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Yesterday we moved into our place, started in 2018 still not 100% finished in 2026, I estimated it would take me 2 years, 🤣🤣 thanks for all the advice from fellow buildhubbers. What we bought, what we have now.

Yes, we moved into our new house on Monday last week, pretty much 9 months to the day since we broke ground and 15 months after we purchased the plot. We know we’ve been very lucky with our build. The weather has generally been in our favour and we had no supply issues or delays. Above all, we’ve had some excellent people working for us without whom we could not have achieved the build. There are too many stars to mention here but if you look through the blog you will see them all get a shout out for their excellent work as it happened. Ahead of the move, Mrs P. did a superhuman job getting everything packed, and the move itself went relatively smoothly, with dry weather and no mishaps. Amazingly, Mrs P. also managed to unpack most of those boxes within a few days, though we do still have some residual boxes to deal with in due course. Moving in day: As we all know, moving house is always a stressful business and moving to a new house is no different. But it is a relief to finally get in - there is always the nagging fear that some disaster will strike at the last minute while the house remains unoccupied. But of course, all was fine. Is our build complete? Not quite. We have some minor electrical and joinery items outstanding, both inside and outside; we have the garden landscaping well under way but some distance from completion as you will see from the photos below. Beyond that, there is a list of jobs of the sort you’ll have following any house move: curtains, blinds, wardrobes, shelving, etc. - but these are ‘house move’ rather than ‘house build’ tasks imo. We do still have to obtain Building Control sign-off and there’s a VAT reclaim to do. On the BC front we had our ‘As Built’ air-tightness test performed by Richard Harris of Peninsular Energy Compliance this week (highly recommended). The result is 1.16m m3/m2 at 50hPa on the envelope basis. Virtually the same figure for Air Changes per Hour , as our envelope area is 583m2 and our volume is coincidentally 580m3. We are very happy with 1.2 ACH. Air-tightness test under way: We have been in the house for a week now and we are really happy with the way it feels and works for us. It’s warm, draft-free, well-lit, quiet, and comfortable; the layout and spaces are working just as we hoped. We are both sure we are going to really love living here. The plant room is (to me) surprisingly warm, running at 25-26 deg C due presumably to the amount of heat-generating equipment in there. I raised this as a separate Build Hub topic but the consensus seems to be that it's not an issue, so I shan't worry. As a side benefit, it does make a splendid clothes airing room. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/46744-hot-plant-room/ Energy use The combination of solar panels, batteries, ASHP and insulation levels seems to be working well - in our first week we used 0.7kWh from the grid and exported 63kWh. Not bad for February. I need to work out our best tariff option but that’s a job for the future. Enough talk, time for some more photos (some taken just before we moved in)... Kitchen/dining/lounge: Hall: Bathrooms - master ensuite: Shower room: Guest ensuite: Bedrooms Master bedroom: Guest bedroom: Bed 3 / hobby room (Ok, so we still have some unpacking to do.) Landscaping - plenty to do yet. The layout is literally as clear as mud to me... I'm sure it will all be fine in the end(!) And finally... Troy likes the new house - it still has yogurt pots that need licking out Dashboard: Contractor days on site this past two weeks: 15 Contractor days on site since build start: 587 person days That 587 days is well over the 500 days which requires HSE being notified of the build using form F10 (which we did). HSE have not spoken to us or troubled us at all and the F10 notification is simple and costs nothing, so I would recommend any self-builder do so - if you are unfortunate and have an incident it’s surely means less chance of getting into hot water if you registered properly. Budget: I confess that in the final weeks we have gone a bit beyond our self-imposed budget contingency and dipped slightly into savings, but that is really down to choices we have made about the quality of the fit, e.g joinery, kitchen, bathroom equipment etc., and also the extent of the landscaping we have chosen to do. We could probably have remained well within contingency had we needed to but luckily we had some leeway. Plan: We did it! Conclusion: Overall, we set out to use the entire proceeds of our previous house sale to buy a plot and build a better house, and we believe we have achieved that. Thanks once again to all the dedicated and skilled people who have worked on our house and made the build a success. Especial thanks to Mrs P. who indulged my yearning to do a build provided brilliant design input and kept the whole show on the road throughout - a truly wonderful person! That then dear friends is the final blog! Thank you for following us and for your kind words of encouragement and support through our project.

I’ve got to be honest, there are times when it feels like we are inching towards the finish line ever more slowly, with lots of jobs nearly but not quite done. Pulling together this regular blog is really helpful in that respect: Every fortnight I start off thinking there is hardly anything to say so it’s probably not worth issuing an update. But once I start to look at what’s happening since the previous blog I realise that we have generally made good progress. And indeed it’s a case of more good progress over the last two weeks. It does now feel like we are nearly over the line. Several long-standing activities have been closed off thank goodness. So here are some of the things we’ve made progress on since the previous blog. (Confession time: I meant to take more photos of the bathrooms, kitchen and lighting but seem to have forgotten to do so, so you’ll have to wait for next time for those.) Bathroom After our disaster last time with the wall hung shower toilet, my brilliant brother came back over from Sussex to hang the replacement, even though he had managed to break his foot in the meantime - that’s what I call dedication to the cause! The (revised and up-to-date) instructions we were given with the replacement WC pan said to tighten the wall bolts to 7Nm torque. Which seems really very low - the sorts of torque used on bicycle parts. Anyway, that’s what we did to the best of our ability. It was just about enough to stop the toilet feeling at all wobbly and the good news is nothing cracked, nothing fell on the floor, and the toilet seems pretty stable. Especially now it’s been siliconed around the edges - though I’m sure the silicon doesn’t add any strength at all. While he was with us, Chris also fitted the small hand basin in our ensuite, tiled and grouted the splashbacks, then fitted a lot of sound insulation into the stud work between the three bathrooms (they all back on to each other, so good acoustic insulation is a definite plus!). He also bailed us out of a looming problem with our porcelain tile skirting… Tiling We were getting increasingly concerned whether our floor tiler would finish off the porcelain skirting tiles before we moved in. The quality of his work has been great, but since Christmas it’s been hard to schedule any time from him partly because he’s been ill and also he’s got a lot of other work, I guess. So we agreed to part company amicably, we agreed a payment for his completed the work, and my brother Chris stepped into the breach. Chris then spent a long day finishing off the skirtings, which really meant doing all the tricky mitre corners which had been left until last plus a few straight runs. For a simple, relatively open-plan house we had a surprising number of corners! Chris then went round and grouted 130 m of skirting. Great job Bro! We decided to hire a recommended specialist silicon guy to apply silicon around the bottom and the top of the skirtings, 260m in total. He did a great job, and very quickly. He is certainly getting a good rate for it! But I’d agreed a fixed rate and he did it to a good standard so, fair enough… Specialist siliconing is obviously where the money is these days! Anyway, all our tiling and skirtings grouting and siliconing is now officially… done! Kitchen Chris the carpenter has finished off all the outstanding jobs in the kitchen, including the final fit of ‘wall of ovens’ in the alcove where they sit. I’d been pondering the best approach to ventilation and with Chris’s help we came up with a what I think is a neat solution - creating a slender recessed ventilation strip above the ovens which is there but doesn’t catch the eye. Chris also fitted the plinths which make the kitchen look finished rather than work-in-progress. The Quooker tap is now powered up in as well as plumbed in and we have been using it for the first time over the past couple of days. I have to say I’m really impressed; it works really well and feels and looks great too. Electrics Progress on second fit electrics has been frustrating, I think mainly because our electricians have got too much work on and they’re trying to juggle multiple jobs. Also to be fair, our installation has been more complex than originally envisaged due to choices we’ve made. The rate of progress hasn’t been a problem until recently but it’s begun to feel like we might not have the electrics ready to move in: However, our main man Darren was in this week and made good progress, and we now have power and lighting throughout the house. All the kitchen equipment is powered up and whilst there could still be a fair few jobs outstanding after we move in (e.g. external lights) it’s clear that the electrics are going to be working well enough for us to move in as planned on the 23rd. Yesterday Nick, the electric contractors boss, demonstrated the seamless switch-over from mains to battery by switching off the mains supply without causing so much as a flicker to the lights. I wanted to try it myself when we had friends round later but Mrs P wouldn’t let me: “it’s not a toy” apparently. I was wondering whether we would actually know if we had a power cut, but the battery app sends us a message to say the power’s tripped over to batteries and then another one when the power is restored and it’s tripped back. I was a bit worried that, with the electrical work ‘growing’ and there being a fair few extras that we’ve asked for, the final bill was going to be way over the original quote. So I have been badgering Nick to give us a revised quote. He has finally done that, and yes, it’s going to cost us a bit more than he first quoted but actually not nearly as much more as I feared. Which is a result! Joinery Meanwhile on the joinery front, the oak we ordered to use as full width door jambs and the pocket door frame sections have all arrived. Mrs. P. has Osmo oiled them, fitting has started and they should all be installed by the time we move in. Rear landscaping Lots of activity is now underway on our rear landscaping. We have a fall of about 1.5 metres from the house finished floor level to the far end of the “residential garden“ part of our land. As I am a wheelchair user we are naturally wanting to have step free access to as much of that as possible. The garden design we have involves level access from the house to a terrace seating area, then 1:20 ramps down to three different further small seating areas between planting areas. That obviously involves quite a lot of low retaining walls and ramped paths. So given we are in the middle of the winter monsoon season, it was clearly an ideal time to start work on those walls, paths and terraces! Ashley and his team have made great progress despite the weather, as you can see - although if their landscaping work ever dries up (ha ha!) they could probably get good employment as World War 1 battle scene recreators. Front landscaping If the back garden looks like the Somme, in front of the house the parking/turning area is looking much more civilised. We debated about how to finish the surface, considering a number of options, but in the end we’ve gone for simple tarmac. Gravel is a no-no for the wheelchair, resin bonded is too expensive, brick pavers we don’t like the look of and need regular cleaning. In a previous house we had hot-rolled grit into tarmac and that does look nice but we found it collects dirt and is a recipe for bringing grit into the house, so we’re keeping it simple this time. The base coat is down and the front apron is being done tomorrow(!). The aim is to leave the top coat until all the heavy work in the back is done, to avoid damaging it. Ashley has told us several times we’re doing it the wrong way round - we should have started at the back and worked forward - but having that base coat down is transformational for me - no more wheeling through lumps of clay or getting bogged down in loose type 1. Preparation under way: Troy anointing the prepared sub-base. "May God bless her and all who walk/wheel on her": Laying down the blacktop: First flower bed planted! Focus for the next two weeks: Moving in! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this past two weeks: 45 Contractor days on site since build start: 572 Budget: No change - over budget but within contingency. Plan: Moving in on 23rd February. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: Hanging that toilet Whether the electrics would be ready Finishing the skirtings Current top issues and worries: Packing! (I expect Mrs P. has it all under control ;-))

Hi chaps, UPDATE! been a while since I posted. Hope y'all doing well. Good news & an update on this heatpump! I finally won the battle with Vaillant, & they've come up trumps, by replacing my problematic Split system with a Monobloc. Installed 10 days ago. No mechanical noise in the house anymore! hydraulic unit gone- good riddance! My goodness, what a long battle tho. I got the final agreement & date set, after approaching a different female at Group Service dept, picked up my sword for one last effort, & with careful navigation (tricky & complex & 5 years of stress tbh) she empathized.. & got the ball rolling for me. Which had been stalled for over a year & my energy spent, & I was defeated & demoralised tbh. And with it I had a fantastic installer too. Extremely competent & friendly. Fab work done, you can just see the difference. Vaillant's west UK choice, so had tiptop credentials. Thanks to all who offered help & advice on this. Zoot

If you’re not driving the digger then your opinion doesn’t matter. if you have an experienced operator and a good groundworker then they will know exactly what to do. don’t interfere too much, sit on the dumper or work the laser, but trying to over manage lads that do this every day won’t go down very well. You won’t know how the corners will hold up until you start, you might come across a big patch of loose backfill,have the shuttering to hand you will dig all that in two days, you need a site visit the second you get 4-5 m of trench to full depth. you do not under any circumstances want to have to go back over it, so you need depth sign off the same day you start. what do you mean by shutter and pour multiple times. that all needs digging in one go and pouring in one hit the following day.

Hi, only just seen your post and you are likely to have sorted this by now, but for others benefit I had exactly the same issue. Output failure on a Zappi that was just out of warranty, with the same offer of a replacement. As an electronics engineer, I had a look at the unit and found there was one relay that was stuck. Replaced this with the same part (~£20 from RS) and no problems since. Perfectly doable for anybody who is comfortable with a multimeter and a soldering iron and safe electrical practices.

Just thought I’d share our experience of our DIY VAT claim with HMRC We achieved BC sign off at the end of September 25 but had moved in 9 months prior. 11/12/25 submitted online application spreadsheet with all invoices up to the date of submission 16/12/25 received request for 10 invoices 17/12/25 uploaded requested invoices 12/1/26 received notification of payout with one disputed invoice noted 19/1/26 sent clarification off disputed invoice (I had mistakenly uploaded a pro forma invoice instead of the full VAT invoice so corrected this) 20/1/26 received initial payment 9/2/26 received outstanding payment for the disputed invoice completing the claim For us the HMRC system seemed to work pretty well.

I still think that we are still a nation of people who want to own property. So much of the rental market is expensive, and shite quality. I was on a newbuild site for about 1 hour last weekend. Two people selling, and i saw 4 appointments in that time. All 4 paid to reserve a property. These were not flats. They were small houses, and were not in London. However, in NW9 on the site of what used to be the Met Police training centre, Hendon. They have built a shed load of Tall Blocks of flats. I think the total is going to be about 5000 new homes. No sign of them not selling. The next door underground station. Colindale, has had a multi million pound refurb. I just think that the shine has gone from London. I grew up in London in the 1960's, and it was a shitehole. There was no Notting Hill, or Islington. Well there was, but not in the same way that we think of those areas today. Islington property all had outside toilets, and was poor as. Notting Hill was a bit of a no go area if you were White. London came up in the 80's. Areas where you could easily have previously got stabbed, or shot, became trendy. London had 30 BOOM years. During the last 10 people have just come to realise that, if you are single, London can be fun. If you want to start a family, and you are not rich. Time to get the Fudge out. The arse has fallen out of London. The young trendies who would have historically owned those flats, just don't have the money that used to slosh around London. So the younger trendies are not there to buy off the previous generation of young trendies. £7.20 for a coffee in Canary Wharf !

It's cool, so I just put a Rehau Synego 1000x1000 Upvc (white/white) window together as well as an aluminium window and timber alu window. uPVC exact same spec same spec for all, no change other than glass. Spacer bar is a warm edge spacer, glass for double is exactly the same (1.1Ug toughened 4/20/4). Triple is 0.5Ug 4/18/4/18/4 toughened, none have extras or locking handles. Double Fixed - £250 per m2 Tilt and turn - £350 per m2 (exposed hinging) Tilt and turn - £395 per m2 (concealed hinging) Triple Tilt and turn - £410 per m2 (concealed hinging). Aluprof aluminium, double Fixed - £350 per m2 standard RAL inside and out. Figures are rounded up for simplicity. Timber aluminium (triple) Gutmann Tilt and turn - £775 per m2, finger jointed pine, standard clear lacquer, standard RAL.

For our build I considered speed of build first, then got stupid quotes. Looked at SIPs and there was quite a bit of key stuff by others, steel being one plus to get to the values I want, plenty of additional insulation was needed. In the end I went Durisol ICF, two of us both DIYers, built the walls of the house in 4 weeks (during end Nov to Christmas), not small either, lots of angle changes and 70m perimeter. 0.14 U value out the box, thermal bridge free, only basic hand tools needed. Build six blocks high, fill 5.5 blocks with concrete, repeat. No lintels needed they are self formed with the blocks, some rebar and concrete fill. Parge coat walls, service void and plasterboard or wet plaster direct, gives an airtight structure. External render, brick or stone slips or timber cladding are all easy to do, directly fixed to woodcrete ICF. It doesn't burn, doesn't rot. The blocks are made from end of life wooden products like pallets etc.

There is a bit of terminology to learn. Energy is measured in MJ (megajoule). A joule is the standard unit for energy and when converted to base units of kilograms, metres and seconds is very small. Why the M for 1,000,000 is added at the front. Now no one, apart from us nerdy scientists, use MJs, and domestic energy is metered and purchased in kWh. MJs can be multiplied by 0.0007778, or divided by 3600 to end up with kWh. The k just means 1000, W is watt and h is an hour, which is 3600 seconds. Power (W) is the rate that energy is used. You can think of this as your miles per gallon in your car, with energy being how many gallons are in the tank. If your car does 40 MPG at 60 MPH, and your tank has 8 gallons in it, you can drive 320 miles over 5 hours and 20 minutes. A unit of power is called a watt, which is actually a J/second. Again a small unit, so a k is added. A k is 1000. This gives the more normal kW for a power rating. Boilers, heat pumps and even wood burners all have a maximum kW rating i.e. 6 kW. Radiators, UFH and fan heaters also have a power rating. (This can get confused by some people talking old imperial units of BTU and BTU/h, but we went metric in ,'73, so tell them off) Where it starts to get confusing is a house will need a varying amount of thermal power to keep it at a steady internal temperature. This is caused by external temperatures rising and falling during the seasons and even during the day. This can be overcome in a number of ways. The easy way, and the way old heating systems were set up, was to fire up a boiler at full power, heat some water, pump it around the house to all the radiators, which then heated the air. When the house was up to temperature, the thermostat turned the boiler off. When the temperature dropped a few degrees, it turned the boiler back on. These days we are a bit more sophisticated and try to deliver enough energy to match the losses. This keeps the house at a steadier temperature, and used less energy overall. You will almost certainly read on hear about weather compensation (WC). This is just a basic feedback system that knows what the outside temperature is, how much power is being delivered to the house and for how long it may be needed. All that can be boiled down to a few numbers. The main numbers you need to know are the thermal losses for each room. Once those are added together, you get a number for the whole house. It is usual to size for a worse case i.e. -10°C outside. This gives you a maximum power requirement (heat source kW). Most of the time, you will be heating the house when it is way warmer outside, so the second number you need is about how much the heat source can be turned down internally. This is called modulation. Gas boilers have quite a high ratio, sometimes 10 to 1 i.e. 12 kW down to 1.2 kW. Heat pumps are not, generally, so good and are often in the range of 3 to 4 to 1. There are ways around this, but that is for later. The other thing that is important is domestic hot water (DHW). There are two ways to do this. Heat water only when it is needed (instantaneous), this requires a lot of power, often over 25 kW. Or Heat and store in a cylinder. This method takes longer for the same amount of delivered hot water, but used less power, often in the region of 3 to 6 kW. If the heat source is delivering both central heating and DHW, then this needs to be taken into account. With modern combination gas boilers, they are sized to deliver enough hot water, and rely on boiler modulation to deliver lower power for the space heating. Heat pumps, generally, rely on being only slightly oversized (which improves efficiency most if the time) and run a space heating time slot and a DHW timeslot at different temperatures and different times during the day. There is a lot of detail in heating design. So questions to ask are. Maximum house losses. Room by room heat losses. DHW reheat times.

The glazing units seal has failed, allowing moisture into the gaps. Only fix for triple glazing is to replace the glazed units with new. As they are so new, you should be covered by the warranty, and these should be replaced FoC

Not in your imagination - you are living in a nearly unheated space, it isn't a healthy place to be. Heat the place never let it drop below 16 degs (yes even at night). Bet your chest issues go away.

Sorry, I can't help with this, but I must congratulate you on moving in, having completed your build so quickly. You're an inspiration to us all. & thanks for documenting your progress on here too - it's a real help to those of us who are not there yet.

We've just had our As Built air-tightness test performed by Richard Harris of Peninsular Energy Compliance (good guy - recommended). The result is 1.16m m3/m2 at 50hPa on the envelope basis. Virtually the same figure for ACH as our envelope area is 583m2 and our volume is coincidentally 580m3. So c. 1.2 ACH which we are happy with. Reason for mentioning it on this thread is that we had Aerobarrier apply their treatment back in September when they reported an 81% leakage improvement to give a final result of 0.97 ACH, so lower than the as built test (but their test had masked off the doors and windows to protect them from the sealant). The implication is that without Aerobarrier our result would have been 5.4 ACH, which I can believe because the standard of membraning and taping up was not the best and I had to part company with the team engaged to do it. So +ve feedback from me for Aerobarrier.

For anyone browsing this in the future these BG electric ones are fantastic. Really thick and nice, not many holes. Highly recommended. At £2 ish each also not much more over the plastic junk. I should have never really been put in this position let alone having to cut all these out, but at least these are a nice solution

Just a wee update Nick, I followed through with your suggestion about the dummy cill and all windows look sooo much better now. The installer was quick to sort it out to my complete satisfaction. It's just a pity I had to go through the pain to get this done when this should have been included in the install, rather than having to get the installer back to complete the work properly.

No it won't, a 30kw oil boiler would cook you alive in there. Accept this as a fact because I have installed gas and oil all my life. It's not a hobby, it's fed and clothed us, and if nothing worked I wouldn't have a career out of it would I? Part 1. Please stop ignoring the fact that I live in a near identical house to yours, it's a little frustrating for you to keep dismissing direct and factual information. My gas boiler doesn't ever output more than 12-14kw, because my house is never allowed to go "stone cold" each day (in winter) and only ever runs at its max output when producing instant hot water (it's a combi boiler). To shut down what the buffoons who fitted this have stupidly said to you, because it is absolute and total fecking nonsense, you can listen to and rely upon what I am saying to you, because I happily consider myself to be an 'expert' in making homes comfortable. I've been fitting oil boilers / gas boilers / electric 1 and 3 phase boilers / ASHP's and GSHP's for around 30 years. Installing MVHR etc for over 10 years. Wiring things for over 36 years, including the QMII before it's maiden voyage out of Southampton. Listen to me, and all the other people on here, most of whom know more than I do and have all got ASHP's or gas boilers, and they all work. **************** Part 2. I have already offered a solution which was to run the heating at night on the setback temp, the one you said you'd ask the engineer to implement for you so we can run at least one months TRIAL of the heating. I suggested times for the heating to go between comfort and setback, I said go for 15oC setback (this would not overheat you, but it would also allow the rest of the house to not go "stone cold"), and you can define these to suit your wishes; I suggested 22:00 - "setback" 07:00 - "comfort". This is how I use mine, but with a very small difference in temp between night and day. I do this because it is cheaper to not let the house go "stone cold" every night. FACT. The above methodology of going from setback > comfort > setback > comfort and so on, is done by you having the heating "ON CONSTANT" vs it going "ON/OFF", but it will cycle the heat in only to replace what is lost to the clouds eg it won't be overheating you at all, just keeping you at the lowest temperature that you will accept (the one where you cant see your breath at night). ************* Part 3. The extra room stat would take command of the times and temp, and would avoid you needing to learn how to make these changes on the fixed controller that came with the ASHP. I suggested this as: a) it needs to be moved b) moving it requires cable / time / labour / higher cost (even though I'd insist your "expert" should move it for free as it's their laziness that has resulted in it being in the wrong place) so you'd be spending money moving a thing you still fear or cannot manipulate. c) the units like mine are very easy to use and to program / make changes on. These have simple timeclocks which are no more difficult to set than a digital alarm clock. This means as you trial and error different temps at different times, you can make these changes without any "experts" needing be in attendance. The one that you have now just becomes an installer interface for making fundamental changes (such as the 40-45 flow temp settings and hot water temp setting) Lets get heating cracked, and then the installer tomorrow can better time the hot water to suit you. Think today what times each day you need the tank hot and ask him to set these times.

It was one year ago that we started our house build, and we moved in 4.5 months later on July 3rd. Well, that's the headline to catch attention, but there needs to be some qualification. A year ago we started building above ground. Before that, we had 3 months of asbestos removal, demolition, site clearance, excavation, concrete slab, drains and scaffold. But still, 19 weeks to build everything above ground is good. Our method: MBC completed the timber frame in 8 working days - that was a great head start. We had a fixed price contract with a general builder for all the external finishes. This meant we could leave him to manage that whilst we concentrated on the interior. We had plumbing, electrical and carpentry trades working on site in parallel. The house was big enough to have separate working areas. We (the client) were always present to create the culture of collaboration and courtesy. Me and the Mrs worked full time on the build without employment to distract us. One of us would be on site before 8am to open up whilst the other was doing desk work: chasing quotes / delivery / documentation etc. We had very few times when the site was unsupervised by one or other of us. We were disciplined in making decisions in the right order and not changing our minds. We lived a 5 min cycle away in a rented house. Cycling is ideal because you don't take up parking space on site, and you can come and go without asking trade vans to move. Our builder saw the advantage and started cycling too. We had Travis Perkins, Screwfix and the electrical wholesaler all within a 10 minute drive. I could collect ad hoc materials before 8am with an estate car + roof rack so the trades weren't waiting for materials. Our builders merchants is a favoured supplier for kitchens / bathrooms etc based 100 miles away. We worked closely with them to keep their supply of materials ahead of the trades. I did three months of carpentry assisting the proper carpenter. If I wasn't supervising deliveries, doing a site induction for new workers, cleaning up, moving materials then I was doing carpentry. The site was always clean and tidy with waste promptly taken off site. The site was working 5 days a week, every week but typically not weekends. And when we moved in, there was another 6 weeks to completion and then the landscaping after that. Photographs attached from one year ago Build photos here: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/45435-project-finished-mbc-timber-frame-self-build-220m2-over-three-floors/#comment-634389

Hmmmm. Why ceiling? Not the best way to hear stereo, plus, when the ceiling speaker is kapput the replacement probably won’t fit the hole. Personal choice obviously but there are some amazing shelf mounted wireless speakers that will link room to room and blow your socks off with the sonic quality. And when they die, just plug a replacement in.

Stop fiddling!!!!! Be PATIENT 😉😊 You are barely into this by a week. This is not enough time for the system to balance itself out. Get the information from the manufacturer technical support you need to input a baseline WC curve correctly. Calculate your heat co-efficient for your house in W/K and use those to calculate your flow temps at the controller inputs. Then leave the system alone. And if you're tempted for reach out and make adjustments, slap yourself on the wrist and go do something else. Yes, of course look at the data to make sure it's running OKish, but let it do it's thing over at least 24 hours or preferably a week - as long as the WC curve is nice and low. Use this period not as a fiddling period, but one of research - gather data to understand how the heat pump is working in context - then you'll understand when it starts to cycle (if at all), what it really modulates down to etc. etc. I know you want to play, but heat pumps, big specific heat capacities, new building and all that do not like this. They want to chill out and relax, take it easy and watch the world go by 😉

Have you considered splitting the house so kitchen dining runs front to back instead of along the back?

Best of luck @-rick-.You have a good heart, and a good heart these days is hard to find. (quote F S) I just can't see you winning this One. However, well done for trying. Most of the above has been tried before, by other well meaning people.

So many people have been drawn into this rabbit hole. No one listened to, no opinions changed. If you don't have the kind of understanding of science needed, then just accept what you are told and act accordingly.

Sounds like a really successful build if this is the main worry after moving in! Not an expert but the little plant room that I have (boiler, cylinder, consumer unit with a few electrical bits) is similar, gets a lot hotter in summer. 27C isn't really going to worry electronics etc. I'd monitor over summer and if you find the room getting about 35C or causing other problems then may be worth doing something but 27C doesn't warrant much concern in my book.

I used Oak veneered arcs and skirtings from Howdens, finished with Osmo oil. Matches nicely to the real Oak door frames. Annoyingly because we had chosen 2040mm tall doors, one length of Howdens Oak veneered arc was just too short to do two door uprights, so to avoid huge wastage, I used corner blocks to join arc to skirting. Floors do get mopped from time to time, no sign of issues with the veneered MDF skirting. Just be sensible and take a little care.

Strangely satisfying though to see a pile of materials almost disappear as they are incorporated into the build. and yeah the odds and ends that need getting rid of when finished that particular task is a task in itself. PIR offcuts I bagged them, photo'd and listed on market place. £20 - take what you want sort of listing. Inundated by people wanting it for sheds and the like, they aren't fussy, foaming and taping it together...

Where we have tiled floors we used the same tile as the skirting. Looks good and hard as nails (obviously depends on the size of your tiles for this option to be considered).

Unless you've got a sizeable solar array and batteries, solar wont generate much electric in the winter when you need the electric the most to run the heat pump. You're probably better spending your money on sorting out the heating system you've already got to get the lowest running cost you can. Once you've done that you can choose how much or little you heat the place.

Yes, BB's clarification helped and definitely seems doable, but if that seems too much there are wireless options to explore. Not at all, take your time. I can't speak for others but my goal in participating here is to help you get to the point where you are not cold after summer. The time between now and then is for exploring, learning about the system and trying things. Good principle and I think it will click for you soon. But if after some more back and forth it's still not clicking then you might find just trying to do what we suggest might help clarify things. Learn through doing rather than studying.

New plan......pull whole lot out and start a fresh.😬

I've just sent Zoot a link to an article on the basics of how to setup the heating on the Vaillant controller (the black box) found on the FB Vaillant group. Also, I've given Zoot the spec of cable (blue) needed to link the black box (in red) to the white box. (In yellow). Its 0.75mm twinflex as stated earlier. FYI: I'm in the process of moving mine once my plumbing is sorted out. I suspect that Zoot's black and white box are also this close to each other. Go for it Zoot! 😀

I’m heading to Chard today, so there’s a possibility that could happen lol An example, Aluplast Ideal 8000 has an air permeability test result of class 4. Which equates to following under EN 12207 Class 0: no performance determined Class 1 → Class 4: increasing tightness levels Class 4 = best performance — minimal air leakage under up to ~600 Pa pressure. EN12208 watertightness, class 9a

I have to say, John, that I try to avoid WB boilers like the plague. I think their designs are awful, I hate working on them and I would definitely never install one (although I have installed one, once!). I think the 8000s are worse than ever, but lots of installers seem to like them for whatever reason. I've never been called to investigate this specific problem, only that radiators aren't getting hot and this is almost always to do with a system balance issue and not the boiler itself. When I do system diagnostics involving temperature measurement I always ignore the internal boiler temperature given by the sensors and instead use my own clamps to as close to the boiler as possible. This is because I very often find discrepancies between displayed flow/return temps from internal sensors and those measured immediately outside the boiler, it's not just with Worcester. The only times I take the internal sensor readings more seriously, is if I see the boiler cycling when my readings suggest it shouldn't and 5C difference is just not unusual in these circumstances. This is why my approach here would be to ignore the boiler and investigate how the wider system behaves over time. A recent example is a hall where I installed a boiler a few years back. I designed a low temp system and explained all this to the caretaker and for several years the system ran beautifully. This year I received calls to say the heating wasn't working and the hall wasn't getting warm. I went and looked at the boiler and found out that the new caretaker was expecting the system to heat the hall up from freezing cold to between 18-20C within 40minutes so they'd even cranked up the boiler output to 75C! I explained to them that they should drop the flow temp back down and be a bit more patient as their bills had dropped noticeably since I installed the system. So in short, sometimes it's about education!

We have a 200mm cavity brick and block build in progress. Before you committ, work out how you are going to source 200mm batt insulation, wall ties, insulated lintels, cavity closures, and so on. Although there are more products for 200mm cavities now than ever, several items are still special order leading to delays and costs you might not be prepared to wait or pay for. We have had lots of issues with these issues and would have built quicker had we gone for 150mm cavity.

They think they are getting a trouble-free house with no work to do, the horror stories won't happen to them, and anyway, there is a 10 year guarantee. What they don't know is that the guarantee is mostly worthless, the horror stories happen everywhere, and the house will be poky and the same as the one next door without any character.

Weeks 56 to 74 The UFH is laid and the screed is providing a lovely wobble free surface for the ladders and makes brushing up so much nicer. Our neighbour kindly lent us his scaffold tower so that we could insulate the vaulted ceiling in the open plan area which is approx 5m high. This has enabled me to finish insulating between the rafters with 140mm of Rockwool and I have PIR sheets to put up under the rafters. For cutting both the Rockwool and the PIR I created a few templates of different angles and had them ready for when my husband came to help pass them up to me. Once the Rockwool was finished we both took it in turns on the scaffold tower fitting the PIR. Having a vaulted ceiling in the openplan area and partially vaulted elsewhere will give us plenty of light and nice high ceilings but for now they are awkward to cut around to insulate and ensure the VCL is tight around the junctions. The time spent doing this will no doubt be forgotten once we move in and it is starting to feel closer. We marked out the kitchen island location and dining room table location to get first fix electic lighting located and measured for the kitchen units. For my birthday treat our daughter came to stay and dog sit our elderly Greyhound so that we could go shopping looking at kitchens. We spent almost 4 hours in Wren Exeter with Harvinder but we think we have ordered a lovely kitchen and pantry. Unfortunately our neighbour needed the scaffold tower back but said we could borrow it again as soon as he had finished with it. We then decided we should book in the plasterer as things were starting to come together, rather luckily for us our plasterer had just had a job cancel on him and when we spoke to him on a Thursday he said he could start next week either Tuesday or Wednesday. As we hadn’t finished insulating one side of the vaulted ceiling we said we couldn’t be ready that quick unless he wanted to quote for fitting the PIR and the VCL, which I had already purchased most of. We then spent the weekend and Monday getting first fix electrics in the kitchen and mocking up where the TV was going to get the electrics and room wall lighting ready. Things have therefore started to move on quicker than we expected, so we are hopeful of moving in by winter this year with a working kitchen, one bathroom and one bedroom finished at least. Kitchen design render. Testing TV and speaker location. Even with the plasterboard lifter its hard with 3 on the scaff and one on the lifter, so glad I'm not doing it. Taking time off the insulation has meant I can tidy the UFH expansion foam up in all the rooms and the trip hazards we kept ignoring at door room openings, whilst being on hand for the plasterers if they need more tape etc or have any questions. Once they have finished with the VCL membrane I might finish the VCL I started before we borrowed the scaffold tower or I could take a rest from the build and catch up on so many other things, even paint schemes maybe. I have caught up on the build paperwork this weekend. The total spend to date including the provisional kitchen figure of £15,000 which includes VAT, units, worktop, tiles and some appliances so not the reclaim amount. Total to date £238917 over 135m2 is £1770 m2 for a 3 bed, 2 bath, bungalow This is broken down as follows. General £4200 Carpentry £500 Kitchen £15100 Roof insulation, inc membrane and tapes etc £4500 First Fix Electrical £1230 First fix plumbing and partial bathroom costs (ongoing) £1430 UFH £900 Drainage and gutering £8540 Floor insulation inc tape and membranes £2670 Screed £2740 Cladding (over ordered but ideas are developing) £5690 Render £3090 Solar 7.5 KWp £8570 Roof £23300 Windows £20870 no front door yet. ICF Construction £119600 Pre build costs and fees etc £15830 The back of envelope guesstimate of future spend is £35k to finish apx £2k per m2

sorry no but depending on your targets I'd be inclined to carefully check thermal and air tightness tests/data. I'd recommend talking to Nordica, even if they don't do pretty sliders - you'll probably get an honest opinion on them! we had final air test last week. 0.45

At my daughters. 1930's butched floorboards, i glued, and screwed down 9mm ply. Just blocking all the gaps made a huge difference. After LVT floor obviously not warm, but much better that leaky old floorboards. Listen, i am not against insulation. Quite the opposite. But stop the airflow. It will make a big difference.

It was one year ago that we started our house build, and we moved in 4.5 months later on July 3rd. Well, that's the headline to catch attention, but there needs to be some qualification. A year ago we started building above ground. Before that, we had 3 months of asbestos removal, demolition, site clearance, excavation, concrete slab, drains and scaffold. But still, 19 weeks to build everything above ground is good. Our method: MBC completed the timber frame in 8 working days - that was a great head start. We had a fixed price contract with a general builder for all the external finishes. This meant we could leave him to manage that whilst we concentrated on the interior. We had plumbing, electrical and carpentry trades working on site in parallel. The house was big enough to have separate working areas. We (the client) were always present to create the culture of collaboration and courtesy. Me and the Mrs worked full time on the build without employment to distract us. One of us would be on site before 8am to open up whilst the other was doing desk work: chasing quotes / delivery / documentation etc. We had very few times when the site was unsupervised by one or other of us. We were disciplined in making decisions in the right order and not changing our minds. We lived a 5 min cycle away in a rented house. Cycling is ideal because you don't take up parking space on site, and you can come and go without asking trade vans to move. Our builder saw the advantage and started cycling too. We had Travis Perkins, Screwfix and the electrical wholesaler all within a 10 minute drive. I could collect ad hoc materials before 8am with an estate car + roof rack so the trades weren't waiting for materials. Our builders merchants is a favoured supplier for kitchens / bathrooms etc based 100 miles away. We worked closely with them to keep their supply of materials ahead of the trades. I did three months of carpentry assisting the proper carpenter. If I wasn't supervising deliveries, doing a site induction for new workers, cleaning up, moving materials then I was doing carpentry. The site was always clean and tidy with waste promptly taken off site. The site was working 5 days a week, every week but typically not weekends. And when we moved in, there was another 6 weeks to completion and then the landscaping after that. Photographs attached from one year ago Build photos here: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/45435-project-finished-mbc-timber-frame-self-build-220m2-over-three-floors/#comment-634389 VID_20250219_094732.mp4 UBox_20250222_153442_246_019_P.mp4

Finally finally balanced the system...thanks to Chatgpt! I know I know but it's true. Had a very long 'conversation' about the history, boiler, system, issues....walked me through everything....took days of tweaking but the killer move???? Dialing down the ABV from 5 to 2 and voila! all 19 rads boiling, every room warm, able to turn off rads in unused rooms without issue. 3..2...1

We started the build as a Passive House but gas fired, we had the gas laid in and ran the track pipe (which is for sale in the market place now.) through a duct from the gas meter. I had looked at ASHP but felt gas was a safer bet, this was at the planning stage in 2017 - we wouldn't need a cylinder so the heat loss into the building, which @Jeremy Harris had shared with us all would not be a problem. I had a very good plumber / gas fitter so fitting the boiler would have been no problem and it should have been a smooth process with a combi boiler. Then I started to get much more concerned about the eco credentials of gas fired heating and decided to look at other options SUNAMP, PV, Willis, and battery but as SUNAMP was getting increasingly bad press and the Willis route would have hit our SAP score they got kicked into touch. So gas came back, but sadly our tame gas fitter was taken ill, and was unable to work, and we would have had to seek someone else so I took a look at ASHP again, plus the grant was now £7500 so we should be able to get it done for that! So in 2021 we started looking at MCS installers and that was like pulling teeth because none of them were very convincing and didn't listen to our design and insulation standards preferring to fall back on some sort of opaque arbitrary process to give us wild quotes for a straight install where a big chunk of the work was already done. The UFH is in and I had installed two 28mm pipes in the insulation from the utility room to the place we might install a heat pump just in case. So again I swithered a bit, and at that point the Umbrella schemes started to take off and it struck me that we might fit the ASHP ourselves if we could find a sound scheme to duck under. In the end after a lot of searching and a bunch of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) like exercises to compare the various offers we went with Cool Energy, although we had to wait almost a year for their smallest Heat Pump to get MCS accreditation. Its installed and commissioned now - still sorting out some teething issues, we have had our grant money and the all up cost with everything including the EMON heat meter system with all the bells and whistles has come in on the money with me doing all the plumbing, electrics and controls and them signing it all off.

What they really mean is we don't want to have a house that looks like this,(because there may be poor people inside). What a bunch of snobs they are. White uPvc looks just fine if appropriate care is taken of the proportions of the windows. It's amazingly durable if you get good stuff. I don't know what the aluminum adds really. That's ours below. White T+T Veka Softline 82. White uPvc fascia and soffit and black guttering and down pipes whilst we're at it.

Hello all and for Hope this helps a bit. This type of thread crops up from time to time on Buildhub. How to fix (connect) floor joists to a wall? To make an informed decision you first need to go back and determine what the connections are supposed to do. Now the obvious one is that they need to hold the floor up under downwards gravity loads. These loads are the self weight of the floor and most often people, called the imposed or live load. However, floors often do other stuff. SE's know that a well put together floor acts as a big stiff beam in its horizontal plane (not its depth that you commonly encounter when sizing the floor joists) that can resist horizontal loads. It acts as (what we call) a diaphragm. They are kind of like a bulkhead in a boat that stiffens the structure. We use the floors to provide horizontal restraint to the walls and to shift horizontal loads to a place where we can more easily transfer the horizontal loads in the plane of the floor to the walls and then down to the foundations. Now as we commonly design for (and take advantage of) diaphragm action we first need to work out what the downwards loads are and then the horizontal loads in the floors that need to be transferred via the joist end connections. Once we know this we can then go about selecting the right connection.. and also know that if we swap out hanger connections and / or use resin anchors in place of another type of fixing say we are not going to do something that compomises the SE design. Here are some common examples of hangers: Below is what we call a simple face fix hanger, a joist fixed to a ledger. You can see that this is a light duty type of hanger. It can carry efficiently a downwards load. But it's not designed to carry much say left to right load horizontally. It's definitely not going to be great if the joist wants to pull away from the wall, joist tension. Below is something a bit more robust. This type of hanger is very common. These can also be face fixed but the image shows the hanger wrapped over the top of the ledger. By doing this wrap over we gain a lot of extra vertical load bearing capacity. You can also see that it may be a bit better if we want the hanger to resist say a left to right horizontal load. But again it will not provide that much joist tension resistance. So much so that the manufacturer does not bother giving a value for this. Below is something you also see on some floors. By inspection we can see that we could easily push the joist left to right and it is certainly not going to be able to take any joist tension. Below is a very basic typ of masonry hanger that gets build in. Note the tabs on the top are flat. This type of hanger requires a MINIMUM 3 COURSES OF SOLID BLOCK (675MM MASONRY) REQUIRED ABOVE HANGER WITH MORTAR FULLY CURED BEFORE APPLYING LOAD. This masonry above is to stop the tab on the top from unfolding and the joist falling down. You can see that it won't be that good at resisting left to right load or any joist tension load. If you don't have enough masonry above you can see if something like the below will work. Here the top tab is folded down the back of the masonry. This type of Simpson Strong_Tie hanger is also claimed to "The SFLHI has been designed to assist in meeting the air leakage requirements as part of the Code for Sustainable Homes. Since the joist is supported by a hanger and does not penetrate the inner leaf of blockwork, the potential for air leakage is reduced and avoids the time consuming and costly mortaring and sealing with mastic around built in joist ends." Also note that there is a short horizontal tie that provides some lateral restraint. Still not that great at resisting left to right horizontal loads though. Below is another option, different, but I often use these types of brackets as they work in all directions. Ok, that is a quick run down on connections.. but what about ledgers to use or not? Well if you want to use a timber ledger the main loads you need to know are the downwards load and if the floor joist to ledger connection is in tension, usually caused by a wind load. The SE design process for this is a bit iterative. First I look at the loads, then the joist spacing. The joists have some form of metal connection so you can't have a ledger fixing there. I kind of know what will work, if resin anchors then I'll usually look at a 12mm diameter rod as it's a good balance. Now for resin anchors to work you have edge and end distances. Roughly they need to go into the blocks but not too close to the mortar joints. You have to know where the horizontal mortar beds are and so on. To do this kind of design properly you need to understand how things get built on site, know what matters and where adding things to drawings can actually confuse the builder. You have to make the drawing notes easily understood by the builder. Usually in a dense concrete block most builders, if they follow the drawings can turn out something acceptable at the end of the day. But if you have a lightweight say Thermalite block you can (if the loads are not that high) still use resin anchors. But the installation procedure is more complex and demanding. The holes often need to be under reamed using a special drill bit for example. You need a dilligent and experienced builder for this and if you deviate from the manufacturer's instructions you will likely be in big trouble! Ok but have you checked with your SE that this is ok. Don't forget.. your builder and you are now making structural design decisions! Thus you are now carrying the can under CDM for example. Best to lift the phone for 10 minutes to your SE and get some assurance that what you are doing is ok.

The last house I built in oz I did 75% and had help with the rest, when we started this I said I needed more help. then as we started I just kept doing everything myself got quotes to do stuff but didn’t like them, everything seamed to expensive when I knew I could do it, even if it took longer, then covid came along, things went up, ran out of money, things went up again, ran out of money again. plus I’ve got multiple other things on the go. I’ve also had large periods of time when I just couldn’t be bothered spent hours wondering what on Earth I was doing and why we even started. and I’m just about to start a couple of small refurbishment projects. must be mad, could be sitting on a beach with a cocktail.

And that, exactly that - is the point. I'd love to be challenged. The local paper can do with some relevant content. 50 meters away is a similar size pothole that has been filled with concrete. The repair is at least four years old. It's a beautiful neat job. Nobody was taken to task about that. ( A local business owner sorted it out quickly, quietly) It's stopped raining - if I get time I'll pop out and buy some quick-dry, and document the repair here. Up The Revolution Citizens!

I wouldn’t consider osb under the sheets, pull out strength of an 18mm screw is not great. 25mm sarking boards for me.

And people are snapping these houses up as fast as they can finish them (or not quite finish them).

Depends what door you have, we have a mat well simply because a lot of the modern low threshold doors are very low to the finished floor, so you physically can’t put a mat on top of the floor or the door won’t open. also with the low doors they tend to trap small stones and scratch the floor, the mat wel allows the stones to fall lower allowing the door to open.

@dustyb My partner and I were in exactly the same situation. We are the ones from the channel mentioned above. We’ve given ourselves a realistic time scale to help both budget and build quality. We are using Ecobrix which is a Woodcrete ICF. It works out at around £11 a block… I think. Which sounds pricey but I feel the block has many advantages to the self builder. Our structural steelwork thats made of rebar and concealed in the block can all be constructed ourselves and has the ability to create many aspects, one of which in our case is a 1 meter cantilever. All the rebar for our build only came to £700, and there’s some nice thick long stuff in there. It’s much cheaper than your typical I beam steel work. Your drives on why to build it yourself are similar to ours, we know there’s a lot we can have a crack at and do well ourselves to save paying someone else though…. We know our limitations and getting a company in to build and pour our slab was money well spent. I do not agree with the comment regarding an ICF pour requiring lots of labour (it may do for an EPS ICF) but our Woodcrete ones from Ecobrix performed brilliantly, though we did go full belts and braces on the shoring up but that’s easily done by screwing OSB directly to the blocks. We had more people than needed in the end (just incase it went Pete Tong). Our build is only small, the first pour was 9.5m3 and would have been done in a morning if the concrete wagons arrived when they said they would. The pour came to just shy of £3000. We have only done one pour so far, fingers crossed we weren’t just lucky!😅 We are also not planning on doing this again or moving… unless we are 90 and in a box.🤞🏼