G and J

The 5kW Clearview Pioneer in my lounge arrived in the boot of my Saab estate, so I know it’s possible. However, I like my neighbours at the new pad so maybe not the best option.

ooooh, so can I pick one up cheap?

I was told recently that Clearview have stopped selling due to failing emissions levels. The Charnwood Aire range is direct air and looks vaguely modern. What wattage do you actually need?

We put a meter kiosk in to give us both our building and permanent supply, partly because I'm not keen on a carbuncle of an external meter box slung on the outside of my new pad and it saved the cost of moving it, so that may be an option. And, erm, bugger the architect, what do you want as far as meter boxes go? I'm assuming it's your house.

is it still April the 1st?

We have clearviews and they are brilliant, but fir our new place we are going for a small charnwood with external air kit which is , for us the next best option performance/cost wise and more modern looking.

It's attracting them to you in the first place that can be tricky.....with a pool of happy clients, event with word of mouth, self build (or garden design) frequency isn't ever going to be like needing an electrician. Certainly good designs and 3d presentations are going to serve well for prospective clients once they are in conversation with you, but

Are you or your representative going to the meeting? I ask because we, and our next door but 1 neighbours where we currently live objected to our shared neighbours planning app for a balcony (before you conclude we are nimbys, they had just put on a 7m 2 storey extension which we were happy to support, growing family etc which they "sold" and we supported on basis of no loss of privacy and then applied without letting us know in advance for the balcony.....yes we are still upset 😞 ) anyway the point is that as in pursuit of good neighbourly relations we decided not to go to committee to argue the toss (they did) it was passed with the comment along the lines of ".......as the objectors could't give us the courtesy of attending........

What's your unique offering to self builders? I ask because I had a small garden design business whereby my planned "usp" was to provide a design that the house owners could then implement over a number or months/years. I say planned as being a gardener myself this was a service that I would have been interested in when I was starting out, rather than the "we'll do you a design and implement it in the next 4 weeks" that seemed to be the norm. However it turned out that there was a limited audience for that and I increasingly became a project manager of others, or worked closely with a trusted landscaper that I could hand off too. Either way not what I imagined. So is your main "sell" cost based i.e. your service, or that you design for cost effective build or...... For info we are 2nd timers, had a basic floor plan for site but used a local architect for planning/building regs. Did this partly to bring us up to date on build methods (last time round early 90's) but the clincher was his knowledge and relationship with the local planners, that for us was the initial "sell". We then went on to meet him and the thought we could work together.

So you’ve one or more vents where you want/need to do a level wheelchair type access (is that part M?). Is that correct? If so, are there any other vents that serve the void which the threatened vent serves? If there is then might it be ok just to block that vent? If not could you put a drain grill just outside the door with cutouts to allow air to get to the vent?

Certainly would be interesting....have seen a good range of images trawling through, but having them in one place would be helpful. Not only finishes but also profiles e.g hidden fixings/board on board, wood types etc etc? And window colours in relation to cladding finish....I (j - aesthetic rather than technical lead), have asked several hubbers, including yourself ( @Kelvin @Susieall of which have helped me.

In fairness I think you are spot on. That’s why I pressed the like button thingy on your post. I have many, impressive talents, and worrying myself sick over nothing is one of my best ones!

This is very much what we are hoping our end result will be...ta for pictures. Just shows what a great material wood is allowing us each to personalise to our own preferences. Thanks also to @JohnMo for the contrast image.

Good to hear and exactly what I was hoping. Would hate to be standing in my hall, listening to odd noises wishing I’d asked more questions.

So, the project moves in and we now have a foundation design. We’ve an A142 reinforced 100mm oversite (slab) on the asymmetric strip foundations to help make it all work. Then 250mm of EPS, in which my poo pipes sit, then 100mm of screed with UFH pipes. The poo pipes can’t be buried in the oversite, so when they enter the house they will have to be at an invert level of 350mm below FFL. The longer of the two pipe runs is just under 6m, which is a 75mm fall at 1:80. That means at the worst bit, which is the base of the soil stack, there will only be 65mm of EPS between pipe and bottom of screed. In terms of scheduling, I can put the poo pipes in just before insulation just before screeding, so I shouldn’t be tripping over them for months. So that sounds good. However, I’m having a fret about them. Should I use special acoustic pipes? Will they creak in the EPS when I empty a hot bath to make the pipes expand? Are there special expansion joints I should build in? Should I wrap them in mineral wool? Will the 100mm screed adequately muffle the trickle of water when someone pees? What else don’t I know that I should know? Etc.

OK dumb question alert: what’s the difference and which does rainwater count as?

I didn’t trust my span of attention. I videoed it so I could check after, which is just as well as I got on with other stuff and forgot about it. The first one I did was over 4 hours. Bugger me that was boring to watch afterwards. Almost as slow as ‘Dances with wolves’.

Pipes will have the fall to run to the road from the road end of the house no problem, except AW want a restriction which implies/requires storage or overflow. Even though it’s a combined system they require separation until the last manhole, which makes the falls a bit more tricky. If I put a tank in the drive it would indeed need a pump and I’m rather keen to avoid that, because I’m tight, I’m lazy so want less maintenance and Sod’s Law dictates that such a system would go wrong when you most need it, e.g. a power cut during a mega storm. (Seen it before, not going there). And as for the end of the garden being able to soak it up, yes, that's a big part of the cunning plan I am hatching (maniacal laugh, as I stroke my Dick Dastardly style moustache!)

We haven’t got a site loo at the mo, but I didn’t think that was what percolation tests meant…. 😕

Crumbs, thank you for all that. In fairness I’ve calmed down a bit now (me meds finally kicked in!) and I’ve gone back to first principles. I’ve got to come up with a drainage plan that satisfies both Anglian Water and my BCO. AW don’t care what I do with the rainwater as long as I squirt a maximum flow (hopefully 2 x 1 litre/s) down the sewer. I’m guessing my BCO cares that I don’t flood anyone. Simples! (I wish.) If our new pad wasn’t there, rain would fall on the plot and what doesn’t soak in would trickle down the garden away from the road, and crucially, peep’s houses. We are in a row of houses where each has a long, parallel back garden with the far end of the garden being circa 1m lower than the road. Plus the light soil is a lot deeper at the far end of the garden, circa 1.2m deep. Perfect for rainwater dissipation methinks. My foul invert level is about 650mm at the road, and as the road is the highest point the invert level with respect to ground level gets progressively worse from there. A couple of phone calls identified quickly that the requirements for a tank under the drive meant that any tank would be way too low to drain into the sewer without a pump. Bugger. No tanks then. So, we are left with the notion that I have some form of overflow that takes excess storm surge rainwater and lets it wander off down the garden and stagnate and then seep away like me with a Pimm’s on a summer evening. That’s what I’m currently working on. So, no thanks to tanks. If and when I get thumbs up from both AW and my BCO you’ll feel the earth shift with my sigh of relief.

I’m under the impression that solar inverters will generate heat, and perhaps therefore might benefit from some airflow which would negate the insulation. Why insulate such a cupboard?

That's we're planning, which sioox did you use original or one of the greys.....cheeky but any chance of a piccy (sorry to divert thread)

Ah, we are going the grey route, not for everyone I know (and we're even paying money to get there quicker and more evenly 🤣), but we are fairly close to an estuary/conservation area (60m) and one of the things the planners seemed to like was the "referencing" of the cladding to the boatyards which is old and untreated......oh, and we're planning to get lazy

😱 we're planning larch cladding to reduce the upkeep from our current cream rendered house........what do you have to do??

My cunning plan is to regale the one who asks with a long winded litany of toil and woe and injustice and everything else I can think of. Two helpings of that, leaving them wishing they’d never asked, and they’ll not ask again. See, being a boring old windbag has its upsides.