Conor

So this is the outer leaf of a cavity wall your neighbour is building? It's shit brickwork but if it's not yours and fence panels will cover it then where's the issue? Did you allow them access to build from your side or did the brickies have to build from the other side?

What are you building, what stage are you at, what are you comparing your B&B pricing to?

Need more details. Wall construction, purpose, who is building what etc.

Why do you want to use block and beam? What's the usual local way of doing it? Doing something different to what is typically done, will inevitably be more problematic, time consuming and expensive.

It doesn't really happen. We've ours set on weather comp on 7 hours per day (low rate overnight) with single stat set to 19.5c. During cold spells we just manually turn the heating on 24x7. There no need to control rooms individually. As you can see, temperature only varies by 1-1.5c every 24hrs, sitting at an average 28.8c. peaks are either heating periods or having extra people in the house. The big trough was when I had to open the doors to vent the house after some pungent stir frying

Can't you just take them off and replace with M14 nuts or whatever?

In that case upsize to 40mm before it goes through the wall and you won't have any issues. It's a bit of work but it's the proper job and no messing around with insulation.

What diameter is it? Should be 32 or 40mm.

That should work fine.

It doesn't need to be fireproof, check the wording, it's something like "predominantly non combustible materials". It's mostly aimed at reducing spread of fire on the surface of the structure. Basically no timber cladding. I built one with block walls, timber roof with fire retardant GRP covering. I checked with planners and BC through the process and everybody was happy. What's your planned roof?

-2c outside. 91% RH 18.5c inside. 41% RH 🫣 And that's with laundry drying upstairs and the mvhr on min fan speed. Heating off most of the day, just back on there at 5pm when we dipped down to 18c. My lips are drying and cracking as I type 😄

From memory the rain ridge was about 3-5mm high? I.e. the thickness of a slate.

Are you sure you ordered the slate flashings? Just looked back at photos of mine, slates don't sit noticeably high . I didn't modify anything.

No, by you'll want to move that sewer regardless. Just reply to BCO saying it's your sewer and provide an updated drainage plan. Your designer should have accounted for this in the application anyway.

What's wrong with your existing roof tiles? I'd assume yud be replacing like for like. Your planning permission may not permit a change in roof covering.

Open some windows if not using dehumidifiers.

You could probably reach round to that slate hanging off from that top window.

Lots of poss factors here. Let's break it down. What was the overall design in terms of heat loss / flow rate? Who did this design? What length is each loop and what is the designed flow rate? As a rough guide, you should be seeing something like 2l/pm for each large loop, and 0.5-1l/pm for small rooms like bathrooms. It appears that the UFH pipes have been laid directly on the original, uninsulated concrete floor? What's the est of the floor buildup? At a guess what is happening here is insufficient flow rate through the loops due to no dedicated manifold pumps, plus you are heating a (assumed) uninsulated concrete slab. Even if you get flow rates sorted, it'll struggle to be warm or efficient as a significant amount of heat energy will be going in to the ground.

Leave windows open. You should never have a house fully sealed up during works like this, soooo much moisture around.

For rough designing to allow you to play around with design options Sweethome 3d is free and easy to use. It's no use for elevations or anything detailed to build from. Otherwise, SketchUp, but you'll need to spend a bit of time learning basic CAD skills. But sounds like you are possibly looking for a designer?

That's crazy. With ashp, car charger, PV and induction hob, ours comes in at less than 20kW. And that's before you apply diversity. Give your engineer a boot up the hole. Go back and ask NIE what they can provide from the existing transformer and work from there. Otherwise, you will (rightly) have to stump for the upgrade.

That looks like a party wall. Have you spoken to your neighbour about this? I'd assume the existing wall height would be included in the 1.8m max height limitation. If it's for privacy, I'd bring it out just as far as the second step in the wall, so you are not compromising any visibility to the road. And I'd keep it at the one height (e.g 1.6m high at the house and 1.8m high at the step down). Double sided, boards on both sides. But otherwise, what you are planning on doing is perfectly reasonable and won't need planning permission.

Our entire master bedroom part of the house flexes in the wind. Steel, comcrete, glass are more flexible than you realise.

I made some edits. I was interrupted by a puking child on my first attempt. Keep the big island. Just make it the focus of the design, not an afterthought. Ours is 3.2m long and 1m deep and it's fantastic. I've the hob at one end, all pots and pans under it, oven directly behind, bins, chopping boards, knives etc just a step away. Sink almost directly behind as well. Keep the sink at the window for sure. Try to picture using the kitchen day to day. What happens when somebody is cooking at the hob and transferring food to the oven while somebody else is making a cup of tea? Do they ever occupy the same space? The answer should be no. That's how we designed ours, designated zones by activity type. A rendering of ours. The door on the LHS past the fridge is in to our boot room / pantry.

Your room shape is quite similar to ours but design very different. Why is the hob (or sink) not on the island? Your oven is too far from the hob. You want to keep the main working areas (sink, hob, oven) close together in a triangle shape. The tall corner unit on its own looks wrong in that option. A lovely 3m island with no functionality is just getting in the way. It's too big if it's just for prep. I'd move the hob to the island, replace that entire run where the hob was with full height units and put the oven there, bringing it in closer to the action. You just then need 600-800mm workspace either side of the sink. I'm also not a fan of overhead units in working areas. Only put them in if you really need the storage space.