AliG

600x600mm. I didn't write it very clearly. I meant 2 from a tile, you'd be wasting two thirds of the tile, although I haven't checked how much the special skirting tiles are yet.

Thanks, I suspected they were harder to fit. I was looking at Ceam ones.

Has anyone ever fitted concealed door hinges? It seems to me that door hinges also end up looking quite rough over time, they get paint on them, the metal discolours etc. So I am looking at concealed ones, they appear much more expensive to buy, but is there anything else I should be aware of, like are they harder to fit or more likely to break. One thing I am not sure about is that you can't take a closed door off the hinges. As a kid the WC handle broke and I only got out by explaining to my maybe 10 year old brother how to remove the hinge pins from the other side.

I spoke to the builder and he said it would be expensive as he recommended just cutting one piece from each edge of a tile. But I checked and the floor tiles we have have matching skirting tiles available.

It's amazing how easy it is to find stats nowadays. The stats I gave were for accidents. In 2001 fires were roughly 50/50 accidental/deliberate. By 2013 it was 25/75 accidental to deliberate. But for residential fires it was only 10% deliberate. I agree with Alphonsox, I am much more worried about timber getting wet than catching fire and I only gave the stats for fatalities because property damage is covered by insurance and can always be fixed.

I have UFH in screed and in spreader plates. The spreader plates are considerably inferior in terms of providing a nice stable temperature. In fairness my current house needs more heat input and I don't believe that the spreader plates cannot supply as much heat per square metre as a screed floor. I almost used posi joists. If I had, I would have put UFH in screed on it as it will also give a more solid floor and better sound deadening. From the people with MBC houses on the site it seems they are extremely well insulated. If your aim is to have warm floors you may be disappointed as the heating may come on so rarely and use such a low flow temperature that you might not actually have a warm floor. I am in the same position in my new place. I wonder if it is a waste but am putting it in just in case, although we then have a top floor games room and I am not putting UFH in there. However, depending on the spec I believe the insulation in an MBC house will make it pretty much redundant. Maybe the MBC owners can comment.

Most recent fire statistics for England, UK statistics are a year older. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/532364/fire-statistics-england-1415-hosb0816.pdf There were 263 fire deaths compared to 1732 road deaths on England for the last year of statistics and we spend a lot more time at home than in our cars. 36% of fatalities were caused by cigarettes, cigars or pipes. Another 7% were caused by cigarette lighters or matches. The next highest causes of deaths were space heating appliances and candles, followed then by other electrical appliances. Considering the number of candles in use relative to electrical appliances this is extraordinary. I regularly hear warnings not to leave phones charging, but not about not using candles! 50% of fires were caused by cooking appliances, although only 6% of deaths. So no deep fat fryer, no smoking, no candles and no space heaters (I'd guess stand alone electric or gas fires) Thus 65% of all household fire related fatalities are very easily avoided. If you are building a new house that meets building regs it and you're not a fan of eating fish and chips by candle light whilst smoking your pipe and toasting your feet on a single bar electric fire I wouldn't worry about it. Smoke detectors should give ample warning of a fire in a house constructed to regs. Plasterboard doesn't burn that easily so it doesn't really matter what is behind it. It is interesting to note that 12% of houses don't have smoke alarms but 35% of fatalities occurred in houses without alarms. Maybe we should all make sure our alarms are working.

Oh that garage floor. Giving us all ideas. I have been pondering this idea of tiled skirting. The more I am reading here, the more I am thinking that over time the skirting looks tatty as it gets chipped at corners etc and it's annoying to repaint. Tiles might be harder/more expensive day one but more durable. The guys who did my bathroom used a very long scribe cutter like Nick suggests. We have porcelain stone look tiles and I struggled to tell the cut edges from the factory edges. Not sure it would be the same on polished tiles. I wouldn't want to see an edge trim whether it be metal or plastic on a tiled skirting, I think that would ruin the effect.

I literally just got the quote for my stairs and the balustrade is attached the same way as yours and the guy proposed putting wood to match the floor on top. I am looking at the construction drawings now and they don't have a batten at the top. The batten sits below the glass and leaves the plasterboard sitting in front of the glass not attached to anything.That way there would probably be a little gap that would allow for the tiny amount of movement in the glass. That's what I was suggesting before. Take off the plasterboard you have up and put on battens so that the plasterboard goes right up across the glass fixings. Of course you will need either longer plasterboard or you put a join in somewhere lower. The top of the board would be a few hundred mm above the top batten, but I think it would be stiff enough to hold its shape. You would probably want to put a square edge or wood on top to get a nice finish. You would maybe need to cut small recesses in it for the bolt heads, otherwise you will definitely need to attach something to the top to cover the gap, but I think that could be achieved without actually attaching the top edge to the glass.

Will the landing floor be wood? Then i would put the same wood on the top edge of the plasterboard on the other side of the glass so that it looks like it disappears into the floor. Otherwise either a thin mastic bead, or maybe you can put an edge profile on the plasterboard and leave it a couple of mm shy of the glass, like you were doing a shadow gap. Small enough not to see into it but just enough for flexing. Looking again at the pics. Have you considered using battening out the wall so that it goes straight up across the glass. I would think that will look neater and less like something has been boxed in.

Yes. There are strip foundations below the slab, matching up with the walls above, which then goes right across them and the internal leaf and internal walls will be built off this slab. There will then be insulation and screed on top of the slab.The slab is 200mm thick. The SE requested very heavy duty foundations, part of this is maybe due to the weight of the upper floors which are constructed from 200mm thick hollowcore concrete planks. I did discuss using an insulated raft instead as this kind of slab does have cold bridges. But the general view I got from everyone involved was that the cold bridges were too small to care and that ground conditions made an insulated raft difficult and more expensive.

I found an MK spec sheet. They give standby consumption of 0.15W for a USB socket, but they don't give standby consumption for a shaver socket which is an isolation transformer. Shaver sockets are rated for 20VA, so 20W although they also seem to be rated as 200mA, 230V which would be 46W as their trip level I cannot find anything other than a guess at their power consumption. It doesn't seem that they are covered by the regulations that have reduced mobile phone charger consumption to negligible levels. I cannot find any mention of a switch in the spec for these, it may be there, but I cannot find it mentioned. Some specs say that they have an interlock so you cannot plug something into the 110V and 230V at the same time. I always thought this was the click they made. Although I found some people claiming to have sockets they can put two devices in at once. Thinking about it, if there was a switch before the isolating transformer wouldn't this increase the risk of a shock at the full supply power and seem to be unlikely from a safety point of view. They might use 0.5-1W which would be 4-8kWh a year. Maybe 50p-£1. Oral B suggested that a toothbrush on charge all year used 2.8 kWh, so that is about 35p a year in electricity. A Sonicare Elite uses 3W, although it isn't clear if it reduces consumption when fully charged. Anyway 3W continuously for a year is 26 kWh, so £3. This improbably a worst case scenario.

No floor void, concrete slab, then insulation, then screed. Loft isn't ventilated, ventilation is above the sarking board. However, it will be necessary to make sure it is airtight where the eaves and walls meet. That detailing has not been specified. The Porotherm blocks have a parge coat so should be pretty airtight and thus little air blowing behind the plasterboard. Theoretically it can cover the gap around windows etc, but I will be checking. Sockets, pipework etc can be surface mounted on the Porotherm as between the dot and dab and insulated plasterboard we have 50mm, so should not breach the airtight layer. Although actually I have tried as much as possible to have no services in the outside walls. Outside walls are a reasonably small percentage of the wall area and I only need to put sockets on them in a few places. I originally thought this would et me plaster the outside walls but decided the extra layer of insulation was better. I think this was discussed on Ebuild, I have literally never seen a new build in Scotland that wasn't just dry lined.

It probably would be cheaper to plaster the walls rather than dry line, but the I like the extra insulation from the insulated plasterboard as it helps if there are any issues with the insulation in the cavity. The skim coat on the plasterboard is definitely an extra expense, but it gives a much nicer finish. I recently had a ceiling fixed and skimmed versus all the other walls in my current house which are taped. It looks immaculate whereas I can often make out the joins especially in taped ceilings.

I just posted about using Insta Stik to attach insulated plasterboard to block walls. It would work for this. Pinkgrip Dryfix also which seems a bit cheaper. I assume there is no movement in the EPS otherwise I would be worried that the EPS itself would tear. http://building.dow.com/eu/gbr/en/products/instastikmp/compatibility.htm http://www.everbuild.co.uk/dryfix

Currently my house is specified using dot and dab to attach insulated plasterboard to the inside of the Porotherm inner leaf. The inner leaf will be plastered first with a parge coat so air behind the plasterboard shouldn't be much of an issue. I would prefer mechanical attachment with the plasterboard hard against the blocks, but the contractor reckons Porotherm is too awkward for the number of fixings required. You cannot use standard fixings as the blocks are hollow. Yesterday I came across Insta Stik which is adhesive for plasterboard instead of dot and dab. This would reduce the space behind the boards and maybe allow me to increase the thickness. It is also put on in lines instead of dabs so reduces the possibility of air moving about behind the boards. I then read up on the stuff and there are some people who think it is great and some people who swear by dot and dab as it is easier to move the boards around and get the walls flat. The plasterboard will be skimmed so it doesn't have to be perfectly flat. Has anyone used this stuff and got any thoughts?

Standing charges are high as gas use in current house is £1500 a year. Probably around 50-60000 kWh. I haven't moved into my new super insulated house yet. Plus as mentioned elsewhere before my wife has 2 baths a day! We are 400sqm so running about 150 kWh a square metre which I guess would be consistent with the EPC, although the house has never been assessed. If it was just me the costs would be lower but a happy marriage is cheaper than lower bills! The break even for your gas contract versus mine will be around 17500 kWh a year, so looks like you are on the right contract for you. My electricity usage is similar to yours. I have a 4kw PV array so my costs are dominated by gas. I just put my current house which is a 15 yr old timber frame house into the heat loss calculator. It looks like it would have something like 4-5x the heating costs per square metre of the new place. These are guesses on the current place vs the new place. They give a figure consistent with my current energy usage. - Walls 0.3 vs 0.15 Roof 0.16 vs 0.12 Windows 1.6 vs 0.75 Air changes/hour - 1? vs MVHR - Not sure on this one. But the figuring for air heat loss is terrifying, it comes out at 2/3 of the cost of heating the current house. The current house has a suspended timber ground floor with rock wool strung between the joists. Wind blows up inside all the walls, through sockets etc. I was quite surprised that the house isn't on a concrete slab, I just assumed it would be before it was built. It really hammers home that due to the size of my new place airtightness is the thing to work on. Your tariff details About your gas tariff Supplier E.ON (E.ON Energy Solutions Ltd) Tariff name E.ON Saver Plus Fixed 1 Year v2 Tariff type Fixed price Payment method Fixed monthly direct debit Unit rate 1.689p per kWh Standing charge 63.441p per day Tariff ends on 12 months from the date you switch Price guaranteed until 12 months from the date you switch Exit fees(if you cancel this tariff before the end date) £30 Discounts and additional charges Paperless billing discount: £5.00 a year Dual fuel discount: £10.00 a year Additional products or services included Not applicable About your electricity tariff Supplier E.ON (E.ON Energy Solutions Ltd) Tariff name E.ON Saver Plus Fixed 1 Year v2 Tariff type Fixed price Payment method Fixed monthly direct debit Unit rate 8.904p per kWh Standing charge 26.754p per day Tariff ends on 12 months from the date you switch Price guaranteed until 12 months from the date you switch Exit fees(if you cancel this tariff before the end date) £30 Discounts and additional charges Paperless billing discount: £5.00 a year Dual fuel discount: £10.00 a year

I switched gas supplies last month. The price had fallen to 1.69p per kWh + 5% VAT. I was paying around 2.6p last year and use over 3p as a long term number when working out heating costs. If you don't switch you get put on a standard tariff which is close to 2x this amount. It becomes very hard to justify aggressive spending on insulation in purely financial terms.

I'll ask my contractor on Monday. Thanks for the help guys

Thanks Declan. I am using PIR. The main PIR suppliers on the mainland are probably Kingspan and Celotex. Their products are straight edged, not T&G. Having looked for it, the Xtratherm may be hard to come by, no where near as many people sell it, I wonder if they have a higher market share in NI. I am having the same issue with the roof insulation where I may have to get it shipped over from NI.

I am having a look now, it may actually be too late as I have a funny feeling the main contractor ordered up the insulation last week, he certainIy ordered the blocks. I don't think overlapping would be practical as the sheets are made to match the blockwork lines and be held in place by the wall ties. Maybe taping the joints is the thing with the best benefit to cost. I notice that Kingspan recommend taping on some of their very high performance insulation, but not the PIR. I am also looking at the heat loss calculator. It suggests that the walls only account for only around 13% of the heatloss as designed. Even if the U-Value ended up being 0.2 rather than the 0.15 calculated it only adds around 4% to heating costs.

I am using the CW4100 boards. The blocks are 100x300x224 plus 1mm mortar. So on a straight wall the 1200x450 CW4100 should fit exactly with no cutting. Tongue and groove insulation sounds interesting, I hadn't seen any. Now I am looking, it appears that Xtratherm make it, will have a look. Originally we had just plasterboard on the inside, but changed to insulated plasterboard. Although the insulation is only 25mm, at least it means there will be some insulation overlap.

The upper floors are suspended concrete so no joists. I assume they are mortared onto the blockwork and the large coat also goes across the joint, but I will be checking! I was up asking the supervisor about the insulation this morning. He said that it is held pretty tight by the ties. I think I will see how it starts to go up and then see if they need to do any more than their standard job. At least there is no hiding it if they build the inner leaf first.

The ground floor covers 504 square metres! We were insistent on having all the most frequently used rooms downstairs, plus a bedroom just in case for when we get older. The last 70 square metres for the garage isn't down in that pic, it goes at the top left. The Porotherm guys have been up to demonstrate and the architect said it flew up and it was so easy to get it perfectly straight. I am excited to be seeing some walls in a couple of weeks.

White goods manufacturers are going mad for internet connected devices. I really can't see the point. Siemens(Bosch really)make ovens, a dishwasher and washing machines that connect to the internet. No doubt fridges will be along soon. I really a struggle to see any useful applications for this meanwhile they add to the cost and complication of the devices. Yes you can heat up the oven on your way home, but it only takes 5 minutes to heat up anyway. As for the dishwasher and washing machine I guess they can send you a message that they are done, but they tell you how long they will run for and how often do you need to know exactly when they are finished. You could turn them on remotely, but that's a pointless feature. Why would I fill up the dishwasher and put in the detergent, but not turn it on while I was there. Some things benefit from remote connections. The house takes a lot longer to heat up than the oven so remote heating controls make sense, or remote security controls so you can check the house while you are away. But sometimes it just seems like pointless technology for the sake of it. Cars suffer from the same thing too now, like Tesla's electric front doors on the Model X, a feature that creates more problems than it solves.