Iceverge

What was the reason for removing the upstand? What harm was it doing?

If you can get some guidance about ridge height and any overlooking concerns they might have. It'll make your designers job easier.

Keep them! Anything newer will require Bletchley Park codebreaking skills to turn on and off. I have actually given up on some of these newer heaters. Impossible to decipher. If you're looking at anything cheaper to run you'll need a heat pump. This will use about 1/5 of the electricity but needs a professional install really and space for the outdoor unit. It something like this for about £700 and it'll use about 1/3 to 1/2 of the electricity but is easier to install.

It's really not a fun place to be. I can only empathize. Don't worry you're getting a hold of the builder earlier rather than later. It'll come around if you keep at it.

Here's where doctors ( even complete amateurs) differ and patients die! A couple of things. 1. Won't the best daylight be wasted on the utility and plant? 2. The only TV option would be in the living room. 3. The hallway feels a little pinched maybe and would it annoy whoever was cooking if the main thoroughfare ran though their work area?

Handy that. With an attitude like that I suspect they will walk as soon as you make an issue of it. Most lightly sequence of events. 1. You raise the point. 2. They deny. 3. You show them and they sulk and say "it's fine" happens all the time, everyone else it wrong, engineer, architect, planner etc etc etc. Nobody will notice and you should carry on. 4. You ask they put it right. 5. They eventually say they will after much hassling. 6. Nobody want's to undo work so it'll get shoved to the bottom of the list. 7. They get busy with other jobs and get harder to reach. 8. The stop answering the phone and you're left with a half built wonky extension, half their gear left in your garden. Dare I say it, did you pick the cheapest quote?

A fine example of "an education bought" and all that. Maybe someone could make a tv show. "The petty landgrabs of Suburbia"

I'm assuming there is a healthy budget. I'm guessing the floor area is about 180m2 so £600k? Overall I really like the design. A couple of points. Most already mentioned. 1. Bin the chimney. Internal air quality for your son would be my big motivator. 2. Consider the corner windows and if they're worth the compromise. It'll need a lot of steel as you've made one of the strongest parts of the house quite weak. They're difficult to get right thermally. Lots of the wonderful thermal benefits of something like a twinwall timberframe get thrown out the window when you resort to covering a Square hollow steels with narrow finger of PIR. 3. The sticky out window is another expense that reduces thermal performance in my opinion. Also it's more lightly to leak. 4. Triangular windows aren't my thing, but that's a opinion. 5. I like the half hipped roof but check for headroom. 6. The huge south facing windows will be too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter and need lots of steel reinforcement. I would break it up into 2 x french doors or similar. 7. I like the lean-to porch with the hole in the wall gable. However the rendered area above the pitched roof will be an area I would worry about the weather long-term. If not weather then, lots of staining and algee with the trees. Why not just take the tiled roof to the apex (aesthetics allowing) ? 8. The chimney is taking up area of your wardrobe. I'd get rid. Also there's no natural light in the ensuite. 9. No window in the downstairs bath? 10. Kitchen/Dining overglazed. 11. Mystery corner of walls in the kitchen? 12. The study corner window would be better as 2 separate windows IMO. 13. Move the door from the hall to north end of the utility somewhere. It'll give you some more useable floor area and make the utility a "walk through" rather than "dead end". The "dead end aspect is a recipe for clutter. Overall I do like the building though. Lots of good stuff. Keep us updated.

You could take out 10 buckets a day, after work. For the next 10 years. Hose pipe a pick and a shovel. No reason it wouldn't work that I can see.

Have the W/C as a separate internal room to the bathroom. Close both doors for sound privacy. In fact, I'd put a W/C and shower in there. Often all you need to do is brush your teeth in the basin but the whole room is occupied because someone is recreating the entire works of Michael Jackson under the shower head.

As an off the wall idea you could use a precast box culvert turned on its side. Either dig a hole and drop it into it or....... And I like this idea.... Lay it the ground and start digging the soil out from around it, gradually allowing it to sink into the earth until the desired level is reached. Using the culvert as a trench box shutter should be pretty safe too. Pour a concrete floor with a sump and pump and you're done.

The decor in the room looks just fine ATM. It'd be a shame to loose much more space and have to redo it unnecessarily. You could strip off the roof from outside. Put 50mm of batt insulation between the rafters. Then add a layer of 18mm OSB. Tape all joints as an airtighess barrier. Important to seal this at the wall plate. Noggins and some sealant should do. 100mm PIR over the top, membrane, battens . 200mm screws through the lot. Counterbattens for new tiles. Should be no need to disturb the inside, no mess inside the hosue. No hauling materials up three flights of stairs. It'll need to be done in stages/or in good weather however. U value of about 0.18 which is quite respectable.

I'd go for at least 100mm rather than 75mm boards in the floor. There's almost no difference in the price. 150mm while you're at it if you can. You never regret putting in too much insulation.

At least 300mm EPS. More is more as they say!! Maybe 2x layers of floating OSB over the top. Or a suspended timber floor with I joists and blown cellulose.

I assume from this graph that it's possible for some members to run at flow temps in the 20's. At say 10w/m2 and 150mm spacing then about 25-28deg flow temps look possible. That would result in a superb COP for an ASHP.

To man the ships.

We need more people, not less. We've got a universe to explore.

Gottya. Looking forward to hear how the UFH performs

The maths suggest the only way deal with this is insulating the walls. EWI- as much as you like. IWI- breathable and probably better with a limited amount. Box in a box with a ventilated gap. I don't know of any official figures about moisture regulation from natural materials, clay, lime, woodfiber, straw etc but those selling it do suggest so. I'd like to see some data. In its simplest form Adobe, is dug on site, screened and relaid. Very little embodied carbon vs concrete where almost all the CO2 is in the cement process. The passive house and Passivhaus brigade are a bit evangelical at times. "NO OPENING WINDOWS. 100% HERMITICALLY SEALED, SCI-FI AIRLOCKED EXTERNAL DOORS. NO AUXILIARY HEATING INPUT BEYOND THE MINIMUM AS DIRECTED BY THE COMPUTER PROGAMME" I can hear the chants, I can see the placards. However in the real world it means that you don't HAVE to install central heating, but you need something. We have an electric rad. You don't have to comply with the dictated 20deg, you can ( and we do) have 23 deg in the sitting room for evening TV. You don't have to open the windows and doors for fresh air, but yet if the weather is nice we do, as the small kids transport contents of the house to the garden and the contents of the garden to the house. The beast from the EAST is easily dealt with as the heating load rises to probably 2kw from 1.5kw. 500w is much easier to find than 20 or 30kw for leaky old pile. In a powercut last year in the snow the house was still at 20deg upstairs and 19deg downstairs after 24hrs without power. Passive beats active every time. Guests are the best heaters of all, any party of above about 10 leads to windows being opened despite 9deg and grey, windy and wet outside. The dog lives in the hayshed thank you very much. Bringing the mutt inside is only one step away from putting him in a tutu carrying him around in a handbag. Cruel emasculation of a noble beast. Why, why is nothing allowed to move and flex?! Airplane wings bounce around for 18hrs per day for 40 years so it can't be the engineering. Is it a rigid mindset? A super low flow temperature might solve this? Mind you, as you loose the warm floor feeling then i wonder what is the point of UFH at all then. This intrigues me. Is it a dear option? Was this necessary? Would it not have just floated ok?

Good work. Are they build "dry"?

I did ours with a 9" grinder. It should be reserved an alternative to hardened criminals facing "the chair". I think most would choose death .

Neighbors are tricky. There's a few types of troublesome ones. Type 1: Francis the Frowning. They assume they own everything they can see out their window. To stereotype this is normally someone retired, listens to LBC, reads the telegraph or the mail, has never ran a business and has had little dealings with officialdom or the law. Their understanding of the world hasn't altered since they were 8 despite that being sometime in the 1950's. These are easily defeated. Polite and professional you should be, but don't waste too much energy. They will object all day long so long as it doesn't cost them anything beyond token money. They can't understand why they loose the objections and come to the conclusion the law is wrong and go back to bitching to their children and long suffering spouse as to why it's a disgrace and this country has gone down the pan. Type 2. Patricia the power tripping Parish councilor. This person is a more worthy adversary, somewhat versed in the rules and regs and perhaps with access to the ear of those who make the decisions. They know everyone in the street, and the next two streets despite this often being a one way relationship. They harbour mild political ambitions but will never will pursue them, because they know that would mean dealing with the scruffs from the council estate rather than the more tasteful residents of "middle income crescent". Luckily for you the planners detest them, but being civil servants cannot ignore the points of local authority planning document A.1.6.7.3(d).6.iii that's being fingered under their nose by Patricia's wagging finger. Proceed with caution, get your good professional to dot the eyes and cross the tees. Smile, but I would shy away from engaging. Play their own game only mumbling vaguely about the "trusting the system to do its work" and " following the correct processes". Patricia will soon see what way the wind is blowing and pretend she was in favour all along, before diverting her valuable attention towards whatever cause for humanity affects the residents of "the crescent" next. Type 3. Charlie the Chancer. A law whizz kid in his own eyes, well he would have been had it not been for they pesky law course kicking him out for plagiarism. He's had dreadful luck with trips slips and falls in the past few years, and despite just being an "honest bloke trying to make a living mate" ends up in court regularly on a no win no fee basis. The local Tesco defends a grape that causes him to tip over and suffer emotional damage needing 2 weeks in the Algarve to recuperate. He'll send you a very official and terrifying letter, crafted deep within the halls of "we've taken down governments" law halls. All your troubles would go away if you were willing to come to a financial accomodation regarding the development with him. Pass it to your solicitor, who, if they're worth anything will send Charlie's letter on a one way trip to the bin. Enjoy the build as much as you can and keep us updated! Good luck.

Hope it works. Our "plumbers" tossed the bath in from the far side of the room so I had to similar to ours. I didn't use any sealant however. I put a careful double layer of (@Nickfromwales close your ears) airtightness tape around the bath perimeter. Onto the OSB on the wall. Ran the plastic bath panels down over it and siliconed it to finish. A bit gash but no leaks after 2 years. Not a reccomended method I'm sure but I was completely burnt out at the time and just wanted it done.

Time over again I would avoid a concrete floor. 150mm concrete plus 200mm EPS here. We have some with LVT and some with good carpet and thick underlay. Mainly to keep things as soft as possible but you know it's still down there. As it's a passive standard house the floors never get cold. They're don't have that nice warm UFH touch, but they don't suck your will to live out through the soles of your feet either. Socks are the normal order of the day with no complaints. I gather from those who run low temp heating in low energy houses that you don't get a hot UFH under foot feeling either. Please write in with the answers subscribers ? @joe90 @TerryE @IanR@JohnMo to name a few. @ProDave has a screed over an I joist floor from memory. Does it chip a little bit off your spine every time you take a step like concrete floors? @JohnMo has recently put UFH over insulation below 2 x layers of OSB floating. I am very interested in this approach. No wet trades. No crucifying hammering of your joints. Another (slightly hippy) idea is an adobe (earth) floor. A shed in my parents house had a floor of exposed earth. It was a lovely surface. Similarly in a garage workshop near me there's an area of 2m2 near one of the car lifts where about 60mm of earth has become congealed after falling off car's over the years and got too stiff to be brushed out. Everyone stands on it subconsciously while shooting the breeze.

I have no idea. If you have a SE engaged then ask them for a required spec. Similarly if you ask the BC for a spec for the lintel they expect then there's some online designers that would allow you to design a pour in situ beam.