epsilonGreedy

My house is not built yet, even so based on previous experience I have wrestled with each of these design points in the new build (1500 sq ft). (1) Our previous large farm house rental home had a generous cooker range built into a chimney alcove with about 300mm worktop each side of hob up to the the old chimney alcove walls. I cannot achieve the same in the new kitchen design and this feels like a loss. We have managed to incorporate an extra 100mm of worktop depth as a mini peninsular where the hob will be situated which is a feature I have lifted from my sister's high-end kitchen. (2) An extra 1sqm would be useful in the ensuite bathroom and can in fact be achieved by halving the size of the linen cupboard though that change would rule out a HW tank and so mandate a combi boiler. Still debating that one. (3) We struggled with the stairs design given a 5.45m depth in the main block of the house. I do not like bedroom doors that lead onto the landing precipitously close to the top step of the stairs and ended up with a 90 degree square turn at the lower end of the stairs and two further steps into the open plan living room, think we ended up with 1.3m of landing width either end of the stairs as a result. I find shallow gradient stairs a problem, I am more likely to stumble on them because my feet are programmed to a regular step size.

OP: How many blocks, how heavy and where? Laying 150 19kg blocks down in the nosebleed course will be a custom price and more expensive than whole house rates above damp.

Is it possible those corner mouldings are just that i.e. bits of plastic intended to shape the grp lamination at the corner of the roof? If so this is not a failure of bonding but a failure by the installer to wrap a continuous grp layup around the corners. OP: What are the corner pieces made of?

Is there any industry tolerance standard for how large a chunk can be missing in a concrete beam end before it needs to be replaced. This was transport damage. Most of my my beams are slightly oversized because they are dispatched from stock that is precut in 50mm increments, hence I can chop say 20mm off the end and still maintain a full beam end seat of 95mm.

Yes in most cases though one first floor stack might be problematic because of a last minute tactical drainage change of plan. We had to flip the ensuite stack to the other wall in order to prevent one stack dropping directly into a horizontal pipe. It now flows via a bend into a y-piece then the main branch as per the @PeterW advice in another recent thread.

It allows the concrete beams to butt end-to-end while still giving each beam end a 100mm seat. The architectural technician did not specify the sleeper wall and instead specified a beam span of 5.5m.

Yes. Not for an air brick, just open square holes about 200mm wide x 150mm high formed within internal sleeper/supporting walls. I have seen photos posted here of completed footings that include the same large open holes to promote air movement between compartments of a suspended floor void. That is what I intended to do but I have come around the larger open square holes.

No it was a local builder, just part of his standard construction method as applied to my site. Yes detached with external air brick ventilation on three sides. The way I look at it the cumulative area of the ventilation slots below the infill blocks will be x3 the airbrick area on the opposing external walls.

I have 5.5m by 6.0m sitting room with an extra sleeper wall, 215mm wide, mid way across the room to allow half length beams and also prevent excessive bounce in the middle. The block & beam floor will be laid across the sleeper wall with the half length beams butting end to end at the sleeper wall. I am being advised that the sleeper wall needs a square size ventilation hole cut out with a lintel over. I feel the new ventilation hole is not required because the gap between every beam creates 400mm x 50mm ventilation slot hence this will create more than enough through void ventilation between the sections bisected by the sleeper wall.

The drainage pipe work is in position and the major components are concreted in. I hope with a 600mm rise the the stack to FFL the stack pipe can be tweaked away from the wall by an extra 10mm.

Ok so a stabilizing bracket is recommended even for the 600mm unsupported drop in the void below the floor block?

You just anticipated a question I was due to post in 2034 when we plan to retired the garage utility room and move some white goods into into the rear entrance hall. Would this boss allow a washing machine drain to be clamped onto a soil stack just below or above FFL? The washing machine will be sited just 2ft away on the other side of a medium block partition wall.

I have found some threads that discuss how to overcome the problem of a soil pipe that emerges from a ground floor slab too far from the wall. I am looking at the opposite problem of being too close to the wall. My block and beam floor is going in over the next two days and the vertical stack of the ground floor toilet looks a bit tight to the external house wall. I understand that at FFL some sort of boss will be fitted, do these have much of a flange? At this stage there is some flexibility because the vertical drop from FFL to the top of the horizontal drainage pipe is 700mm.

A typo? Did you mean "incorrectly"?

NHBC have a published standard for this situation and require a rodding point at the end of each branch.

There is obviously a cost, £3000 to £5000 I am told, it is just that the industry reclaims the cost through a substantial fuel markup over multiple years. Clearly these tanks are expensive because it took Government legislation to specify the supplier handover cost of a tank's residual value while promoting customer supplier freedom.

Their web site is a pleasure to use, just a shame their much trumpeted fast dispatch times are void as soon as a Plasson component is added to the basket. I only ended with PhilMac parts as a substitude suggested by Pipestock due to back order delays on Plasson, it was in this telephone conversation I was told they do not hold stock for Plasson.

Except they do hold not stock Plasson parts and so any order with Plasson parts immediately goes onto back order with a delayed delivery. Very odd that as a complete beginner the Plasson fittings jointed together with low stress and required just two arms. My fist encounter with PhilMac was aborted after 20 minutes when I concluded I was doing something wrong. When my pro developer/builder neighbour returned from work I trotted over for help. He immediately recoiled in horror at the sight of PhilMac and said "I don't touch those", he then spent 20 minutes wrestling with the PhilMac coupling to achieve some sort of dependable joint. Further research of the PhilMac saga led to the conclusion their loose wobbly joints (at the push together stage, pre torquing) are due to their history and their sole USP, they arrived on the market in ancient plumbing times when it was often necessary to join 25mm pipe with an older standard size. I guess a snug initial push together fit like Plasson is not possible when trying to accommodate different pipe sizes.

I thought 3 inlets were the norm. What would motivate such a change? The plastic bits of an IC cost < £100. A dynrod callout is £60 minimum. Fewer ICs but longer trenches could end up costing more to implement. Your suggested changes to my plan were an example of excellent lateral thinking and a more efficient plan overall but in the example in this thread is it not close to ideal?

Yes but just for two years max. The contract will typically have a fixed per litre price for a portion of the two years and some other formula that specifies a flexible price for the remainder of the contract. I have be advised the fixed price is often a teaser price and I should calculate the two year cost by assuming worst case during the formulaic price period. After the two year period the customer is free to choose another supplier and government regs will determine how much the new supplier pays for the residual value of the tank owned by the current supplier. An ex industry insider told me that the true bulk retail cost of LPG is half the typical tied contract cost and the other half incrementally pays for the tank. Since the true cost of a tank is around a cheap ASHP pro install we are not comparing like for like figures in this thread.

Three ICs for 4 bathrooms, kitchen, util and WC looks very efficient to me. Mine got complicated because (1) it is an l-shaped house (2) I decided to save £2000 by sharing the sewer with a neighbour when meant an inconvenient main drain approach angle, then (3) we decided the rear door into the utility area would in fact be our principal entrance hence we moved the utility function out to the garage.

@JSHarrisGiven a 160smq 2 story house built with a thermal performance mid way between Passiv and Building regs heated via electric UFH downstairs and a room target temp of 22 degrees at 8pm and 19 degrees in bedrooms at 4am, what proportions of UFH space heating KwH will be at E7 and standard rate?

I suspect there are some regional influences in this debate. Lincolnshire is well served with LPG supplier, I will be able to get quotes from 3 or 4 off the top of my head. The balance is shifting towards all electric heating for sure, I just don't believe the differences with LPG are as extreme as suggested. For some who are on a knife edge of being able to fund a self build, the option of an LPG combi coupled to UFH plus a few rads upstairs is rational and certainly better than giving money to Bovis Homes or a landlord. The suggestion of £1000 savings is just daft. If the OP builds a middle sized 160 sqm house insulted to a little better than regs then I doubt we are talking about more than a +/- £400 heating difference depending on the fuel used.

Did these experiences date back to prior regulation of the LPG bulk supply industry?

What was your heating bill prior to installing an ASHP?