Conor

We had a few of those. Prop a scaffold board up underneath and shovel in some concrete and couple lengths of rebar.

It means they release the funds depending on the added value of the work done when you request the money. It's an arrears mortgage, i.e. you'd get foundations, slab etc down, valuer would come out, value the work at £10k, then you'd draw down £8k of the approved loan.

With a two year guarantee and BPC 30mins drive away, I'm prepared to take that gamble. I'm saving £2k over Zehnder units! I spoke to them today and they haven't quite got their heads round these units yet and weren't able to answer my technical questions. A bit more homework required, but I'm about 80% sure I'll be buying two smarty 3 units this week.

At a guess, £30 a metre for a service connection, all in. From the sounds of it, I'd definitely replace the pipe. It'll be giving terrible water quality, is probably leaking like mad (likely part of the reason you've poor flow) and will fail at some point.

In our basement we had two rows of rebar every 200mm. Once above ground this was reduced to a single row, same 200mm spacing. You have to remember that a concrete building acts as a homogeneous structure, so one part of the building influences another. I.e. even if you think extra loadings apply to just one part, the actual loads and stresses are spread further away and need to be accounted for.

Have you looked at flushing the main out? I.e. installing a temporary standpipe on the main and letting it fully open? If it's an old cast iron it may not make a huge difference, but worth a shot.

Just spotted these on BPC. Very good price for passive House certified units. Manual seems detailed and concise which is a surprise. Never heard of them, not much info out there. Any experience? https://www.bpcventilation.com/salda-smarty-3x

I found midsummer to be more expensive than other places unless you get the trade discount, which I couldn't

£500 cheaper than what I paid for a very similar setup. Difference with mine was I specced solar edge optimisers and inverter, which adds a few hundred. So I'd say you've a reasonable deal. Just make sure the inverter can be limited to export 3.78kW in case your DNO doesn't authorise anything more. You can still of course make use of peak production by heating water, washing machines etc.

We'll have three zones, one for each floor. Just going light on the UFH on the middle floor. Going by how relatively cheap UFH pipes are, I might just go full on UFH for the middle floor.

That 0.00000001% will niggle you at you for ever ?

Stick a strip of 25mm Eps all around your formwork and increase the concrete thickness so you have enough cover over the pipes (min 40mm) on top of the mesh. I don't think a slightly thicker slab will be an issue, unless you have really strict ridge height limitations.... Even though we're not watertight yet, our basement is significantly cooler than the rest of the building. Most of our UFH will be in the basement.

Just do it!!! Nobody is ever going to notice that a house is a few mm wider than planned. Unless you are in a really tight spot and say, a metre from a boundary. We did exactly that by changing ICF suppliers and having a block that's 50mm wider once we got the extra insulation on.

OSB is super cheap at my local merchants. It's insualtion, tiles, slates, plastics etc that are expensive... Anything imported really. Our thermohouse roof panels are going up 6%. Spoke to Kore and they are putting up prices soon due to high demand. Money money money.

Is circuit A-2 the plant room? Wouldn't bother with anything there at all, more than enough heat coming from the manifold.

Welcome. I lived in an electric only apartment for a year with a work colleague, it had a small 100l well insulated tank that was heated on overnight economy 7 tariff. Did the job and I don't think it cost very much at all.

Still cost me £5k tho!!

I paid £130 per 15t load plus £35/hr for loading. That was mates rates.

What would you normally use to provide extra sound dampening (75mm metal studs, OSB+PB on both sides) for a bathroom / WC wall? Normal mineral wool (loft type) or cavity batts? The batts are more than double the cost of loft insulation.

I'd planned on setting down 25mm PIR on our intermediate floors, then UFH and then 75mm screed. PIR is now nearly double the price it was when I costed this 18months ago. Any reason I can't set down 25mm EPS and staple the UFH pipes to it instead? Is it too fragile? Not really worried about the lower U value tbh as don't expect to need the heating much. Just for clipping the pipes to. Thanks

@irish_admiral I managed to get an ex display 90cm stainless steel hood from Currys for near nothing.

Imho you can't beat an externally mounted fan unit. Loads of power and little or no noise. You just need a spark to wire up a control switch and speed dial somewhere in your kitchen (we used a standard dimmer switch!). We then used an off the shelf extractor hood and removed the fan unit. If you are ceiling mounting then you can get ceiling grill units for kitchens. This is what I used. https://www.fastlec.co.uk/monsoon-150mm-6-external-centrifugal-extractor-fan-600m3-hr?gclid=CjwKCAjw-e2EBhAhEiwAJI5jg3ld4z-kGumyDJ2ZYkhCdmIV-uJmUAI7lzL9C5DBQ3NEMo8hyJmNTRoCCjsQAvD_BwE

The quote for 100mm sand and cement screed was £12/m² ?

Ahhh. That sucks.

Very tidy. Why is your soil pipe white? Should be red/brown for underground use I would have thought?