jack

You need to use stainless, whichever you choose. We attached our horizontal larch using stainless nails. I discussed power-nailing with the guys who did it and they thought it wouldn't work due to the hardness of the larch. They pre-drilled every hole and then hand-nailed - a lot of work! For our soffits, I've been using good quality (Spax) stainless screws and they work a treat. I was worried they'd need pre-drilling, but they go straight in with little effort and no splitting. Torx heads help. One nice thing about screws is that if you need access at a later date, it's easy to do. I had to remove a bit of nailed cladding and it was a nightmare. The battens for the horizontal cladding were power-nailed with galvanised nails. For the battens for the soffits, I just used Spax screws (longer than for the cladding) and they've been fine, although not much is being asked of them in terms of loads.

Great post Andy.

Not SIPs, sorry. Ours is onto battens attached to a wooden frame that hangs off the house to form a 400-1000mm overhang (different depths in different parts of the house).

Final warning: the topic is the impact of Brexit on self-builders. Further off-topic opinions will be deleted without further explanation.

Why are you asking people on the internet to answer an unanswerable question, over and over again? You're getting the same result expressed several different ways from different people - that's a strong hint that you're the one not understanding the situation, not them. Why not just ask your builder exactly the same questions? If he's as experienced and competent as you say, he'll give you the answer you need with a 30 second phone call.

I suspect that if you're using towel rails with an ASHP, the best you'll get is faster drying of towels and small amount of heat output. The cylinder won't form part of the fluid circuit to which the ASHP is connected, so the cylinder size isn't really relevant to whether you need a buffer tank.

The latter two aren't that far from what we have, and I find that very comfortable. >200mm rise would give me pause, I suspect.

There'll be a minimum volume that your ASHP will need. A buffer tank is only required if your UFH system doesn't have at least that minimum volume of fluid. Radiators will need to be UFH compatible (ie, designed to work with the relatively low temperature water provided by an ASHP). You'll likely be disappointed with ordinary radiators. Same with the towel rails - they won't output much heat if they're being supplied with water from the ASHP.

Get back on the low-carb diet.

True for the vast majority of LED downlights, although some LED light sources (LED strip, in particular) need 12V or 24V.

I think it's been a while since the word "electrocuted" definitively meant death by electric shock. Its use in that article is more informal than I'd hope for from a newspaper, but no worse than that imo.

Did I mention that I contributed nothing to the spreadsheet and that it was generated entirely by my electrician? He saw early-on how complex things were going to get, with home automation (sometimes multiple light circuits per room), MVHR, ASHP, blinds, etc, and decided that the only way he'd be able to cope was to meticulously plan it all up front. He also knew that he'd be the one being called back in future years to amend things, so it was in his interest to do a good job documenting things!

One nice thing about our Loxone home automation system is that it effectively self-documents as you go along. That said, I still have a spreadsheet that documents every single electrical connection in the house, and it's come in really handy at times.

I've had control of a Beagle Pup coming in on this approach to Popham. We did a circuit out to the coast near the Isle of Wight and back, with me at the controls nearly the whole way. It's literally the only time I've ever had control of a powered aircraft. The pilot was very good at giving instructions, and took control later than I'd have been brave enough to do with such an inexperienced co-pilot. That said, 10 years later and I haven't been invited out for another flight - maybe I didn't do as good a job as I'd thought!

Nice-looking house, although I echo others' comments about budget. Much will depend on your choice of things like kitchen and bathrooms, and how much you do yourself, but the sort of sharp modern finish that would suit a house of this type tends to be expensive and/or time-consuming to achieve.

We just bought cheap fire doors and painted them. They're solid softwood. You can get them edged with hardwood, and I was initially annoyed I didn't, because the edges of the softwood show the grain through the paint over time. However, hardwood edging tends to shrink less than softwood over the first couple of years, so you end up with a visible edge along the faces of the doors. Fine if you're okay with sanding/planing back and repainting a couple of years after installation.

It was your user name that tipped me off! The skills you have will still come in useful, even if you haven't applied them to this particular field yet.

I think we saw something we liked and the source mentioned an 8mm gap. Might have been something about keeping insects out too. I can't actually remember, to be honest! This is it. Siberian larch, west-facing with 4 years of weathering:

Keep looking.

I discussed this with a few builder types I know and this was the consensus. I really disliked the idea of wet membrane against the back of the cladding. We have 8mm gaps between our horizontal larch, with the membrane behind the battens. Only insect problem I've noticed in 4 years was a wasps' nest last year, but they got in via an unfinished opening at the bottom of the cladding, at one end of a balcony we were still working on.

Would have been more interesting!

Welcome. Are you a project manager by trade, perchance?

A mate of mine went to dinner with her and several other people (I have utterly no idea how he ended up in this group). At the end, she paid the bill. Not much of a story, I know, but at least it's on topic. Actually, just noticed the topic is an eco build, so maybe not.

A photo would work in many cases, depending on tree type and time of year.

Fiberglass. They're a standard moulding for this application. [Edited to add:] Crossed with @JSHarris I ordered a couple of sorts of these trims from different suppliers when I did our balcony and they were all GRP. Looking at it again, you may well be right. It looks as though the GRP mat perhaps wasn't continuous around the moulding. Really poor form if so!