. Then the cheap electric vibrator we were using in to window voids gave up. Couldn't handle the stress of the day, my heart rate was in triple figure now. The hired in vibrator we were using from the top was still going strong, and I also had some cheap plate vibrators to hold against the walls which were doing enough. I went around all the corners and added more bracing, berating myself for not adding large strips of OSB on all the corners.why didn't I do that. If your reading this because your planning to use PolySteel then screw large sheets of OSB to the corners.. Ok, heart rate still in the hundreds, but the first truck was done, we were level, with the exception of the problem SE corner to about 1.4m. everything was holding and plumb. The moved corner will be ok, as long as it stays put. While waiting for the truck to go back and refill, around 90mins, I went manically around screwing more battens to the corners. The concrete was setting up on the SE so I was feeling a little better, but worried about filling up the corner With the excitement of the corner issue and my manic battening, I forgot to add the additional supports for the two large windows, these were left out so we could fill the lower part of the wall from the 360 bucket. We start the second lorry on the West wall, working out way to the SE problem, all working well, vibrating and filling as we go, shuffling the pour boxes around. Then the hired vibrator started smoking and gave up. Back to sticks and the flat plate vibrators for the last section. We skipped the SE corner and worked our way along the S and then W walls. With about 3m of wall to complete the digger shut down. Spanners out, more fuel, clean the filters, bleed the injectors, no go, dead. Ok. Fire up my old loader and get it as close as possible and shovel it in... No this wasn't happening, the steering piston decided to come off, an old fault that came back just at the right time. FFS anything else. Yes, those supports for the lintels I forgot.. Pete!! Those lintels are sagging argghhhhh. Acro props and some more tense moments we jack them back into place level and plumb. Ok back to the other fire. We were contemplating buckets when my neighbour brought his Manatu with a big bucket and managed with shovels for the last bit around 1/2 a cube. While the tops of the walls were being floated, and in anticipation for excess concrete we managed to fill some shuttering for a front path, and the start of the ramp to the rear door. This is the offcuts of ICF from the windows that will form the path and increase the levels at this corner hopefully softening the height in this corner. So it's done, it's up, my heart rate is now normal, and I think I dodged a bullet or two. But with DIY and house building you have to adapt to react to the events as they unfold. My list of favours I owe my neighbour has expanded. But we can sit here today and be proud of the product. the SE corner will need a little fettling to get square,but nothing to worry about. On wards and upwards. Day of rest today, just off the strim around the pods, guests due later.

This week the roof was cut in. Can see the spaces for the Velux rooflights and get a different picture of the inside - the vaulted ceilings in the rear living area in particular. The builder recommended a ceiling in the upstairs bedrooms at around the 3 meter / 9 foot mark which is high enough even if you're bouncing on the bed! Still leave a bit of space for storage so may leave a small hatch and floor this area after setting it up. It's a warm roof so this is all conditioned space. Next week they'll add OSB and Solitex WA, then baton and counter baton and that's them finished! The roofer is due in after Easter to install the tiles and the Velux will go in sometime then also. There is also an AEV for venting the soil pipe to install. There's a ventilated ridge, and other details that will be interesting to see installed. Should stop ice dams forming! Big decision point is around the rear picture window - it's to be metal clad. There is the option of adding additional insulation on the outside and then stud work for the ventilation behind the steel cladding or just insulate internally only. Also the roof of this feature needs to be worked out. Some drain to the back of the house but that needs a gutter. Most drain towards the house which I didn't realise and the water channels to either side. This junction has to be perfect or it ensures rain ingress. There's a good local team recommended by the builder so I've left word and hope they'll get in touch next week so they can build out the 7 degree backward slope needed for the roof of this area. There is a lot of metal posts in the house which worry me but I had a few hours onsite today to take my time and see if it's something to worry about or not. The contact area with the foundation or wall are very small so there may be cold spots but I feel for a first attempt, the detailing is sufficient. I just didn't realize how decisions about moving walls etc impacted structural changes until I saw them onsite. Decisions made years ago haunting me a bit, but I can live it! It's still a wonderful house. The next two will be better!! The air tightness will be a challenge but I got some samples of Tapes, Gutex and Phonotherm I plan to use by driving to the company I'm buying them off and seeing their warehouse up front. I hope to entice one of their technical guys onsite for an hour to get their advice on a few things. I expect a detailed post at a future date to address this. Lots to think about. I plan on using Moy Metac in the timber frame wall - 220mm worth. The frames are mostly at 600mm centers. I'd calculated I'd need 43 rolls off the plans but now looking like 53 when I did a quic calc onsite. They do a roll that is exactly 220mm deep and 1200mm wide so plan to cut in 1/2 and it should press fit in the space nicely. I could do this before the windows and doors arrive, just need to find a good price! And hope it isn't swiped! Windows to be measured either next week or 2 weeks later due to builders holidays. Delivery 9-10 weeks after that. Bricklayer, still chasing quotes! Hope to get that done Late April / Early May. Waiting on council to approve brick style as the plain red in the estate isn't to my taste, I've gone for a blend of brown, red and beige. As a project there's a LOT to think about, decisions to be made and money to be managed! Spending is SO easy, tracking it and keeping in budget not so much!!

It has been a long and windy road up to this point. I bought the plot in February 22 and have had over a year of ecology surveys, useless solicitors including the county solicitor and a few changes of plans along the way before planning was granted earlier this year. The old house which was formerly housing for workers on the fruit farm had been used as site offices for a national house builder. When the builders left it looked like they just finished on a Friday and locked up and went home. There were 30 odd chairs and several desks in there. The filing cabinets were full of the site paperwork and then the kids had moved in and spread the contents around to make it look like the inside of a plasterers van. Finally we got the green light from the ecologists on Monday morning and with the help of have moved straight on to the demolition stage. I am enjoying this bit. 😀😀😀😀

Properly chuffed with myself how far i've progressed this year, but its a good time to take a break i feel, before the last huge job of doing the new bathroom, hopefully next year. Finished the external wall insulation off in the courtyard area, and got my new set of water butts all connected, should provide enough for the front garden and car washing (when i have the energy!) during a prolonged dry period. Just got the silicone to do on the corner and the join. Probably the most important job was the lower parts of the roof, to ensure the insulation was all good, and to stop any mice from getting in, which has been an issue the last couple of years around this time. Took off 3 rows of tiles and pushed the 4th row up, which got me to the natural overlap of the second row of felt, allowing me to take off the old battens, and put a new layer of felt under the overlap and down to the bottom. Also replaced the end of the dry valley, with a correct formed end, tiles need a little tidy up at some point, but its watertight. This was the mesh i used. It was then fully packed with insulation and overlayed with some ventilation trays which i didn't take a photo of. And the front was even worse, including the weather, of course it decided to pour it down the second i had the old felt off. Front existing felt was in very bad condition, and one of the battens appears to be fire damaged, no idea how The valley needs repointing, still on my to-do list. And a small indulgment, a bit of colour for the driveway, also filled with spring bulbs so hopefully will remain colourful right through to next summer

My previous blog entry ended at submitting the building regs in March, although they were not validated until 5th April and then refused on the 31st May. I believe my architect had complained on them taking too long so I am guessing when they found he had not included a turning circle for a fire engine they refused them as giving the architect extra time would have hit their own time targets. We resubmitted 1st June and finally had approval on the 5th July. A few conditions but nothing unexpected. In the meantime we submitted our amendment to planning for our window changes this was to increase the airflow through the house to pass Part O more on this later. This was submitted to planning on the 21st March and approved on the 12th May. When the BC plans were initially refused I decided not to contact our architect as he obviously had something wrong and as it was all out of my hands, I just presumed it was not my Part O spreadsheet as he never contacted me. You can not rush anything in Cornwall it will all be dealt with dreckly, (eventually no time limit). Instead I got on with jobs I could do, mainly starting a new vegetable plot as the old one is in the way of the new build for plant access and will eventually become garden. My potting shed is only a few years old so it will be dismantled and stored indoors until we have walls and roof on and can position the shed close to the new build. My netted tunnel is also now down and will not be going back up instead I will create new smaller structures to cover individual groups of crop and re-use the larger netting just for my new strawberry beds. We have had a hosepipe ban on here in Cornwall for a year now so it’s not been a bad year to not be growing anything new and instead concentrate on the soil and new beds. Top photos are the early days of my vegplot and below as it is now, looking a bit sad but better things will come. Before it sounds like I’ve lost the plot and writing a gardening blog I’ll return to our build progress. We advertised our existing barn as free locally and received many offers to remove it. A local couple will be taking it down in October and rebuilding it on their land. I’ve sold a lot of paving that I had kept just in case we wanted it in the future but finally decided it’s not required. The problem with having land and outbuildings is it’s difficult to get rid of things we just move it to the cow shed but that has to stop. So all the wood in the old cow shed is moving to the old pig sty. We started keeping the wood because we wanted a stove but eventually decided our listed barn was never going to have a wood stove so a few trees that got cut down were given to neighbours but now the new build is going to have a wood stove so we’re saving wood again. Emptying the cow shed also involves giving away corrugated tin roof sections that have been saved just in case, moving a pile of nice small stone I was going to make a rockery with and finding a new home for our Christmas wooden reindeer. The cow shed is now nearly empty. We also hired some plant and shifted some spoil full of weeds from around the cow shed and took down two more trees, the Ash tree had Ash die back and it had been allowed to self seed much to close to the fir tree that had grown one sided. They were also in the way of the new field access that we are making wider for easier machinery access, and will also now provide a hammerhead turn for a fire engine. The spoil and tree stumps were moved to the lower field, the useable fire wood stored in the old pig sty with a few large pieces left as temporary seats for the builders. Top row left cow shed surrounded by weeds, right new wider access cow shed on the left with stables in the distance. Middle row clearing in progress and the better access. Bottom row me in the sun and heat while husband is in the Air Conditioned digger, some of the larger stone put to one side no boulders so far. We still have not got our ground-workers or builders sorted out, a few have been to look, some you never hear from again others give a quote that’s ridiculously high with so many provisions. Some will do this and that but not that, they suggest somebody else who is not interested. I think it's partly because we want an ICF build and also to dry shell stage only, excluding windows. We still hope to start next year but are now thinking to just get the groundworks completed as that is the most unknown quantity, and we are still saving up. The build is being partly funded by the sale of a Jensen FF but we have only just got round to advertising it last month and finding the right buyer could take a while. Part O Unfortunately my architect did not think ahead and design the house with Part O in mind and it took quite a while for me to work out what I had to change to pass the simplified method. A local company was approached and discussed the simplified method and the dynamic method but from what they told me there was no guarantee in passing either and to pass the dynamic method more changes to the building design and further dynamic modelling could be required so no set fee was offered. Instead I designed my own spreadsheet that initially proved our ventilation of just opening windows would not be enough to pass Part O but after reading up more and few window swapping ideas I got a pass on my own spreadsheet. I also stumbled upon the future homes site which has a spreadsheet that can be downloaded. As I’m a Apple Mac user it meant using MS Excel online but it was a far prettier version than my nuts and bolts spreadsheet and one that I thought my BC would be happier with. I input my window measurements and how they opened, and obtained a pass. Anybody reading this and wanting ideas on how to pass the simplified method first depends on what you fail on e.g. too much glazing or the free flow of ventilation although one can impact the other. I don’t think anybody looking at our plans from the first blog would think we would not pass as the southerly view is not overly glazed but by removing 3 windows on the northerly side and adding 6 roof windows that open 50 degrees and slight changes to bedroom windows meant the northerly facade was the most glazed and we had better air flow. We also changed all windows that open to open inwards to meet the arms reach criteria, enabling a wider opening. The spreadsheet is not perfect though as my bedroom windows are tilt and turn but you can only have the same hinge for day and night on the spreadsheet e.g. side hung. I could have adapted the spreadsheet but that would mean its not as trustable as I was hoping it was going to be or I could have created two one daytime side hung and one for night time opening when the windows are top hung. I decided to make the one spreadsheet work as explaining to my architect who would then have to explain to BC would be like learning and then teaching a foreign language. Happily we passed the simplified method with a condition about night time security when I get my own named BC I will be able to talk them though the spreadsheet quickly change the side hung to top hung and get a pass and if I still need a security grill it will only be for the lower half that opens at night and this can be made to measure by my talented husband out of rebar. The changes to windows did mean we had to make an amendment to the plans but as it was due to my architect not thinking ahead about the new regulations I suggested to him that I shouldn’t have to pay for this and he agreed. https://www.futurehomes.org.uk/library#Guidancetoolsandtemplates SAP When you start out on this journey there are so many new things to learn about and discover the pre build SAP being just one of them. Unfortunately this area seems controlled by a piece of software probably not much more than a spreadsheet but no free copy for us self builders to play with to see if we change x how does it effect y etc. I was in the hands of my Architect and if you haven’t worked out by now I am usually in charge of everything so taking a back seat I found very hard. The initial SAP needed a few tweaks here and there but Im happy with the result. For those of you who don’t know what one is I am attaching mine and if anybody wants to dissect it feel free to do so but the pages long report is quite boring as they all are and it comes down to insulation, air tightness and your chosen method of heating. We plan to have a minimum of 11kw of Solar on our virtually perfect south facing unshaded roof in Cornwall. This and together with an ICF build and good window air tightness with lots of added floor insulation hopefully will mean low running costs. You will not find a ASHP mentioned I’m not having one. I don’t like them for my build. I’m near the sea where everything rusts, and if I need a plumber because its broken it will be 6 weeks before one would be available who knows enough about ASHP to fix it. In the 6 years I lived in Cornwall I have seen the lack of trades people first hand in waiting for returned phone calls that never happen, quotes that take ages and waiting lists for the good people. In winter when you most need good heating then all the trades are busy working in the holiday homes out of season and are booked up. We have no mains Gas so are going to be a mainly electric home. To ride out the peaks and troughs of solar we will have as much on the roof as we can fit and rather than export to the grid we will export to our other working barn and lower some of those summer electricity costs. In winter we will have to buy some electricity but hopefully very little at peak costs. Quick guide to the SAP The first 3 pages are our planned u-values, expected Air permeability results, space heating, hot water etc and MVHR. The following 30 pages look very similar but have different headings and figures. Calculation of dwelling emissions for regulation compliance Calculation of target emissions Calculation of fabric energy efficiency Calculation of target fabric energy efficiency Calculation of energy rating Calculation of EPC costs, emissions and primary energy page 18 perhaps the one to read first Calculation of energy rating for improved dwelling Calculation of EPC costs, emissions and primary energy for improved dwelling Finally the predicted energy assessment on page 33 (96A0 and the estimated energy cost for the property over a year £103 That’s all for now, my next job is getting a full online estimate of the build now we have all the building regs and SE calculations completed. Build Costs b/f from first blog £12660 Building regs submission £345 Hired in plant and fuel £890 SAP £300 Part O Free VAT element only on building regs, and SE (Not included in first blog totals) £430 Total to date £14625 SAP.pdf Part O.xlsx

So - Attempt #1 of trying to build my house failed - Made Ground (Poor soil bearing), a buyer who wouldn't grant me legal permission to access the mains water after I sold and changed their mind after I'd let go all the builders, and my planning permission extension was refused. Attempt #2: Re-Applied for Planning permission from scratch - preliminary decision due July, final decision August 2023. Place my house back on the market in the meantime somewhere between those two dates. Finally I need to find a solution for the poor soil / made ground. Today was that day! The Structural Engineer got the Ground Screw company to come onsite and put a 1.5 meter screw into the ground in 5 different places and do a pull test against each one. They each held over 4 tonnes of pull pressure which is good and the results will inform the Raft Design so I can get it priced. It was all done with hand tools with a motor assisting the Screw insertion / extraction running on 240v via an Extension lead. Then they put a tripod above the screw and a measurement device to determine the force trying to pull it out. Probably looking at 30 or so Ground Screws and a number of Screw Piles for point loads & using a laser level. Had a good chat with the team and they have 5 years of experience and have been to Holland where they source their system from. Due to the coastal conditions there they typically use 6 meter screws! Some soil conditions eat away at screws over time 30-40 microns per year which gives you 50 years guarantee on a 3mm thick screw to allow up to 1500 microns to be eroded. They had heard about some cheaper Chinese screws that were pulled after 3-4 months for a different reason and they had started to rust as their galvanisation was not thick enough. Very bad if that happens! The team do a lot of extensions, shipping containers and garden rooms but houses too. If the screw is exposed more than 500mm you need bracing - this can happen if the ground is sloped. The system should save on soil muck away and concrete costs hopefully. Cost wise I'm looking at @ 5K for the ground screws vs digging 2.2 meter strip foundations and muck away costs / concrete as the alternative. You can sit a foundation on top of the screws and this may mean you don't need a Radon barrier as there is airflow underneath? I'll go with whatever the Structural Engineer recommends though. Anyway, thought I'd have a big JCB onsite but this took about 4 hours with powered hand tools and gave me confidence in the system and the team behind it which helps. Educational Day all in all!!

A busy couple of weeks and favourable weather has seen some progress at The Windy Roost. When in use the word I, or we, I mean Mandy my wife, and me. So far that's the only labour on the build. Mandy has worked office based for 40 years before we moved here, so this is an all new world for her, and although she regularly tells me she's older than me, and she's needs a day off, I can't be more proud... It seems that the engineers really worry about the wind here, which is fair enough, but you would think no house has ever stood the test of time. The 40M perimeter of the house required 288 H10 starter bars, after installing the radon barrier inside the shuttering, I used some 8x2 timber, (that will later be used to frame the gables), and drilled lots of holes and feed the L bars though. These were spaced as per spec and to suit the poly steel blocks. Checking the dimensions, diagonals and rechecking this was all secured in place. The 8x2 timber made pouring the shuttering difficult. I made some pour boxes, but this had limited success, so ended up using the 7 ton 360 & bucket method, a Caithness speciality, and the bonus was the concrete truck driver is also a very skilled 360 operator, which speeded up the pour. I think Stuart now counts as the 3rd bit of labour on the build. Rebar work in progress. 4 cube of concrete and all dimensions still bang on. Next day stripping the 8x2 was to be honest, a pain in the ass. But a few hours later all the shuttering was removed and we were ready to install the radon barrier over the sub slab joining it to the previously installed barrier now under the footing. Sand blinded, and then added 20 ton of 40mm be to dust in preparation for the slab after the foundation block pour. Installing the poly block we loosely set all four corner blocks, leveled them using plastic folding wedges, and measured the lengths, widths, and diagonals. We strung string lines around the blocks to ensure the corner blocks were in line. We sprayed the footing with marker paint, and then marked the blocks in position onto the footing. Then one by one we set the blocks in position and fixed in place with fire rated expanding foam. Checking the level with a laser level and double check with a dumpy level. Next day we filled in between the corners, gluing the blocks in place and ensuring the blocks are straight level, again using the string lines and levels. We cut holes for drains, ducts, and sealed the gaps with foam. The poly steel block are t&g and also come with clips that lock the blocks together. Before we closed the sides we needed to feed in horizontal H10 rebar🙈. We tied the horizontal and starter bars together, and also tried the rebar to the metal grids in the blocks. To close the runs the blocks needed cutting, luckily our cuts didn't cross the metal firings in the block, so it was simply cut with a hot knife. Then glued (foamed) in place. These cuts were braced with 4x1 screwed into the metal firings with bay pole screws. Foundation course in place. Mandy starting to tie the bars, you can also see the clip between two blocks. Concrete day. 3 cube. Concrete pumps don't exist up here, I was quoted 2k to bring one up from Inverness. I fabricated two 1200mm OSB form boxes, which sat between the top of the ICF block and formed a funnel, and used the 360 and Stuart to pour the concrete into the forms. We had two pokers on the go and filled one funnel, and while the bucket was being re filled, vibrated and leveled the concrete, filling the forms alternatively, and moving the empty form along. Mandy was a demon and just got in with it. The whole 3 cube took one hour to place. So paid £15, waiting time and a drink for the 360 operator. It went really well. We cleaned up the top of the forms, then checked the walls. We didn't prop the forms before, and used the rebar to be sure it wasn't going anywhere. Inspection showed there was some movement especially in the areas where a I removed one side of the ICF for door ways. This was easily rectified with some timber wedged and screwed in place. About 15 props in total were required. I was really impressed with the strength and quality of the poly steel blocks, only slight issue is they do have a slight wave along the block, but screwing timber to the metal firings lessons this and over all after the pour the walls are straight. Next slab prep, drainage, and lots of insulation.

Greetings on a miserably rainy Sunday October morning. Perfect weather for catching up on some blog writing! As the title suggests this blog will be about our external coverings of the house and, by the end of it, the outside of the building will be pretty much finished allowing us to crack on internally. We started many months ago by battening the outside of the buildings. As we are having external blinds and they have a requirement for fitting the blind cassette we needed a large gap between the house walls and the outside of the cladding. This meant 50mm x 50mm timber battens and counter battens. We did this ourselves and saved many thousands and, even though it was slow going (as, it seems, everything is when you do it yourself!), it was very satisfying with the carpenter saying that it was good work and he’d seen chippies do a lot worse jobs than we did. Nice warm fuzzy feeling ensued. We are having a mixture of burnt Siberian larch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakisugi) and, to contrast the black, standard Siberian larch on the ‘arms’ of our property and entrance porch (all will be revealed in photos below) and I ordered all the cladding to be delivered on-site prior to the carpenter starting. The carpenter started on the garage using the standard Siberian larch which we bought from Jewson at a very reasonable price, and quite a bit cheaper than we could get from the usual timber cladding suppliers and we are very happy with the quality of the wood. He then went on to the black charred larch (which gets everywhere and he and his tools looked like they’d been in a coal mine by the end of each day!). We purchased the charred larch from Permachar (https://permachar.co.uk) who gave us a brilliant price. The wood itself was burnt and delivered from Lithuania (https://degmeda.eu) but they will only sell to the UK via Permachar. It is stunning wood, but incredibly fragile and any sort of dragging or scraping will cause the black char to flake off. While he was busy doing that and while the scaffolding was up I thought it a good time to get the guttering started. Our architect specified Zinc guttering and after a lot of thought and looking at stainless steel and zinc we also decided that zinc was the choice for us. We ordered it from Rainclear (https://www.rainclear.co.uk/guttering/copper-zinc-guttering/guttering-fittings.html?color=235) who offer next day delivery if in stock and were incredibly helpful and very well priced. It’s also a clip on system which even I managed to install without any major issues! Around the same time and while the carpenter was busy putting the cladding up our external blinds got fitted. We bought those from a local company called Powell blinds (https://powellblinds.com) who stepped in brilliantly at the last minute after we were seriously let down by Cornerstar Aluminium (long story which I won’t get in to here). The blinds are fitted up behind the cladding above the windows but externally so they will be hidden from view when lifted up. We absolutely love them and during the heatwave this summer we lowered them and this drastically reduced the temperature inside the house. There was still one large south facing window that didn’t have blinds that needed shading. We wanted and the architect designed a Brise Soleil in this area but all we had to go on was a 2D drawing. I contacted a few companies about getting one made and installed and the quotes came back at between £6k - £7k! A figure we simply could not afford. So I did research and spoke to a local forge called Horsham Forge (https://www.horshamforge.co.uk) with an idea I had. He said ‘that could be done but how about this instead?’. He suggested brackets with a pole running through them and vertical timbers slid on. Genius! On to Sketchup where I draw up the brackets and gave them to the forge to be created and spoke to my timber manager at Jewson who procured me some thermowood at the size I needed and got my carpenter to fit it and it cost me £1700 in total. So we saved around £5k by doing it ourselves and we also enjoyed the journey and got a solution that we designed (with the help of the forge of course). We think it looks fab and it does a good job of shading from the sun apart from a couple of hours when the sun is directly facing that side of the house. So we will still get some solar gain but it is definitely reduced and it’s a brilliant architectural feature. 😉 Right, while all this was going on the chippie was finishing up the cladding and now that it is all finished and I have put the downpipes on we have an almost finished external facade to our dream home. We love it and think it’s stunning. So very happy with the carpenter’s work (http://www.kmlcarpentryandroofing.co.uk). Kieran’s attention to detail at the junctions between the 2 types of wood is fabulous as it is in other areas too. He would also discuss any issues and potential solutions with us to make sure we were happy with them rather than just doing something he thought was right. Hopefully the pictures below do it all justice! (Note: please ignore the 110mm brown downpipe in the below photo! It will eventually be a rain chain but this works for now. 😉 ) Thanks for reading and we hope you like what we’ve achieved so far.

I really hoped that now we are progressing after our suspended floor saga that things would get better, but something somewhere is determined to make sure that doesn't happen. The only change is that this time the things that have gone wrong are not build related. Firstly, my brother, only 63, died of a heart attack with no history of problems. I spent 5 days with him and his wife / kids in intensive care hoping against hope that he would pull thorough, but at 6am 6th Feb his heart gave way for the last time, no more restarts, RIP Alan 😞 Just before that, 6 days before, I got told that I've been made redundant, as the only breadwinner that's another major blow, the build funds are sorted, but we still need to eat and pay the bills and run the cars. So, forget build PM I'm now looking for a job that offers enough for us to live on. The only snifter I've had would be a 20k reduction in pay with an hour's drive each way and 24hr on call once every 4 weeks. I may be desperate, but I'm not that desperate yet. The trouble is I'm in my 60's so although age discrimination is illegal you can't prove it's happening. But, with ALL the experience on my CV it shows that I'm not just out of uni. Right, back to the build. In December we had just got the details about our suspended floor. It had to have a bearing of 130mm, plus 20mm expansion foam, plus shear links. After much huffing and puffing it was prepped and ready for inspection. The BCO came out and just said yes with no hassle and went on to talking about the other parts of the build and our future under pinning of the back wall. He was really helpful and has even sent a message to the SE saying that he feels that 2.5m deep foundations is over the top with our sandy soil. He wants us to dig two trial holes of 1.5m deep and then have a site meeting with BCO & SE to discuss what we really need. He feels that the SE is being over cautious bearing in mind we are converting the barn into a single storey bungalow when there have been no issues with the existing barn over the last 70+ years. This will all happen about March as hubby is going to build this 'room' first. This will actually be our hall and snug. The above is the inside wall of the cavity wall up to DPM. As I speak the mostly external wall is finished although the bit nearest stays internal as that borders the kitchen. I wanted a 'proper' wall for hanging a sliding door and kitchen cabinets. It was already a separate space when it was a barn so it is a bit like an extension. The long awaited concrete pour happened, at one point it looked like they might not make the slope as it was raining, but after a lot of slipping and sliding they got there. bit of a wet day for it, but all dry now The only other thing we did this month was buy a block saw at auction (for not a lot of money), it needs a new engine as it's been stood outside for years, when hubby took off the old casing it was obvious just how long. This is how it arrived and this was what was under that casing. I wonder how many years the birds were nesting. We actually got 2 for the price of one, when we got to the auction to collect they said, oh there were 2 of these in a lot. So, hopefully we can make a bit of money by cleaning, replacing the engines and servicing. These beasts are seriously expensive to buy working at about £750. Hubby has worked with a company in the paste who are going to do the work for us and refurbish so we should end up with at least one working machine for less than £250. I've not been able to work for over a week on the build and we stopped for 10 days over Xmas so a very short month. Once again, I'm just hoping next month will be better, but somehow I'm losing hope on that front.

Finished the Kore Passive Raft Foundation this week. Just in time as it's currently sleeting it down out there! Cold enough to make a pour more difficult. they set in a 70mm rebate for the lift & slide door and also cut out the kore to let the concrete out to the edge (up to shuttering) for a steel post to carry the blockwork over the two corner windows. We'll insulate around that later. the Kore went in really fast, then rebar, ductwork for the kitchen island and getting it finished before more cold weather kicked in. It rained just after lunchtime which slowed down the curing. But really pleased with progress and we're ready for the timber frame next!

Why do people get so hung up about thermal insulation, it really is not difficult. The main thing to remember is that the power, in watts (W, J.s-1) that passes though a material is approximately proportional to three things, conductivity (k, λ), temperature difference (∆T) in kelvin (K), and thickness in metres (m). In arithmetic terms, the thermal conductivity of a material is written as W.m-1.K-1, or W/m.K (as I have never found a way to write a superscript negative sign on my Android phone). Different materials have different thermal conductivity. Taking extreme ends of the spectrum, natural diamond conducts at a rate if 2200 W.m-1.K-1 and a pure vacuum, for these purposes, is 0 W.m-1.K-1. Now we don't, in the real world, work at the extremes. So let us stick to some more common building materials. Ordinary brick, k = 0.72 W.m-1.K-1. Concrete k = 1.28 W.m-1.K-1. Timber k = 0.14 W.m-1.K-1. Mineral wool insulation k = 0.038 W.m-1.K-1. Expanded polystyrene k = 0.04 W.m-1.K-1. Polyurethane foam k = 0.03 W.m-1.K-1. Orientated Stand Board (OSB), 6% adhesive k = 0.16 W.m-1.K-1. Plasterboard k = 0.19 W.m-1.K-1. There is, obviously a lot more materials and it is down to whoever is calculating to find and check figures. An example of this is granite, there are a lot of different types and the k-Value can range from 1.73 to 3.98 W.m-1.K-1. So do your research. It is not normal to fit a metre thickness of any insulating material, If we did, none of this write up would be necessary. Because we use fractional dimensions i.e. 0.2m when planning the insulation levels of a building, the more common thermal resistance (R = K.m-2.W-1) is used. There are two advantages of using the R-Value, it takes the thickness of the material, and the area of the material, into account. Converting from the k-Value to the R-Value is really easy, just divide the thickness by the k-Value. R = l / k R-Value is often quoted and one thing to be careful of is that imperial units are often quoted. You may have noticed that R-Value has somehow introduced a m-2 unit, this comes about from dimensional analysis of all the International System of Units (SI) units W, which is kg.m2.s-3 and some arithmetic rearranging when combined with the other units, m and K. This is a useful as we do not have building elements that only have thickness, they also have area. The most useful thing about R-Values is that they can be added together to give a total thermal resistance (ΣR). Taking a simple wall build up of:) Outer: Brick, k = 0.72, 0.1m thickness. Full Fill Mineral Wool, k = 0.038, 0.2m thickness. Inner: Brick, k = 0.72, 0.1m thickness. Plasterboard, k = 0.19, 0.012m thickness. The overall thickness is 0.412m (dimensions may vary, so check). Using the sum (Σ) of l / k for every component makes for a long equation, and it is usual to use a spreadsheet. ΣR = 0.1 / 0.72(outer brick) + 0.2 / 0.038(mineral wool) + 0.1 / 0.72(inner brick) + 0.012 / 0.19(plaster board) ΣR = 0.139(outer brick) + 5.263(mineral wool) + 0.139(inner brick) + 0.063(plaster board) ΣR = 5.604 K.m-2.W-1. Note here that the effects of the mineral wool are dominant and that large R-Values are better. It is not normal to talk about a house, or wall, having an R-Value, but a U-Value (anyone know if R should be proceeded with 'a' or 'an', sounds like it should be 'an', but U sounds better with 'a'). Changing to U-Value, which is W.m-2.K-1 is simply a matter of taking the inverse of the R-Value K.m-2.W-1 U-Value = 1 / R So in this example: U = 1 / 5.604 U = 0.178 W.m-2.K-1. If the wall, ceiling, roof or floor is of timber construction, the technique is just the same, just that the appropriate areas also have to be included in the final solution, so you work out the U-Value for all the studs and noggins, plus the OSB thickness, and then the U-Value for all the insulation and the OSB thickness. There is one other thing when looking at heat losses, and that is the air film surrounding them. Air has a very good k-Value of 0.026 W.m-1.K-1 and is really the component that is doing the majority of the work in insulation, the material i.e. mineral wool or polyurethane foam is just there to stop the air conducting by trapping it in place. Because of this, some allowance has to be made for any air voids in the wall build up i.e. a service gap. To simplify this, it has been decided that two standard values are used, one for walls and one for roofs, with no regard to thickness. The wall R-Value is 0.18 K.m-2.W-1, roof R-Value 0.04 K.m-2.W-1. So taking the above example, and extra 0.18 K.m-2.W-1 must be added to the sum of the R-Value. ΣR = 5.604 + 0.18 ΣR = 5.784 Convert to U-Value U = 1 / 5.784 U= 0.173 W.m-2.K-1. It only makes a small difference, and at the third decimal place, but is still worth including because when the numbers are rounded, it may be the difference between the desired value or not.

It has been a cold week, so just after 12:30 on the 15th of January 2024, I started a small, but limited, experiment. This was rather prompted by a comment by @Garald who wanted to insulate at the back of his book shelves, and mentioned our favourite insulation, multifoil. @Gus Potter also has a project that may benefit a thin, easy and cheap to make, insulating panel. I think I also made a comment to @saveasteading about this experiment, but can't remember in what context. Now I have always been dubious of reflective type insulation. Works great at high temperature, especially in a vacuum, it is how the cameras on the James Webb Telescope are kept cool. But we are not Billionaires, so I used hardboard, pine, white emulsion paint, double sided tape, small screws, clingfilm and aluminium foil. Basically I made some small St. Ives picture frames, put them face to face, separating the 24mm air gap with clingfilm in one, and aluminium foil in the other. The total thickness of the test panels is 30mm. Each side of the test material had temperature sensors (DS18B20s) inserted via holes in the frame. These had been calibrated before hand and the analysis is based on the calibrated data. Other sensors where fitted in the room and externally to log ambient temperatures (why being a cold week was so good). The panels were then stuck to my kitchen window with double sided tape. The position of the sensors allows for a combination of temperature differences to be logged, logging was at the minute interval but the analysis was based on 6 minute means. A quick calculation to check the standard error showed that accuracy was a factor of at least 10 below the 0.1°C accuracy of the experiment. The data analysis was based around temperature differences, but for some context, internal and external air temperature is also shown on the charts (right y-axis). A frequency distribution line was also added, this is black line (right y-axis) and is called Ambient ∆T Probability Percentage. The Ambient ∆T is the difference between the inside temperature and outside temperature. This is also used for the 0.1°C temperature bins that create the x-axis. Mean temperature differences between each side of the clingfilm or foil (shiny side towards warmer room) were also calculated and binned according to when they happened with respect to the Ambient ∆T. This method is used as it is more relevant than a time series that can fluctuate during the day, it is the properties of the insulation that is being tested, not the absolute 'comfort' levels. The below chart shows the total test period results. Test period (15/01/2024 12:26 to 19/01/2024 12:42) Always remember that these are temperature differences and not absolute temperatures, except the Internal and External mean temperatures (yellow and green lines) and the probabilities (black line). Those 3 are read from the right hand axis. The Clingfilm is the red dots and the Aluminium Foil is the blue dots. Linear trend lines have been added more for clarity than actual predictions. A can be clearly seen, there is not much difference between the two datasets. The Clingfilm performs better overall with a mean difference of 2.5°C, to the Aluminium Foil's 2.3°C. Above an Ambient ∆T of 19°C the Aluminium foil performed a little better. This is actually saying, the colder it is outside, the Aluminium Foil performed better, which may be important comfort, but overall, there will be greater energy losses than with just using Clingfilm as a separator. It is, purely from a climate change viewpoint, the overall energy reduction that is important. Climate change has caused the mean temperature at my end of Cornwall to average -0.1°C for 4 days. I have lived back here for 20 years and never known such a prolonged cold period. I am now running a second test, using one panel without any separator at all, and the other one fully filled with silica micro balloons. Micro balloons may sound exotic, but they are just filler used in the plastics industry. I don't think the temperature differences are going to be so great next week, which is a shame as the greater the range that can be tested, the better. I can always raise the temperature in the room to compensate, but as I raised it up to 24.5°C a few times, which resulted in only getting a mean of 23.5°C in the room, it will be a bit costly and not very environmental. I shall post up the results of the second test next week, all going well.

So in the last couple of months we've moved on quite a bit for us. We started on our next section of the build, to be the snug and entrance hall. This is the sticking out part of the 'L' of the build. We removed the roof covering some time ago, so at the start of July it looked like this. Then the 4 layers of floor and internal walls were broken down Then the walls came down and trenches were dug and filled up again Sometimes with building it looks like we do loads of work and then cover it all up again Once that was set, we started on the foundations and while we had access we had to build out the floor to the correct level for everything that needs to go in there. From the DPM we had to go down 650, almost as deep as the foundations at 750 While we were going down and starting to build the walls back, we had 100 ton of this. Crushed by this beast He was worried about our Suffolk Hill, aka a small slope as his machine is 24 ton and totally home made using his built in pecker for some of the tough concrete crusher.mp4 So, quite an active couple of months. Next is to build the floor in what will be our snug and hall, first hardcore with blinding sand layer (wackered down), then cellcore as we have some clay, then 2 layers of mesh and the concrete pour. The mesh and pour needs to be inspected by our BCO. Till next time Adios

Sunday in the Highlands, and the weather has a feel of changing, we've been so fortunate on the build so far, day 105 today, but the last week or so has been wet, windy, sunny, overcast usually everyday. So autumn is on the way. July and August have been busy with the 2 cabins with around 100 nights occupied, that's over 250 people staying, and 30 +dogs 😂. The upshot being we can afford to eat, but the labour for the build has been affected with Mandy continually cleaning and washing. We've got a roof. Again the labour for all this is me and Mandy. The ICF allows the wall plates to be bolted to the core. Getting the trusses, 44kg, onto the roof was going to be by using a borrowed small loadall. We used this to take them off the truck and set them next to the house, but lifting them onto the walls was proving tricky with access and wind. So we resorted to leaning two lengths of 4x2 against the gable end , leaning 1 truss at a time against it and then sliding the truss up the 4x2 onto the wall plates. Then dragging them into place. We had a scaffold erected at 1 end of the house and used this to raise the first truss. Then it was repeat the process. Untill it was done. At either end of the house we used an additional truss to form a timber gable wall, this saved money on the ICF as we are having a cold loft. I drew the gable frame on CAD and created a cut list, then framed the gable out of 8x2 Insitu. I used 4x2 as a sub fascia to support the eaves trays, allowing the use of capit fascia boards keeping a keen eye on the budget🙈 I held off boarding as I had some labour debts to repay to the local farmer, and the wind was up and down. Once we had a clear window The roof and gables were boarded with OSB. At this time I also fitted membrane and battened / counter battened the gables. Black fascia boards, over fascia vents and eaves support trays were installed. The Highland vernacular is for small soffits / no soffit. So working back from the board on board cladding thickness and the battens I should end up with just the return on the fascia showing, about 30mm. I used some 4x1 as the sub soffit that will also act as a fire stop / smoke from entering the loft. Our location, and elevation suggests we can't use enough fixings for the tiles, we opted for Marley Edgemere thin leading edge tiles in anthracite. These were fixed at the eaves, every tile nailed and every tile clipped, more on this with the GSE trays. (Mandy back to real work🤣) I also taped the joints of the membrane with tyvek membrane double sided tape. We tiled the North elevation first as this was straightforward with only two roof vents (for MVHR) These were klober 25000mm2 universal vents as the Edgemere vents only ventilated to 10,000mm2. These are a good vent but it's a struggle with thin leading edge tiles to get them to sit flat. I ended up grinding a little of the back of the adjacent tiles and drilling an additional hole and nail to get them to sit as best as I could. There is a slight kick where the rubber flashing sits under the adjacent tiles but this doesn't affect the rows above, so decided I have to live with it. (Picture from a distance to stop you zooming the vents😂) The south elevation has 10 longi 405w PV panels, so I was using the GSE trays. Incidentally these trays and flashing were 50% more than the panels😔. GSE panels...... The instructions are very in-depth, but to be fair I just struggled with them. They suggest you don't need flashing for the top course as the tiles can sit over the trays, I doubt this works for any flat tiles / slates. Possible for pantiles if your lucky. A few on here @Dave Jones, and @dpmiller (I think) suggested this was the case, and I confirm you need the flashing kit, or use Flexi flashing, but IMO the detailing of the raised sections of the trays ( between panels) would be tricky and ugly. The thin leading edge tiles also caused slight kicking issues on the side flashing as well. So I had to be creative. (maybe this is standard for a proper roofer?) For the bottom flashing I used a 4x1 and timber wedges and used a replacement self adhesive flashing. Annoyingly the width of the trays with the raised section etc and the side flashings made the overall width 6.2M wide, so I had to order another length, and this was held up with Evri for 10days🥲. Fitting the extra battens for the clamps and tray support was painful for my brain, just too much timber. I ended up fitting a row of half trays at a time. Once the trays were fitted we tiled the RH side of the roof upto the GSE tray lateral flashing. This is where I needed to think out of the box, the tiles on there own kicked up into the air a looked terrible. I also had narrow tiles (120mm) cuts to allow for the half bond. These tiles needed the nib on the back of the tile grinding off which in turn meant they had nothing to hang on, and couldn't be nailed as they were on the flashing. So I used a hanging valley clip. To get these to sit flush I had to grind a little slot into the tile face, then to stop the tiles tipping into the flashing, and to give them a second fixing, I ground a groove in the rear of the tile, then once the next row was installed used a c clip to hold it all in place. Picture shows the valley clip and wire to hang the tile. Groove for C clip. C clip in place. This was repeated on all rows, so all tiles have at least two fixings. (Overkill?) The top flashing as I mentioned, had to be ordered and the corner flashings need modifying to ensure they sit flush over the PV panel. I installed two panels, then test fitted the flashing and corner flashing, which needed snipping with tin snips, then the overlapping cut edges pop riveted to reduce the height. This was sealed with lead mate. Once I fitted the flashings, I tiled the remaining roof and top rows. The flashing kit is expensive, but works and looks neat from the ground. Dry ridge installed,l and end caps finishing the roof. Then the panels, these were simple with 8 clamps per panel. Just the gutters to fit and scaffolding can come down. Some more EWI to fit then onto the windows and doors which are sat patiently waiting for us to pull our fingers out.

I just noticed that my last entry was 1st June and now it's mid August. Where does the time go. Once again we've lost time on the build, HID did too much breaking and hurt his back and we got a new puppy who is a huge time waster. Although I WFH I also have to visit clients so quite a bit of puppy sitting going on. Then there has been the weather, total opposite of last year. So, down to what has been done. The first main wall is now up to lintel level. First all the door frames then the inside skin This one has the external wall on one part and the insulation so is covered. HID has found fixing the string levels tricky, hence some of the early blocks are not totally level, but improving as he goes through. We have also been breaking up the floor of the hall & snug to be Layer 1 already gone, now layers 2, 3 & 4 to break and clear as well as knocking down the 2 internal walls that are not in the right place being corridors to feed the pigs. Also lots of drain pipes and heavy duty foundation concrete. getting there done and digging on the other side to start prepping for under pinning, the current foundations are 200mm They need to be min of 500 and possibly deeper, until we get to good ground as agreed by BC The nearest soil is definitely showing hints of clay. of course we have an issue though, if you look just above puppy, you can see the drain culvert, totally buried in concrete. We knew that there was a drain, but how deep is it and how much effort to dig out The other necessary task was clearing the space for the water pipe trench. After booking the water they came and inspected and showed us where it joins us. That turns out to be behind the long shed so we had to clear. Not as bad as ScottishJohn, but a small area similar that I can't find the photo of, but completely covered in brambles and a sloping bank dug out to be level enough for trench digging. Anyway this is the after the pile of bricks turned out to be an old culvert, we dug out brick by brick to 1m then just decided not to go any further. It was solid laid bricks about 1m square, so not a well as solid and not foundation as nothing there, but laid properly so must have been for something. The sheds on the right are storage from the last 20 years and will need to go as that will be our driveway as we don't want to share the existing one . We are holding off digging the trench until we get and answer from OpenReach about their ducting as we want to lay that and both water pipes in one trench. NSW water are happy to see photos of trench and pipe and they realised that digging all 120m trench will probably collapse. When you note what you've done in a 2 month period it has changed, but it's not much for that length of time. If it does continue at that rate then I reckon about another 4 years 🙂 Thanks for reading. Jill

Well, it's really happening. HID left work last Friday, spent the weekend fixing the horses fencing, but it didn't matter as he can now work on the build. I've created a very detailed project plan for his for 3 days and intend to keep this going as he works much better this way. This will approximate timings which will no doubt go out the window. We did have an issue last week, he had dug a trench, we had torrential rain and one side fell in, some of our soil is very sandy so fine to build on, but need almost digging, inspecting and filling in one day. He has today dug the main parts of the first trenches and BC are coming Thurs am to look with concrete coming Thur lunchtime and then BC coming back later to look at this as he's got a local inspection as one of the local mansions for a few hours. Still lots to do for this, one end needs to be shuttered to allow for the underpinning, we need to fence the area for safely before someone (probably me) falls in. We need to put level markers for the depth and check if any of the sides need supporting. Luckily the weather is supposed to be good this week. Not a very big update, but so excited to be doing something except pouring over reports and plans.

Where on earth has that 2 years vanished? So coming up on the 2 year installation of the inverter and single module battery, and as with most things these days, the gradual improvements to firmware over time have made a huge difference. So at the last update I'd managed to get the power leakage down through an offset, and the whole system was a lot more accurate, but nonetheless still had a small amount of leakage throughout the day which was averaging around 0.5-0.6kWh, certainly not insignificant. It turns out that not long after i bought this setup, Solis released a Version 2 of the inverter, which came with an external RS485 Meter, to connect the CT clamp to, and i believe this was done to improve accuracy, gutted i missed out on it, and theres no way of adding it without swapping the inverter, so thats a definite non-starter. I got back in touch with them to see if there was anything more they could do, and it was decided that I would move away from the firmware which supported the fixed offset (A1 branch), to the generally available firmware and ended up on version 17014, which was clearly much improved as now the leakage looks like this... At the end of september I decided to move over to Octopus Flux to take advantage of the cheaper rate during the night to charge the battery up. To compare both scenarios i have taken the same December - January Period (clearly at this time of year, solar input will be minimal), last year and then this year. Neither of these include any standing charge, this is purely for energy alone. 2022 Electricity 8th Dec. 2022 - 31st Dec. 2022 - Total amount after reimbursement from goverment £44.45 Energy Used 141.3 kWh @ 48.45p/kWh £68.47 Energy Price Guarantee 141.3 kWh @ 17.00p/kWh -£24.02 2023 Electricity 8th Dec. 2023 - 31st Dec. 2023 Energy Imported 15.15p/kWh 130.2 kWh £19.731 25.26p/kWh 17.8 kWh £4.491 35.36p/kWh 3.4 kWh £1.188 Total consumption 151.3kWh @ 16.79p/kWh (Average unit rate) £25.41 So taking into account the government reimbursement from last year, the energy pricing on standard variable tariff this year is around 4p cheaper than the same period last year. I've not included the amounts for export, as they are minimal at this time of year also. Otherwise the battery has saved me almost £20 in that single month, by being able to use cheaper electricity, and in effect shift my load. Maybe another month, or thereabouts and I should be able to stop charging from the grid again until autumn, and rely wholly on the excess Solar PV to run the property. The better months of the year for Solar should be really interesting, as at the peak i'll likely be able to totally drain the battery, and still charge it up enough after peak export period to keep me til the next morning, should be able to accrue a good amount of credit from export. I shall report back in the autumn!

Thought I'd do a short blog on the Polycarbonate tunnel we built. Our big field suffered with no storage, and location meant containers were very expensive to transport. so one option was to build a polytunnel, which we have planning permission for. again due to location, 500m from the coast 73M AMSL I wanted something sturdy. so looked at off the shelf packages. in the Highlands and Islands the PolyCrub is seen as the mecca. Designed in the Shetland isles, guaranteed to withstand 100MPH winds etc etc. due to the ability to get CROFT grant assistance on these, the price is, IMHO, artificially high CIRC 6K for 4M *6M.. this wasn't going to happen, so after looking at many photos I designed my own.. Basic principle is hoops of MDPE pipe secured to posts in the ground, then 3*2 timber used as horizontal support, with Polycarbonate sheets secured to this timber. the bottom sides are then clad. My design was to use 65mm Black MDPE pipe, and secure the timber with coach bolts and penny washers through the pipe. this way I get a guaranteed fixing that won't pull out , and it still allows for flex in the whole structure. 4m wide x 6M long, but this can be extended. My ground has bed rock close to the surface, 300-500mm below ground, so just knocking in post wasn't going to be secure enough to withstand the winds, also where I was sighting the tunnel its on sloping ground, so I couldn't get it level. I cleared the area to removed the top vegetation and a bit of the top soil. and dug 14 holes. then due to rock levels I then core drilled the rock to allow for the post to be deeper. We then set these in concrete, (at the same time as doing the slabs for the cabins.) The next day we had a look and I wasn't too happy with the security of the posts, so slight change of plan, we created a plinth. basically I used some 6x2 either side of the posts, with a slight angle, then filled this with concrete (again we used ready mix at the same time as back filling the treatment plant) this added about 300kg of concrete to each side, and joined all the posts together, and gave us a solid plinth at the side. No Photos of the next stage but we cut 7M lengths of 63mm pipe, this when placed over the posts gives approx. 500mm dwarf walls and a 6M polycarbonate sheet, giving a head height of around 2.3M. we used a plumb bob to get the centre line on each hoop and drilled an 8mm hole through the pipe and secured the top 3x2 treated timber to al the hoops. One thing we found was that the MDPE did not bend uniformly, this may have been due to slight errors with the posts being plumb. The resultant timber (which was not very straight), snaked from hoop to hoop. after head scratching and re thinking. I decided it was a poly tunnel and to get on with it. we used 7 lengths of timber jointed with half lap joints to extend the length to 6.5M. if using a clock analogy the timber was placed at 9,10,11,12,1,2,3 positions, with the 9 & 3 o'clock being 500mm off the ground, also ensuring the 9 & 3 o'clock timbers were approx. 5.8M apart circumferentially. Then it was a case of securing the polycarbonate sheets to the timber. each sheet is joined with some soffit H joint strip. (you can buy a clear joining strip for the sheets but for a 6M length it was around £65. the H strips proved extremely difficult to connect the two sheets together, or should I say impossible. so I cut off the back edge on one side and used some glazing sealant. this way we could attach the strip to the polycarbonate prior to bending over the tunnel. and each sheet 'H' strip basically lapped over the previously installed sheet. day 2 we had the basic structure. It was noticeable that the curve was not symmetrical, so putting the door frame header in by securing to timbers at 11 and 1 o'clock was not level. I overcome this by using a ratchet strap attached to the 11, and 3 o'clock timbers and tightening until timbers at 11&1 o'clock were level. I then put the two door jambs in (concreted at the base) and cut to the length required and secured to the header. This worked and the tunnel was now more cylindrical. I framed the rear by baring 3x2's off the horizontal timbers. Last steps were to clad the base, I used 4*1 treated timbers that were screwed into the MDPE pipe and wooden posts. then used strips of visqueen to create a more sealed dwarf wall, this will help prevent driven rain from the winds getting inside. over this I used Larch timber backs* to create a vertical cladding All in with hardware, polycarbonate, timber, concrete the project cost £1200. not cheap, but its solid as a rock. It withstood the first Autumnal storms this week with winds hitting 50MPH. Its also very warm inside, even now as the temperature is falling. Larch timber backs are the offcuts from the saw mills and are reasonably priced as scrap. we purchased a pack of timber backs, approx.40 lengths of larch timber with bark in 4.8M lengths for £100. these are not uniform and taper etc, but as i only needed 500mm lengths it was straight forward to make it work.

Our tale of delays and woe is competing even with @pocster for time taken From Oct - Dec progress has one again been delayed by weather, flooding, cold and in all honesty a bit of incompetence on our part meaning we are further back than when we started. This period started well enough with the trenches for foundation filled ready to start building walls. After digging down and down to the required depth (or so we thought) we started to place the cellcore ready for the mesh / concrete. Most of this had to be done by hand as we somehow managed to build the walls before digging deep enough for the hardcore and blinding and couldn't reach lots of it with the digger. The cellcore and mesh were laid Then this hit - storm babett our road and the site were totally flooded and the work from the previous day ruined After waiting for it all to dry enough BC came out and said wrong, wrong, wrong. We had mis-read our plans and somehow forgotten to suspend our suspended floor and to add even more woe we hadn't left enough bearing space on the foundations for the mesh to sit on. Cue 4 weeks of SE, BC and the associated costs. To be fair they were both really helpful at trying to sort out what was our mess with the least upheaval to us. Then partially fill the hand dug hole, thankfully only one room not the whole house and having crushed 104 tons of concrete hardcore isn't in short supply. In the end we had to knock down what we'd built and get agreement from SE & BC that we could use Shear Links between the mesh sheets and have any overhang of 150 instead of 200. I hadn't even heard of Shear Links so sourcing them was fun as neither had any of the main BM's. there are also many different shapes, we needed shape 33, like a paperclip So, amended drawings, shear links, time and everything else leads, once again, to more cost and more time. It's also rained so much in the last few months that any progress was hampered. We are still not back to where we were, the blinding needs whacking again so the cellcore can be put down again, the mesh needs placing again with the shear links, the walls need rebuilding to DPM and BC needs to inspect. Then we will be back to where we were 2 months ago. One day, I'm hoping to do a blog entry where everything is wonderful 🙂 More in a couple of months.

As promised, here are my completed (I hope) drawings for building control, which I've just submitted to the local council. I'll post back on here with what they come back with, any changes required, and also any restrictions imposed. I know some were asking what was required for BC plans, so hopefully this will give a good guide for a masonry cavity wall build. Side Extension Drawing BC.pdf

A short blog to show my Mini spilt Air2Air install, in the Windy Roost Static. I looked at installing a wood burning stove, but we have zero trees on site, so when I looked at the costs of twin wall flue, terminals, flashing, creating a heat shield and making the caravan tidy plus the hassle of getting wood / coal, the costs were adding up. A quick question on here - Build hub, some options were suggested and I decided to go with the a cheap Air 2 Air heat pump from Appliances direct. The unit is a Telefunken 12K BTU split unit. cost around £375 but did not included the pipe to connect from indoor to outdoor unit. I got 5M twin insulated copper pipe with the flair nuts from ebay for £56. Our Static has a gas fire - useless, and a chimney breast made from chipboard, the side panel just screws off to access the flue. This was the perfect place for the indoor unit, as it would be a neat install and the rear will allow for the pipes to be hidden, also I could use the hole in the floor to route the pipes/ drain and power for the remote unit. I removed the light fitting, screwed the bracket on the timber, and drilled a 80mm hole, for the pipes / drain and power. Then its a case of posting all the pipes/ drain and power cables through the hole, really straight forward, the indoor unit then just clips into place. The indoor unit comes pre wired with a 13A plug top, and you need to run a 3core and earth cable from the indoor unit to the outdoor unit. this is Live, Neutral and a control / switch cable. Next to the chimney is a double plug socket, so I wasn't messing around running new cables, I just drilled an 8mm hole in the side of the chimney breast and used 2M extension lead to plug the unit in. I used some zip ties to secure the extension lead and plug to the pipes (these were put on after the photo below). and that was the internal work complete. zero mess, and no rework / decoration required. The outdoor unit was going to sit directly outside, behind the chimney breast, the ground outside was not level but it is bedrock, so a made a simple frame and made level concrete pad, and cast some hook bolts into the concrete. For initial research I spoke with a Local (ish) refrigeration engineer, and he said he would connect for £120. but was telling me there is nothing to it, and if I was doing everything else then maybe I do it all??? I found an American You tube guide which was helpful on the pipework side. (linked below) Basically, the unit comes pre charged with gas, so you are not filling with gas etc. the main issue is removing the air from the two pipes you install. This is done with a vacuum pump. (some more expensive units come with pipes and they are pre-vacuumed with quick connectors) I found a vacuum pump and gauge set for sale on Vevor for £79 so £41 cheaper than the refrigeration engineer. I bought one, and an adaptor. I'm not suggesting anyone does this without an F - Gas Engineer, but the main issues are leaks, if when you connect the pipes up and they leak you are going to loose the gas, and the unit wont work. To Purge the pipes Step 1 connect your pump to the centre of the two gauges with a hose Step 2 connect a second hose to one of the gauges and the other end to the one way valve on the outdoor unit Step 3 Open the valve on the corresponding gauge from step 2. Step 4 Run the vacuum pump for 15mins to remove the air, and you check the gauge is reading negative. (-30 blue gauge in pic below) Step 5 turn off the pump and wait 15mins, and check the gauge is still negative. (-30) - this proves there is no leaks Step 6 close the valve you opened in step 3. Step 7 Open the 5mm Allen screws on both valves to the gas fill the internal unit. That is disconnect the pump plug the indoor unit in and you ready to go. Notes: I used expanding foam in the hole at the rear of the fire. We have no intentions of using the fire as it is /was rubbish. Also the indoor unit should not be near a source of heat. The total install time was around 4 hours. and total cost £530 More importantly my caravan has warm air. lets see what its like in winter.🤞

Following on from the last entry we had our final inspection and were on the cusp of getting our completion certificate. A few final documents were uploaded and a certificate was received from building control. We had built a house. A few final jobs were completed following the last blog entry. I order 20 tonnes of gravel from a quarry on Skye and then barrowed it down the access and spread it around the house. I also had enough to put some at the top of the access as well and fill a couple of bulk bags. The last job for the joiner was fitting the downpipes. We used the cast iron effect ones as these provide a bit more of a decorative look compared to the standard glossy pipes. We seeded the ground at the start of lockdown and now after a summer of growing the grass is coming on nicely. The grass seed cost very little money. It cost us around £15 to do all around the house. We are pleased with how the house fits into its surroundings. Our pallet wood shelter was finished and I’m currently building up the wood stocks. I am also storing fresh cut wood for the future years. These old CUPA slates crates are useful for this. As we are now heading into colder times of the year, we have had an opportunity to have a few burns from the stove. I’m really pleased with how well it is performing. The stove is bang in the middle of house surrounded by thick concrete block with a lime render. It heats the entire house and the increase in room temperature can be felt twelve hours or so after the last log goes on. I wouldn’t however recommend fitting a stove in a self-build unless you put some serious planning into how you will actually use it. Even a small stove could easily over power the heating need for a living room. Solar gains produce our base heating, keeping the temperatures to around 20c and the daily electricity usage at 10kw. We don’t have any underflooring heating or radiators. If we reach a long cold spot and need a quick boost, I plan to wheel out an oil electric heater or use the towel heaters. . What’s next. I need to crunch the final numbers. I also need to put a final layer on the access road but might put this off until the winter. Thanks for reading.

Concrete was poured via a pump on Monday. Finally have a Concrete sub foundation! Took delivery of the Kore insulation for the actual foundation. Lots of angles sheets, L shape and other ones. I've 88 silver EPS boards too in packs of 8. They needed 2 men to move, the others could be handled one by one. The delivery driver helped offload as getting a forklift and driver for 4 Pallets (@150kg each) was going to be expensive and on too much short notice to arrange insurance for me to drive one. Plus I don't know how!! We got it all offloaded in about 30 minutes by hand and then another 45 to shift it to the back of the site. There seems to be a dip where water is collecting in the middle there and some rebar patterns are showing up in one corner, will discuss with groundsworks lead next week. Next is to find a blocklayer to place two courses of blocks on their side around the perimeter to hold in the Kore and lay the DPM/Radon barrier on. Stops the Kore moving around. That's the holdup as brick layers are flat out over here currently. I put a call into a 2nd who said 7-10 days give him a shout. Plan is for Timber Frame to go up in early March.

The strip out continued through the months of July and August. The old shed coming down Loft insulation out (the itchiest job known to man) Cielings down Conservatory down Floors up Loading up the skip with non burnable stuff. And burning the rest The old garage briefly before being sold, dismantled and collected

After obtaining planning, i got my building controll aplication under way. I had 2 options - Pay £1100 for Building Notice - Pay £900 for Full Plans. Everyone on here recommends full plans, and it was a cheaper fee. I knew i'd have to either pay for the plans or do them myself. I opted to do them myself after loads of research on this forum (particiularily inspired by @HerbJ ) Here's my version of Herb's spec. Building Regulation Specification Redacted.pdf I paid a structural engineer to do the calcs. And then I did all the details, layouts and thermal calcs myself. EWIPRO-A025.pdfnwtc.01.pdfnrtc.pdfnftc.01.pdfewtc.01.pdfeftc.01.pdfDRTC.01.pdfDCTC.01.pdf

so, here we are at the end of the 3rd week of our build with the groundworkers having dug the basement to depth and put the sub-base down ready for levelling and compacting on Monday with the blinding and insulation to also be completed on the same day. We got a second digger driver on site this week and things have really got going and on Friday we even had a 3rd person to stand around with the laser level to assist. Here's the time-lapse video of the week. The basement contractors were due to start on Monday but as the groundworks aren't quite finished they've been pushed back to Tuesday. Despite that we're very happy and even happier since I've been told that the basement construction should only take 5 - 6 weeks, whereas previously I'd been working on around 8 weeks to complete. This is brilliant if they can do it in that time frame and I've already given the timber frame company notice that we might need the TF a couple of weeks earlier than anticipated if they can accommodate that. only time will tell if that's the case. The week finished off with me laying my first ever slab. It will house the electricity kiosk and also be a place for our wheelie bins to go. it was actually the UKPN surveyor who suggested to me to make the slab for the kiosk a bit bigger to allow the bins to go there. I thought it was a great idea and saves me creating something further down the line. Being a bit of a cheap-skate I use some of the old shiplap cladding from the pool house that got pulled down so it probably wasn't the best wood to use for the formwork and, after I put one piece down I did notice is was a bit warped but figured it's just for bins so just left it there. if it's not obvious it's the piece on the left hand side. Also, the 150mm ducting for the electricity cables made tamping the concrete down quite tricky around them so it's not perfect but it'll do. And if anyone asks I'll just say it adds character. seems to be a one-stop excuse for shoddy work. I promise I will take more care over the actual house! For mixing the concrete I was going to hire a cement mixer but at the last minute decided to cancel that and save myself £25 and a drive to pickup and drop-off the mixer and ended up mixing it by hand in a wheelbarrow. that was pretty hard work for someone who sits behind a desk all day and I'm feeling pretty stiff and sore right now but I'm sure as the manual labour progresses it'll help get me in shape in the long run. I'd like to finish with an observation.....this self-building is a funny old thing as I've never ever looked forward to a Monday morning so much in my entire life! I'm just so excited to get to Monday to see what next week will bring. Hopefully I'll go back to hating Mondays once the build is completed. that's about it for this week. I can't wait to see what next week brings.

So after a month or so in the house, the time has provided us with an opportunity to reflect on what we have achieved and what if anything, we would change or could have done differently. In truth there is very little if anything that we would change. The rooms flow, the doors open in the right direction and the lights can be switched on and off in the appropriate places. Even the WBS has proven to be a worry that wasn't worth worrying about, as it's position within the hearth is no longer an issue due to it being vented through the back as opposed to the top. Some jobs have been completed such as the down pipes and a few jobs remain outstanding but nothing that has an impact upon our daily lives. One such job is the porch that needs to be slated. Thankfully I still have some financial leverage over those various trades so I know they will return. Our satisfaction I suppose, has to be routed in the preparation work, the research and being a member of this superb forum. None of these elements should be underestimated. Therefore I would like to sign off this blog with a heartfelt thanks to all those who have contributed, not only to my issues over the past couple of years, but to all the other threads, as they too are just as relevant / enlightening. I have also attached some images which complete the project, namely the WBS chimney installation and the erection of the much mentioned porch. For a final time, thanks for reading, and given the date, seasons greetings to you all. Paul.

I've been looking forward to getting to a point where I can park my car in my driveway again, and finishing my July Post with a part 2 here to mark a finish to my Driveway project finally! Took a bit longer than the two weeks I was hoping!! I just finished adding up the damage and it was @ €7.2k all in all. I think the length of time increased the costs as there were days where I couldn't get to use the compactor and I had to get it back a few times to progress the project on. Some notes observations below: The big Diesel Compactors are heavy duty brutes but also take a specialist skill to start. They are all draw cord and they pulled the arms off me for 25 minutes before I gave up. I was shown how to start it but had to return it to my embarrassment and downgrade! Drainage took a lot longer than I imagined, plumbing in the drain channels was very difficult - I replaced both gully traps and one was encased in concrete by the original builder! Just getting the right couplings and things to fit took me a while to figure out. SDS comes in different sizes, SDS Max chisel bit wouldn't fix my SDS drill so ended up buying an SDS Max drill off Screwfix! I now own 3 angle grinders, started with none! A Screwfix one that won't let me change the grinder to anything else, then a 5" DeWalt, then a 9" Makita. I prefer the cut using this to the block cutter but the dust is gruesome! Grab Hire worked out well, took away 2 x 20 ton loads to clear the site and was able to drop two loads of MoT 804 exactly where I needed them. All moved by hand / wheelbarrow at that stage, was very difficult to find anyone hiring a skid steer for one day. Lots more sand and cement than I thought, all mixed with a wheelbarrow! Using a digger is scary when it starts tipping to the side due to doing something stupid! Two injuries: #1 drilling concrete screw into wall for new side gate, it got stuck and the SDS drill spun violently out of my hand, 6 weeks sprained finger didn't help! #2 seagull poo'd above and dropped inside my goggles, put them on and got acid splash into my eye. Now store goggles between jobs closed to the sky! Broadband issue is fixed - tree roots crushed the pipe on my neighbours property, stump was still there for years. I tried to find the pipe to create a new junction to my new house hear the boundary but only ended up finding the gas pipe by accident with the digger, just the tape over the pipe, where it shouldn't be - should be out on the road according to the gas map. Went to the other end near my old house and finger traced the pipe to a point near the new boundary and created a shore there. Thankfully after two years complaining a crew came recently out to remove said stump, run new draw cord and I'll have no issue getting broadband into my new house now, 1 less worry So I've to finish the very front and put up two more concrete posts and panels. I've to grout using Rompox jointing compound and see how long that takes. Hopefully it will keep the weeds away! But at least I can relax a little bit and use the driveway again. Would I go it again?! Well, I learned valuable lessons, to pace myself, what I can do when I put my mind to it, very useful for my self build next year. My body is certainly feeling the pressure and I'm glad I'm in my 50's and not my 60's!! I overestimated how much work was involved but learnt a lot in the process, not just specifics but about groundworks and hiring plant and grab hire which was new to me. I did get a digger & driver for a day and could see how they made short work of things compared to my efforts so picking and choosing where to spend money best is a wise course of action! Full costings below if interested! I Kept all my receipts for idle curiosity! All inclusive of VAT. Best of luck to anyone out there thinking of doing same! My Driveway area is 75m2. 7265.52 Total 1984.38 Tobermore Paving 210 Paving Block Cutter (€400-sale afterwards) 200 Recessed Manhole Covers 32.69 Spade 690.78 Sand, Easypost, Cement,Gravel 100 Diesel Compactor - unable to start, returned! 32.66 32mm plastic waste pipe as screen level 300 Compactor Rental 39.92 Donegal Quartz stone 89.95 Dewalt Angle Grinder 102.57 Sand/Cement/Gully 44.95 More Gullys 35.47 Lubricant / Sealant 147.08 Donegal Quartz stone & gravel 24.48 Plastering Sand 76.65 Sewer Gullys 11.32 Sewer Pipes 19.56 Sewer Pipes 19.19 Concrete Screws 200 Hire Compactor 500 Hire Digger 19.58 Plastering Sand 86.35 Manhole Cover 292.15 Plant Rental 69.65 Cement mix & misc 45 post and line levels 93 replacement wheel for wheelbarrow & cement 17.7 side gate lock and hook 5.99 petrol can 284.55 rompox jointing compound 12.45 tape 257.31 sds max drill 82.04 kpost 7.15 coupler 38.8 drain caps 15.95 sds max drill 37.25 bits and sockets 38.95 draper cold chisel 700 Grab Hire - removal of concrete/topsoil 300 Delivery of MoT 804

What a journey that was, lying builder and a few no show days caused the finish date to slip, and following a 2month delayed start, but I got there in the end!! Good things come to those who wait eh. So the outside shell of the building is now completed, and yesterday I started work on the inside. The lean-to roof was extremely close, but just squeezed it in with a slight pitch modification. This leaves me with essentially 3 sections of wall to clad: Near side will get done with EWI and brick slips, and the flue will get extended through the EWI, far side will get EWI and brick slips right up to the soffit, and that will leave a triangle with 1 missing corner above the extension. This will get clad with timber, and insulated to match the EWI spec. The EWI will likely get done first, the timber later. Downpipe is to be fitted yet, and will temporarily get routed down the soil stack. I'm going to get several large water storage tanks, but as you can probably see i've got a mountain of block paving to shift first!! Really pleased with my size choice for the windows, had worried they weren't going to be big enough, but think they are spot on! First day of me on the job, got the first layer of insulation in, 100mm PIR. Need to hit it with the expanding foam, there is then a further 50mm to go on top of this, and then 25mm under the rafters, before the plasterboard. Hoping the new Windows for the front of this and also an upgrade for the kitchen to triple glazed will be coming tomorrow, and planning on fitting this bank holiday weekend if they do. Other developments: I also made the decision to invest in another battery, a further US3000C module to take me to around 6.6kWh of usable, and unlock the full 3kW output of the inverter, and given the current outlook to import pricing, I think i made the right choice. Very pleased with how the battery system is performing even how it is currently with only a single module.

So after 2 years since the planning permission was granted, and a 2month delay from the builders I'm finally underway on what will be the last major building work on this bungalow. Having real trouble finding a joiner who's available to do the roof, so I may end up having to do that myself. The one bit i'm unsure on having never done a lean-to roof before, the wood plate which goes on the wall, is it fixed using thunderbolts?

The next stage of the setup of the site took place over the last 3 weeks. with some good progress. The trip up North, 433mile from our current rental in the NW of England. I set off on Wednesday morning in the 7.5T truck, and the 2 dogs for company. I took some materials with me, and had a gut feeling I was overloaded. I had worked out the approx. weight of what I was taking, but was unsure of the TARE weight of the truck. so I didn't take all I was planning. Luckily the nice guys from VOSA, At Carlisle (Todhills check site), confirmed my suspicions when the invited me in for a check. I was over weight, but the truck and my paperwork were all in good order, and they give the truck a thorough looking at. The upshot of this was me renting another 7.5T truck for storage, offloading the excess weight, driving the remaining 333 miles, unloading, returning the next day with the empty truck, re loading and driving back to site. 1100 miles in 38 hours. not what was planned, but you live and learn.... I arrived back on site on early Friday morning, 02.30am. and slept in the cab of the truck, until I was woke up at 05.10, by the guy delivering the Static, he was at the end of the road... Here's a screen grab of our new home arriving to site, this was 05.25 am... I hired a contractor to carry out the highway works for the site entrance, basically as he had the correct insurance and RAMS it was easier to get this stage subbed out. The idea was he would open up the site, with a 5 T digger, start the initial road and stone this up with around 60T of type 1. I would then meet on site and hire his man for a few days to assist with the pecking of the treatment plant. This didn't go to plan, they had to use a 13T machine, as it was available, so when I eventually get to site on the Thursday, due to the size of machine, the operator has completed the initial works, then pulled out approx. 60M of the road, and pecked the treatment plant hole, and I got this for free... 😁 Having a 13t machine on site, with operator for the Friday, I needed to make the most of it, as I was only paying for the rental of a 5T machine. Mikey the operator, made short work of pulling out the remainder of the road up to the location of the house, in total this road is around 90M. Next I had him strip the area for the house. The house is around 13M x 7M, so I wanted to strip back a working area around the house, my thought was we would hit the bed rock so this was the plan, we marked out a 16M x 11M rectangle, and he set to it, it took him about 2 hours to strip the land and scrape it clean. The above is the bedrock where the house will be, and the road coming up the side of the house. (I used a geotextile as a separation layer for the road, although in sections the road is on bedrock anyway,) You can make out that there is a fall from the top left falling to bottom right, this will be made up with type 1 stone, raising SW corner of the house around 700mm, I will raise the road in this section and use some of the top soil to level this out a bit and soften the impact. The last Job for Mikey was to dig me the trench for the services, he dug a 600mm wide trench about 8M short of the Treatment plant (to allow me access to move the spoil, and a similar distance short at the other end for me to connect to the water. just shy of 60M. Friday was a busy day on 3 hrs sleep. The treatment plant also arrived as can be seen above, I went for a Tricel unit, this was based on cost, treatment, dimensions and availability. Last job for the day was to move the caravan, Mikey helped me with this and we stripped a bit more land and located here temporarily for the night North / South. Saturday I decided to get the water connected to the caravan, for this I needed to complete the trench from the standpipe to the large service trench. I never dug this on the first trip as I was concerned about the electrical supply to my neighbours property. Cables seemed to run across my field at around 300/ 400 mm depth. I used my contact at SSE and he arrange to get the cable moved / deepened. This was carried out a few weeks prior and we discussed the position of the new road, and he made a site visit and we talked about me extending the water pipe trench in both directions so that I could also lay a utilities duct to the road for broadband. So to say I was a bit surprised, and p***ed off when I cut through the neighbours supply cable. The cable was as I was worried about 400mm deep, and the marker tape was next to the cable.... How to upset your new neighbours by having their electricity supply stopped two times (1 for the initial connection, 1 for the remedial works), only for me to cut the cable for a third time.... At least they were very prompt, they arrived after about 40mins, and it took him around an hour to re-joint the cable. I then removed the water standpipe and ran my new water main up to the caravan. It will tee off for the pods at some point, and then continue up to the house. SO now I had running water in the van, and gas for the water heater and hob / oven. Sunday was glorious, so I caught up on my sleep, and had a restful day. Scottish Power were due to fit the meter on the Wednesday, so I needed to get my service cables from the meter box into the service trench and up to the caravan and to the pods. I dug a trench across the road and through to the service trench. I used a 125mm Duct, and inside here I ran some 6mm SWA to supply the pods and some 50mm Duct to run a service cable to the caravan and ultimately up to the house. I pulled the cables through, and I have put a caravan hook up point next to the static. Tuesday / Wednesday, I had 80T of Type 1 MOT delivered in stages, I spread this out using the Back hoe, and vibrating roller. so by the end of Wednesday I have the base in for the road. which will give me good access for deliveries. Scottish power were a no show..... Discussing the caravan with the neighbour they advised turning the caravan 90deg, so it was end on East / West as the stronger winter winds tend to blow from the West, and being side on would ultimately be unstable. I dug out another section of land next to the caravan with the idea of swinging the van around at weekend when Mandy Joined me for the last week. It took me and Mandy all Saturday to move the van, using the backhoe to pull it around. and most of Sunday to get it jacked up off the ground and levelled. We dug 4 pits later on in the week and concreted some anchors in to chain the van down. The van in position with Mandy getting the best job of the week to squeeze under the van and start to insulate the water pipes... Scottish Power let us down again with a missed appointment on the Tuesday with a promise of Friday.... They actually turned up late Thursday and fitted the meter, so we had power on the Thursday night. We spent a couple of days moving spoil around the site to create a mound of earth to shelter and soften the impact of the pods, this was also a planning requirement for the neighbours amenity. Still work in progress and there's 10's of tonnes more to move. Last job before packing up on the Friday was to level the base of the treatment tank pit. At this point we were still waiting for the building warrant. so couldn't actually install the plant. We end the week by getting the Building warrant approved, and the certificate for discharge for the treatment plant both on Friday. Thanks for reading..

... and so, in mid July, we had just a few things to do before we could pour concrete. <CUT, CUT, CUT> That's wrong again, you forgot the three spur walls and you've order some wrong parts. Go again, from the top ... and so, in mid July, we had an unknown quantity of things to do before we could pour concrete ? But before all of that happened, as a family we were all brought together for one of the inevitable things about life - every one must some day some to an end, this time it was my Mother-in-Law, a real matriarch, in the best way. After having gone through several operations and rounds of chemotherapy, her cancer got to the brain, and all other plans went on hold. We were able to get back to site shortly after she passed away in late August to continue. She did get to visit the site, and was so pleased with where we going to be living. So, first on the list was the starter bars for the retaining walls with this amazing double row being installed by my erstwhile wife and with all those complete, it was onto the underfloor heating loops and then the bolts that will locate a couple of steel columns Now, the eagle eyed amongst you will recognise those as M16 bolts (well done to all the bolt nerds), and when a steel fabricator came along, having seen the plans, he fortunately pointed out that they should be M20 bolts. So, if anyone is in need of some 300mm M16 bolts and fittings, tap me up for a deal ? And, so we thought we were ready for a bunch of concrete, until we visited our friendly ICF supplier to talk about the walls and realised I had omitted the shoring for three extra pieces of wall that needed to be tied to the main slab. So after a stupidly self-imposed extra delay, we managed to get everything in place to have some jolly super chaps (Tom, Phil and Ross) to bring along a concrete pump and other wonderful paraphernalia to pour, tamp and float our insulated slab foundation. . We can almost smell the completion of the house ? ? ? ?

Whether you are converting a barn, like us, or building from scratch I just don't know where the time goes. Agreed hubby works full time and although I'm only supposed to work 3 days per week I've been doing a lot more lately as we are so busy with the work new build. It's also been dark and cold which doesn't inspire enthusiasm to get outside to do things. I'm also very limited in what I can do, I'm not very strong and don't always know how to do things. I've also found that keeping the site clean and tidy is a thankless and time consuming job, but essential, last week we lost a crow bar and took days to find it buried in a pile of old newspapers that should have been thrown away. One of our bigger issues is the barn being so full of all sorts of things gathered over the years before we even start, as it was pig units it's split into 7 large areas with a corridor with a wall down the middle. Some of the stuff is rubbish and can be disposed off, but I'm loath to get rid of anything at this stage in case it may have a use in the future. One area we used for hay and horse feed, which they are almost through being the end of winter. Of course by next winter I'm going to need somewhere else to store this, it may be next year that it's still in the barn as we are most likely still going to be putting the outside together. The other areas have tack and cat food, another one wood, then there is the farm implements, the tractor, the digger and other machinery. So, to store the things we really need I cleared out the old bike sheds, these had collapsed roofs which had to be removed, cut up and taken to the tip. Then to provide us with storage space they had to be rebuilt. The wood wasn't a problem, over the years we have knocked down lots of old sheds so we had lots of wood around which was good enough for this purpose. We also had some roofing sheets from old sheds, enough for one of the bike sheds. Even though the sheds suffer from subsidence they should be good enough for the duration of the build (we hope) when they can be knocked down. We then needed more sheets and some long lengths of wood to put a roof on the 2nd bike shed. So, I had to take some off the roof of the barn to provide what we needed. Not being a building expert in any way I was surprised at how much was involved in this, with battens, insulation, rafters, roofing sheets attached with lots and lots of long nails. Also, after that more wood on the top of each wall, wall plates I guess, I thought that they would be one piece, but oh no, it was battens with 2 pieces in between, lots of mouse nests and more nails. So, that's one shed, with the roof off, only another 6 to go and then the corridor. Each roofing sheet is 20' plus and far too heavy for me to move so I remove the nails with hammer and crowbar and then get hubby to get the sheets off. This week I've also removed the old gutters and what used to be wood holding them up. It did make me wonder, this barn is about 50 years old and lots of the wood is completely rotten, so what protects timber framed houses. I guess that they are just not exposed like this. This side of the barn is south facing as well so gets lots of sun. This lower roof that I'm removing at the moment will be raised to be the same height as the other part which along with digging out the floor will give us enough roof height at the lower end to pass muster. We also went shopping this month and spent a large chunk of our budget buying a digger, wacker plate, breaker, nail gun and some tiles. All auction purchases at Cheffins plant sale in Ely. We spent more on this than intended because of the VAT that we can't claim back, and will lose when we eventually sell it. But, it's going to make our life so much easier. The first task though is to dig out some huge troublesome brambles that have spread very quickly. Good practice before we need to dig out the floor in the barn. That will be done once I've finished removing the roof. Another urgent task is to get some concrete fibre roof sheets removed as they may contain that pesky asbestos. These are on the 'L' part of the barn, the majority is the metal sheets. On as more sedentary note I spent many weeks going through everything that I think we need for the build from nails to zinc roof. This was 100's of items which I then manually searched for the best price for. Then I contacted 8 builders merchants asking about trade accounts, only 4 responded with Wickes saying "do it yourself from our website". The big boys didn't even reply at all. The 3 that did respond were all local merchants who returned my spreadsheet with largely varying prices, but all offering good discounts due to the volume of stuff that we need. They also said that they sometimes have special deals, in one case 75 - 80% for some items. Of the 4 I looked at 3 priced Kingspan insulation whereas one of them listed Celotex. This is what is in the barn at the moment to keep the piggy's warm, is there much difference as the Celotex was a lot cheaper. During April, I want to get the rest of the back roof off and also get the asbestos cleared and removed from site. This does necessitate some water and electrical changes as this roof is in the area where the power and water come in from the host house.

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!

Hesitantly, I offer this checklist because the subject matter is often deeply sensitive: there's so much at stake during the meeting and the build up to it may well have been fraught. Indeed, this blog entry is a pen-portrait of a recent Planning Committee Meeting in my area All the more need for a rational, carefully structured checklist, therefore. This list appeared originally on the ill-fated ebuild site. Each comment was referenced to multiple threads, thus adding greatly to its validity. This list is offered as a help to those who are considering going to Committee to make their case. I am almost sure that -since many of the ebuilders are now here at buildhub- that any questions you may have about this checklist will be answered promptly. List the facts, assemble the evidence. (Basic procedure for problem solving) Councillors may ask for applications to be called The process in a nutshell Scottish Regulations differ to those in England Dig out the NPPF read it, which paragraphs refer to your case? The value of an accurate drawing Conservation Area? Other local decisions Scale model Size matters, (footprint) but you need evidence Micro-politics: architects - planners - county councillors - parish councillors - neighbours; strategy for dealing with each Is needing to Appeal so bad? Going to Committe or Going to Appeal Manage your Planning Consultant Check the fees situation in relation withdrawn applications What is a withdrawal? You may withdraw DURING a meeting Manage your emotions: don't show people how upset you are What to say and how to say it If you're worried about that, employ a professional to present for you. Going to Appeal needn't be as bad as it may sound