jack

We run water through our UFH at around 15 deg C and get a breath of condensation (not enough to drip) on the metal parts of the UFH manifold. From memory, that gives us a floor surface temperature of around 19 deg C. Although the air temp tends to still be quite warm during long hot spells, walking around in bare feet or socks seems to cool me down out of all proportion to the amount of contact area with the floor. Walking into the house on a hot day feels like walking into a cave. Lying down on the floor when you get back after exercising in hot weather is absolute bliss! This is all downstairs. There's no cooling upstairs, and during longer periods of hot weather, I do wish we'd installed some form of cooling, whether fan coils or aircon. The other thing that I think is even more important is insect screens. Even during very hot weather, most nights the temperature outside drops well below the interior temperature. If we had insect screens we'd be able to open all the windows upstairs and let out a lot of the heat that's built up during the day. Retrofitting insect screens is on my increasingly long list of things to do.

It's worse than that: the council at leasty implies that mitigation measures wouldn't be allowed:

And they wonder why planners have a bad name. How do "formalised space" and "unneighbourly" map to the requirements of planning law? Similarly, I don't see how "engineering works" have anything to do with the need for a planning application. You built a small(?) retaining wall (planning not needed), replaced the paving over a slightly larger area (no planning needed), and didn't raise the level (no planning needed). I agree that it all sounds like complete nonsense, and I'm sorry you're having to deal with it. Depending on your appetite for stress, I'd be tempted to write back and tell them that you look forward to them initiating enforcement action based on the actual planning laws of which you're alleged to be in breach.

Thanks. I appreciate it takes some navigating at first!

Can you please repost your question over in the planning sub-forum? https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/108-planning-permission/ A lot of members don't read posts in the Introduce Yourself section. It's also helpful for future readers for discussions about specific topics to be in the right sub-forum rather than in this section. Thanks Jack

Let me know which post and what you want edited and I'll do it for you.

Welcome. Head over the planning sub-forum and have a read. Lots of good info over there. If you have specific issues, ask away.

Existing members posting commercial links in the context of research and recommendations is fine. It's just people advertising that we don't allow. I agree that the gap will close as more people (and eventually grid-scale storage) absorb cheap energy at offpeak times for re-use when it's expensive. However, relatively few households installed solar when the government was guaranteeing two decades of index-linked payments. Financial conditions for most people are worse now and I don't see them improving in the near future. Even if battery prices continue to fall there're still additional costs associated with installation that won't get much cheaper. I just don't see vast numbers of people getting into battery tech in the near term. Also, there's some complexity around operating these systems in a way that takes full advantage of the time of day pricing. I'm sure set and forget systems are on their way, but we still have some time. People are generally not that interested - look at how few people building an extension bother spending 10 minutes researching what insulation to put under their new UFH system. Overall, I doubt there's much risk of the market changing so much in the next 3-5 years that ToU tariffs won't still offer an arbitrage opportunity. For some of these systems that's the entire payback time. With a decent solar array, you almost certainly get more time before the financials deteriorate. Personally, I'm very close to the point where installing a decent battery system makes sense. Just need to find the time to research the options (the massive number of which is another impediment to mass-market uptake!)

Factoring in only your own use may undersell the financial case. If you're on a true ToU tariff such as Octopus Agile, my understanding is that the best option is to discharge when the grid is paying the most (typically early evening in winter), rather than solely maximising your own self-consumption. This approach can offer better financial results, albeit at the cost of additional complexity.

Welcome to BuildHub. Some MVHR systems have a humidity sensor in the return (from the house) ducting, and enter boost mode when humidity rises above a certain level (e.g., due to steam from a shower). The humidity sensor could be positioned in the duct between the return manifold and the unit inlet. If you can access it, look for something poking into that duct with a wire coming out of it back to the unit. Not sure if your unit offers this option though.

I agree that basing architects' fees on actual build costs doesn't make sense, but that isn't what happens. As I understand it, the percentage is not applied to the actual build cost (which would be unknowable at the design stage), but to a nominal estimated build cost that assumes a particular level of finish. To rephrase your question from a different perspective, why would an architect's fee change just because their client decides at the last minute to put marble on every interior surface, add a solid gold bidet, and include 15 Miele ovens in their kitchen? The alternative would be to esimate the amount of time the job is expected to take and generate a cost estimate by multiplying that number by an hourly or day rate. I'm not an architect, but I'll bet that architects as a profession have figured out that nominal estimated build cost is a reasonable proxy for time, and easier to estimate. This is a different prospect from what I understood from your original post. Redesigning an existing plan on the same footprint, for which planning is already in place, should be way less than starting from scratch. To me, £5k sounds expensive for that.

Welcome. You'll fit in with the other grumpy old fossils on BuildHub.

I don't understand why. The cost that you could potentially build a particular design for makes no difference to the amount of work the architect has to do. It still ends up being a number though. 2.5% of a £300k build = £7500. Ignore the fact it's based on an estimate and just decide whether you think the number is reasonable. If you want less from them than is implied by the stage you're considering paying to, then I'd be arguing that point to reduce the fees. If you've worked with them before then presumably they know what to expect, in which case there's less uncertainty for the architect when pricing the job. Good luck, whatever you choose to do.

Brace yourself for several posts complaining about how basing the fees on an estimated build cost is ridiculous because if you do some of the work yourself the build cost is lower. Out of curiosity, why are you engaging an architect in this situation? A draftsperson who specialises in building regs drawings will be more than sufficient, especially if your local council is self-build friendly (i.e., it's generally straightforward to get planning permission). Some on here have even done their own, although I suspect there are traps for the unwary in that approach.

It's highly variable, but two or three weeks is a pretty common turnaround time (per hire). There's only one person on the list in front of you at the moment. I'll add you to the list. If you're not ready when you're up, let me know and we'll skip to the next person on the list (if there is one by then).

Thanks. We had a TPO slapped on all the trees at the front of our house while we were in the process of buying it. From memory, we didn't become aware of it until we'd exchanged or perhaps even later. The buyer who beat us when we initially tried to buy the property was a developer. One possibility is that they approached the council for planning advice (it's an oddly shaped block with an unusual level change across the back garden), which triggered the intervention of the tree guy at the council. Alternatively, one of the neighbours might have said something to the council when they realised developers were sniffing around. There'd been all sorts of nastiness during attempts by our neighbour to get planning so it's possible someone wanted to get some constraints in place. All speculation of course, but the previous owners had lived there since the early 1950s, and the trees are probably even older than that, so the timing of the TPO is suspicious. I do wish we'd appealed at the time. We subsequently had a tree survey done. Turns out most of the trees subject to the TPO were of very low quality and arguably should not have had TPOs on them. We were completely ignorant of what it all meant, plus had too much else on at the time to properly look into it. The result was that the front half of the house couldn't extend beyond the original footprint of the bungalow we knocked down. We could really have used even an extra metre widthwise, and the garage/workshop could have been made a more useful size. As I still say (nearly 9 years after moving in) when I spot something I wish I'd done differently: "Next house".

Ah you're right, I misread it. Thanks, I've edited my reply. Is it possible to appeal a TPO being placed on a tree?

Tricky one this. Planning permission overrides TPOs, but I wonder how that works if the TPO is applied after planning is approved? Could it be argued that the TPO was issued in error given planning permission had already been approved? Ignore this, I misread and thought planning had been approved.

@Dave Lee, I've moved your post to the subforum that covers dormers. You'll get more chance of a reply here - a lot of members don't read the "Introduce Yourself" section.

Thanks Tom, the approach you've suggested sounds fine. By way of background, some new members start a thread in this subforum without any introduction, and launch straight into a specific building-related question (I know that isn't what you've done). I've been making an effort over the last few months to move those sorts of threads to the right subforum. While this subforum wasn't intended to be for build diaries, I appreciate that this is probably the best location for such threads.

There's some useful DIY info at the start of this thread (plus a currently very short queue to hire, if that's of interest). There's more to it than dividing the total by the number of valves, as you also need to take into account building regs flow rates for things like kitchens and bathrooms.

Welcome to BuildHub. I get the impression that a lot of members don't check the Introduce Yourself forum, and/or stick to sub-forums that interest them. You're therefore going to increase your chances if you ask your question in the MVHR sub-forum: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/79-mechanical-ventilation-with-heat-recovery-mvhr/ Good luck.

@alfaTom, would you mind if I moved this post to the relevant sub-forum (probably https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/73-foundations/)? As @Gus Potter says, there's a lot of useful information in it, and it's likely to get lost in the Introduce Yourself sub-forum. Thanks.

Welcome to BuildHub @Accent Have you tried searching the forum for Nulok, ordered by most recent posts? It doesn't look like there's been a lot posted about the system in the last couple of years: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/search/?q=nulok&quick=1&updated_after=any&sortby=newest

Hi Gary. A lot of members don't read the Introduce Yourself section, so you'll get a better response posting in one of the building-related sub-forums. I can move this post for you, but I'm not sure what sub-forum best suits your question. If you'll mostly be doing renovations and extensions, then https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/60-house-extensions-conservatories might suit. One of the construction type sub-forums might do if you plan to be sticking to one of those: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/24-house-construction/ The Project and Site Management or Building Regs forums might also suit: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/19-design-architecture/ Let me know which you prefer and I'll move this post there (a link will stay in the Introduce Yourself sub-forum for 30 days).