Dreadnaught

Welcome to the forum @TFnovice. If your experience is like mine you'll find that the sun will rise on the complexities and you will eventually see a crystal clear view of the way ahead. It happened to me. It does take some time (and lots of reading). I also recommend visiting other builds. That has been astoundingly helpful for me.

How is the matting controlled given that its purpose is to raise the temperature of the tiles not the room?

@JSHarris, makes sense. I assume that it would also provide a modicum of infra-red warm feeling too. Electric matting is there to compensate for flooring with high thermal conductivity (which thus can feel cold to the touch of a bare foot) and probably mainly in the summer when space heating is off. This could imply that such electric matting in a bathroom could be limited to only areas with foot traffic, which is perhaps lower coverage than would be installed if the matting was for space heating.

@JSHarris thanks. My bungalow-to-be of course could have both electric matts and UFH pipes in the bathrooms. I am wondering if that's a good idea.

@PeterW, @JSHarris, is that electric UFH matting duplicating UFH loops in the bathrooms or is it electric UFH matting only there?

Isn't there a difference in practice between a fixed price and a firm price? I seem to recall @JSHarris highlighting a difference.

And also worth considering that a new scheme for the payment of feed in electricity from home generation is on the horizon. I don't believe details are yet public and I don't suspect it will be terribly generous but still worth considering combined with the other advice herein.

I visited a house twice during construction that achieved 0.08 ACH at 50 pa. This podcast talks all about it. https://www.houseplanninghelp.com/hph183-how-to-achieve-an-outstanding-airtightness-result/ Their secret was the prime contractor was motivated to achieve a very good result to promote their new Passive-House building prowess commercially. They used the PH15, I-beam system and taped everything to high heaven. One point to consider is that ACH is measured relative to the volume of the house. This big house also has a big basement and basements are inherently airtight. I think that the calculation includes only 50% of basement volume to compensate for this but somehow I suspect that big houses especially with basements can achieve these very low figures more easily.

If one of the AP is missing a heartbeat intermittently its likely to be the ethernet cabling. It is unlikely to be the APs themselves or the firmware. They are rock solid. Sorry to hear you're having problems.

@Sue B, another one here. This time mine will be (not started yet) a passive slab combined with screw piles (because of unstable soils, clay beneath that can heave, and lots of tree roots that need to live a long and happy life). I have collected a small sheath of cross-sectional diagrams of piles and rafts. Any of the raft of pile companies will have one that they can send you.

Ever heard of the EnerPHit standard? If your budget can stretch to having an architect, you could consider a full refurbishment to the highest levels of airtightness and thermal performance.

@Laura some general advice. A key principle I learnt from reading the Passive House Handbook is that it is interstitial moisture which destroys buildings If you add insulation, you may be lulled into thinking that you can only be doing good. However you would be well advised to focus on how moisture (both liquid and gaseous) moves through walls and how adding the insulation affects that. Specialists can model this for you. As @Onoff says:

Further… https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/section-75-of-the-consumer-credit-act Probably best not to use PayPal for this. (More detail in the link)

Reading https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/section-75-of-the-consumer-credit-act, it says: So it seems so long as the total ticket price is between £100 and £30k then if you pay as little as 1p on a credit card then you are protected by Section 75. Am I right?

It is a good point to put a portion of a spend on a credit card. I will attempt to insist on this for all the big-ticket items on my build that ask for a deposit or advance payments, at least for physical items (as compared to services). The ones that spring to mind are: Timber frame & foundations (might be greater than the £30k limit) Windows (might too) Roof? Kitchen Bathroom MVHR Second fix items, such as boiler install? Anyone already done this on their build I wonder? Any relevant experiences? For service providers, there are almost always paid in arrears in my experience. Does this then remove any benefits of using this trick with them? I imagine it does. Would paying a mere £100 of any bill (less than £30k) do the trick? Its surprising that paying £100 on total bill of say £30k provides full Section 75 protection but it looks like it does. Anyone have experience of this? I did not think of this until it came up recently on BH in the context of @Weebles sad situation with her kitchen supplier. Thanks for highlighting it again, @newhome.

Thanks @epsilonGreedy. Those are very helpful observations. Good idea. I will look to do that. Very interesting comment. Thank you. To help me understand, could you expand a little on what do you meant by a 1960's aspect ratio. Is it their horizontal nature perhaps, or is maybe to do with the wood cladding section beneath? By subdividing with pillars, may I ask what you had in mind. Might there be a google image you could grab which shows what you are imagining? (You guessed rightly that the avoidance of full floor-to-ceiling windows is driven by thermal modelling.)

You are quite right about the bathroom Liz. We looked at it but failed to find way to have a window with the bathroom in the corner. The roof ridge constrains it. You are right about storage. I will look to add an attic space somewhere when we design the frame.

Thanks. Had a look. Interesting thought. Will talk to my architect about it.

Thanks. Makes eminent sense. As a bungalow, I suppose only bullet three is less relevant for me.

Ah, I see what you mean now. Makes sense.

Good point. That is a (gated) path there between my plot and the neighbour. The path runs behind the neighbours gardens. Easy access.

Pleasing to hear. Thank you. Good point. The snug however could conceivably be contained by walls to make an office/library. What do you think of that idea? Very interesting idea. I would like to explore this at timber-frame-design time. Note that the area above the bathroom area is constrained by its skylight. Good point. Will do that. Fair challenge. Aesthetically better having them in a cluster? Or is that overridden by reduced cost/less frame of having fewer? Unsure. Oh, interesting thought. I don't know how planners view number-of-bedrooms for a site like this. Is more always better? I imagined two was plenty for the site. Yes sure. It was like drawing teeth to negotiate even the solar pipes. That neighbour, the seller, is (understandably) concerned by unsightly light pollution on that side. It is close to his house. Notorious for? Unfortunately for those who are fans of that tree (and there are many) its quite sick. The tree specialist says it has bleeding canker and honey fungus. I (a non expert) suspect it wont last more than 10 years. But it is in a conservation zone and has an army of fans. Its located just off my property in the unadopted road (no known owner). Haha, sounds about right. The location is plumb, even if the plot is a squeeze. It is just 10 mins by foot to the centre of town, opposite (across a river) from an ancient meadow (which has the town's annual fireworks display), within 200 yards of a Michelin-starred restaurant, etc. Thanks for your comments. I'd welcome any more.

You hit a bulls eye on the main compromises. Natural light. The bathroom has a skylight. We could not fit one in the roof in the corner so moved the utility room there. That areas is a bit of a compromise. It's a flexible space. We could even enclose it in walls to make an office. Possibly yes. My architect thinks four in a grid looks better. I am open. Privacy yes. View: not really, just sky. It exists because of a window in the building to the left which as a high-level (above head height) window there (just visible marked on the plan). By pushing our wall back it prevents even the impression of obstruction of that window but in doing so creates the small sheltered area, which is a flexible space with could be used for outside seating or even just sheltered storage. That's the idea. Thanks for your comments. If you have more, please don't hold back.

This is what has gone to planning for approval. I would welcome people's opinions, observations and suggestions for floor plan tweaks. The aim was to design a floor plan with an eye on saleability The constraints are that we are forbidden to overlook to east or north. Even roof windows are not allowed on the east but are allowed on the north. We are limited in height. And we cannot remove any trees.

It is an interesting question. It seems surprising pricey to me. Which is unfortunate as, as form of insulation, it has many advantages. One brand, possibly the main one in the UK, is WarmCel. I believe it is manufactured in the Czech Republic or Hungary and imported. And I believe there is only one importer in the UK, PYC in Wales. I would be interested if anyone knows whether what I have said is correct and about competing products and prices. I also wonder how much go the cost goes to the pump operator, and the requirement for the pump equipment and operator is the reason for its priciness, at least as I perceive it. If it were cheaper, I think it would be a good product for pumping into internal walls for sound proofing (as well as external ones). Just my tuppence worth.