jack

True, but I don't want to live in a world where no-one ever designs an overhang because they're scared of the impact it will have on whether something can be certified. It would have been perfectly possible to reduce the thermal bridge in our case given some thought and a slightly higher budget for a thermally broken structure at those points. Alternatively, if we hadn't been so obsessed about trying to keep things box-like to minimise the surface-area to volume ratio, we could have extended the rooms underneath out under their associated balconies, thereby doing away with the need for steels passing through the insulation layer. An experienced PH consultant would quickly have picked up these issues and been able to explain the compromises of each approach. I have a much better feel for this sort of thing now than I did at the time it would have helped me! Undoubtedly, but that isn't the same as a PH-certified (or certifiable) house, which is what I was talking about.

You're a retired government chief scientist with degrees in chemistry and... another (which I can't remember, sorry!) You worked in technical management at a high level for many years. You've had highly technical hobbies across a wide range of disciplines all your life. You're retired and have a lot of time to spend learning all this stuff, along with a brain that's capable of processing and retaining information far better than the average punter. Respectfully, you may have found it a "doddle", but I suspect many may find it otherwise. Also, certification is not just about airtightness, insulation and 15kWh/m2/year. It covers everything from undue thermal bridging (which ours has, despite being an MBC house - we missed this until it was too late, although a passivhaus consultant would have spotted it immediately), to MVHR efficiency and sound, to a hundred other little details. Yes, with planning it shouldn't be a struggle to meet certification if things are planned properly from the beginning, but I defy the average person with a job to do this without help and significantly increased costs. Someone above mentioned £2000 for certification. Looking at this flowchart, I think it's very optimistic to assume that the consultants' fees alone will be less than double that for a typical project. My rough calculations were that certification would add around £8-10k, and possibly as much as twice that, to the cost of our build. For example, if you don't use PH certified components in certain areas, it can be difficult or even impossible to get certified. An example of this is MVHR - if you use an uncertified product, you have to down-rate its stated performance by (from memory) 15%. That could easily mean the difference between a PHPP pass and fail. So you buy a PH-certified MVHR unit as we did when we were still considering certification, and pay at least a couple of grand more than would otherwise have been the case. I really liked the idea of certification. I believe it focuses the house-builder on details that they might otherwise ignore as being unimportant (specific performance numbers - eg, airtightness and annual space-heating energy) or too hard (modelling thermal bridges). I just couldn't justify the additional costs at the time, given that it didn't have any impact on the value of the house. It may be that in the longer term, the more general market will allocate a positive value to certification. Also, the Passivhaus is one of the ugliest logos I've ever seen, in any context, and there's no way I'd hang one of their plaques in my house. Was that this one @craig?

Not really. The Passivhaus planning package (PHPP) does a pretty good job of modelling the real world. As with all models, it's at best as good as the data that's fed into to it.

We got 44mm fire doors from a local kitchen place, I think. They were surprisingly cheap. Do check that the vertical edges are smooth and flat before installation. We realised after ours were painted that there are nasty planing marks that show up clearly under downlights. On some doors, you can also see where the fibreboard outer leaves have shrunk slightly less than the internal core, leaving fine vertical lines at the join between them in certain lights. Yet another thing that only I (I hope!) notice. I lost the argument about lipped doors, which I suspect would have been smoother without additional work.

Newcastle is only about 2.5 hours north of central Sydney. 4 hours is more like Forster way. I lived in Sydney for many years. We're going back later this year for the first time in a decade - I expect there'll have been a LOT of changes!

Complaining about 20mm ridges is you "being difficult"? I'm concerned about this language being used so early in the discussion with him about this. What's your relationship been like to date?

I've said it before, but our plumber was aghast at the idea of a 5kW ASHP for a large house - and that was just for heating! He simply wouldn't believe there was any chance it could handle both DHW and heating. He gave an example of the DHW being on for a couple of hours very early in the morning, and wanted to know how we'd feel about the temperature in the house falling significantly during that period. I pointed out that it would take 24 hours without heat for there to be much difference to the temperature, so a couple of hours was nothing. He still refused to believe me and suggested a 9kW ASHP (he wanted 14kW) as a compromise. We went with the 5kW and it works just fine.

Definitely good enough for the plant room. Oddly, I think I'd rather have the garage and workshop looking nice, as I anticipate spending more and more time there over the years.

Exactly. In one of the three windows in our kitchen, the plasterer double-boarded the head reveal, but only single boarded the others (long story, but basically there's double-boarding in a lot of the side-reveals, and I think he doubled up by habit when he did the head on that window). It drives me a bit nuts, but no-one I've pointed it out to has noticed it, even when I've asked them to tell me what's wrong with the plastering around the windows. The kitchen alone has maybe 6 or 7 details that I'm not happy with, but no-one else seems to notice.

There'll be days when you'll feel like this, for sure. There will also be days of pure joy when things you've been planning and dreaming about for months suddenly appear in real life and are even better than you'd imagined. I'm not sure whether I could do a house build again, but I'm pleased I did it, despite all the heartburn. It's hard at times, but it will turn out in the end, and everything is fixable (albeit not always cheaply!) Come on here, ask for help, and have a whine. Many of us have been there and will do our best to help or at least sympathise.

Thanks all. Quite a bit to digest there.

Hi I have Fermacell lining my plant room and garage. We weren't able to get hold of the special glue used between the boards in time to use it for the initial installation, so left a gap with the intention of back-filling it with Fermacell Jointing Compound. This is a resin-based plaster filler that is, presumably, stronger than standard plasterboard fillers. I'm having a devil of a time getting hold of this stuff at the moment. I'm now at the point where I'm considering using a standard plasterboard filler. I appreciate that the strength won't be as high as with the correct stuff, but these aren't mission critical areas, so I doubt that'll be an issue. Any thoughts about whether there are any issues using plasterboard jointing compounds with Fermacell? Assuming not, any suggestions about which jointing compound (or other product) to use to minimise the chance of cracking? Thanks as always.

I'm on Three. No problems at all with coverage in London, Surrey and Hampshire. If anything, I get better coverage than I did on Vodafone.

Hugely useful info for others thinking of doing the same. Thanks for sharing!

I used to watch a few of this guy's vids, until he came out as a full-on pro-Trump nutjob. Lost the taste for it after that.

Yes, ours is the only unpainted room in the house!

Lovely work!

We used Fermacell in our plant room. Brilliant stuff for durability and mounting things to. I'm sure it's better than the same thickness of plasterboard for reducing sound transmission, but suspect it works better for airborne noise than for preventing noise from vibration caused by things mounted to it. Our Immersun unit, for example, buzzes under load, and that sound is transmitted quite effectively through the wall. I'll be mounting it on something more resilient in an effort to reduce this.

Ours is spaced off the wall (house is 18 months old), but I don't know whether SSE or the electrician installed it.

SSE was happy to mount our internal meter on chipboard (not 22mm - more like 10 or 12, I think).

According to my electrician, that was exactly the reason. He thinks most electricians are cowboys.

Ooh, I like how this is going. Don't leave us hanging too long!

Pics, pics, pics please!

Well that's clearly false. It's "literally" possible that an error was made with a return and the goods ended up with you. Still, thanks for initial story and for following up with the results. Hopefully others will see it and think twice (or at least check their packages sooner) when considering ordering from Wunda. I won't go off-topic and bore you with the similar issue I had with the UVC I had from McDonald Engineering...

Our ASHP is on the far side of our garage from the house, so it'd be pretty hard to hear even if it did make noise. However, if I stand beside it in heating mode (ie, not on full blast for DHW), I have to hold my hand in front of the fan to determine whether it's actually on. I don't know how much noise it makes when it's doing DHW, as I'm not generally up at the time it's on (4-6am). As Dave said above, if you have a well-insulated house and triple glazing, you won't hear it anyway. We have a train line that runs quite close to our garden and you can only barely hear that a train is passing when it's very quiet and you listen for it. If a window is open it can be quite loud!