Iceverge

The old Holloway house is my favorite. I really like it. If you're aiming to emulate the same feel I think your design is over glazed to the north. The old Holloway is much more biased towards southern light making it feel very unexposed but it might not suit your site. Have you any idea how you'll build? 350mm may be ok. A 220mm stud with a 63mm service cavity would be about that. Blown insulation ideally. I really like the wobbly metal too. 150mm is good for internal walls. On the layout maybe make the small beds a touch bigger. The kitchen+living a touch smaller and th utility a bit bigger too. Over all very good though.

You could consider parging behind them too just in case you ever need to airtight the garage .

If you were to accurately account for man hours true renovations to a modern standard are rarely worth it vs the cost of rebuild. If you're not pushed about how far you improve it then obviously there's savings to be made. Much better plan to use a breather membrane than netting. No wicking if heat through the insulation then. I would lay T&G chipboard atop the joists. Foam glue all the joints and use a good quality expanding foam like FM330 at the perimeter of each room to seal them to the wall for an airtight floor. Draft sealing is the biggest cheapest win. Get some forced ventilation going too. A PIV or a central extract even would be fine to keep the place fresh and dry. Regarding windows I'm a big fan of quality white PVC 3g. Veka 72 in our house and I wouldn't swap them for equifilu timber or metal windows even if they weren't twice the price.

Caution with flue liners. A house near me sadly burnt down when an uninsulated liner happened to sit against a timber build into the chimney. When I did my parents house there was space to shove an insulated twinwall SS liner up the chimney from the bottom.

Congrats, Pics always welcome. As ever my advice is simple. Knock it down and rebuild.

Depending on how you source firewood I reckon it's anything up to 22p/kWh delivered energy to the room. At least double gas price is safe to say. If you really don't give a shite you can buy a tonne of coal for £440 for 8000kWh of energy in the shed. (It'll be less heat delivered by the time you in fumigate your self and the neighbours) It's about the same price as gas. An A2A ASHP unit with a COP of 3 is amazingly the same price too. TLDR. Bought firewood is expensive. Coal, gas and ASHP are about the same price.

I don't think there'll need to be a ban ultimately. Most people don't care less what makes the wheels turn so long as it works and it's not too dear. The shift to EVs will only accelerate as good used models get cheaper and petrol stations close due lack of custom.

There's rads there already I think. One thing that doesn't get mentioned much is plinth heaters. You could get the cosy toes feeling without all the pipes etc. Has anyone used one?

Wouldn't bother with UFH to be honest, insulation will be the biggest gain for comfort. A warm surface covering and you'll be barefoot happy. Based on say 15mm adhesive + tiles I'd imagine about 75mm is your limit for total floor thickness. For me I'd do 3mm LVT 2mm adhesive 11mm OSB 11mm OSB 25mm EPS 200. DPM 25mm EPS 200 Float the OSB on the EPS, glue and screw all sheets with wood glue and 20mm screws. Allow a little bit at the edge for expansion. Sandwich the DPM between the EPS layers to protect it. Stagger all joints in the EPS too. You could use PIR but I don't trust it as much not to crumble after a few years. Espically at the edges of sheets. Use some filler in any small gaps and sand the top layer of OSB if needed to get it perfectly flat. Glue down some LVT tiles. U Value about 0.6W/m2K before you take any of the ground resistance into account which is very worthwhile.

Ah, that explains it.

That's super toasty but yes you do get used to it. Why was it so hot, i was of the impression you resided somewhere in the far North. Surely evening and night time temps were more tepid than that?

You've lost me.....

Good passive design should be always considered. Houses are woefully under engineered given the masses of human knowledge we have accumulated. Omitting active climate control at either end of the scale however will result in uncomfortable temperatures. Coupled with other heat limiting measures like shading, appropriate glazing, decrement delay, cross ventilation, stack cooling, and insulation I think A/C is still an acceptable compromise in NW European climates.

pun intended? !!!

I think people would be worried about the unfamiliarity of it because we're all somewhat cavemanish when it comes to our houses. Mind you a few weeks of no sleep in 30deg bedrooms in conventionally heated houses this year might broaden people's imaginations.

After feeding the AI a little and trying to decipher the nonsense I've concluded that the risk presented by rain, wind and cold are lightly to be about 6% worse than normal. Something like 1997/98 for where i live. Making long range weather forecasts from climate changes is like predicting the exact path of the ball for 90mins from just studying the team sheets before kickoff. Most lightly a waste of time.

Back to OP's original q. We didn't install any heating but relied on a plug in radiator for a couple of years until the electricity price rocketed, enter stage left the Daikin FTXM25R. A2A is a wondrous thing, cheap to install, cheap to run and simple to use. Heating and cooling and it cannot leak as there's no water. We have one in the downstairs hallway, nothing else, give it long enough to run and it'll keep the house ( passive class) appropriately toasty. (Bathrooms need a small boost with a fan heater for comfort. One worry I'd have is that it wouldn't cool the upstairs as much as cool air tends to sink and warm air rises but I've never had cause to try. Sensibly sized bedroom windows, all rooms with cross ventilation and the south of Ireland doesn't suffer England type nighttime temps. In your situation and wanting to allay fears of future saleability I'd do UFH with cooling throughout as mentioned earlier. If it were me I'd do a 70mm duct and a fused spur in a hallway upstairs and downstairs and move in and install A2A as an when you felt it necessary and spend the saved cash on the fabric of the building.

No, the laptop fan is ten times noisier.

Spending too much of my life in hotels with work I've completely abandoned the USB sockets in the wall in favour of my own charger. They are always very very slow and sometime give up the ghost altogether.

240w, goodness.

Does USB C charge faster than the old ones? I have a multiple outlet charger and maybe its my imagination but I think it does*. *No science applied here,I'm guesstimating.

That lead to yet another amusing and informative visit to urbandictionary.com

That's very tight to get insulation in there but anything would be a great improvement to prevent condensation etc. How many mm do you have to play with, it looks to be only about 15mm? I would get Marmox board and shim it level and screw it to the brick reveal, holding it back 5mm from the window frame. Squirt behind it with FM330 or other low expansion, airtight expanding foam. Then use a white acoustic/airtight sealant to seal the 5mm gap between the marmox and the window frame. The room side of the Marmox can be taped to the PIR. 3MM Gypsum skim over the marmox then. Consider adding some kind of check strap or other stopper to the window sash to stop it hitting the reveal and cracking it afterwards.

Insulation going in there? Looks like an opportunity pour in some EPS beads.

No, just a self builder. You *might* get away with PIR but low permability materials used like this are very intolerant of errors in workmanship. Let us know if you every have a look behind it.