NSS

Ouch!

Not been in our new home for a year yet, but have been projecting forward our total energy consumption with the aim of establishing a measure for comparison. Found an interesting article on the OVO Energy site (https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.ovoenergy.com/amp/guides/energy-guides/how-much-heating-energy-do-you-use.html) which is specific to heating requirement, but I wondered if anyone else has (or could) work out their total energy usage per annum as kWh/(m2a) so I can start to gauge how we compare. For the purpose of the calculation, I'm assuming we consume 50% of the solar power we generate (though it may be a little more than that) and adding that figure to the energy imported from the grid.

Seems there is a mechanism, a development completion notice, but it is seldom used and usually ineffective. Funnily enough, I'd heard that our local authority have issued such a notice recently against a development (a block of apartments) which has stalled without even having got out of the ground. I'll watch with interest to see if it has any impact!

Okay, I thought they could specify a timescale, but maybe not. However, if they could it need have no effect on self-builders as they wouldn't be the ones holding back on builds to facilitate new planning applications and I wasn't suggesting a one-size-fits-all period for every development.

But that's a different scenario to what you described in your previous post ("then letting demand (and price) build up before they built a few more."). And some of the blame for what you're now describing has to sit with the LA for not stipulating a defined period in which a development should be completed.

That (on its own) doesn't make them "absolute bastards" IMHO, it's just sensible business practice. No business will manufacture or stock more goods than they believe they can sell in a given period, and to do so would potentially cause huge cashflow problems.

We had a quote from one supplier who quite literally loaded all the appliance costs (circa £5k worth) onto the cabinet prices and listed the appliances as foc as they knew we wouldn’t be able to reclaim the vat. We didn’t go with them though as their price was circa £6k more than the route we went, even allowing for the vat saving.

You sure all you’re doing is sleeping?

Oh, okay, the way you speak about the performance of the house I’d assumed you’d been living in the new one for a while now. If you spend a fair bit of time there already I guess it won’t make a huge difference to the way it reacts, although we do, for example, find cooking (in particular) has quite an impact on he indoor temperature.

Bit of a random question, Jeremy, but have you still been living in the old house until now?

Think I'd be concerned I'd pitched the price too low with that much interest so quickly, so agree the sealed bid approach may be best. As for using PB, we sold our last place using a sort of hybrid EA in so much that they use the same model as PB but are local only and staffed by people who have worked in traditional estate agencies in the area for many years. The advantage for us was they have great local knowledge and contacts. I incentivised them with a bonus payment if they exceeded our minimum acceptable price (they did) and they also did some of the viewings when we were unable to (at no additional charge). The net result was that we saved well over £4k on fees compared to a traditional agent, and the only noticeable difference was their office was in an industrial unit in a boatyard rather than on the high street. Would definitely use them again.

Yeah, fun like watching paint dry!

I was a planning engineer at VT shipbuilders 35 years ago. We used to load all the activity detail (task description, duration, trade, dependencies, etc) into a screen in Portsmouth which was linked by leased line to a mainframe in Tyne Regional Computer Centre. Once we were happy all the data had been entered, you pressed the go button and TRCC did all the calcs and then sent a file to Vickers at Barrrow-in-Furness where a huge plotter printed it out onto 4ft wide rolls. Three days later a big tube arrived by post with the printed PERT charts. We'd then paper these around the office walls, look for errors, correct these on screen and then wait several more days for updated printouts - and repeat ad infinitum!

And I should add, that's despite having multifoil insulation ?

Literally just back from a week's holiday. House has been locked up tight with just the Sageglass (it's actually electrochromic) and the MVHR left running (no active cooling). Temp inside upon opening the front door was a reasonably comfortable 25C in the south-facing rooms and upstairs, and 24C on the north side. As I've said before, the glass may have been expensive but it does the job, automatically, without losing the benefit of the solar gain when we want it.

Google icatcher by icode systems. They have wildlife and security solutions. Don't know if they'll have specifically what you need but worth a try.

I've applied a fair bit of vinyl in my time and the guy is right. However, there's a knack to getting it right (and bubble free) and there's a big difference between applying decals to a van in a controlled environment such as a workshop, or to the inside of windows, and covering whole, large panes of glass outdoors. The film may not be particularly expensive, but it would be easy to get it very wrong. I certainly wouldn't attempt it as a diy job.

That's not a garage, that's an aircraft hanger!

We used Scandia Hus, but deleted many of the items you mention (stairs, windows/doors, MVHR, internal doors, skirtings etc) not only to save money but to improve choice. Could we have got a cheaper TF kit? Almost certainly. If I was ever to do another self-build would I invite Scandia-Hus to tender again? Absolutely. As @PeterWsuggests, quality comes at a premium.

The TF supplier we used has numerous 'standard' designs but, as we understood it, they rarely build two exactly the same as most clients want a degree of bespoking. We actually went to them with our own design and then they produced the manufacturing drawings, structural calculations, etc. Of course, these 'services' don't come free, but their price for that work was very keen (a fraction of what an architect/SE would have charged) but I guess they make their money on the TF manufacture and erection.

In that case, the film seems the logical (and most economic) solution for your specific situation ?

@PeterStarck, I accept the up front capital cost is high, but I'm beginning to think it's probably a very cost-effective solution in the longer term, and it's such an elegant one also. Reading the latest in a long line of threads on the subject of overheating caused by excessive solar gain (posted by @lizzie ) it's obvious that this is a significant issue. It's also obvious that other solutions, such as solar reflective film, external blinds/shutters and the like, come at variable cost (both in capital and ongoing terms), and at least some form of aesthetic compromise. Reflective film may (reasonably cheaply) cure the issue of too much gain, but it also stops you from benefitting from it when you want it, and that means spending more on heating the property year after year. I'd also question what it may look like after several years of exposure to the elements, window cleaning, etc. External blinds/shutters will I'm sure be equally effective as reflective film (albeit at a significantly higher cost) and will allow the benefit of solar gain when desirable, but at the expense of the view out of the windows when you perhaps most want to enjoy it (and with the aesthetic compromise of the external frame/box of the blinds/shutters). And' of course, for such a solution to be reliably effective it needs to be automated, which I suspect brings this solution close to the extra cost of our Sageglass (bear in mind that whilst electro-chromic glazing is expensive, it replaces the 3G glazing units you'd otherwise be paying for). By contrast, excessive solar gain is controlled automatically but we still get the full benefit of it when desirable (reducing heating costs); the need for active cooling (and the cost thereof) is reduced/eliminated; there's no compromise to the external aesthetic of the building; and (perhaps best of all) we enjoy an uninterrupted view out, regardless of the solar intensity. As I said previously, it just works.

Thought I'd update this thread with our experience to date. So far this month we've had 15 virtually cloudless days (out of 21) including a run of 8 consecutive such days. We've left the Sageglass in auto mode and it has worked extremely well in restricting the solar gain and effectively regulating the indoor temperature. Granted, the sun is relatively high in the sky now and approx 25% of the south-facing glass is shaded by our 50cm soffit overhang, but I'm pretty confident the Sageglass would cope even if we'd had such a run of cloudless days earlier in the year. So far, to coin an old Honda marketing strapline, it just works! Edit to add: by the way, the privacy element is fine during daytime when the glass tints as it reflects like a black mirror when viewed from outside, but is far less effective at night when light are on inside. Suffice to say we now have blinds at the bedroom windows!

This is precisely how ours is configured (7 x 285w panels facing east, 3 south and 4 west) and whilst we are generating less in total, the spread is far more usable. For example, today we were generating 1kW+ from 0715 until 1745 this evening but our peak was only 2.4 and total for the day 22kWh.

I 'finished' over 6 months ago and I'm still knackered!