G and J

I will take you up on that kind offer Nick, thank you.

Downstairs from outside: render 75mm blockwork 50mm airgap breather 9mm osb 140mm stud filled with mineral wool. vcl 60mm battens with RW3 mineral wool between 11mm osb plasterboard and skim. Upstaurs from outside: vertical wood cladding (fire treated) battens counterbattens breather cement board 9mm osb 140mm stud filled with mineral wool. vcl 60mm battens with RW3 mineral wool between 11mm osb plasterboard and skim.

I’m ok with to 10mm tolerance, I’d rather that and a strip of expending foam tape all the way round than having to hack bits out of my timber frame. The spec asks for an R value of 0.65 which equates to 22mm of Marmox multi board - unless there is a better board I should be looking at. If I pad out the frame just where the window is I don’t know if that would undermine the strength of the brackets they use to fit the window. Otherwise it would simply be a case of specifying the apertures slightly oversize and putting 20mm of wood all round.

That was my starting point too. But our SAP report came complete with a document which requires a minimum insulation level on the return. Now I could achieve this with 15mm of PIR, then plasterboard then skim, totally circa 32mm. Marmox multi board comes in 20mm (just under required R value) or 30mm (which would be thicker than the 15mm PIR/plasterboard. These all leave circa 10mm of aluminium frame showing which seems too little to me. What am I missing?

Our brains have overheated trying to fathom how much to add on to our window sizes to set the precise hole sizes. We have a mixture of fixed and opening windows. And the frame width (jamb) is 42mm for the fixed lights and 68mm (jamb plus stile) for the opening lights. We are keen to have sensible anti- cold bridging measures. Our plans show 25mm PIR plus plasterboard and skim totalling about 40mm. So if we set our holes tight to the frame size then on the fixed lights there’ll be virtually no jamb showing. So is it ok to add 25mm air gap round the window frame - to be filled with expanding foam tape (thank you to @Nick Laslett for introducing me to that stuff). If not how much should I add? @craig - J tells me you are the dude to ask this of, just in case you are on here.

Crumbs, that’s a toughy. Would you still want them if you had to pay the VAT? I think we moved in here before final sign off and continued to collect receipts till sign off then put them in en block. We were fortunate not to have anything queried. I guess you could demand your supplier zero rate them. If, when their overpaid accountant looks at that their reaction might be a useful guide. Cheaper than paying a tax accountant for an opinion.

Our current house has a projector in the kitchen, screen above the woodburner. All totally hidden when not in use. A lot of the winter we live in the kitchen (easy chairs round the fire, warmest place in the house, little tv for normal stuff). So deciding to watch a big screen film involves powering up the sound bar and projector, and turning down the lights but not moving room. If we had to move room it would hardly ever happen. This has informed our design for the new pad, as we are replicating the hidden cinema function in the lounge/kitchen area. I’m with @nod in saying go for the basement if it works from a build point of view. But a cinema room? Wouldn’t work for me.

We tend to toil for hours and hours without taking time to reflect on our accomplishments, because we are so focussed on ‘the next thing’. Well done you. it’s good to view one's work and appreciate the achievement.

Dunno, but in our case the upstairs frame is 100mm offset to the downstairs frame, so a ledger board wouldn’t work for us.

I spent ages googling. J took 10minutes to find this which, on investigation, was contained in a document that @ETC posted a while back which I had forgotten about… Boy, do I feel dumb sometimes.

Stinky blue thing it is then.

There are public toilets 150m from our site. Do I really need a stinky chemi potty on site?

Indeed. This was beyond the remit of our architect (the perils of fixed price contracts). No, cold loft, simple trusses, airtight layer under trusses, taped to vcl inside frame upstairs, Tony Tray, vcl downstairs, etc.

Hi folks. Talking to a joiner today who may well be assembling our timber frame. I mentioned Tony Trays and tried to describe them but I didn't do a good job- so I am looking for something that describes them in a timber frame setting. I've found an article based on blockwork: http://tonyshouse.readinguk.org/tonytray.pdf I'll use this if I can't find anything else, but does anyone know of a description/illustration which conveys the essentials in a timber frame?

So I need a really, really, really powerful water pistol then….

Good point. I guess my naive thinking subconsciously assumed access to the jump cables so that checking voltages should be relatively easy. Optimisers it is then. Do any of them allow remote interrogation to easily determine which element is faulty?

I’m thinking of optimisers to extend working beyond single panel failure, not to mitigate the effect of shading. But if the panels are that reliable and that easy to pop off and replace, and given that the optimisers are a significant proportion of the cost of a panel, maybe I should consider omitting the optimisers (at this stage) and accepting the potential future cost of professional panel replacement (I’m not as young as I used to be, even though I still happily dangle from ropes when I get the chance).

I’ve asked many, many dozens of daft questions on here and as a result learnt tons. I believe our build will be massively better as a result. You'll likely find googling to search in here is very effective, and many of my questions I’ve found answers to that way, as there’s a huge wealth of info in previous threads. But if you don’t find the answer ask, and others may learn from the ensuing debate too. Welcome, and good luck with the purchase.

Were the optimises accessible without taking the panels off?

Oh dear. We are both long retired, but for us I think that means more time to apply to the build. But to each their own. I feel strongly that to benefit from it the end result of building or renovating has to be something you want to live in. To do either for profit rarely works for most peeps, the uncertain uplift in value comes at a price of a lot of stress, as a minimum.

We’ve successfully employed a very professional local estate agent, (more of a land agent type than a bunch of lairy suited 20somethings) on a fee basis for comparative valuations. If you’ve one in your area.

Erm, assuming the door linings have finished shrinking… Wouldn't running some sandpaper down the proud plaster simply do the job? Feathering it in sort of thing? The turn on the architrave might show depending on the profile, but if not I’d have thought it rather easier than machining so far across the architrave.

Context is so helpful in these things. On the face of it simply ignoring the lath and plaster, which I imagine will be vapour permeable, and carrying on with your planned build up would seem a viable plan. However, if you give an overview of your plans then it would be easier for peeps to comment. For example, if you are going to be at or near passive house standard with whole house heating by a single chunky candle it’s a very different prospect from you planning to retain the single glazed sash windows and have a 25kW gas combi running. If you are a renovation presumably you don’t have minimum insulation requirements? So go on, share. There’s phenomenal knowledge on here and most of us don’t bite lol

Good point. Presumably that would cover panel only, as opposed to any peripherals like optimisers.

Big time. I switched off our digibox three years ago. 18 months ago I disconnected the aerial. So we rely solely on streaming now, and will do so in the new pad. I think there are solutions to watching a recorders output in other rooms, but it might be worth taking a step back and looking seriously at whether you need a digibox at all nowadays.