Benpointer

Good point Rick. The steel ducts are actually on the 'warm' side so don't need insulating (though we have popped some acoustic insulation offcuts around them just because we have them. The 'cold' side ducts are Zehnder ComfoPipe 160mm pre-insulated ducts as shown here:

A principal role of the project manager is surely to deal with the unexpected - for example, when a key team member is ill and out of action. But what happens when the project manager is laid-up? Following an ‘incident’ (all my own fault), I have spent the past week unexpectedly in hospital. That was definitely not in the plan. Fortunately I am home again now but largely ‘confined to barracks’ for the next month or so. At the moment I cannot even visit the plot, although I hope to be able to make the occasional visit over the coming weeks. As you can imagine this is deeply frustrating. Worse still is the realisation that my lack of hands-on project management has made absolutely no difference to the pace of progress (well actually, it may have increased without my involvement, tbh). Curious. The main thrust over the past two weeks has been carpentry, ventilation ducting, boarding-out and plastering. And fortunately we have two excellent chippies and a great team of plasterers in. We really have been very lucky with our trades; here’s hoping it continues through the remainder of the project. Mrs P. has been magnificent during this period too, keeping the show on the road by constantly stocking drinks and snacks, regular runs to Screwfix, keeping the site tidy, as well as fixing all the internal acoustic insulation. Not to forget planting all our new trees! All while running back and forth to the hospital 20 miles away to keep the Project Manager sane and stocked with essentials (edible food mainly). So, great progress has been made despite (or because of) the absent PM, and we continue on plan. Ventilation ducting and caprentry I had some wild idea that Mrs P. and I might fit the MVHR ducting but the least said about that the better. Fortunately, as noted in the previous blog, our chippies Chris and Alan stepped in to run the ducts very neatly to all the rooms. Even though it’s a new build we’ve found it tricky to work out how to run the 14 semi-rigid 75mm ventilation ducts from the MVHR to all the rooms whilst avoiding obvious ‘boxing in’ sections around and across rooms, which would have detracted from our desired clean lines. Partly that’s because it’s single storey and most of the ceilings are vaulted right up to the insulated roof. If we did another build (Mrs P: “We’re not!”), I’d definitely look to use those open web joists to good effect for ducting. But in the event it’s been left to Chris and Alan to ‘magic away’ all the ducting behind invisible false walls, whilst impacting the overall room sizes as little as possible. And a splendid job they have made of it. The ducting plan requires seven supply and seven extract ducts attached radially to two 8-port manifolds close to MVHR unit itself. We chose to site the manifolds 3m away from the MVHR unit in a void above the kitchen alcove which will hold our built-in ovens, connecting the manifolds to the MVHR unit with 160mm rigid steel spiral ducts, which themselves needed to be hidden away behind a false wall in the utility room. Acoustic insulation As noted above, Mrs P. is an absolute whizz at fitting this. I'd like to think that she's enjoyed it but, um, I'm not brave enough to ask. Anyway, it's going in to every stud wall as soon as there's board on one side to fit it against: Boarding-out and plastering The main thrust over the two weeks has been the room by room boarding-out and plaster skimming. 12.5mm board to the walls, and 37.5mm insulated plasterboard to the ceilings. The plastering team - Dan, Sam and Brandon - have been great. Particularly pleasing is that they are alert to problems and think about the finished product, raising any questions or concerns so that they can be resolved rather than simply plastering over them, so to speak. For example, questioning whether a pendant right by a wall rather than centrally in the room was what we wanted (it wasn’t, the cable had been dropped in the wrong place). We are now about 2/3rds of the way through the plastering and it's making an amazing transformation - turning a house frame into something that begins to feel like a home. Tree-planting Remember all those trees delivered in the last blog? Well Mrs P. got them all planted with the help of our landscape man Ashley, and they are really looking great. Focus for the next two weeks ...Will be on completing the plastering and then our floor tiler Steve should be making a start on the 170m2 of porcelain floor tiles. We thought about using engineered wood in some rooms but in the end we decided to have the same limestone effect tile all the way through and will use rugs to provide additional interest. Eight pallets of tiles are due to be delivered next Tuesday. Dashboard: Contractor days on site this fortnight: 42 Contractor days on site since build start: 353 Budget: No real change - still over budget but potentially using a little less of the contingency than previously. The benefit of an absent PM possibly 😉 Plan: Still on track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: N/A Current top issues and worries: A fortnight ago I said "Nothing too pressing - it'll be something we haven’t thought of, probably." Well that was prescient! Current top issue: getting myself back fully fit - otherwise, how will the project manage without me?!

We went with Paul Thorney at Air2Heat, who was originally going to provide an umbrella MCS service but for various reasons (mainly to do with the warm feeling we got about his phone and email pre-sales support) we asked him to do the whole supply, install and commission for a price we though was fair, and we got the £7,500 grant back within a couple of weeks. If you're thinking of a DIY instal but fancy the £7,500 grant, speak to Paul about his umbrella MCS service - you'd still be gaining over £5k after allowing for his commissioning and certification costs.

Tbf some of the music choices of our contractors are definitely a H&S risk. Hearing and Sanity that is.

Re the unplanned extra photo at the end, just clarify Mrs. P. up a stepladder is not the next big issue or concern! 😉

Two weeks since the last blog and there’s a lot to cover - but lots of pictures too, so persevere! The main issues and concerns two weeks ago were 1. how well the airtightness test would go, and 2. keeping ahead of the plasterers. The good news is: both of those concerns can be consigned to the bin. Airtightness As previously reported, we had engaged Aerobarrier to test, spray their magic mist, then retest the airtightness of our house. Prior to their visit they asked us to send video walkthroughs of the house. Because of concerns we had about how well the airtight membrane had been fitted and taped, which the videos did nothing to dispel, I asked Josh from Aerobarrier to plan some extra time for them to re-tape some of the wall ceiling interfaces, for an agreed price. The Aerobarrier team duly turned up as planned - Josh plus two others. After a few hours taping the house, the initial airtightness test gave a disappointing if not entirely surprising 3.2 ACH - go enough to satisfy Building Regulations but above our target of 1 ACH. But after running the acrylic misters for a couple of hours the airtightness improved to 0.8 ACH - an 80% improvement which we are obviously very pleased with. Aerobarrier left the place quite tidy, they had masked the horizontal surface on window frames, door handles etc. The only weird result was the screed floor was left as sticky as a dodgy Wetherspoons. A week later and the stickiness has more or less gone though. No photos of the process in action I’m afraid, tricky to get inside with all that mist flying around. First fix electrics …is now complete! Power, lighting, PIRs, smoke detectors, data cables, room stats, TV… there are a lot of cables threaded round our walls. We’ve had a great team plugging away at this for a few weeks - Nick, Martin, but especially Darren, who installed the majority of cables and boxes, have done a super job. Carpentry In parallel our two chippies Chris and Alan have been making sure various false walls and ceilings have been put in place ready for the plasterers. They have also fitted three of our four pocket door frames - just one more to install next week. Somebody also needed to run the MVHR ducts and fit the vent plenums to the rooms the plasterers were planning to start with. This seemed like a golden opportunity for Chris and Alan to acquire some new skills. I am not sure it was high on their wish list to be honest but they cracked on with it nonetheless. Regular free breakfast baps still works wonders when you’re asking people to go the extra mile. Acoustic insulation I could see that Mrs P. was itching to get involved with something and fortunately someone needed to push all the Rockwall acoustic insulation in to the internal stud walls. Luckily as it’s Rockwall rather than glasswool no further itching was involved. Anyway, Mrs. P has done a great job, as you can see. Plastering All of the above were things we needed to have done (or at least done enough) for the 8th of October, which is when our plasterers Dan, Sam and Brandon were booked to start. They duly turned up as planned and we had enough of the rooms ready for them to get started. In the plan, all the carpentry work would have been completed before the plasterers started but they seem happy enough to board out then skim one room at a time as the carpenters keep ahead of them. The initial focus has been on the boarding out bedrooms 1 and 2 and the bathrooms and the early progress bodes well for the rest of the task which we aim to complete by the end of October… ready for the floor tiler! In other news… Our timber cladding has been delivered. We’re using Brimstone Ash from Vastern near Swindon https://www.vastern.co.uk/timber-cladding/brimstone-ash/ which we will be having fixed vertically. Once Alan and Chris have finished all the internal work required for the plasterers the plan is for them to move on to the external cladding - assuming they haven’t had enough of us by that stage. More breakfast baps may be required! We have also had a number of trees delivered, which Mrs. P. was strangely much more interested in than she was in the pallets of plasterboard or multi-finish skim! 🤷‍♂️ And finally, I have bought a new toy… a Topdon infrared camera to plug in to the iPhone. Cue quizzical look from Mrs P. “er… and you needed this for what exactly?” Good question Mrs. P, but I have at least been able to check that the UFH loops are all working: During the next two weeks... … we hope to be getting plastered! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this fortnight: 32 Contractor days on site since build start: 311 Budget: No change - still over budget but within contingency. Plan: Still on track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: How well the airtightness test will go. Keeping ahead of the plasterers. Current top issues and worries: Nothing too pressing - it'll be something we haven’t thought of, probably.

I'm blaming autocorrect! 😉

Yes, sounds very similar. I also have a concern about the paint blistering, hence the question - in the hope that someone has done this a few years ago and report on their experience.

Ok, we may have made a mistake but we've had the concrete block wall below DPC rendered with a sand and cement render. We did this because concrete block walls don't quite cut it aesthetically. I am confident there is no bridging of the DPC. Above the DPC sits our timber frame finished externally with a ventilated cavity and either STS cement boards + thin coat render, or vertical timber cladding. There is a 45mm horizontal gap with inset mesh between the rendered blockwork below DPC and the external wall finish above DPC. The DPC itself overhangs the rendered blockwork by 20mm or so, so we're confident there is no bridging issue. The blockwork below DPC supports a ventilated block and beam floor as well as the timber frame, and is thus itself ventilated on the inside. My question is: How to finish the render? Can we leave it unfinished? Can we paint it with a breathable masonry paint like Sandtex? (We're thinking a darker colour might look better.) Will that below DPC render inevitably 'blow'? Thanks as ever for any thoughts or suggestions. Some pics. Before: How it looks now:

Wow! That's impressive! Very rapid build start to finish. We'd seriously considered MBC but in the end went for a cheaper option. Overall, we're happy with our decision but I seriously doubt we've saved that much money overall.

We hunted around for the best price for 75 sheets of 18mm class-3 exterior ply and because and my local builders merchants, Sydenhams, came up with £28.74 per sheet ex VAT. Very good boards they are too. Best of all they have kept the price for the extra sheets I have bought in 1s and 2s. Appreciate you are nowhere near a Sydenhams but I assume other local BMs might do similar for a bulk order.

Plan is to hang the door to open outwards (with a suitable locking mechanism!)

It's the other way round Viking own Norrsken. Norrsken made no secret of this in our dealings with them - quite the opposite, they flag it as a strength.

Week 18 - Progress on many fronts It feels like the build has entered a different phase now that the structure is fundamentally in place and watertight so I am going to drop to fortnightly blogging, hopefully with enough progress to ensure there something to cover in each blog: Since the last blog (week 16) we’ve been busy on a number of fronts, a lot of which is geared to being ready for the plasterers who are due to start on 8th October. First fix electrics I think we must be closing in on a kilometre of cable now installed: power, lights, room stats, data, PIRs… there seems to be a lot more to do than there used to be when we did our last big project. Our electrician Darren has been toiling away every day and making good progress - he’s certainly far enough through that for the plasterers to start. Not very photogenic though, first fix electrics, but here goes anyway: Carpentry We’ve got a surprisingly long list of jobs that need to be done by Alan and Chris our chippies, including wall and ceiling battening, walls and ceiling studwork to create space for ventilation ducts and plumbing, pocket door frames. A bout of covid has put them behind schedule but they still seem (reasonably) confident they can be ready for the plasterers. Double-skinning the wall between the Bed 1 ensuite and Bed 2 - to allow for a bathroom niche and for sound insulation between the rooms: Top part of wall is external, so has extra insulation; lower part is not (it's a complicated roof!) but has extra studwork to avoid a step in the wall: MVHR Mrs P. and I decided to have a go at fitting the MVHR unit (ok, I decided, Mrs P. humoured me). Through the outside wall: Reaching high enough to cut the holes for external ducts is surely what a scissor lift trolley was really invented for: The scissor trolley only gets you so high but never fear, I bought a new toy - a bargain Nano Power Tower for £305 off of eBay! Next project: wheelchair ramp to get onto it. Moving on - remember the zinc roof? Well, so did we. And now the render is dry, Tom from Wessex Metal Roofing came back to fit the down pies and remove the remaining plastic protection. We really like the roof. And the drainpipes: Garden started! Well sort of… the paddock area has been seeded. Before: After: Watching grass grow - far more interesting than watching paint dry. We’ve been shopping We’ve decided upon and ordered all our bathroom fittings from Island Bathrooms in Salisbury. We liked the service from them and the prices seem quite keen. Previously, we’ve used the likes of Victoria whatsitsname but it was quite nice to have someone who was prepared to come and look at our bathroom spaces and advise accordingly. We’ve also ordered our kitchen appliances - nine in total. I created a list and sent it out to eight suppliers, a mix of the big online retailers and some local. In the end it was Knees Electrical who are online and quite local (Trowbridge) who came out best, both in price and helpfulness. So with all that spend, it was nice to receive our £7,500 BUS grant for the ASHP. I was quite impressed at how quickly we got it tbh - thanks once again to Paul Thorney at Air2Heat for getting the application through promptly. Ceiling insulation Week 16’s blog ended with the note that we had had to part company with the contractors who were supposed to fit the additional ceiling insulation. At that point we’d abandoned plan A and were looking at plan B - ask the plasterers to fit insulated plasterboard, or plan C skip the additional roof insulation. In the end we have gone for plan B and will fit 37.5mm insulated plasterboard to all the ceilings to ensure we meet the building regs 0.16 u-value. I had thought that the blown cellulose within the roof would have been enough but there is no heat loss modelling readily available for open web joists filled with blown cellulose so we have to fall back on treating them as solid timber joists, which brings the roof u-value down (or up rather!). The safe solution, which our SAP man is happy with, is the extra 25mm of PIR from insulated plasterboard. So that’s what we are doing. Even with the price of insulated PB, it still works out cheaper including fitting than plan A. Next two weeks: The next two weeks should be exciting if things go to plan. We are due to have our Aerobarrier airtightness test and remediation done on 6th October. I honestly have no idea how it will go. I have doubts about the quality of the work done by the membrane team (the team we parted company with) but I am hoping Aerobarrier themselves will improve any deficiencies. The plasterers are due to start two days later. Before then the first fix electrics should be completed, studwork should progress as will routing the internal MVHR ducts, largely through that studwork. Looks like we will continue to be busy! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this fortnight: 15 (I'm not counting Mrs P!) Contractor days on site since build start: 279 Budget: Slight improvement - still over budget but within contingency. Plan: Still on track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: Replanning the approach to ceiling insulation. Current top issues and worries: How well the airtightness test will go. Keeping ahead of the plasterers.

You reckon? Can you point me at who else is selling the Norrsken P33 window?

Not quite answering the question but we used Norrsken for our 3g alu-clad windows and doors and they have been excellent throughout. Their team of fitters were particularly good: prompt, friendly, careful, tidy and flexible...

First point is very true - we had one quote for £21k after deduction of the grant! We just weren't confident we had ability and understanding to design and install ourselves. In the end our total cost net of the grant was £6,200. For that we got a latest model 7kW L-series Panasonic + 300l cylinder, fitted, installed and commissioned. (I would recommend our supplier/installer Paul Thorney from Air2Heat - very helpful, good price, great service.) (Incidentally, we were asked for the ASHP MCS cert by the buyers when we sold our previous house last year.)

Against which, there are 7,500 reasons not to avoid it. Has anyone had their ASHP checked to see if the cooling facility is on? I have heard that cooling still has to be disabled to satisfy the MCS cert*. Edit: *or has that changed? https://mcscertified.com/mcs-has-published-an-updated-version-of-mcs-020/

Great to read of your latest progress, and it made me zip through the whole blog again. Interesting to think about the similarities (e.g. Norrsken Windows, solar in roof) and the differences (ICF versus timber frame) between your build and ours. Keep up the good work! And keep the blog coming!

Yes I was looking at that switch too - Looks like you can just wire one in the back of a convenient switch box. Does anyone have experience of the Sonoff?

Thanks all, especially Nick for those video links - I will watch when I get chance.

Being a lazy sod I like the idea of telling Siri to switch the lights on or off. We are going to have a number of multi-way light circuits in the new house. I presume there are smart switches that could sit in these circuits either as a two-way at the end of circuit or an intermediate? I'm struggling to identify one that is bound to work (with Apple Homekit). I am no doubt being dim but... any suggestions? Thanks

Generally a much less stressful week than last week with lots of great progress but all is not perfect - see below. Heating Last week's drama getting the UFH pipes laid just in time for the screed pour seems like a distant memory but as there had not been time for Ken to fit the manifold and pressure test, he came on site on Sunday evening (roping in his Dad as a helper) to get that done. Thanks Ken - and Ken's dad! A neat job completed... ... just in time for Paul and Shaun from Air2Heat who arrived on Monday to install and commission our Panasonic ASHP and cylinder - kit which also arrived on Monday. It's almost like it was planned! We have opted for a 7kW Panasonic Aquarea L-series Bi-Bloc with a 300 litre Panasonic cylinder and 50L buffer tank. We're really impressed by the speed and neatness of the install: it's almost a shame the pipework has to be hidden behind the insulation. The external unit looks great and seems incredibly quiet - even when heating up that 300L cylinder from scratch. Although the heat pump is working we can't use it in anger at the moment as we have to have a slow temperature ramp up to prevent the screed from drying too rapidly. The screed itself does seem to be drying out nicely with no issues. None of the zone stats are fitted yet so the UFH is operating in open loop mode but in reality there is no demand anyway. I would thoroughly recommend Paul Thorney at Air2Heat as an MCS ASHP supplier and installer. He has been super-helpful throughout our heating journey. Initially he was just going to provide an MCS commissioning umbrella service but his price for supply of the kit was good and in the end we asked him to do the install as well - and we're very happy with the result. Rendering Although the weather has been 'iffy' at best John Wheeler from Caesar Spray-Rend managed to find a window to prime our base coat and then spray the Ecorend Thin Coat topcoat in 'Scotch Stone'. Again, we're very pleased with the result. Once the timber cladding goes on the other sections (later, later!) we think the two finishes will work really well together. Before topcoat And after: John also put a sand and cement render round the block-work below DPC to tidy that up... Although Troy seems more interested in the stray soil-pipe bung than the render: Electric 1st fix ...has started! Unfortunately 1st fix electrics is not particularly photogenic but here are the sparkies Nick and Darren pretending to be hard at work to prove it's underway. More on electrics to follow in the weeks ahead, I am sure. Decision time So, good progress on a number of fronts but it's not all been plain-sailing. I have had to pull the plug on the team who were supposed to fit out additional wall and ceiling insulation. They were supposed to complete in two weeks back in early August but the work didn't progress as well as they'd hoped we agreed they'd need to come back for a week with a bigger crew to finish off. They were due back last week but had to postpone by a week. Then today, I find they can't make tomorrow and there's a lack of clarity about when and if they'd be in next week. Unfortunately, we cannot afford to be chasing a slipping milestone because the ceiling insulation has dependencies: 1st fix electrics and then the plastering, both of which are on the critical path. So I had to let them know that we weren't continuing with them. They took it quite well to be fair; I suspect it may have been a relief. We are now going to switch to Plan B... just as soon as I have worked out a Plan B. Seriously: always have a plan B. Actually we have a plan B and a plan C, either of which will protect our schedule - we just need to decide which is the more palatable because they both have some downsides: either through higher costs or by reducing our planned insulation levels (which may be a bit OTT anyway). In summary, Plan B - get the plasterers to fit insulated plasterboard; Plan C skip the additional roof insulation and let the u-value for that element increase from 0.09 to 0.152. The latter of course still satisfies building regs and has a surprisingly small impact on heating requirements according to the Build Hub heat loss spreadie. Conversations with our architect and SAP man next week to help decide. Watch this space for further updates. Overall though, we both feel the we have made the right decision, and usually in these situations the danger is 'going with the flow' when the flow is really drift. And finally For the eagle-eyed amongst you who spotted that some plasterboard has magically appeared in the plant room... Have the plasterers started already? No - they don't start until after 1st fix, of course, but the plant room presents a 1st fix v plasterboard conundrum - so who did we manage to rope in for some impromptu 'boarding out'? Why, none other than Mrs P! Seen here in action: Great job Mrs P. - good to see you wearing the Benpointer team hoodie! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this week: 15 (I'm not counting Mrs P!) Contractor days on site since build start: 264 Budget: No change. Plan: Still on track to move in by Easter 2026. Issues and worries closed this week: Worries about the ceiling insulation crew's ability to keep to the schedule. Current top issues and worries: Replanning the approach to ceiling insulation. Plan B or plan C?

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.