Pete

We had some repairs carried out by Plasticman courtesy of our window installers and they polished a couple of glass units. It is a specialised job and only a few technicians are trained in the art. A lot has to do with heat and not overdoing it. I'd be more concerned with your 3 year old and what she will do next!!

And plenty of time!!?

I got mine on Ebay and saved a bit

Previous house we always had the thermostat set to 18 but as I get older I feel the cold more and when you are sat we found 21 was a more comfortable temp. To be fair solar gain works really well for us and this means we have not had the heating on since March. It is touch and go sometimes if we had a cold spell whether to put the heating on but because the house takes a while to adjust to external temps then we found looking at the incoming weather (if it was going to be sunny) helps us decide to hang on a bit so it is free!!

I understand what you are saying but sometimes you do not want to just have a box purely filled with insulation. We embraced Passive but without sacrificing the looks of the house and the way we want to live. So for us a heat pump was necessary to be able to have a really warm house which needs heating from November to March (I think as we only moved in December) but yet still have very large windows and live as exactly as we would like to without the house dictating how we live.

I have a SSR roof and have experienced no problems. If my memory serves me well my make up is as follows (inside to out) PLasterboard Battening (service void) VCL 18mm OSB Wooden I Beam/380mm with full fill cavity insulation (not PIR) 18mm OSB 50mm battening (vent/void) 18mmOSB Roofing membrane SSR

Good idea which we thought about but our kitchen designer put us off them and we are very glad. We have a very light coloured large 1.2m sq tiles throughout and you have to hoover nearly everyday. You would not believe the amount of dust/debris that accumulate every single day and if you put lights under your worktop it will show up absolutely everything depending on your floor covering. GROSS WARNING!! If you walk round bare footed as I do when you sit down you have an area of dirt/skin exactly where your feet have been that drop off as you move your feet around. Plus you would not believe the amount of hairs that get shed each and everyday as they form a patch around your feet when sit down. We moved from a carpeted house with a dark laminate floor and used to hoover once a week as there was nothing to see but now we hoover every day and may get a robotic hoover in the future as it is depressing reality of living in a modern new build that is so light!! GROSSNESS OVER!

You seem to have a bee in your bonnet with heat pumps and as some have pointed out your experiences may cloud your judgement. When you read this thread there are far more positives than negatives especially from people who have built their own house to be highly insulated with a great air test result that suit the use of a heat pump. My electricity usage was about £120 for February and it is approx 330sqm house keeping the internal temp at 21. As people have said do your homework and put in a large cylinder and you will not have any problems so to speak. I had quotes for around £12,000 to fit my heat pump but bought a 9kw Pump myself and fitted it with my mate and loads of help from people on here for around £5500. No gas connection to pay for and with regards to it being noisy you cannot tell when it is running, in fact the noise from the mvhr vents is louder than the heat pump

No, just an internal vcl as a complete barrier on its own

This is exactly what I did. My sole plate had some adhesive + mechanical fixings. It then had adhesive/sealant between sole plate and timber frame sections. Then I primed the concrete and used the appropriate tape for wood to concrete and it is still like nobodies business 3 years on. My air test was 0.4 with a bug piece of window trim missing so it must have worked well

I have had problems with my Internorm sliding doors. I had Thomas Hagen (Internorm tech guy) out and I helped him to acro the frame back up and tighten the fixing screws but it has slowly happened again over the three years that the frame has been up. At the moment I cannot let the handle lift the doors fully up as the opening door catches on the frame so I have to hold it halfway to be able to open the doors which is not ideal plus I have to remember if I slide the door fully open that the handle is in the horizontal position and not vertical and so could put a dent in the aluclad exterior so not good! I tried to have another go with an acro just recently but the screws will not just pull the frame up and I cannot see what the screws are screwing into as the house is finished. With the Internorm frame the fixing holes in the sliding part of the frame are nearer the inside of the frame and when I look at the frame it seems as though it is not level across the width and I may try to remove a 5.4m exterior trim and try some screws on the outer side of the frame to help pull it up square and thus have two rows of screws. We are only talking about 3mm but it is enough to stop the door working properly.

I have tries GIS and they made a song and dance over not having a completion certificate so i tried renewing with Orwell insurance who we got unoccupied insurance with as the we had finished the structural work and they said not having a comp cert was not a problem with them and also we are timber frame/render board with S/S roof and a flat roof and the quote was just over £500 so cannot recommend them enough

Bloke next door to me does a bit of gardening and said he had a load of leylandii mulch that he wanted rid off and I took the lot FOC. worked a treat on top of the soil and was FREE so no complaints from me! The garden centre up the road sells bark mulch and they have a massive pile you fill your bags with. You can see the different types of wood that has been sent through the shredder and a lot of it is Leylandii.

My next job paving and I am seriously looking at paving pedestals for the majority of it so no laying/lifting etc

Left the gap as you suggest which was covered by the skirting. Did not bother with silicone to save money!! (Tight us northerners!)

Would be ok but I did not even do that in the two bathrooms as I had used the mat throughout

I do not have expansion strips of any kind in my doorways. I have laid 1.2m x 1.2m tiles throughout my ground floor onto decoupling membrane on a concrete slab and have had no problems and imo looks better than putting thin strips in which would have spoilt the look of my large tiles

I used the mat to cover my entire concrete slab just in case, just peace of mind really

Okay, you mentioned solar gain that was all and not the cold in your first comment so that confused me

Not sure why you are saying 3g is a must? We have 3g and it still gets plenty warm when the sun is on it. On the windows that are truly South facing we had a solar coating put on them and this really does help

we have used similar lights down a corridor. They are the plastered in ones and sit about 300mm from the floor and do look really smart but if you are having a tiled floor it shows every little bit of dirt!!

You sound just like me and the answer was you cannot reclaim the vat but no reasons given

I tried to argue but computer says NO!!

When I spoke to HMRC about this they said I cannot claim the vat back on induction hobs with built in extraction.

I did exactly the same, must be a Northern thing, eh, like!!