Bitpipe

Cool, at the moment I drive round with a pen permanently stuck in the over-ride slot, has worked for 8 months Will give them a call, just need a friendly mechanic to extract it for me..

A follow up opinion here - not news to us but calls out the conflict between the skills available in the market and the government desire to build housing, plus a slack inspection regime and coziness between NHBC and developers. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/23/building-millions-new-homes-not-fit-to-live-in-regulation

Hmm, at the moment I have a fault with my '08 Audi A6 auto gearbox - locks out and I need to press a hidden button under the ash tray with a pen to unlock. Problem is with the gearbox ECU which garage could remove, send for 3rd party reconditioning, and re-install. They stopped doing this though because there was no guarantee that the ECU would't fail again and they had upset customers who had shelled out £100s on the labour cost. Only Audi will supply new ones and they need to do all the work - cost £1500+ Apparently I have over 10 such ECUs distributed through the car

It's quite remarkable how little there is inside a MVHR unit really. Agree that they should last much longer than 10 years. To make the obligatory thread diversion, our local garage reckons they'll be out of business before too long as cars from the last 10 years are becoming increasingly uneconomical to repair due to ECUs failing and now they have s/w issues that ca only be addressed by the dealers.

I also have basement light-wells from MEA Bausysteme, a Hacker kitchen and NEFF / Siemens appliances (plus the same windows as you). I can only blame that sandwich year I spent in Augsburg in 1992...

That's what we had for the caravan - as recommended by you I believe!

This reminds me of a similar thread that I started when attaching 2 47kg propane tanks to the caravan. My regular (and nearly retired) gas safe plumber hooked it up but did not insist on securing the tanks (was more of a recommendation against theft than safety) and I proudly posted the pics, only to have Nick and Dave tutor me in how to make it secure. I concreted in 3 posts and chained the cylinders every which way to prevent any risk of toppling etc. Very glad of the advice too. My LPG delivery guy suggested a cage for both anti-theft and safety - was impractical for us but might work for you Terry?

Reading the comments, a lot of people put huge faith in the NHBC warranty and belief that each unit is inspected and signed off - we know that BC look at 1 in 10 max per development. My overriding thought was if those are the defects you can obviously see, what on earth is now hidden from sight - guessing shocking levels of insulation and cold bridging that will only become apparent after a few years occupation.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/20/bovis-to-pay-7m-to-compensate-customers-angry-at-poorly-built-homes

Yet to get round to this, could use the money but may still have a few big ticket landscaping items that we need to buy first. Some items that I'm wondering about... We bought quite a bit of MDF for built in wardrobes - these are called out in the drawings so hopefully should be OK (I know there are strict interpretations on what is allowed). Also got some temporary plastic guttering while we waited for the alu goods specd in the plans, guessing this is not allowable.

Agree, by 'super neat' I meant within a mm which is what you need for the flush variety.

Looks like we were lucky to have good tackers who only left the yellow fittings protruding from the board, the tiler then did a neat job so the pans fitted fine. Only area where we encountered the above issue was on our downstairs loo where we had splash back glass instead of tile. We were nervous of the pan biting onto the glass so had a decent margin around the pan in the glass template - however this now meant the bottom of the pan would bite onto the pb so we had that section removed and replaced with 12mm ply. All worked fine and I colour matched a sealant around the glass. I've not sealed around the tiled WC pans yet though - looks neat as it is but I guess I'd better do something before long. The yellow bungs are best left in until fitting the pan, as well as protecting the seals, they prevent odour coming out of the foul system - we noticed this after leaving the downstairs one off for a day or two, was not pleasant. One last tip, do you have your flush plates on hand? if they are the clip over variety then your tiler does not need to be super neat around the opening, however we bought the flush variety and didn't realise that they needed a tiled in surround to work until after we'd tiled two rooms. Got the necessary surrounds for the other two and did a swap to get clip over plates for the already tiled ones.

Installation guide for Quooker fusion here. http://www.quooker.co.uk/fileupload/Documentation_UK/installation_guide_vaq_e_uk.pdf It says that any descaling system must not reduce the pH level below 7 or remove all minerals by reverse osmosis as this can be harmful to the tank. I guess this is why ours is not fitted to the soft cold feed which is fed by a classic brine style recharging water softener. Apparently an annual service is required to remove limescale, or use of their bespoke £250 descaling unit!

We are also in a hard water area and have unfiltered cold to the boiling tap (quooker fusion plus pro vac3 tank) and soft hot. We have a soft cold feed under the sink too that's not connected to anything. Not had any issues yet but expect to need to service the tank soon - they do a free kit. The associated softener was quite expensive so we didn't use.

We have a large Siemens extractor over the induction hob, it's a bit of a beast and the centre piece of the kitchen but looks great and seems to work well. It has a recirculation unit and we have a MVHR extraction duct about 1m in front of it, plus another in the corner of the kitchen. It works pretty well on smell and grease removal, however it has its limitations and theres been a few times I've needed to open a window - normally because I've 'overcooked' something One note, extractors and the recirculation units are VAT exempt kitchen appliances for new builds as they're considered building fabric, not appliance. This may skew when you decide to buy it. We just got our kitchen supplier to zero rate it in the invoice.

We got our first induction with the new kitchen - on moving in we were dismayed to find that none of our Analon pans would work (alu, non ferrous). Scratching our heads, we opened a plain box that had been left on the counter to find a full set of suitable stainless steel pans - part of the induction hob package apparently. Mrs B has since 'upgraded' to a set of Le Cruset pots. Also have a Qooker 3 way tap and no kettle, would never go back. That said, we didn't get the de-scaler module so probably need to get the free descaler kit pronto...

Changing the topic slightly.... We used a local architect to design our house, before we knew anything about low energy / passive principals. We chose him based on his in-house style and proven record at getting planning through, he worked with traffic and planning consultants so offered a complete package in that respect. Once we had planning, we started to investigate build methods and discovered e-build, then the passive / low energy journey started. He admitted that his knowledge in that respect was pretty non existent and his usual path forward was traditional build methods (brick / block & block) though a main contractor. We amicably parted company thereafter, especially as he wanted £15k for planning conditions & building regs submissions, even though our TF provider offered a complete package in the latter respect. We did the conditions & regs ourselves with no issues and this gave us the confidence to PM the whole project. We did love his design and by luck it lent itself well to being a low energy construction, especially wrt orientation and window placement. So while we may not be typical self builders (if there is such a thing) I doubt our experience is unique, especially on this forum.

We built a passive basement in Berks, with a MBC timber frame passive house on top. The GI for a basement is a bit more complex than what you'd do for strip foundations, DIY is probably out of the question. While GI does not need to be expensive, you want to do it properly once and get everything you need. I found that most firms travel far and wide, they usually rely on a small self propelled rig that they can mobilise on a trailer or in the back of a van. Ideally, your SE should draw up the specification for the GI, not your architect. In reality, the SE designs the basement - i.e. the steel schedule, concrete spec, waterproofing methodology etc, and needs to get the required info from the GI. BC and any warranty underwriter may want to see the assumptions that the SE used for the design and your LA may have interest in what you find also. SE will primarily be looking for the bearing strength at various points of the basement, water and gas levels, ground build up and any history of made ground, etc. if you have contamination conditions from your LA as part of planning, then you'll also need the requisite contamination reports. To minimise muck away costs, you may need classification of the waste as inert - depends on where it's going and what their requirements are. We required two go-arounds, mostly due to sloppy practice first time on site (I was away, which was unavoidable but a mistake) but also due to some uncertainty in the findings and the vagueness of historical workings in the area. We had a mix of 10m dynamic probes and 5m samples taken, plus ground water and gas monitoring left in place for a few weeks with regular monitoring. Our buildup was classic river bed - clay, gravel and chalk - quite surprising on how much this varied in a 11m2 area, 3.5m deep. SE was concerned about solution features in the underlying chalk so we have a fairly hefty 300mm thick slab with lots of rebar to support the cantilevered walls - we have a suspended timber floor, not a concrete lid on the basement. SE also designed the steel support for that, tying in with the TF design and point loads from above. Whole basement sits on 300mm EPS 200 (the cheapest we could get away with for the required bearing strength) and the walls have 200mm EPS70. We used Sika warrantied waterproof concrete without anything else as the water table was quite low for us (6m).

I meant temp taping around doors, not the permanent variety

Well done! Is that a record for this site? Was much taping required?

I imagine that the vast proportion of showroom kitchen company business is replacement and upgrade, not new build. I'd even guess that a trade place like Howdens only has a fraction of new build business given that the vast majority of new builds are developer led. We also had to spell out the finer details of self build VAT rules to our kitchen firm, ensuring that the (quite expensive) extractor was VAT free as they'd lumped it in with all the other appliances which attract VAT. Between locking the spec and ordering for delivery, a few of our appliances had been discontinued but we got upgrades to better models for no extra charge - probaly would not have had that luck if ordering as individuals. Our Hacker kitchen is also offered by a few firms so it was easy enough to do a price comparison once we had locked the spec. Stone and glass were also easy to check. The only real variable is the quality of the fitting, our guy was great - if hard to schedule. He practically did a bespoke job for the utility as there were some odd shapes in the vaulted roof and he also had a gas flue and two 180mm external MVHR ducts to deal with. Ended up ordering a bunch of new panels to finish it properly vs what had been delivered, again at no extra cost.

+ 1 on driving a heap. Always slightly disappointed when its still there the next morning...

Exactly the situation we're in Dave, being charged CT at 50% for the van (so about £35 a month) and despite disconnecting it from power and water, LA can't do anything unless the Valuation Office delete it from their books. In discussion with them, they sent me a generic form, none of which is really applicable as the van is water and wind tight. I have a local couple interested in buying so with a bit of luck I may have got shot of it in a month or so, will still try and get the CT back if I can. The van sat in our back garden for over a year before hooking it up and it was another good few months before we moved in and a few months after that, demolished the main house which is when the council took notice. However, once it's on the books, it's there until it goes or the VO delist it.

That's who I used. Bought their 100W/m2 mats and 6mm tile backer board. They were good quality and stuck down quite well, tiler said that the more expensive mats were not as easy to work with. They are warrantied to a degree but you're not covered for consequential losses if they fail (i.e. replacing tiles etc). The more expensive brands seem to offer this but I'd hope that once they are in and latexed & tiled over, they're unlikely to go wrong. Make sure you get a digital multimeter to test & record the resistance of the mats at each stage of the process (wrapped, unwrapped & installed) and then use the alarm box during install to ensure they're not damaged during latexing or tiling.

Our bathroom UFH was a very last minute decision, sparky and me were hastily removing the plasterboard on a Sunday ahead of it being plastered the following Monday to get the conduit in for the stat and mat I got cheap 100W/m2 mats off eBay (from a reputable seller) and also picked up the 6mm backer board, sealer and latex from there too. Tiler put it all down in less than a day (all 3 bathrooms). I binned the stats that came with the mats and got nicer ones from the underfloor heating store, plus a cheap digital multimeter and damage sensor - this is a handy box that clips onto the mat cable during laying and will beep if there's an earth fault or breakage. Take pics of the mat location and note that the heat does not spread far so you need to get the coverage spot on - also be aware if you need to cut into the floor at a later date for traps for free standing baths etc. Each mat is self contained, the stat has a timer, so no central control needed.