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Item 1 on the latest list is complete 😁

An update (after the fact) Plastering finished in the open plan area this coming week (by others) DONE (see above) Remainder of stone cladding arrives and work begins to get the most inaccessible (high) parts put up before the scaffold gets taken away - this means cladding two 7m x 2m wide walls. It arrived and I did get the stonework done on the high parts Plumbing pipework ready for ASHP installation DONE Gabion basket and pad for ASHP to be installed on DONE Mist coat and first coat on plaster (SWMBO is at the ready) DONE Begin fitting upstairs UFH (Not done) Front door being fitted (January) by others DONE Take 3-4 days off for Xmas DONE and appreciated ASHP installation (January) by others, that will allow for hot water and the downstairs UFH to be available ... DONE Fit a temporary bathroom ... DONE Fit out utility room as temp kitchen ...DONE Its been a comfortable month in the house (in fact we are staying an extra few days while it is cold overnight!). We fitted an over bath shower, and done a lot of other work since. and that'll be part of the next blog entry.

@Marvin I think I have just about done all the reduction measures I can (except baths). I intend to add a bit more insulation here and there, but it will only make a marginal difference. An EV would make the biggest difference, but at the moment it would not be practical (or affordable) for me. I could get a lodger again, which would pay for an EV, but I like living in my own.

Hey @Nickfromwalesthanks for the comment last night, gave me some confidence and motivation to go at it again today, armed with a bag of STANDARD set adhesive 🤣. I had been using rapid, because the tile supplier recommended rapid to prevent the adhesive being sucked into the natural stone and discolouring. But, id rather a good tile job, than worrying about discolouring. Mixed the bag up in 3rds. My confidence really took a knock after smashing whole bags of rapid set downstairs for the limestone floor! and what a difference that made, gave me so much time to lay and adjust, getting it all perfect! And ended up doing significantly more. but yes, next time I’ll set the former to the height of the SLC minus 2mm for UFH cable, not the height of the tile backer board! the SLC has made the rest of the room a doddle to tile! So I forgive it for making my former a nightmare. Could probably have got away without the levelling clips, but they’re a nice safety net.

@LiamJones "if I were to do it again (I’ve got 2 more formers to do), I'd sacrifice a dead level room, to reduce build up at the edge of the former. The former is designed with built in falls, and by building up, I’ve destroyed this. I could have also gone 2-3mm lower with the self leveller and still achieved a level floor, given 3mm adhesive would still be applied over the top of the bare UFH in places. what a nightmare!"..... First off, a bloody commendable effort mate, just dust yourself down and get ready for the next one. Firstly, don't use rapid set adhesive you mad bar steward!! Standard set is your friend for intricate stuff like this. Secondly, my thought as to where this went wrong (imho) after it was all going so right is as follows. When you set the former into place on the woodwork you missed one vital step, and that was to put a 6mm (or x mm) layer of plywood down first to raise the former to meet your (predicted) top of SLC, that simple mate. On the next one, work this out to the mm and fit either ply or insulated backer board / whatever works, and then the world will seem a happy place and the tiling will be a doddle I fit the UTH wire with the suggested tape etc, but it then go around after, painstakingly, and mitre bond the wire flat to the floor everywhere it doesn't want to lay absolutely flat, and then you can put prob half the SLC down. Lesson learned for the next one, third ones a charm 👍

Well done. We got some eye popping demo quotes most didn’t even come to site, like you, we found that all they were going to do is smash the house to pieces and go to land fill although they would do it very quickly it seemed the amount of skips required was an extra to most quotes. We had asbestos in various places but removed ourselves with care and an asbestos skip. It was the kind your allowed to remove yourself with precautions. We found more asbestos than was listed on report we got, so got samples tested before removing but if a digger would have smashed through house this may have not been found. We did the demo ourselves, pallet break x 2 was invaluable on everything from roof tiles to plaster off walls and floor boards. A reciprocating saw was our second most trusted friend along with ooffa and doofa our crow bars. Ooffa had got it self lost but recently sighted between the walls at the front of basement, silly sausage, how did it get there! We have been able to store lots of wood and hope to reuse including our floor boards which I plan to make into parquet at some point. Bricks are going into gabions to terrace the garden. It was harder work and longer than we imagined but lots of money saved and satisfaction and very little to land fill and only 2 skips of concrete roof tiles, (so far) although lots of weekly drop off at recycling centre and managed to make money on selling copper and such like. We are now left with an open shell of a basement and chimney but we are now waiting for our sheep farmer to finish lambing to finish the rest and do ground work. Not long now.

Hi Nick, J here, my "mantra" for our move is less stuff not more storage, so not planning on having anything in the loft....we'll see how that goes! Seriously though that's one of the reasons we're comfortable with the old fashioned w trusses being provided as part of out frame kit. Always good to "test" the thought process though

I know 3/10 poor rant - needed more variety in the expletives Sorry I'll try to do better next time!!

The Commissioning chap came round yesterday, checked the system and listened to our tales of woe. He said that the flow temperature was 10oC lower than recommended and the water temp was only at 44oc when it was specified at 50oC. But apart from that, all was okay. After some tweaks to correct the temperatures, he left. The house is warm enough and Dad seemed to listen to his advice re maintaining a fairly constant temperature, rather than trying to turn off things then expecting them to warm up when turned back on. (Even though I had explained the same several times before - but then I'm just his daughter! What would I know........) So we spent £7k, plus a £7.5k grant from the Government, and from start to finish it took from 11th November till 3rd December to install and make it all work satisfactorily. Not really the best advertisment for ASHP's but if it keeps the old folks warm enough and saves some money from the old system, then I'm happy.

As promised, Black Friday did me well…

We want more info on the Interceptor 🙂

Easy peasy. now just think if you had your own machine how much would you have saved. 😉 go and tell the wife.

Love to see a really clean and tidy site

Looking good - fingers crossed all goes well for you.

They sound great. Just need to build a house with cladding now!

Including yellow rattle. It adds attractively to the mix and parasitises any grass that dares try to take over.

Looks great, agree with @Thorfun on the pocket doors we had three but have gone down to one now.

Building involves so much digging and disposing and filling and burying. So, lots of expense for something that will never be seen again. Makes me extra thankful for the farmer who very happily had all our spoil for his own particular holes in tracks. But, it's coming on well and now you get to go up and put something in place that you will get to see again. JIll

Yeah, it wouldn’t be good to be entombed in your own foundations.

Great job - really at the coal face and making good progress!!

Oh, and get some tanking solution on top of that tanking strip!!!!

On the Roof ventilation side I think you are planning insulation at ceiling level and a pitched roof? If so I would opt for a sealed roof and zero ventilation in the attic to prevent wind washing of the insulation. Have a look at Tyveks detail for a non ventilated cold roof.

on that basis I think I’ll treat your future blogg posts as thread resurrections in future

Uh-oh. Having been on an extended quiet period, my blog has gone beserk. This is one of those "push it into the indeterminate future whilst I think about finishing it" posts from about 3 years ago :-). Ooops.

That would be really useful data. I often think people are over optimistic about the efficiency they can get from almost every bit of equipment they own. Reducing parasitic loads is an area I really focused on a decade ago, it is why I show two different 'means'. In my larger spreadsheet I can look at the half hourly data and see what is happening.

Interesting read - like lots of us on here, I'm always working out ways to reduce our usage and make the most of off peak electricity prices. Like @Marvin we're all electric, with PV, ASHP and in our case batteries not an EV. Now we're in the new year, I'm just working out what we've used this year. At one point in your analysis @SteamyTea, you say a 20% efficiency loss on batteries would be a best guess. This is one thing I was concerned after I'd installed our batteries. What I've noticed is that at low wattage the losses are higher. If this is the case, then there's probably a base loss due to the inverter being 'on' so to speak and then a %age of the actual wattage being delivered. An example from this morning, with a house load of 323W the inverter was actually drawing 397W from the battery, so 19% - which is about your best guess. Later in the morning with the ASHP drawing power, the house load was 2953W and the inverter was using 3187W from the battery (2452) and PV (735W), so about 7%. Unfortunately for all battery users the lowest loads will be the most common and higher loads more intermittent, so losses would be closer to the 20% than the 7%. I'll have to try to dump data from the inverter to get more data points, for example when the batteries are being charged, either from the grid or from the PV etc.

Snotgobblers I call them One thing I did like about Covid was it showed the world how good a childs developing immune system was and how it could take on a novel pathogen (CV-19) and just bloody laugh at it like all the other colds and coughs They didn't need vaccinating and there never should have been any attempt to do that all the data screamed that!!!

The blue car is a customers Jensen 541 and the grey one is our Jensen FF arriving back from the painters ready for us to complete its restoration.

The old mannequin purchased the Jensen Interceptor in September 2011 the car was a rusty wreck that many in the Jensen Owners Club thought was too far gone to restore. In 2014 it won many trophies in the Jensen Owners Club Concours. The old mannequin enjoyed restoring the car so much we bought a Jensen FF. In September 2015 we came on holiday to Cornwall to meet up with other Jensen owners, on the way home we made a five year plan to move down here. The original plan was to find land build a house and a big barn but less than a year later we had found our current home with a big barn. We left our business in Manchester in the hands of his brother and staff who all became small shareholders in the company and started a new business in Cornwall restoring Jensen’s. Our current home has 3 staircases although you could just stay on one level if you chose too, ignoring the 3 extra beds rooms, snug and other rooms. As you can see we’re no spring chickens, the bungalow will be great all on one level for both us and our elderly greyhound. Follow this link https://www.oilyragclassics.co.uk/projects-gallery/jensen-interceptor-mkiii/ for more info on the Jensen Interceptor and for the full restoration blog click here https://joc.org.uk/joc-forum/?w3=dmlld3RvcGljLnBocD9mPTE3JnQ9MTI0NTg=

Looking dead good ! Redundancy feels like a kick in the teeth at first . But as you have found out - it can be taken as a positive sign . Onwards and upwards ! 👍

I should have known it wasnt going to happen. The Commissioning engineer is now coming next week to give the company time to sort this all out. Which is a good job. The electrician was moved to today (wednesday) as the new Honeywell thermostat was arriving yesterday. However, when i arrived this morning, the electrician was resetting the programme on the old one! He assumed I was not intelligent enough to programme the correct temperatures!🙄 Despite being one of the two who had left it on the factory set schedule, for those out at work all day, not 85yr olds sititng at home all day!! Grrrr! Then i found out, he had not been told about the new thermostat, and questioned why we wanted a wired in version and not wireless😖😩 He left shortly after, saying he'd be back tomorrow with the new thermostat to wire in.........

It all looks lovely and cozy. well done! And thanks for all the details - very useful for our own renovation. 🙂

The people who commission the system and sign off everything for the Government grant are coming next week. We have instructions for everything except the Digistat! And the rest of the stuff, we are advised to leave well alone. Apart from adjusting the radiators. I agree with the wireless stuff - far better to have a wired system that we can control - with instructions! I hate Apps and it didnt work from my house so that was a waste of time. I guess there is some way of connecting it to Mums internet so I can control it remotely and I shall have to find out. Today Mum rang and told me that while the house was lovely when they got up, it had turned itself down to 16oC - ie, back to the origonal schedule at 8.30am. Luckily I was able to tell them how to boost the temperature, till I can get there and amend the schedule again. What a nightmare for them 🙁they can do without these programming issues. It is difficult to assess the energy use as it has been on and off since it was installed. We took the old heating system out on the 7th, leaving them with plug in radiators over the weekend. The system was finished on Friday 15th but we need a few weeks to really see if its helping. 16th may have been the day it heated the whole water tank as that is the biggest use.

Probably too late now, but at some point this year Johnson & Starley were due to produce a new version of the Aquair 'Heat Interface Unit' to allow a heat pump to supply warm air via the ducts used by those central storage heaters.

That will be a big saving in time and money not digging out as much. We have just covered our windows up as well. I hope your enjoying it and not working too hard.

We were quoted £400 for removal of the old heating system so we decided to do it ourselves. Thinking it would take all day, it actually came out in a couple of hours. And we even got £10 for the metal at the local recycling place. 😄 Looking at the plate - it was an 8.5KW system - no wonder it used so much electric! There was a large box underneath, with the vents to the other rooms for the warm air. After speaking to the ASHP company, we left the box in place, just tidied up the space. They plan to bring some wood to sit the new system on. After holding up all those bricks, I am sure it will cope with a water cylinder. The plan is to use the bricks in the new garden and make a BBQ with them. they even have grooves for a rack.

"How do these figures look" Your PV production is very good for your location. I don't know about 'up there', but our weather has been dreary down here all year.

Sure, there are a few self build insurance companies depending on your location. This is separate to the mortgage life insurance though as far as I'm aware, at least in my case. I had to shop around quite a bit but google and you'll find a few - they'll need details to apply and see if they will quote / cover you depending on the specifics of your build. Some of the big insurers do this and there are other specialist insurers or you can go through a broker.

Second hand is always a gamble, get someone who knows diggers to look over it for you. (I loved every minute of driving my JCB, best boys toy EVER).

The first SWMBO here knew about me buying a digger, is when I said "you know that digger on ebay I bid for just before we went out today, well I won it"

Great post. These things let folk see what a site looks like, gives them ideas.. food for thought. Well done!

It will be scary if it's not properly restrained against not least movement in the direction of the ridgeline... in fact likely dangerous. John you have a number of pivot points (like rocker bearings) and due to the nature of steel fabrication and behaviour it will tend to buckle sideways due to the vertical load. I can see where you are coming from ( gables taking out the wind load I assume) but it is very important that this arrangement of steel has solid restraint against moving in the direction of the ridge and also perpendicular to the ridge. Please check your SE drawings and make sure you follow them religiously.. don't let the builder / steel fabricator go off and do their own thing. Do this before you load up the roof further. If in doubt get some temporary bracing in.

'... How do people in their 60's even do this?!!...' By planning for it. I don't know of one builder over (say) 50 who isn't careful with their upper body. If it's not backs, then it's shoulders or necks. And I'm just about the same as you are: cursing quietly when [...] clicks in. That's what young folk are for - saving our backs. Learn the warning signs, sign off straight away, not '...Oh I'll just [...] ...' For me, it's the single hardest lesson of the build so far. And nobody can see anything except my refusal to get on with it. SWMBO notices the analgesic consumption, but that's about it. Now I look at jobs done in both haste and pain and repent at leisure.

Well done you, out of the ground so the biggest risks are now behind you. I’ll be unbelievably relieved when we hit that milestone.

We specialise in restoring Jensen’s, that one is a customers returning after a test drive but we also own a few and hope to sell an FF to fund the build.

Looks fantastic - love the bath!

Outstanding mate, you should and are very proud of what you have achieved 👍

i didn't bother with this. a real faff and extra cost that i didn't think was completely necessary! hardly any water will get through the cladding and whatever does should soon dry off. ymmv.

no cavity closers ? much better job to build them in as you go for airtightness later on.

the wildflowers have started to bloom