jack

If I were doing another build, ICF would be at the top of my list of construction techniques to research.

Are you including design and in-factory manufacturing in making this comparison?

MBC Timberframe.

Aaargh, assault bikes. Consider me triggered.

We built a timber frame house with 300mm pumped cellulose insulation. For me, I found: Pros: - Quick - factory built panels meant the whole thing went up in a matter of days. - Accurate - internal walls etc are square, and rooms are exactly as shown on plan. - Quiet - external noise is damped very well. Part of the quietness definitely comes down to decent windows though. - High decrement delay. Cons: - Internal noise transmission. This is the big one for me - I find it frustrating how noise makes its way between rooms. This might have been improved if the chancers who did my drywalling had installed the insulation better, but I'm not sure how much better it would have been. - Internal well strength - we used fermacell anywhere we thought we might like to hang something, but even so, whenever I want to put something on a wall, I need to check whether it's fermacell, and if not, go about finding a stud (oo er vicar). Block walls would have been better. - Vibration - again, maybe something that doesn't bother others, but slamming our (admittedly fairly large) front door causes windows in adjacent rooms to rattle. No big deal, but it constantly reminds me of the construction method. I suspect most others wouldn't find this as distracting as I do (I'm the guy who'll lie awake at night distracted by a mosquito three rooms away). Overall, I'm happy enough with timber frame, but if I were doing it again I'd at least consider using some form of masonry-based construction.

Unless you're buying from builder's merchants, HIABs are few and far between. Virtually everything of any size that we ordered came palletised on a truck with a tail lift. The best we could hope for was for them to back up close to the house and manhandle the pallet onto the very bumpy drive with a pallet truck.

Did you explain how it was all going to be mounted? My concern is that if you didn't, then it's possible they expected some sort of internal mount below (or within the bottom part of) the aperture. That said, if I were in their shoes, I'd be offering an at-cost remake at the very least. No-one should want to make money off a simple error by a customer.

Bugger. But why is he going to call you back if he's already given you an answer?

Time off is excellent, for sure. Even a long weekend will make a world of difference. I found it useful to spend an evening out with mates at the pub. You can piss and moan to them for a bit, then move on to talking about more interesting things. How are you sleeping? I find that my motivation flags hard when I don't have enough sleep. There was a thread somewhere recently about that, but my tips are: - reduce caffeine intake, and have none at all after midday - make sure your room is dark - take magnesium and inulin (extracted from jerusalem artichokes) before bed. Latter is a flavourless powder that can just be mixed into your choice of caffeine-free beverage. - do some hard exercise every day, even if just for 5-10 mins. Low intensity isn't enough - your heart rate needs to be elevated and you need to be breathing hard. I also tried to focus on how much we'd achieved rather than how much was still to go or how miserable I was about mistakes I and others had made. We're with you, and we know you can do this.

Single phase, G59. I wanted as much PV as possible. I was really surprised when the installers we went with (highly recommended, incidentally: http://www.techforenergy.co.uk) suggested applying for 8.5kW. I genuinely thought there was no hope of being allowed more than twice the G83 amount, but it went straight through. I believe that if they won't let you have what you ask for, they'll tell you the maximum you're allowed, and that will generally be more than the G83 limit.

Snap! We have 8.5 kW on a flat roof in two sections. The first two rows are on the larger roof, which is actually to the north by about 5 deg. The top row is tilted to the south. The second row alternates east-west. The last two rows are on the smaller roof that's angled slightly to the south. Both of those rows face south. Due to the parapet wall and position of the panels, you can't see them from the ground.

Stone fruits, including cherries, are different to most other trees - they should be pruned in summer: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/7803102/How-to-prune-stone-fruit-trees.html https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=318

Ah, bugger. Hope it mends quickly.

We have Click Definity screwless stainless steel. If I were doing it again, I'd go for quality white plastic on all white walls. The stainless ones stick out visually too much for my liking. Maybe a bit different somewhere like a kitchen where you might want to make a feature of them. I also wouldn't l wouldn't go for this particular brand of screwless fitting. I find the little dents in the edges of the faceplate as distracting as screws would be (especially for light switches), plus it's a bit hit and miss as to whether any particular faceplate clicks positively into place.

Actually, although they didn't come preinstalled to the window like yours, they were priced and supplied together, so I don't have separate prices. Also, while they're excellent for keeping the heat out, don't rely on them for completely blocking light. Ours let through a surpassing amount of light through their sides and the holes for the tapes.

Same with us. Lovely blinds on the downstairs east-facing windows to the kitchen. Nothing on the east-facing upstairs windows to our bedroom and the landing. The landing window is in a double height space, so you can hardly just bung up a curtain!

I see lots of same-old modern houses in the UK, that basically look like busy versions of what the modernists started not that far off a century ago. I have very little emotional reaction to most "modern" houses built in this country. I say that as someone who's built a fairly low-key but very modern house. For comparison, Japanese architects (and their clients) seem much more willing to push the boundaries to deliver truly interesting buildings. That said, I do suspect that this is driven as much by planning laws as taste.

And decent gloves at that. I tried this with brambles at ours and found out the hard way that the cheap pair of leather gloves I had lying around wasn't up to the job

Our house has a similar materials palette, but reads as three simple cubes. Hopefully that will stand the test of time better than something as fussy (in my amateur opinion) as the house above.

Hey, our insulation and airtightness are alright! Well, some of my windows are due a bit of a adjustment after a couple of years... It's mostly a combination of low solar gain overall (mostly due to trees) and large windows in places where they're net losers due to orientation. As a guide, we went away for three weeks from mid December, and turned *everything* in the house off. I estimated that the house was 13oC when we got back, which I didn't think was bad given nearly zero heat input for three weeks other than limited solar gain. Anyone care to estimate what temperature a house built to building regs standard (or worse) would have been at in similar circumstances?

Absolutely. My wife will use a duvet all the way through summer. I'm too hot under one even in the middle of winter. It's the same for most couples I know. There's also an element of me being cheap (plus wanting to use less energy in principle), so I'm happy to put on warm clothing if it's cold, rather than just turning the heating up.

Wow, I would literally - LITERALLY! - melt living in your house. 20-21 degrees in winter is more than pleasant for me. When the air temp gets above 23 degrees in the house, I start suffering. Apparently spending a lot of time in Australia in the past did nothing for my heat-tolerance! Like Jeremy, you clearly have a lot more solar gain than us.

Welcome to Buildhub. We have Passivhaus-level insulation and airtightness, with UFH in the downstairs slab. Our ASHP broke down at the start of winter. We found that a simple 2kW electric column heater with a fan on it was able to keep the house comfortable (if not exactly toasty) throughout the whole of winter. We usually ran it on low, bumping it up to the full 2kW during cold snaps. We have polished concrete floors throughout the downstairs area. It wasn't comfortable to walk on barefoot when the UFH wasn't working this winter. A decent pair of socks was okay for me, but it was certainly a lot more comfortable when the UFH was working the previous winter! Bear in mind the UFH in a PH dwelling will run - and indeed, will have to run - at a much lower temperature than in a standard building regs house. We have our ASHP output water on the absolute lowest heat setting, which is 25C. That works fine. Also, don't let anyone tell you that you don't need heating in your bathrooms in a house with Passivhaus levels of insulation. We were convinced not to include it and it's one of the larger regrets I have about our build. We're now retrofitting IR panel heaters, but I'd have preferred UFH. You should also think ahead early to how you've going to control solar gain, especially in the shoulder months where the sun is lower in the sky (so can get deeper into the building) and it may still be warm. One other consideration: you may not be thinking of it now, but one day you may need to sell. I think you'll put a lot of potential buyers off if you don't have UFH or at least beefy-looking central heating. You know you don't need the latter, but a lot of buyers won't know, and won't be convinced just by your say-so.

Did they tell you that today? I was convinced that they'd moved to an inner airtightness barrier a year or two ago, but perhaps I'm misremembering something else.