gc100

how much gap around the flu where it goes through the roof? I presume there is no insulation here and I’m wondering if it creates a cold bridge/area? on the quote: I insulated 2 stoves in my last house and for BC to sign off at about £900 each. However I wouldn’t do it that cheap agin in my build. I’ll be being good money in a top of the line stove as the cheap stoves I got (that looked great) where not effecient and drew too much air/difficult to control well. Plus I don’t think they’ll last 20 years. Stoves are basic things but in my experience there is a difference between the cheap and top ends.

Due to certain restrictions on my build it looks currently that I have 150mm of PIR insulation in my zinc vaulted roof. Does anyone have any idea how much Optim-R costs and where its worth the extra cost? Also does it retain its uValue over say 10/20 years? Anyone know much about this? Thanks!

While I sympathise with your initial post, I think it’s fair to say everyone has the right to change their house via PD so you can’t block for emotional/seem fair/emotive reasons. You can only block on planning rules/law. I would suggest you employ a planning consultant to help you in your objection.

There really isn’t any reason not to used one of the cloud storage providers. As already mentioned above there are many advantages. Unless you are dealing with GB size files or terrible internet connection all the time or something incriminating there really isn’t not to use it. It will be more secure and redundant than anything you can create at home. I’d recommend Amazon AWS if you are concerned about price, availability and security though not user friendly. If you want something super simple then dropbox (which stored everything on Amazon anyhow and your local devices)

We built next to a wood. If you are doing normal foundations you just have to go much deeper and use clay board on the inside. A structural engineer can do the calcs for the depth needed for BC to be happy.

My buildup has been specified much the same as the original poster. I think your comments all have merit. However I really like the idea of the vcl/air tight later sandwiched between the main insulation and a thin layer before the service void, mainly for protection against accidental penetration but also being sandwiched there is going to be less stress on the table glue from movement and therefore less prone to failure over time. I get the point about a cold house and warm damp day outside. However this is only likely maybe a couple of times a year (unless we install AC due to climate change!!!). So even if there was some condensation won’t it still be able able to escape (slowly) so not really a real risk given the occurrence rate?

yeah I haven’t seen anything locally thus far, and I won’t know who to ask at the shopping mall. It’s a good idea generally though ?

We’re settled on our installer/supplier however there is one window I’m not 100% happy about. We had the same answer with all the suppliers that we spoke to and they all said it’s not possible to manufacture a fixed window that is 5.5m x 0.8m I a single pane . Thing is I see similar dimensions at airports/commercial setups. any ideas? I know the biggest size glazing supplied is 6mx3m so the glass comes in that size.

We got many many quotes from most of the big names and others more local. In the end we’ve gone with a local chap. By far the cheapest 50% of internorms price. All triple glazed etc with comparable u-value. Manufacturered in Spain. Been to see the product and there installation on other sites. Super helpful and very responsive to all our questions. It’s was a no brainier really.

80mm . The don’t look right because each ring has 2 bars on one side of it, so depending which was you put it on sometimes you get one sometimes two, plus none are exactly the correct size/bend so once fixed to one side in the other side it’s impossible to get them vertically straight. Total pain. Essentially each ring is actually a spiral , you can see better here

Timely topic as I'm doing mine now. I got all my rebar cut and bent for about £580. There is no way in a million years I'd want to bend it myself. There are about 850 rings, then all the long lengths. Whats taking me forever is wiring it up - about 4-5 days so far. Now off to do some more now.

Tell me about it!! . It was like the Somme around my build until just a couple of weeks ago! Finally got the foundations and drains in etc. We ending up putting granite hardcore all around the build and between drive/paths so that we're out of the mud for the rest of the build. Cost a little but it means the builders can get on at pace without fighting the mud all the time.

I'm self managing a project build and paying for peoples time. I got a couple of different QS studies done - one high level by a well known commercial QS locally , and a online service that broke everything down detail. I'm not particularly confident with either to be honest other than a ballpark rough estimate - I can see both easily being off by 20% or more. There are just so many variables in play when building, from where you source the materials, to unknown issues (in the ground, services, etc), quality, thermal efficiency, etc, etc . I just don't think a QS can ever 'price' all these factors in accurately. I honestly think the best guess is actually coming from the architect in terms of cost/m2. I have a large contingency pot so I don't stress too much. Its going to cost what it costs unless I compromise on quality. I would just say its 90% chance its going to cost more than you think.

You should get a confirmation letter/email back. We made sure we had it, as there was a case where someone had notified the LPA but didnt get a confirmation and they ended up paying the full CIL.

Thats great to see, definitely opens lots of options for me as well. Thanks

Yes please if you can. Do you think that profile ducting will be noisy?

yes I think this is the best compromise actually thanks

nee have a central hallway with a false level to run all the pipework down, but wasn’t planning to do this in the area. I suppose the most easy and to keep following the same ceiling height would to just carry this into the kitchen which would leave lots of room for ducting. I’m just wary of loosing height as I’ve already needed to add some extra floor height for various reasons.

Hi, we have a single story pitched roof small barn conversion construction underway . I have a problem however with the ducts for a room. Basically the end of the barn is the kitchen/living area, also having a pitched ceiling the follows the roof line. I recently got a quote for MVHR and they said that I would need and feed and return at opposite corners of the room which means I would need and ugly external duct running across the wall or ceiling. iIreally want to avoid this so I have a couple of questions. Do I really need to have at opposite corners rather than just either side of the room? If it’s really needed at opposite corners are there any really thin/wide ducts I could run in the ceiling/floor Plan attached thanks

Looks like you need 240v power for that.

Looks nice, except it doesn't upload the video to the cloud, so a would be thief just needs to smash/steal the camera!

You mean adding to the existing walls with plasterboards and aerogel on the cavity side? (FYI the existing walls will be used to clad the building, there's then a small cavity and then the main structural stud walls which will also hold the roof. These sit on new steel re-enforced lintels that sit on top of the existing slab. The existing walls will be tied into the new internal stud/structural wall ). We can dig down as this would basically be removing the existing slab which again is a no-no for a conversion.

Yes my gut tells me the same, just wondered what other peoples experiences might be. Again we can't go with too much insulation on the existing slab as we'll run out of head space where the roof meets the walls (its not very big!). Though my main loses will be windows and ceiling saying all this. My fear at the moment, is that there will be a lot of cold bridges tying the cracked walls to the new inner structure for stability purposes and I will have more heat loss than calculated in SAPs. I am planning to make air tight as possible at least.

fair enough! Thing is ours is not passive - its a barn conversion and because of some really stupid planning laws we need to retain/rebuild some really heat zapping walls and I suspect the best we can do will be standard regs levels of heat loss.

Good timing this thread. The supplier I have chosen done some detailed calcs for our house and came back with a 8.5Kw system (160m2). However I then pointed out that the room volumes are much larger than a normal house due to valued ceilings all all rooms bar 2. His response was: So it seems I'm on the edge of both systems. For me its not the extra initial outlay (its not much more to be honest), its more the long term running costs/maintenance - what do you think would be best?