MikeSharp01

Even when you are doing the bulk of it yourselves cost control is very hard / almost impossible. So far we have been hit with (to list the main ones): Asbestos removal. Additional site insurance as we ran out of time. Muck away costs we had not planned for, we had to dig deeper than we expected. Additional type 1 for the sub base going to 150mm from 100mm. Additional Concrete in the slab as we have 150mm thickness not the normal 100mm (Will be good for energy storage but costs a lot) Failed polish on the concrete - so we have to grind it. The £ going south. Some additional labour to help me when I could not do it alone. All of which has eaten well into our contingency, and we are only just out of the ground, so we are now looking at a whole re-budget exercise. It is only us so no 3rd party to blame either. Keep on keeping on, not a lot of choice, and it will be worth it in the end is the way I see it - pragmatism can suppress panic sometimes.

Interest only / over how long?

Why not do it via your MVHR, as is our plan, and put the heating / cooling fan coil unit next to the MVHR unit - I agree this cools everywhere but by working with the MVHR systems distribution boxes you might even be able to control that, by restricting flows to downstairs at night time.

A few of us will know all these part numbers but for the rest: ESP8266 = a micro controller with loads of IO such as embodied on the 'WEMOS' D1 board. SSR = Solid State Relays. DS18B20 (not DD) = Semi intelligent Temperature sensor. SSD = Solid State Disk (give your RPi - Rasberry Pi, some local storage.) Have I got that about right @TerryE

Yep - thanks, found them, looks good but did you also have hold down straps at intervals around the perimeter?

Have you got a link for these?, sound interesting, found this in Oz but not much coming up here. Ah may have found them is it this http://www.timco.co.uk/media/documentation/tds-en.pdf product, if so are there also hold down straps at intervals on the frame as well?

In software or hardware?

Jump on the @TerryE wmos D1 miniPro solution then you can just echo the readings across your wifi or even set up a dedicated network of the little buggers, no wiring required even make a daughter board for the optos - but mind the isolation issue!

Isolation very important so solid state Opto isolators all the way on this one, mechanical relays are all well and good but small high (ish) frequency signals don't make it through very well and shorten the contact life. THIS chip does it as long as you are careful on the board to keep isolation distances, 4K Volts plus isolation if you do, and with a few surrounding components to: a. diode to prevent reverse biased over voltage on the internal LED during the bottom half of the ac cycle, b. a suitable resistor to keep the current across the LED low and c. a capacitor across the output to smooth out the 50% of cycle of the incoming mains (don't suggest doing this on the input side - much safer on the output). The choice of value for the cap will need some thought as it will slow down the off response time by a few, perhaps 10s of, milliseconds.

I think you can do this with a site built design its just about iterating towards a series of local optima and then choosing which one you are going for. In @pdf27's initial post I sense that one dimension is missing, which is part of most mass production design work, and that is the nature of value to the customer in an infinitely customisable product - I agree this is very much taken into account in terms of what the end user wants and would be prepared to pay for. However in self building I feel that we are working towards and infinitely customisable product, as in approaching any number of local optima, the challenge comes in taking the 'cost' as a driver not so much for the design but mostly for the construction optimisation - as @JSHarris points out in respect off kitchen sizes. In a curious way this closes the loop on the production / manufacturing engineering cycle it EG 'now rework the design so we can make it' which is what @pdf27 points out in his modified 3 stage process. - inevitably embodies some aspects of compromise though. If one was looking towards solving the housing crisis as your main objective you would take the manufacturing engineering approach directly and every time. Why can a house be more like a car - which we discussed on the old forum IIRC.

Just out of interest do they offer bulk quantity breaks?

Don't worry 5G will be along shortly.

Mirrors are just glass so you need glass drill bits like These (which I gave used on many occasions) just don't have the hammer action turned on! For bigger holes there are these which come in a variety of sizes they need a guide to hold them in place (I have a set I got from Lidl which work fine on tiles have not tried them on glass.) and they are usually run wet.

If I never see another TV ad for smart meters it will be too soon and I will save a heap of energy and turn my TV off because I don't understand what the advantage of having one is for the householder given that most people don't track or care about their energy usage anyway.

Nope - you are just following up the conversation you had with the PO and formalising the new material - most planners are quite used to people doing things a bit out of sequence, your neighbour is already on their radar as a bit of a problem and they want things sorted so putting in retrospective PP (minor change) is the line of least resistance for everybody.

Nothing to stop you applying for a retrospective change of materials, this may be a minor change - seems like the PO is already happy, so it won't go our for neighbour consultation. You always have the right of appeal anyway. We are using tiles on our build so I hope I can find someone to fix them down for me! (Next door had some done a year or so back, although not jet black, and I have the name of the chap who did it!)

Worth fighting for then.

Ah - you may be in a conservation area or some such where such things can be mandated. Competition law may not apply here as the condition was part of your planning permission and you went ahead anyway, and in doing so accepting the use of the stated material. Naturally that does not preclude you going for a change of material in the normal way of things. However - given how much you have in the bank, what is the cost difference anyway to good natured rich folk like yourselves

Don't forget to max out your premium bond limit.

Welcome to THE forum from the other end of the union - Kent

Snubbed we was

Surely Jeremy you will get an invite - as the chief test pilot and all that, if you are not careful people will be calling their pets after you - we, my brother and I, called a goldfish we won at a fair in 1970 'Trubshaw' after the UK test pilot Brian Trubshaw who first flew UK Concorde very topical then - all forgotten now.

Yes not knowing what it is you don't know, Donald Rumsfeld was a genius in making this a topic for discussion , is a risk for us all and perhaps might be a summary of this whole topic. You can do it all yourself but watch out for what it is you don't know you don't know!

I may have a perspective on this one. We were (still are hopefully) going for a passive house so we needed to close a lot of the loops before we went planning as the permission might have been granted for a house that could not be a passive house. Things like window sizes and orientation had to be tested against the PHPP (passive house planning package) to ensure that we got a working design through planning and would not need to go back for alterations. As it stands we may need to go back to planning as I am contemplating increasing the roof area to be covered in PV from 8Kw to 12Kw (Won' be 12Kw peak as some are east and some west facing) and that will require a planning alteration. Interestingly such modifications do come a bit more costly if you use an architect - not for the design work its only replacing some tiles with PV cells but because we used one for the PP every change costs more.

Makes perfect sense - she is now 11, so in 7 years she will head off to university to do a 7 year architecture programme - complete with the matching section and then she will be ready to give you a hand - does 14 years feel like your kind of timeframe?