epsilonGreedy

It would be useful to have the calculated internal floor area. The design incorporates some wow features with its baronial dining hall space and dedicated gym. I hope the internal gym wall will be mainly glazed to connect it with the hall area. I feel the kitchen is undersized for a property of this stature and the lack of a walk-in utility room and preferably a pantry is a major miss for me. I have some specific observations on the sitting room having lived in a property with a similar size room and with the internal door in the same position. The double focused furniture arrangement does not work and actually caused interpersonal schisms. I would loose 3ft of glazing on the west wall to allow the stove to be centered further south on that west wall as this will promote a central furniture arrangement. Have you and your architect experimented with larger eve overhangs? What about wide plank timber cladding? Have you or your architect lived in North America, I ask because there seem to be some design choices inspired through living in another culture.

British houses built in the 20th century can be usually be dated from their predominant window aspect ratio and your design gives an impression of a 1965 to 1975 build. If I drove past your completed house at 30 mph and had 3 seconds to assess I think I would conclude "low rise custom designed property built round 1975". One problem with the outward aesthetics is the design seems geographically homeless, I reckon there are many similar suburban properties in mid latitude US states. In general I find that L-shaped homes have an inviting approach though in your case this is lost to a degree because of the inconsistent fenestration, there is no balance or symmetry. In your position I would spend a few days walking around Cambridge college greens to find some critical window positions, lines and ratios. Cambridge is oozing with attractive examples of ground floor college residences that embrace a garden area, it should be possible to lift some concepts albeit with a modern interpretation. You might already have a fully worked up plan for external finishing details that are not conveyed in the diagrams shown in this thread.

Why not investigate land insurance sold to farmers? As a theoretical exercise I just went through the Protek self builders online quotation system for a property with a 1m2 internal area, a £1 reinstatement cost and just the 3rd party liability insurance element ticked. The system calculated that 12 months insurance would cost £1.57. Protek officially call this an "indication" which implies there is later human review. It might be worth pursuing as they might just view the minor costs of insuring a green field as a loss leader for you later business though be aware that this industry segment colludes to tie self builders to a single insurer for the whole self build and consequently people get stung when seeking insurance extensions.

If this is DC hence no rectification losses then I read somewhere that 3w is equivalent to 30 to 60w incandescent. Could a cluster of 4 downlights be switched off a single network switch port?

Perhaps passiv slab house owners should fit marine navigation lights to cover all possibilities.

When you say "in the footings", is this to take the water main through the foundation from outside to inside the building under what will eventually become the internal floor? I ask because the accepted practice is to use ducting for the water pipe as it passes through the foundation wall. The Building Construction Handbook 11th Edition page 937 has a diagram showing what is required with a 75mm drain pipe acting as a conduit for the water pipe through the wall and up to the FFL. In their diagram the footing blockwork is as deep as the regulation 750mm depth for laying a water main hence the water pipe and duct pass through blocks rather concrete. I assume your foundation concrete is thicker and the footing block courses will start above the 750mm regulation depth for the water main? The same page then has a confusing extra note "pipes passing under the foundations should be encases in mass concrete". I think this covers a different situation where the foundations are shallow and the arrival point of the mains pipe is completely below the main poured concrete foundations. Your builder should adhere to further mains water service standards as the water main passes up through the floor structure to FFL particularly insulation. The book shows insulation for the final 600mm of conduit up to FFL and where the water main emerges at FFL within 750mm of an external wall I think it recommends the whole conduit is insulated. Here is what an Anglian Water inspector would be looking for: Pipe has ducting and insulation where it enters the building. Ends of the duct are sealed. Within the property oversite, where there is a suspended floor or the pipe rises to less than 750mm deep within 750mm of an external wall the conduit should be insulated. If the pipe runs through concrete it is housed in continuous ducting to facilitate later removal. See page 11 https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/_assets/media/LED645_AW_DS_Connecting_10_steps_20pp.pdf I am a beginner who is about to tackle this on a diy basis so it would be good if @PeterWcould review this.

You can mix and match the insured elements at the Protek self build insurance web site but at the end of the day their policy is geared to full cycle self build project risks and the monthly rate is much higher when the policy term is under 9 months. I guess you want something that does not mention self build i.e. cheaper 3rd party cover for land and an unoccupied building. Is the "near derelict bungalow" weather tight with lockable doors?

I have been trying to find an old thread from about 6 months ago which discussed wood burners and how they introduce particulate air pollution directly into home most notably during ash cleaning. At the time someone confirmed in the thread that he saw a spike in measured airborne particles following woodburner emptying but his brand name air purifier quickly cleaned the air. Since moving into the static caravan I am noticing higher dust levels than I am used to and want to purchase one or two air purifiers. Could someone suggest a make/model?

Anglian Water recommend using 32mm above 40m. See page 8. https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/_assets/media/LED645_AW_DS_Connecting_10_steps_20pp.pdf

Here are my thoughts using those check points mentioned in another thread. Does the plan clearly convey an objective? Yes. How well does the plan achieve that objective? Pretty good. Would I enjoy a short holiday let in the property? Strong yes with its walking distance to central Cambridge but mostly it is a refreshing alternative to most British domestic house design. Would I want to own or build this property? Strong yes. I think the market would financially reward the builder, it provides a non car based lifestyle in a global ivy league university city. The design provides something different in a city where buyers should be receptive to innovation. As a buyer of the property I would start discounting from the asking price to fix the elements of the internal design that do not work for me. Specific comments: Like others I had a bad reaction to the sky light arrangements. The sky lights look like adhoc retro fits implemented to fix a design error, the net result is a roofline that resembles a maintenance depot shed. Suggest fewer larger non square roof lights. Having said that I do appreciate that black and white technical drawings tend to over emphasize detail and in real life these skylights might visually melt way. I would want to rework the landscaping to create a late afternoon patio outside the main bedroom to catch the late afternoon sun though I appreciate your current focus might be internal privacy from the road. The snug simply does not work and it would take some particularly creative internal decor to improve this. I cannot think why I would head for the snug when leaving the kitchen because the living room is the same number of steps away with much more window area. If you wish to retain the snug you could adopt some ideas about creating a cosy space by looking at traditional rural spanish houses that have a hunker down for the winter inner living room. I would swap the utility room and bathroom around and have the bathroom door facing down the bedroom corridor. The occupants of bedroom-2 should find the bathroom closer and this will also improve the coupling of utility room and kitchen. Keep the kitchen/living partition wall. The design is already open plan enough and that wall helps specialize the spaces. Finally and a biggie. I don't like the 1960's aspect ratio of the principal windows. I would subdivide them with pillars though I fear this would cause havoc with you carefully crafted solar gain calculations.

How long is the external pipe run from the mains to your property wall? There is an industry recognized threshold at which point 32mm is recommend, I think the number is 40m.

Making space for an artist's studio specializes the house though I guess inside the M25 has more creative people per sq mile than elsewhere in the UK. I can foresee a future purchaser wanting more communal space as a young family and considering knocking Bed 3 & 4 together to create an extra living room and then turning the studio into a large parent's master bedroom. I was going to suggest plumbing for a future top floor ensuite but with bathroom plumbing below the potential is there. The inner landing is odd, something to do with designing around light sleepers or attenuating road noise at the front? It creates loads of cupboard space. All in all the design meets your requirements very well and I cannot see areas to improve. As a sometime work at home IT person I would like the downstairs office with immediate access to kitchen and outside garden when the weather improves.

Are the 4 beds a personal requirement or have they been incorporated for future resale market value? Will the downstairs study and top floor studio be used concurrently by different family members? It would be helpful if you provided a total floor space.

Maybe we are talking at cross purposes, not sure where the 50mm comes from. Anyhow I am not building TF and I think the OP has disengaged after the bruising feedback, it must be disheartening to be advised to start again after so much expense and preparation. At the end if the day if the house shown in the OP was built as-is, are we debating more than £100 extra on the gas bill p/a compared to 150mm of under screed insulation?

Does winter weather influence this decision? If the OP follows a conventional build route then the screeding can be delayed until the roof is on which probably implies fitting the UFH and screeding in the spring or summer.

Ok point taken, I have edited my question to be more specific.

Your advice seems specific to passiv slabs. The OP's design is not based on one of these. In order to provide a more balanced view, what percentage of conventional B&B floors with UFH do you think are finished with rebar in the screed and the screed is +99mm thick?

It is reassuring to read that you know what constraints have influenced the current design. You say the architect is working to a ridge height limit hence the poor floor u-value, what internal ceiling heights will you have?

Environmental health monitoring would be on my list for a deluxe home automation setup e.g. internal particulate monitoring and CO2 level to allow fining tuning of MVHR down to lowest healthy level. I have never suffered from asthma but I want clean internal air if only to deter its onset. I will also be looking for intelligent control of my MVHR based on external conditions because since living onsite I can now predict the climatic conditions when wood smoke hangs over the village. Another issue is a chicken farm about 600m away. Think we should all consider old age and technology to help with independent living, this is where I foresee a growing role for voice control. I take the point about external service dependency though the major chip manufacturers like Intel are presently working on silicon chips for embedding AI neural nets cheaply at the IOT edge (think 1980's EAROM). Voice recognition is going to get embedded in local devices. The question is how to provision a selfbuild today for voice control hardware that is yet to arrive. Another old age provision would be video cam aided front door access control. Finally and at the old tech end of home automation with consideration to the continuing demise of high street retail. I will want to facilitate home parcel delivery which will consist of a metal parcel drop built into a garage wall.

Yes some of the Anglian Water material I have read today mentions the requirement for pipe tail ends to be tagged with plot numbers and addresses which would relate to their subsequent adoption concerns you mention. As you and @ProDaveindicate how will they know when a selfbuild is complete and why would they be interested in the finer details of domestic plumbing best covered by mainstream building control. My natural inclination is to keep a low profile but before doing so I wanted to understand the rules. A 750mm deep water supply trench is a significant mantrap that I would prefer to backfill asap. This is correct, in fact I now remember taking a call from the pre connection surveyor from Anglian Water as he wanted to raised a minor concern about the lack of a surrounding insulation box for the standpipe upstand though he did add this would not prevent scheduling of the actual connection date.

This was my hope until I started reading up on water supply building regs. Anglian Water publishes a guide showing 10 steps to completing a new build water supply and they mention a later stage inspection that includes internal plumbing details. However the guidance in the document seems oriented to a larger developer who establishes a builder's site supply, then builds multiple properties each of which needs a subsequent meter installation. See steps 8 & 9 on page 14. https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/_assets/media/LED645_AW_DS_Connecting_10_steps_20pp.pdf

I am trying to understand my obligations and the scheduling of dealing with waterboard officials during a newbuild after a builder's supply has been installed. My builder's supply standpipe was installed 6 months ago and has recently been extended to the onsite static caravan. The setup is very simple with a waterboard installed meter and stopcock sited 1ft outside the boundary of my plot in the grass verge of a public road. My builder dug a short trench for the builders supply, supplied the MDPE pipe, standpipe and one way valve as per the waterboard's initial survey. The waterboard's installation team (Anglian Water) did the road dig and connected everything up. I have removed the standpipe for the moment and extended the MDPE mains pipe 24 meters to my static caravan and the oneway valve from the standpipe now sits inline under the caravan. A few things now puzzle me: Will I eventually need a further waterboard survey to inspect the completed mains water installation of the near completed house including the supply trench? If so this will mean an keeping a 3m length of trench open for 9 months which also implies the current static caravan supply being exposed to frost risk? Am I correct in thinking that "a double check valve, drain off tap, servicing valve and tap" are internal building plumbing details that would normally be fitted once a house is watertight and heated?

My favourite software programming Q&A system called StackOverflow has a feature to support posts intended to be self answered, I think the idea is to allow separate Q & A posts to maintain a consistent style and to save others from expending time answering a post that is about to be self answered.

@PeterWis that a screenshot of a BuildHub app or does the website reformat particularly well on a small mobile screen?

This is a pseudo question I can now answer to save others asking the same dumb question I raised a few weeks ago. In preparation for today's mains water pipe re routing I asked my pro self build neighbour if I could borrow one of those gadgets that reaches down into a roadside mains water shutoff inspection chambers to turn off the master waterboard stopcock for the site. He frowned and asked if this was for my site's water connection installed last summer and then added have you had a look? No I had not looked. It transpires that a modern roadside stopcock/meter installation comes fitted with a type of long-reach raised tap head, this lurks under a custom piece of insulation foam. It is a doddle to turn off the supply, the foam insert even has a diagram showing the open and closed positions. My water meter also had a useful feature in addition the main numerical readout. There is a black rotating cog visible through an inspection window that is very sensitive to any flow, it even registers a tiny flow of water in the reverse direction as the pipe reaches full pressure which I assume is a hydrostatic bounce or reflection. This cog provides immediate assurance any new connections do not have a serious leak.