AliG

I thought about this. The alternative is putting another entrance to the dressing room next to the bedroom door, but that would mean losing dome of the cupboards in the dressing room. TBH you have to walk around out bed to get to the dressing room. I did wonder it was a bit far, but in practice have never actually noticed it being an issue.

A lot depends on how you use the en suite and particularly if there will often be two people there at once. I originally designed our en suite with a walk through shower, but decided it used too much space and also I didn't like the feeling I was on display if someone came into the room. One thing I really try to avoid is the design of the first layout where the WC is directly facing the door, sometimes it cannot be helped but in this design you could look straight through from the bedroom to the WC. I based the final layout on hotel bathrooms. They often separate the shower or WC so that it is easier for two people to be in the room at once. So you might want to consider that. I really like that our WC is separated from the rest of the room. I doubt you would ever use the exit from the shower next to the WC, it is too much in the corner. I would likely move the shower into the corner to free up space. If you freed up more floor space you could have a chair in the en suite. We love having somewhere to sit and get dressed, or to chat to the person in the bath,. Alternatively you could move the WC to the alcove area and put the shower where the WC is, fully hiding the WC in the corner. As to the dressing room, it looks like the distance between the two side on the second plan is only 800mm, I would probably want a minimum of 1m. Also I got 650mm deep cabinets which are a lot easier to hang things in. We do not have a door on our en suite or dressing room. It works fine, but the light can be annoying in the bedroom and it is also noisy when someone runs a bath. In the dressing room I just put the light on a very short timer, but you cannot do that in the bathroom as the light would go off while in the bath. I would probably if I did it again have a door to the en suite, but not the dressing room. If you want to face the window, why not just put the bed back against the dressing room wall, you could even move the wall forward to have more room again in the dressing room and en suite.

Our house is actually on their website, it wasn't there the last time I looked. https://www.angusandmack.com/projects/job1910 Suffice to say it was not cheap, although not unreasonable for the quality of the work. For the bookcases, the price increased a lot adding the drawers.

Sorry, posted in the wrong thread

Without the extra insulation your U-value would be 0.16. I suspect that strictly calculated the extra insulation would not pay for itself but you would see some benefit in both sound and U-value Normally a timber frame would have a permeable membrane on the outside. I am not sure how adding insulation to this affects it. I just looked this up and in this case the membrane would have to be installed on the outside of the insulation which seems awkward. I ate that no vapour control layer or membrane is shown on the wall drawings which seems odd.

Our house is actually on their website https://www.angusandmack.com/projects/job1910 Suffice to say it was not cheap, although not unreasonable for the quality of the work. For the bookcases, the price increased a lot adding the drawers.

It looks like you have 100mm PIR between the studs already on the inside of the frame. What is the thin layer of insulation on the inside of the studs. Is that another 40/50mm of PIR. I assume it is but it is not labeled. If you already have 140/150mm of PIR you already have a good U-value and there would not be much practical difference between adding a 100mm layer of PIR or fibre insulation. It would give a U-value of 0.12 with fibre and 0.09 with PIR, this would make very little difference to heating costs. I would recommend fibre as not only is it cheaper, but it will improve the sound insulation. I would not be worried re sound transfer with that build up. Also that wall is between two buildings, not an outside wall, so the U-value will be less important again.

Thanks, I had to look back to the original emails with the maker. The door frames are soaped oak (similar to oiled) , the veneer in the middle of the doors is poppy oak and the handles are smoked oak. If I remember correctly he said he flew to Southampton to look at veneers and then they showed us dozens of thin sheets of veneer and let us pick the ones we liked.

The beauty of wood is that it is usually pretty easy to mix woods together. The general rule is to try and mix similar tones so warm tones eg walnut and oak or grey tones together. We have lots of mixed wood tones.

This is a very good piece of advice. It is amazing how, even in a large room, depending on the positions of doors and windows it may not be easy to position furniture where you want to. It is good to think about this whilst you can still change things. The basic layout seems sound, so just a few comments. 1. The lounge is very long at 7m, would you actually use all that space. If not, I would try and shorten it and add the space to the sitting room which is comparatively small. 2. The WC is extremely small relative to the house. If you take the idea above to make the sitting room larger I would then make the WC larger. 3. I would think hard about the kitchen layout. It looks like it is set so that the kitchen units will be where you walk in, then a dining and sitting area at the back. Imagine you are cooking for guests, would you want to take them in past your cooking to the table. 4. We have a larger room than you have there as a gym and it never seems big enough, but we often have three people there at once. I would look to steal space from the laundry/utility area and add to the gym. You need a surprising amount of space for some exercises, especially when on the floor. 5. The laundry/utility area is too large. I cannot think what you would possibly do with all that space. I would probably take the plant room a little bigger and rein the space making the gym larger. You won't hang out in those space so they really only need to be as large as needed for their functions. 6. Upstairs I would make the two small ensuites at least 1.2M wide. 1M is very small especially compared to the size of the house. I would also make the wardrobes in those two rooms larger, probably moving them to the righthand walls of the rooms. 7. I think the suggestion to model the house in 3d to see what it looks like is a good one. I am less of a style expert. I might consider rendering the part where the front door is and having more glass above the front door. 8. Counting the steps on your stairs, is the ground floor only 2.4M high? It really should be 2.7M in this size of house. At the moment you cannot have a longer stair which would prevent this. My wife wanted a split stair, but I persuaded her to go for one really nice stair, we have a curved stair. It looks like the stair has a combination of half landing and winders. It seems a bit fussy and I am not sure it will flow well. I think one stair along the wall where the kitchen door is then turning left would be a much nicer stair to use and then you could have a double door not the kitchen with a sightline right through from the front door.

I have often wondered about what does it mean for a fence to be "adjacent" or "next" to a highway as this seems ill defined. In your case an access road is a "highway", a highway is just any kind of road with public access. I found this which contains some case law on the subject https://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1209017/general-permitted-development-order-part---2-q---dcp-section-434 In truth it doesn't sound like planing would be too concerned about it, at worst they might ask for you to make a retrospective application if someone else complains. Are the trees inside or outside the fence? If there are trees outside the fence then they would probably mark the boundary between the road and your property and two metres would be fine. If they are inside the fence then it might have needed permission unless the verge is extremely wide. I am assuming the fence is taller than the one it replaced, if it is the same height then no change has occurred and no permission is needed. In terms of a fence between properties, they should take the natural ground level where it sits. If there is a big drop on one side, then the higher height would be used. If your neighbour's garden slopes gently away from the fence that is not relevant as it is the height of the ground the fence is on that matters, not a distance away from the fence.

To avoid the 110V problem and the need to buy bulbs I bought one of these last year and use it to light the loft. Took me ages to find a 240V version. https://www.mad4tools.com/defender-22m-led-fully-enclosed-festoon-lighting-kit-110v-or-240v?utm_source=google_shopping&c=55856&2269=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI86vmnrqK8AIVUuN3Ch3hsQcNEAQYASABEgLmIPD_BwE#2269=?

For most lights in the house that is true. We have a lot of dusk to dawn lights that are on for hours and 5-8W each. However there are 16 LEDs in my kitchen which the automation say use 185W when they are all on. I put them onto two circuits, but apparently people hate the idea of only one circuit being on. Back on the topic of MVHR. I have turned my MVHR boxes down to level 1 as I didn't think any more air flow than that was needed. Perhaps it is the size of the house, plus lack of airtightness, but I have never seen condensation in a bathroom etc. One thing I note is that MVHR is cheaper than heating up cold outside air, but it still does not heat the air to the inside temperature during winter so it cools down the house if running too hard and increases heating bills.

The automation guy wanted me to put in extra sensors that could be programmed to put the lights on at a lower brightness level at night, but as I already had sensors going in it was too late and a lot of hassle to change.

You are right, It wouldn't pay for itself, it only really works if you replace a light switch with a sensor. When my electrician priced it up it was £60 installed for either. This should be standard practice in all new builds, I am surprised it hasn't been put in the building regs.