Great_scot_selfbuild

Equally, my question was whether anyone had achieved BR sign off 🤷‍♂️ I’ve been finding a difference between guidance rules and MIs - many MIs saying only ceiling (including on AICO’s site! 🤦🏻‍♂️). It’s the lack of consistency that’s frustrating, hence asking about actual lived experience (I’ve done a lot of manufacturer searching). @Nickfromwales have you had any signed off with wall mounted detectors?

Yes - we’re in England

BR requires a mains powered fire alarm with battery backup

Upstairs we need to install smoke detectors on the walls as there is no service void in the ceiling. We have a small area of the flat ceiling as the first floor is mostly in the pitched roof space, so fitting the detectors to the top of the vertical wall would be in the space where smoke would gather first anyway. Has anyone done this and achieved BR sign off?

Phew! Started reading this post and thought I’d not been told something by our PD and electrician! Pleased to hear this shouldn’t apply to our build.

I’ll try to dig out the tender doc I sent. I went through a bit of evolution in how tenders were written / structured. ChatGPT can be a great help, but in general I found less is more - if you send out to much then it may not even get a response (even if it does contain the detail they would need). Here’s one of the examples of what I sent: *********************** Hi [name - I always made a point of contacting them by phone first], We spoke the other week about our self-build project. Would you please quote for the attached design. [included the BR designs by our architectural technician; once we selected our TF supplier, then the detail of the construction drawings were developed, and any BR drawings were updated at the end] House: 0.6ACPH (to quote for assuring this value once windows installed - to be done by EcoHaus; UK based and experienced at meeting passive-level performance). U=0.11 walls & roof Roof insulated and built up to the point of roof finish (standing seam) to be installed. Internal service void of 50mm. Floor - not required, will be beam & block (by others). Wall insulation preferred = blown cellulose e.g. warmcell/steico. Include for steel as required for spans. Include structural calculations as required for the timber frame. Include for plant / lifting equipment as required, noting access constraints (attached doc). Include internal walls, with 100mm stud thickness to allow for sound insulation (by others). Kind regards, ******************* Hope this helps Sent from Outlook for iOS

I’m trying to make sense of the BR and what I can see of BS5396-6. We’re installing the electrical first fix and have a circuit for fire alarm covering the required areas shown in Approved doc B. What have people done here for their fire alarm design & installation? The BR guidance seems very straightforward and clear about what we install and where, but then Approved Document B, Volume 1: Dwellings, Section 1, under “Design and installation of systems” also states: “Fire detection and alarm systems must be properly designed, installed and maintained. A design, installation and commissioning certificate should be provided for fire detection and alarm systems.” Is the mention of fire alarm commissioning certificate (which has a section for ‘designed by’ required for self-build residential homes (I.e. not HMO, not especially large - no single floor over 200sqm etc)

We have a telegraph pole on our land. BT says that the rate they pay is what their rate card says at the time of a new owner registering with them, and that it never changes until the ownership changes. The current rate card is £10.50 per year(!). Has anyone tried challenging this? The previous owner was being paid £8.82 by cheque once a year (since early 1990s). This seems to be a very favourable inflation rate for BT. My simple ChatGPT-aided search has shown it to be a BT policy rather than law and the bit that annoys me is the reference to it being a fixed rate for the whole duration of ownership. A neighbour wasn’t aware of this at all until I mentioned it. The response they have had offered: £10.50pa or £315 one-off payment my personal concern with a one-off payment is any implied rights, whereas an annual payment is far more clearly a rent-like payment. I’m sure some of you have opinions on this. I’d love to hear them… 🫣

Not that it applies to us, but my interest is piqued - how 'heavy' for fire protection to not be required? (thanks for the other points - we pored over the fire protection discussions early on in the design stage with the PD, SE and TF company; I've since filled my head with MVHR, UFH.... and need to go back and re-read it all.)

I think this sounds sensible & practical. I did my UFH (16mm PERT-AL-PERT) install. It was easy enough, but the companies that produce the drawings don’t consider bend radius at all. I knocked up a simple bending tool, though I quickly got the hand of doing it and didn’t use the tool - though my test helped give me confidence in handling and bending it. Not sure if this video will upload - here’s my DIY tool and demo of bending the pipe (showing how much / little the cross section is affected). IMG_2232.mov

Was this aerogel spacetherm? (From what I’ve been able to ascertain it contains aerogel, but is a variation on the original aerogel product which started as a firm ‘flexible, not so flexible’ board). The spacetherm stuff definitely appears higher up the search results. And I thought getting the ground truth on waste treatment plants was difficult! 🤣 trying to work out what is sales BS atm…

Here are two companies I’ve spoken to: https://coreprosystems.co.uk/thermal-insulation/ https://www.thermablok.co.uk/our-products/ I’ve sent them details of what I need and am waiting to see what comes back. A lot of valuable detail came out I. The call that I hadn’t found on any website. The description ’flexible’ is a bit misleading g as the bare material (not fitted to another type of board) doesn’t actually sound very flexible at all! 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

I plan to do this internally, where I have the space available - I don’t have this option externally.

The thermal property of tilebacker boards is nowhere near comparable with aerotherm though.

Is this aerogel or spacetherm? From the suppliers I’ve approached, aerogel is like a stiff board/sheet (these pictures look like a loose fabric). It appears that the term ’aerogel’ is used across a variety of products, but not all with the same thermal value.