jack

I've had one for the last 4 years, installed with an ASHP. This isn't accurate. First, most people use their ASHP to heat water in the tank to at least 50 deg C (@ProDave takes his to 48 deg C, and that's the lowest I'm aware of anyone on here using). Most people like their shower water to be no hotter than around 43 deg C. So you need to add cold water to bring the temperature down. But guess what - if you add some of the heat from the waste water to the cold water before the mixer, then you can use a higher proportion of that (preheated) cold water to achieve a given temperature at a given flow rate. A higher proportion of cold water means a lower proportion of hot water, hence energy is saved. Even better, to get the nearly 70% efficiency you mention, the system needs to be connected so that the preheated cold is supplied to both the cold side of the shower mixed and the cold feed to the DHW cylinder. Higher temp water into the cylinder means less energy to heat it to the final temperature. In short, the numbers work even if you're using a lower temperature heat source like an ASHP. In fact, I'd argue that waste water heat recovery is particularly suited to ASHP-based systems. There's a big difference in the amount of hot water that can be supplied by a tank at 50 deg C (ASHP) and a tank at, say, 75 deg C (gas boiler). In most households, showers consume a large proportion of all generated hot water. I'd estimate in our case that showers account for at least two-thirds of our usage. Waste water heat recovery increases the effective amount of hot water you can get out of your DHW cylinder. That lets you either use a smaller cylinder, or go for a standard cylinder and get more time in the shower.

@Brickie, any thoughts?

That's what I thought. No idea!

On a slightly lighter note, my parents in law told me that the guys that burgled them last year were caught. They admitted to 40+ burglaries and have been sentenced to several years' jail. Interestingly, both of the burglars have had property seized and sold. The result is a not insubstantial payout to my in-laws. I was quite surprised by this - I assume it's something to do with the proceeds of crime legislation, but I didn't realise that money was distributed to victims.

I agree with all this except for one thing: we have no idea what the builder is actually thinking. He may well be on target to deliver exactly what Zoothorn hoped for and drew, and quite possibly would be stunned that such a straightforward job (from his point of view) has run to 11 pages of discussion on a website before a block has been laid. At the moment, it could be as bad as @zoothorn is worrying about, but from my perspective that worry is based entirely on speculation. I think that unless and until some form of communication with the builder takes place, talk of being stuck with the wrong outcome, or falling out with the builder, or firing the builder (etc, etc) are all premature.

My comment was neither criticism nor an attack. I'm genuinely concerned that you could interpret it that way.

Why do you keep talking about extra costs if you haven't agreed to a variation on what's shown on the plans? Is this not being built for an agreed price?

Respectfully, this contradicts everything you've said to date. The main guy is apparently a fantastic, highly regarded local builder, but you expect him to walk off the job if you point out that an error has been made by his guy? I find those positions difficult to reconcile. I just can't comprehend why you won't have a conversation with the builder. It doesn't need to be nasty or provocative. You just need to say that you want to be sure that what's being built is what's on the plans, and that you can't understand how what's currently there will give you that result. Tell him that you know you don't know what you're talking about and just need a bit of help from him to understand. If he's half the builder you say he is, he should be happy to explain. If he won't, then that's a screaming red flag in my opinion, whatever other stories you may have heard about him. Again, why are you compromising if they've made an error? Keeping the builder happy isn't your job as a client. Your responsibility is paying them for doing the agreed work - that's it. More generally, errors happen ALL THE TIME in building. I doubt there's a self-builder on here who didn't have to deal with an error at some point along the way. We had loads in our build. In my case, all but one of the contractors who made errors put them right at their expense. The other was unwilling to admit his team's error (poor workmanship, really), so they were asked to leave the site. It was very stressful firing them, but not as stressful as it would have been watching them continuing to do crap work. In short, if errors are being made about things as basic as finished floor level and they won't talk to you about it, you really want to ask yourself whether these are the right people to be doing the work. Put it this way: you keep saying how stressed all of this is making you. If you actually DO something about what's causing you stress, the problem will be resolved one way or the other. Plus a large part of the pain in stressful situations is the feeling of helplessness. Taking some control of stressful situations is a guaranteed way of reducing the total amount of stress you'll suffer. Finally, the reason people are posting things that are upsetting you is that you keep asking for advice, but you don't seem willing to listen to any of it. Ignoring competent people who freely share their experience and time to give advice is a sure fire way to rub people up the wrong way - and that includes people who are just reading the thread without contributing. I haven't given advice in this thread because I don't have any knowledge or experience in this area. But reading it makes me very frustrated about the way you're behaving - partly because you're sabotaging yourself and partly because you aren't listening to people, but also because it's frustrating watching someone allow others to walk all over them. As someone else suggested recently, why don't you go back and read this thread from the start, and see whether what people said would happen has actually happened. Perhaps that might give you some confidence to trust some of the advice you're getting.

We went to Grand Designs live a couple of times: once about 6 years ago and again about 3 years ago. Even over that time the difference was palpable. We were done within an hour the second time - it was just stall after stall of tat, with very few exhibitors that I'd even consider to be in the building trade.

I was involved in a startup (first employee) and that's exactly what the founder was like. Very bright guy, but utterly lacking any form of doubt or cynicism. No way the company would have gotten where it got without that, but for every one that's wildly successful there're probably tens that aren't.

Really sorry to hear that @AnonymousBosch Keep your pecker up mate.

Assuming you're talking about chlorate rather than chloride, drugs are banned too, but they're still available!

Is there an adjacent room you can bung them all in? Ours are all together out of sight on the pantry wall.

Agreed. Most self-builders don't think much about energy use, so @Chedbuild is already well ahead of the pack. Welcome to Buildhub @Chedbuild

It's banned, for good reason.

My point is that you're looking at the wrong "they". This is a very important point, and it's critical that you (or whoever) do the best job you can of thinking ahead at the design stage and sorting out which decisions need to be made early and which can - or sometimes even should - be left until later. Again though, my point is merely that a lot of what you're concerned about in this document are not things that architects will generally be familiar with. Maybe you can pay your architect for an hour to go through this document with you and tell you which things he/she can help you with, and those for which you should be looking to others.

But why would you design a specific element of a house around a specific consumer item that might die within 5 years of purchase? You're better off just saying "there needs to be space, support and connections for a projector", and make sure to provide for the maximum size of any likely future projector. Either way, home cinema requirements aren't something I'd expect a typical architect to know about. Our architect doesn't know where/how our taps are mounted. Sure, consideration needs to be given to, eg, sink and pipe placement if you want a wall-mounted tap in the kitchen (good luck finding one of these, incidentally. We weren't able to fine one we liked the look of). But for the most part this is something I'd expect to discuss with the plumber and kitchen fitter.

Wow, that's impressive. Way more than his fee saved with a single phone call!

This one might be the Webex product hinted at above. Cheaper than the one linked above, self-levelling, final wear surface, industrial application. Depth is 4-15mm. Not particularly cheap, but it looks like a decent product. At some stage I need to do something about my garage floor. We had problems with the weather when the slab was laid, and in some areas the upper layer has lifted, leaving a dusty, uneven surface. Options for fixing include patching the rough areas with self-leveller then sealing the lot (or covering with vinyl tiles), tiling with industrial floor tiles, or some sort of self-levelling system. It hasn't really been a priority but I'll need to start thinking about it now we're nearing completion.

Difficult times @Ferdinand, but your mum's lucky to have such an attentive son helping her out. Re: food, I've read repeatedly over the last few years that protein is less well-absorbed as we get older. Is appetite a problem? If not, I'd be trying to get her to eat as much protein as possible. Focus on beef and eggs, but lamb and fish (particularly oily fish) are good too. If she'll eat it, liver (even 50g a couple of times a week) is fantastic. If tolerated, full fat dairy is an excellent source of nutrients. Vitamin D supplementation is useful at all ages (especially outside of the summer months, or all year round for those who aren't out in the sun regularly). And as I'm sure you know, any form of activity is good. If nothing else, exercise may help with appetite. All the very best to your mum.

I skim read that and thought that the whole house was to be pulled down!

@Ferdinand is bang on. This is an excellent and useful document, but it includes an awful lot of stuff that is at best a distraction, and at worst potentially off-putting, for any potential architect. Much of this is the sort of info you should be thinking about when formulating a brief, rather than something that should form part of the brief itself.

At the very start of our self-build journey I got slightly obsessed with straw-bale houses. I actually don't think the old-fashioned version is a great idea in our damp climate (although it can definitely be done with careful detailing), but there are panelised versions that apparently work well. A school not far from us used one version: https://www.modcell.com/projects/weydon-secondary-school/ It all got a bit too hard in the end, so we went with a more conventional construction.

Everyone. We can't poll the wider self-build community, so this is by definition a poll for BuildHub members to see what building system they're using. What big builders, non-members and the wider self-build community may or may not do is irrelevant. Please consider that before posting.

Reply deleted - pointless escalation on my part.