Bitpipe

If you get a dog they'll eat it for you. The cat poo that is, not the cat.

A balcony is an external area that is intended for domestic use and designed for that purpose. It needs to be approved by planning and conform to building regs. A roof is not intended to be accessed in any way or walked upon apart from people who have the necessary experience of working at height , insurance etc and are there for some kind of essential purpose (e.g. a roofer). They should have external means to access the roof (ladders, platforms etc) , you could provide access from inside but ask yourself how often that will be needed and do you want a messy trade getting your interior, ceiling etc grubby? If you open your roof 'to the public', including your family, then you'd be in contravention of your planning permission (overlooking neighbours etc) and you'd be legally liable for any falls or worse. Can't think why a properly constructed roof will need access for maintenance. If keeping the window clean is your concern, may be cheaper to spec a self cleaning glass for the roof light and let the rain do the job for you.

Which dries out nice and quick. MVHR removes the odour also.

We made a last minute decision to put electric UFH in the bathrooms, previously had only allowed for wet towel rads. When I say last minute, we'd already completed first fix and started boarding out so a few had to come off to get the conduits and spur boxes etc in. Was a good decision and was not at all expensive. The budget Warmstar mats work well and I can't see why you'd pay multiples for the more expensive brands - they all do the same thing, resistance heat a wire in a mat in the floor. One thing to watch is build-up - you will add about 10 -12mm of additional thickness to the floor with insulation (6mm), the mats and a laytex compound to give you a smooth layer to tile off. One advantage of this was that the 25mm low profile shower tray in a room ended up flush with the tiles, which was nice. One disadvantage was the bathroom tiles were 10mm above the hall flooring (engineered wood) so the fitter had to build a little ramp from laytex to even the threshold. Worked well and you'd never know to look.

All of our TV points have a male F type connector for which you apply a small adaptor to get the coax connection. We also have an ethernet port adjacent to every TV point as that seems to be almost as ubiquitous. I doubt our kids ever watch anything that's broadcast live over the air!

I did not plan any steel penetrations but got lucky with a few gaps but also had a few detours.

UFH manifolds are not large, ours are in the hall cupboard along side the pump, controller and same for the towel rads. UVC is in basement plant room with hot return so distance from taps not an issue. MVHR manifolds can be large though and need space around them to take all the terminating ducting can get congested when they all come together. Ours are 14 ports each and are a flat design so are mounted in the plant room ceiling. The unit itself is not small either so wall mounted in plant room also. Needs access to change filters and the annual heat exchanger clean.

DIY and I'm not particularly handy. Lots of information on this forum on how to do it. Start with a design from one of the suppliers based on your floor plan - I used BPC. You'll be looking at an extract per bath/kitchen and a supply per bed and otherwise occupied room. Depending on your build method, you may need penetrations in steel beams for the duct runs - these need to be specified, designed by your SE and fabricated, not a thing to be doing on site. You then fix the ceiling plenums where needed and run duct from there back to the manifold locations, one for extract and one for supply. It's easy enough with pozi joists but be prepared for a bit of swearing. Best done with a helper but I did mine solo. Next job is running large bore duct from the internal manifolds to the unit and running the external large bore ducts from the external vent locations to the unit location, insulating if required. Once ceilings are up and plastered (I recommend trimming the ceiling plenums before skimming) you attach the vents, position the unit, attach the large bore duct, run the condensate drain as appropriate and basically switch it on. Your electrician should make provision for boost switches if they're to be wired in - ours were done inline with the lighting controls and use the same PIR trigger as the hot return system. You can then adjust the ceiling ducts to balance flows and check you meet the BR requirements - again, lots of guides here how to do that. You will need to borrow or hire a flow meter. Try and get your ducts in before first fix starts or you may find space taken up with other large services such as foul drains.

I cant imagine they cost much to run, they only cover the areas of bathroom you walk in (so not under bath, shower or WC) but don't forget to extend under the sink. Come on for a few hours a day to take the chill off but as the house is usually 20o year round not needed much.

I got Harmoni ones but they don't seem to to them anymore. The Heatmiser range look to have ones that can be integrated. Ultimately, the system comprises of an in floor stat that is laid alongside the mat and something to turn the mat on and off so you could create your own if you're going down that path.

I upgraded the stat to some fancier ones from the UFHSS but used everything else. Also worth buying a digital multimeter to note resistance readings and mat alarm which detects shorts when the mat is being laid. Tiler used 6mm insulated boards below and covered with two part laytex before tiling over. Work great and stat has a timer so just have them come on an hour before we get up.

Ah, the Daily Mail. My son has a paper round and without fail the DM goes to pensioners, Telegraph to the posher ones. One lonely Guardian and a few Times. Must take a lot of effort to be that perpetually outraged at everything. They seem a bit bored now that Brexit is done.

Yes - we have wet UFH on GF and wet towel rads in bathrooms but used electric mats in bathrooms as it was a bit of a last minute decision. They work really well - just got cheap 150W single wire mats from Warmstar.

Our basement slab was 120m2 and sat over chalk / gravel so was designed with the expectation of 'solution features' aka holes. Was 300mm thick but nothing bigger than H16 bars. Basement walls (linear 45m x 3mhigh ) were also cantilevered off the slab as there was no basement lid (steel / timber GF). Similar 300mm thick. We also had no toe, just a clean corner. Friends built a basement in Thames tributary and were underwater from the get go - de watering equipment for the build etc. Their basement design had a massive slab and toe to stop it getting pushed out of the ground by the hydrostatic pressure.

We were advised against pressure washing the block paving area on our drive as it dislodges the sand that is vibrated into the gaps and keeps the blocks from moving, can also erode the sand below onto which they are bedded. I just do a dose of path clear weed killer early in the season on visible weeds, grass and on any new weeds that emerge. Need to pick a dry day with no rain forecast and be patient. You see the effects after a week or so.

You've drawn something similar to our GF detail but it is over a basement. We have a timber soleplate on top of the basement wall, the pozi joists hang off that (the top chord is longer than the bottom) and the deck goes on top. TF walls build off the deck. DPM and airtightness lap under the soleplate To exterior we have paving that comes level with front door and rear slider but the rest sits away from the wall by 100mm with a 100mm deep french drain. Paving slopes away from house and in the areas where paving is close to exits, DPM is lapped up so no water can get to the wooden elements. Also have lead flashing under the doors. Not had any issues in 5 years even when the rain has been hammering against the door.

We have a Vent Axia Sentinel Kinetic + - very pleased with it, no issues in 5 years and easy to change filters and remove the heat exchanger for it's annual clean. They're not that complicated inside, four fans and lots of foam plus a few other bits and bobs. Not much to go wrong really.

Suggest you pick up the phone to a few brokers and see where you get. I would be surprised if they are that knowledgable TBH. Outer membrane + waterproof concrete (& water bars etc) would meet the requirements, question is if you can save the expense of using both. Also, a warranty is not mandatory but is advisable if you plan to re-mortgage post build or sell the property in 10 years. Our mortgage company (who we went to post build as Ecology were a bit expensive) asked IF we had a warranty but never asked to see it. They are notoriously hard to claim against.

I think the above goes for any driveway irrespective of what's on top. Our landscaper grubbed up 5 grab loaders worth of old driveway and top layer and replaced with about 100t of crush and then scalpings which were rolled flat, not whacked. He concreted in edging blocks, well haunched on the outer side and the resin contractor laid pourus tarmac and resin bound gravel. 5 years in it looks more or less as it did when it went down. We also have block paved bell mouths in and out. Few gaps starting to appear between blocks now but he's coming back to resolve.

The waterproofing is dependent on your ground conditions, until you know where the water table is in your footprint it will be hard to get the SE to sign off on any one scheme over another. When I was engaging with my warranty vendor at quote stage, I had the reports (water below 6m) and SE plans so they were happy to accept type B only.

My challenge is doing Zoom calls for work when the wife is doing the same, kids are on their phones after school etc.

Few observations here... for us we had already committed by moving into the house to be demolished and locating a caravan in the garden but had lots of delays which is where our stress was. Also felt queasy watching the old house getting flattened though, point of no return and all that. The build itself was fine - things you worry about tend to be OK and the things that catch you out are things you never thought too deeply about. e.g. I was super stressed about the basement (contractor 1) lining up with the TF house (contractor 2). No issues. But I never though the airtightness of the house would impede the resin flour pour (humidity was too high) and that caused stress. I think the number one stress is usually financial - do you have the cash and a reserve to build what you want and to deal with hiccups? Next up, do you know what you want and is it clearly described / documented and understood? The majority of trades can usually do what you want (within reason and budget) but only of there is no ambiguity. The best way to avoid that is to be present to be asked questions and to pick up on issues early. If you have very high expectations and are asking for things outside their norm, make sure that is understood at the outset and re-inforced as you go, but also be realistic on what is achievable on your budget. Don't ever be afraid to ask what's going on - not in a confrontational or critical way but in a 'I'm not entirely sure what's happening, can you explain'. Ask open questions such as 'what are my options here' or ' how would you do it if it was your house' - I found that a good way to get defences lowered and the trades were more likely to be candid if they did not understand the brief. Remember that every problem can be fixed but some errors you can live with and some you will want put right. Most importantly be there - I realise that's not an option for everyone but all my issues happened when I was away from site for a week or so (e.g. business trip). It will challenge both your physical and mental health - try not to over dramatise or castrophise what might happen. If you did that every day you would not be able to exist. Just do your research, accept that things can go wrong, always have a 'how can we fix this' mentality and you will be ok.

We live 800m from a FTTC cabinet but have very slow speeds, peak of 22Mbps and can be as crap as 1-2Mbps. House cabling is new as is the connection to the pole opposite so something between the two is not good. Our neighbour had OR out for the 4th time last week - they remade his connection at the pole and it improved his speed somewhat but it's still much lower than we'd expect. I had a good chat with the OR guys, they agreed that the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) I was experiencing was too high (11db vs target of 6db, db are logarithmic) but did not have any good suggestions other than to keep on at my service provider (Vodafone) to reset the link. They admitted that much of the local loop cabling is just not fit for purpose and is riddled with faults, broken pairs, crosstalk, flooded chambers etc. We have a local 'exec development' (they would die to have it called an estate) built in the 90s and they have aluminium wiring so have really poor speeds as ADSL is designed for copper. Rumours abound though that FTTH is on the way and slowly creeping in our direction. Starlink may force the legacy providers to up their game but realistically it will never be able to offer the same urban coverage & performance, more targeted at rural areas I fear.

Yes I did and please don't think I'm anti ICF. We shortlisted two ICF systems, visited sites and did detailed cost modelling on each, TF was a late entrant for consideration. We even chose our basement SE based on their ICF experience. In 2015 I just got much more build for my money with a TF package, working with one above ground contractor and a very fast progression to first fix, which as a novice was important. Were I more experienced then perhaps I could have found a way to pull in the ICF cost and been able to manage the additional build complexity. We were wholly reliant on waterproof concrete for our basement, which is considered type B from an insurance point of view. Also had a french drain externally but that is not recognised as a waterproofing method per se. I wanted to avoid type A (external membrane) if possible and type C (internal membrane, pump & sump). Our water table is at 6m so we were not 'in the water' so got insurance based on type B alone. I found that when getting quotes from ground-workers they were exclusively cast in situ concrete - none of them had any experience with ICF. Maybe different now. With regard to airtightness, ours was contractually guaranteed and we achieved 0.56 ACH on a fairly large structure so if the attention to detail is taken and the right materials used then any structure can meet the desired standard.

That's unfortunate - was one of our reasons for sticking to standard window sizes for the roof. Are you looking for internal or external shading?