Bitpipe

I don't think the world really gives a toss tbh. Still, as long as Boris get's to play president when he can remember to turn up.

That's general taxation for you. I'm also funding the royal family, Trident, Boris' new 'Whitehouse style' press room (£2M, as yet unused), his COBRA 'Whitehouse style' situation room (£9M, unlikely he'll ever make an appearance) and his £1M plane paint job. Also Priti's £350k bullying payout to avoid a messy tribunal. Better get back to work.

Really? I just handed over the detailed MBC drawings and calcs to my private BCO and they told me what else they needed to see, which was not much and easily obtained. Given MBC give you a finished shell (with all internal walls & floors) that you can pre-order doors and windows for off the plan, installing them once the frame is up (mine went in a week after) why on earth do you need detailed construction drawings? My architect tried the same, wanted £10k for planning conditions discharge and BCO and we shook hands and said goodbye. I took it on from there and it was very straightforward given the package nature of MBC. Would have been different had I chosen to use a traditional build method. If planning is just an alteration and you know what needs to be altered then go to a technician to get drawings to the necessary approved scales etc and go for it. I did a few NMAs (changed window sizes, added solar) using powerpoint and some judicious cut & paste from the original drawings and got away with it

The new Audi eTron GT is getting good reviews and looks amazing. However the boot capacity is not compatible with my current lifestyle choices (teenagers, dog etc..). Looking to take the eTron 55KW SUV for a test once the dealers are open again - the BIK for electric is super low again so cheaper to business lease through ltd.co and have as company car vs my current Q5 on personal lease. Jeremy has always been open that he got a rather generous deal to take early retirement from the MoD which helped fund his build etc. Also, you'd be hard pushed to find anyone paying upfront for a car these days, leasing is the dominant model so as long as you can afford the monthly payments.

The only thing you have to watch is spilling bleach (or similar) or anything that can dye like lilly pollen or Tumeric and leaving it there for an amount of time. If it gets wiped up more or less straight away then it's fine.

There are a few variants but it's comfort floor - mine was done 5 years ago so it's probably moved on. There is a grey or black resin base coat which is mixed, poured and raked flat and then cures over 24 hours or so. The guys then sanded it and applied the topcoat which is water based and dries fairly quick again. I vaguely recall that the rubber mat was being phased out as a requirement.

No idea, where are you based? I can PM you the firm we used - would really recommend them as they do mainly commercial floors and the like, so did not have the 'lifestyle premium' of the fancier installers with the nice showrooms. Will dig out a link to some posts with my floors in them however they do look just like this... https://www.sika.com/en/brands/comfortfloor.html#colors

It's a suspended timber floor underneath - OSB on pozi-joists with ply to give a dead flat base for the resin. Feels solid but with a softness - bit like posh Lino. We've dropped glasses, plates etc on it and they virtually bounce. Very hygienic as there are no grubby gout lines. Good for the dog too as there were no issues with puppy accidents and the like.

Look at a resin floor - can’t remember who has it here but looks stunning ( @Bitpipe..?) and will allow you the finish you want in about 6mm. Or look at one of the commercial flow coats you can get, all of which will be cheaper than your tiles as I’m pretty sure they will be £100/m or more. Yup very happy Sika resin floor owner here. The buildup is about 6mm (2mm of resin and 4mm of rubber crumb mat underneath). We have UFH underneath. The resin cures in about 24 hours and same again when painted with the top coat - 2-3 days in all. No restrictions on UFH temp and it is very nice underfoot - we are a no shoes inside house and everyone always says how pleasant it feels as there is a slight 'give' due to the rubber underneath. Pretty bulletproof also, only thing that's caused damage was some unattended bleach and even that is hard to see. I needed additional buildup of ply as it was on a suspended wooden floor - 12mm + 9mm but on smooth solid surface like new self levelled screed then you'd be fine. It was about £100/m2 all in so up there with expensive large format tile. Looks great though - we have a seamless ground floor surface which takes a quick steam mop to look as good as new and are very resilient to almost everything. You can refinish it with the top coat if you tire of the colour or it gets damaged (no chips in ours after 5 years).

About a metre or so and 3 m wide. The SE will do the calcs and that will dictate the steel design. Only issue you may run into is designing the floor around the thickness of the steel beams. Also have to watch for excessive cold bridging.

We used 20 0.5 W 24v lights from here https://www.ukelectricalsupplies.com/collingwood-gl018-c-nw-small-led-marker-light-neutral-white.htm with a single 15W driver. On a timer and Lux switch and set into blocks that edge our resin bound gravel drive. Look great. Used rubberised pond cable to do the runs and each JB was filled with the two part waterproof gel. We also used 240v mains LED units from screw fix for lights in our driveway pillars. https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-browning-bricklight-brushed-stainless-steel-2-1w/1146x

I have a cantilevered first floor box at the front of my TF build - there is a steel frame inside that supports it. I used MBC for a passive standard frame package. If you have planning drawings then they can give you a cost estimate.

Talk to local ground workers - if they are doing road crossings then they need to be approved by the highways agency or LA.

I would suspect that if you employ someone to oversee the build in that level of detail then you'll be spending closer to 10% of your build budget for project management. Even then most PMs visit site occasionally, maybe once a week at best or at critical moments - I contemplated using a low energy specialist PM at the start of my project but could not justify the fee. Instead I took the approach of using a contractor who was experienced in passive construction and had contractural commitments to airtightness and a build system to guarantee passive standards, and trades who were capable of maintaining the airtight envelope. Getting the necessary U values and minimising overheating is a design exercise, getting airtightness is both good design and on site attention to detail. You then need follow on trades (electricians & plumbers) who won't compromise the airtightness by putting holes through the fabric.

If build hub had a motto....

Reminds me of playing Tetris in the student bar - always hated that shape...

I take your point - you can build a passive house, and enjoy all the benefits, without having it certified but if that's important to you then by all means pay for the certification. I still think perspective buyers will be interested in day to day running costs and comfort vs a confirmed standard they probably have not heard of or may not even be relevant in 20 years. Just be aware that your choice of products for some functions (like MVHR) may be restricted and you will need to pay a consultant as you go - back in 2015 we were quoted around £3k (and the MVHR unit would have probably been more £2k expensive than the one we chose).

EPS 300 is overkill for the sides - as very little load is presented from the backfill you'll probably be fine with 70 or 100 grade. If you go insulated slab then it depends on the load per m2 of the structure above it. We were able to get our SE to sign off on EPS200, original spec was EPS250. It gets a lot more expensive, heavy and harder to cut the higher grade it is - I think our 1.2m x 2.4m of EPS200 were about 35kg each. Once laid edge to edge on the blinded layer they were not going anywhere.

Probably depends on your ground conditions also, we were well above water (started 6m down, we dug to 3.5). Friends had a Thames feeding stream go through their plot and needed WPC plus exterior tanking. They went with a system from Glatthar which was very high quality but not cheap. Big issue they had to contend with was hydrostatic pressure pushing the basement out of ground so the slab was a beast. Also needed de-watering during the construction.

What did you do for your slab? Just cast it over EPS? I agree that structurally ICF and shuttering are the same, latter much less effort on site. The only advantage of shuttering over ICF is you can see the quality of the pour when it's struck. With ICF you need to expect that the vibration etc has been sufficient to prevent aggregate settling etc. You don't even need to use specialist shapes like Kore above. We just laid a plane of 300mm EPS 200 on sand blinded compacted hardcore to cover the slab footprint with some overlap at edges and covered with membrane. The crew built the slab & structure on top as if it was solid ground. 200mm EPS 70 was applied to sides, sitting on 'toe' of the EPS 250 using LE foam to stick it to concrete and fill any gaps. Total cost of insulation was about £5k in 2015 - £72/sheet for 300mm EPS200 and £25/sheet for the 200mm EPS70 (slab was 120m2, walls were 2.5m x 45m linear - ish). We could have gone for 200mm in the slab and saved some money (less excavation & muck away also) but at that time were undecided about UFH in basement so erred on side of caution. Didn;t bother in the end but basement is always cosy @ 20O. Installation costs were zero as I did it Maybe £100 for LE foam

We received our warranty with just one method (concrete) but that itself came with its own warranty - Sika.

Make sure your drip details are sufficient - this is the number one reason you'll get algae bloom and water staining. We can clearly see on ours where it's sufficient and where it is not. You want a good 50mm overhang for cills and 150mm for eaves.

My house is about 50-60% footprint of yours (remember for MVHR calcs you only measure useable interior space so not inc. walls) but similar in design of basement (4 rooms + plant), 6 beds (inc rooms in roof) and 4 bath/wc. BPC designed me a system based on Sentinel Kinetic + which easily met the BR whole house ventilation requirement at just over 40% fan speed and since, like you, there are only 4 of us I dialled it down to a more comfortable 35% for normal, keeping boost at 50%. You need to show to BR (in that you mark your own homework, they will never check) that your system can meet the regs but how you configure it there after is up to you). That unit is designed for multi occupancy units and was about £2k ish in 2015, I think it's about 30% cheaper now. The design was useful to size the unit and also estimate the ducting, although they made a generous allowance for deviation in runs which was needed (I diy installed and commissioned - lots of threads on this site how to do that). I used 75mm flexi duct with double runs to all extracts (7) and single to all supplies (13). One consideration you may have is duct length and location of unit. I put mine in the basement plant room so have some very long and very short runs. This made balancing a challenge but I got there in the end - only had the ceiling plenums as a means of adjustment. On the up side the intake/extract to exterior are quite short (good given they are 180mm steel, closer to 250mm when insulated). The manifolds were 14 port each (one supply, one extract) so more or less filled. Have you thought as to where you will locate yours and how to manage the not inconsiderate ducting and manifold - while the ducts are flexible, it can get pretty congested when they all come together and tight bends will reduce airflow.

It is but on a new build site you can't have people wandering in and out. The trade off is a quick indiscriminate flattening of the existing with a machine over a few days - rough separation of recyclables, crushables etc vs landfill and getting to a clean workable site as quickly as possible vs slow demo to preserve items of potentially zero value that will hang around site (getting in way and potentially causing a hazard to trades) all at cost to you. I went through our 1950s detached ahead of demo and stripped all the copper, brass and lead piping, cylinders etc and took to recycling yard for about £150 total cash value. We kept the vintage enamelled bath (& bathroom set) but it was too heavy to move, filled up with junk and eventually a scrapper drove past and we gave it to him for free. I also had 3 jumbo ton bags of clean softwood on offer (anything processed, ply, MDF etc went to dump for recycling) - ideal for kindling. Advertised a few times but had to take it all to the dump bar a few car loads that friends took. One job I did do was an end of day 'skip surf' to pull out timber, cardboard, metal etc and get it into either the domestic recycling or down to the local centre. Food waste (of which there was lots from trades lunches) went into the domestic bin / food caddy and all empty cans and drinks bottles recycled. This both kept the skip free for proper waste, minimised pests (rats etc) and maximised recycling.

Let's be clear, the PH certificate / plaque adds no value itself - you can build a passive standard house without the bit of paper to say so and reap all the low energy benefits. Many here have done that. The PHPP tool is useful and gives a more accurate view of space heating requirement and overheating risk than the mandatory SAP. I would fully expect that marketing a house for sale as 'Passive' would reduce its value as the vast majority of normal buyers want a nice house, kitchen and bathroom etc and will be put off by anything deemed out of the ordinary or too 'eco' as it implies (incorrectly) that there is a mandatory lifestyle and mode of using the house imposed on the occupant. You would be targeting a very thin slice of the market. One of the original, but sadly no longer active, members here was told as much by a surveyor who came to value his passive (non certified) new build in Wiltshire. Saying that the house had very low utility bills (my 400m2 house is £1/day gas and £1.50 electric) will definitely get attention, again you don't need a passive certification to enjoy those benefits.