epsilonGreedy

Given the outdoor lifestyle I think the kitchen is currently in the best place for ease of access from the terrasse and with lots of ventilation along the tarrasse wall to allow heat to escape. I assume that is a pair of inward opening doors next to la cuisine? It is interesting how the continentals highlight the area of every space. I find it frustrating that visitors to this forum upload house plans, that probably cost £10+k plus in architect fees, without any mention of total internal floor area on the plan.

An overlooked point on this forum because leading contributors have pursued passive house performance with much enthusiasm. The House Builder's Bible has a useful table showing the energy costs for the book's model house if built to past, current and passive house standards. The model house is 1722 sq ft. Space and water heating annual costs using mains gas are: £3,680 1975 £800 2013 standard £224 Passiv House These costs exclude standing charges. The passiv house is assumed to have PV and if the 2013 house had the same the water heating bill would be halved which would reduce the annual bill by 1/6th. The same chapter then discusses other annual running costs, for example mains water and sewage for 3 people is about 2.5x more than the passive house heating costs. Then consider some domestic appliances: washing machine, tumble drier, kettle, dishwasher, fridge freezer and TV, the annual electric bill for these is 50% more than the passive house heating bill according to the book. The numbers demonstrate there is no passive house magic point where holistic household annual running costs plummet. There are however some unhappy regions on the passive house pursuit curve to be avoided. Somewhere between a tested air change rate of 1 and 5 there is a zone where MVHR is not a happy buddy with a fairly air leaky house. Then there is the subtlety of decrement delay, getting this right means you can choose when in a 24 hour period to top up your heat reserves depending on the availability of free or cheap energy. If however all this new passive house thinking is configured poorly due to bad design or ignorant trades onsite then you can end up in the passiv house pit of despair that requires keeping the house warm with electric radiators consuming evening rate KwH or sweating in bed at night due to runaway solar gain.

In the world of sailing it is claimed that when a yacht has an earthed mast (big wire electrically connected to a metal keel) then a spiked lighting rod at the top of the mast will discharge a stream of ions in conditions that could lead to a strike. The net result is that a yacht moves within a bubble of reduced electrical potential which persuades a lighting strike to find a path to earth elsewhere.

I want a wifi enabled version so that I can programatically turn off the MVHR when the wind wafts over from the poultry farm.

Try converting to inches and it will make more sense. Standard British door sizes were 27", 30" and 33" plus it seem you have an odd 34" in the mix. The basic rule is 33" downstairs and 30" upstairs though I guess once a house is larger than 2000 sq ft the designer might entertain the thought of 33" all round as an architectural statement.

Pretentious? It can be on a street where house numbers predominate, the exception is where there is an interesting story behind the name.

Was Hannah wicked last weekend?

Take inspiration from the Georgians. Following the 1774 London Building Act window frames had to be fully set back inside the wall so that in the event of a fire a sash window would not fall out into the street below. As a consequence window frames were near flush with the internal wall finish... the things you learn doing a new build in a conservation area. Sash window history here. http://www.theheritagedirectory.co.uk/viewarticle.asp?artid=49

My static caravan earthing does not follow best practice as posted by @ProDave I do not know if the safety performance of an RCD is dependent on a reliable earth so how can I test my set up without putting myself in danger?

My electrician emphasized this point when agreeing to the same job on my site. He also struggled to fit all the bits in a slimline 100mm cavity meter box because I had elected to accept a smartmeter from British Gas.

Rather than approaching the DNO corporate body and looking for an official answer can you not contact a named job surveyor for an opinion? During my mains power install I always talked with the guy I met onsite during the initial job assessment survey, he was pragmatic.

The ideal (cheapest) sequence of events is to get the foundations dug and the concrete poured, then schedule the DNO power grid hook-up bringing the meterbox right up to the wall near its final cavity wall mounting position. With careful positioning of the meterbox on stilts there will be enough spare cable to lift the meter directly into the wall without further £ bills. Buildhubbers with larger plots seem to favour a dedicated services meter housing near the plot boundary and then total control over subsequent services re routing within the plot as the build progresses.

£50 ! That must be a posh meter box made from certified locally sourced recycled plastic? These cavity wall boxes are pretty flimsy when on stilts but that is what the DNO provided as part of the £1200 connection.

For £1200 my power company did the following: Created a new supply spur on the boundary of my self build neighbour's plot so no road closure. * Pulled a cable through 45m of trenched ducting organized my me, this crossed the neighbours plot and mine. Installed slim (** cavity wall sized) meter box on stilts next to the utility room foundation with enough spare cable to allow the meter box to be eventually lifted as-is into the cavity wall. * Some of my supply cable runs over ground on the neighbour's plot and will be sunk free or charge by DNO once he has finalized the position of his foundation plan. ** They arrived with a standard fat meterbox for the job but were generous enough to pop back to the depot when I mentioned my plan to lift the meter directly into the cavity wall later. The trenched ducting organized by me was part of a larger job costing £600 which included concrete foundation pour supervision and labour over 2 days, some digger work for a builders water supply and 10m of foul drain across my garden, so call it £150 for the mains trench part of the job. British Gas supplied and fitted the meter free of charge. For £140 an electrician fitted a temporary 2 x RCD fuse box inside the meter box then supplied and connected 40? amp armoured cable to the static caravan. He was working at my other self build neighbour's house so I laid the 25m of armoured cable between meter box through foundation trenches to the static before he started the live connection work each end of the cable. So all told a live temporary socket next to the meterbox at the house wall would have been about £1200 (DNO) + £150(Trench & Ducting) + £80 (Fit RCDs and earthing pin).

Good point, Swmbo will park in the garage 4 day a week for the next 10 years.

Ok sounds like a plan for the approach ramp. Would a 4" incline up a 1 meter wide approach ramp be typical for a garage situated higher than its main drive? It would be useful if the approach ramp could be higher/wider. The reason for this is that after putting down 150mm of 2" to 4" clean hardcore last September I am satisfied the drive base is stable and above any winter deluge ponding, so if I can just finish off with a 40mm deep topping of Cotswold Chippings (10/20mm) I can save £1000 on a further 50 tons of 2" clean and my digger man to spread it with his 13 ton excavator. My feet would also appreciate this plan sooner rather than later because it is a pain in the sole to walk on lumpy hardcore all day. The trouble is that plan is it leaves my main drive 200mm below the garage FFL.

My full size mobile home weighs about 8 tons.

Is a slight gradient recommend for the main internal area of a garage floor? My garage is detached and the floor will be higher than the general drive height outside. In this case I am looking to understand the advantages of a slight gradient. Is it: Allow heavy volatile hydrocarbon gases from a car to seep out through the door aperture. Encourage any wind driven rain to run outside past the door.

That is easy to fix, I just phoned up my Council and said "I would like to pay some council tax on my static caravan".

Dig a hole outside to the same depth as the soil under your suspended floor. Wait for 48 hours of dry weather, drain both the experimental hole and the underfloor void then compare the height of water at both locations after 10 hours. If the same then that is your ground water table and consider your house did not sink for 80 years in these conditions.

Stop Press: Kinky Hannah eyes up @recoveringacademicand heads south. More weather turbulence ahead this Saturday. There is an active front stretching right across the Atlantic and meteorologists are concerned that a mid Atlantic kink on this front will wind up into the next storm scheduled to be named Hannah. Unlike the most recent storms Hannah is not passing Scotland, instead the eye of this storm is heading for a battered slate roof near the Lake District.

I was commenting from the perspective of a selfbuilder subject to a planning condition that mandates a slate roof. From that starting point Nulok offers a substantial reduction in the amount of slate to be ordered. No doubt Nulok, empowered with their USP, decided to price the system just a smidgen lower than the saving in slate costs. Edit: Using the tiles per m2 quoted at this site a conventional slate roof requires 2.6 m2 of slate per m2 of roof. Looking at @recoveringacademic's latest photo I guess he is using 1.3 m2 per m2. https://buyroofslate.co.uk/roof-slate-calculator/

I read somewhere that the inter-tile drain channel incorporated into the short fixing struts allows one whole layer of slate overlap to be designed out.

These detailed photos illustrate how material efficient Nulok is. I knew that in theory but am I correct in thinking that 100 m2 of Nulok roof requires just 140 m2 of slate?

What type of builder? Selfbuilder. Local developer who completes up to 5 house a year. Bovis Homes.