FarmerN

If position of SVP near velux is an issue , is chimney also an issue?

We are in a bungalow so not comparable. I would recommend electric towel rails on a timer . Ours are on 3 hours a day, at cheap rate, hour and a half morning and night. Towels always dry. Our towel rails have timer built in to element , but wish we had put the timer in the wiring circuit, probably back in plant room. We have wet UFH which is on 9 months of the year but we have 90mm screed and tiles, with a different, warmer surface, might not need it. The floor and stone effect shower tray do dry quickly after a shower. Not had any heat on in bedrooms through the two winters we have been here. We put a high level wire connection to take an infrared heater or similar if required but not needed it yet, but its there for when I am 90 if needed. Both our neighbours in new builds, both with heat pumps and MVHR, talk about over heating far more than heating, but both have a lot of glass. Overheating not been an issue for us but we have a lot less glass, and high level Velux windows we can leave open at night when warm.

If you have a suitable outlet pipe or ditch put a land drain or two in before any fill, to take as much water away as possible during and after build. We were lucky having a suitable ditch along side site to drain into. We put two land drains in just beneath surface, covered with membrane then permeable stone ( screened crushed concrete) If lorries are running on this go for as deep as possible, and if possible constantly fill any soft spots where traffic causes ruts. At the end of the build the surface of this was loosened, stone recovered from around site, as much as possible, while leaving land drains in place, and all used to create a permeable drive way and rear patio area. Again we were lucky in being able to build site up a bit whilst having good fall for final surface drainage, and sufficient depth for services to go above land drains.

Our builder used a Pre mixed mortar delivered in large tubs , inhibiter in it so it was workable for 5-7 days depending on weather. A range of colours was provided in 20 Liter sample buckets , which were used to build small Sample sections of wall of about 20 bricks each. It was revealing how much difference colour and type of pointing made to the appearance of the bricks. I was very sceptical of long life pre mixed mortar before use but 3 years on seems fine. Biggest problem is when a very small quantity is needed at the later stages of build to tidy up a bit of brick work as I think it was a minimum delivery of 1 Cu M. I think builder used a couple of sample bucket for final tidy up. Colour of deliveries was very consistent, but hard to match with hand mixing on site.

All the smarter Pubs and restaurants seem to have wood flooring and seem to stand the spills they get. I guess it depends if you want the immaculate look, or rustic used look?

Just make sure you have an internal pipe insert for the compresion fitting.

Looks like black alkathene pipe ( MDPE),to me, but dont recognise the fitting. If it is, any blue MDPE pipe fitting with addapter to black should work.

More or less retired , hence the new build. Yes , I am aware. Particularly important for potatoes where ridge and furrow is in place for a season. Most , but not all, ploughed fields are worked down soon after ploughing to create a seed bed , so then not an issue. Re 5% runoff, all land I have had anything to do with, has land drains in, many going back 100 years or more so there will always have been drainage of rainfall, attenuated by the water holding ability of soil. Drainage pretty fast once soil has reach field capacity in winter. Once at full capacity, rain will run off , it has nowhere else to go. Most historic drains are 11 yards apart in my part of the world, so once you have found one you can normal find more. The problem in many areas appears to be there is only one drainage system, so clean and foul get mixed. I can’t believe any one putting a treatment plant in would put roof water into it, so why put clean water into sewers on any new build?

Does that not just increase the load on the sewage system , that can’t even cope with current load, especially in very wet weather? I never had to face these questions ,being in a rural area with plenty of land to soakaway too. I suppose I’m lucky and so have a different perspective. We were however required to have a permeable drive way , which we did, with a good sub base of clean stone to allow water to soak through to the sub soil. Again lucky in having plenty of space to loose soil we had to dig out, rather that pay to have it taken away.

I feel for you. By “Q planning for 2 two bedroom semi’s” I presume this means Class Q permitted development and that you have an existing structure you have to work within, or have I misunderstood. If Class Q ,is it still true that you have a fixed time scale of 3 years from approval to work with? Take note of the CIL warnings already given. Good luck.

Concrete tiles far worse than clay tiles for moss in my experiece.

We bought Rationel windows from John Knight Glass on the Wirral , they supplied and fitted. I think they did a really good job, we did specify fitting to Passive standards when ordering. Windows and Patio door been in two years now and still pleased.

We demolished a house and rebuilt. The meter was moved by the power company to a temporary kiosk as already suggested. Once the new build was water tight we paid to move the meter again into the plant room. I was expecting the power company to go back to the pole for the final new connection into the plant room and was surprised that they just made an underground connection to the temporary kiosk supply cable to make the new supply. Saved them about 15 meters of cable, the builder was doing all the digging except the last 3 meters to the pole which the power company wanted to do them selves.

Builder did our soffits and facias first. I wish he hadn’t! The facias were a tiny bit high , resulting in a bit too much kick up on the final slate. We were meant to finish the gable overhang with an aluminium dry verge system. Because of the extra kick the straight aluminium verge kit would not go on and we ended up with an unsealed gable verge. As stated in an earlier post take great care on positioning of facia to ensure correct eaves drainage into gutter and to avoid excess kick on the final slate. I still do not understand the desire of traditional slate roofers (or ours anyway) to reduce pitch on the bottom slate. If the bottom slate is supported by the facia as in our case it makes it very hard to change or renew facia at a latter date.

I would not like to comment on the drinking water quality of the pipe pulled through a drainage field. Personally I'm a bit agricultural about these things, but thats me. There must be an element of risk...........but . Is the MDPE contiuous with no joints while going through the drainage field? Are there small childeren or vunerable people living there? As for the drainage field , it sounds like standard flexible land drain pipe. Joints are readily avaliable on line ( Plastic Express etc https://www.plastics-express.co.uk/land-drainage-80mm-products.html ) and with these it would be easy to repair any severed pipes . 2 joints and a short length of pipe of the right size and a bit of gravel to repair any breaks.

Brick and Block construction , wet plaster and a builder who wasn't really intested. Only one air test done at end of construction. Air Test 1.9. Should have been and easily could have been lower.

I knocked on the door of a new built house I liked and asked the owner. They had a folder with all the details of the build in it. They were really pleased to talk about their new house.

Would you want to extend the power supply from it in the future for a greenhouse, garden room or workshop? About to extend electrical feed from my treatment plant to a workshop.

We put a 3Kw wood burner in our 200sqm new build, with MVHR, GSHP and UFH We do light it in winter for about 2-3 hours a night and I like it, you do have to leave the room door open, it soon gets HOT, the sort of temperatures everyone is trying to avoid at the moment! Ours was planned from the start of the build so was easy to put under floor ducts for an air supply coupled direct to the stove doing away with any question of an air brick. As in post above you definitely need an air duct direct to outside coupled to the stove. It is impossible to justify on heating basis , it’s the aesthetics and nice to know we have the ultimate back up to a power failure. Fortunate enough to have a plentiful supply of home grown logs.

We put an ACO drain channel in along wall in a similar situation, seems ok so far.

+1 Harder to get the window reveals right with wet paster. We did wet plaster and I am happy with it,it was on top of dence blocks not thermalite. The plasterer was incredibly slow and some of the reveals were hard to get right as too thick a layer of plaster was required.

Thanks for reminder, just sent mine off.

Can you lift a stained block out to experiment on? Try different things. Brick acid, very strong hypochlorite /washing up liquid mix, different solvents ? Apply and leave to soak rather than scrub. Care needed ! Don’t mix chemicals! Good Luck.

Are you suggesting no inlet ducts to the bedrooms or have I misunderstood?

I can’t help on fitting Panels on old roof , but we had a 1890 roof retiled a few years back, no felt etc . It was bone dry in the attic and very well ventilated ! Roof only lasted 120 years! Timbers all very sound, the bit that was failing were the batten nails. You could see the odd bit where whole battens were sliding. This would be my worry with putting panels on an old roof. Just built a new house, the bit that annoyed me about the new roof was the battens were nailed on with a nail gun, OK they were galvanized nails , but the nails were so thin and the coating very thin compared to hammer driven roofing nails. I think they will slip a lot sooner than the roof, on the old house. They used Copper nails for the slate but that seemed almost pointless as it will be the batten nails that fail.