Dreadnaught

I am wondering whether to clear my build plot of vegetation before bird-nesting season begins? Do the bird-nesting restrictions affect me as a self-builder? Is this quote sensible to clear my plot: £120, plus £80 to remove 300kg of vegetative waste? if I asked that the vegetative waste be left on site to be taken later when the groundworkers start would I then open myself to hedgehog inspections of the vegetative mound when disposal time arrives? I hope to start the build in late spring or summer. The plot is 20m x 20m. To be cleared are two small trees (trunk diameter less than 20cm, no TPOs) and a selection of assorted bushes. No hedges. Nothing that should cause neighbours' pens to twitch.

To self manage a build takes hundreds of hours of preparation by reading, researching, speaking to others, visiting builds, exhibitions, etc. But for me the journey is the destination and I immensely enjoy doing all of that. Personally, I would not want to skip any of it by handing it over to someone else and paying a much larger bill. But then I also have full control over my time so can devote those hundreds of hours by choice.

@TFnovice, just a side note on overheating for well insulated houses. The best mitigant for this is not active ASHP cooling, openable windows, or even shutters but by good house design. Depending on the constraints on your site it may be possible to orient your house, and especially the glazing, and and add shading overhangs and other features that reduce summer overheating dramatically. For example, in the case of Ben Adam Smith of the House Planning Help podcast, his forecast rate of summer overheating by these design measures for his own house was zero percent. In reality, of course, its impossible to fully avoid overheating. However, if your house is also modelled using PHPP then you can see the effect of design changes. Personally, when I chose my architect, was careful to choose one that was familiar with both PHPP and these concepts. Many people who aspire to a (near-ish) passive house don't realise that, with a highly insulated house, space heating becomes easy and it is overheating that becomes the more major concern. Unfortunately, often they discover this only after they take-up occupation. Hope that's helpful.

@Red Kite Ben Adam Smith of the House Planning Help podcast went with a masonry constructed certified passive house for his own personal build. Might be worth your while looking that up. His was also a turnkey project with a prime contractor supervised by an architectural firm and thus expensive. I have chosen a different route for my soon-to-be-built bungalow (passive slab, TF, self-managed build without prime contractor).

Oh, its well out-of-date: I must update it. Thanks for spotting it. I've bought a plot, chosen my team and a TF supplier, and am just waiting for planners to give the thumbs up before starting everything.

@TFnovice, to find other build to possibly visit, look at the blogs on here, choose the one's you think you could learn from, and message the authors privately asking if they might accept a visitor. Recognise that some are very busy, especially those mid build. However I have found everyone without exception to be hugely generous with their time and I have learnt enormous amounts from each one of my visits. I am immensely grateful and have met some splendid characters along the way (no names ).

@laurenco, looking good! It must be exciting to see your walls on their way. Yes, I am sticking with the 0.11 walls too for the same reason, although I have not placed the order yet as I am still waiting to finalise my planning permission.

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.