jack

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.

Welcome Richard. Happy wife, happy life. I wish you all the best in your endeavours. Do consider sharing some photos at some point - we love checking out what other people are doing and judging helping as best we can.

Ah, but that's punctuation, not over-punctuation. I once went for a job interview where they asked me whether I had any comment about a sign saying "Dogs must be carried on the Underground". I asked whether they were interested in the potential ambiguity or wanted a discussion about whether the intended meaning is clear enough from the context. Apparently it was the former, and they were continually surprised how many people didn't see the issue even with prodding. This was for a job where accurate expression was utterly paramount. Oh, and I didn't get the job.

If you want see lots of semi-colons, read any book dealing with grammar; authors of such things seem to love semi-colons. I gave up reading "Eats shoots and leaves"; for me, the writer over-punctuated to the point of distraction. Mostly it's US style guides that say that - from grammarly: "In British English, the first letter after a colon is capitalized only if it's a proper noun or an acronym". Snap.

Colon required, surely: Woman: without her, man is lost.

Or not: Again from memory, this is roughly the temperature difference I recall noting while my ASHP heated its first half tank of water. I hadn't really thought about it and expected a much higher supply temperature.

What goes on tour...

You forgot 18% maths.

Everything can be explained at a fundamental level by physics (although there's perhaps a metaphysical "what is physics" question that's worth addressing before committing one way or the other).

Is it just me or is that beam crooked?

So much irony. Thanks for the laugh.

I suspect it's language choice, but this isn't quite right. The amount of energy required to move 1kg by 1m in 1 second could be anything. It could be zero in space (object moving at 1m/s), or around 10 joules against the earth's gravity. From memory it takes 1 joule to accelerate 1kg by 1m/s2 (not against gravity).

Maybe, but that isn't what I've seen. I set mine for 55 degrees, and according to the tank stats, it gets there pretty quickly. From memory, the ASHP doesn't output the target temperature while heating the tank. It outputs water that's a few degrees higher than the current return temperature. As such, you don't ever have a huge temperature difference driving energy into the tank. Happy to be proved wrong about that.

Yes. Given that these things are designed to handle outputs up to 3 times what your ASHP is putting out, I suspect a standard one might be fine. However, if it's not, you're stuck with it for a long time. For comparison, I have a 5kW Panasonic Aquarea with a 3.2m2 coil and have had no problems with the tank heating up quickly.

Thanks Jeremy, I found that link last year. Unfortunately, it mentions nothing about insurance, but it isn't clear whether that's because consumers don't need to go through the supplier's insurance, or the CAB just hasn't dealt with this issue in the link. I'll try calling them later this afternoon (just tried now and it sounds like there's a long wait).

Great minds - I was just looking up the details of the person I spoke to there when this all kicked off last year.

Assuming you get through all the other questions satisfactorily, I wouldn't show them your preliminary plans. A better idea is to take all the important information that drove the drafting of your preliminary sketches and put that into the design brief. Things like available views, desired rooms (eg, must have one ensuite and walk-in wardrobe), how you want to live in the house now, whether you have (or will at some stage have) a family that will need to be accommodated will be taken into account by any decent architect. The architect will guide you through the preparation of this document.

Thanks Jeremy, this is exactly the approach I have in mind (except for the mediation bit, as there's no dispute over the general cause of the leak nor of the damages involved). That's the big question though - is it actually my right in law? A firm answer to that would make me a lot more comfortable with pushing back.

Update on this (and looking at the date of the post above I can't believe how long I've sat on it!): We eventually managed to get everything repaired and have picked this issue back up with the roofing company in the last few days. I forwarded them the reply we had from the insurer. They were (understandably) surprised hear from us after so long, and had assumed the insurers had dealt with the issue last year. They said they'd get back to the insurer to confirm what had happened. A day later, I've just received the following: _______ "Our broker has looked into this for us by contacting the Insurer Aviva and the reply from Aviva was Aviva did not receive a reply to the correspondence sent to you on 06.03.2017 so after some time Aviva closed the case. We have been advised to ask you to please redirect your claim to Aviva by contacting <name of useless person at Aviva we were already in contact with> and quote reference <blah> so Aviva can pick up your case. It needs to be pursued this way as we have gone down the insurance claim route. Aviva have all the information from <supplier>. So I assume Aviva need a reply from your side explaining the problem then hopefully all can be resolved." _______ Aviva clearly don't have "all the information" from the supplier (or they're lying), otherwise they wouldn't have come to the conclusion above. At this stage, my main interest is in getting a definitive answer to the question of whether they're able to require me to go via their insurer. As @JSHarris says above, my (consumer) contract is with the supplier, not the insurer. However, it's possible that, by going the insurance claim route, they're implicitly appointing the insurer as their agent to handle this matter. This would be analogous to requiring me to communicate with them via their lawyers. I can't even think where I'd go for a definitive answer on such a thing, short of speaking to a lawyer with an insurance specialisation. Of course, if I wanted to escalate this to small claims, then I'd be suing the supplier directly, and for the amount I'm seeking I doubt the insurer would get involved. Any thoughts? I have strong preference for not dealing with this issue via the insurer, partly practical and partly because the person we were communicating with at the insurer is a twat.

Welcome to Buildhub! Other than those in the trades, I think it's fair to say that every one of us was naive and ignorant at the start of the process. Some of us are only slight less so at the end! Does the plot have planning permission? That's a hugely important matter to sort out before you consider finalising the deal. If it can't get planning permission, or if you can't build for some reason even if you get planning permission (no way to get services in, for example, or too costly), you may be paying a lot for the assumption that you can build.

If you're in Scotland, the build cost will be far cheaper than in the South East (friends of mine in the outer reaches of Surrey are having trouble getting anyone to quote less than £2800 per sqm for a fairly ordinary build). Bear in mind, however, that it's much easier to overcapitalise in many areas of Scotland. Even if you plan to live there forever, if you have kids, you may want to at least consider what you'll eventually be leaving them. I agree. With absolutely no disrespect intended, I'd be concerned about how efficient it will be for the original poster to design a house from scratch. Some people on Buildhub are anti-architect, but I personally think they can be very useful (we used one when we built, and we're very happy we did so). Many architectural technicians are also very good. One way or the other, I'd encourage you to at least have a chat with a few local house-designer types to see what they can offer. Given the size of the house you have in mind, it's possible that a good architectural technician or architect could actually save you money through good design choices.