MikeSharp01

If it's a decent 10mm soffit you can use self tapping screws so a very small hole, shallow, is needed just to start the screw and select the length so it does not come through. You need not worry as if there is water up there you have much bigger problems.

Or just put a few controllable holes in before the test so you won't get a three and control it down to 3.2 on the day so you can still get a good SAP / whatever passes fro SAP. Hang on, just wondering if this is the reason some of the big house builders just don't bother too much with air tightness.

Now there is a thought - but I guess the powers that be are getting more famous for not thinking things through than they used to be.

Most modern cameras weigh nothing so the soffit will support one of them no problem

That's now rolled up into AI who knew that a 16th century technology would be key to your smart phone's face identification system!

I have been struggling with this whole debacle over the last 48 hrs. I have had a response from our BC who just reiterates the Part K stuff really but also does confirm that: Providing a restrictor, such as the one illustrated above, and safety glazing is provided he will be happy - in which cases we do not need to move the transoms up. The fall protection IS needed, in our case the restrictor and safety glazing, on the GF as the BC cannot be sure how the external landscaping might be finished. The glass in the windows must meet the requirements of BS6206 or EN12150 and be marked and certificated as such. (He did not set a kN lower limit - just BS6206) Laminated glass is required in all doors and windows on the GF for security purposes. So we have crossed off all the issues - talk about stressful! Thanks for all the help.

Somewhat down beat way to start the week, but hey, food for thought and you are correct, every day is a school day - thanks Gus.

Does that window open - at all / outwards and what is the soffit made of UPVC / Wood?

I know the great JS Harris, formally of this parish, tried to get everything to 1/10th of a deg and his hysteresis down to less than 1 degree but never quite managed it. I have this idea that a bit of AI from all the inputs, including sun / weather forecast should help close the gap a little. I guess this depends on what the plan is. I though a bit of research would be fun so I put the sensors in the floor, about 2m in front of each south facing window, we only have north & south windows of any size really, so I could sense when the solar gain was happening, as @joth points out - will also know if the blinds are open or shut, and allow me to get ahead of the cooling in summer and in winter / shoulder months manage the blinds / pump the water from south to the northern loops to even out the temperature and spread the heat around a bit / use the northern loops to cool the southern loops etc. We have 43 tons of concrete in our slab so it's good chunk of store. I appreciate there are issues, after all it's heat in the building no matter where it is, and that it's just a hypothesis but it will be fun to play with when its up and running.

You are correct but sadly I am just like that.

So does that mean that if the window is an escape window then the min 800mm does not apply - I just need a restrictor? In which case all my windows are fine as they are all designated escape windows 1 on the ground floor - window 1 in the snug and the others on the first floor in bedrooms!

This is great stuff. On the safety glass is mainly 4tuf, 4tuf, 6.2lam from inside out but some has the 6.2 on the inside. That was down to the window company - never questioned it. I will dig out some sections.

Not yet as we are not finished but I have one at the most risky place - top of north east wall, according to the WuFi analysis we did, so I might then start to worry.

I find they do need calibrating so I use a 5w Calorimeter and a traceable thermometer, put a few of them in at low temp 0 or thereabouts, and then let it track up, they can be several 10ths out so I mark the units and programme the curve fit, usually close to straight - y=mx+c, into the microcontroller - works a treat.

We buried some spare UFH pipes, suitably blanked in straight lines from the manifold position to places in the slab I wanted to measure and two straight down into the sub soil under the slab, suitably sealed to the dpm. I can then push the sensors down the pipes with a wiremans tape and hey presto I have temp from a over the place. The DS28B20s are great and cheap but need calibrating a DHT22 has humidity also and I have some of them in the middle of the wall insulation.

Not sure what guarding the floor is? Safety glass I think is sorted they all have toughened glass on the inside, although one has laminated inside - the inward opening triangle window, and laminated on the outside and toughend on the outside for the inward opening triangle.

We are getting close to getting the windows, our first supplier disappeared under us, perhaps lucky as the new ones seem much better, however today our supplier has asked us to confirm that the scheduled windows all meet building regs. I had thought that was their job but it appears not. We have three escape windows which may also need to be part K compliant. Here are the three windows, it looks like the opening size is OK for escape but I am concerned about having the height to the opening portion too low, am I going wrong somewhere? (The internal sills take about 40mm of the lower portion measurements.) Window 1 Window 2 Window 3

I think this was made in Ukraine - or at least one of the vans had a Ukrainian number plate! As I watched I though that the last scene would be a picture of it destroyed by Russian artillery.

This will depend on the rest of the structure - you need to do a full fabric analysis EG get the U values (work them out) for the walls / roof, and see where your heat is all going. That way you can get a feel for the payback time of what looks like an improvement of 23% in your windows and then you can decide if other ways of spending the 4K, EG improving the loft / tank / thin wall insulation would be more effective. I think the general consensus on here would be that just making the windows better without looking at everything else is likely to be wasteful. Not sure how you managed to get Internorm in under the Rationel price it generally seems the other way around on here.

Well now I get it

Lighting seems to me to be one of the biggest deals of self building if the work we, and many others on here, have put into it is is anything to go by. The types are myriad the location choices are mystic and the control theory and practice is a rocket scientist's dream. If you toddle about on here you can gather the basics right enough but the proverbial devil is probably in the detail.

No but getting there. We are doing most if it ourselves and part time around semi retirement. It's a project not a crusade.

Looks like a great project - here is how we started:

Hi. No the pipe is 50mm in the slab all the sanitary wastes are 110 out of the slab.

We created a sunken zone in the slab for the whole wet room and in the middle of that, suitable for the shower tray we went for, a sump from which we ran, through the slab, a pipe to the main 110mm riser, which we boxed for the pour so we could get to the connection in case anything went wrong. So we just have to fit the trap to the pipe, drop the tray in and link the two together and then we can tile the whole place and come out flush with the rest of the houses FFL.