jack

I went part time - 3 days a week - so I was around for some of the time. I arranged my days as best I could to be here for important stuff, such as when new people were starting, big things were being delivered, or I suspected decisions might need to be made. Still not enough. I've said many times that I'd never do this again while I had to hold down a job.

Is 1) Russell?

1) - ? 2) - Bob 3) - Pete(?) What do you call a man with a rabbit up his bum? Warren.

Larch has a high silica content and is apparently bloody hard on blades. Budget to buy a very good quality blade (or to replace cheap ones).

If the walls had been only slightly less thick, or the windows set only slightly further out relative to the wall thickness, the issue wouldn't have arisen. I suspect they may not have installed these particular windows in such a situation before.

What do you call a guy lying on a doorstep? Matt.

Re: "tying down details", our architect worked out installation details for every single window and door, in plan, elevation and section, based on the window supplier's standard installation details. We even took our architect to the factory in Germany, where he met the company owner and worked through all the drawings with him to make sure everyone was happy with the details. Those details were then provided to the installers (who themselves were reps for the window company) before they even quoted. I can't see how we could have tied the details down any more! Basically, the problem was that neither I nor the installers appreciated the importance of the 15mm packing illustrated underneath the windows. It doesn't really sound like much, and we were all very surprised when it meant that not a single cill could be installed. This one oversight caused nearly all subsequent problems. Even the ones it didn't directly cause were at least exacerbated due to the increasingly rushed job that this oversight led to. My main contribution to this failure was assuming that the installers would follow the standard installation detail used by the window manufacturer and provided in the drawings we provided. I should have kept a closer eye on them it to make sure they actually did it, but there was so much else going on at the time that I didn't notice it until it was too late. It's a nice idea that these sorts of issues are somehow avoidable by thinking carefully about details, but in the heat of battle - and there were plenty of other problems to manage and stressful situations to overcome during installation - things are overlooked. In complex situations like these I think you just have accept that errors may happen and hopefully you learn something to reduce the chance of similar errors happening again.

We used corex to cover our concrete after polishing. It was down for several months before we moved in. One thing to look out for is that you can get different colours appearing where the corex joins and air can get in. We taped all ours, but in a couple of places had to lift it for one reason or another and didn't tape it down again. There are a couple of light linear strips where the untaped join between pieces of corex was. I doubt anyone else would notice the odd line, as there's a lot a variation across the concrete anyway. What you don't want is a grid of lines in the shape of corex sheets! Also, the lines do fade over time. Our concrete's been down for over a year and it's not as noticeable as it appears in the pic above.

The actual programming didn't take long. A couple of days maybe. Mostly it's pretty easy - lots of repetition once you figure out how you're going to implement each function. Then I went back and tweaked things over the next several weeks as I had time, and added things like a blinds schedule so certain blinds open and shut automatically at certain times of the day.

You're right, I haven't!

It was quite a bit less than that when I did it, I think - less than £200 from memory. Also, do check whether the discounts that you're reading about are actually offered to non-trade punters. I was led onto the course largely based on this discount, but was then calmly told when I went to claim it a couple of weeks later that the discount was only for trade. I provided what I thought was pretty clear feedback about how misleading this was, and then HerbJ had a similar experience only a few months later. I don't think they do it on purpose - I think they genuinely expect that most of the people on the course will be trade (as were 90% of the guys on the course I did). I also had serious problems with the significantly higher pricing they had in the UK at the time I bought. They argued that they wanted to be able to fix prices for a year or two at a time and didn't want to keep reprinting materials with new prices. That might have been ok if if you could have ordered from the German site, but you couldn't, which as far as I'm concerned is contrary to EU regs. I was basically fobbed off when I raised it with them. I started looking into doing something more formal about it, but didn't have the time or energy as I was buried in the build at the time. All that said, they're a really good company and they're putting together some really great tech. They're always more than helpful when you have technical questions. The only other question mark I have over them is their interface. It's better than what I've seen of, eg, Control4, and to be honest, I hardly use it because most of what it controls is either automatic (heating/DHW/blinds) or has a hard switch (lights, blinds).

We all know that by "Redbull" he means "ale". Let's face it, he always means "ale".

You are my father in law and I claim my £5. I hate negotiating more than just about anything else in the world.

I wish I could be sure you were joking!

I personally don't think it's an option that can ever be safe unless it's in conjunction with some sort of heavy-duty fail safe support system - either a solid frame with outriggers to prevent tipping, or some sort of strap system attached to hard points like rafters or floor joists. Having seen how hard it was just rolling it on scaffold poles, there's no way I'd accept the responsibility for nearly a ton's worth of top-heavy glass being carried by people without such safety systems. If it tips and lands on someone, they're dead.

I don't know whether the suppliers are loading up the sub-contractor's costs so they get a cut too. I think I calculated that we were paying somewhere north of £300 per person per day, and one of the three was essentially a labourer.

Ha, tempting! But seeing how stressful it was for even experienced installers to do this, I think I'll pass thanks

We have something like 25 windows and doors, some very large (including a 5m long lift and slide triple glazed job that weighs nearly a tonne!) We were initially charged around £6k to install them, which included travel from Ireland. Seemed a bit high for the number of days involved, but we were spending a lot on expensive German windows, so we were willing spend more to get the right job done (the installers were the Irish representative for the company that supplied the windows). While the guys clearly knew what they were doing, it's also clear that they underestimated the size of the job. They also hadn't installed the particular external blind system we went for and didn't realise that when they failed to lift all the windows by 15mm as shown in every drawing, none of the cills would fit, which meant none of the blinds could be installed. A couple of the the MBC apertures were slightly shorter than they should have been, but to their credit they had someone onsite within a couple of hours to adjust a couple of the apertures that were particularly tight. The real failure was that the installers failed to understand the impact of not packing up the windows as shown in the detailed drawings they'd had since they quoted. In the end, they left site early then returned the following week once the cills were "adjusted" (ie, butchered by me with an oscillating tool). Unfortunately, at 4pm the day before they left to return to the site, they sent us a new invoice for something like an additional £1500, without any comment, for their extra travel time, accommodation and time on site. They simply couldn't see why this would be a problem. As far as they were concerned, the apertures were the wrong size, so it was our fault and they shouldn't be out of pocket because of it. My position was that they held themselves out as the rep for this company, and I should therefore expect them to know the product, understand how to read details supplied by the window company, and understand the ramifications of not complying with them. After some negotiation, they eventually ended up onsite, only to discover that although the cills were now fine, they'd failed to understand how the external rails for the blinds needed to be fitted. Cue me going around in front of them with a hammer, crowbar and oscillating tool removing all the lovely battening that MBC had so lovingly installed (and which we had been assured by the fitters wouldn't be in the way) from both sides of every window that had external blinds. The perfect end to it all was a few weeks later when I went to remove the cills so I could put some EPDM over the now-exposed OSB in the window closure. Imagine my surprise when I found that what I had thought was a blob of sealant around each screw holding the cills onto the window frames was in fact just evidence of the construction glue they used to permanently glue every cill into place! Turns out that the screws they'd brought weren't long enough to go through the insulation and into the wooden frame, so they used glue and just used the screws to hold the cills in place while it went off. As some point, I'm going to have to get new cills made, then cut off the old ones, repair the EPDM, and screw the new ones over them. It's a real shame that it went this way, as the guys doing the installation were decent blokes who clearly knew what they were doing generally. In my opinion, if they'd spent a little bit more of the travel time they'd billed us for looking at the detailed drawings, things would have been lot smoother. I consider the window installation to be the thing I'm second-least happy with about the entire build (the brick slips were the worst, but that's another story!)

We were only very slightly below the passivhaus 0.6ACH standard on our first test. Then one of the MBC lads realised he hadn't actually pushed the front door closed! Second test went much better, but I was surprised we got such a good result with a slightly cracked door. The Denby Dale Passivhaus was built with masonry and a parge layer. Worth a read of the blog to anyone contemplating it.

Having helped install a 5m long, roughly 900kg triple glazed lift and slide, forget about people lifting it. The sheer sense of mass of the thing was incredible. It's so top-heavy that the slightest tilt would end in disaster. We'd originally planned for a crane to install from outside using exactly the tilt-and-drop method described above, but there were issues with the scaffolding (despite repeated assurances from the installers before they got onsite that it wouldn't be a problem). In the end, we got it in through our (thankfully unusually tall) front door, rolled it on scaffold poles to where it need to be, then somehow manhandled and wedged it into place from inside. Still not sure how we managed it with four of us, if I'm honest!

It you haven't already done it, I'd highly recommend doing at least the first three days of the Loxone training courses. I looked at some online training stuff before starting but I found having someone take me through it by the hand really invaluable. Once I'd done that, I was able to do all the programming myself. It's a very powerful system. I'd also recommend joining (or at least reading) a couple of the forums that were set up when the official one was pulled last year.

Our groundworks team did all the drainage and left pipework sticking up in the right places (well, most of them!). MBC just laid and levelled the blinding layer, installed the EPS and laid the concrete around them. Edited to add: I don't, however, know whether the reference above is to mains drainage. Sounds more like drainage for under the slab, presumably to be connected to a soakaway. What kid of ground are you on? Clay?

I didn't really check it. Sometimes it was on (generally with the fan barely moving) when I went near it, other times it was off. I'm not presently set up to record how much energy it uses or when it's on/off - that's a plan for when everything else is finished! Certainly there was no discernible change in slab temperature. This image shows the slab temp for one of the sensors across January (each step is 0.5 degrees - I'll eventually swap out this one-wire sensor for one with a higher resolution): The biggest temperature difference across an entire day was about 1 degree (bearing in mind the resolution limitations) and usually it's a lot less than that. Of course, the ASHP was only in DHW mode for two hours every morning, so not a lot of time for the temperature to fall.

Indeed. Moving out of our tiny, horrible, freezing, mouldy, falling-apart rental property around the corner was a superb feeling!

Great stuff - fantastic feeling isn't it?