G and J

Space for Xmas deccies already reserved in the garage. Besides, I’d miss the repetitive amusement of hitting my head as I climb the loft ladder to squeeze through the slightly too small hatch I hurriedly built 34 years ago.

No chance of that. In our house now anything stationary for more the 27 hours is photographed and listed on gumtree and faceache and if it doesn’t sell in four hours it’s bagged up for the next tip run. We are on a mission to dump the excess stuff. The latest debate is loft hatch size. J is suggesting that maybe we make it nearly as big as an A4 sheet…. :-0

I am hoping that our internals won’t be too gross, but that relies on J. I do engineering. J does aesthetics. I'm planning a state of the art auto-climatic plant enclosure facility in the eco friendly vehicle storage zone. In other words a small insulated cupboard to house MVHR and cylinder plus gubbins in the unheated garage. To 1 and 2 I simply don’t know. I’m chasing the MCS plumber dude for details and costs. I think the valves (be it a 3 port valve or two 2 port valves, which is my preference). We could have designed in space for a quasi external cylinder but sadly that moment has passed us by.

Sadly I don’t know what GIA is, though I’ve a sinking feeling that I’m being dumb again. But (@Nickfromwales) given your response then the cylinder is def going in the garage. Shall I put the manifold there too?

Cavity is 50mm. I thought that we had to keep the cavity clear to allow the frame to breath. That render thickness sounds good. Is that k-rend?

My history is mostly with gravity systems, apart from a couple of small and simple gas combi based ones. Perhaps that’s why when we designed our new house I automatically drew the cylinder in a cupboard in our bedroom which gave short hot water runs, and the UFH manifold under the stairs, to minimise the flow and return from the ASHP half way down the garden. I’ll call that plan A. I’m a tight sod, so I want the MCS grant thingy. So I opened comms with a local MCS plumber and he said lots of the right things, so I gained confidence in him. Now that we are getting down to the nitty gritty he’s advising me to put the UVC in the garage, next to the water softener, along with the water pump and other gubbins. His rationale is noise from water being drawn from an unvented system is not something one wants in one’s bedroom; plus the water softener has a nice and convenient drain already hopefully making his life easier and thus my costs lower; plus it means future servicing is better as the engineer doesn’t have to traipse through the house. Sounds plausible. But it does mean longer flow and returns from the heat pump, about 10m longer, and another extra 10m back to the under stairs where I’d assumed I put my UFH manifolds. He assures me as long as the system is designed well then the extra flow and returns lengths won’t matter, and could be run in less expensive internal pipe work rather than more external u/g insulated piping. I’ll call this plan B. So, is it a good idea to move me gubbins to the garage and accept longer f&r runs? Or is there another downside I've not spotted? If I do do plan B should I move the UFH manifolds to be with the cylinder? In my normally highly imaginative manner I’ll call that plan C. Opinions gratefully received.

Late in the design process we twigged that lenders like masonry skins covering at least part of timber frame houses. So we added one the ground floor, and we converted the garage to all 100mm blockwork with 200mm pillars. Ours is a narrow site so I've always striven for the thinnest walls possible, so I went for 75mm block rather than 100m. The architect then added 25mm of render. Fast forward to working with our SE on the foundation design and he commented that whilst 75mm would be OK he'd do 100mm himself. This would grow the walls a bit, but not by 25mm if we went over to one of these new fangled render systems like k-rend. Views?

I'm told, and I believe it, that when selling a house telling the world it’s a self build is taken as a big negative - peeps would much rather have professionally built houses. My guess would be the above would be less likely in a self build where the self is actively involved in the build. Odd world innit.

My plan is to top up my washing up water with a qooker tap. I like scalding hot washing up water but want to run my system only as warm as needed for J’s hot showers and my lobster baths. I can’t work out if I need more than 200 litres….

Exactly that. Though I always thought it was to ward off The Kraken…

So I fall asleep on my sofa facing the garden through the patio doors and wake to see the neighbours leaving their front door, averting their eyes from my string vest with boiled egg yolk stains down the front (Onslow style). I’m not sure I like this innovation lol

Hmmmm. In Suffolk there’s a very non pc name for people who are not quite as intelligent as others - window lickers. Dreadful name really, but that is of course the image now in my mind. Me contorting my face and mouth to get my tongue to touch the inside of the lens whilst emitting a low sort of moan at the awkwardness of it. That's the moment some bugger takes a pic…. But oddly, I like snorkelling and I rinse my mask then spit on it to stop misting - so I should have thought of that. Thank you.

The week starts with the removal of the external walls on the rear half of da bungalow. That’s the fun bit. I’m armed with two chainsaws and a reciprocating saw (aka sabre saw, for some reason). I bought the sabre saw as Steve the builder recommended one for demolition. When I bought it I knew it would be useful, but I knew my trusty chainsaws would get more done quicker and easier. It’s not easy working with someone who’s right every damn time. Sigh. So the chainsaws remain at rest while we quickly get into a rhythm of joist then upright removal, working our way along the frame till the only part of the rear half standing is the chimney and it’s wings (and our neighbours wall are still untouched ….yay!!). The pile of wood at the front of the plot is now clearly tidal. We cut wood, the tide flows. The ‘wood man’ comes, the tide ebbs. The cycle disguises the sheer volume of wood we are handling. It constitutes an awful lot of skip savings. Next day it’s straight back to heavy spade work for me, knocking of plaster and trying to leave the metal lathe mesh stuff reasonably clean to make later processing for recycling easier. In the process I discover previously a hidden window and a door - it would be fascinating to understand the history, the sequence of events and the reasons, but we can only guess. Steve is straight into heavy hammer work taking down the chimney and wing walls, and he discovers thermalite block so that chimney isn’t original either. Most interesting. Nobody tells you about the dust when you talk about demolition. I thought I’d done dusty jobs before but not like this. It’s like you bath in it. Everything on site is coated and one touch leaves my hands feeling almost ‘smooth’ in a strange kind of way. The dust masks that started off annoying are now comforting, I now start the day clean shaven to help them work better. But they discourage hydration as lifting the mask up to drink means putting a sweat soaked mask back on one’s face. Less than ideal. Warm dry weather makes it worse, and when a stiff breeze gets up it really is the limit. My goggles fully protect my eyes from dust. Unfortunately they also protect my eyes from seeing anything, as they mist up in seconds each time they are cleaned. I sprayed them with de-icer and that did help - it trebled the time it took them to mist up - sadly that still only made about two minutes. So, back to specs type protection it is. The high velocity flying bits are deflected but the fine dust floats round and gently crusts, aided by the breeze which isn’t enough to cool me but is easily enough to ensure dust gets everywhere quickly. Skooby (trusty steed, or cheap ancient Skoda on her last legs bought for the build, depending on one’s point of view) now has a light gray interior. Not just from my clothes, though that would be enough, but also from the stuff piled in her for the tip runs. And the litres of moisturiser I get through is crazy - we never budgeted for that - the dust dries the skin like mad. But, one just carries on. So having removed the back half the question is what to do next. Steve is logical and methodical. So he advocates carrying on removing the rearmost and working our way forwards. That means the dunny. But I still have a bladder, and age dictates that that bladder is attended to regularly. And I’m tight and we’ve nowhere sensibly to put a rented thunderbox anyway. So the score on that one ends up as Common sense: 0; G’s bladder: 1. So, after adding some diagonal bracing ‘just in case’ we bypass the loo and work forward. Yet another carefully considered risk assessment debate ensues. These consist of Steve standing and looking for a bit while I remain silent. He then says what we are doing next and I say yes Steve. Simples. In this instance we are going to remove the lintel above the old front door as otherwise when we remove the studwork near it there might be instability, as one end rests on a tiny masonry pillar held up only by studs. It takes an hour to drop the blockwork above and the large catnic lintel we discover. More to clean up and sell, if only I could lift it. Then, finally, it’s back to studwork removal time. The ‘wood man’ has been again so the wood tide is thankful out, so there’s space to put the wood mountain. Another excellent four days, so much so that we all take the Friday off. It turns out that being at home on a day off is emotionally, much easier than visiting site. A few jobs need doing around the house which helps, but it’s basically ok. It tells me that I could never live on site and have any peace of mind. I already spend a lot of time thinking things through/worrying myself into a fizz when I should be sleeping, and I think that would be massively greater if we lived either in site or very close nearby. The 20 minutes in Skooby as she grumbles along is vital to prepare for the day and then later, to help me start to decompress. It’s easy to think about one’s muscles needing rest, but not so easy to think about one’s head, but I’m trying, and it seems that that drive, and a soak in a scummy bath, is as vital as talking the day over with J. It’s like mentally putting one’s tools away, clean and tidy. Cooking helps too… Saturday it’s time to get all the lead, the house wiring, and (as it turns out) 80kg of gas boiler to the scrap yard - no wonder the boiler was so hard to lift!

I'm with you....perhaps I could put a weighbridge disguised in the block paving 🤔, J

But very funny!

The energy inefficiency of da bungalow is truly shocking, but I’m guessing that’s true of millions of UK houses. I am coming round to agreeing with the saying ‘we don’t demolish enough in the UK’. The worst bit is that da bungalow was built as one of a pair. Our neighbours knew (in fact they told us before we bought it) about what a poor the state the bungalows were in. But, if they care to look, they’ll see the rotten wood we are pulling out (crumbly sole plates being the worst bit) and I think even the faintest heart would despair. What do you say to peeps in such circumstances?

Hmmmm, I do enough of that myself. Coldest days heat loss will be circa 2.5kW, but for emotional support reasons we are likely to light an unnecessary 1.5 - 3 kW woodburner to give the Great Hall its heart. (OK, it’s a one room sort of kitchen/lounge/diner/conservatory and it’s the size of some ‘grand designs’ houses plant rooms but the daft name Great Hall makes me smile). So for the majority of the year I’m thinking the ASHP will have significant spare capacity. In fairness, using the outside temp and return temp as in input to an algorithm that adjusts the flow temp makes perfect sense. And I’m guessing that the tech is mature enough that very well developed algorithms are built in to the good ASHPs.

Hi Nick, J here, my "mantra" for our move is less stuff not more storage, so not planning on having anything in the loft....we'll see how that goes! Seriously though that's one of the reasons we're comfortable with the old fashioned w trusses being provided as part of out frame kit. Always good to "test" the thought process though

Interesting. Our fluffy loft floor will have the best u value of the whole build, looking at 0.1. Do you know what sort of temp your loft gets too? I’m guessing even with fab insulation if it’s hot enough up there then some of the heat will filter through.

Then yet again I've misunderstood. And it’s good news that I now know that. I’m going for a 100mm screed for the UFH, which I’m now thinking of as a huge, low temperature night storage rad, only it’s not charged at night - it’s charged during cheap tariff periods. For some reason I thought variable flow rate was part of what made weather compensation work. So does WC work purely by changing flow temps? And presumably it can be set up to work during the cheap times.

Agree whole heartedly with this. In our current place our first hedge planting consisted of a native mix including dog rose/black thorn/hawthorn.......it is a pain to cut/clear up. When we extended the garden we went for dog woods/spindle/field maple/viburnum opulus.......hedge just as attractive/good for wildlife etc and so much easier to deal with. In clearing the condition for our current build we took the view of trying to give the minium info we could, (so not to tie ourselves down)but indicated the key points......having said that ours was probably less detailed than you've already provided (LA used the phrase " rudimentary") so maybe identify key components (which trees/large shrubs whether evergreen etc) and methods as per other advice above.

Having had two convertibles I think k aircon is vital. They are buggers to dry out in cold times of the year otherwise.

I think I need one with weather compensation; the ability to modulate down to below 2kW; either a powerful water pump or the ability to control a powerful external pump with variable speeds; cooling as well as heating; oh and paid for by an MCS grant. Oh, and I’d only like it to rain at night.

Hmmmm. So the walk-in wardrobe has a good flow through of fresh air. Would that be equivalent to ‘dry cleaning’? If so it could save you a fortune lol

How's this.... My thinking is that the VCL, being part of our 'airtight balloon skin' (such concepts help me, regardless of how daft they sound), will reduce the amount of steamy human stuff that evaporates into the attic. Therefore we won't need a gale blowing through there to keep it dry. The OSB is a bit breathable, the breather membrane being counter battened will deal with what little moisture vapour there is, and the ridge vent is a belt and braces thing, and won't scare any horses. With the eves sealed then the thermal performance of the roof should be fab.