epsilonGreedy

If it is so obvious that trade standards provide the answer to my question why have three people offered different fixing solutions in this thread to the same build challenge?

I know this is not true even though I am a rookie. My year 2000 Bryant Homes house used the copper & upper joist notch technique. And earlier this week a young chap (33) was standing in my kitchen listening to my self build plans, after a short career in general plumbing he moved onto a well paid new career path in central heating servicing. His no.1 piece of advice was "whatever you do, do not use plastic piping, the rubber seals always fail eventually". Edit: I now recall he was talking about the quick fit jointing system associated with plastic piping. p.s. I do appreciate your advice. Two weeks ago you shaved £1000's off my self build project with a single sentence observation on my central heating design.

Ok but I am not sure why this thread keeps veering towards trade standards. When running your mains cabling through the posi joist void did you implement a metal tray support plinth as described by @jsharris or did you invent a cradle system as shown in the first photo in this thread?

@RandAbuild - your photo is very helpful particularly the basket idea for cradling the electric cables. Did you find you needed to think ahead and load up the joist void with extra timber to be used later for service supports? I note the larger diameter black pipe running through the wood support, was that wooden support too large to thread into place after the joists were fixed in position?

Their principal rivals who promote I-beams take the opposite approach with ready made conduit knockout panels. The market rewards manufacturers who provide a prescriptive highspeed solution to a problem e.g. Wago boxes.

The Mitek documents include an impressive amount of detail for the joist installation stage including awkward edge case scenarios. What is odd is that their no.1 or no.2 selling point is simplicity of installing services and yet the more I think about it I-beams and solid wooden joists have proven solutions that require zero think time or fiddly creativity. Precisely, you prove my point. The standard way to run a central heating pipe across joists is a top notch and a bit of felt, the very thing that is expressly forbidden with Posi joists. The Mitek official site shows copper pipes resting on the lower timber chord which seems like a recipe for pipe rattles when a person stomps across a bedroom floor, the alternative shown in this thread is a horizontal support with a notch for pipework but am I looking at a notch taken out of the strong back? This sounds interesting, if I review your build blog will I find an image of this technique? Anyhow this is the type of technique that Mitek should be providing a definitive example of. My first thought was to strap a 4" plastic pipe across the joists anchored to the metal webs but then I was concerned this might create an thermally insulated chamber that would cook wiring if it heats up under load.

I have read through the three downloadable docs from the mitek.co.uk site, 80+ pages in total with some repetition. Only one page addresses ducting specifically just maximum sizes for conduits, which is the technique most self builders seem to ignore. Google searches lead to images suspiciously lightly loaded with plumbing and electrics. The image posted to this thread is the only one showing a convincing fully loaded Posijoist floor void. I am beginning to think that Posijoists are likely to slow down a professional house build because follow-on trades will need to invent custom solutions for supporting pipes and cables.

Is the UK company behind Posijoist guilty of not providing thought leadership on techniques for fixing pipe and cable runs through their open metal web joists? Looking at images online installers are left to wing it, one image shows a copper pipe resting on the lower beam wood section, surly a recipe for creaking pipes as the wood dries. And what about mains cabling, can this ever touch the metal webs?

Just to clarify, I am purchasing the plot with DPP and I actually like the approved plan except for one detail I want to tweak. If I progress without further input from the architect then the finished house will hopefully be an accurate clone of the DPP design. I am now wondering if I have steered the discussion down the wrong path by referring to "copyright", in the software world there is copyright but licences control usage rights. Does an architect's design published on a LA planning web site have an implied licence for use at the designated plot?

Since stating this thread more weird legal scenarios are popping into my head. A supplier of a major component of the house used diagrams on the local authority planning web site to produce an engineering diagram and then a quote. Could this be construed as unlicensed use of the architect's original DPP work? If the brick & block laying team build the shell without a detailed building diagram and instead we eyeball an image of the elevation diagram on an iPad screen on site, would that transgress the architect's intellectual property rights? And in an extreme case, if the architect is given no further work beyond the DPP design work for the plot seller and then visits the finished house, could he declare that the physical house is an unlicensed manifestation of his paper design? I must be over interpreting this scenario otherwise this issue of architectural IP would be as topical as ranson strips.

You are a braver man than me. I am dealing with two conservation officers, one is employed by the local authority and the other one cooks my dinner.

Another question springs to mind, when the original owner of the land paid the architect did he become the owner of the DPP design he paid for? What is typical business practice? My design change is minor, less than a 2% change to the overall design vision and it would be much simpler to illustrate this overlaid against the original. My question is bigger in scope than just the planning revision, a brickie team has asked for a full sized printed copy of the elevation plan.

Said architect did the grunt work for the plot seller and presumably got paid handsomely for his role in turning a green field into a highly valuable asset. I hope that an experienced solicitor would rise this matter. None of the self build advice I have read covers this point presumably because most plots are sold with OPP and so plot purchasers expect to pay for cleansheet pro design.

I thought it might be the case, I might introduce this as a negotiation point during conveyancing. Something like, "The purchaser is granted rights to create duplicate copies and publish minor amendments to the plans in order to build the dwelling and when interacting with suppliers, contractors and local officials.". Without such a clause an architect would in effect maintain an exclusive right to supply all architectural services post plot purchase because it would not be cost effective to start with a blank sheet and recreate copies of the original DPP.

When an architect's diagram is submitted as part of a planning application that is subsequently approved and published in the public domain, does the submitter of the planning application retain copyright over the plan? I ask because I want to submit a small revision to an approved plan of the plot I am purchasing and the simplest route would be to download some of the diagrams listed with the approved plan, digitally tipex out the feature I wish to change and then draw in my alternative. Would this land me in hot water? I am not sure what is reasonable, the architect has been paid for his work in obtaining DPP and the plot seller will get his pot of gold.

This is a strong argument. Reading between the lines I think you are saying that with 7 billion humans walking around the only sustainable way to accommodate them all with a decent standard of living and without pressing an environmental self destruct button, is more house design science and not wood coppicing. Yup I accept that but will my local conversation officer who has mandated a particular shade of natural grey roof slate, cute sash windows and a smorgasbord of hand cut brick finishes.

Fair point, all part of the equation. The most persuasive posts or me so far in this thread have been Lizzie's highlighting the need for neighbourly consideration and the other suggestion that all wood burning stove users create direct or indirect market demand that ultimately leads to felling in ancient forests in Latvia. Rounding off, I still don't accept the respiratory health association. The Clean Air Act following the great London smog did indeed clean up the air for a few decades then something happened that triggered an epidemic of asthma in this country. At a simplistic level one could conclude that clean air causes asthma and wood burning stoves are a preventative measure. I don't actually believe that but my post does at least highlight the wonky science presented here. An effective public policy jihad against wood burning stoves will simply postpone the day we truly comprehend the triggers for modern day lung disease. As to the WHO report linked to earlier, this is not applicable to this country. Since WWII the population has risen from 2.5 billion to 7 billion and most of this population growth has ended up living in poor housing and crowded urban areas. If 3 billion new human beings light a wood fire each morning in shanty town conditions then there will be health consequences but we are talking about the UK.

It is odd that the viability of wood burning stoves is defined as the utility of the fuel when used as the exclusive source of fuel to heat an old house that would not meet minimum new build thermal regulations. Even more perplexing is that such anti wood burning opinions are held by those who heat their homes using a portfolio of energy sources, many of which are funded via Government subsidy due to their fundamental lack of economic viability. I currently live in a rented property with a 2 acre ornamental garden slowly turning into the land that time forgot. The energy-fixing carbon-fixing capacity of 2 acres of growing green stuff is phenomenal, I know this because each summer I personally cart 1 to 2 tons of clippings to the giant compost heap. This experience has led me to a conclusion that I want to explore coppicing in conjunction with my new build. Think of the benefits, no Government subsidy so it must be more viable than many alternatives and the supply chain is highly efficient and low energy i.e. just my leg power.

I think you represent the majority view and I am the rural wood burning Redneck or should that be sooty neck. If you were my neighbour I would be happy to amend my lifestyle and yet I would still maintain the rise in lung disease in the UK cannot be attributed to wood burning stoves. Blaming wood burning stoves for rising respiratory disease might satisfy a populist desire to blame others, and rich gits in particular, but it will only delay discovery of the true underlying causes.

Genetic therapy will revolutionize medicine over the next 50 years, do you know that food intolerance can be predicted through analyzing both a person's DNA and the DNA make up of that person's own gut bacteria. The thing is respiratory disease in the general population is gyrating by a crazy amount and the experts really don't have a clue of the cause, if they did the NHS would not be dishing out inhalers like smarties. I reckon 100 years from now doctors will be as contemptuous of current inhaler prescription practice as modern-day doctors are about Victorian surgeons who refused to wash their hands until an operation was over. I have lost faith in science. Academia is corrupted by corporate sponsorship and political agenda, just look at the bad science in the 1980's that portrayed butter as evil and vegetable oils as the health saviour. The current anti wood burning agenda feels like corrupt science driven by politics. We live in a liberal society that needs to blame an external party for all personal misfortune and the solution is yet more big Government with new fangled agencies. About 15 years ago there was an excellent TV documentary which sponsored the top NHS asthma doc in London and allowed her to pursue her own theory that poor modern domestic standards went a long way to explaining the asthma epidemic that was getting into gear back then. The lady doc took charge of 3 families with very ill children and she mandated her own no nonsense domestic routines. Thorough domestic deep clean. Carpets were ripped out of bathrooms. Pets banned from upstairs. Regular hot temp washing of bed linen and towels. Old bedding removed. And fresh air. The health of the poorly children improved immediately despite the protestations of the middle class ex. hippy mother who considered: her dust encrusted crystals so vital and the operation of a vacumn cleaner to be a form of subjugation to patriarchal domination. No TV producer would dare create a program like that today, it would not be compatible with the current social landscape that always concludes throwing more money at the NHS is the answer.

I would like to create a small area of usable attic storage space in the central 30% of my roof space. Would a roof truss manufacturer be able to design a roof where the central trusses were "attic trusses" and the remainder of the roof was comprised of Fink trusses? My L-shaped house has a main roof space 10m by 6.5m in plan, the pitch is 30% and both ends are hipped. A boarded loft storage area 3m x 3m would be fine.

I have been mulling over this thread trying to reconcile my instinctive response that the oldest form of heating known to Mankind cannot be the source of modern respiratory illness v. first hand health reports here that condemn wood burning stoves. I doubt the science quoted in this thread, wood burning stoves must be trivial compared to diesel car particulate pollution, all the modern infill housing estates that cluster around motorway junctions, the mountain of daft TV advertised cleaning products and the national addiction to NHS prescribed inhalers. However if individual neighbours perceive that a whiff of wood burner smoke triggers their ailment this is a fact that needs to be respected. At present in my linear Fens village I only have three neighbours within 1/2 a mile. The topology of my new self build plot is difference and so I will amend my wood burner usage and rely on LPG in still climatic conditions. It would be better to take the weather guesswork out of the equation and so I wonder if @ActivePassive could describe his external PM monitoring set up?

Sorry but my current rented house out sieves yours in the thermal sieviness league. Note to self: never buy a house built by a farmer. I just ordered a 500 litre top up for the oil tank and hope to be camping out in my part built selfbuild before the tank runs dry.

How are all you passive house self builders finding the current weather? Do you feel vindicated and is the 5kw boiler keeping you toastie?

I followed this up, prices are not frightening though I might struggle to meet the 3m safe distance tank rule. Is 34p per litre competitive?