Conor

Mild soap, plenty of scrubbing, and water is all you need to clean a patio. Soap will breakdown well before it gets near your plants. Acid based cleaners should be avoided, but these will breakdown quickly as well. Bleach and commercial cleaning solutions are your worst enemy here.

Normal door is fine. We've a timber and perspex door which would last about 10seconds in a fire. If you intend on never closing the door... Is there an option to is tall ot as pocket slider? You'll never know it's there but you'll still be compliant. Basically what we have. Only close it when I'm cooking something funky.

Ask the SE if a ~100mm thick padstone would suffice. Put it in as a full block width. Save a lot of faff.

I just Invite a few friends round for dinner. Few adults and a load of kids running around the house easily adds a kilowatt or so.

A few basic things in reality Vs model. Your heat load is worst case, constant over 24hrs. If it's 5kW, and you've a 5kW heatpump, it won't be enough. Purely because the sCOP (and other inefficiencies, needing to heat water etc) will be less than the label, and you won't be putting enough energy in to the building. You'll need more like 6 or 7. You'll likely run the building as a single zone (or one per floor, like we do) adjusting individual room temps be tweaking flow temps. You might add a buffer. Your mvhr will modulate down when really cold, to protect against low humidity. You probably won't want to run your heating 24x7 (which these models assume). We run ours for 7 hours on economy 7. These things are hard to model. And the reality is you have to just go with close enough, and stop worrying about decimal places. Our peak heat load is something like 5.6kW. but we've no curtains on the big glazed areas, so its probably higher. I went for a 9kW heat pump that modulates down to 2.5kW. it's perfect. When it's really cold, I just adjust the timer so it's on 20 hrs a day, rather than 7. Room stat and weather comp takes care of the rest. If you end up with too big a heatpump, you can easily compensate with behavioural changes. E.g, fewer zones, running for shorter periods of time, buffer tank, and still hit good performance efficiencies. If you end up with an undersized heatpump, there is literally nothing you can do to compensate in those challenging periods. Only option is supplemental heating. Defeating the purpose of an efficient heating system. You need a 7kW heatpump.

Yes same here, glass is overrated. Esp in July when it's 30c outside, or January when it's -10c.

How on earth did they remove the old posts? Just pull them out of the ground?! We're they not concreted in?

Nope, no requirement under BC regs for this. Old school thinking from your plumber. Save yourself a bit of money, hassle, and a compromised building fabric and go with the AAV. Read up the building control regs relevant section (a Google search should get you this) and you'll see that it specifies adequate means of air admittance. I'm in NI but our regs are basically a copy and paste of the English ones. Scotland is different tho

The mvhr doesn't make that much of an impact. And it's only the overall rate they matters. Airtightness is a bigger factor. We designed for 3ACH, and achieved 1.5. don't be confusing building airtightness with mvhr flow rates. You'll be wanting a 7kW ashp.

Install an internal air admittance valve instead. We've three stacks in our house, each one with an AAV. No need for an externally vented stack.

If it's a full gut job, plumbing, wiring, insulation, windows etc, start with £1000/m², then add on kitchens, furnishings etc.

Do you mean you want to remove the door from the kitchen - living area and the hall? If this is the case, all of the other habitable rooms need their own compliant access to the outside (not the hallway) as you effectively turn the hall into a kitchen.

It'll be fine. Especially if it's just aluminium gates, probably only going to weigh about 80+120kg for the big one. I'm about to build a 4m, 200kg wooden gate to hang off the same size pier! My hinge hooks are 300mm deep threaded rods. I was worried about a standard plate pulling a brick out, so going OTT.

Nope. Will be fake. Some have both things like this, and they aren't terrible.

What sort of I underfloor heating and how will it be heated? Don't listen to the builders re insulation, they are used to doing things to the minimum standard. Saying that... 300mm EPS is probably the best option here. You won't need SLC if the floor is done right.

Build a smaller house. 315m2 gross (250m2 habitable space) is too big for a family of 4. I'm currently working from home in one of our basement rooms.... 50m2 with a desk and some shelves 🙄

I'm guessing your walls are solid 9" brick, no cavity? Or is there one? In a cavity wall situation: You'd normally install a door or window so it sits to the inside of the outer leaf (like the original here). Some issues with what has been done, water will get in past the frame as it's sitting on the render, rather than behind it. Hope there is plenty of foam/sealant etc in there. Second, you are guaranteed to get condensation all round the inner reveal, as it's a direct path to the outside. Finally, as it's sitting out further, it'll be more exposed to wind driven weather.

How were the doors installed? Do you have a pic from the outside? trying to figure out why, what was once on the outside, is now on the inside?

Take out all the timber and replace with the same block that's at the bottom.

Hi. We built a three story ICF house with basement, but not on this scale. (I'm a civil / environmental engineer, not structural, I'm sure our resident expert will comment in due course) With the scale and design of this structure you might beyond the realms of normal building methods, and builders for sure. The best construction method will be determined largely by the structural requirements. Your basement walls will likely have to be shattered reinforced concrete as ICF blocks aren't ideal and most won't be wide enough, you are looking at 400mm+ thick walls here. I'm sure there are ICF projects similar to scale, you'd need to dig in to it. Same for you floor decks. These will be commercial building / car park type affairs at ~250mm thick with a bit of chunky steel holding them up. These kind of things, plus the excavation requirements, massively change the game, and costs. There is little economy of scale when you jump from a residential brick n block to a pseudonym commercial type construction. Not going to comment too much on the design, but things like you have an unfeasible amount of glass (apart from being uncomfortable, unlikely you'll pass SAP assessment), and cars are waterproof and don't mind the cold Cost wise, you say you are prepared, I'm assuming you know this will cost about £4m? It's never too late to change a design. A full redesign could cost you less than 5% of the construction cost, but could save you 30% or more. I'd speak to an SE before you go anywhere, and another look at the design. You could shave off a £million and not lose any rooms /functionality for sure.

Right. A 100 year old retaining wall can be assumed to be well beyond it's design life and in need of replacement. The question then is who is responsible for its upkeep and ultimate replacement? You could argue that if the wall forms part of a boundary, and only one party (you) has access, then therefore you are responsible for its upkeep and condition. And if lack of upkeep has resulted in early failure, then it's not unreasonable that you could be partly or wholly responsible for its replacement. But that's only one argument. And I'm sure there is legal precedent one way or the other, but that's not my realm. The other is when it was built and who built it, and why? If, as you allude to, it was built by the neighbour (original developer/leaseholder) in order to allow the building and landscaping of their property, and is sited within their boundary, you can argue it's FA to do with you. You (rather the original leaseholder) can easily argue that you are a mere third party in the matter. It could end up being a load drawn out and exhaustive experience. Getting a price for the works required could be a wise first step.

Is 8 weeks even remotely realistic?!! I've never heard of planning going through even close to that. Ours (new build) took near enough a year, and before that a simple extension was 14 weeks. Obviously different part of the country, bit similar policies and budgets....

Your house spec is near identical to ours. 9kW heatpump and it works perfectly. You want a bit of headroom as the as-built performance will never be the same as the model. In theory our max heat load is just 5.5kW. BUT, we run our heatpump on economy 7 about 90% of the time and the entire house is only two zones, and it works well. It only needs to run 20hr/day when it's really cold, so about 2 weeks a year. Fyi we have 5m x 2.7m 3G bi-folds from feneco. No excuse for DG sliders.

I think you can still buy individual sockets in Halfords, and they do deep ones as I've a 80mm deep 17mm socket from there. And great quality.

Good suggestion! Working fine on the site, must be an app issue.