G and J

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.

I think it could be either. You won’t be putting dripping wet coats in there, I assume, so as long as you get air movement and thus air changes it doesn’t matter. Which do you need to balance your system? (I should add that the above is guesswork mind, I’ve not a clue based on experience, but hey, it feels good guessing with confidence 😉

Stubble undermines the seal on the disposable ones too.

I think we need to increase my Makita budget!

Bang on, and I was keen on that approach but I've erred on the side of caution - ridge vents to give some ventilation without the wind-wash gale of eve vents thus helping the soft fluffy stuff laid over the bottom cords of the trusses do their stuff. This option feels like it’s gaining 90% of the benefits with very little risk. And hopefully even more rodent resistant. Bob (our SE) isn’t quite so keen on Tyvek. He thinks they have a tendency to overstate.

Crumbs, I’m v poor in comparison. I just use the disposable FFP3 ones with the little valve in, plus goggles. After a while I start to forget I’ve got one on.

Week 13. Or at least, my body thinks it’s week 13, whereas the calendar says it’s week 3. It’s really odd looking back on the demolition. Starting to strip tiles off seems so much longer ago than 20 days. Most odd. The week started with a tidy up day, as Steve wasn’t there. Almost all of the wiring for da bungalow ran through the loft, and was set to be in the way so out came my new and wonderfully sharp side cutters. About 5 minutes in they went back in my pocket and were replaced by a cordless angle grinder with a thin metal cutting blade. Super quick especially when a bunch of wires were involved. Habits and techniques quickly and unconsciously form through trial and error or, more often on this project, by watching Steve. He’s had best part of five decades building and I’m lucky to be able to tap into that. More luck comes in the form of a guy scrounging firewood at the tip. Phone numbers exchanged (goodness that sounds dodgy!) and a promise to let him know what we have available. It transpired that the ground worker didn’t have a use for our roof timbers so in two runs the wood man has removed about 5 cubic yards and wants all but the nailiest bits. More skip savings and he seems to understand that for it to work he has to turn up when agreed and load up without help. Marvellous. So on Tuesday we started stripping off the internal plaster. The external walls are 4” x 2” stud with metal lathe either side then pebble dash outside and a weak cement render inside with a skim. Between the studs is a patchy application of white fluffy insulation, which had settled significantly, or was completely absent where they missed sections. A fantastic illustration of the cowboy insulators of yesteryear. The plan was to knock off the internal plaster, then peel off the wire to grab and bag the fluff section by section, then thump the pebble dash off from inside. We had visions of the whole neighbourhood being covered in wind blown non bio degradable fluff for decades to come. We soon discovered that the tool of choice was yet again, my trusty spade, backed up by my SDS with a funny crushing bit. Hours of hacking leaves the wire mesh clean enough to go in metal recycling. The render was then barrowed to the growing aggregate pile in the back garden to be used to build up the solid floor. Peeling off the metal lathe involved much yanking with a nailbar and we generated an enormous pile of plastic bags of captured fluff, the only non recyclable bit. Quite pleasing. The frightening bit was knocking off the pebble dash. Too easy. It came off in huge bits with very little effort. It happened so quickly that once we’d cleared that up we had time to start cutting down some stud work. We started with the end wall. A couple of high level cuts and a gentle push and down it fell into the garden, in two sections, with a small plume of wood dust from the disintegrating rotten sole plate. If our neighbours see these bits they’ll be scared stiff at the likely condition of their near identical bungalow, built as a pair roughly a hundred years ago. The chimney and masonry wall in the centre of the bungalow forms a stable support to the side walls as we’d left the joists connected for safety, so we started cutting out an upright and a joist at a time. These walls are only a meter from our neighbour’s walls, so I stood for a good few minutes having a bit of a wobble before doing the first one. It finally occurred to me that the years I’ve spent cutting trees down (an odd hobby but a satisfying one) were of use. Just think of the studs like little trees. Worked a treat. So on Wednesday we went home pleased with progress. I was alone on site Thursday and Friday so it was tip runs to get rid of the fluff bag and wire mountains, and lots more hours of spade work stripping plaster. When on Friday I realised how dusty the site (and our neighbours front patio) had become I quickly deployed the hose to damp the floors down which improved the feel of the shell significantly. I had a day off Saturday, and J and I visited site for J to tend plants and see progress first hand. Oddly, I found not working really difficult. I really needed the weekend off, especially my shoulders, but my head felt I should get in there. As both J and Steve remind me constantly, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and there’s always tomorrow. But stopping before exhaustion is, I find, very difficult. My body clock has shifted completely now. I wake before 06:00 and lay there thinking stuff through as there’s no way I can get back to sleep even though I’m still tired. We’re still chasing quotes on many things, and it seems in a lot of areas our need for early quotes simply doesn’t fit the industry. We are asking too early, though of course we want the info for both budgetary reassurance or to be able to plan nicely in advance. However getting numbers requires the work to be imminent, it appears. This is even the case with our BCO. He wants all changes from the architect drawn building regs plans authorised by a grown up. Acceptable grown ups include architects and SEs. A good example is the attic. We do not want eve vents, we want just ridge vents and a roof sealed by OSB (sort of sarking). Our architect refused to remove the eve vents as that’s what he’s always done, so we are fortunate that our SE is happy with our alternative plan. All I have to do is draw it up and submit it to Bob, our SE, for approval. I know that’s vital work but as it doesn’t involve a spade it somehow feels less so. Yet another odd thing.

Boy do I feel stupid, again. See, tiredness impairs the judgement lol

Our builder friend Steve is a bigger Makita obsessive than I am. Maybe even more than @Nick Laslett! He bought the 18v coffee maker on impulse. It’s yet to see service as I think he recognises it was a daft thing to buy. I wonder how many of these ovens will go the same way.

Does an MVHR extract have an IP rating or have I missed the point?

Da bungalow that is, not us mortals. We carry on sweating in our hi vis. We were pleased with how the timing worked out - planning to demolish during cooler months so all the neighbours will be wrapped up warm indoors away from the dust, plus it’s hard work so cooler temperatures help comfort. So much for that plan with our mini heat wave! Steve took pity on me by leaving me recovery time on Monday and Tuesday. Good news from a site clearing and tidying point of view. It gave me time to kick down the last of the ceilings, mostly while the windows were still in, and then for J to pick out all the lathes for safety and for disposal at our nearby recycling centre (I’m old fashioned, I still call it the tip!). Trevor the trailer was bought for £200 just over a year ago to help clear the mountains of brash from clearing the massive overgrown conifers. Skooby the Skoda was bought as a building vehicle for £700. We now realise that they have paid for themselves many times over in saving in skip costs. If I’d known how much we would be saving we might have bought a car with a working heater, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Monday afternoon was window removal time! Ben arrived bang on time and had agreed to help us remove the windows, though he’d never done it before either. I was relying on Steve’s knowledge. Shame he wasn’t there. So da bungalow now has a series of holes where windows were. Each neater than the previous one. If you look at them in chronological order you can see evidence of two keen but clueless numpties first hacking out a huge hole, taking forever, graduating in stages to the last one which was beautifully neatly and quickly and efficiently removed. Yet another example of experience being the thing that one acquires just after needing it. So by Tuesday evening we had a clear site, which is incredibly important on such a tight, narrow plot. And then next morning, Steve returned to the job, so progress exploded again. We stripped the felt and battens off, with muggins of course being the idiot hopping round on the battens for two thirds of the day, with the last third being careful removal of some of the roof timbers. Rather disappointingly, we found woodworm everywhere. So my plan to build my hideaway at the bottom of the garden from reclaimed roof timbers has gone. Some of the timbers came away scarily easily. But those that didn’t put up a hell of a fight - they used huge nails in the 1920s it turns out - and this wasn’t ideal as force had to be used in moderation in case of unseen weakness leading to accident or collapse. We were probably overly careful but better safe than sorry. The next two days are a blur of heaving and bracing and sledgehammering and chainsawing. Thank goodness for a decent twin battery Makita saw - saved us no end of time - and my little one handed chainsaw - AKA Lightsaber - was slower but brilliant in places too. It’s oddly satisfying knocking off the little bits of wood that hold up the soffits and facias and rainwear - sending the whole assembly crashing down in a plume of dust. Even more satisfying to push over the block gable - the thump when it hit the ground was like felling a big tree, primevally enjoyable. We did take a break for a site visit from the ground worker. He asked all the right questions which does give confidence, including asking me to gain permission from our neighbours for him to hand dig one shared corner of our frontage to carefully identify where our neighbours services are. He might even have a use for the roof timber mountain we now have! More skip cost saving. All this is punctuated with other strands of the project. They are vital but hard to find the will to divert onto when mid hammering. In that way J and I are working together fantastically. I haven’t the bandwidth to think - I run to keep up with Steve when he’s there - I run to tidy up when he’s not there to get ready for when he will be - I go home a bit too late each day and after a coffee and a discussion about the day I then bath and by the time we’ve eaten it’s bedtime. Buildhub, apart from my weekly therapy session (oh ok, blog writing) is a distant memory. So J does the thinking, I do the grunting. That’s a little bit of an overstatement as in my head, when I stop to access it, is a 3D model of everything and every junction and material and supplier and missing quote and little red flag of issue that might become critical path and hence needs sorting before it does. I can and do flick into ‘principal designer’ mode when needed. But the day to day scheduling and remembering is falling to J. J has given me a little exercise book and my own grown up ball point pen to keep my to do list in. It’s a bit year 5 but it turns out very effective, as long as J remembers to remind me to look at it. Between us we are working incredibly effectively. Long may it continue.

After what feels like forever we finally started real works. We’ve done lots to the plot, tree clearance, root removal, digging out beds, planting, etc. but little to da bungalow itself. We held off stripping out ‘til we were sure the project was viable, which was über cautious but that’s us. Selection of timber frame supplier wasn’t straightforward. It came down to a local-ish company (ETE) who supply a panelised frame for manual erection on site or stick built on site under the supervision of an SE. Most frame companies require crane assembly, which we can’t have due to overhead wires. But once we felt we were in the right place, planning, party wall agreements, demolition survey, site insurance, timber frame supplier, the main peeps to help us build, etc. then we got down to it. That initially meant selling/giving away the kitchen, a fireplace, the conservatory, the UPVC windows and door, an electric fire and even a garage. I had intended to do more stripping out before the cavalry arrived, but there was always a more important task: digging test holes for the structural engineer (needed for the foundation design, so vital); getting the gas meter removed/capped off and the pipe cut of at the verge annoyingly costing £1,700 (not safe to have gas on site in the way, so vital); replacing fence panels including digging out big roots (to keep the neighbours on side, so vital); erecting a shed, with of course a base (to keep those working on site happy, so vital); moving the water supply (to avoid it being trashed by the groundworks, so vital); digging in (by hand) the 10m of electric duct, casting a concrete base for and installing a huge, but apparently necessary, meter kiosk to comply with the DNO requirements, enabling them to charge us £9,500 - ouch - so vital); dismantling the garage (which was in the way and we wanted it to be reused, so vital); and finally, dismantling the conservatory (which was also in the way and we wanted it reused, so, you guessed it, vital). Turns out breaking up concrete by hand is exhausting, but oddly therapeutic, even if you do bend your ancient trusty steel spade. I wonder, have I got so used to digging foundation test holes and digging soakaway test pits and digging out roots and digging in pipes and ducts that I’m actually going to miss digging? Scarily possible! Who needs a mechanical digger when you’ve a mattock from Amazon and a new steel spade from Toolstation? But then the real works start. 34 years ago we built our current house helped massively by Steve the builder, who was a bit older than us. This time round it’s a repeat, as the same Steve is helping us and given that I’m nicely in my 60s and oddly, Steve is still older, it means that none of us are in the first flush of youth. So my theory was that Steve was the brains and I would be the brawn. Wrong. Steve is both it turns out. Monday saw us stripping off roof tiles and after a day on the battens I was wiped. Tuesday saw me on the battens again for half a day stripping the rest of the tiles and then, just to vary things, I then spent some time on the battens stripping off the felt on one face so we could get the chimney down and kick down some ceilings (overboarded lathe and plaster). Whilst we were out on the tiles UK Power Networks, our DNO, dug up the road and put in our underground electric feed. And a quick bit of begging over the phone got the meter moved that afternoon, so we had site power again. Bliss in a coffee cup. So by the end of Tuesday I was pleased with progress but exhausted. On Wednesday we started stripping out walls and we discovered that there was a lot more plasterboard than I first thought. Damn. Pronto plasterboard skip ordered, we estimated that we’d need a 4 yard skip, so to be safe a 6 yard skip was ordered. Which meant we needed easy barrow access so we removed a window and cut a new front door. Wednesday night I went home totally exhausted and less than pleased due to all the newly discovered plasterboard. That night I came to terms with my limitations, so I messaged Steve to suggest he do a 4 day week to give me time to tidy up and recover. He agreed and offered to buy me a pipe and some slippers. (Pic of new door) The skip arrived promptly arrived at 07:30 next morning. There then followed a rabid day of plasterboard removal. Incredible how effective a spade can be indoors when instructions are given to the novice. By the end of the day we’d nearly filled the skip and had just a hallway ceiling left covered in the dreaded plasterboard. I could hardly raise my arms. One of Steve’s endearing features is his sense of humour. One of his most irritating features is his sense of humour. So as I’m on a step up, gritting my teeth and willing my arms up again and again yet another joke prompts the giggles. That was it, hopeless. My giggling got him giggling and progress paused. Priceless. But determination sustained and the skip was filled. Thank goodness for over-ordering. I went home a zombie, but with less energy. Friday and Saturday were tip runs and tidying up, and now on Sunday I sit quietly reflecting on a week that was unbelievably productive, thanks to Steve’s experience. But oh my, it starts again tomorrow. I have no idea if anyone will find these ramblings of interest, but they are, much like digging, remarkably therapeutic too!

Welcome to the forum. I think my comments in this post more or less fit. Take no prisoners guys!

Would one see a benefit if one doesn’t have the latest devices?

So when you pull the plug out does some water sit in the bottom of the bath?

Ah, got that covered. We’re going for trendy wall mounted potties. Which unless I lose loads of weight building will need some big bolts to hold em up!

Hmmmm, I can believe that I need to do a factory reset in my heating brain cells but I can’t find the button. I'm committed to the single zone, WC, approach, with UFH throughout downstairs and limited upstairs heating (Fancoil in bedroom and electric UFH and towel rads in bathrooms). I'd figured I’d have a loop solely for the utility room which could be turned off to start with but brought on if needed. Taking the above comments to their logical conclusion I could almost forget the internal walls and simply pipe out in the most efficient manner to give equal loop lengths. So all can be more or less left wide open. I think.

Not started thinking about UFH loop design yet but as a principle, by removing loops as you describe do you diminish or remove individual room control?

Will you train it to go up chimneys too? 😉 (sorry, long day, I’m bordering on being giggly tired!)