Square Feet

Oh I started watching this guy the other day. I can't believe that after his whole (self built) house burnt down he just said 'Oh well' and built another one in the same place. I don't think I am that resilient. Also - has the man not got any friends?

I think they must mean 4 months for the house to be erected on site after foundations etc. And this must be with the majority of construction work being off site and craned in.

I wouldn't necessarily knock Grand Designs - there's quite a lot of projects on there that are fantastic examples of good, simple architecture that can be built at a good price and timescale. If you go on the Channel 4 app you can find all the old episodes to watch there for free (though I think £3.50 a month for ad-free watching is well worth it). These are some episodes I like for their simplicity and being good examples of straight-forward good architecture without ego or bling. Leominster 2018 North Cornwall revisit 2015 Woodbridge revisit 2013 County Down 2017 East London 2017

Yeah, there's another channel called Break Heart Orchard with an American guy posting his SIPs self build that I have been watching and he is a bit of a 'how not to do it' guide. It's interesting to compare his efforts and Booglehead's right enough - Mr Booglehead seems to have a background in construction of some sort and it really shows. That said, Mr Orchard did build himself a house and get it signed off, so I don't want to knock him too much, even if he did then have to dismantle some of it to get his furniture in afterwards. 🙄 He is pretty humble and candid about his mistakes though. I got a bit bored with his videos after a while though as he left the camera running a bit long for me. He also talks in feet and inches which (in spite of my forum name) I find infuriating and very hard to follow. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNTohfwvpNKxHWiwDshFvx9rvGPqQ6qx_

I've been enjoying watching this guy called Booglehead's videos of his SIPs self build on a stunning site in Tasmania. He built a metal kit workshop on site first and made a basic flat in there for him and his wife to live in during the build. He has then been building the main house with SIPs with occasional help from a friend and a few specialised tradespeople here and there. It's a near-passive house, on one level with MHRV, zinc roof and a large carport. I like that he is just the right side of bonkers and talks in metric, though with it being Australia the regs are a bit different. He does have an alarming habit of creating cold bridges with the enormous bugle head screws he is so fond of and the house isn't to my taste, but that's the beauty of self-build and the nature of local vernacular I guess. Obviously you need to watch the videos in the playlist in reverse order. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzJHPUKEmzWVlbuMLwIeT_52SooH5ROrB&si=1bo9fsoDs7syy5iO If anyone else has any YouTube playlists to add to this post that would be great.

20% off lots of new products on eBay this weekend (valid until Oct 30th) with code SPOOKY20 Link to everything: https://www.ebay.co.uk/b/bn_7114592181?_trkparms=pageci%3A823fd6f5-765a-11ee-aa8c-26953ae5ece9%7Cparentrq%3A7b81662c18b0ac6a0dceaefffffe9f88%7Ciid%3A1%7Cvlpname%3Avlp_homepage Or you can filter by category, ie tools.... https://www.ebay.co.uk/e/coupon-offers/27102320-diy-tools-workshop-equipment materials..... https://www.ebay.co.uk/e/coupon-offers/27102320-diy-materials industrial etc https://www.ebay.co.uk/e/coupon-offers/27102320-generic/business-office-industrial/12576

Oh I have! This was just an example of what can go wrong - there are plenty more out there, but I couldny be ar*ed linking to them all

I think you should watch this before settling too much on ICF. I have picked SIPs for the same reason - I think I can build them myself. ICF seems like a stressy disaster waiting to happen. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs-the-streets/on-demand/58244-001

It's good to add this to your profile as it does make a difference when folk are replying to your questions.

Hi. You are going about things exactly the right way. I'm twice your age but going through a lot of the same thinking and practical steps. It's all good. Your work setup makes the whole thing sound very achievable - hopefully it isn't the winter that you are free to work, but those aren't so bad in Kent so it should be ok either way. I guess if you have time and energy then the only other magic ingredient is money, so keep working hard and saving as much as you possibly can. You will need it all! I am finding these books completely invaluable for my research and they really make me feel like I could build a house tomorrow (or at least plan one effectively). https://www.firstinarchitecture.co.uk/books/ I would also recommend watching lots of eps of Grand designs. I don't have time to link to the good eps just now, but Joe and Lena, South London is one that springs to mind that you might find inspiration in as Joe sounds like a similar guy to yourself. You can watch these for free via the Channel4 app. I would really recommend paying the £3.50 for a subscription though as the ads all magically disappear. Grand designs The Streets is also very good - don't overlook that one. Good luck.

This stuff can work well if applied properly. You do have to be extremely careful to seal it all up well though. I used it on one job where the stone walls (50cm thick) were saturated and would have needed a year to dry out properly before plastering otherwise. The scale of what you are dealing with might be beyond this product though and you might be into more specialist basement tanking territory. Good luck. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185157727730?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=Zd1bKbOWRrm&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=KWF4Zlu-Rge&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY ps - the plugs aren't anywhere near as exciting as they look 😉

That's really interesting thanks. I could live with that - it's not ideal but would be ok in the interim. Nice one, cheers.

Here you go....

.... and I could power the garage build like this..... You can't pull high voltage that way but it would be enough to charge tool batteries overnight, run a few lights and so on.

Thanks Rob. I am not under any illusions and am very much looking to establish whether it is possible rather than proposing it as a finished plan, so thanks for your stats - those are very useful. I am indeed very frugal with leccy and gas, but a lot of the point of wanting a passive house with PV is so that I don't have to watch the pennies quite so closely in future and can live in a bit more comfort. The figure of 3.28 Kwh/day is genuine as it comes from a year's worth of leccy readings for my 150sqm double-upper flat that has terrible insulation in the upstairs part as it's basically a shed dropped onto the roof. Because I am in a flat I can't charge my car at home so those figures aren't included. I live alone but with my son here on uni holidays. We both use computers, TV, nintendo etc but all our lightbulbs are led and I turn them off behind me wherever I go. Our shower is run from the tank and only uses electric to pump it, not heat it so that makes a big difference I think. I use the airfryer as much as I can and avoid running the 'big oven' wherever possible. I suppose the whole point of wanting to do without grid leccy is that I hate paying the standing charge and being beholden to price fluctuations. It would also make quite a few cheaper remote plots viable if I didn't have to pay for a connection which is why I am going into this in detail at such an early stage (don't have a plot yet!) It may well be that I will have to get a grid connection for the house but I am viewing this as a two-stage project where I move onto the plot and live in basic accommodation above a self-built garage at first. I would put solar on the roof of the garage and house the battery inside. This way I would hopefully have enough power to live (frugally!) and power all the tools, lights etc of the main build. And if I didn't then I could nip out in the car and juice up so that work didn't have to stop on site because I had run out of power. From what you are saying this plan would be workable I think.

Nice one thanks. I will check those out. Not having hot water is my biggest fear!

Black interior on mine so all good there, thanks. I had actually found both those products in an internet deep dive this afternoon, but I can't find any second hand. I will keep an eye out though. Yeah, the plan would be to do this with one battery for regular storage - I can't see the point in paying for leccy at night if I have been generating excess during the day. The plan to also use the car is in case this just isn't enough ie during winter - so I can go out and get charge to bring back with me and add to the system. I found this guy on YouTube who has made some sort of hook up to use his imeev in the same way (also uses chademo). He is a wee bit bonkers though - he made a lamp out of a pickle by sending a current through it, so it does come with a bit of a caveat. Cheers for your help - it's good to know I am not the only one thinking along these lines here.

I found this pdf which relates to using the Leaf as a battery to power a home that is connected to the grid. It's basically used as a way to exploit lower tariffs over night - the battery is charged then and discharged during the day when the tariff is higher. It can also be used to power the house when the grid power source is disrupted and there's no reason it shouldn't apply to the use I have suggested - basically replacing a genny in an off-grid setup. https://www-asia.nissan-cdn.net/content/dam/Nissan/th/news/nissan-introduces-blue-switch-program-to-asean-region-th/EN-Factsheet Nissan LEAF V2H.pdf I've looked at my home electricity consumption and it seems to be about 3.28kwh per day. That is with gas being used for heating, hob cooking and hot water. So figuring out how much I would need for a passive-standard house is a bit of a shot in the dark for me. Three times maybe? 10kwh a day? The MHRV shouldn't use much. The trouble is that there are then additional variables to be introduced as usage will be higher in winter while solar generation is lower. I've put a scribble of a graph of this below. In winter I will be home more, have more lights on, use a tumble drier and maybe need some electric heating. Meanwhile my solar generation will be a lot lower - perhaps 12 times lower than in summer. I want to be able to charge my car from the solar wherever possible and happily car usage would correlate to some extent with generation - I will probably use the car more in the summer to go out and about. I haven't added the car into the calculations as it's really just a bonus to be able to dump some into the car as-and-when. The bar graph shows output from a 4kw solar array in southern Scotland. It basically shows that an array of that size wouldn't meet my current demand in Nov, Dec or Jan. It's a bit of a blunt instrument though, so I would love to hear real-world figures if anyone has them.

Yeah my understanding was that the Leaf does support it, but I didn't know there was an issue with the charger connection. I plan on changing my car to an E-NV200 van later on which would have a 40Kwh battery, but I don't have the funds for that just yet. I also meant to say that I can't really apply my current electricity usage to this as I use gas for heating and hot water. I don't want to have any gas in my new house.

I'm very much at the research stage here, but I know that I want my future build to be as off-grid as possible. If I can make it completely off-grid for electric then this would make me very happy. I drive an old Nissan Leaf electric car with similar specs to the one in the link below (for anyone reading this after the eBay link has expired I will summarise it as having a 24Kwh battery with 9 bars of health out of the original 12. It's a scrap vehicle in the listing but the battery is fine. It's £2.5k fixed price). I know this isn't exactly how these things work, but for the sake of argument let's say it has c.18Kwh of battery storage (24/12*9), perhaps 15Kwh to ensure it isn't depleted down too far. This is more capacity than the 13.5Kwh Tesla Powerwall 2.0s, which cost in excess of £7k. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175949367105?hash=item28f7664741:g:M10AAOSwRZJlIq~M Years ago I had a girlfriend who lived off-grid and powered her house with a small solar array and a fairly substantial wind turbine. She stored her excess in some old forklift batteries but I don't think these were really working very well. On still, foggy days she basically had very little power and couldn't run a washing machine etc. She also used a back burner to heat water as there wouldn't have been enough power to run an immersion. So I know that winter is a difficult time for off-grid power generation, particularly if you aren't able to install a wind turbine for planning reasons. I know that using the batteries from scrapped EV's for PV storage is a common enough route, but my question is more about using my current on-the-road car for additional battery storage. So let's say I squeeze as much solar capacity on to my roof as I possibly can but I am denied planning for a wind turbine. Then let's say that even with an old EV battery for storage I am just not able to keep up with demand over the winter. My idea is that in these circumstances I take my car to a public EV charger and top it up to the max and drive home and use this to boost my storage battery back up again. Admittedly not exactly fit-and-forget, but not that much of a hardship either. The cost wouldn't be overly punitive as I live in Scotland which has publicly-owned chargers which are kept at a fair price. For example near me I can rapid charge at 35p/Kwh or slow charge at 16p/Kwh. I plan on building a garage to store the battery in so there wouldn't be issues around space. I am mostly concerned about the effect of this plan on the health of my own car battery if it gets depleted and recharged a lot, but I suppose my real question is - would this work? Would I be likely to be able to keep up with demand in practical terms? I don't mind making a special trip to a (hopefully nearby!) public charger once a week but once a day would be a pain. I have absolutely no idea what sort of demand a 175sqm passive standard house would have, nor what I could generate from solar over the winter. I could go on a massive internet deep dive to try and figure this out, but I wondered if anyone here had those sort of figures to hand from their real-world experience. I also thought thrashing it out in here might be useful for anyone else reading it later on. Cheers

Maybe your neighbour has tapped into your leccy for their weed farm..... 😉

Thanks, I will check that out

How do you wire that then? It's on a switched live feed at the moment so just on when the light is on. There is a spare 230v supply nearby from when there was a wall heater there - would it need connected to both, ie the 230v for the trickle and the switched for the boost? Or am I being really dense here?

Nice one, thanks. Yes it is solid ducting that is on there. I will have a look at the solo plus. Cheers

I am renovating a ground floor flat with an existing ventilation set up to the bathroom as shown in the drawing. The bathroom is in the centre of the flat with no windows or external walls. It backs onto the common passageway leading to the back garden and has been ducted to the outside air, c.3m away. It has been like that for years and none of the other residents have complained so I am not looking to radically alter things. I quite like the idea of fitting a single-room MHRV unit but the ones I have looked at say that the max run is something like half a metre. I have my doubts that the fan that was in there before was able to do much on a duct run of that length. The property will be rented out so I am keen to make it as 'fit and forget' as possible to make sure the tenant uses it and I don't end up with a very mouldy bathroom. Do I need to fit some sort of additional fan in the duct run to assist the push/pull of air or is there a particular unit that can do it on its own?