Benpointer

Thanks for the kind words everyone - much appreciated. I wish I knew why the random pictures appear at the end of the blog entry!

As promised, I spared you a Week 14 blog due to our visit to Yorkshire for a wedding and catch-up with old friends. It was lovely to do something unrelated to the house and it made us realise how all-consuming our build has become. We will definitely try to have some more non-house time through the rest of the build. That said, it’s back to the matter in hand: UFH Two weeks ago the guys were battling through laying the floor insulation in preparation for laying the UFH pipes, ahead of the screed pour which was booked for 3rd September. In the end it was a very close-run thing - the UFH pipes were ready by 13:30 and the screed arrived 10 minutes later. Too close for comfort really: Tight project scheduling is one thing but the stress of 11 cubic metres of unusable liquid screed potentially being dumped on the site was a very uncomfortable feeling. Screed Once started, the screed pour itself (by Williams Walls and Floors) seemed to go very smoothly (hah!) and it looks fantastic. We have had 65mm of Cemfloor Therm liquid screed laid. Still in stressed-out mode I woke up before 4:00am the next day worrying about what would happen if the pipes floated up or the screed was laid too high (they didn’t; it wasn’t). (I helpfully woke Mrs P. too just so that she could share the experience - she seemed not to appreciate it.) We left the house shut up for 24 hours as instructed by the screed man Rob Williams. On Friday morning I went over and opened up to find we had a sauna! All perfectly normal apparently, but the combination of heat from the screed setting reaction, the well-insulated relatively air-tight house and (presumably) 1000’s of gallons of water created an atmosphere that made Singapore seem like a desert. Sadly, I failed to get any photos of the clouds created as the windows were opened and the saturated ‘sauna’ atmosphere hit the September morning. By the afternoon, with all the windows and doors open the inside of the house seemed perfectly normal again. Seeing the screed poured in a few hours and reflecting on how fiddly all the underfloor insulation had been to lay, made me wish there was an option for a poured floor insulation - it would surely have been so much less effort and faster? Edit: There is apparently - https://www.rtu.co.uk/assets/documents/RTU-Ultrabead-Brochure.pdf. I have no idea if it is any good, what the pros and cons are etc, and it is too late for us but if we were doing another build (Mrs P: “We’re not!”), I’d certainly look into it. Render Just to make sure we weren’t missing an opportunity to get some outside work done while the focus was on the floor, we had booked our render team (Caesar Spray-rend and Plastering) to start boarding up the 50% or so of the external walls that are to be rendered (the other 50% will be vertically clad in Brimstone Ash). So on week 14 the STS construction boards were fixed to battens and last week the base coat was sprayed and smoothed out. It already looks a lot better just for some of the shiny breather membrane walls being covered up. We now have to wait a week before the top coat can be applied. We’re using EcoRend Thincoat for anyone who is interested. And finally… Marcus from our super groundworks team came in on Thursday to set all the stainless steel oak post brackets in concrete on top of their support pillars, and also to lay the smoothest, tidiest concrete slab you have ever seen to rest our ASHP on. …Which is just as well because the ASHP arrives on Monday! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this week: 22 Contractor days on site previous week: 16 Contractor days on site since build start: 249 Budget: Getting more challenging tbh - beginning to eat into the contingency - mainly costs I hadn't properly estimated. 😱 Plan: Still on track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this week: UFH pipes laid. Screed down! Current top issues and worries: Insulation - the additional ceiling insulation is still a worry - scheduled for w/c 15th September.

Well, as a novice I am consoled by that thought, although I am sure some on here have said stud walls on screed was fine. Anyway, it's history for our build now - choices made and no going back - so onwards and upwards!

Floor The main focus this week has been laying the DPM + 220mm PIR floor insulation + 50mm upstand insulation round all the walls, then the UFH perimeter expansion strips and the vapour separation layer ready for the UFH pipes. It’s proved intricate work. Ken our first fix plumber assisted by local builders Barry and Jordan together have been working hard to complete the task by the end of August so that the liquid screed can go down during the first week in September. Early this week it looked like there was too much to do in the time available which added to everyone’s stress levels but by the end of the week the guys have made good progress and appear to be over half way through. We have a little bit of contingency with the screed team who are happy at this stage to leave the pour date a bit flexible during w/c 1st September, so we are hoping we will be alright. One thing that is particularly pleasing is the meticulous attention to detail being applied by Ken, Barry and Jordan. The PIR boards are being cut and fitted really tightly and the taping of joins and of the DPM is being done with real care. If we were doing this again (Mrs P: “We’re not”), I’d consider building the non load-bearing internal walls later, on top of the screed, which would have saved a lot of effort intricately cutting, fitting and taping DMP and insulation to those internal walls. But no doubt a different series of problems would have ensued. Electricity supply Also this week, SSE came in and moved our electric supply from a meter box which used to cling to the side of a now-demolished wooden garage, inside to the plant room. Two SSE engineers for two hours = 3p change from £700(!) Hey-ho, it’s done now. External battens I reported that these were all done last week but I forgot about the cross-battening required for the vertical timber cladding. Anyway, that was duly completed by Alan and Chris this week and the walls are ready to receive STS construction boards plus Ecorend thin coat render (for the rendered sections), and Brimstone Ash vertical timber cladding on the other areas. I need to arrange delivery of the latter when we have sufficient space (the cladding is bought and being held by Vastern Timber pending delivery). But work on the backing boards for the render starts on Monday - yes I know it’s a bank holiday but the render people are keen, so who am I to stop them? Carpenter Chris also sorted out the ply protection for the front door and here's our lovely temporary door - the real one is safely wrapped up in the workshop. Scaffold Also keen to work the bank holiday weekend (well, ok, after a bit of encouragement) were the scaffolders, who arrived on Saturday morning to remove the scaffold, which they did in a few hours with no dramas. So we can now see the house! although it’s still looking very shiny-silver. The plastic protection is remaining on part of the zinc pending the completion of the vertical cladding of the wall on the left And finally… Remember this rogue beam from last week’s blog? Too close to the window reveal to allow us to fit an external blind… Well, I asked Matt at Turner Timber Frames to check with the engineers whether it and the one at the other end of that roof canopy are structural and it turns out they are not, they are purely 'cosmetic' and can be removed if we wish. However, in the meantime we are wondering if we really need and external blind anyway(!) Also, we need to talk to Alan the carpenter about how we are going to finish the roof in that area, and he’s away until next Wednesday. The soffit will be clad with some of the Brimstone Ash but should the soffits be horizontal or follow the slope of the rafters? Do we need some kind of clad gable at the end? Also, how easy will it be to take that beam out? It’s on joist hangers at the wall end but how is it fixed to the top of the oak posts? At least we have options to consider now though. Dashboard: Contractor days on site this week: 19 Contractor days on site since build start: 211 Budget: No change, running slightly over. Plan: On track to move in by Easter 2026. New measure - Number of bacon baps bought: 8 this week; 41 to date. These are ‘keeping people happy’ baps. Unfortunately there is no entry in the budget for them so I have explained to Mrs P. that they’ll have to come out of the kitchen budget. Kitchen -> food, it’s obvious! (Although as Mrs P. points out: "No kitchen; no food" which is a concern.) At any rate bacon baps from time to time feel like a worthwhile investment to keep everyone happy. Issues and worries closed this week: Scaffold is now down; the renderers can get at the walls! Current top issues and worries: Insulation - the additional ceiling insulation is still a worry - going to need to schedule it in after the screed now. PS We’re at a wedding next weekend so the weekly blog may be delayed or skipped. I imagine you’ll all survive the blow.

Wow! That does look lovely. Do you have a floor plan you can post? Great idea to make use of that beautiful walnut. What did you use to finish it?

It's got a nice ring to it but sadly it's not really fair on those who experience genuine bad luck that no amount of preparation which doesn't involve time-travel would have avoided. I'm thinking of those who bought, and largely paid for, a timber frame from a company that then went bust; those who planned their groundworks for the summer only to find that particular summer is the wettest on record (in contrast to us)... We can all think of plenty of similar examples. However, alongside Gary Player's gem: "The more I practice, the luckier I get", it's a great way to highlight that there's often more to apparent 'good luck' than meets the eye.

Very kind words but I am still expecting that we will hit the rails and run into the smelly stuff at some point, so let's see how we cope with that. In the meantime, the principal attribute of successful project management imo is "Be lucky". Not too big for a first tattoo Nick 😉

Great advice re lift and slide door Nick. We'll lock it shut for now because there's currently a 500mm step up from the back and a 300mm step down inside to get in through that door, so it's not an ideal access anyway. We'll make the ply cover for when the screed is down - early September 🤞

Very busy again this week - we were probably running at the maximum people we can have on site without contractors getting in each other’s way. On Thursday we had the carpenters, the insulation team, a roofer and the window installation team on site, and it’s not a very big site. Windows and doors The main highlight of the week was the arrival of the windows and external doors on Thursday together with a team of four (from Ukraine, though the windows were made in Estonia). The installation team led by Alex and Val were on-site by 7:30am and the windows arrived at 8:00. All the windows and doors went in smoothly over the next day and a half. Barring a factory error, we knew they were going to fit as Alex and Val had done a pre-installation site visit three weeks ago. There were no factory errors and everything fitted perfectly. There was no fuss about our difficulties with getting all the requested scaffold changes done (we didn’t) - the team worked around the shortcomings. For those interested, the windows are triple-glazed, alu-clad, inward opening tilt and turn, Norrsken P33A units; the doors are S305A alu-clad, composite panels doors and the 4 metre lift and slide, which is also triple-glazed, is Norrsken’s S305A door. The lift and slide door weighs in at 475kg and was moved by hand down a 500mm wide gap between our scaffold and our neighbour’s fence, then lifted manually into place. Here’s the sliding panel coming in first - it was stood to one side then fitted in once the frame and fixed panel were in place. I have to say, we remain very impressed by Norrsken and would recommend both the product and their installation subcontractors. Alex and Val suggested removing the front door, wrapping it and storing it safely, then cladding the frame in ply with a temporary door in place during the remainder of the build. Seemed a sensible suggestion and that is what we aim to do next week. Here's Dima, Alex and Val from the Norrsken window installation team: Having the windows and doors in is obviously a big step forward but we had progress on other fronts too: External wall battens and roof Our carpenters Alan and Chris made a start on (and indeed finished) fixing the 50 x 50mm external ventilation battens and have pretty much finished. (That’s messed up my wallplan - it’s not supposed to be done until next week!). They also boarded out the plant room walls with 18mm ply - it seems sensible given the amount of kit we need to fix to the walls in there. Just in time for the electricity supply, which SSE are coming next Tuesday to move into the plant room from the current external meter box. The slate edged, solar panel roof was finished this week too and now only needs the zinc mono-ridge capping/facia to be fitted (tomorrow) for the roofs to be complete. Insulation The team from Cornwall were back this week for what was supposed to be week two of two, to membrane and insulate the insides of the external walls and the underside of roof (below the blown cellulose layer). Progress has been slow for a number of reasons and the work remains a long way from complete. Still to do is the insulation on a couple of high walls and the whole of the roof. Partly, the job has proved a lot more involved than I or the contractors realised. Also they were delayed this week by other work over-running, sickness, and a funeral. On the one hand, given it’s a fixed price contract, we should not be too worried. But there is a potential impact on the schedule downstream if this work is not complete by about the 3rd week in September. And for the next 3 weeks our focus shifts to the floor: fixing the DPM, insulation and UFH pipes, then pouring the screed. So there is no access inside the house for the wall/roof insulation team until about 8th September. I can see this getting messy but for the moment we are trying to keep to the current plan which leads to the plastering starting on 6th October. It might be time to fire up Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field (well, it worked for him... until it didn’t). Mistakes - I’ve made a few… Here’s a good one: We planned to fit an external blind to the master bedroom window, partly to keep the solar gain down and partly for blackout purposes. The idea was that the blind would be hidden in the timber cladding, out of sight when not in use. But despite poring over drawings and designs endlessly, I failed to spot that the roof canopy has a return beam that comes in 20mm above the window reveal - so there is no way we are going hide a blind cassette in there. I’m not actually sure what that beam is doing given there is no weight hanging off it and surely the roof trusses provide enough of a horizontal tie for the oak post? It’s probably too much effort to challenge or change now though and Mrs P. and I both feel we can live without an external blind there (and fortunately our Part O Overheating assessment did not take the external blind into account but listed it as an optional improvement). Other mistakes are either too minor, or too embarrassing to mention. Stress Yes, I can confirm that running a self-build is pretty stressful - on a par with the stress levels I used to experience running big IT programmes, I’d say. I won’t deny we’ve both had a few sleepless nights worrying about what’s happening tomorrow, or the day after, or next week... Still, every task done is one we (hopefully) no longer have to do. Dashboard: Contractor days on site this week: 26 (that’s our record week!) Contractor days on site since build start: 192 Budget: No change, running slightly over. Plan: On track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this week: The windows are in! Our scaffold issues haven’t held the window installation up (though the scaffold itself did fortunately hold the window installers up!) Current top issues and worries: Insulation - still lots to do, increasing potential for the dealys to impact our overall schedule. Scaffolding - still a worry, although we do now have a provisional date when the scaffolders plan to take the scaffold down, so fingers-crossed that holds. Scheduling future deliveries: insulation, battening, cladding, render boards, MVHR, UFH kit, ASHP, HW cylinder… all due in the next four weeks.

I'd recommend Turner Timber Frames. Their price was about 50% of MBC and several others, albeit it's left us with more work to do subsequently (which we knew).

I shopped around for 100mm Celotex two weeks ago - needed 135 sheets. Tried all the big online places. In the end my local Travis P came up with the best price: £27 per sheet, £32.40 inc VAT. Best bit is they'll keep them at my local store, and deliver them for free as and when I need them! Genuine Celotex GA4100 too.

Er no... that's a winter project 😂 Good point though - needs some thought.

Well done - it's hard enough trying to organise others - physically doing a lot your self must be a whole different ball-game and is mightily impressive. Keep up the good work!

Haha thank you so much! I knew there could only be one @Roger Cross 😁 Re the PV panels: we have 14.8kW of panels from which we'd hope to generate about 14 to 15,000 kWh per year (this based on our experience with the previous 4kW set-up at Ancombe). We are limited by the DNO to a 7kW export cap but we'll have 20kWh of batteries and should be able to export most of what we generate each day by spreading the export over the whole day. That's the theory anyway. I used this tool - a bit clunky but detailed. https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/#api_5.3 Garden budget... Er 😬 How much is a few packets of seeds anyway? 🤣

I'd like to pretend that last paragraph made sense to me... but sadly it went way over my head 😂

Firstly, in terms of re-thinking, that ship has already sailed - our heat pump is ordered and paid for. Secondly, we've had Paul Thorney at Air2Heat review the design. He instals a lot of Panasonic ASHPs and it was his recommendation to go for the 7kW rather than the 5kW. He seems like a knowledgable trustworthy guy (certainly better than the local companies I spoke to, who although MCS registered, didn't seem to know their a*** from their elbow). I doubt it made any financial difference to Paul if we went for the 5kW or the 7kW. @JohnMo The Panasonic kit includes a volumiser as standard anyway - primarily to facilitate defrost cycles. If we've made a mistake, we'll live with it. However, I think we'll be fine.

A quieter week this week but good progress nonetheless. The main build focus this week has been on the south-facing single pitch roof which is to be covered using in-roof solar panels with slates around the boundary, then zinc facias to match the rest of the roof. It seems the zinc roof guys don’t do slate roofs and the slate roofers don’t do zinc, so two roofing teams required. Fortunately, both teams have been excellent: professional, tidy, friendly and turning up when they say they will. All you could ask for really. Also fortunately, the slate roofers (Pete and Dave from G M Spicers) will fit the solar PV panels under the guidance of our electrician Nick. And that has been the main activity this week - roofing battens and then the solar PV panels. (I should just give a mention to Travis Perkins who supplied the cleanest, straightest 2 x 1 battens I have ever seen, barely a knot anywhere. It’s a shame they’re florescent yellow - I wouldn’t be surprised if they glow in the dark.) The solar panels are by Solfit and clip together to form a watertight roofing surface - no trays, they just fit straight on the roofing battens. They’re about 1790 x 1220mm and weigh 26kg each, so getting them on roof is no easy matter but the Pete and Dave seemed to manage ok. We have 35 landscape format panels (5 rows of 7) at 425w each giving 14.8kW total generating capacity. There are no doubt cheaper panels available but we have saved 77m2 of slate or zinc roofing, so that helps the economic case. By the end of the week, all the panels were on and the team had started to fix the slates around the edge so we can see how that will look. Also this week the zinc roofers stripped off the protective film from most of the roof so we can see that now and I have to say it looks really smart. Aside from the actual build work, we’ve made good progress on planning future activity with an number of trades now provisionally booked in including: UFH fix, screed, floor tiling, external rendering, airtightness test, decorating (single-colour spray all through), and bathroom fix, courtesy of my brother Chris! (Yes, there are lots of other activities booked in too - but we didn’t book them this week!) The next few weeks remain very busy (hopefully) so watch this space for more progress… Our windows and doors are due to be installed on Thursday and Friday, so if you see Kevin McCloud in the vicinity of north Dorset, please send him away! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this week: 10 Contractor days on site since build start: 166 Budget: No real change, running slightly over. I keep finding things I’d forgotten to include (e.g. decorating!). But I also realise I haven’t factored in our VAT reclaim yet. So overall, all ok good. Plan: On track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this week: Velux flashings. At last, we have solved the mystery worry of the Velux flashings. More detail here for those really interested https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/44742-velux-flashings-for-standing-seam-zinc-roof/#comment-626128 but in summary: Velux twice got it wrong and the second time tried to sell us some flashings at £588 + VAT each, when we actually needed some £43 kits…also made by Velux. The latter are now fitted, so all is resolved. Current top issues and worries: Scaffolding - unresponsive scaffolding company. The scaffolding needs to come down in two weeks time but I’m worried that we’ll be used as free storage and thus be held up. Scheduling future deliveries: insulation, battening, cladding, render boards, MVHR, UFH kit, ASHP, HW cylinder… all due in the next six five weeks.

Heatpunk may lie but that's what we've used. That gave a space heating demand of 4.3kW at -5C outside. The BuildHub heat loss calculator gave only 2.7kW at -4C. 🤷‍♂️ We do also use a lot of hot water because we prefer baths to showers, so wanted to factor that in. Probably the 5kW would have been fine but there's £100 difference in price between the L-series 5kW and 7kW so, we played it safe.

Sorry, yes it's the 7kW Aquarea. Yes, it has been designed: Total floor area is 170m2, single storey, vaulted ceilings. Room heat Watts/m2 from Heatpunk; planned flow temp = 35C; pipe spacing from my plumber using tables in an OFTEC manual... (Hmmm... OFTEC are a 'liquid fuel trade association' - I might just check those pipe spacings against a quote I received from SoleHeat.)

If I'm not too late... We had planned for 200mm PIR then 60mm screed. It turned out that once the upstand walls were built we had 280mm to play with (my error). So I toyed with 80mm liquid screed but an extra 20mm PIR proved cheaper than the extra screed! (100+120, rather than 2 x 100mm). Ok it only moved our floor u-value from 0.101 to 0.092 but it cost less to install anyway. My point is, if you have not already laid your pipes you could add another 20mm of PIR and reduce your screed to 55mm. Might be cheaper to install and save running costs. Just a thought.

Nobody knew they needed a smartphone until Steve Jobs came along with the iPhone... Seriously though, I am interested in this conversation because my plumber suggests we should go for 16 loops to keep the pipe runs short (sub 100m). He mentioned the Maxima FM from Multipipe (but just because he googled 16-port manifold). Whether we have 1 x 16 or 2 x 8-port, are we going to need an additional pump? The Panasonic Aquarea L series we are getting has its own pump - I thought that would drive the UFH, am I wrong? Thanks

To belatedly close this off: Monday did bring good news; the ZWC flashing kits fitted perfectly over the windows and the zinc upstands. We are going to add a Velux BBX vapour collar to each window on the inside but because of the confusion we neither bought nor installed BDX insulation collars. So, between the window and the zinc roof upstands is a gap which looks to be between 10-15mm all the way round. It's water tight because of the ZWC flashings and the vapour collar will make it airtight. Most of the gap (80mm) is above the insulated envelope of the roof and we'll be fitting PIR around the reveals below the Veluxes before fixing the vapour barrier but... It feels wrong to leave those gaps empty. Should we just fill them with expanding foam? Or try to squeeze something squishy like a thin layer of rockwall into the gap? Any ideas? Thanks

We're hoping to get them in w/c 23rd or 30th Sept. That's after 1st fix, before plastering. Just waiting for them to confirm they can do a day one of those weeks.

Lol - I'll take that as a no then 😂 To answer point 3: yes absolutely I lack confidence in our overall airtightness outcome. Why?: I'm a novice at this; most trades don't seem to understand airtightness very well; as mentioned on my blog, we have a complex roof build up (maybe a poor choice but the bed is made now). Anyway, I thought you were a great advocate of Aerobarrier?:

Yes, I appreciate that is a Buildhub crime of the first order. I was thinking of several mitigations we have in place which may or may not be effective: On the other side of the VCL is 254mm of blown cellulose. I have been told that blown cellulose improves air-tightness by 50% but I am not sure what that would mean in practice. We can tape the PIR boards before the service cavity battens are fixed, effectively making the membrane holding the cellulose redundant. We are engaging Aerobarrier to do their magic after first fix. But if we can avoid missing the cross-battens that would clearly be best.