Conor

The two separate (linked) blocks looks great but adds huge amounts of cost and hampers practicality and efficiency What are the constraints of your plot and can you come up with a virtual box of the biggest building foot print you can have? I think the first drawing you posted could be tweaked a bit and be practical and more affordable but still interesting.

I'd say 6 hours or less if a heated house. Foot traffic 24hrs, working on another 2 days. I'd still put sheets down for ladders, scaffolds etc for a full week after.

FYI Virgin and Bank of Ireland (UK) don't require structural warranties. But I think you're right, market should calm down a bit in the new year. Get you BC sign off sorted tho so you can move quickly.

You're being BS'd. Don't hand over any money to anybody unless your getting something immediately.

Agree with all of the above, not a great design in terms of practicality, cost and efficiency. But loads of room on the roof for PV panels!! You could make things substantially better by moving the utility, plant, pantry and play room north of the kitchen / living area and two of the bedrooms to the north of the other ones. This would make each wing more square and the footprint smaller. You'd also need to move the stairs as they are currently jointing two rooms which might be an issues from a BCAR perspective. Or, you could go for a conventional two story and put a lift in. Propably work out cheaper. Get the design over to a sensible headed architect. I recommend Ronan at FMK eco homes.

You can't. If the builder is going to be using the materials and installing, they should be supplying them zero rated. You can only claim back goods in your name and address. As long as the invoice has the site address on as the delivery, then you're ok. But best using the site address as default with any merchant. You're best setting up cash accounts with the three main local merchants (Haldane, macblair, Murdock) and just emailing them a list of items each time. Best grouping the lists together so you'll get better prices and save on delivery chargers. You'll soon build up a relationship with a sales rep and get the trade prices. You'll soon see you're being quoted 40% less than the list prices.

It's much nicer. Our upstairs is a constant 18/19c. If the heating is on it'll rise to 20c before switching off. You just adjust your bedware to suit the temps. Don't miss cool bedrooms in the slightest. Summer douvet all year round 😀

Opposite here. Anything with less than 300mm cover has to be encased. Also standard practice in the water industry for shallow cover pipes of all types. Other than concrete, @pilgrim, make sure the pipe above is well supported and protected from movement.Hence the suggestion of concrete.

I'm assuming the garage is unheated? In that case I'd be looking to install an external PVC door... with proper seals. If you can get a fire rated one.

You need to dig down, cut off the socket / cement topand fit a rubber coupler like this. Surround in concrete. https://www.drainageonline.co.uk/underground-drainage/drainage-pipe-and-fittings/flexseal-couplings/clay-to-pvc-adaptor-couplings

You also need to think about the practicalities of this design. Will you need to access your neighbours side? Erect scaffolding etc? That's important to get all that stuff agreed before you start. Also, do you know the existing wall build up? Will BC allow you to build on top of an existing party wall? How will you insulated it? It would probably be a hell of a lot easier to build a new wall just I side your boundary and suck up the lost 500mm or so. That's what we did, works out much cheaper and faster.

Seems like a good way to add £100k+ to your retirement pot.

Get yourself an IR thermometer and start pointing it at stuff. Brilliant for figuring out flow temps in different pipes quickly.

A few notes, hard to be specific without drawings etc. 1. The MVHR will do nothing to prevent smells entering the house. In fact it'll be worse than currently. You'd need an activated carbon filtration system as well. 2. The 75mm ducts may need to be doubled up for some rooms - say anything over 7m or so. Definitely over 10m. 3. How many stories does your house have? The duct runs take up more space than you think. 4. Each plenum should be at the far corner of each room - have you planned duct runs that take in to account joist direction? Are these routes clear to push a duct through? If not, it will get messy and expensive.

Have you checked the thermostat on the actual immersion coil unit? You'll need to isolate it and take off the palstoc cover to access it.

Second to the painting option above. Is there a drainage system/gravel/membrane behind the new wall? I see gaps in the bottom row of blocks which should do the job. If not, the wall will be permanently damp and whatever you face it with will degrade over time.

That'll be reminants of an old warm air heating system.

As our washer drier is too loud to use off peak, I'm currently hanging washing in our unfinished ES. I've a basic dehumidifier running on a plug timer for economy 7. If hung out in evening, everything is dry by the next morning. Think it's using about 1.5kWh, so about half of what the drier would use and it's a double load. I have the dehumidifier set to constant running.

Bodged as in it was basically a vertical tee that was buried with no chamber. Forced out of circumstances as the manhole the pipe was meant to connect in to was under a 3m tall mound of clay. It's now replaced with another bodge backdrop, but with a proper 90⁰ rest bend and in an accessible chamber.

When it comes to asbestos, it's best leaving it in place, as the risk only arises when cut/drilled/ground/smashed etc. Pretty standard practice to fit PVC fascias over existing ones.

I had this debate with my spark in our build. They were running cables directly against the EPS roof panels and I called him out on it. He was of the view that it was ok, unless they were in a potential over heating situation. I impressed the whole plasticiser migration thing, and he was adamant there was no issue. As it happened, he was going though his NICEIC recertification and his assessor visited the site and was of the same view, not a known issue in their industry. Also, it seems the brittleing of cables is only an issue if they move around and crack... So for hidden cables not an issue anyway.

Ok.... The job is done. Really struggled with the rods as the blockage was SOLID and even though it was a 1200mm manhole, was tough getting the rods in. In hindsight a jet would have done a better job. Had to use the rods with no attachment and punch through it. Anyway.. the blockage was at the bodged backdrop as expected... But I pulled out chunks of rock and smashed pipe... I think what happened was a pipe was damaged at some point and not properly cleared out and the debris a cumulated at this one point and caused the blockage. Getting my civils mate back asap to sort out the manhole and do a proper backdrop arrangement. But otherwise a nice day moving 100tonnes of clay 🤣

Before you do anything, find out the required inverts of the pipes so you can set them at the right depth. For this you need to know the invert at the connection point at the main sewer / septic tank and calculate back so you have the correct falls. Your ground workers should be able to do this. At this stage you just want the pipes coming out of the raft and no more, or else they just get damaged. For the pipes inside, have them terminate just above the FFL. Whether you need extra pipes on the bends depends on the depth of the pipe and thickness of your raft.

I had this happen this week... Turns out to be the main waste line to the public sewer is blocked. So when you flush, there is a pocket of pressurised air in front of the water that will need to escape. That usually means any trap between the blockage and the flushed water.

Hi, welcome. We just built a 350m2 passive-ish house with ICF. Top tip is find an architect / architectural technician who is familiar with PHPP, building low energy homes, airtightness etc. No point paying twice, especially if not going for the £2k plaque on the front of your house.