Pete

Hopefully just finished our UFH design. This is for a non certificated passive house. The house is a timber frame with passive slab using AFT .The house is on a North/South axis with South being at the right hand side of the drawing. I am hoping people could cast their eyes over this pipe layout. At the moment it has come out needing a 12 port manifold and the spacing is 200mm. My query is whether I have over done the amount of pipework and if this could be reduced. With the one room upstairs (not on the drawing but positioned directly above the Northern end of the house) I have not bothered with UFH but not sure whether to get a bigger manifold which starts to get expensive, just to put electric ufh to go with the bathroom and all of which may never be used if the house is as warm as we hope. All bathrooms will be electric UFH and any spacing you see, as in the long corridor, will be evenly spaced on the day of laying the pipes. TIA

Is the land that has the Planning permission on part of your garden? We are in the same position in that we are building one for ourselves and one building plot for sale. If we built on the building plot and sold the house we would have been liable for CGT but we decided to just sell the plot as the value of the plot is the same as may be the profit we would make without all the work of building. The reason I ask is it part of your garden as you are not liable to pay CGT if you sell part of your garden while you live in the main residence. We will need to sell the building plot before we move into our new build otherwise we would be liable for CGT.

Order some Rosate of ebay. We did and it will kill almost everything and keep things in check while all the non-building work takes place.

Exactly what I propose to do when our frame goes up. Definitely make life easier especially where the ladies are concerned!

Great to have started. +1 on a neat and tidy job. Our foundations are starting next week so we are not far behind you!

My worst had a nail sick roof where the rafters had dropped from the ridge board creating a 200mm gap in the middle allowing the local feline population in. It also allowed the rain to get in, most of the carpets had mushrooms growing in them. It was an end terrace and when I had finished stripping it back if you stood in the front door there where no floor joists to the basement, first floor joists still intact and no gable wall and no roof timbers.

Mine has worked out at at about £166 sq m. That is with me excavating site and getting ready for contractor to lay the stone. I will be doing the UFH pipes myself.

I have same thoughts. Will see what it is like when the garage is finished and may use self leveling if needed.

Hi All, !6 cube of concrete booked for 11am today. Batch plant broke down approx 3miles from site but did not find this out until end of first pour. Upon asking how long till the next load I was informed about an hour as he has to go next nearest batch plant. I was not happy but what can you do. By approx 3pm all concrete in place and started to finish the screeding. The beam screed was 6.2m long with two vibrating units on it and it weighed a ton. With about 2 metres left to do the belt on one of the units was playing up and started vibrating badly. At this point the wooden beams that are used to secure the engines to the beam came loose due to a combination of excess vibration and the securing threads on some of the bolts had been stripped. Then the unit completely packed in as the shaft that drives the belt had a severe bearing failure.(stress level rising by now.) By the time we had removed the whole beam, removed faulty engine, cleaned beam and relocated it was past 4pm and it was at this time that we made a bad decision. As the we looked at the concrete we realised it was a mess where the wooden beam had dropped out,when we placed the beam back it left a big mark right across the slab. We decided to go over the whole slab again with one engine ( rung hire company and they did not have another) and it was a nightmare.Trying to pull that beam with only one engine on concrete that was starting to set was horrendous and thus we have ruts across the slab spaced evenly as I took a step to start the next pull. So the reason for the rant I now have a slab that is sort of ok for a garage but if you had seen the finish of the concrete before it all went wrong you would be as disapppinted as me. I rushed to the hire company just before closing to get a bull float but it would not even touch it. Would a power float touch it tomorrow? Or what else could I do? SWMBO said it looks ok as it only a garage but every time I go in there I will be reminded of the day when it all went wrong through no fault of my own. TIA

Looking good Ian. Hope things continue to go smoothlyish, will pop down and see you soon. Our frame going up in August, just completed garage footings.

Got 12 linear metres of 12mm rebar today from TP's and when I asked how much he said £39.96, my response minus expletives was it was steel not gold I wanted. Sorry he said your discount has not been applied, £14.00 including vat was my bill. I hate having to query every item and I feel really sorry for people who do not have an account.

Just make sure you leave enough room to slide your soaker in, it is only around 75mm ish Do not nail/screw within that zone when fixing vertical battens and cladding and you should be ok,As you are fixing the lead piece to the dormer first you can nail that at the top edge and then carry on cladding the dormer being mindful of not nailing/screwing below that line.

What he means is put a single length of lead at the lowest point of the dormer cheeks following the rake of the roof. If it is longer than 1.5m then use another piece to allow for expansion and overlap by at least 100mm with second piece. If you measure how thick your slates are then that will set the bottom edge of the lead piece you are going to attach to the cheeks and along the front under the windows. The top edge of this lead will be covered by your battens and wood cladding, When you make your soakers they are L shaped, one part goes under your slate and the the other part, the vertical up stand will then tuck under your lead piece on the dormer. Each row of slates has a soaker which is nailed to the batten and turned down past the top edge of the batten.If you imagine putting a 75mm strip of lead under the lead piece on the dormer and a 75mm piece under each slate with a 90 degree angle between them this may help, all using one piece of lead. Where it gets tricky is doing the dormer corner detail as you will either have to beat the lead to shape or you can buy pre made lead corners on the web or ask your roofing guy to make them for you. If it was my roof on a brand new build I would get some lovely lead welded corners to finish of the job properly. hope this helps.

Following this thread with interest. Just got my ducting diagram from BPC and apart from a few tweaks it is all looking good. We are using the Vent Axia like a few on BH and it seems quite straight forward to install as a DIY? My only concern will be the cooling mode but I am sure somebody will already have completed this on their build? TIA

We found going through a middle person rather direct is the only way to deal with Tata steel. Since we did this communication has been great. When I queried their quote and they realised it was their fault they increased the discount from 25% to 40%. I am booked on a couse in August. If you PM me I can send you the reps name if you still want the product. The rep works for Catnic and has been really helpful. The product is sent to your nearest BM and you pay them the price quoted from Catnic . I thought the price I was quoted was ok.

If you have done a few small roofs already and it is battened out you should be OK. As long as the battens are straight and you make sure you keep your slates to the middle of the batten when laying. Just check along the bottom of the slates you have laid now and then to make sure they look right.

Just playing the builder's merchants against one another and TP said they would not use Hanson cement as it is a load of rubbish. This was after another local merchant could provide this at a saving of 90p a bag as opposed to using Blue Circle. Just wondered what the brickies thought of this and does it really matter as I have used both in the past and never really noticed any difference.

These things happen. Before we approached planning we decided to contact the neighbours to inform them of our intentions and provide them with a copy of the elevation drawings to see if there was anything that they considered contentious. When I contacted one neighbour she just snatched them out my hand and never spoke to me again.She then tried to object at the planning stage by saying all sorts of things including saying that our development would cast shadow on her house even though her house was positioned east of our plot. Another neighbour was adamant that we should not be allowed to build even though she was waiting for planning to build at the bottom of her extremely large garden.

When I joined the fire service everybody was within a few inches of one another. After equality kicked in, my last few years were spent putting up 4 man ladders with female f/f's next to me who where at least a foot smaller if not more and that is meant to be progress!! Womanual handling regs!!

Nice job. like the way full pieces sit under the windows

Thanks guys

Ours is a raft design. So the pipes can be laid between the xps insulation that is within the house and then there will be a short run from where the pipes leave the house wall to the ashp, approx 1 to 2 metres.

Not looked at that yet but from previous post's would look at insulated pipe. Distance is about 7/8 metres each way. What type did you use and what diameter?

Further to ducting post, what size ducting have people used for the flow/return pipes for the ashp as we are not planning on fitting the pump straight away. We will see how the house performs so would like to put the ducting in place for future proofing. TIA

Is there a problem with running the alarm cable for the separate garage in the same duct as the mains supply? Not sure yet whether the main supply will go to the garage then the house or vice versa but either way I need to run an alarm cable. TIA