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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.

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.

Swear I’m getting slower at this DIY lark! been a very turbulent month and a bit, about a week after I last posted in this thread my dad passed away, and with funeral and starting to sort the mass of stuff in his house, the days have zipped by at a rate of knots. coinciding with what I always find the most difficult part of these jobs, getting the floor structure down, balancing definitely isn’t a strong point! cut out the last of the woodwormed joists and decided to replace everything under there again even though quite a few were new from around 10 years ago, it was the first room I’d done and wasn’t prepared for what I found so the ones I took out were untreated, now replaced with treated. topped up the floor insulation with another 20mm to go with the existing 70mm, new 22mm chipboard, and sorted both heating and supply pipes along with drainage for the shower. be a few weeks now til I get some time to do the first batch of plastering, but I’m just happy it’s starting to look a bit more like a room rather than a building site. Stumbled across a brilliant airtight primer this time too, Tescon's SPrimer, which is a sprayable primer. Saves killing a paintbrush, and is so easy to apply, but its a little smelly for a few days. I've still got a bit of the paint on primer, but don't think i would have had enough to complete the job, managed to get a can off ebay from someone who had finished their works and was selling excess off.

But very funny!

50°C on sunny days in summer before we added tile vents (it's a 100yr old roof, re-roofed in 1989 with dark tiles, and no economic way to put a vented ridge on it). Thankfully it's nearly always windy here, and from memory the vents knocked at least 10-15C off that figure last summer. You will have loads of insulation in your roof, but it's the decrement delay that also matters. How long does it take the heat to enter - and leave - the insulation? You mount a chunk of crumbling sole plate on a plinth and give it to them as a Christmas present. Many broken nights recently @Iceverge?

I think we need to increase my Makita budget!

Good to see progress, keep on keeping on.

Ahh I was honestly wondering when I read the post what percentage of the population would still have concerns along the lines of your blog post - I could absolutely understand your concerns when Pandemic kicked off - fear is a massively powerful weapon and those in power in partnership with the majority of MSM and SM ramped it up to eleventy million percent with no real idea of the consequences of doing that. Lockdown should have never been the answer - we will be paying for it for decades in terms of health and wealth. If anyone is interested (and most probably aren't because they want to put the whole thing behind them) My first trigger point was the "daily death numbers" being announced on the News like it was a tsunami of epic proportions because there was no context - I new the context already 1600 people die per day in England and Wales of natural causes and the News was trumpeting anything from 1 to 100 deaths in a day as "end of the world" stuff - how the feck does the deaths of less than 5% of the normal deaths per day get to be headline news 24/7 A cruise Liner the Diamond Princess gave everyone a a perfect petri dish to illustrate who was at risk. - the results didn't fit with the narative that "those in power" wanted to "spin" so it was dismissed as too small a sample The original pandemic plan got ripped up and thrown in the bin in favour of "the science" which wasn't Science at all BTW Any challenge to the "new science" (like GBD) was labelled "crazy" and "internet was cleansed" to stop the spread, the authors labelled "fringe epidemiologists" Those in authority got "drunk" (in some cases literally) on the new power and did everything they could to keep it whilst themselves broke the "guidance" the set for others How often was a lockdown implemented after the infections had peaked? We were led by a government of muppets and the opposition party instead of doing what they should do which is "hold the muppets to account" and challenging the "rules" introduced instead cried "more more more" My second trigger point was when (having had Covid and recovered) a vaccination against Covid was required for my future well being............. Me "Sorry I need a "vaccine" to stimulate an immune response so I am protected from something I've already had and recovered from - surely that's what post infection immunity has always been about." (Ahh yes it was called "natural immunity" and we can't have that it indicates that people already have immunity and this is a new virus that has escaped from a lab doing US sponsored gain of function on coronavirus's research Sorry of course it was an unfortunate consequence of someone eating bat en croute or Pangolin lasagne Jedi Mind trick "this isn't the lab you are looking for" Third trigger point - The insistence on vaccinating every man, woman and child - Encourage by the Well if you won't volunteer for a vaccine "you really do need" we will restrict your access to travel and entertainment events in order to encourage you to have one The general public banged pans on doorsteps for the NHS who became the National Covid Service (concentrating solely on that and directly shortening the lives of anyone who had routine checks or any other screening process) I lost two friends - not to covid but to missed MRI's or other routine health checks that by the time they restarted the delayed findings were too damn late for them That's before I even think about the initial reaction of hospitals pushing elderly patients back into care homes - like that was a (expletive deleted)ing good idea!!! If you hadn't guessed all of the Covid "over reaction" really really really (expletive deleted)ing boils my piss!!!!!

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.

I’m sorry I don’t know cost of the pumps they where part of the builders quote for the foundations. The pumps came from a local quarry about 15 miles maximum, they had at least two like this and it could reach the far side about 20 meters from its parked position. The pump operators were all very good remotely moving the telescopic boom to the correct position.

We hope to camp out in Feb as expressed towards the end 🙂

Sometimes life throws the reset switch and gives you the space to re-evaluate and go again; well done for embracing it! Great progress on the house; love the manifold!

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.........

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.

"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.

I had similar site inspectors including one half way up the roof looking in the velux rooflights!! Very cheeky of them! Scaffolding is down so they have to content themselves with outside inspections from now on...!! Much colder these days, best of luck with your build too!!

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).

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.

Looks great - must be such a relief knowing that the "pour" went without any of the dramas, usually associated with such an option. What do you put that down to - good prep work?

Great blog, thanks for all the info and photos.

Yes we have been lucky on getting out the ground but the roof cost have gone up. Not much is happening at the moment so next will be week 5 and 6.

Nice build and a very nice car 👍😀

Excellent. Good to see, and you have some great hardstanding's for the winter's inevitable wet weather.

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.

Really nice work and great joinery too. Well done I'd be bloody happy with that for £4K I think we spent 4K last time we refurbed our bathroom 7 years ago but it was all off the shelf stuff

Looks fantastic - love the bath!

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

The OP has been edited all quiet on the western front!

We didn’t bother with a temp supply either and went straight to a final supply in a GRP box. The issue we had was it took months to get the meter installed. Up until then I used our EV too. Worked really well.

Your tools are possibly drawing too much starting current, this will cause the inverter to automatically disconnect. Maybe something like this may help, a soft starter, it limits the initial current (instantaneous current is infinite). https://norwall.com/products/generac-sure-start-16-32-fla-soft-start-kit-8008/ Your Z Book is quite a power hungry laptop, (up to 150W) which is about 10 times what mine draws.

Love tidy insulation install with the full fill batts. Keep up the good work.

That’s quite a bit of progress despite everything you have gone through. 👍

Not sure I would pin myself to passivhaus, but instead follow the principles. A2A you still need a heater for the DHW, so I would stick to a normal ASHP. MVHR several ways to do it, the normal way with a duct and terminal in every room, or cascade, generally duct to each wet room and a couple of supplies only that suit the layout. You will have a demand activated fan through a wall or two for awkward layout rooms that do not lend themselves to being cascaded. An example of said fan https://www.ventilationland.co.uk/en_GB/p/brink-indoor-mixfan-co2-gestuurd-tot-70-m3-h/17927/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwkuqvBhAQEiwA65XxQNHSp3Am0ssSPnBCSOd5avKVIvBbL4-5yDgamc6Up--18SUdWGZUpBoCV34QAvD_BwE Get yourself a thermal camera and see where all the cold bridges are, so you can focus on fixing.

Latest "from the mound" picture. (could have been taken back in August, but I forgot 🙂

the wildflowers have started to bloom

Thanks. Its funny actually out of all the plots I found, the 4 acre plot was the cheapest (less than a third of others). It was by chance a owned by a previous self builder who built a passivhaus, who sold it to me for the very reason he wanted a self builder to have it, could have went for 3 times the price. A very nice man.

This happened to us, we split the land belonging the cottage we had bought, we only lost 5k , we’d paid 250k for cottage and 2acres , we sold 18 months later retaining half the land which we’d got planning on and realised 245k so it doesn’t mean because you’re keeping some of the ground that you’re going to sell the house your in at a big loss. Anyway what I started off going to say here was that we put our plans out to tender with a local company to do the full job, we nearly fell off our chairs when the price came in at £350k , not including oak finishings or staircase and only allowing £8k for a kitchen, tiling only to showers and splash back, the plot had been valued at 125k so there was a total of £475k which the house would never be worth, however we have built the house, we do have an oak staircase and finishings , we have a bespoke kitchen and when we finish off the garden, drive etc we will be in line to have spent around £270k so just over £1k a square metre, it can be done if you’re very careful and we haven’t done a lot of the hard graft just bits and pieces and the drains.