LA3222

Kids want to decorate it, bit rubbish for young ens with covid! I have the obligatory tony tray in place around the joists so I intend to tape the vcl to this and to the floors. As you say, where it meets a stud wall that has osb racking I will tape it to that, on the other side I will run it into the stud and tape to the other side of the osb and around any noggins. A fiddly pita but belts and braces. That will leave the only moisture pathway as the edge of the 9mm osb as far as I can see?‍♂️ As far as diminishing returns, I get what you mean, what I'm doing won't be for everyone. At the minute these additional bits haven't interfered with the flow of things as the missus has dealt with them whilst I've been busy on other stuff such as soakaway and foul drains. Outside stuff is done for this year now, more to do next summer but they are cosmetic jobs rather than critical ones. Its all hands to the pump inside now.

As you say, technically a VCL is not required with SIP but I'd rather put one in now while I can rather than worst case regretting it later on in life. Im belt and braces as much as possible, the missus has just finished taping and sealing every panel to panel, panel to floor join etc to get air tightness as good as it can be. Once the 70mm insulation is installed I intend to tape all joins so it acts as a vcl, and then put an actual vcl in. Maybe overkill, but its easy to do now rather than later. The bit that has me thinking is where the stud walls abut the external walls like in the pic:

Having reread my post the terms I have used might be confusing. When I say adding 70mm of PIR to external walls, what I mean is internally. So I am working inside the house and beefing up the insulation by adding an internal layer. The house is all up and pretty much finished externally, internals are my issue now. Soo, all the stud walls are up inside so what is the best way to skin the cat when installing a VCL. I can't run an uninterrupted VCL due to the studs, I have a sinking feeling I'm going to have to lap over/around them somehow which will take some time!!!

Pondering future problems and I'm currently dwelling on the installation of the VCL. I am currently adding 70mm of PIR to all external faces and the VCL will follow, however what I'm wondering is what do people do where a stud wall abuts an external wall? Stop the VCL there and tape/seal it to the stud? I'm thinking this leaves lots of moisture paths through the TF. So do I need to 'seal' across the studs somehow? That will be a right pita!! TIA Jamie

Can't see why 16 would be an issue.....configure it as two banks of 8 so its not one great long line? I expect I'll be at a similar no. to what you jave.

Must admit that I used the proper tape over my first electric duct that the DNO used, put some over my BT duct in the lane, havent used any since?‍♂️

Thanks for this, I will have a good look later and hopefully develope my own plan further using this.

@SuperJohnG a bit of thread revival I know! Not sure if you've had your Kore delivery yet but there's some useful pics on here to give an idea of what the delivery will be like. My own to add to the thread: 175m2 slab, the artic was full top to bottom all the way.

One other thing bud, give some thought as to how you set your profiles up - I'm trying to think back now but I recall i had issues at one point. I had a concrete toe beam cast in my EPS which didnt help with setting out. The insulated upstand which the soleplate sits on was quite a bit higher than the outer bit for mine and it was these diagonals I had to use to plumb the EPS. These dimensions are different to when you set the house out though as you do that use the outer corners so in my case the outer corners of the blockwork. I'm confusing myself here now with what I'm trying to get at?‍♂️ .....so I had to set the house out with outer corners of blockwork and then plumb it up with outer corners of soleplate dimensions. Both of which you'll need on your profiles potentially.

If you can, get your reference points outside the area you are building up. You need a datum somewhere that you can take your levels from, I hammered a nail into my fence post that serves this purpose as it was easily accessible but safely out of the way. Setting out is where I had difficulties. I had to excavate down which put me in a bowl for all intents and purposes and I couldn't set up profiles outside of this area as they would have been 1.5m above the ground - impractical. This meant i had to keep resetting out from scratch and then measuring as I went for things like drains - luckily its all worked out so far as I can tell. If your surveyor pegs out the footprint set up some profile boards out from them, say 3m or so should get you out of the 'working area'. Profiles about half metre wide then put a nail in on them and run string lines from them that line up with the setting out the surveyor did. You will have to tweet the nail positions slightly as you go in order to get the lines bang on. Once those nails are all in position it doesn't matter what happens with the work the surveyor did as you build the ground up. You can chuck some lines up between those nails and you've got your house marked out again. Ref drainage, like others I marked the house up and measured the 'x' and 'y' position of the drains from the outer walls. Think you can make out my half assed profiles in the pic? The shape of my house made the no. of profiles required a PITA!

Hi Bonner, how north of Lincoln? I'm building near Louth, from Scunny originally!

@Internet Know How that is the same across the board when building. I had some wild quotes for the bricklaying on mine, an absolute joke some of them. Its part and parcel, I have a sparky doing a days work for me in few weeks to put power into the house and rig up some sockets - charging me £300 which I'm sure is pulling my trousers down but needs must. I will reasses pricing when his fixed price for wiring the house comes through. Most of the stress/issues i have encountered so far are down to contractors, either the standard of work versus my expectations or the price - am I paying too much! I've mellowed out about it all a lot now as its not worth losing sleep over. Contractors are a minefield that have to be navigated unfortunately! For every good one there's probably a dozen charlatans out there?‍♂️

Ah, I see - not so straightforward then. I will admit my knowledge of basements is nil, I toyed with the idea, dismissed it so left it at that. It seems there are many ways to skin the cat and the only way to work out whats best is to work with an engineer and cost the options up so you can compare them against each other.

In Lincolnshire I was charged £35/hr for 16 ton excavator plus operator. The problem with everyone telling you what they paid is that it may give you a false expectation of what you think you should be paying. It all depends on what the going rate is in your particular area and just what you expect for that price. The price i paid was good value with a good bloke who was very good at what he does. But I still had to tell him where to dig, what levels to work to and I was there throughout. He did his job well but the expectation was that I would tell him exactly what I wanted to achieve, i left it to him to work out the best way to do that. If a company has to do all the thinking/accept liability for mistakes then it will incur additional costs.

Am I just missing the obvious? Surely a days crane hire will have them out easy enough at far less cost than purchasing outright??

Board out the openings with OSB and cover with breather membrane, that will keep most of the crap out. Yeah it will cost you some cash in timber but then your programme can stay broadly on course?‍♂️

As per the title, looking for some 240v LED work lighting during the winter months. Anyone have any recommendations? TIA

Its like anything in life, good and bad. Have faith that once the end is nigh all the bad will be forgotten.

Figured I'd update this a bit, foul drainage is all in now, was a PITA but its done. Next lesson - put your land drain in whilst the sub base is getting laid. I didnt?‍♂️ and yes it was another PITA job. To be honest I was thinking not to bother as my sub-base sits on sandstone which drains rapid, no groundwater to worry about so I figured whats it needed for? Quick chat with the SE and I find they include them by default and are reluctant to dispense with them regardless of ground conditions - something about the potential for frost heave. So, dig a hole and put some in?‍♂️ Another suggestion, if you know where your soakaway is going to be maybe get it put in whilst doing groundworks for foundations so its ready to connect to once gutters done. With the way my plot is it would have been far easier for me if I had planned this in. I had a 20T excavator on site for the sub-base, would have got the job nipped rapid, now have a 3T digger and not so quick/easy a job?

The first drawing has two coils for buffer tank, second has one. So the coil in the buffer tank is to circulate the ASHP water through thereby heating the buffer tank. The UFH then taps directly into the buffer, using the heated water within for the UFH. I'm still working on all of this in the background. I think the fundamentals are there but I suspect a lot of component parts are missing. What I'm after is a 'complete' schematic rather than a 'general overview' which is what I think I have at the minute. As I learn more I will post amendments to the drawing. Not sure why in the four yrs or so this forum has been running that a 'complete' schematic has yet to be posted up. I know that there will be nuances to each install but when you have a ASHP/UVC/UFH setup i can't believe they will be that different in terms of setup from build to build?‍♂️

Do you have an idea of how long it would take @PeterW? Trying to work out if £500 for labour is ok or not? With a couple of sparks on the forum I was hoping they would have an idea/give some feedback?‍♂️

Ha, yes indeed its to be pulled into a duct. Your questions leaves me thinking this just might be a ball ache of a task? 100mm duct - hopefully not too bad a job? Ref the garage, my static lives on that spot at the minute, when I got the van connected up I used a 10mm iirc 5 core swa so can transfer that to the garage supply at a later date.

Another one for Protek here, every other quote i had was absurd. IIRC I paid a very similar price to @SuperJohnG. Funnily enough our build bears some similarities - 280m2, SIP, £500k reinstatement cost for mine.

63A per phase, dont think this changes the price of fish? My supply head is 80A per phase, and there is a 6 way TP&N board in there. A supply will run from there to garage, house, garden room. Just sorting the house at the minute. What supplier are you looking at for 55m of 5 core SWA at £600 incl vat? I havent searched, just looked at quickbit who i got the cable to run a supply to my static from which is where I got £650 excl vat from. My numbers may be out but assuming £650 for the cable, £150 for the board, 63A switch £40, 63A RCBO £40, additional cable and metal clads £100 puts the material quote at about right? Unless I'm getting my prices wrong?‍♂️ Also how long to do the job? One day? Labour seems high?

Yeah, my supply terminates into a kiosk i built on my plot. Looking to run a sub main now into the house itself.