Iceverge

That's a tiny hole. Literally cup full of sand and cement will have it filled. There'll be about 4 table spoons of moisture in there

I think more modern cars can adjust the revs for electrical load. I could be wrong however. I imagine even 200W is probably on the high side. A really good engine might be above 40% minus all the losses associated with pumping fuel, cooling etc. So a realistic number might be 30%. Similarly an alternator is problem 60% at best. Then add the efficiency of the inverter at 85%. So even if the car is only burning 0.5L/HR of diesel (0.55kWh) then I'd be surprised if 100W of that was ending up as electricity. Still though if it keeps the WiFi on any price is worth paying.

Also from a thermals perspective I would add EPS to the exterior of the frames sandwiched between the external leaf and the frame.

Window bolted to the external leaf and resting on the concrete window sill. The windows is set behind the external leaf. OSB is to close the cavity, and provide Airtightness. It's a completely independent box to the window. Just joined by AT tape. It's foamed and AT painted to the inner leaf and the cavity is completely filled with EPS blown beads. I would alter the method I use the next time by screwing J beads to the windows. Do you have any pics of the openings as they are today?

Not an actual wet room, just the bathroom floor. I'll have to go to the shed to find the adhesive. It was some magic stuff from Poland from memory. I used tanking paint over the floor first and then SLC over that . I second the need to have the floor immaculate though. I left a grain of dirt under one of the tiles and you can feel it with your toes. On a separate note take a day off. Get ugly with everyone about the moving date and push it back. I gave myself the world of stress with this, baby enroute etc. Absolutely not worth it. It's only a house.

It's probably twice the price of doing it with one layer of battens.

In other news I also bought a 3000w pure sine wave inverter. I plan on connecting it to my Mrs car battery and hooking the house up to that. A 140Amp alternator at 14V is about 2kW should be plenty for a borehole pump, MVHR, fridge, lights, TV etc. I trialed something similar with a cheap square wave inverter a few years ago but it made the LED bulbs in the house go bananas.

I bought a Keystart loncin 8000 about a year ago. Haven't had cause to use it yet but in a trial it boiled kettles etc just fine. I started it after dry 9 months of no use a week ago to see if it would still operate and it fired straight up on 12 month old petrol. The one tip the man in the shop gave me was to not switch it off with the ignition but rather close the fuel tap on the tank, and let the carburettor run completely dry.

Make a DIY airtighess fan. You can troubleshoot at your leisure then as doing it on the day with the man with the fan won't give you enough time. I found loads of pinhole leaks on ours that were quickly solved with a dab of sealant.

I don't know.

We counter battened. I like that it pinches the membrane continuously along the line of the rafters (or trusses) and gives it much more strength. I think a layer of even 9mm OSB sarking would be nice in hindsight as the membrane does flap a small bit in windy weather. Interestingly I don't know if this would happen without the counter battens.

I don't mind it. Like I say I used a couple of buckets of I think the Soudal stuff during our build. It's massive cheaper than any of the fancy tapes that stick to masonry. It can be used to do the back of wall chases etc too. Unlike other airtight measures it's forgiving to sloppyness, and the more you slather on the better. I use it to paint the windows externally too to keep them windtight. With some Illbruck FM330 and some airtight paint over the top you can work wonders. Joining irregular block reveals to the OSB for example. We blew 0.31ACH by the way.

From experience the easiest and most robust way to make stuff airtight is to use tape to a solid non dusty surface like OSB or plastic. Membranes are pretty easy too so long as you take care with them and they're cheap. I designed out as many penetrations as possible in ours. The paints are messy and don't stick as well as the tapes in my experience. However they are good for irregular surfaces like blocks. It will need priming with a dilute coat first for concrete. I applied it neat and it pealed off too easily. Parge coats are easy but labour intensive and don't deal with junctions. Airtight sealant is amazing stuff but my god is it messy sticky and impossible to clean. Airtight foam like FM330 is fine but quickly gets expensive and again requires lots of trimming and mess. If I had a choice I would opt for Tapes, OSB and membranes and avoid anything liquid/parge/foam altogether.

OSB is much more expensive than a membrane. If using a blown in cellulose then you can't check to see if all bays are fully filled like you can with a membrane. On the other hand OSB is far tougher. And less lightly to be punctured by wayward workers. 18mm OSB is normally airtight although I would be confident in high quality 11mm stuff too. Crappy cheap OSB might not be ok.

Stone came to my mind too. Not particularly modern either, even by @SteamyTeas scale.

Despite being aware of the risks of straw bales I'm not opposed to anyone doing whatever suits them. It's a free(ish) country. But to knowingly allow someone to make a potentially ruinous mistake when they asked for opinions and help would play on my conscience.

I've nothing against straw bales. I spend much of my youth forking them out for bedding, just that they're never the best material to build a house from. We used to have great fun building "houses" in the fields out of them until someone decided we were old enough to pike them onto the trailer or drive the tractor. However they're very inconsistent in length. Up to 300mm variation in length depending on how much of a lump goes through the baler and gets included in that bale. Similarly they can vary massively in moisture and density simply based on the corner of the field they were harvested from and if the sun was shining when the tractor went past. These issues are worse with crops from Ayr (200km by road @saveasteading) and other wet climates like Ireland. Straw will be damper, greener and more prone to fungal diseases than drier areas like east Anglia, continental Europe and the great plains. Small squares are becoming increasingly rare too and largely cater for the horsey market so they'll be trickier to source and you will pay double the rate I do for animal bedding in large squares or rounds. Then you'll need somewhere to store them in the dry when they're delivered with access for a telehandler or tractor with a specialised grab. Otherwise you'll be lifting them by hand with associated risks of injury and falling and added waiting time for the truck. They'll have to be laid in the dry and covered immediately at any hint of rain or otherwise they'll grow! None of this adds to a cheap build. Then the practicalities of building with them. They'll need a metal mesh in the external render to keep birds, mice and espically rats out of your walls. Insects will be trickier and constant repair of the render for the lifetime of the house will be a reality to keep wasps, bees and woodlice at bay. Rendering will be multiple more consuming of time than a standard wall and use much dearer materials and more of them too. Bales are naturally compressible and the building will move throughout it's life and you'll have jamming windows and doors and extra cracks opening up allowing air to leak through the structure with the associated impacts on comfort energy efficiency and building durability. Then there's the insulative quality of them. They're about 0.05-0.07W/mK depending on what way you lay them. About half as good as already very cheap mineral wool or EPS or blown cellulose. https://permies.com/t/113626/Straw-Bale-Don The first post I found on Google tells a lot.

Don't miss the opportunity to install an airtighess barrier first. Then run 20*70 mm strapping underneath for a service cavity in what ever direction you fancy. The 70mm width gives you a better chance to hit roof joists and is less lightly to split than thinner timber. Then you can run your wires without any faffing in the attic and penetrating the airtighess layer. The then the plasterboard. More is better for sound protection.

How about some thick underlay, carpet and lino and forget channelling the floor at all?

Straw bales are fine for a fun project in the right climate and you don't care about it as a long term venture. Try to make a durable house from straw bales and it quickly becomes apparent that they're only useful as an insulation and even then they're full of compromises. Something like blown in cellulose or even chopped straw will be miles better.

I just did the floor.

Square stick down tiles. I wouldn't use the click together floating ones as I'd be afraid of water getting under them.

What exactly is the concrete doing other than making a surface than is less lightly to be disturbed during floor laying. Another no concrete idea is to opt for an Adobe floor. Stones. Insulation. DPM. Compacted earth. Linseed varnish. Take off your stilettos before entering and you're done.

Having used amtico in the bathrooms I'd have no issue using it in a wet room. I can't see how it would be less effective than tiles. I'm dreading the day we have to remove ours. Whatever glue they gave us is tough stuff. I also despise hard tiles floors from a comfort and safety perspective.

Yes but there would be issues. The structure it would normally need some buttressing from inside with other walls. These would make a very large thermal bridge to be dealt with. Fixing through the battens into the wall and PIR would need very long screws, maybe 250mm. These would quickly get very expensive. Cavity blocks can be hit and miss to fix to as they're quite thin by concrete standards. You wouldn't save any money on blocks as standard solid blocks are about half the price of cavity blocks. Like @joe90 we did a block+ EPS beads insulation+block+wet plaster wall after considering loads of methods. It was by far the cheapest in 2019. Time over again I would stick build a timber frame on site and put a layer of blocks on the outside I think. Sole plate damage is typical of poor detailing which TF is intolerant of. Done properly it can last indefinitely though.