MikeSharp01

Are the Finder 22 series not already classed as contactors? Snubber sounds like a good idea all the same.

The Google elephant - if you put in ASHP and planning (included Sevenoaks & Canterbury) and its the top answer! Which also tells you something - we (here) are talking about this more than anybody else!!!!!

Ah a bit more due diligence done and I find that the planning committee here millstone Manor (Sevenoaks) have asked officers to find out what other councils are doing about ASHP! So they will find East Herts and we will get it to. Not that it's a problem here as we are 50m from our nearest neighbours window but it does look like council's are floundering around a bit.

Hi @JamesPa you went through a lot of this in 2022. You are clearly more knowledgeable now and it is clear that this current bit of work shows how variable this is across the UK. I cannot find anything on either of our councils (home and build) Web sites referring to ASHP one of them does not mention them in their ,(our) plan to 2040 published in 2023.

When / if I replace our loft HW tank in millstone manor I intend to stand it in the bottom section of a plastic barrel, I have one for the purpose standing by, then duct this via an overflow pipe out of the roof and latch shut off the mains via a sensor in the barrel, there is already a valve that does this when we set the house alarm so we don't need to worry about turning it off if we go out, I can tap into the alarm system to control it.

Our build is in a private road, it is a not a public right of way (although technically a no through road you can walk through the end but not drive), we are responsible to the center of the road and there is a fixed (ish) width. I would watch out for future owners building a gated community but after that there is no law to stop someone walking up / down it anyway - as here. HOWEVER given the pa-lava @garrymartin is having a footpath that connects to the national network sounds like a very good plan and might aid planning issues further down the track.

Cynical moi🙄

That means it IS accessible by walking, cycling, crawling, and public transport so there must be more detail somewhere that says that walking can only be along pavemented roads or less than some notional distance, that cycling must be along designated cycle paths etc, public transport must include taxi's & rickshaws not just buses and soon to be self driving cars which I suspect will be a subscription service of sort - if they ever perfect them for the general case. I'll get my coat 🙄 or just get back to boxing in the soil pipe.

Seems like a sound and pragmatic principle to me. I am also an exponent of the idea that you can either spend time saving money or spend money saving time AND, for me, often times its just fun to give it a go after extensive research to ensure success while having a backup route to the professionals if needed. Occasionally we do a job twice once in house and once via the professionals, EG the air test, many here do their own to get an impression of the air tightness but we need a registered outcome so had to have a professional do one as well. We ran ours got a result (.29 on the PH scale) the pro came in and got it as .2 on the PH scale so we weren't that far out and on the right side - very pleasing even though I doubled the 'cost' but learned a lot along the way.

Yes suspected you had thought of it - respect for the very thorough work on the research around the sustainable travel. Keep on keeping on.

Found the site on Google maps - perhaps a long shot thought you probably had already, is there any chance of getting a cycle path across the fields down to Copcut lane as from here there is a cycle friendly riverside path into town under the A38 which then connects to the primary and middle schools reasonably closely.

Are you not allowed to put numbers anywhere in your responses? Would numbers not speak more confidently than words and show that the home will generate more energy than it uses (probably - PH+). Keep the car and the electric bikes all charged up and export to the grid when it cannot use all the generation. Might help but I get the feeling this inspector was using other metrics against your application.

Do you think the planners understood passive house plus? I am not sure I do and ours is passive house classic!

Very upsetting it must be. Lovely part of the world, hope you find it in you to keep going.

As I am finding the 'rules' for laying wooden floors are myriad. For the one we are contemplating the drying time for the slc is 1mm/day , the boards must be stored elsewhere or not delivered until after the drying is finished, and installing above 65% RH is not recommended. UFH adds a whole other set of 'rules'. Anyway what has happened is that the oak layer has tightened up (how thick is it?), unlikely in 95% RH, or the plywood base has expanded, more likely but would perhaps lead to twisting as the cross grain layers expand differentially which you don't have. Either way checking back with the suppliers seems like good advice to me.👍

Before it was occupied we were invited to go to the top of the Canary wharf building, a very lonely building in those days. We got to the top in the lift and walked out into the vast open space. There was a video of the build and in it was a test on the window glass, floor to ceiling, and its fixings where they threw the equivalent of of 150Kg person at the window at 10 mph, it just bounced off. I still couldn't go within 1 meter of the edge looking out was fine, looking down was terrifying!

There is quite a lot in the academic press around the Wufi stuff, probably also Ubakus but I have not looked, Wufi has been around sine the 1990s and was IIRC started as an academic exercise- once they knew what they had, something that worked, was useful and that very few people understood in any detail, they went quiet on it a little because they saw the commercial potential and went that way. None the less although it is possible to get to grips with it I suspect that for most people it won't repay the effort either intellectually or financially which is why we paid to have ours done.

Interesting stuff @JohnMo - great posts. Not for us here as we won't have a boiler in our system anywhere although we did fit the trackpipe at the start and are leaving it in in case any future residents want it - not that gas will be available to them by then I hope.

Same with me, built all the roof structure from inside scaffolding then got the roofers to fit the slates as I could not go there. Although on one day I did crawl to the apex and sat there to let the roofer take a picture of me as he said I needed to own it and the worst that could happen was I slid back down onto the scaffolding at gutter level. Actually over the build I have got more confident on ladders and scaffold but once outside support like that I have to get out of there.

I am guessing that they would not have developed the Wufi system if they could have done it with a spreadsheet. This field is littered with no fun hard sums the most difficult of which is calculating value when all you know is the cost 🙄🤣.

Tough one. Have looked at shared ownership opportunities it may be a route they could take and then purchase the other portion in time.

I think this may be the case and it is curious that such a great idea is engineered so poorly. When you look at the guts of it, @TerryE posted some pics when he took his apart , it's clear that it is not just a great concept but simple in practice. A little attention to the design for servicability and control would have made them world beating. As it is everybody is giving it a body swerve.

@JohnMo How cool does the slab get, we are just considering the flooring, my wife has fallen in love with engineered Ash (5mm thick slice of Ash on 15mm plywood) and the manufacturers say that with UFH expansion is a lot less of a a problem than contraction and cooling must lead to contraction.

Interesting project - loads of work for the cable jointers of this world.

We got lucky with our blown cellulose - we DIYed it by 'borrowing' a machine from a member here who purchased a machine on Ebay. This machine is no longer available but they do come up on ebay or there are smaller machines available in the states that would do the job. DIY was not that difficult but made some rookie errors particularly around the stretching of the internal Intello membrane. UK kits are available for purchase / rent EG https://www.markham-sheffield.co.uk/product/turbisol-56-blowing-machine/