Jeremy Harris

I think you've hit the nail fairly and squarely on the head here. I'm probably one of those who have raised expectation levels, as one of the first here to use MBC (there were actually two of us that were first, but Greg doesn't seem to have followed us over from Ebuild). Anyone that's read our blog will have read that I was very impressed with the effort taken to get the foundation base and slab dead level and flat, and will also have read about the savings we then had as a consequence of that, everything from using far less plasterboard because the walls and ceilings were all dead square, to using far less tile adhesive because the slab was so flat and level. This was down to the expertise of the key guys, I know. We had Brendan full time on our build, and he is fanatical about getting things right. I remember asking him why they were taking so much time to get the grit blinding dead level and flat before putting down the slab insulation, and him saying that they'd learned that time spent getting this flat and level was time saved when they came to stand the frame up and get that level and square. Training new people takes time, and the best guys cannot be on every build all the time, so I guess it is just "growing pains", as skills are built up to the "Brendan level".

Most of the time the DHW won't need anything like 15 kWh. You can work out how much by using the rough rule of thumb that a decent shower will use around 3 kWh at most, more probably around 2.5 kWh. A bath would be around the same. Baths and showers are the two biggest users of DHW, so work out how many of those you will have a day, then add on around another couple of kWh fo washing up, hand washing etc (again, probably a worst case) and that should give you a rough idea of the true DHW energy requirement.

IIRC, the last immersion thermostat I replaced was around half the length of the immersion heater element, so 270mm sounds about right. That was a long time ago, though, probably well over 20 years ago now.

To heat 250 litres of water from 8 deg C (typical cold main temperature) to 60 deg C (typical DHW temperature - could be higher or lower by 5 deg or so) then this is the calculation: First you need to know the heat capacity of water, which is about 4181 J.K.l, or around 1.161389 Wh.K.l Next calculate the temperature change which in this case is 60 - 8 = 52 K Now multiply the volume, 250 l, by the temperature change, 52 K and the heat capacity of water: 250 x 52 x 1.161389 = 15,098 Wh, or around 15 kWh. Bear in mind that this is the worst case, most of the time the tank will never get to the cold water temperature, and so will be heating from a higher starting temperature, as it's unlikely that it will be completely drained of DHW very often.

Yes, the standard cells use the PCM 58 material, which runs at around 58 deg C, the newer material is PCM 34, that runs at around 34 deg C, and is better suited to UFH. The Sunamp PV uses the PCM 58 material, AFAIK, hence the earlier comments about it not being best suited for use with UFH. One option that I may well consider in future is to replace our buffer tank with a Sunamp Stack fitted with PCM 34 cells. That would be charged via the ASHP and provide both DHW preheat and UFH buffering. The big advantage is that I could get around 3 times the thermal storage capacity in the existing space, which would be a very useful benefit.

Indeed you can, and in winter even a very small bit of excess generation will all go to heating the water if it needs it, irrespective of the storage device temperature.

As @Nickfromwales said, any one of the online calculators will give a reasonable estimate of the output. PVGIS is my preferred one, as it seems to be within about 5% of our actual output, which seems pretty accurate. Bear in mind that you will get loads more energy than you can use in summer and very little energy at all for maybe three or four months in winter - that's just the nature of the UK climate.

Our tiler spent around 40 minutes or so trying to find the highest point on the continuously tiled area to use as the starting point. The idea was he would work from there, and if any areas were beyond the tolerance he could take up with adhesive then some levelling compound would be use to bring them up to within tiling tolerance. We were lucky, our slab was dead flat, so flat that we had loads of tile adhesive left over (around eight, 20kg bags, IIRC). I think that the adhesive can make up for something like a 6mm discrepancy, any more than that and you need to level things out first. @Nickfromwales is the guru, though, and will correct me if I've got this wrong.

We have 6.25kWp of PV on a single phase supply OK, and I have two electric car chargers on the same supply (one 7 kW one, one 3.5 kW one that's upgradeable to 7 kW). No problem with the DNO at all, although I did need to get permission from the DNO for the G59 PV connection. No cost associated with this at the time, just a form to fill in. The DNO had already verbally confirmed that they were OK with up to 10 kWp generation on a single phase if we wanted it.

That seems pretty typical, I think. Almost all the objections in the chequered planning history of our plot were invalid. They ranged from expressions of concern that the someone's pumped sewerage system would become less reliable (when we were over 100m away and proposing to fit a treatment plant, and that had always been the case, right from the very first application) to overlooking someone's back garden around 60m away and across the other side of a lane. There were lots of objections relating to the site being developed purely for profit, which may have been the case for the original land owner, but isn't a valid planning concern. I think people get very emotive when it comes to objecting to nearby developments, and the majority of objectors don't take the time to read up on planning policy and what might be valid reasons for objection. The only valid objection regarding our plot was concern about the highways safety of the originally proposed entrance. It was a daft idea for whoever put in the first proposal to place the entrance in a potentially dangerous, and impractical, location, but that was sorted out during the consultation phase by the highways officer, so by the time we bought the plot the highways issue had been resolved.

Well worth doing, as in my experience a withdrawn objection is often perceived as tacit support. However, the fact that the objection was based on the objectors relationship with the previous owner suggests that it would not have been a valid planning objection anyway, so should have been ignored.

It varies a bit from one LA to another, although the basic guidance to all LAs is the same, as to whether a group will be allowed to speak in a meeting, and there may be some discretion from the chairperson. Here they are not allowed to at all - I've been in a meeting where a group was physically expelled for trying to do so. As for addressing any committee member about the application AFTER it has been notified as going to the committee, then it is not allowed, and may well be considered to be a serious failure to comply with the rules of impartiality. The general principle is that any constituent can approach a councillor about a planning matter, before the application is formally referred to the planning committee. Once that has happened, any constituent can still approach a councillor who is not a member of the planning committee to discuss the matter, but they must not approach a councillor who is actively considering the application except under controlled conditions where impartiality can be assured. Failure to observe this protocol is grounds for appeal on the basis of a failure of process, and does happen. The rules are in place to try to ensure that, once the planning committee are notified of an application that is going before them, they are duty bound to ensure that they allot exactly the same amount of time to hearing arguments in support of the application as they do to hearing arguments against the application. This is all defined in legislation, although there are often cases where elected councillors ride roughshod over the law, for a host of reasons, ranging from ignorance to personal interest. I can give an example where the regulations were breached for our own application, albeit at the pre-decision stage, where the application was still out for consultation. Our plot had a chequered planning history, several refusals and an approval that was only obtained after appeal, with strict conditions. There were many objections locally. We didn't want to build what had been approved, so submitted a new application, anticipating a great deal of hassle. The first hurdle was the Parish Council, that had raised 14 points of objection to the previous application that got through at appeal. I spoke to the Parish Clerk, who warned me in words of one syllable that I was not permitted to utter a single word at the Parish Council meeting, as I was not a resident of the Parish and had no right to speak at all. When our application came up, we were the only members of the public in the village hall. I had prepared a scale model of our proposal, and was allowed to place it on the committee table. The hearing of our application started with the chairman reading out the five previous applications, their reasons for refusal, and the last application where they Parish Council had raised 14 objections. He read out each of these objections in turn. At this point he was interrupted by a rather forceful lady councillor, who asked if the model on the table was the proposal. The Parish Clerk confirmed it was, whereupon the lady looked closely at it, then looked out at us and asked if we were the applicants. I said that I was afraid I was not permitted to talk to her, as it was against the rules. The Parish Clerk read out the bit of regulation that confirmed this. The lady councillor then made some sort of exclamation, said she thought this was ridiculous and was going to ask us some questions anyway, and how dare anyone try to stop her. There followed an interesting discussion, which ended with the lady saying she could see no reason to object and she asked the chairman to record a recommendation that there were no objections. Another councillor tried to speak, and the lady then said something like "Well, none of you object, do you?". whereupon there was a quick vote resulting in a unanimous decision that there would be no objection. It was one of the funniest things I've seen happen, and was completely against the rules, but as none of the potential objectors in the village were present to see it they got away with it!

If the planning officers report is recommending approval, then pick out all the planning policies and guidance that it references and use them to reinforce the points that you make during your three minutes of fame. In general, planning officer reports will consist of a sort of "question and response" format, when it comes to recommendations with regard to policy and guidance. They may say something like, "planning policy XYZ states that development should not be permitted if conditions ABC apply, but in this case, those conditions do not apply for the following reasons XXXXXXXXXXXXX". If you can pull out those elements, and amplify the positive aspects, and make it clear that there is no basis in policy to refuse your application on that aspect, and repeat that through all the key points that the planning officer has made, that will help. In theory, all the planning committee members should have read the planning officers recommendation before the meeting. In practice you will find that many of them haven't bothered to, I expect. It does no harm to reiterate the reasons why they cannot refuse your application, based on any specific planning policy point, if you have the time to do so.

Not normally. The majority of local authorities have a strict policy whereby planning committee members are not permitted to speak with applicants or objectors at site visits. Here that rule is very rigidly enforced, with someone from the planning office being present top ensure that no words are exchanged between either applicant or objectors to any planning committee members. Things can get a bit heated at times!

Probably cheaper, and very definitely a great deal easier, to fit in-roof flashing units and just slot the panels in to them. They are much easier to install than rails and frames to fix the panels too, won't need bolts that have to be sealed through an EPDM membrane, fix directly to tile battens with normal membrane underneath and make for a very neat installation. The two biggest manufacturers are Easy Roof and GSE Integration, both French (because of French regulations on fitting panels). Here are the links: http://en.irfts.com/easy-roof-evolution/ http://www.gseintegration.com/en/inroof.html

I guess you may know some of this stuff, but the basic rule is that you, and anyone that you can persuade to stand and speak on behalf of your development, will each get EXACTLY three minutes to state your case to the committee (and my experience is that they time it with a stop watch and just turn your mic off at the 3 minute point). The decision is supposed to be wholly based around showing that the proposal does not contravene any planning policy or guidance, and, in theory, there is a presumption that all applications should be approved unless they can be proved to contravene policy or guidance. However, as you can imagine, 99% of objectors know little about this, and so will waffle on about stuff that has no bearing at all on planning................ If you feel up to speaking on your own behalf, then I would very strongly suggest that you do, rather than get someone else to do it for you, and practice to get as much into your three minutes as possible. Stressing that you wish to build your own home, that you are not a developer and then going on to show how the proposal complies with all planning policies and guidance, together with some little emotive points (in our case promising to plant some cherry trees to replace old ones that were planted as a part of the Coronation celebrations in the village, and were at the end of their life) may well get the committee on side. Avoid trying to address negative comments made by objectors that are not valid planning considerations - they are a waste of your time, and the planning officer should pick those up when briefing the committee, anyway. It helps if you can get a copy of the planning officers report to the committee well in advance. If he/she is recommending refusal, then look at the reasons and consider withdrawing the application, addressing the reasons and resubmitting - it's free. Finally, check how many supporters you can ask to speak on your behalf, and get hold of some, brief them carefully and make sure they are registered as speakers - this is important, as the committee will have a tight timetable and will often only allow registered speakers to present an argument. If you feel that you may be on dodgy ground with regard to complying with planning policy or guidance, consider getting a planning consultant as one of the speakers. They are often very good at making a case, but be aware that this is a double edged sword. The committee may well have seen this particular planning officer many times before, and so may take less heed of what they say!

I would start will all ducts/valves about half way open. There is a lot of interaction when adjusting rates - as you close one valve to reduce the rate the flow rate at all other terminals on that run will start to increase. This makes the process a bit of a pain, as you end up adjusting every room several times. I started with the kitchen, as that had the highest flow rate requirement, and so would tend to cause the least upset to other rooms. I also did all the extract rooms first, as building regs only really stipulates extract rates for individual rooms. The individual room extract rates in the regs are actually the maximum figures the system needs to provide, not the background figures, so turn the MVHR up to boost for these initial room settings. Once you have at least 13l/s from the kitchen, next move to the bathrooms and utility room, and adjust those to get at least 8l/s. Then do the WCs, and adjust for 6l/s. After doing this, go around again and check that you still have at least these rates from each of the extracts - some will have changed because of the adjustments throwing off the main plenum pressure. You will probably have too high a flow rate everywhere, so I would advice opening up the valve to increase the flow rates whilst keeping them in proportion with the regs requirement for each designated extract room (kitchen, bathrooms, utility room, WCs). If you have fitted the toilet smell extractor system I came up with, then just ignore the flow from that - it isn't officially part of the ventilation requirement. Once you have the system extract rates looking in proportion at boost (and bear in mind that they will probably be way over the requirement at this stage) then start measuring the fresh air inlets, also on boost (doing it this way will highlight the main duct loss differences). Adjust these to achieve two objectives. You want the sum of the fresh air flow to be as close as possible to the sum of the extract air flow, plus you want to adjust the fresh air flow so that the most frequently used rooms have the higher flow rates. There is nothing in the regs about fresh air flow rates, so use your own judgement here. For example, you will want the largest and most often used rooms to have the highest flow rates, the smallest and least often used rooms to have the lowest flow rates. The main thing is to adjust the fresh air total flow to match, as closely as possible to the extract total flow. After doing this, go around again and check all the extract flow rates. The chances are they may have changed, and if so then adjust them to make sure they all exceed the building regs limit and match the fresh air feeds. Then go back and double check the fresh air feeds, these may need slight adjustment to get the system balanced at boost. The chances are that you will find at this stage that the system is pretty close to being balanced. Next, reduce the MVHR to the background ventilation rate setting (this is specified as speed 2 on our system, but see my note later). Go around as before and measure the flow rate on all the extract terminals and note the total extract flow rate (the sum of the flow rates from all the terminals). Do the same for the fresh air feed terminals. The total figures for each should match. If they don't, then adjust only the fresh air feed flow rates to get them to match, do not adjust the extract rates. Note the total extract flow rate with the MVHR system on the background ventilation setting and make sure that it exceeds the continuous ventilation rate requirement in Part F, which is calculated from the house total floor area (the total must exceed 0.3l/s per m² of net internal floor area for the whole house). With luck you should find that the ventilation rate exceeds this figure with ease. If it doesn't, then go back to the start, turn the MVHR to boost and go around opening up all the extract ducts, starting with the kitchen, (this is why I said at the start it was a good idea to open up all the extract ducts to maintain the ratio and exceed the building regs extract figure), then go though the process again. Once you have the system so that it meets the building regs Part F Table 5.1a max extract rates from the specified rooms, and is in balance at the background ventilation rate of 0.3l/s/m² of floor area, the job is done. However, you may well find that the background ventilation rate is too high in practice, and that as a consequence the MVHR is using more power than it needs to in order to keep the air in the house fresh. Our experience is that turning down the background ventilation rate has had no detrimental impact at all, so I now run ours at speed 1, with the fan speeds around 25% of full speed. It's worth noting that some MVHR units have the option of being able to individually adjust the extract and fresh air fan speeds independently in the set up menu. This is useful for fine tuning, but is detrimental to efficiency if used as a shortcut way to try and balance the system. I have our system set to 28% extract and 25% fresh air fan speeds, to fine tune it, but would suggest that anything more than a 5% difference really needs to be adjusted out in the ducting/terminals if possible.

One major problem with a wood burner is finding one small enough. Some people that came to look at our build had completed a passive house and fitted the smallest room-sealed wood burner they could find, one intended originally for use on narrow boats, I believe. The lit it for the first time at Christmas, when they had a family gathering. Within an hour the living room was well over 30 deg C and they had to open all the windows. The room continued to remain hot so they had to abandon it, leaving the windows open and retire to another room. They couldn't get back in the living room until the next day, when it had cooled down enough to be bearable. When I last spoke to the lady she was in the process of sealing off the wood burner flue and underfloor air feed duct and fitting an LCD screen inside it to make it look as if it was working. I did a few quick sums for her, and on the day in question her living room would have needed around 300W to maintain 21 deg C. There were four people in the room, that would have provided around the 300W needed, and the small stove was rated at 3 kW. So, when they lit it, they were putting in around 10 times more heat than the room needed, potentially enough to heat the room to a very high temperature had they not opened the windows (it could have probably got to around 50 to 60 deg C I think). I agree with the comments above. Our Sunamp PV is charged by excess solar generation around 70% or more of the time, but I have a two hour timed boost that comes on at 4 am, to make sure that it is fully charged first thing in the morning, no matter what the PV output was like the day before. The cost of doing this is small, especially if you're on an E7 tariff. Likewise, you can boost the Sunamp at any time using a boost timer, just like an immersion, if need be.

IIRC, wool insulation is supposed to be fitted within an insect-proof barrier, not left exposed where moths can lay eggs on it, so the defect seems to be more one of poor installation than a defect in the product. We looked at this before choosing pumped cellulose, because there is is potentially a similar vermin problem, even though most pumped cellulose is borax treated. I concluded that as the cellulose was sealed tight inside the structure, and as I spent a day going around the outside of the frame sealing up even the very smallest of openings with low expansion foam, and making sure that the breather membrane was very tightly secured everywhere, there was no way for anything to get at the cellulose itself, so there was no problem. We've had mice nesting inside open fibreglass insulation in the loft of the old house, as there was nothing covering it up, so once they got into the loft then they could nest in it to their hearts content. The fix for that was to seal up all the holes under the tiles around the eaves and fix soffit vents with grills to keep the little blighters out. I suspect that any insulation material that is left exposed would end up being a home for some creature or other. The key is to make sure the creatures can't get to it. Keeping moths out doesn't seem to be a major problem, I'd have thought,

The two small solar powered fan vents I fitted to my boat worked pretty well when she was moored or ashore, and not in use. They weren't horrendously expensive, and were easy enough to fit. The only snag is that they won't work if you keep your boat under a cover when out of the water. You could probably rig up a cheap solar panel and fan to work as a winter ventilation system.

We're very happy with bonded-down bamboo, plus a big rug under the bed. I hate fitted carpets with a vengeance, and the combination of very hard bamboo, that makes cleaning easy around the edge of the room, plus a rug to give a nice bit of comfort, seems a good compromise. I'd go with bonded, over floating, installation every time, BTW, because it makes the floor quieter and much more solid feeling.

If you can get a DC operated one that's cheap enough to try, then it might be worth a go. Having good ventilation whilst reducing heat loss should help reduce the condensation. You may even be able to build one. @SteamyTea built a heat exchanger a while ago that worked fairly well, and 12 or 24 V DC fans are cheap and easy to get hold of (computer cooling fans are often 12V). The advantage of a DIY unit (apart from cost saving) is that you could shape it to fit in an awkward space, something that might be useful for a boat, where space is always at a premium. You'll need to arrange a condensate drain, I'm sure, as the chances are that the heat exchanger will end up operating well below dew point a fair bit of the time, so if you can position it high enough in the boat to have a gravity drain to an existing seacock, then that may be useful.

I've had a set of these for around 20 years or so now: http://eumro.co.uk/drill-stops.aspx although I bought mine in the US, as they weren't available here at the time. When I built an all-alloy, riveted together, aeroplane a few years ago I drilled around 16,000, mainly 3.2mm, holes using stops like these, as the last thing you need when drilling rivet holes in aeroplane parts is to accidentally drill through another critical part.

What's the primary objective for fitting this to the boat? My experience over the years has been that there are three main problems inside boats. They get too hot in summer, too cold in winter and are more or less constantly damp inside. You may not have the first problem, being where you are! Condensation has always been the most annoying thing on every boat with a cabin I've owned, and is even the most annoying thing on the open inland waterways boat, with canopy and sleeping "tent" I currently own. The cold I could always cope with, although I will admit to a few nights on board were a bit of warmth wouldn;t have gone amiss. Overheating, especially when cooking or brewing tea invariably seems to go hand in hand with condensation. So, what are the priorities? - Less heat loss? - Less condensation? - Less over heating? It may be that an MVHR type system could help, but it could also be that you might be better looking at other approaches. A friend (who has the luxury of shore power where he's moored) runs a small dehumidifier in the boat when it's alongside, and that makes a very big difference, with the effect lasting for several days at sea afterwards. My last yacht had two solar powered ventilation fans fitted in the coachroof, one right forward, over the loo compartment, the other over the galley area. They worked pretty well at keeping the boat dry-ish inside when it was moored up, but weren't at all effective at sea. I had the use of a boat with a small charcoal stove for heating once, and that was brilliant for both keeping the boat warm and dry, as the charcoal didn't introduce moisture the way a gas heater does. When it comes right down to basics, the very best modification I ever made to my old yacht was to build an old-fashioned dorade box on the foredeck, fitted with a removable, and rotatable, ventilation "elbow" (it was modified 160mm drain pipe bend..........). This was unplugged and a blanking plug fitted when the boat was moored up, but when out sailing the vent could be rotated to blow fresh air in, whilst the dorade box kept even pretty heavy water out.

There's no easy way to fit panels over an untiled area, unless you use an in-roof kit. I guess you could faff around and lay something like an EPDM section, suitably flashed to the tiles all around, where the panel mounting frames are going to be bolted down, but frankly it would be a lot easier to just fit in-roof kits, as they are dead easy and quick to install, and are probably cheaper than either tiling underneath or fitting some sort of waterproof membrane. Having seen the mess nesting pigeons can make under on-roof panels, I don't think I'd want to consider fitting them unless I had no choice.