Jeremy Harris

I found her channel when I was looking around at 3D printers, as she has some useful stuff on 3D printing, like this (you will need to sign in to Youtube to view it):

TBH, Ian, I sort of cheated. I just grabbed the data for the CO2 equivalent for charging an EV from here: http://www.carbon-calculator.org.uk/ which is a useful site, as it has typical CO2 figures for just about everything. The house CO2 figure came from our SAP chit, which gives an annual CO2 "production" of -0.9 tonnes. That's probably slightly wrong, now, as the grid has become less CO2 intensive in the years since that was done, and the current version of SAP has different emission factors than the version I used when our house was signed off.

Naomi Wu's channel is pretty interesting, if you can ignore the stuff where she 3D prints skimpy items of clothing and talks about her implants. She did a video with the South African guy, Winston, who's channel focusses on living in China as a Westerner that was fun.

Just done some estimates to compare our house CO2 with my car CO2. The house is -0.9 CO2 tonnes/year, and if I assumed that the car was always charged from the grid then my ~6,000 miles per year would generate about 0.7 tonnes CO2/year. In reality, roughly 50% of the car charging comes from the house PV system, so the car is probably responsible for about 0.35 tonnes CO2/year. So, for us, the house PV system effectively sequesters more CO2 than the house total energy consumption and car total energy consumption combined. It looks like the CO2 total from our energy usage for transport, heating, lighting, cooling entertainment etc comes to around -0.55 tonnes CO2/year, so we're helping a little bit to offset someone else's CO2 generation.

I think it's worth looking at whether this is good value or not. I suspect it's not. We fitted a Vaillant combi at our old house, probably in around 2006 or thereabouts. We had major problems with the thing for the first year, which turned out to be installation related. After that it was pretty reliable. The diverter valve failed after about 6 years or so, but was replaced for around £130. Services tended to be around £70 to £80, but included a safety check on the gas cooker and gas fire. We didn't get it serviced every year, probably every two or three years or so. I think the secret is finding a good local plumber who doesn't charge an arm and a leg. We found one when we were having problems following the installation (the installers were complete numpties) and as his prices were OK and his service good we stuck with him. At a guess I'd say that over the 12 to 13 years we ran that boiler it probably cost us around £40 a year in maintenance and repairs. Not a lot really, and significantly better than paying BG £250 a year.

Our old system was dead easy to top up the inhibitor, via the mag filter. I used to just fill the filter chamber up with neat inhibitor after cleaning it. Not sure what the concentration was, but as it was a closed and pressurised system I reckoned a filter full should have been enough to keep it working OK. The mag filter was dead easy to clean, too, just close the two isolating valves, stick a bowl underneath to catch any spillage and whip it off for a clean.

It'll just be down to the difference in the restriction between the two sides. I think ours has about a 9% correction via the extract and supply fan speed adjustments. To minimise this difference the duct system really needs to be designed so that the total air flow resistance of each side is exactly equal, but this is pretty difficult to do in practice, as it's unlikely that duct lengths, number of bends etc will be that well matched, plus there will normally be more supply terminals than extract terminals, so the extract side often needs to work a bit harder to provide balanced airflow on both sides.

That duct is smooth inside, looks like the same stuff we used. It has a smooth white internal liner with a corrugated external surface. It's a popular choice because it's relatively easy to install. Here's a photo of the stuff (what look like internal ridges are a trick of the light): https://cvcdirect.myshopify.com/collections/75mm-radial-duct/products/semi-rigid-ducting-75o-d-blue

We have a mix of two different styles of terminal. Doesn't affect the way the system works in any way. I used directional terminals where I needed to fit them to a wall, so the louvres could be pointed to direct air upwards towards the vaulted ceiling. The ones I used for wall mounting were these: https://cvcdirect.myshopify.com/collections/ceiling-valves/products/turn-airvalve-125mm

There's only one interpretation of the regulations, and that is that any gas appliance must be installed and maintained by a competent person. It may be offence for anyone that's not competent to install, modify, maintain or adjust any gas appliance, within the bounds of the aspects of that appliance that fall within the regulations. In general terms, the regulations cover all of the gas pipe work, connections, valves etc that are not intended to be touched by the user, plus the flue, air vent, combustion controls and all electrical or electronic components associated with safe operation of the appliance etc (it's an offence, for example, to change the circuit board, or any sensor that controls the combustion process yourself). You can usually maintain the non-gas or combustion parts of an installation yourself, so things like water circulating pumps, filters, radiator valves etc. At a push you might still be alright re-charging a PV, or perhaps replacing one. On the electrical side I think that wiring up an appliance is OK (but is covered by BS7671 anyway), as is wiring up controls like room thermostats or a programmer.

Not sure how you can do this legally. It's an offence for anyone who isn't a recognised competent person to connect, maintain, adjust etc any gas appliance. Doesn't matter if it's LPG or mains gas, the same regulations apply. As well as breaking the law by DIY'ing a gas installation, I strongly suspect that there may be insurance implications in the event of a fault that causes a claim. If there was an accident and someone was injured then prosecution would be inevitable, I'm sure. Although both gas and electrical installations must comply with regulations, failing to get an electrical installation inspected and tested is just a breach of regulations that rarely causes a criminal prosecution. Failing to get a gas installation properly installed, inspected and tested is almost certainly a criminal offence, specifically a breach of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/2451/made

I'm not sure that all people working in the boiler servicing industry can be just lumped together in this way. IIRC, I paid about £70 to get our boiler and heating system serviced, and that included safety checks on the gas cooker and a gas open flame fire. The chap took around 2 hours to do the work, including cleaning the mag filter and adding inhibitor, so it wasn't outrageously expensive, especially in the context of certifying that the items were safe.

Servicing is probably a bit inaccurate, as the two key aspects are making sure the boiler is still safe (emissions from boilers and explosions caused by them do still kill people every year) and making sure that the hydronic stuff is all OK (inhibitor has a finite life, corrosion products build up in the filter and need cleaning out, PVs need checking, etc). Most of the time a modern gas boiler won't need anything doing to it, but as CO has no odour, and can build up to lethal levels undetected (unless the house has a CO alarm) then ensuring that the boiler is still burning cleanly, and that all the covers are still properly sealed, is a useful safety check. I used to clean out the filter on our old CH system every year, and add a bit of neat inhibitor into the empty filter housing when replacing it. Every time I did this the magnet in the filter came out covered in black crud. Leaving this to circulate or settle in the base of radiators would eventually cause blockages, hence the need to clean the stuff out regularly and make sure the filter carries on working.

Just checked the .dxf that I downloaded from the OS when putting our application together. The base unit is metres, with grid squares annotated in metres. Selecting any entity on the map gives it's dimensions and location relative to the grid in metres.

When we put our old house on the market, I had the boiler and heating system serviced first (knew we'd get asked about it by the solicitor, anyway). That was in July. The chap that came out said he was really surprised to be asked to service a system in mid-summer, as everyone usually waited until the system failed to work when they turned it on in the autumn before calling him out. The service was cheaper, too, as they were offering a 20% summer discount.

My experience was that SSE here normally fit a standard meter that has a built in isolator, but the E7 meters they fit don't have this feature, so having your own switched fuse makes a lot of sense if you are ever thinking of having E7 in the future.

I've found that zoning doesn't really work effectively in our house, so I have all our UFH zones running as if they were just a single zone. The whole lot is controlled with a simple room thermostat in the hall, plus a simple programmer that is set to turn the whole system on or off. Seems to work OK, and is easy to use, as the controls are simple (I like simple...).

If you get the OS digital map as a CAD file, then you can produce any scale you need, as it's in vector format. IIRC, I just downloaded the map in .dxf format and opened it in AutoCad, then edited it to show the sections I needed, at the scales asked for.

IIRC, I had to buy a licence from the OS so that I could download all the map sections needed, at various scales. I don't think it was that expensive, and they had the option of being able to download the maps in CAD format, so they could be easily manipulated for everything from planning to producing site plans. The only stipulation was that I had to add the licence number to every plan I produced that used the OS data set.

I think it may depend on where you live, so worth checking. Here, when we bought our plot we didn't have to pay stamp duty, and until the house was built and almost finished we didn't have to pay council tax either. I was threatened with having to pay council tax at 150%, as a second home, shortly after we were issued with a completion certificate, but I provided evidence to the local authority that we were self-builders, that our existing home was on the market, and that our intention was that our self-build would be come our principal residence. They gave us a 6 month period of grace before they would start to charge us council tax at 150% on the new build. I had the impression that they would have been OK to extend this period of grace if we had trouble selling our old house, subject to us providing them with evidence.

I'm on our parish council, and one of those who always refers to our place as "the eco house" is a fellow councillor...

Welcome. I went out of my way to try and ignore anything badged "eco", really on a point of principle, as it's become a bit of a marketing term that means little in terms of how any product performs, what it's whole life impact on the environment is etc. Unfortunately there are some people in our village that refer to our house as "the eco house", just because it's a fairly airtight and well-insulated house that needs little energy to heat, and it annoys the living daylights out of me. What we built was a low energy house, that has a relatively low level of embodied energy in it's construction, and which is a net CO2 sink, rather than source, over the course of a year. Because of the particular incentives that were on offer at the time we built it, we have no energy bills, no water bill and no sewerage charge, so the running costs are just council tax and insurance. We also made a point of not including anything that would impact on air quality, so we have no appliances that burn fuels. The latter is pretty critical living where we do, near the bottom of a deep valley, as we get severe, and pretty toxic, winter air pollution from those that insist on burning wood. We designed our house in 2012, and since then things have moved on a bit, so there is now a greater choice of build methods, energy conservation measures, etc available. It's also far more common to build to the sort of energy performance level that we built to now. We've learned a lot about how a passive house behaves, and some of the key things that have a significant impact on comfort, and there are definitely one or two things that I'd change if we ever decided to build again (which I doubt we will).

No, I had three quotes for a passive slab foundation system, one from Isoquick, one from Kore and one from Supergrund. The spread of prices between the three was around £500 either side of £10k. Our plot price was discounted because there was no mains water or drainage accessible for a reasonable price. Mains water was going to cost around £24k, mains drainage around £14k, plus the cost of a pump station. Both would have entailed digging up the lane and preventing access to three or four houses for a time, which may well have incurred additional cost. What's the cost of your block and beam, floor insulation, finished floor screed and ground floor heating system, as we can just add that to the costs you've given for the footings and compare on a like-for-like basis?

When comparing foundations it's well worth comparing on a like for like basis, though. For example, our "foundations" also cost around £10k, however, included in that was: - 200mm of compacted stone, blinded and levelled with ~50mm of grit - 300mm of under floor insulation - 200mm of peripheral insulation - DPM - Steel reinforced concrete ring beam and slab - underfloor heating pipes - power floated finished internal floor, ready to lay flooring To compare our foundation system with a block an beam system the cost of the floor beams and block, insulation, screed and ground floor heating system would need to be included. I suspect that the cost difference between the two may not be that great if a proper comparison was undertaken.

Ours beeps sometimes when you're wiping it down, due to the "something being on the sensor field" issue. It's a minor nuisance, but I'd guess that any touch sensitive hob is probably going to be similar. It doesn't deactivate when in use, though, and it also doesn't seem to get that hot at the surface when in use.