Jeremy Harris

Ours is behind a partition wall in one of the bathrooms, but can be accessed by crawling along the eaves space. You can get access doors to inset into a wall for things like this, too.

It's listed on Amazon, here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/COMPUTHERM-Q3RF-Wireless-Room-Thermostat/dp/B00SI2XDSI

Already done, I have half a dozen boards already stacked up against the North wall of the house, left over from when we did the cladding. They weren't specifically put there for this - it's a happy coincidence that it was a convenient place to stack them...

I'm still working on it, in slow time as our priority is selling the old house right now. I believe that fitting a washable pre-filter where it's easily accessible may well reduce the amount of crud that builds up in the G7 filter. These G7 pollen filters are expensive, so anything that extends their life has to be a good thing. I'm working on lowering our intake from just under the eaves down the outside of the house to a box that will house a water to air duct cooler as well as a washable foam pre-filter. For us this is easy and out of sight, as the intake is on the North wall, in the alleyway between the house and the big retaining wall, so having a boxed duct running down the wall isn't going to be an eyesore.

The single biggest cause of self-build problems that get expressed on this forum are due to lack of daily, competent, oversight. It's easy to assume that a builder, frame supplier, sub-contractor, even an employed project manager, or architect taking on a project management role, will have the total and absolute control that is essential if errors are to be caught early or even prevented altogether. The very first lesson I learned was that I needed to be on site very regularly, ideally daily, even if only for an hour or so, just to make sure things were on track and everyone clearly understood what was going where. Stay off site for a couple of days and you can be pretty damned sure that something will go awry.

As a bit of additional info, I believe that @PeterStarck may have a low level external vent, and as his build is also a PassivHaus, he may well be able to confirm that external vents are acceptable when used i conjunction with an AAV on top of an internal soil stack.

You are far from being alone! We encountered much the same, from architects to builders, and found it extremely frustrating. It seems that there is a general reluctance in the domestic sector of the building industry to change from doing things the way they've done them for decades, even if what they've been doing for decades is building crap!

We have an internal stack with an AAV on top. No problem at all with the BCO, he just wanted a diagram showing what I planned to do and an assurance that the AAV could be easily accessed if it needed replacement. The diagram I sent him was this one: Elevation - Section showing foul drain stack - A4.pdf In addition, you have to ensure that the external foul drain is vented, in our case that's via the treatment plant, but a low level vent, perhaps hidden in a hedge or flower bed, is acceptable. Low level vents were (probably still are) commonplace in cities and towns, as well as on top of old septic tanks, and they rarely cause any problems. Arranging the soil vent like this avoids the significant thermal bridge that a through the roof, or out the wall, vent pipe would present you with.

Definitely has no understanding at all of how a raft on EPS foundation works. Might be an idea to let the SE have a copy of this Kore report: http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Kore-Insulated-Foundations-Report.pdf

Me neither. Our frame erection included all internal and external walls, floor joists and first floor flooring, plus roof sarking boards, membrane and slate battens. Took 4 1/2 days start to finish.

You need to have long flexible pipes between the ASHP and the house wall, if it's going to be located fairly close to the house, but those flexible pipes need to bend around in a loop so they don't transmit vibration into the house structure (I found this out the hard way and had to replace mine). This means you have some leeway when it comes to positioning pipes, and you could always run short length of insulated rigid pipe along the outside of the wall to get the terminations for the long flexible pipes in the right place. There's a bit in our blog about the need for long flexible pipes for the ASHP, part way down this entry: http://www.mayfly.eu/2014/07/part-thirty-one-its-slow-going-on-your-own/

I fitted out ASHP flow and return pipes after the house insulation was blown in. Not a significant problem or hard to do. I made a special very long (around 400mm) 6mm drill to drill a pilot hole right through the wall and insulation from the inside, sloping slightly down towards the outside. I then used a 25mm hole saw to cut holes either side, through the panels. To make a hole through the insulation I made a gadget from a bit of 25mm conduit with a conical end fitted to it that I turned up from a bit of ABS rod, but a bit of suitable dowel with a point carved on the end would do. I then wiggled this tool through from the inside and it pushed aside the insulation. The tricky bit was trying to get it to line up with the hole on the other side, but with perseverance I got through OK. I them just ran 22mm copper pipes through the holes, sealing either side with sealant. On the outside the pipe insulation is tight against the wall and glued in place with some sealant, after I'd made all the connections. You could put conduits through the wall ready for the pipes, but you would have to be confident that you knew where to put them - I hadn't a clue, as at that stage I'd not bought the ASHP and didn't know where it was going exactly anyway. If putting conduit in the walls then I don't think you need to make them as large as 50mm, a bit of 32mm waste pipe would probably be fine. To temporarily fill and insulate it, put a plastic bag inside the duct, spray some water into it, then squirt in some expanding foam (the water will ensure it cures inside the sealed bag). That should give you a tight fitting insulated plug that can be pulled out when you want to fit the pipes, as there will be the plastic bag between the foam and the duct, to stop it sticking. After fitting the ASHP pipes you can use expanding foam to insulate around them in the ducts.

We used the Kytun aluminium dry verge. Should work fine with slates nailed direct to sarking, I think: http://www.kytun.com/c/slate-dry-verge-system/7

Might well work OK, especially with the tank underground, as it will itself be cooled down to around 8 or 9 deg C by the surrounding ground.

What reason has he given for not accepting EPS under a slab? It's very widely used in the UK, and all over Europe, so there has to be a specific concern he has that relates to your particular set of circumstances. It can't be waterlogging, as EPS has been used for decades in waterlogged foundation conditions. Perhaps it's to do with load spreading through the underlying blinding? Until he says exactly what his specific concern is it's hard to try and come up with an alternative suggestion.

We've been looking at the bamboo shower mats. Not very expensive and have the advantage of raising your feet above the slight puddle in the tray. Our intention is to fit it at the "dry" end of the shower.

From what I can gather that's pretty much the case in RoI now, they've tightened up their regs a lot, primarily because there were thousands of really crap houses built during the boom years, some of which are having to be demolished they are that bad.

Back when he built his granite thermal store I think the Radon risk was not yet widely known or understood. I do remember back in the early 70's borrowing a Geiger–Müller counter from work and taking it back home to Cornwall one weekend and seeing how active some of the granite outcrops on Porkellis Moor (behind where my mother then lived) were and being surprised to find readings that were well in excess of 10,000 cps, far higher than we would have accepted for any contamination in the lab at work.

The Sunamp already carries a CE mark, so all that's needed is an approved installer. I can't think that Brexit will change anything technical, as we will still be CE marking stuff, just as countries all over the world do if they wish to sell into the EU.

The electrician is required to have access to a copy of the current regs, in this case BS7671:2017 Amendment 2. After next January it will have to be to BS7671:2018. It's not optional, in order to trade as an electrician he HAS to be up to date on the applicable regs.

Looks very much like a solution looking for a non-existent problem, to me! The only uses I can think for it would be in shared student accommodation, or in workplaces with shared tea/coffee making facilities, as a way of finding out who's nicking someone else's milk from the fridge...

Sunamp can train an installer pretty quickly, might be worth seeing if you can persuade a local plumber/heating engineer to go on a Sunamp training course. Perhaps talk to Sunamp about whether or not they would offer training in RoI? It really isn't at all difficult to install a Sunamp; Sunamp even allowed me to do my own install after I'd had a long chat with their technical chap and read through the installation instructions. They were content that I was competent to undertake an installation based on that. The sticking point may be if there is some for of government registration required in RoI, or whether it's just approval by the manufacturer.

Advice from our agent was to just clean and de-clutter, but not bother with replacing anything, as the chances are that any buyer would want to do their own thing anyway. That's been borne out by our experience of the 16 people who have viewed our place so far, three of whom made offers (we're still negotiating). All said the same thing, they would want to decide themselves what to fit and were pleased we'd not made any attempt to tart things up, but just shown everything as-is, albeit nice and clean and tidy. I'm not convinced fitting a cheap kitchen to make it look more up to date would cover even the cost of the most basic kitchen available in terms of increasing the sale price. Most people will see a cheap kitchen for what it is and budget to rip it out and replace it, which seems a heck of a waste to me, and not great for the environment, either.

Sounds like a very neat solution to making insulated tanks. I'll be very interested in the performance, as a couple of years or so ago I read of a similar store that was built using a cylindrical tank that ran up the centre of the building, with the stair case wrapped around it. Sadly I can't remember where I read about it; may have been in the Passive House magazine. On a vaguely related topic, many years ago a friend (who, it has to be said, is slightly more eccentric than I am...) converted an old chapel into a house. He built a hollow insulated blockwork square section "tower" in the centre of the chapel and filled it with large granite rocks that he collected from the beach, one by one in the back of his 2CV. In between the rocks he laid resistive heating elements stripped from old storage heaters (together with the iron blocks), modified to run from a low voltage supply. He used a home made wind turbine to "charge" this big thermal store, and had ducts with low voltage fans and shutters that led from the store to each heated room. The system worked very well, although he was in a good position for getting a reasonable amount of wind power, on top of a hill in South West Cornwall. By a very weird coincidence my great grandfather had been the minister at that chapel around 1900, and my great aunt was born in the house alongside.

Just as a guide, this photo was taken at about 08:30 on day one of our build, as the timber frame arrived on the truck: This photo was taken on the same day at around 16:30: After three blokes, plus a crane a driver, working flat out for around 8 hours the whole ground floor frame was up, almost all the internal stud walls were up and they were getting ready to start putting in the first floor joists.