Bitpipe

Our architect designed us a great house and came up with innovative ideas that we would never have thought of ourselves - also helped navigate us through planning and played the game with the LA to get us through. Money well spent in my opinion. I will say through that they did their best to talk us out of having a basement (expensive, cold and damp was their initial view) but we persevered and it's one of the best parts of the house. They just drew it as a big square box on the plan and we decided later how to split it into rooms (actually our electrician did out of sheer frustration and we gave his design to the joiner to build). However when it came to the detailed design phase they were a bit of a let down - zero awareness of passive or even low energy design and very sceptical of timber frame construction.When they asked for £15k to discharge the 12 planning conditions and rework the very detailed drawings we'd get from MBC, we amicably parted company. We took it from there (with lots of help from this forum's predecessor and more than a few of the regular contributors) - a turnkey TF design & build removed a lot of the risk and the rest was basic PMing and paperwork. A good independent BCO helped (came on their recommendation) and when we were done, they came for a visit and were genuinely impressed at the execution and performance we achieved. I just think that our requirements were out of their comfort zone at that time and it would have been very frustrating for both of us to continue working together. By luck and some site constraints (their admission), their design worked well in the location for passive performance and we had enough glazing in the right places to minimise excessive gain. I just think that self building is still relatively rare in the UK so most of their bread and butter is extensions and commercial commissions. They also said that a surprisingly small amount of their bigger work (whole houses, developments etc) ever gets built as people get cold feet, refused planning / finance etc. They obviously get paid for their work regardless.

Our roofer also fitted all the velux as a complete unit and I found it hard to engage a few of the vent bars we had one clip snap on an integra, but my general window fitter fixed it with some proprietary glue he carries around! Now I can see what the reason was...

Back home in NI in the 80s, chip pan fires were very common - a neighbour of ours died when he came home from the pub, fancied some chips and put the pan of hot oil on, fell asleep and you can work out the rest. The lady we sold our first house, classic victorian terrace, to managed to start a fire with a tea light on a window cill catching a voile curtain. While structural damage was minimal, the water and smoke damage were significant. Nowadays shonky device chargers seem to be quite common...

When we designed the basement, we had two choices to comply with regs - one was sprinklers and the other was a second means of exit to outside, independent of the main stairs. Quote for a system just for basement was £6k (booster tank & pump, should mains not be sufficient) an extra £1k. We went for external access as it worked better for the design and made the layout more flexible - sprinklers would have been the cheaper option though.

We used micro inverters and I agree that maintenance may be an issue (and something I gave no consideration to), although our roof design is a bit more forgiving as it has a GRP ledge at the base and a sizeable flat area at the front. As we have slates, the trays are flush with those but the panels do sit proud, however all is watertight so not sure whether that's a function of the panel or tray.

Roofers often just work off ladders but guess the issue is manipulating a large panel safely.

Could you not do it with a cherry picker?

In a brick and block house, the floors, internal walls, stairs and roof will all be timber so once the house is on fire I'd expect it to burn just as well. The exterior walls obviously wont burn but will be compromised structurally with heat etc.

I had same issue, 5 rendered block pillars built around steels. As there were lots of cables in the cavity for lights and sensors, didn't want to risk damage pouring a heavy wet mix in there. I had a jumbo bag of sand and a few bags of cement so made up a dry mix (5:1) and back filled bucket by bucket. Has all gone off now and is fairly solid.

Yep - we have a chamber every 9m or so as a set of rods is 10m and you have to allow for the drop into the chamber etc.. In practice I normally need 11 or 12 rods to do a proper job.

Ours was erected in November, peeing with rain. Got boarded in May and skimmed in June - no issues 3 years in.

I leant to the s/w side of electronics, she is in h/w. It's a wonder we're still together.

Now the wife and I both have degrees in electronic engineering, both physics and maths fans and, sadly, none of this has rubbed off on our children who are as addicted to snapchat as the rest of them. However if I were to suggest a similar empirical experiment to settle an argument such as the one above, very quickly we would be moving to a separate investigation on how long it takes for a cup of tea to evaporate from a human sized form:) BTW, I'm with you on units - when I did A Level physics many moons ago, the first thing we learned were SI units, and manipulation of unit nomenclature. Our physics teacher rightly pointed out that if you got stuck in a test and couldn't remember the exact formula, quite often you could figure out the bones of it by looking at the units provided and the units required for the answer. Also, I noted this from helping the kids with their homework this week - Without units, science wouldn’t make sense. Units allow us to use numbers to describe the world. That’s why maths is called the language of science. Understanding units and using them correctly can make all the difference in the exams. You want to nail those maths-heavy questions in your GCSE Physics papers? Then you need to be at one with your units.

You must be a demon on one of these ...

Same as Jeremy and we did go for electric UFH in the tiled bathrooms - was a very last min decision but was cheap as chips and makes quite a difference.

An end to the tale. The bank (who sit behind the credit card I used) requested an independent report on the incomplete works & quote to remediate. I used the fitter who installed it all on behalf of the supplier and was left seriously out of pocket when they folded (N.B. they have miraculously arisen again from the ashes, trading as a supply only firm). Bank have agreed to settle for the amount on his quote as full & final closure of issue so I'm happy, as is the fitter. If I were cynical, I could have inflated his quote by a few £ and pocketed the difference - they're taking it at face value. But I'm not

@HerbJ has UFH upstairs in his MBC build - used a low bore pipe in a floor panel that sits on top of the structural OSB IIRC. I have a timber ground floor over the basement, steel web and pozi joists with 18mm OSB on top and bog standard UFH in spreader plates under that. The water temp is only 30-40 odd degrees so no idea where he gets that concept from.

We had same experience - I used the FSAP tool and tweaked the model that @JSHarris developed ages ago - got it up to A easy enough and thats what we ultimately achieved. Also submitted a PHPP model (which we paid a consultant for as part of a QS / modelling package) which showed we were passive standard by design.

I cleaned mine when it just refused to work after a long period of non use. Was easy enough to strip apart and I was able to winkle out a blob of hard foam that had formed inside the trigger mechanism. Bit of isopropyl alcohol helped too.

Me too (in a good way).

Agree with that - I finally got mine (by email), zero inspection, after the original insurer went bust but they lopped off the first two years cover as that's when I said the build was watertight vs occupied & signed off by BC. It's only value to me is for re-mortgaging (doubt we'll sell within the next 7 years).

Would recommend one that takes blocks vs loose salt / pellets (I have the latter) as it's a faff to fill and you need to lug about 25kg bags and inevitably get spills etc.

Yep - did this too and got money back, even though I bought the windows through an online discount reseller.

Yes - I have quite a few Velux and achieved <0.6 ACH in my airtightness. The Integra ones are wired to mains and come with a wireless controller as they're located too high up to reach. I also have their external blinds on the east / south facing windows and internal blinds on the west facing ones (SK10) which are reachable. 2 x VELUX Electric Centre-Pivot GGU MK04 006621 INTEGRA incl. EDN Flashing 2 x VELUX Top-Hung GPU MK04 0066 incl. EDN Flashing 2 x VELUX Top-Hung GPU SK10 0066 incl. EDN Flashing 2 x VELUX Electric Centre-Pivot GGU PK10 006621 INTEGRA incl. EDN Flashing

I heard it from @Weebles I think. I expect he'll re-establish in Ireland - seems a bit young to retire but maybe he can afford to now