Conor

For anybody not sure on induction hobs yet, IKEA sell a portable one for £35. I bought it as an experiment a few weeks ago after seeing it posted here. It's a great job and a built in hob can only be better.

We're 250m² with ICF walls with u value of 0.15 and floor and roof at 0.10. a 5kw Mitsubishi ecodan will do everything for us, and I think once I factor in install with a pre plumbed tank, manifold, controls etc, should be around £4k. Not 100% sure on PV setup, but will likely be an off the shelf 3.5 or 4 pKw system bought from one of the many online suppliers in GB. Will DIY fit in to the roof structure myself and just get my spark to connect. Not RHI here in Northern Ireland so don't need an approved installer. PV will provide hot water during summer and offset daytime demand.

Have you tried an induction hob? I have, and I now think they are far superior to gas. Control, response, heat, easy of cleaning, efficiency... All superior. This is coming from a previously die hard gas hob person.

I've been looking in to this a lot lately as well. I had been previously convinced on a gas boiler, couple hallway and wet room rads, 180l tank. But now that I've decided to go win an induction hob and heat pump tumnledrier, all of a sudden the install cost for just a gas boiler is climbing. As we're building passive/near passive, out peak heating demand is just 2.5kw. that means a 4 or 5kw ASHP would be more than enough for our heating and hot water. A monbloc ASHP is about £2k and much easier and cheaper to install than a gas boiler. I think that tips it ahead slightly of gas. And UFH costs next to nothing and is easy to install. I'll be just putting in 3x 100m loops, one in each floor. Another factor is renewables... Our SSE supply is 80% renewable through wind generation. And So significantly lower long term carbon emissions than even gas - esp with my PV contributing.

Nope. Try it again with a little fairy liquid on the leading end, works wonders.

This is what we used anytime when working on potable water supplies when contamination was a possibility. Easy to handle and you can make up to whatever CL concentration you want. https://www.ferret-technology.com/product-page/chlorus-tablets But, there are much more effective sanitising products out there for the food and beverage industry. Chlorine solutions will kill everything, but they are not so effective and lifting residues and material from pipes. I'd suggest a flush through first with a beer line cleaner or similar. Especially if you think there might be mould, dirt etc in the pipes.

This is exactly what we did in our extension. 100mm PIR between joisest and another 50mm on the bottom of joists, plasterboard then on. We have a ventilation gap between the 100mm insulation and the underside of the roofing membrane. Your scenario is a little different, but as you say you can leave a 50mm ventilation gap... Key thing would be, how much air flow would you get through it?

If you plan properly, and align your webs, you can screw in to these as you would for internal fittings. So you'd make sure there is a web inline with your downpipes. You'd obviously just get one of the screws in per bracket, so use one of those EPS fittings for the other.

In most cases it should be free. Caveat being you first have to replace all of the lead on your side of the stop cock.

We are in the same situation. Bought a 1920s bungalow with intention of renovating and extending. After we got it and took a closer look, was apparent that renovation would be extensive and expensive. Basically, we'd be stripping the house right back to 4 bare walls. Costs were coming in around £150k before VAT... And even at that it wouldn't be what we want. So we're now demolishing and building a new house. Ultimately, it will cost more at £200k but the finished product will be far superior, larger, warmer than anything we could have achieved through renovation. so is much better value for money. Planning has been tediously slow tho... Best of luck.

I intend on making my millions after Brexit by selling dairy milk chocolate on eBay with crazy markup. Couple boxes a week in my laptop bag should do the job. I certainly won't be declaring lol

We recently got multiple quotes for our proposed build, a few obscured 3G windows, no differences in U value that I noticed.

We were in a similar position, a little vague and different interpretations. Architect recommended we go for PP anyway to absolve any possible future disputes. In the end when we saw the ground cleared, we went out another metre so needed pp anyway. Design your ideal scenario then take it from there. Pp for an extension won't cost that much or take that long.

F**k Brexit. I'm in Northern Ireland and we're due to start on site 1st Nov. Building products from GB are expensive due to need for ferry transportation. From ROI due to the weak sterling. Tariffs will kill us. I will happily hire a van and smuggle goods across the "border".

Welcome. For passive standard build, you can make life easier for yourself but firstoy using an architect that is experienced with the standard and can design accordingly. If you use a modern construction method such as ICF or SIP, you can achieve passive standard much more easily than traditional techniques like brick and block. About to start our passive build using ICF... Hopefully will have more knowledge to impart over the next few months. Check out the blog sections on the website, lots of first hand experience.