Nick1c

Others will be better informed but a couple of things occur to me. It sounds like an MCS install to get the RHI, have you worked out how long it will take to get the 'MCS premium' back? You may be better off using a cheaper, non-MCS accredited installer & forgoing the RHI, which is pretty low now anyway IIRC. Why not have UFH upstairs too? No wall space taken up so more flexible. My current quote for UFH, in slab on the gf & tor board on the ff (180m2 total) is circa £4500.

We are having our foundations put in on this basis (+10%) by the contractor who will be putting up our frame. I live 10 minutes away from the site and will be keeping a very close eye on things. There will be 'full transparency' - itemised costs, agreed labour/machinery rates etc. I have some help in this in that a good mate is building a (much bigger) house 30 mins away, he runs a non-local building company and is doing his own project management. Another good mate who runs another building/civils company is a couple of hours away and has offered to look things over. Once the ground rules have been agreed the obvious things to keep on top of are: Ensuring workers are there when they say they are & working productively. Minimising trips to the BM (I will do this as often as possible when it is needed) Checking to make sure materials costs are competitive. Keeping tabs on 'management costs'. I am am thinking about buying a Brinno, partly for security, partly as a record of the build & partly for peace of mind over this. Any my other tips would be very welcome, together with details of successes/failures of similar arrangements and why it worked or didn't.

In an effort to alleviate my frustration at the glacial progress of our build I have (prematurely) started looking at the cladding options for it - there will be some vertical and some horizontal areas. The house overlooks the sea near lands end and will get a fair beating from the weather. It will have a slate roof (with some in-roof Pv), a small amount of white render and RAL7016 windows, we plan to let the timber grey. There appears to be a wide variety of opinions about the pros & cons of various options, I have listed what I have been told/ heard below and would be grateful for any information about people's real life experiences with them. The total cost is a combination of material price, labour & longevity and, as ever, there doesn't seem to be a simple answer. WRC: reassuringly expensive, the most stable (can be t&g), easily fixed (secret or face), no pre drilling, the most durable (30+ years) lightweight, prone to bruising, initial colour very variable, weathering can be uneven depending on exposure. Siberian Larch: half the price, moves a lot so best as half-lap (although can be bought as t&g), may need pre-drilling, less durable (15+ years), initial colour pretty even, heavier (2x the weight), hard wearing, weathering as above with the added possibility of blackening in damper/ sheltered bits. Silvalbp: SiLa with a sacrificial coating to give an instant 'final finish' look. Starting with the most basic question: is all wood of the same type (from places such as Russwood, Vincent, Mill Works, Vasterns) equivalent and is choosing the grade purely a financial/ aesthetic decision ( like oak flooring for eg.) or are there performance/longevity differences? Is kiln dried a good idea? Has as anyone had any issues with fixing (splitting &/or movement), have people chosen to pre-drill for fixing, if joining pieces together have butt or mitred joints been used? Are people who have used the age accelerators happy with them? Are they all equivalent? Does using non-marine grade ss fixings in exposed locations result in staining (bad), or just a dulling/ tea staining of the visible part (potentially good)? Any real life information on longevity of untreated timber in exposed locations. Anything else I have forgotten?

We will be overlooking the sea about a 15 minute walk from lands end so will get the occasional stiff breeze!!

We are getting external Venetian blinds, I am worried about the wind.... Any moving glass with internal blinds sounds like a recipe for disaster & I imagine repairs would be difficult & expensive. How do you 'loose' the stacked blind when it's up? We stayed in a hotel in Spain recently that had the tape operated shutters, they were great for a hot climate, but I can't imagine how that mechanism could be compatable with airtight houses, it would need to be electrically operated.

The builders put it together to our design. It's made of MDF with a rolled paint finish, Blum hinges & push catches, ours is 350mm deep. I like the clean looks & it gives a lot of storage for relatively little loss of useful space on the shower room. It has a 1400mm shower tray, basin & toilet in it, it feels about the right amount of space - plenty of room to move, but not pointlessly extravagant. Still need to sort out the mirror!

A bit late now, but when we had our new bathroom put in at our current house we brought the stud work for the wall hung toilet forward a little & used the whole of the wall, excluding the cistern area, for cupboards.

Someone who is quoting to do our dry-lining mentioned it too. I want Fermacell & he doesn't like using it but now is keener - no shortage & the price differential is less.

Not really VR, but our architect uses a programme called BimX which allows you to fly around the building (once you get the hang of controlling it!) and get different internal & external views. I have an old iPad & it even works on that.

We hope to achieve the same end result & it has been bothering me too. My assumption was that we would have to shutter the exact void we want (I will buy the shower trays so they are on site to make sure it all works) and get the siting of the drain pretty accurate. Hopefully @Nickfromwales will sort it all out! A 75mm slab seems thin, our design arrived earlier & looks to have a minimum thickness of 150mm, with areas of reinforcement for areas under high load.

Gaulhofer do external blinds. I have specced them on our south facing windows, mostly for managing the solar gain, but the optional extra privacy will be good too. We are considering shutters for the 3 veluxes & will probably put the infrastructure in so that they can be added later if required.

What is the definition of 'heavy plant'? Does a small digger count? Alternatively is there any potential access from farmland. I am in Cornwall and a friendly farmer is worth his weight in gold (or something a bit less precious, but still v. valuable!).

Thanks @ProDave If the limiting inverter isn't too expensive presumably I am better off 'over-panelling' for when the conditions are sub-optimal. I'll try WP tomorrow to see what they say about putting in more.

I am trying to get my head around the best options for our roof. The current plan is for 17 panels & 5 veluxes. As I am concerned about overheating I was thinking of reducing the veluxes to 3 upping the Pv to 19 panels, or even more. Once I discovered the £500 per window cost of the integral flashing I became even keener! It turns out that, according to Wagner, who sell the in roof kits, that I will have to apply to the DNO (western power) for permission to feed in over 16A if I go over 17 panels. Given I will not be getting any money for the power fed in am I likely to get any worthwhile use from the extra generation? Presumably in the near future both electric cars & batteries will become more attractive. I assume I will be charged for supplying free power to the grid, but have no idea how much ?

Back to reliably charging sunamps..... would one or two solar thermal panels do the job using the water based variety - the temperature requirement of the pcm means that ashp's (mostly) don't work at a good cop, but those sorts of temperatures could fairly easily be hit by a st unit & boosted if necessary by an electrical element. Or it it too expensive.

Just had a quote for this, the Velux flashings are £500 each!!! I gave them a call to talk about it - funnily enough they don't sell many.... Transport (from France) was over £700 too.

On the up side Reuter still are accepting uk orders.......

I have just had an email saying they won't ship to the uk. Thanks a lot "call me Dave" ?

Thanks Ian, I tried the number yesterday but the dash beat me. Maybe getting the site on my phone & dialling from that might be more successful.

I managed to get a uk retailer to match Megabad for most of my bathroom stuff, but they couldn't get close to the sink tap/ bottle trap prices so I would like to get 3 of each (+ 3 pairs of angle valves) from them, total cost €340-ish. When I try to check out I seem to only have the option to pick up. I have been working on my bathroom German, but my delivery German is rubbish. I would be grateful if one of the linguists on the forum could let me know if I am just being inept or if there is a minimum spend before they will ship to the uk. It looks like I could use Reuter, but they are €40 more.

You need to talk to an engineer. We are having a passive slab & he wanted non made up ground, I am sure there are ways round it (presumably at a cost!), but you need to go with what they say. It would be worth contacting Hilliard Tanner in Ireland if your engineer isn't that familiar with this method of construction.

I have a Grohe eurosmart M in our current bathroom and may well get them for our new house - but probably not with the pop up waste option as the seal isn't great. Megabad was v. reasonable when I looked, a U.K. based store price matched them for Duravit & Hansgrohe, but couldn't get near the Grohe prices.

If you are having 90m2 of glass have you thought about overheating? We will be having roughly half that glazing and I am more concerned about being too hot than too cold. It may be worth running the design through PHPP to get an idea. In our case we have opted for external blinds on some windows and UFH (with the potential of using it for cooling).

I have no direct experience of this (currently living in an old granite barn), but as I understand it MVHR is not an efficient way to purge excess heat due to the relatively low volumes of air, which itself has a low specific heat capacity, being moved. It seems to me that the best way to manage this problem is to try to avoid it in the first place by having a building with a low decrement decay and effective shading (ideally external) of glazing that receives direct sum. If that proves to be inadequate some form of active cooling will be needed, @JSHarris has success with using his ASHP in cooling mode - maybe a remote control for that would be of most use. If you have Pv panels it would also have the benefit of using self-generated power as it is only likely to be a major problem when the sun is out!

A bit premature of me I know as all we have is a hole in the ground, but I have just ordered out bathrooms fron CP Hart in their sale, remarkably they price-matched stuff from Germany! I paid by cc just in case. Is the uncertainty over brexit smothering the construction sector or are other factors the main cause?