Jeremy Harris

No reason you couldn't do it yourself, as long as you have the drawings. Our SE produced drawings, calcs, a steel list and bending schedule as a part of the package for our big (~2.5m high x ~ 35 m long) retaining wall. The total cost was £360 inc VAT.

Yes, all ours came up vertically through the insulation. Under our 300mm insulation layer there is 150mm of type 3 stone, with the bottom of the service trenches being around another half metre or so below that, so the bends are all below the stone layer.

I found that the 100mm and 50mm duct just naturally adopted a bend radius that was fine for pulling big cable (25mm² three core SWA) and MDPE water pipe through. Bearing in mind the depth these ducts need to be, there is quite a bit of room to accommodate a gentle bend before they come up vertically through the insulation and slab. I was surprised at how easy it was to pull the heavy SWA through, the biggest problem (because I was working on my own for that bit) was the weight of the cable, and going from pushing at one end to pulling at the other to get it through. With two people this would have been a lot easier; one to pull and the other to guide the cable in from the roll at the other end. The same applies to getting MDPE pipe in, it would have been a lot easier with two people.

It is a shame, but it's no good trying to pretend that some architects aren't that interested in one-off, mid-budget, self builds. Quite apart from anything else, I doubt this is a sufficiently large market sector to build a profitable business from. A total of thirteen architects have been to look at our build, not quite sure why, I can only assume that there's a forum or Facebook group for architects where it got a mention. Out of those thirteen, two were people I could have worked with, one had a commercial practice and wanted to use the integrated design and systems approach he used in commercial architecture to the design of dwellings, the other was a local architect with a particular interest in low energy homes (and had I met her when I was looking around I'd have used her practice, I'm sure). The remainder were a bit of an odd mix, but had one common feature; they just had no real understanding of why a low energy home has to be designed from the ground up with energy conservation as the primary influence on every decision process. Some reminded me of one of the architects I originally approached, who suggested we shouldn't have East and West gable windows on the first floor, but should fit four large roof lights in the South facing roof...........................

Pretty much all of the moisture in the slab will be incorporated into the curing concrete after about 4 to 6 weeks, so fitting the kitchen 5 to 6 months later will be fine. I fitted our kitchen around 5 months after the slab was poured, and by then the slab was bone dry.

I do think there is often a problem in finding a good architect, though. I intended to use one, but my initial experience of approaching four local practices was extremely disheartening. I think one issue is that there aren't that many architects working in the one-off, non-mega-home, sector, as far as I can see. A look around locally at planning applications seems to show that the majority of one-off new builds are draw up by architectural technicians. I can understand why this is, as with the high cost of plots, together with the higher cost of building a one-off home, there really isn't much cash left, if the build cost is going to stay under the sale value. Our house cost around £320k, including the land, and was valued at £340k. The build cost was around £220k, so with an architect on 10% we would have paid more to build the house than it was worth.

That opens up another, rather devious, possibility. As long as development has commenced, which would be getting the pre-commencement conditions signed off plus some ground works, as agreed with the planners, then there is no time limit, as far as I know, for completion. In theory, you could build one, or two, of the houses and never get around to building the last one, I think. I'm not at all sure what, if anything, the planners could do about it.

That price seems reasonable and yes, it should be zero rated for a new build, as it's supply and fit. Our PV supplier wasn't aware that new builds should be zero rated, so as well as send them a chit with the planning details etc on, I also emailed them links to the HMRC guidance.

Yes, there is. The head is a standard threaded fit on the valve, so a pulse width modulation capable electrothermal actuator could be fitted, connected to a suitable controller that senses the flow manifold temperature. Our manifold already has a deep internal pocket screwed into the flow end, so fitting a sensor inside it would be easy enough. I did think about doing this, but then decided that I didn't want to have something non-standard. Although, thinking about it, as some electrothermal actuators are designed to work from a pulse width modulated control signal, there may well be an off-the-shelf controller available.

Sadly I was the one that managed it's closure, and the move to Porton Down of the remaining staff and labs, around 8 years ago now, as a part of the rationalisation of defence research to two main locations. I'm not sure what's happened to the site since then, though. The private company, Qinetic Ltd, still owned a fair bit of the site, not sure how profitable it was.

It's next door to a friend of mines parents old house, in Dracaena Avenue, which at one time was the local boy racer hot spot (lads trying to see how many multiples of the 30mph speed limit they could hit - one managed a claimed 5 times the speed limited on a Z1000 before getting stopped at Penryn Bridge...............). The drive is steep, but not excessively so.

We have a similar minimum housing density here, and I've not seen anyone manage to change things to allow a smaller number of houses built on a plot, only the other way around, where developers often seem to get PP for the smaller number of houses then put in another application to increase the density, on the basis that the principle of development has already been approved. One option may be to see if the planner would consider a voluntary Section 106 contribution, to "buy off" the reduction in density. Depending on how they are doing with respect to their 5 year allocation, they may be amenable to a contribution. They won't suggest this, so it's something you'd have to raise, and I would take advice from a good planning consultant as to whether it's likely to succeed before doing anything.

Interesting to see that Gold Hill, Shaftesbury (just a few miles from us) was a contender, most probably because of the old Hovis ad: but it's "only" about 16 deg, whereas Wych Road is over 17 deg and the steepest, Vale Street, is 22 deg. Gold Hill is a bit of a nightmare, as it's cobbled, so traction isn't great. It's also often teeming with tourists, even all these years after the Hovis ad has stopped being shown.

This was my favourite "office" at work: It had that very unique DeHavilland smell, a mix of leather, oil and just a whiff of AvGas. It also had proper opening DV windows of a decent size, to allow one to deposit one's cigar ash out of the window in flight (sadly, DeHavilland didn't fit cockpit ashtrays, unlike the Jetstream that we had after we sold the Devons..................).

If you can get one of the ones with a 20 deg C to 35 deg C range then I would definitely say that's a better bet. I have to run ours right on the very edge of it's control range to get a 25 deg C flow, and it's very close to the point where it starts to hunt around a bit, rather than regulate well. I'm planning to change mine before the next heating season, as I'd like to hold the flow at around 24 deg C if I can.

I'd really like to have a go at building something like that railway. Having a plot with a slope like that would be all the excuse I'd need...............

Both are OK; EPS has been used for several decades underground and as foundations for things like railway lines crossing bogs, so has a longer track record of use under these conditions, but that's largely down to it being a material that's been around longer, I think. Both EPS and XPS can allow moisture to penetrate under some conditions, but not enough to degrade performance to any significant degree. It's really six of one and half a dozen of the other, in practical terms.

It may well have been more cost effective to fit a lift at the front, rather than create a path up a series of hairpin bends. Here in England that access wouldn't appear to comply with Part M, as the gradient exceeds the max allowable for wheelchair/disabled access, unless there is access from the rear that is on less of a gradient.

First off, you don't get any Permitted Development rights until after the house is complete, if it's a new build. This means that technically you can't even put a shed in the garden until the house is complete, although in practice planners will often turn a blind eye to something that would have been PD post-completion. After the new build is completed, and assuming that PD rights haven't been rescinded as a part of the planning approval, you can erect outbuildings, and then extend them, as long as they stay within the PD rules with regard to height, area, distance from a boundary etc.

Councils are indeed funny about this stuff. We're outside the village Conservation Area (CA), but because we are within 100m of a listed building we had to comply with slightly more onerous requirements than we would have had we been inside the CA. I'm still not really sure why this bit of the village is outside the CA boundary, given it contains one of the two listed buildings in the village (the other being half a mile away from the CA).

I'm not sure how labour rates compare, as generally rates here tend to be a bit on the high side, but we paid the guys the equivalent of about £160 a day each, plus a day of labourer's time shifting boards into each room. A fair bit of time is spent mixing batches of plaster, which is something a reasonably competent labourer should be able to do, although it needs to be done with care; our guys were very fussy about the way the plaster was mixed, and did it themselves.

They were fast workers, Nick, and the two of them barely stopped all day. They started around 08:00 and worked right through to about 16:00 each day, then cleaned up and went home. I don't think I saw either of them stop for more than a 15 minute break. Thinking back, the labour was a bit less for the skimming, as on the last day one of the guys couldn't work, as he'd broken his wrist playing football the evening before, so the skimming was really about 9 man days in total, perhaps around 7 man days more than filling and sanding.

I don't have the labour broken out separately for skimming our place, but I know that the two guys took two 2 weeks (10 working days) to do the whole job, boarding and skimming. Our job was a bit awkward, because of the need to work up on the platform in the hall and the whole first floor ceiling (the ceilings up there are around 3.7m high). Labour was £3200 for the whole job, and skimming took around 5 days (10 man-days). Filling and sanding joints would have probably taken around a day, so it's reasonable to guess that skimming added around 8 man-days of labour to the whole job. IIRC, the total internal wall and ceiling area was around 480m2, which makes the labour cost for skimming around £2.70/m2. I can't remember the cost of the plaster, but it wasn't massive. Our skim is around 3mm thick.

My other half walks around in bare feet, as did my brother's partner last weekend, and both say that the travertine stone we have laid directly on to the slab feels fine. Our heating hasn't been on at all for at least a week, and I've just pointed the IR thermometer at a bit of floor on the North side (that gets no sun) and the surface is at 21.7 deg C. The room temperature at the moment is 21.8 deg C, so pretty close to the floor temperature.

This depends on the temperature differential and the amount of heat the UFH is delivering. This house is like mine, same builder, same sort of heating requirement per m². There's one place on the floor surface where I can spot with a thermal camera or IR thermometer that the temperature is around 1/2 to 1 deg C warmer when the heating is on, and that's in the doorway to the utility room, where all the UFH pipes run through to the rest of the house. You can't tell by walking on the floor in bare feet that this area is any warmer at all. There is a significant difference between an UFH heating system like this that is delivering around 5 to 10 W/m² and a typical UFH heating system that may be delivering 50 W/m² or more.