Iceverge

I think 3 x bathrooms is fine. You could segregate the shower + Lav in a small room off one of the bathrooms if you want to get more utility. Re trees, agree completely. Plant fast (10 years), medium (20 years) and long growing species concurrently and hack them down at appropriate intervals before they get too large. With this I've narrowed it down to elbow space as the only real requirement. 1100mm for me. We have 2 x 1400x900mm showers. One with the shower on the short side, one on the long. Worlds apart in terms of comfort. A 900mm corner shower is fine if you can stand in the diagonal. Completely agree, we have a dressing room style bench for boots underneath and hooks on the wall in our utility adjacent the front door. Beside it are pigeonholes for shoes. It is about 3m wide. It should have been 10m. Every outdoor coat gets hung up. Schoolbags similarly. I was determined to not be a Nazi "shoes off house" but yet because the floors are warm everyone naturally dumps their shoes. You need storage here for EVERY shoe and coat in the house IMO. A proper area for indoor drying of cloths + bedsheets etc is very handy. I'm typing beside a banister covered in various drying garments as we speak. A pull up rack of maybe 6m2 would have been excellent. A vaulted ceiling over the entrance might be a good option to avoid the dead end cupboard. I don't know your position re kids, but I wish we could have built a carport avoid the rain when bringing kids into and out of the car. Good on you for sharing. Gives us something to keep the mind active on a Sunday.

You probably don't need anything. A permeable ground membrane of some type to stop weeds and gravel over it to protect. I'd probably dig some kind of shallow drain around the edge to make sure water can't pool anywhere underneath.

I'm a little lost here. As an EU customer of a UK item that is £1000 inc VAT and shipping how much do I pay as an end user in Ireland. VAT here is 23% Pre Brexit I could pay the UK seller £1000 and it would arrive at my door.

That's the exact situation we're in. Soil stack vent to atmosphere by the garage . AAV Internally. UVC to Tunsish to HEPVO to soil stack.

I'm enjoying this iterative process. @tuftythesquirrel is there an option to have the UVC on an external wall and run the discharge pipe directly through the wall as per red line. Alternatively have the discharge to an external vented stack. Wall as per red line. Would the HepVo not prevent any backflow just forcing any steam to bubble out the sewer?

@MK_Anthony I assume it's the urban soundscape of MK that's causing the issues. Those sliding sash windows are probably the main culprits. Secondary glazing would be a good improvement. Other than than the ceilings are lightly not great. I suspect 12.5mm plasterboard with lots of holes for light fittings etc and a lightweight glass wool over the top. If you can have a look in the attic and see what's in there. If you could just loose lay and drop say a 15mm layer of plasterboard on top of the current plasterboard and then 300mm of rockwool you'd have a good improvement. Top it off with some acoustic sealant to any and every hole in the ceiling.

Would this not already have been taken care of by a tundish?

What is the reason for it needing to be fully ventilated? I can't see any practical benefit.

Blown mineral wool, closed cell foam or maybe even poured in vermiculite are alternatives that wouldn't have the plasticiser issue. I know of a house that had cables in the cavity so the EPS bead installer wouldn't pump it. It was done with what looks like open cell foam. It completely crumbles to dust when you pinch it. However has made the house much warmer and AFAIK no issues with the electrics so far.

It's working, or rather not working the other way around too. Several smaller UK companies I've asked for quotes have been unable to ship to Ireland without UK VAT as the paperwork isn't worth their time . The resulting double VAT makes items too expensive usually. @Tom, perhaps contacting a local haulage firm might be the way to go, a neighbour brought several pallets of Spanish slate back here on an empty return trip of a cattle lorry if all things a few years back very reasonably.

It's just some rebar and concrete. I can't see where the cost goes. How much are catnics for interest? You could pour your own concrete ones in situ. Use an appropriate dye match local stone. Should be a 2 minute job for the the engineer to calculate.

Can you not buy precast lintels off the shelf in the UK? They're ubiquitous and really cheap here. One for the internal leaf and one for the external. Anything that needs to take more load gets an RSJ.

Farko?

No reason it couldn't be done but you'll need conventional shuttering pans I would have thought. You could forgo the OSB. Shuttering concrete is very fast. I had an agri job done last year. 117m2 in 3 days. No openings in that however.

Coast = Windy = Airtightness+windtightness as #1 priority. Have you considered closed cell foam in the cavity and maybe a battened service cavity inside or insulated plasterboard. Don't forget airtightness needs to go with ventilation, mechanical preferably.

One advantage of a supply and extract in the same room is that you don't need a door undercut for crossflow which may help with noise between rooms. I put a supply in the hall just outside the kitchen door like @Jeremy Harris to keep smells in there and also as I had a spare slot in the manifold. I read over windows is a good location for terminals as they're unlightly to get blocked by high furniture. I think there's many ways to skin the cat in reality. The only thing that I've noticed is there's one just above our sofa if it's shoved in the wrong corner of the sitting room. It can be a tiny bit chilly then.

Have you considered EWI as you are rendering anyway? No loss of internal space either. £30/m2 would buy about 200mm of EPS Which would probably boost you to about 0.13 W/M2K.

Kooltherm is very dear compared to alternatives. At your thickness it's £33.91m2 70mm Knauf omnifit + plasterboard is about €13/m2 50mm PIR + plasterboard is similarly about £13.50/m2. All have similar U values. If it was me, I'd have a good look at the state of the cavity insulation as is. It mightn't be as bad as you think. Then probably 70mm mineral wool between battens and plasterboard or.... 40mm/50mm PIR foamed and taped at the joints and then 22mm battens for a service cavity and then plasterboard and skim.

@JackofAll Have a look at these posts. See if it makes more sence?

Sorry for the late reply. Just saw this. Built the two leafs individually here. 150mm setback lateral for the inner leaf laterally (for splayed reveals) and about 25mm vertically. Fitted the Windows to the outer leaf resting on Killeshal type "H" precast window sills with concrete screws and brackets. There was about 20mm window bearing on the sill and 60mm floating over the cavity. Then made self supportive window boxes from the inside out from 18mm OSB. Just pushed against the inside edge of the window and concrete screwed to the internal skin. The window doesn't bear on the OSB and the OSB doesn't bear on the window. Then used plenty of airtight tape to join the OSB to the window and airtight paint to join the OSB to the inner leaf. I'm not sure I'd do it this way again. It took ages to make the OSB although it didn't get exposed to rain throughout. Probably better to make up the window boxes first. And use external galvanized brackets on the corners. That way they would be strong enough to hold the Windows. Also they measured the windows in the conventional way. IE exactly the same or a little smaller than the external opening. As we built the inner leaf bigger I wanted the external leaf to overlap by 20mm but this didn't happen. Compriband would be what I'd use next time too for a good external Windtight layer. If you use an @ before my username it will alert me next time by the way.

Oak effect click down LVT here. I think it is quick step by another name. Easy to lay ( once your floor is dead smooth) Hides dirt tremendously. That floor is filthy!! It has certainly reduced visits to the first aid kit for small kids. It's warm underfoot even with UFH. Be cautious of floating it however. I did over 12m stretch maximum length. I left the reccomended length for expansion but it became trapped by furniture and bulges a little in the direct sunlight. I think that's due to using a thin underlay which slows the soaking of heat into the floor and heats the LVT more. Smaller areas I used it without underlay I had no problems. 2 years in and it's proving hard wearing.

There's an Irish forum with a building section and it's almost useless because there's a few die hards on there ( including mods) who constantly reply "that's a question for your architect/engineer"etc. Unfortunately this fear of litigation stifles debate and imagination and drives both professionals and DIYers off the site.

Yikes no insulation! Anything will be a big help. I would avoid any tiles as they'll be very uncomfortable. @Garald That product looks like LVT although some of it is organic but a glance on the website didn't seem to expand much on that. My granny has vinyl tiles that are probably there since the 1960's. I have no experience of oak in person.

I use one of these. Additionally I use it for anything that requires good eye protection. Every other set of goggles that seal around your eyes for angle grinding etc fog up. It is a bit sweaty however.

LVT here. Its relatively grippy, plates usually survive a fall, it's warm underfoot. Tiles are too hard, too slippery, too cold and too dangerous IMO.