Conor

Where exactly is the stop tap? In road or footpath / verge? Of it's safe to do so, flip the lit open and if it's not bunged up with dirt, you might be able to see the outgoing pipe type. But either way, you'd only replace your pipe as far as the edge of the boundary and connect there.

Batten out a service void on the underside of the ceiling on top of the vcl/insulation. 50mm should be enough, though fire rated ones might need more. So basically instead of 50mm insulated PB, you use 50mm PIR across the joists airtightness etc, batten after, run all your services in this void then board.

Western power. You should have signed a load of paperwork, drawings etc. Their connection requirements will be there. Fyi octopus aren't installing the meter, it'll be Western power again, you're just going through octopus as their your supplier.

Either an option. You just need to use a decent damper flap (ideally actuated) with vent out. We went for recirculating because of difficulties getting the duct through the floor.

Your spark needas to have the main fuse, RCBOs, earth rod, meter tails etc in place. took a couple attempts before our supplier was happy to fit the meter. What you can have as outlets will likely be documented in your DNO connection pack. For us, it was ONLY 16a commando sockets. Of course I just put on a fly lead with 13a extension gang.

We're the same. Our whole ethos was "how do we build a house that's big enough but without looking like showy tw*ts? Think we did ok.

They would have come from the company that supplied the precast slabs and the stairs would have been designed in at the same time when the slabs were measured up. If it hadn't fitted, would have been their problem and their crane cost! I'm sure cladding it in oak or what ever would have added huge cost so I'm not exactly losing sleep over it!

When we looked at it over a year ago, concrete stairs were £2.5k. thought it was a bit much so skipped it. Ended up with an oak staircase with cut string for the same money. In hindsight would have gone for the concrete as would have made things simpler and faster.

You'd stick on your LVT or engineered wood to the stairs.

Something like this https://www.directplastics.com/soil-and-waste-systems/drainage/underground-80-x-110mm-adptr Would advise some acrylic sealant then aluminium tape to make sure air tight.

Probably mostly poor build quality. Just takes a few gaps here and there and you may as well be outdoors. We've rooms with veluxes and when closed, no different from other rooms.

Yeah, but they'll be cold and drafty! And never exactly what you want... The rises in material costs is hitting everywhere so it's levelling out build cost differences across the UK. Quarry products and concrete are still relatively cheap here but are catching up. Everything else has pretty much doubled in 2 years. You could do it for less than this but you'll have to cut corners and build to minimum building control spec (do not so this).

Use precast concrete floor slabs. Half the cost of a Lewis deck and 10x faster. Metal stud walls with 50mm accoustic insualtion. Suspended ceiling with 150mm void and 100mm insulation. ICF walls Solid, fire rated doors. Triple glazing. Concrete stairs Carpet and rugs. Thats what we have (apart from stairs) and our house is silent. From both inside and from out.

Hi Dev. Current build cost here is about £1500/m² for modest standard. We're coming in at £1250 but we did a lot ourselves and missed most of the recent price rises. For a full contractor build, more like £2000m². For a 4 bed and garage you'd be looking at at least £400k. Yes, normally purchase of land contingent on planning permission. You'll need representative drawings for outline planning. Architech can do this and the application for you. Check services before you go any further; water, sewer electric and telephone. Check local planning website to see what had been applied for and passed in the area recently to get an idea of type of house you could have.

Basically that's what I did in our last house but used a monsoon external centrifugal fan. Almost silent and great airflow. Used a dimmer switch to control fan speed.

@Tony K in that case make your life simpler by going for a recirculating hood. The MVHR will pick up anything that the hood doesn't deal with. We were going to duct out but glad we didn't as recirculating is fine.

You're pretty much spot on. That's what I did. The solid PVC ducts have a bit of wiggle room, so if you are 25mm or so off centre, it won't matter. I used rectangular ducting to fit between joists and circular adapter at the top of the hood. Don't forget to tape the joints. I assume you've not got an MVHR in the house? Re extractor hoods, I HIGHLY reccomend an externally mounded fan unit rather than one in a hood. But by the sounds of it that's not an option for you as you're venting to a flat roof?

Another thing that helps with design. Try to visualise the air flow through the house. You want "stale" air to flow out of habitable rooms and travel via communal routes to extract points. You don't want two extract points competing for air coming from a single outlet, you. end up drawing air in to a supply room. rather than out. Somebody spotted this issue in our build and I quickly changed a dressing room to extract so we'd have better air flow out of our master bedroom.

Nilan have a distributor in Ireland. You'd just drove down and pick it up and make a run for the border 😉 Fyi they are overpriced compared to a separate heat pump and MVHR and the heating capacity is quite low, for hot water only really.

Some general points: 1. Outlets should be in the furthest corner from the door. You've several that are close to the doors. 2. No need for outlets in communal spaces like hallways. 3. Run the ducts as straight as you can. You've lots of bends and long routes. Any particular reason for this? To you specific questions: 1. I was told 10m or more should need two ducts. However, I used two in my kitchen even though it's only 5m, reason being I will have much higher flow rates there. 2. I used lindab. No issues. 3. Not ideal as you want the air to flow along the surface of the ceiling, but not a major issue. I've a couple like that. Just ensure its a fair bit down the wall, not right in at the ceiling. Think I left a good 200mm gap from edge of plenum to ceiling. 4. Had great service from BPC. Also reasonable service from Lindab that have a range of MVHRs but also supply everything else. Their returns conditions are terrible so make sure you get the right stuff from the start. 5. Why do you need fire stopping? Is that a BC requirement? If it's outside the thermal envelope of the house, everything needs to be well insulated. Also consider noise attenuators. 6. Seems plenty about. Paul, Zehnder being frequently reccomended here. 7. Single outlet, but it'll have two dict connections on it instead. 8. Keep bathroom extract points close to the showers.

Second the inroof system. It's relatively easy to install once you figure out the battening layout. The extra battens go on after felting but before slating. You install the trays and wires before slating, the the actual panels at the very end. The the price of electric going up and up, you'd be mad not to.

We moved in to our house on Feb and only had a couple 1.5kW heaters running about 12hrs a day to warm the house, plus a couple small dehumidifiers. it's been off totally for two weeks now. If you insulate and detail a house properly, you hardly need any heating at all. So a properly sized heat pump will work fine in all typical East Midlands winter weather. If you install a buffer tank (reccomended), you can install a 3kW immersion coil. If you build to passive House standards that'll warm you nicely. Don't worry about flooring, install whatever you want, will make very little difference to the temperature feel of the house. We've some rooms with carpet, some with laminate, and others bare screed. All the same temp.

As above, it's LA dependent. In our case, there are no distance criterion and I interpret that if it is visible from the highway, then the conditions pertaining to *adjacent" apply. So setting your fence back won't fly . Nothing stopping you from buying 6ft tall connifer or laurel hedging tho.

Edit: I used 12mm OSB in most other rooms as much, much cheaper but still strong enough to mount sinks, rads, etc.

No. It was to preempt lots of shelf fitting in the office! We did this in bathrooms etc as well. Can't objectively say if it's quieter than just plasterboard. But compared to my parents house that is timber stud, it's night and day.