Conor

Hi. We have a balcony and it's specced as being a pvc/trocal deck with paving on pedastals. Before I go to look at options and get bombarded with sales "advice", are there any rules or tips for selecting paving or tiles that will sit on pedastals? Size, thickness? I am thinking of outdoor porcalin or 40mm quartz slabs.

That might be, but it's so cheap and the main regs are pretty poor tbh. I did 300mm top of the joists, that extra layer also covers over any gaps as you change the direction for each layer. The legs aren't great on their own, that's why I crossed braced with some extra timber, made all the difference.

You'll be there for years. Great for chasing for conduits but that's it. A slightly blunt handsaw is perfect. Doesn't matter if it's rough cuts as any gaps will be foamed, the lot will be rasped and covered over forever!

We stored timber outdoors under Dpm Insulation just outside in the plastic wrapping. Tools, plumbing, MVHR etc in a shipping container Soil pipes etc outside under a hedge! The shipping container with secure lock box turned out to be an essential purchase. Definitely get one. Keep at back of site as much out of sight as possible. properly dry so good for cement and plasterboard. Heard of a container being lifted from a site local to me. I rammed in long lengths of rebar and chained to the container. Would at least stop a hiab lifting it.

As we built using ICF, only time we had to air tight electrics was whee we drilled through for external lights and sockets. Then we just filled the conduits with acrylic sealant.

@low_and_there enviroform will cut their sheets to suit. Give them a call. Very helpful and fast.

Aerogel is a soft, fibrous material, a bit like cellulose, and hence is quite soft and powdery, hence only available in roll or blanket form. Its not the nicest to work with, reccomend toy get a foil backed sheet to to your required dimensions.

The legs are easy and cheap. When I did mine I also stuck in a couple extra 4x2 timbers between trusses to make it a bit more stable. 300mm loft insulation really is the minimum and you will notice a big difference after. 100mm between joists and 200mm above them. Do not compress the wool.

I don't think you'll generate enough to effectively charge the batteries, except for peak days in summer. Once you bear in mind that you won't generate the full 2kw due to the orientation, and that your day to day background load will each up another couple hundred Watts at any one time, then you're left with very little. Better option is to change your electric use habits (washing machine and dishwasher on time delays, solar diverter to heat hot water etc) to make the most of the daytime generation. And if you end up with an electric car in the future, then that will eat up the lot. Don't forget that you'll need oprimisers on the panels to maximise generation. Can reccomend the solaredge optimisers and inverter setup. That first roof looks big enough for 4 panels in landscape 2+2 configuration. Have you considered that? Remember, you can run the GSE trays right to the gutter and half a slate from the verge.

We did in around all the door frames so there were no air gaps in the walls. Didn't bother between plasterbaord gaps as they weren't big enough and we have acoustic wool in the walls anyway.

Perfectly normal. They'll be taped / meshed / beaded and set in place with a base coat before the final skimming.

No. For the simple reason your heatpump will have a min draw of something like 1.5kW. Your excess PV generation could be something as low as 200W... Which would mean if your heat pump is on, it'll be drawing much more power from the grid, negating any COP advantage over a immersion coil. The solar diverter will control the power to the immersion to match the excess generation, and can do this from a few Watts up to 3kW. We'll be setting our heatpump if for cooling and time for during the peak afternoon... So if cooling is needed in theory most of the power will come from the 4.5kW array, and only some from the grid. At this time of year we're not producing enough to power the heatpump, so still on the immersion

We used isover 50mm acoustic rolls and they seem to be performing well. Little or no noise transmission between rooms (70mm metal studs, OSB and 12.5mm board)

Ours was a waste of time. "Please refer to the guidence" etc etc.

Myself and @dpmiller have one. mine is still in its box 9months after I bought it so can't comment... But David has had his up and running for a while and is detailed in his blog.

Air circulates and flows... And so the heat with it. That's the principle of wool type insualtion. It holds air, and therefore, heat in place.

I think an insualted raft is your friend here. You'd get away with a single 100mm thick slab on EPS insualtion. If you do the calcs I wouldn't be surprised if the embedded carbon of the EPS and concrete is less than the PIR and screed. Remember, screed has a lot of cement in it as well. Or, you can go for a fully timber structure (BC will be tougher) with suspended timber floor with an over floor heating system. Then ground screws / hardcore / stone might be enough.

You'll need it for a residential mortgage and home insurance. (Or so I've been assuming!!) Or did you do the work with a residential rather than self build mortgage. Also need the BC cert for selling the house.

Well I bought a couple Salda Smarty 3x units from them, and at the time nobody else was selling them, but got them for £950 each. Think they were on at £1200. Generally fast and good to deal with.

Phone them up to place the order and see if you can get a discount. I did without even having to ask. Saved me £200.

Who's that with? We've been waiting since November for a replacement glazing unit from Internorm 🤣

You have to take the render right off, rasp, and put a proper render product on, e.g Sto or k rend. There will be a base coat, mesh, another base then the coloured top coat. It sounds like your render wasn't put on properly.

Easier to not run conduit and just feed cables through at a later date when needed.

The cheapest way I could figure out how to do it (couldn't find 50x50mm timber) was to use standard cheap 22x50mm battens fixed in with suitably long screws, then another batten fixed on top with nail gun.