TerryE

Josh, try searching the forum for this: Buildhub forum: search all content for decrement delay. There's been lots of discussion including the ARUP online calculator (add ARUP to the search).

I noticed that as well. There are lots of different perfectly valid installation approaches. Lots of debates about the advantages and disadvantages of S vs Y plan, though for an installation of this size, I would have expected S plan. SY plan if such a thing exists is just bizarre, and smacks as if the installer doesn't really know what he or she is doing, IMO. A Y plan value in this configuration is just plain wrong, IMO. Surely you don't want a preference setup on this system as the boiler could drive both; this needs replaced by standard S plan.

I think that the main learning for me and others is that it pays to be proactive if you are planning to sell your house and your documentation isn't 100% watertight, whether because of your actions or a previous occupant's. So in terms of changes that might potentially have required planning permission, a Certificate of Lawful Existing Use or Development (CLEUD) as Jason says will nip a whole class of complaints in the bug. (Here is one of many explanations on the web on CLEUDs.) As fas as the indemnities for work that could have potentially has required BC inspection, then it is better for you to shop around for a few quotes and pick the cheapest, rather than having to accept the solicitors choice because your are up to the wire trying to exchange, and then have to pay a handling fee on top. To be honest another aspect is to say as little to the vendors surveyor as possible. If they miss something then that's their affair; if they make a false conclusion then you can always challenge this with the facts. The other advantage of being proactive is that you control the "regularisation" and you can do this off the critical path, so avoid additional stress during the run up to exchange. However all of this is moot for us now as we have exchanged on our old house with a view to completing on the 19th.

When someone tried to break in to our new build, they tried to jemmy the rear French doors and failed miserably since they are Internorm. We got ecoHaus SW to repair them for us under the insurance, and they used Plastic Surgeons which is a similar outfit. The end result was brilliant. Both Jan and I are very pleased.

Definitely NOT. One is 16mm and the other 15mm OD. Enough difference for the fittings to go bang.

Yes, and in 2003 one of the few actual Regs which apply to fenestration was the issue of escape which does not apply in this case as 2 were roof lights that were approx 12ft above an adjacent door into the garden; the other two were in an open mezzanine 5m from the door. No secondary escape requirement even in 2003. The other was the then requirement for insulation which the Velux exceeded. My point wasn't that I could ignore regulations, it was that I shouldn't to pay the premium for a FENSA installer to install them, or pay indemnity 14 years after they were installed and I hadn't got a chitty from some BI to say that they we inspected at the time.

I think that you could describe a lot of us as a bit anal when it comes to the quality of our work and also what we expect of trades that do work for us. It is also a matter of pride that what we do is of the best quality and complies with the current regulations. In my mind, this is nothing about quality and everything about petty bureaucracy and kick-backs. Take this indemnity crap. 14 years ago, I replaced 4 windows with very good quality and (at the time) high thermal-spec Velux. There's isn't any debate about the quality of the installation and the buyer has absolutely no problems, but I have to pay £169 for the policy and another £60 for my solicitor arranging it, for an indemnity against something that won't realistically occur. The alternative is that I risk a delay to my exchange timescale. As I said, CRAP.

Yes this doesn't apply to new builds, but there are members here who are doing (or have done) refurbishment and extensions to existing properties, and at some point they will want to sell the house. This is also the case for new-builders like us who at some point want to sell their old house. This bureaucracy is a total PITA, because as I said it doesn't really add value for the vendor or the seller, IMO. As to Jeremy's point, we just bit the bullet, and got our electrician do a full ElecSa Electrical Installation Condition Report. It took him about 6 hours barbecue we have quite a few circuits and a lot of sockets in the house. Luckily most of the renovation dated back over 20 years, and is still clearly in good condition so the buyer is very relaxed about this. But £169 for indemnity for four good quality Velux fitted 14 years ago, grrrhhh!!

We are are just about to exchange on our current house and have got caught by some bureaucracy over the "Fenestration National Self Assessment" scheme. In a nutshell, the 2000 BRegs were tightened in Apr 2002 when the replacement of windows became a controlled activity, which either had to but done by a recognised competent person or be subject to inspection by an authorised inspector to ensure that said works complied with BRegs. In this case my slater with my help replaced some crappy old roof lights in early 2003 with (then) top of the range Velux windows. They've performed faultlessly in the 15 years since. In the case of replacement windows and doors, the work needs to be covered by installation by a FENSA member, or you need to base BInsp sign-off. My reading is that in the case of all building work, the LA has 12 months of completion of the work to serve the notice or it it is time-barred (Section 36 of the Building Act 1984) , however, in the case where the work does not comply with the regulations then the LA may still obtain an injunction to force the owner to remedy the breach in regulation. So as long as the work itself complies with regulations then after this 12 month grace period, the authority in effect has no powers. Hence LAs only use such injunctions sparingly where there are clear safety issues. Likewise for building work to a single dwelling which would normally fall within LA planning approval, there is a similar 4 year time-bar (Section 171B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990), so even if you materially change the external appearance of a building (e.g. our local authority interprets any change to fenestration of the principle elevation of a property as material) and no one flags this to the LA by objecting then they have no enforcement mechanisms available. (I am talking about sensible changes done openly; there have been a couple of topics on the forum, where people have tried to abuse this section and failed -- the farmer's 'castle' hidden behind a bale-wall comes to mind.) So if you've or your builder have made well built changes to your house, then after four years any debate over whether planning or build regulation consent should or should not have been applied for and approval sought are moot. However, the catch-22 comes when you come to sell the property, because the buyer almost invariably needs a mortgage, and the mortgage providers are very risk adverse and require any such work to be indemnified. So in my case and my replacement windows, I am now spending £169 to get the indemnity to cover the 4 replacement Velux windows that were installed 15 years ago to the then BRegs to cover the possibility that the LA might seek to raise an injunction on the work. More and more work that would fall into the normal self-build scope seems to be coming into this "controlled activity" scope, so compliance with the regulations isn't the issue; you either need to subcontract to a firm which is a member of the appropriate closed shop, or you need to pay for a BInsp to sign off your work. It seems to me that for anyone planning to improve their home, then the obvious course of action is to sweep the entire scope into a single building control application and in essence pay once for an inspector to inspect and to sign off the work. Footnote: I will update this synopsis in the light of feedback from other members (for example I am sure that @Temp and @JSHarris can provide their insight / corrections to this.)

Nick, it's a waste product from processes like cement making. They've got no way of capturing it at the moment, so it's going to end up in the atmosphere anyway. Using it as an abrasive in lieu of sand doesn't add to the atmospheric burden.

That Norwegian paper is an interesting, albeit heavy read.

Dave, that is exactly what we do in Alonissos. But you missed highlighting my other part of the formula, which is that you need to ensure that you can rapidly spread the heat around the house, otherwise the room that the stove is in will just become a dry sauna. We bought one of these fancy new Dyson fans for the living room in our new house for instant quick boost, should we need it. After 30 mins, the room is starting to get too warm -- we only have the internal door to the rest of house and lots of acoustic insulation in the internal walls and ceiling (another BReg requirement), so if you want one you must adapt your house design accordingly, e.g. open plan living room and stairs or fan-assisted ducting into the hall and other downstairs rooms). The reason that most wood stoves are so polluting is that people burn them too cool. The efficiency is crap and the nasties in the exhaust too great. You really need a core temp approaching 1K °C to eliminate these. So using your own collected / cut firewood is a no-no unless you know how to stack and prepare it and are willing to wait at least 2 years and preferably 3 before you use it.

I knew that I should have given you a Greek-style kiss and hug at our meet up, but I was worried that you might have a heart attack and die on the spot.

In my old farmhouse I had a small mutlifuel (? Charmwood ?) stove and a double skinned jetmaster but then again it has 2ft thick stone walls, no underfloor insulation in most GFL rooms and very leaky windows. I also have a cottage in a village on one of the Greek islands, and I have one of these burning these From Oct-May, I can get the ground-floor (one open room with open stairs) toasty by breaking up 2 or 3 logs into 50cm bits and chucking them and a firelighter into the stove, then clamping it right down once once everything is good and alight and letting it burn out. Brilliant -- for a cottage with 2ft stone walls and leaky windows. The basic formula of good insulation + good airtightness + MVHR means that you have a house that is airy and very cheep to heat in the winter, and keep cool in the summer. The entire air in the house is swapped out every 2-3 hours with fresh air and this is ~10°C warmer than the outside at night, more in the winter, so the RH is always within a low, yet comfortable range. So washing dries pretty quickly in any room with an MVHR extract in it without leaving moisture in the house. If you do need to drop the RH a bit more, then as @Roger440 says, put a small dehumidifier in the room. In economy mode these run at a 100 W or so and in fact can return more than double that into the room as heat (the waste energy from the heater, plus the latent heat from condensing out the water vapour). This will give you a very efficient drying room. It is the low RH of the drying room than accelerates cloths drying. The main issue with an old fashioned drying room is that it achieves this by having a room maybe 10°C warmer than the rest of the house. But what happens to all of the humidity driven into the air? You either use an extract to dump the wet warm air out of the house (= a lot of kW heating the outside air), or you let it circulate into the rest of the house where it then condenses on any cold surfaces: windows and their reveals, any wall area where there is enough thermal bridging to drop the wall temperature enough; and hence you get mould and damp problems. IMO, there are two main issues with most wood burning stoves: You need the core of the burn / or exhaust gasses to get up to a minimum of ~1,000°C (yes that is one thousand). Any less and the products of combustion don't break down properly and your stove will produce more nasty products of combustion than your typical diesel car. Stove manufacturers like to put a nice glass window onto this core. (I did a quick search and not even the continental suppliers like Jotul and Nordica no longer seem to offer small fully closed stoves.). This then emits a lot of radiant heat means that ... You find it hard to modulate your stove down to a minimum of say 2½ kW output, that's 60 kWh a day, which in my case is roughly 4× the amount of top-up heat that I need in winter months. This heat is produced in one room, so even with a properly insulated house this is far more than a single room can take, unless you have a very large open plan area and even then you may need to actively redistribute this heat around the house. Of course re (2) you might use a back boiler to heat the water but back boiler stoves needs a higher minimum output due to the heat losses into the water... Any small manually fed stove will not have enough bulk capacity to keep enough supply in the burn chamber to run overnight and still be alive in the morning, so you will invariably need to relight the stove every day. (Butane or Propane gas poker's highly recommended for this, BTW.) Your ideal stove would be something like a rocket mass heater, but I can find any standard pre-built stoves selling in the UK. There are lots of self-build versions, but have fun finding a HETAS-certified installer or tame Building Inspector willing to sign off on an installation of the same. Sorry but wood stoves and properly Part L1a compliant (average sized) houses don't mix. Of course you do have the option that many builders seem to take, which is just to use partial, badly installed insulation or just omit it entirely on some walls so that your house leaks heat like a sieve, and accept the damp generated by the drying room running down the walls.

Dave, this isn't a free option, but Skype has a service called Skype-out which allows you to call any landline pretty much anywhere in the world for 1-2p/min. My mob has pretty crappy reception in our old farmhouse, and I am still running a crappy BT Infinity contract. I refuse to pay the uplift for BT Anytime, since the amount of landline calls that I do outside weekends is tiny. Skype-out gives me quality call from my mobile for a lot less. And both Skype and WhatsApp give free VoIP calls and video so long as the other user has the same.

The lack of proper cavity closers was a factor in the Gredfell Tower tragedy. They are needed for a reason. They have to close the gap and give 30 mins fire protection. Also remember that your solution needs to be weather proof as well as giving fire protection and acting as a thermal barrier.

We have the click to lay stuff. Brilliant. No glue. It floats over a 2mm backing. The only thing is that it is best to lay it before you put your skirting down because it needs a 10mm gap at the walls and the skirting covers this.

Eh? Sounds like bollocks to me. We've got engineered floor in our updates and its 15mm+ 3m. The Karndeen in our bathroom is 7 or 8 + 2mm so the Karndeen is ~8mm lower. I can't see this being enough to fail some Part M requirement, especially it you put an internal door mat down behind the main access to mask the level shift.

Or you can get continuous stainless steel strapping which you can cut and bold together with M4s or M6s on the secure side. Then anyone trying to remove these will need decent tin snips, a bolt cropper or 5 mins with a hacksaw rather than a quick snap with small and easily pocketable side-cut pliers.

I can't understand your rationale here. In most TF constructions, the TF is boarded out internally to form the airtightness barrier and then it is battened out over the TF uprights to form the service cavity. I know that you have the airtightness layer at your ceiling in your single storey section, so you can't run your ringmain around the roof void without risking compromising your airtightness. But way is wrong with drilling through the studs just below the ceiling level if you need horizontal runs and using the service cavity for your services? Or even run them horizontally at switch level. Wherever they are they should be taped or clipped back to run 50mm from the surface.

Have a look at my blog entry: and at @Construction Channel's recent topic on the same. You will get some movement between the blockwork skin and the TF. A good way to do this if you haven't already done the blockwork is to mount the frames say 50mm into the cavity and to "turn the corner" on the blockwork to block up to the front edge of the frames. You need a minimum of 30min fire protection cavity closers between the blockwork and the TF. If you do this then you can just render right up the windows and the blockwork looks 150mm deep.

We got an interest-only loan for the Monmouthshire. That is we did not have to make repayments on the capital, This had an interest rate of ~1% for the first two years, jumping to 4% after that. We took this out on our existing property. We were totally honest about the reason for it , and in fact they will only give an interest-only mortgage if you have established a credible lump sum repayment strategy -- in our case selling our old house and moving into the new one once complete. We had to prove that our pensions would cover the interest payments. Towards the end of the two years, they did contact me and offer alternative minimum term extensions to the mortgage, but it now looks as if we will only pay one month at the higher rate before we complete on the sale of our old house. A bit of a real bargain, thanks to the Monmouthshire.

All I can say is that Jan and I understand and feel for you. It must be totally the pits for you both.

My +1 is for this PoV. OK, fields of silver can look pretty unattractive if you are living in a village were due to the lie of the land, but looking at Google Earth the line of sight from Faversham seems to be already broken by woodland/ coppiceland. We are in a similar situation with 3 solar farms within a few km of our village that you only see if you look in the right direction from the C roads outside the village. It's very flat from the Seasalter direction so again it won't be really visible. As to land-loss, most of this looks like rough meadowland, and as Jeremy says the land under our solar farms is grazed by sheep and undisturbed in terms of both ploughing and pesticides / fertilisers, and so is far more wildlife friendly that fields of wheat-rape-wheat-rape... Given that a quite a lot of our rape goes to making biofuel at incredibly low energy conversion rates, its far more green to harvest the solar energy directly, IMO.

Jan rolls her eyes and utters "saaaad man!" when she sees me watching them. I wonder if Faye has the same reaction?