LA3222

I'll admit I didn't read your background above, the question alone is enough for me. No. Cant say I've come across a case yet where GSHP makes economic sense. ASHP yeah, GSHP nah. I did consider it very early in my planning process, swiftly dismissed.

I just used some 15mm foam i had laying around, gave it a couple of turns around the soil pipes and taped in place. You can see in the pic it leaves a nice tidy gap around the pipe in which to get a coupler, just set my foam a little higher than I would have liked but it worked. I haven't any experience with rebates etc. I suspect you're on the right lines with setting some EPS in place as a mould.

Forgot to mention this before, but one solution is to wrap the stub in a couple of layers of foam roughly at the height of where the concrete slab will finish. That way you can pull out the foam, trim the stub and get a coupler to sit nicely into the slab in the gap created by the foam. I was connecting my stacks up the other day and this worked almost perfectly. I got the foam out, no need to chisel any concrete and the 15 ish mm gap created by the foam was just right for a coupler to push into. My mistake was to be too high with the foam on the pipe, I was only an inch into the concrete when I pulled it out, it was enough but if id placed the foam a little lower I could have had a good two inches space to play with. @SuperJohnG may be an option when setting your pipes in. It saves the headache of getting the socket to the exact height it needs to be.

It can be 100% efficient and reduce his heating cost to zero and id still say its a crap idea. What about the rest of your energy costs? Heating is only part of the picture. Whats the point of being efficient for your heating but then relying on the grid for DHW and routine energy use? He spent a s**t ton of money saving on his heating bill. I'm sure he could have used an insulated slab, insulated frame, ASHP, solar and reduced all of his energy costs for less money than building an underground bunker?‍♂️ Ending up with a far more 'eco' house. Seemed to me he has two obsessions in life - proving that his mental heating system works and whipping out his FLIR at every opportunity. Can probably add checking his probes to that list now? Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater, looked ok, I just think the narrative didn't match what was achieved.

Heating is one part of the equation. DHW and general appliance use will be a massive chunk of the energy consumption. No provision for them? They spent a massive sum of money to reduce only part of their energy consumption! Seems to me that the geezer didn't take a step back and look at the bigger picture. This is more like an idea he was fixated on and everything after is geared up to prove himself right. Yes, the principle works. But was it worth it and did it make sense. I would argue no. I think that the builds on here would be more eco than this one?‍♂️

Am I the only one thinking there was nothing eco about that house? It was just a subterranean house with a novel heating system? How do they heat their hot water, cook etc? I'm sure they could have achieved an equal level of 'eco ness' using ASHP and Solar. Lots of non eco concrete - however much they want to kid themselves they used an eco type. Lots of dirty great big 'oil' based insulation sheets. And those graphs.....decrement delay....Nice one. Most of the builders on this forum could produce similar graphs for their build without having stuck 500 ton of soil on it? Don't get me wrong, looked nice. But 'eco' nah.

I got mine as individual cans from screwfix too....cost me a fortune. Annoying as I pay £48 for 12 cans of normal soudal on Amazon.

Thanks @Temp for the list, I'm sure it will be useful when working out what to use?

Started to run out the internal soil stacks to where they need to be. First one, has an inlet for sink/shower waste in the ceiling void. Above that I have a 90 degree coming out which the geberit should drop down into - with the use of a 90 degree connection of some description. Both branches coming into the stack are one above other, but there is more than the required 200mm separation in line with Part H? I've capped it off with an AAV, will leave it there and see if BC says owt about accessibility, if he does ill just extend it into the loft above! Just have a 50mm pipe to run into the black grommet on the soil stack and thats the first one done. I'd appreciate it if folks could take a look and if there is something I've done wrong, let me know before I crack on with t'others!

Get the corners where they need to be and then fill in from there. I assume you've got low expansion foam, I tended to use as little foam as possible, just enough to securely grab the adjacent blocks. The pins are crap. My biggest issue was the lengths of my long walls are nearly 20m that was alot of blocks. If the gap between blocks is 1 or 2mm by the time you get to the end you're out by 20 to 30mm. I had to fill in from the corners and then trim a block to suit the last gap as you go. I glued as I went. If you make a mistake its easy enough to re seperate the blocks by cutting through the join with an insulation saw.

Yeah slab was fine bud. If I remember rightly it was C28/35 mix. How are you getting on?

This. My suspicion is that a lot of bawbag consignment companies are using brexit as an excuse to cream some extra cash put of people. A lot of confusion, general consumer doesn't know whats going on and so the sharks are circling. Such is life. The opportunity to profiteer will always be jumped upon by someone i.e. Covid and hand sanitiser/bogroll. Bastards.?‍♂️

@Gus Potter, you mention getting one guy to do it all. I get that, but you tend to find that the Timber Frame companies have their own in house or go to designers for the structure. Like John, the company I used worked like this and like John I used Tanners for the foundations and the SIP company worked to that design. I got the point loads etc for the house (the SIP part) and provided them to Tanners along with the ground investigation report. They then designed the foundations in the knowledge that the house was SIPs so had to work for the SIP soleplate etc and they also took into account the blockwork outer skin, designing the foundations accordingly. Once I had that design, I went back to the SIP company and got them to look at it and make sure there were no issues from their perspective with how the frame integrates with the foundations. The slab design is sloped on the perimeter, this meant the SIP company had to check and adjust their fixing plan for the sole plate and steels in order to ensure there was sufficient edge distance for the fixings. The general point I'm making is that although ideally one person will carry out all the work, it tends to not work out that way. That is not an issue, it just needs a bit of back and forth chasing to make sure each side of the coin is working together via yourself. In Johns case, it seems the SIP frame designer has incorporated a standard detail but without looking at the foundation design and considering the how! Everyone is human, these things happen, the key thing is that hopefully after a bit of discussion it can be resolved in a way which makes it practical for John to implement yet still achieve the desired effect.

Oh, as for fixing into EPS I can't see that working. Its rubbish to stick stuff in it - the U shaped pins you get from Kore are crap and don't work great.

What is the purpose of the straps? There were no straps used for my build. The soleplate was fixed to the slab with concrete screws, the same for the baseplates on the two steels. You got a drawing? May help people to see the issue.

Latest iteration or the plumbing from mains incomer to UVC. Small changes each time but trying to flesh it out so all parts are on it which can then lead to an easy to work out materials list. Any feedback is appreciated.

Looks like its got some tasty watter in the bottom of it?

Nice estimate, had two quotes come in now and first was £5400 the other £5200 both labour only. Figured its easier to compare if keep it to labour only. So with that in mind, how has the first dude come up with £13500 labour plus materials (basic sockets etc). I cant see how materials would be around £8k if only basic sockets etc quoted for. I asked for a breakdown, said something about a lot of wiring needed due to size and rcbos being £40 a pop for a 3ph board?‍♂️ I really need to go through the electrics tab of my QS sheet to bring it up to date so I can see whats going on with materials side of life.

I havent done the plumbing yet but ill be using 10mm and 15mm HEP2O. Im not keen on mix and matching pipe sizes, plus this stuff isn't the most flexible. I think I may go along with the conduit idea, just to key places such as audio/visual locations.

On the advice of the neighbour giving me a hand. He's a builder so I went with what he said. I couldn't fault his logic ref using side branches leadng to blockages if your soil run goes there as I've witnessed the effect myself with the static caravan foul run. Surprising how much 'crap' washes over the side that needs hosing away. I get your point about rodding, two sixes and a dozen - cant rod into the house from the IC but then will it ever need rodding if coming out through main branch? If came in on side branch, yeah can rod it but then are you increasing the odds of needing to rod it??‍♂️ Would you want to rod in an upstream direction? Also, how often does anyone ever need to have their foul pipes rodded? I've not needed to yet, I dont actually know anyone that has?

Correct. 3 stacks, each with their own rest bend and then three seperate pipes running under the slab to 3 ICs. Each pipe enters the their IC on their main branch, not a side branch. To do this, and then be able to connect them all up so it all runs start to finish through the main run was to use a y branch as each pipe hits its IC.

I quite like the conduit idea, its 16mm pipe so would you be able to pull a leccy cable or whatever through at a later date ok or would the small dia/friction stop it? My original intention was to just join it all up to use for the first floor UFH but the idea of joints in UFH pipe dont float my boat so scrapped that idea.

Is there any practical use for leftover pipe? I have 11 offcuts varying from 10 to 30m that have been sat in one corner for a while now. Sick of looking at them but before I bin them I want to check there isn't a better use for them elsewhere on the build?

All my stacks went into a rest bend and then then I had three stubs coming out beyond the slab. I'd worked out roughly what the what the distance between each would be and so what height they would all need to come out at the get the falls right. Each one then went into a y branch just before entering the main run of the IC. The y's were then all connected in a line. So I now have three ICs in a line at the front of my house. Initially an eye sore but you get used to it. I was going to connect the two which are next to each other into one IC but my neighbour (a builder) who was giving me a hand advised not to as the flow coming in a side branch would wash over the side potentially leading to blockage later. He said ideally each pipe (if stench pipe) should come in on the main branch and not side ones. The picture shows where I have the two pipes next to each other. Had to bend one pipe slightly to get enough room to come into the main run on the next IC. You can see how the y branches were used in that pic. I see his point because my static is connected to a side branch on my main IC. I did this knowing that the main run would eventually be what the house runs came into and I do get wash over in there. I periodically have to hose it down to get all the little treasures in there to wash away.

Looked really nice too, outstanding effort by the pair of them.