Bitpipe

Thanks for the tips on protecting the EPS. @Calvinmiddle could you please sketch that upstand detail? So no concerns on having the soleplate effectively below ground level then?

I think he's taking the p1$$.

Welcome! I would not have been able to build our house without the help of this forum and its predecessor - no word of a lie. It's also a place to de-stress and halve your problems by sharing. Now, onto more serious matters Are you working with a TF firm yet to understand how you'll achieve your stated airtightness and have you thought about other elements that will contribute - mainly doors and windows, cat flaps, letterboxes, penetrations for external services etc? This is easy to get right at the design and spec stage but harder when you're more advanced. Have you done any modelling (via PHPP or even something more basic) on your heat requirement and solar gain? If your house is well insulated and has high airtightness, plus MVHR for heat recovery, then your space heating requirements will be lower than you think (our 400m2 house has nothing in basement, UFH in ground floor only and only towel rads and electric UFH in bathrooms upstairs. I'd be very concerned about the potential for overheating - in a modern well insulated, airtight house, you may quickly become uncomfortably hot, even on a sunny spring day and that heat is very difficult to shift. We have friends who built a beautiful contemporary house with lots of glazing to the south to maximise the view and its insufferably hot - they're now spending a lot on special film to minimise the gain. Some thoughtful design can reduce your exposure to this plus use of integral blinds etc (this was our approach to reduce east gain where we have lots of windows). So while you're choosing your architect, make the performance of the house a key criteria - not just how it looks or how the space works (both still important) - and see if they have expertise and experience here.

Maybe add one of these for good measure.

We have MVHR extract in our utility, we have a heat pump condensing tumble dryer and an electric drying rack from Lakeland. Quite a bit goes on the rack, which is usually off unless there's something particularly heavy (i.e. jeans) or urgent. Things seem to dry pretty quickly.

We have a wet towel rad and electric comfort UFH in the bathroom, unsurprisingly towels dry out in no time. I'd get the fused spur fitted though just for peace of mind.

That looks smart. If we bring our paving level, with the bottom of the render then the EPS wont be on show really but I may need something to protect the top 100mm, I think I will need to run the dpm over the top of the pavers and cut flush to the door trim and then put a bead of mastic between the paver and the underside of the door trim to make it watertight.

After much procrastination, I'm finally getting round to locking the landscaping details for our build. First some notes on the construction - we have an open box basement (waterproof concrete) wrapped in EPS with a MBC house on the top and where we have doors or full length windows we cast 100mm wide corbels to allow these elements to sit within the insulated portion of the wall. Doors sit on timber packers off the soleplate to bring them to the required floor level - I should have put lead flashing under the sliders before fitting them to further protect the wood, was able to do this for the front door. Basement acts as DPC, MBC also laid a DPM under their soleplate which comes up over the external EPS leaf. There are 1m stone cobbles backfilling the basement wall with a land drain at the bottom, so very free draining. BC / SE originally required 150mm of the basement wall to be exposed above ground level to act as effective DPC - we then agreed that where this was not possible, ground could be higher than this provided we had ACOs to prevent any water collecting. Parex render system on the exterior and it must remain 100mm away from ground level to prevent splashes soaking up through the bottom of the render board. Original plan was to dress exposed EPS with UVPC and then backfill and pave such that the slabs were 100mm under the render and tight to the wall, using ACOs where needed for drainage. This is quite low wrt surrounding ground level and would mean a step up to the sliders, so the contractor has proposed an alternative plan where the pavers are at the same level as the end of the render but sit 100mm away from it and we have a french drain all around the perimeter, giving the necessary 100mm clearance from the render system. The paving would actually have a slight fall away from the house. For the doors, the paving would sit in a recess in the base of the sliders and the paving fall away from the house - potentially we could consider an ACO here but would like to avoid if possible. BC and render contractor are happy with this arrangement but I want to double check that there is no risk to the timber soleplate etc with this plan. Am I OK just dressing the DPM down against the wall or should I just trim it off where it pokes over the EPS? I'd bring the DPM up behind the paver and trim, not under like in the photo below.

I have timber UFH on the ground floor only (some electric UFH and towel rads in bathrooms). We have six circuits downstairs - five are in the open plan kitchen / diner / living / study and one is in the hall / stairwell. We control these as two zones separately with wall mounted stats with air sensors and we sometimes run the hall zone a degree warmer than the open plan living area to encourage a little heat upstairs. Seems to work fine - only snafu was not labelling the circuit pairs so a bit of trial and error to figure out which was which - we isolated the hall on second attempt and have never bothered to figure out the rest, much to the sparky's OCD disgust

I once objected to a planning app for mineral extraction near a beauty spot near New Lanark, Scotland - even though we live in Berkshire (we were on holiday up there as it's near the wife's parents). All accepted and I still get regular communication from the LA on it...

Might? It's almost obligatory for there to be all kinds of junk - I found taps connected to a foot of copper plumbing. I filled a wheelbarrow without even trying (and this was just in the surface layer, god knows what lay in the rest of the 150mm...

Had my electrician round yesterday and he was telling me that on one of his jobs, a garden new build in central Henley, BT wanted £4.5k for service provision, even though the house that the new build is beside has a drop wire from pole! Also saw this today, will be interesting if it makes any difference... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39228115 BT strikes deal to legally separate Openreach division

We had this issue with the transition from engineered wood in the hall to tiles in the bathroom. Fitter just make a little ramp from screed to gently bring the oak flush with the tile. Stainless steel 'T' trim on the join and it looks great. If you're having any electric UFH under the tile then you'll be looking at about 25mm when 6mm backer board, ufh mat, latex adhesive and tile are all added together. We made sure all the floors were complete before doing the final survey for the stairs - these are the one element you don't want to be out - depends whether they sit on the sub floor and if you finish around them (tiles, carpet, wood) or if they're sitting on the FF as they did in our case (resin).

FYI - Challenge was getting the placement in the MBC frame construction as there was a structural rib fouling the preferred spot, but we managed to squeeze it in. Note the 300mm is from the actual door aperture, not the door frame and that's what saved our bacon on this occasion.

Our 180mm MVHR penetrations are 1.5m apart but are level - I'd not heard of any requirement to have one higher than the other. Ours sit about 300mm from finished external paving level as they rise from the basement and exit behind utility cupboards. Our boiler flue is round the corner so that's not an issue wrt MVHR, however it was a pain to get it in the correct spot, being 300mm (or whatever the regs say) away from the rear utility door and 2100mm above finished paving level. Note it was the GS installer (our plumber) who insisted on those separations, not BC. I have to say, our independent BC guy didn't pay much attention to the MVHR - he asked for a commissioning cert but I explained that it was a DIY install so he's settling for a copy of the unit specs to ensure it's appropriately sized for the dwelling.

To be fair, I bought the kit (alu spreader plates and a 500m coil of pipe) plus a pipe decoiler which got returned as I used MBCs. I then started to lay the alu sheets while MBC were finishing joisting out the suspended timber floor over the basement. I got about half of them down before MBC took over the whole job as I was too slow

Thanks Jeremy - its the non solvent variety - elbow grease is the way forward, just wish I'd been a bit more diligent during the fitting !

I'm sure that some of the type 1 we used to line the basement excavation before putting down the EPS was made from our house rubble that we had carted away a week or so earlier. I recognised some of the parquet flooring... I'd just be wary as to how much junk is in the type 1 - ours had taps, light fittings, wood, rope etc..

Silicone was banned from our build when we were having the resin floor poured for this very reason - we had managed to avoid using any (using Sikaflex instead) but I had to jump in a few times to stop trades reaching for it. That said, Sikaflex is a bugger to get of glass once it's got smeared on - I added a 200mm glass projection to our ensuite wet room to prevent spray hitting the door a few weeks ago and I'm still cleaning it now - any suggestions on what to use?

We use ours all the time, for every cup of tea, coffee - cooking pasta, veg and even cleaning out containers quickly before putting in recycle bin. We binned the old kettle when leaving the caravan and have never looked back

Our Quooker fusion is a 3 way tap with one spout. DHW and cold are blended just like a normal tap. There is a collar that needs a 'double click' and press to activate the boiling - this is also aerates (so splutters quite loudly) to minimise risk of burns if you were to pass your hand through it (I have tried it and it works).

I was introduced to them by Jack who had researched them alongside Pazen (another brand I'd never heard of). Gaulhofer have a reseller in UK who both Herb J and I used. Im my case, they were the only firm that could offer a decent integrated blind to the external of the window (not the internal blind that Internorm have). It's a 3rd party product (Roma) but is really coupled well with the window and is shipped attached as a single unit. I also liked their inline flush style and budget wise they were coming in lower than Internorm at the time. The reseller also had a local installer who was very experienced and made a great job of the install, using high quality foams and tapes and also organised a repair after one of the frames got scratched during rendering. We also looked at Norrsken but found them a bit haphazard to deal with, although their prices were keener. They were not able to offer installation to meet our timing which was another negative.

No damage here but a few gusts caused the 4.4m sliding doors to whistle and rattle which was fun. Was half expecting to see the caravan make an exit (still trying to shift it ) and some scrap EPS got redistributed around the garden. However I was glad we're shot of all our old security fencing - we had Heras-like panels that I ziplocked privacy screens to and no matter how much I tried to weigh them down, they always ended up in the road (every weld is now broken so they're just scrap). The solid panels we had erected while digging the basement were even worse and made a racket or flew over when there was even a fart of wind - I had to go out one windy night with my spanner and torch to dismantle the whole lot so we could get some kip...

UK City of Culture, did Derry no harm...

On a related note, had my private BC come round for a pre- final inspection. He said 'I'll need the MVHR commissioning cert' I responded that it was a DIY install (which is common) so what did he need to see exactly? We agreed that I'll send him the spec of the unit to ensure it's adequately sized for the house