jack

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.

I'm not that tall, but my wife is. So you're probably subliminally thinking about her

We have 1100 on our landing. Feels tall, but since it's all steel with fairly fine balusters and a thin plate handrail, it looks fine. I actually think it make the landing feel very safe. I can't recall why we went with 1100 rather than 900. Might have been because our kids were quite young when all this was being decided, and a little bit of extra safety seemed like a good idea. There was also the fact that one bit extends above a double-height area, so it's a bloody long way down onto a concrete floor if you get it wrong!

How's the blade coping?

A family acquaintance who made a packet selling his business has spent several million on a massive house for him and his wife. It's turned out to be an utter nightmare, including him ending up in court with the builders. Money doesn't necessarily obviate the need for the traits @AnonymousBosch listed imo.

Not a bad price. I'm sure I paid more than that 4+ years ago.

Agreed. In fact, there's no reason to even have a bath drain routed throught this sort of unit. You connect the drains of one or two (I believe they recommend no more) showers to it, and connect the outlet of the device to the main drain. That's it.

The rate for ASHP (at least) went up a couple of years ago, from memory.

The heat recovery on these smaller horizontal units tends to be a lot less than on the large vertical units (like this, for example).

Yes, that's what I was told. Bivalent systems require metering for billing purposes. It also used to be the case that the system had to be capable of having metering installed. However, from memory, this was to do with capturing real-world data for research rather than being anything to do with billing/payments. The requirements were something like you needed an accessible straight portion on the flow and return pipes of some length - 500mm, 600mm, something like that. I think they got rid of that requirement when they made changes to the RHI in late 2017.

Not really - the system is really only functional when you have continuous warm water being used, and simultaneous warm water going down the drain. You might get a bit of recovery if you drained the bath while hot water was being used elsewhere, but realistically, it's designed and connected to work when people are having showers. I believe the split system works better because the higher flow of cold water though the device allows more energy to be extracted from the drain water. They're not cheap - maybe £600-1000 depending on model? In our case, we have a very active family who all do sports throughout the week. I sometimes have to shower twice a day, and my wife is the same. Our kids aren't that heavily into the long shower routine at the moment, but I'm sure that's coming. Overall, we foresaw the potential for a lot of heat going down the drain from showers. Even if the payback period is 15 or 20 years, there's an awful lot of energy being saved over that time, which is no bad thing.