Mike

If it's not rendered, then with hard rain in an exposed location it can be a continuous flow, especially if the brickies haven't fully filled all the joints. Unless I had a rendered wall, I'd definitely be wanting to correct it. You'd need to cut out short sections of brick, cut the insulation and insert 'retrofit cavity trays' designed for the purpose, reinstating the insulation above and below, then the add back new bricks, making sure that the joints are well filled, but adding preformed weep holes. Then leave it several days before do the next section. You can have different sections on the go at once, as long as they're well away from each other to maintain the structural integrity of the wall. I've done similar (as a manager) retrofitting trays above lintels that the original builders 'forgot'.

There are Radon measuring services available, if you want to be sure. But if not, then assuming that there is a problem is wise. There are published recommendations for Radon barriers & sumps and I'd stick to one of those to avoid potential problems with home-rolled solutions when you eventually come to sell it.

Sliding along runners works well, but at 180KG it could go dangerously wrong for the people beneath. I've slid heafty gluelam beams to roof level before, using a pulley on the scaffold to avoid anyone beneath. I think I'd probably do similar by building a scaffold tower (metal or timber) the full width of the landing at the head of the stairs, to get the pulley up near ceiling level. That would enable you to pull the bath up the stair sliders and up onto its end, then move the pulley and lower it down onto its side again.

Out of curiosity, I've just been checking the requirements in France. A quick look suggests that there may be no requirements for individual & semi-detached homes, which isn't going to help much. For terraced housing & larger buildings the solution seems to be to use a 15mm fire-resistant plywood cladding to the outside face of the stud (rated B-s3 d0), followed by the external membrane & cladding (to which you could add cavity barriers - not required in France, it seems). Of course, that means keeping the insulation within the studs, with supplementary insulation on the inside face of the studs, not the outside.

It looks like there may be 2 on the drawing already - if that's what the large dots are. The 'Single duct supply valve' symbols are in strange locations, so I think they're only intended to show you which type go in which room. Could be clearer... Just spotted that the duct runs in the attic go to some inappropriate locations too - you don't want the standard vents they've specified that close to the walls. I can't think of any good reason why they've shown it the way they have. You'd be better using the 'big dot' locations as the starting point, then consider how that fits in with your light fittings / showers / other features & come back to us for feedback.

Like MVHR units, it's easy to stick a fan in a box and call it a cooker hood, but that doesn't make it effective. Choose one with a high European 'Grease Filtering Effectiveness' classification - see https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/42370-cooker-hood-with-its-own-mvhr/. It's still a good idea though to have a filter on the kitchen extract, but it can be a concealed 'sock' type behind a regular extract (a good idea on every extract). The only reason I know to use the 'visible' type in your spec, is that it jogs people's memory to change the filter when they see it's ugliness. It looks like there may be 2 on the drawing already - if that's what the large dots are. The 'Single duct supply valve' symbols are in strange locations, so I think they're only intended to show you which type go in which room. Could be clearer... There are a few special circumstances where it's possible (that you're not going to encounter if you're following a good design & specification), but no risk at all if you use a ceiling vent that uses the Coanda Effect (Zehnder Luna, if you're sticking to that brand). Keep them underneath the loft insulation. As already recommended, find somewhere within the heated house envelope. In a larger house you might have a plant room, but a utility room or kitchen would be OK if you can spare the wall space. If not, then there are some models that hang horizontally from a solidly constructed ceiling. For example the Zehnder EVO range, if it's available in the UK and you want to stick with Zehnder.

Another style with a clear flow (apart from the stopper) is the flip top type, where the stopper remains permanently in place but rotates from vertical to horizontal. Though it may also put your earrings at risk.

A good tip. I did the same.

Another topic to add your to-do list is to learn the VAT rules and budget accordingly. If you're mostly DIYing then you'll be paying VAT on your materials and, while you can eventually reclaim the VAT on most items (not all), you'll have to fund them until you put in your VAT reclaim, so don't let it become a cashflow issue. And, where you do have contractors, make sure they only charge you VAT on the items that they should; if you pay it on other items you can't reclaim it. There are other threads that go into this. Returning to the design, because plasterboard, plywood, OSB and other sheet materials come in 1200mm widths, it will help to reduce waste if you can plan as many dimensions as possible on multiples of 300mm. It won't save a fortune, but will make a difference if cash is tight. For some 'relaxation', track down the BBC series 'The House That £100k Built'; it may give you some cost-cutting ideas, though bear in mind that inflation means you'll now have significantly less to play with than they did.

They've some concerts in Europe this year: https://kraftwerk.com/concerts/index-concerts.html

Yes, if they're wired in, then no problems on a balcony or anywhere else, in most cases. However the article posted by @saveasteading (and the use of Balkonkraftwerke, AFAIK) refers to balcony plug-in solar.

Looks like they changed the law in 2019 to allow it (subject to rules & registration): https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/how-germany-outfitted-half-a-million-balconies-with-solar-panels

Not legally, but that may change (though not in a rush); there was a report just a few of weeks ago: Currently, UK regulations do not allow plug-in solar to be used in the UK, but the government is working to explore its potential. Action 2: Government will conduct a safety study this year with the aim of unlocking opportunities for plug-in solar over the next few years. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/solar-roadmap/solar-roadmap-united-kingdom-powered-by-solar-accessible-webpage

I spent >€4K on my apartment (+VAT), but that includes following my own advice and installing a PassivHaus certified Zehnder unit (with per-heater due to cold winter temperatures) and hiring some guys to abseil down the side of the building to core-drill through 400mm of stone for the air intake and exhaust. Apart from them screwing the external vents in place, it's self-installed. If you're wondering, I can vacuum the vents from the windows. The new electrical installation is incomplete so It's not yet operational, but it's installed for several reasons. The apartment will be pretty airtight so it provides the necessary ventilation; I'm in an urban setting so using it to filter the air and avoid noise via trickle vents / open windows is a very big plus; it's essential to reduce humidity due to having a tricky unventilated insulated ceiling; adding an evaporative cooler to it (another €1K) is the only way I could provide some summer cooling; it also provides heat recovery during the heating season.

At a guess they're not ventilated as they probably have very minimal insulation in the ceiling - there's not enough depth. As for drainage, the roofs would likely slope backwards, so the rain would run back and down the mansard (unless driven by the rain).

This. Also, when you push the machine back in, you don't have a cable looping on the floor and getting in the way of the wheels - you can pull it through from under the sink.

I'd put the sockets in your 'sink cupboard', so you need no additional depth behind the machines. It's what I'm doing and I only have a 350mm width unit below my sink to squeeze everything you have into (plus the waste & overflow from a water conditioner). If the appliance cables aren't long enough - they probably will be - then replace them (or get your sparky to).

I'm out of touch with the latest changes to SAP, but last I heard there was going to be an (option/requirement?) to test the MVHR installation and award the score based on that -a potentially significant improvement. Sounds like that didn't happen? I know that MVHR was scored low because it was based on seriously out-of-date assumptions that didn't reflect current best practice. Though with a test some installations were so poor they would be expected to score less, not more.

Yes, you certainly need that. A parge coat is normally only a few mm thick. If your wall is so uneven that it requires 30mm, that's 2 or 3 coats of lime plaster - or the Diathonite Thermactive. Nether of them are cheap, though you'll need it pretty flat, especially for rigid insulation. BTW, when balancing dB reductions against cost, remember that it's a logarithmic scale. 3dB is only just perceptible, 5dB is noticeable, 10dB halves the noise (at the frequencies measured).

Swap the rigid wood fibre boards with adhesive & hammer fixings for a semi-flexible wood-fibre boards friction-fitted into place. That will be quicker and easier, and the insulation will prevent impact noise being transmitted.. The CLS stud can keep the insulation in place, though I prefer to use metal studwork (fixed only to the floor & ceiling). No need for extra decoupling; the semi-flexible wood-fibre provides that. Noise takes the easiest path, and one of those will be the doors & door frames, so you'll need to buy them accordingly. Another will be flanking sound via the ceiling and floor, but since you don't mention them as a problem, maybe they're not.

All can be good or bad - it depends on how well they are installed. I know one high-spec 3-layer flat roof that's still good after 30+ years, and a GRP roof that had to be replaced after 5, so choose your installer with care. Personally I'd choose mastic asphalt. It has a very long history, will last for decades, is readily repaired, with good green credentials too.

I should add that, thanks to a single nation-wide digital electricity meter system, your power gets cut if you exceed the subscribed limit for a certain time (about 2 minutes, from memory); you then have to reset it via the meter. Avoiding that is another benefit of a load-shedder!

I think it is in France that domestic electrical load is limited to quite a low level. The big difference in France is that your standing charge depends on the capacity you choose - 15, 30, 45 or 60A, the maximum monophase supply. After that you're paying for 3-phase. In round figures, 15A costs around €10 per month, 60A around €20. Installing a load-shedder* may therefore be a good investment. As a result, around 70% of all domestic properties (including apartments) in France have a 30A connection. That's typical for a house with gas heating, for example. For an all-electric house, it's likely to be 60A. France relies much more than the UK on electric heating, so electricity demand is about 50% higher than the UK. So, if everyone had an 80A or 100A supply, the grid might have to be doubled, or more, to cope with peak demand. Switching the UK to a similar model would no doubt significantly reduce the number of new power lines needed for electrification. If it had been done a decade or two ago, gas generation might already be much lower. *Load-shedders temporarily disconnect one or more low-priority loads (water heating, central heating, washing machine, etc.) if the total load approaches the maximum - for example while cooking - and avoids moving up to a higher subscription.

On a block wall, it's going to be tricky to get a rustic finish, however using lime paint helps as it ages by turning powdery and weathering off, unlike modern vinyl paints. FWIW one of the best fake-rustic new-builds I've seen used deliberately roughly-laid brick, bag-rubbed with thin render, then limewashed.

I'll be using clay paints too, for the same reason.