Conor

This is where there is a knowledge disconnect between local councils and modern building technology. We're in a conservation area and the planners raised concerns that some of our rear PV panels might be visible through a sliver between buildings from the road. I got the architect to send through images of black PV panels set in an in roof system. They accepted this and in fact in an amendment allowed us to put panels on a elevation that is fully visible from the road (image below). Speak to them and put together a document with renderings of your proposed roof. They are thinking worse case of raised blue panels staggered all over the roof, not a slick black system that blends in to your roofing.

My BC officer covers an area with four large towns with a population of 160k and has been doing the job for 20 years... he's overseen ONE A rated house. Ours will be his second (if we get that rating!)

Shoot or bolt on battens then screw on render board.

We used a couple in our last build where the waste pipe was forward of the pan. Did the job ok, but they are noisy so make sure you stuff lots of mineral wool around it.

From owning a few brushed and brush less Makita tools, I'd try and get brush less. Far more powerful and responsive. Only other info I can add is that the Makita brushless impact driver is a fair bit quieter than the equivalent DeWalt (going by what I experience on site)

Anything to do with modifying an access will be referred to your local highways department. They'll assess it in terms of sightlines, impact on road safety etc. You can look up the guidence and see how you'll impact. Fact that it is a conservation area is irrelevant.

Dont over estimate how much you can do yourself. I regret taking on a lot of the "hands on" jobs myself. It just take so, so much longer. Arranging trades, buying materials, equipment hire, keeping site safe and tidy are almost full time jobs. Ecology is THE place to go for a self build mortgage. I was aiming for £850/m2 at the start of our build last August, looks like we're going to come out at about £1300. That's with me working part time and doing 12hr days on site. I think £1500 for a good quality, modest home is about right, assuming you'll be subcontract all of the works.

Our kitchen company said you need 50mm all around the sink for fitting, can go less but it makes life harder. You could fit that unit in a 900mm carcass no problem. We're fitting an 800mm sink in a 900mm unit (undermount). Will be tight enough.

Nope, won't work, you'll never get the flashing to work and it'll look wrong. Either have to strip sarking away in that area or fit directly.

We went for GSE trays, JA Solar panels and solar edge optimisers and inverter. No complaints (apart from the GSE instructions being terrible).

Ideally, you'd have no sarking where the trays are going and instead use 100mm battens as per the guide. You really need the back of the trays to be ventilated. But I can't see why you couldn't directly fit the trays to the sarking boards. It would make fitting them a lot easier!! You cant raise the area up as the trays need to sit at the same height as your slates. Do you have optimisers or micro inverters? In which care you'll definitely need the ventilation gap.

Did you use the MVHR design spread sheet? That's what I used. I worked out the total volume of the house, multiplied by the Part F 0.3AC/hr and that gave me a "standard" ventilation rate of 260m3/hr (72lps). I then populated the sheet with this as a target rate for the minimum. I then went room by room and added individual flow rates using the passive house guide (Kitchen 60 m3 /h Bathroom, utility room 40 m3 /h WC 20 m3 /h). And added 33% for boosting. After all that, it showed I needed a system that would be maintaining a standard ventilation rate of 260m3/hr, and a boost capacity of 345m3/hr. Doubling that to get combined flow means a 700m3/hr unit. There aren't many. There is the Airflow Ardoit which meets this, and the Zehnder Q600 which is a little short. My design only roughly calculated pressure drop, so to be safe I've gone with two 400m3/hr Salda Smarty units. Two units does mean a lot more ducting, which adds significantly to the cost and complexity of installation. Either way, definitely oversepc your unit so fan speed and noise are minimised.

I think this is a case of the planner simply not liking it. However, the comment above seems to refer to the front elevation? Planners generally do not like extensions/modifications that significantly impact the primary elevations. It should be detailed in the planning policy. Ours was quite explicit regarding what should and should not be visible from the road, and we based the design accordingly.

Better fixing for your SIPs. 22mm doesn't give much to tack in to.

@MortarThePoint just screws I think.

Fecksake. Our kitchen is going in early Dec. At least we have an old fridge freezer, mocrowave and a portable countertop induction hob.

Replace it then. You'll have a load of leaks on that pipe as it is and that'll be dropping your pressure a bit. There are a lot of variables and I'd need more info to model it, but I'd not lay 32mm pipe over that length. If laying a new pipe, you may as well go up a diameter or two, as the biggest expense will be the excavation, laying and backfilling. Do you own all of the land along the pipe route? You want to keep a good 1-2m away from the AC main. E.g. if it runs along the verge of a lane, lay the new pipe on the other side

I'd avoid going near the AC pipe unless it's leaking badly. It's not doing any harm. We've thousands of miles of AC pipe in this country. A 2" AC pipe will have more than three times the capacity of a 32mm mdpe pipe. If you have current flow/pressure issues, they will get worse. You'd want to replace with 50mm or 63mm mdpe. If you do replace the ac main, leave it buried and lay the new pipe in a new trench. Either that or pipe burst. Either way, it'll be a big chunk of money.

If I think "I could have done a better job", then you know it's bad.

I've done a load of mine in spiral ducting. Had to as lack of voids for ducts. It will perform very well but it is an absolute pain in the ass to do! If I was doing it next time, 100% semi rigid.

First thing to do is see what your local planning policy is regarding turbines. I know of somebody near me that was building a house to be fully off grid, but was dependent on a wind turbine for winter. He's not been able to get permission and has had to connect to the grid. Find out how likely you are to be able to have a turbine before committing.

Hope you've done your flotation calculations ?

For my soalredge system, max string length is 100m.

Thats the worst possible place possible place for an mvhr. You'll have lots of pressure drop because of the long runs, and ironically, more noise. What's at the stairs where it says "store". You want it to he as central as possible. Good design and installation will mean a near silent system (oversize the unit and ducts, keep runs short, use silencers, etc, etc)

Try Internorm. At one point we had a 3m X 2.4m window in the list.