Conor

Open wall vent. There's a ratio of trickle vent size to floor area of the room. Should be in the regs somewhere. But you will likely end up with 100mm vents in the rooms. I'm not sure if a mechanical vent extractor in a bathroom also counts as trickle ventilation? I'm assuming no MVHR?

100kPa is standard for under floor insualtion, you won't have any issues.

Exactly the same. I used it for my bifolds. Three bags. Cheaper ways to do it but none faster or leveller.

Put up shuttering to the correct height and pour a self levelling structural grout, e.g. Larsen multi grout 60.

Is this to stop external fire spread (i.e. the timber structure or cladding) or contain fire within the building? If the latter, you could see of they accept fire rated plasterboard on the inside?

We originally had a quote for a mid range Sinquastone worktop for £4500. We've just got a quote from a different supplier for Technistone for £2600 for the same thing.... from the reading they are both 93/7% quartz/resin materials. I can't see why I'd pay almost double for the same thing?! Am I missing something? We also have a quote for Dekton but no plans to stretch to it.

1. Was hoping the circulation pumps for each manifold could be in the palnt room and pump via the 22mm flow and return pipes to each one. I should be able to bring pwer and data to them if needed. 2. Yes, planning on the controls all coming from a unit in plant room 3. Nothing in plumbed in yet.. I've a 9kW CoolEnergy ASHP with pre-plumbed tank, carell control centre and 60l buffer tank. 4. Think I'll speak to CoolEnergy about this.

Flow temp or zone set temp?. Each floor to act as it's own controlled zone. Stat locations in basement bedroom, ground floor hallway and a roaming stat for first floor . Flow temp is modelled at 28c to all zones. Really want to keep all the stuff on the plant room if possible.

Probably should have posted this a few months ago.... I never got a proper UFH design done (just my own in loopCAD). We have the UFH laid and second fixes starting. Summary: 1. Three floors. 8 port manifold on each floor. Each manifold acts as a zone. NO control system bought yet. 2. Wired points for thermostats on basement and ground floor only (UFH on top floor was a last second addition, would be using a wireless stat) 3. No power or control cables at the manifold locations (can be added if needed and wired back to plant room) My intention was to have the blending valves, pumps and actuators all located in the pump room as I didn't see the need to have a multi zone system My plumber has pointed out that I will need a pump, valve, controls etc located at the first floor manifold due to the height above the plant room (6m). Is this correct? Or is there a pump(s) that can supply the manifolds from the plant room? I'm guessing I'd need at least a 10m head pump?

Morning. Welcome. With lofts it's best to stick to mineral wool type insualtion. Anything solid between the rafters risks condensation issues. How much in total is there in the loft? I'm guessing 100mm between rafters? You really want 300-400mm in total. If you end up lifting the flooring, may as well put as much as you can Inna's the insulation itself is relatively cheap (compared to the cost of lifting and raising the flooring). Or.... Do you use/need the flooring in the loft? You could simply lay more mineral wool on top...

Yes. It's part of your total outgoings during the loan period.

First, there is static head (pressure). You've measured this as 2.1bar. Then there is dynamic head, which is how water pressure drops as flow rate (and therefore friction) increases. The biggest factor in this is pipe diameter, roughness and any other physical restrictions in your pipe, The mains pressure will never increase. It's in the water companies interest to keep pressure as low as possible to reduce leakage. They'll have a zone where pressure is managed, and they'll manage the pressure so the highest elevation properties get at least 1.5bar at the customer connection point. They usually set PRVs to deliver 2bar at these points. In your case, the water company is meeting their statutory obligations and are unlikely to do anything more. Only suggestion I have is that you request they fit a pressure logger at or close to your property to see what the minimum pressure is. Their models might be slightly off and if the min pressure on the main drops below 1.5bar, they are obliged to take action. Keep on them. As for things you can do, get rid of you PRV to start off with. You'll either need to install a booster pump or replace all of your key pipes with larger diameter ones.

Similar here in NI with my ICF wall. Asked if I can recess the box in the EPS and run the conduit through a channel. Never got a response. Just going to have to wing it and hope they connect me up.

Our roofers put felt over the ridge, fixed a batten down, slated right up to the two top battens, and then we fitted a dry ridge system- flexible flashing all along the ridge followed by the clay ridge tiles (this is what the ridge batten was for). From memory the top battens were pretty much tight at the top of the ridge so there was only 25mm or so at the top with no slate coverage. Ridge flashing and tiles sorts this.

We covered all bits of timber and steel with either render board or EPS. I bought a bail of 25mm and 50mm EPS for this purpose. If that steel needs to be insulated, do the full depth in Eps. Normally it's better to fix a timber batten first, but of you don't have the depth, fix directly with stainless steel fixings and expanding foam (low expansion ewi foam).

Use a laser level and just transfer your measured heights through each doorway, corridor etc. You can then set a benchmark in every part of the house to take all measurements from.

We got three cheapy 2kw fan heaters form B&Q last week and just two of them have raised the house temp to 14-15c. The screeders have just turned them all off as they say the screed will dry too quickly on the warmth. The taping and joining stuff dries out in just a couple days of you leave the windows open.

Fairly sure it's halfway between Newcastle and Glasdrumman. Know that road too well! Welcome. Tbh, you'll not do it for less than a grand a m² these days. We're building with amvic ICF. Two story plus basement , 300m² is coming in at £1300/m². Wish it was closer to my original budget of £850!!! I think your budget of £300k for £220m² is spot on. Assuming you're not going crazy on kitchens and bathrooms. There are three or four ICF contractors in NI. Johnny ballantine, Fox Bros, Thermal shell construction (Gordon Cowan) and Passive Structures (Patrick McKenna). There may be more but that's who I know. Drop the oil boiler and get an ashp. We're not nearly finished ours yet and have a single 2kW fan heater keeping the house at 14-15c at the minute for drying out. A modern air tight ICF house takes nothing to heat. (Modeled peak heat load for the house is 3.5kW so we're not far off hitting that) I've done a PV install and the payback is looking like 9 years. But with electric prices only going one direction, it's only going to be less. Also, it's a small investment (5k) amongst a much bigger budget and you'll hardly notice the mortgage payments....

You'll need to install attenuators on the supply and extract ducts. This not only reduces fan noise but also external noise. With semi rigid ducting, insulated exhaust/inlet ducts, I don't see it being an issue. We have our external ducts in place in our new build but no mvhr yet, and I can't hear anything coming in through them.

Last time I checked we were at £1350/m² but I'm sure it will be nearer £1500/m² by the time we finish. It's not just materials, I'm struggling to get any trade in for less than £200 a day. You may find that of you reduce the size of the footprint, your costs won't go down that much. The bigger the build, the cheaper the m² becomes. You'd need to be losing rooms or making it much small to save significant amounts. I can't see prices coming down any time soon so keep on pushing.

@luz624 it's still in its box for another week or two.

Get all the clearing done over the winter. No worries over bird nesting plus the vegetation is a lot lighter and easier to deal with. Pile it all up, let it dry a bit before dragging to the recycling centre. Or hire a chipper for a weekend. I have the Screwfix chainsaw plus a helmet and face guard if you want to borrow it? Quote easy to use and not scary. Won't need it anytime soon. I'm in Holywood.

Ahh. I have a few offcuts of A142 mesh that would do the job brilliantly.

We bought the duct out version of the hob... I'm now rethinking that and will investigate the recirculating option. We do have an MVHR and have a double flow rate extract in the kitchen. I think I might get the kitchen finished and get MVHR up and running before doing anything drastic like cut through floors. Wooden floor wont be going down for 2-3 months anyway. Plenty of time to see how much we need the extract.

I'm now thinking going down through the slab is the better option, and probably less work. I can reroute the two MVHR ducts and remove a section of the electrical caging and go straight out with the ducts provided. Really dont like the idea of the duct below the screed - agree with Mark that best option would be to build over withe bit of ply. but at that, 10mm ply isn't great.