jayc89

18 weeks when we asked around our neck of the woods.

I used https://www.expressscreed.co.uk. Cracking job, but yeah, it seems a little pricey around here!

Original dwelling also has an interesting definition. It's basically the footprint of the house as of 1948, assuming it was built before then. So in some cases you could include extensions within the calculated "original" footprint.

Seems mine was pretty expensive - it was the cheapest of 3 quotes too!

Typo - it was 65m2, so £25.85/m2.

XPS below the cavity tray, as you where above it

55m2 @ 60mm of Longfloor IntegraCure was £1,680, so £30.54/m2 and no laitence to remove.

Looking into IWI for some of our existing rooms. Thinking we'll likely use the "warm batten" method, but regardless of the method, almost all recommend retaining the existing plaster. In places, our existing plaster is over 25mm thick. Knocking this off reduces the floor space last by ~ 22% so quite considerable. What's the purpose of retaining the plaster? Would a sand + cement parge coat serve the same purpose?

It could be anywhere. For us, the water company's side of the stop tap was MDPE and ours was all led. Yes, one contagious run from the stop tap, avoid joins underground where possible. Entirely up to you and very much dependent on your site plan vs how much effort you want to put in. Ours was a pretty long "Shepard's crook" run from the front stop tap, down the side of the house, around the back and until our current utility room. We could have halved the run and brought it up under kitchen sink instead. When we remodel this is likely what we will do. I'd avoid taking up valuable kitchen space where ever possible.

I guess slightly off-topic - Would this work in conjunction with airtight tape? Generally, I'd assume the airtight seal would be made between the PIR and window frame, then covered with the plasterboard. Can the tape itself by skimmed over too?

Welcome. We're on a similar journey. If there's one thing I wish we did sooner, whilst the house was back to brick, it's wall insulation. Good luck with the project!

We're currently on Ovo's Better Energy plan, but that's due to come to an end next month when we'll move to their variable tariff; Simpler Energy. Which is incredibly bad timing... The comparison sites don't suggest any companies are currently taking on new business - does anyone know if any of the independents currently are? Sticking with OVO is likely to bump our bill by > £100 next month!

We considered F&B and Earthborn. We ultimately decided against them both on their price point and also concerns around their durability. With two young kids it's enviable that our walls get scuffed and bumped and the reviews I'd read at the time weren't great in that respect. I didn't want to use a paint that needed regular touching up.

I feel your pain. Ours is a 1860s build (we think) and whilst it gets up to heat pretty quickly, it never feels as warm as the stat suggests and certainly feels colder depending on which way the wind's blowing so I'm currently going around our house plugging any holes as I find them. Eventually I'd like to be in a position to do a, home made, airtightness test, but right now it would be pointless as the place is leaking like a sieve! Over winter we were paying around £4.50 a day to heat the place! Our windows are probably 50 years old at this point (and amazingly they're in better condition than our last house that was only 15 years old itself!) so once all the obvious gaps are plugged, replacing those is next on our list. Good luck!

He'd probably think I'm bonkers if I got my tape measure out From memory it wasn't very thick though, no. Thanks for the advice!

It's a townhouse build so I assume it's an official room. The roof does have 4x Velux's running along one side. It's difficult as I don't have another non room-in-attic to compare it to in that area, but it was certainly noisier than I'd like our new bedroom to be!

I was working from a friends house today - they have a new build which came with a room-in-attic that they use as a home office. They live in a quiet residential neighbourhood but I couldn't help but notice how noisy it was up there, both from cars coming and going and from the rain showers throughout the day. I have no idea of their construction spec. All being well, our plans for the extension was to have our master bedroom in a similar room in attic set up, so it got me thinking - what's the best way to sound insulate these rooms to avoid such noice pollution?

A couple of these are woodcrete, but I think this covers the EPS ones; Amvic Beco Altherm Nudura WarmerWall QuadLock Sunbloc Jackon Thermohouse Econekt

I'm coming up with a list of EPS ICF suppliers, so far I have; Nudura Beco PolySteel Jakon Am I missing any known ones?

When we moved into our current house it was band G for no obvious good reason. It has a large footprint, but the size and property value didn't match that of other houses in the area also in band G. We contested it (as you can within the first 6 months of ownership) and managed to get it dropped to band F without dispute. In hindsight we should have maybe pushed for band E (although didn't fancy the hassle of any pushback at the time).

Stairs, lips, anything you need to stretch to reach (windows, cupboards etc), anything too low (w/c), anything you need to step over/into (baths)

I think my biggest bug bear is they're basing it off my own "finger in the air" guess. No informed opinion based on the requirements etc. In reality I don't expect the build to cost anywhere near what I said because it was really my max budget if I was to be fully hands off and have no involvement in the build. I could have given them any number I liked.

I'm currently reconsidering our architect of choice for our extension. Most company's we've spoken with have asked for our budget which I presumed was to both weed out the daydreamers and also give them some bounds to work within. We had a company come out and suggest we didn't need to extend as far as we initially thought and made reference to how it would also save us money - great. However their quote has just come through and they're asking for 5% of the budget I initially provided. This is for up to and including technical drawings. Given this number was very much a finger in the air guess AND they claimed they would likely be able to design something well below that figure, I feel they're taking the Michael. I get they need to price based on something, but using such an arbitrary number seems odd. Is this normal? Am I missing something? I should have just said the budget was £5.48

Re: weather comp. That's my understanding too. I wish I came across this site sooner I've spent the afternoon ensuring the rads are balanced and dropped the flow to 65. I have a couple of clip on thermometers so I've attached one to the return pipe going back into the boiler. It's a pretty nice day here so heating's not flicked on yet (and I doubt it will) so I'll check back on it when it does.

DWH is set to 55c, I'd suspect 60c + lagged pipes would work?