MikeSharp01

looks great!

Poor old Ferdinand obviously still suffering from last evening imbibing of 'the' cocktail...

Great work Dave. How did you detect the leaks?

Wonder what 'cheese' is in the sunamp thingamajig! Its made in Scotland I believe, they do some good cheese up there

Are there any 'better' cheeses for this application? I am a goats cheese man myself but suspect it will be worse than cheddar so perhaps a really hard cheese might have improved characteristics. Other substances one could think of include, fudge, chocolate and a gigantic humbug!

Did anybody read this? If this is true then Building standards are meaningless, NHBC may have some rather large problems and the Construction industry as a whole is going to need defibrillation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40418266

Get some proper drills, EG These and start with a very small one and working out to the size you need. Tun them slow to start with and you will be fine.

Yep, +1 to that. You will be able to get the CE paperwork for all the bits, steel, bolts, welding rods etc but you won't need one for a one off winter garden, or at least I can see no reasonable path through the CE process that would be usable unless the whole winter garden was a product in its own right. If you think about it the CE process was designed to ensure that products arriving and circulating around the EU met the various standards. Your product is being built to a local standard (building standards) and is not destined for resale as a retail product so I cannot see how it might apply although the last time I had to take a product through CE marking was 2003 I think.

Sorry for the delay. It's about the use of materials to form walls and the use of Thermoplastic. I see no reason to think you cannot do what you want. The relevent sections are part B2 section C. Table 1 para 3.2, 3.4 & 3.8

Why would you class it as structural @MikeSharp01 If any fixings pass through into the timber frame is it not just a packer or filler just the same as expanding foam would b Structural because you need to meet a number of constraints keeping the frame fixed in place mechanically. The longer the fixings are through insulation the more flexible they will be as the insulation offers no support to them in all three planes - as you tighten the fixings you will crush the insulationand bend the frame as the insulation deforms rather than tighten. Wind pressure will cause, at the outset, slight bending of the fixing and, as the suporting insulation deforms, more movement. Also ensuring you meet the fire regs which I suspect might depreciate too much non fire rated material supporting, or not, the frame.

If you think you will need to let go then you perhaps should have clamped the vice down, much the safer route anyway. Essentially you have to be sure the drill will break before you do, if you are not sure bolt it down.

Welcome... As @Onoff says don't leave it too late to start. His mention of a great / understanding partner is also valid as a self build will absorb your time, physical & emotional energy and shed loads of money. For all that you get massive sense of satisfaction. Your skills sound like the ideal ones for such a project and you might even have a way of leveraging your colleagues in on the job.

Sounds like a plan but you will need to check that the insulation, which will be structural in this application, can take the strain!

The skylights will probably need planning permission, rules may differ so need to check with planning and see if you can squeeze it in under the wire, as it would be a material change to the permission granted, but I doubt the BCO will be worried if your structural engineer signs them off.

Yes we have one reasonably local to us, in Maidstone, good idea.

Not many of the cheap pillar drills will have geared heads and 12mm forsner bit or standard drill bit can be turned by the larger pistol drills. Agree that a good pillar drill is a joy. This machine would be / is my weapon of choice.

Can you put the unit in the room below then you can sink the tray down.

Great you have a son who is interested in making / mending stuff. Ours, and his sister, appears uninterested - wonder what he / they will do when they inherit my workshop! Just scap it all I expect, probably in the same skip with my CD collection. Have not made it easy though biggest machine weighs in at 750Kg In pillar drill terms you might find that buying a pistol drill with the right attachment points and a drill frame for it will do just as well and your can use the pistol drill without the frame. You will of course need 110mm of travel and 210+ clearance in the throat to drill 100mm deep.

I will keep an eye out for it and park elsewhere or have Scoty (been with us since I was a lad) drive around the town while I do the shopping would not want to lower the tone.

My experience is that you will be disappointed with an electric shredder as 2.5Kw is nothing, and they take forever to swallow even slightly engorged leaf stems. They often do not have simple ways of replacing, sharpening, the cutters - just disappointing. That timberwolf @Triassic had might have been 70Hp (50Kw) and will mince up branches all day and spit them a couple of meters into a big bag. My advice would be to get a second hand petrol one or hire as needed. Are these the little fellow we used to send up Chimneys?

I think we share the same Lidl, my only problem with it is the car park is not big enough, other than that its great for most stuff and the meat (meet) is as good as you might get at the butchers on the hill by Halstead although there the selection is bigger. I won't buy the bread (rye bread excluded), not from anybody else either as I make my own and I am happy to say that since I retired we have only purchased one loaf of bread while at home. As I understand it we fight with the Brighton store for weekly supremacy on being the largest turnover store in Europe.

Thanks Dave, I guess that is my preferred. I can find nothing from IET.

Hi @Simon Brookeand Welcome to THE forum. You will find loads here to look at on ASHP. One of the key questions / features that seems to figure here large in highly insulated homes is the ability of the Underfloor heating (UFH) to work in cooling mode as well as heating something you cannot achieve with a pure heating system. We have added UFH to our design to take advantage of this feature as without it a passive house can probably get along without UFH. In the big picture provided you can work the ASHP at a solid Coefficient of Performance (COP) you should be able to do better than a large thermal store which brings its own problems in terms of waste heat as insulating them is very difficult. You also have the problem of heat exchange and the like. If you have PV then you can power the ASHP from it after all.

Hit a small problem today that I am struggling to find the answer to; Our Garden Room has walls that extend all the way up to the vaulted ceiling and the ceiling has an axisymmetric pitch so I am wondering where the wiring safe zone is, is it A or B or C or some combination of all three / any two? Any definitive ideas anyone?

If they are passive certified then the Uw value must be OK why do you need it thinner?