Cpd

Don’t forget your vcl layer

Ha that awful puff if dust as to bang a tight fitting bit home and realise to late you took your glasses of !

It’s worth brushing the cut faces before taking it from one location to another to lessen the spread of the dust, if the weather is even half decent it’s well worth doing it outside, the dust and gubbins will soon disappear. I am aware of my environment but there are limits.

I am very fortunate to live on an island where there are NO Rats. Probably pretty unusual. No hedgehogs either or snakes or various other things but no rats is a blessing.

My biomass is Chinese, Q83, DRH Brown, DRH Green these are specifically developed for fuel. but I have planted about a dozen other species of willow for show as they come with such wonderful coloured barks and buds !

I would assume about 4-6 years I got my cuttings from this company. If your land is very wet then pick a specific species that will grow in that environment or do some serious drainage! i have a wet but drained hill side with rich soil as it was previously a bog. https://mammothwillow.com/store/

Just planted 600 willow and eucalyptus that have been developed for the biomass market (very quick to grow) they are a coppice crop so regrow when harvested. This is on top of the 2000+ other trees I have planted in my garden, and I am also in a very rural coastal location where my log burner will not be a problem to others. Even though I use my fire a lot I don’t burn anywhere near the numbers that @Jeremy Harris has put up, like others it’s all just random bits collected from friendly farmers or found washed up on the beach. I have two years of wood on stock but also use anthracite in the winter to keep the kitchen warm over the day without the need to tend it. Don’t use any heating in the summer......

Fair point @bassanclan ........half price is how I like to imagine an outcome but 25% off is probably more realistic.......

Sounds about right. ✅

Absolutely no idea what what the solution to your problem is but if nobody can help you here then try the green building forum https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/

Seems like a reasonable price and in reality if this is a house your going to live in for a long time then you will recoup the cost through electricity savings and even if not the improvements in air quality alone I think would be worth it. If your doing DIY then there are plenty of people on the forum that have done it very cheaply and a whole wealth of knowledge at your finger tips. I will leave it at that for now as I don’t want to derail this thread and also sound like a preacher !!!!!

I was always sceptical about how necessary mvhr would be... always thought traditional ventilation would be fine..... however recently I have finished insulating a single bedroom and making it fully airtight, it’s a small room in roof so not spacious but it’s only me in there, anyway it has a velux with trickle vents and if these are not open at night it becomes very stuffy and the humidity rises, I have to make sure that the vents are open and that there is also a window open outside the room to get cross ventilation. I tried to see how well it would work with the door sealed and just the trickle vents open.,. It did not work and was still stuffy. It’s a right palaver remembering to opening vents at night and shut them in the morning and when it’s blowing a gale outside you can’t limit the size of the vent so it then costs a small fortune to keep the room at 16c..... and right now it’s blowing a gale outside And the vents need to be shut as it’s actually a loosing battle with the small room heater an the wind howling into the room... plus it’s really noisy when open in big winds. I can’t imagine what it would be like to keep a large house With multiple rooms properly ventilated without spending a random and probably large amount Of cash on heating and actually getting the ventilation right. Airtight houses are so very different from anything I am used to and I think airtight houses and mvhr are a marriage made in heaven. Having recently visited a build hubber with an airtight house with mvhr and experienced the lovely CLEAN air and stable room TEMPERATURES throughout the house I am now fully converted! Just saying.....

I may have missed something but are you not installing mvhr ?

Water had been trapped in the plastic and will have soaked in to the PIR. If it’s from a builders merchant I would get them to replace it. It obviously been standing in a wet yard for quite some time.... cheeky of them to offload it onto you.

So I ripped up my old floor in my cottage and dug down to my desired depth (wish I had gone deeper....) the ground / earth was very solid and compacted by this time and I got it nice and level. I then dug a trench from one gable end to the other with a slope on the bottom towards a central trench that went out the front door which was in the centre of the house. ‘I then graded the surfaces on either side of the trench down from the stone walls to the centre trench so that any water would flow towards the drain and then make its way out of the house. i then put perforated drain pipes in the bace of the trench and filled with pea gravel and golf ball sized stones (railway rubble) I then put clean railway rubble across the whole floor 100-200mm deep (deeper in the middle because of the sloping bace) and compacted this in layers and capped it all of with concrete i left an exposed 50mm gap round the side (no concrete) then I put down two layers of heavy duty DPC and topped the whole lot with 100mm concrete again leaving a small gap at the edges. I have not put down the insulation as of yet but have only room for 90mm PIR and then an under floor heating system from WUNDA then final floor coverings there is absolutely no damp rising up the walls, they are bone dry they are 700mm thick double stone with rubble fill. I have put vent holes on the outside at the bace of the walls to help with ventilation and they are also vented at the top. i have repainted the whole house with a weak cement, lime, sand mortar and not the traditional lime mortar......shock horror! it’s working great. the outside is painted white with masonry paint. given my time again and knowing what I do now - against what I knew 7 years ago, I would have knocked the whole lot down and started fresh, this would have resulted in a much better house, bigger, cheaper and a whole lifetime less work. however I am where I am and hopefully one day I will get it finished....... i forgot to mention the huge underpinning job I needed to do to keep the height...........

Pretty sure it would jam in PIR as it’s much more compressed. probably work on thinner sheets but anything above 25mm might be a struggle.. but without trying it who knows.

Will try and comment later as I have done similar, try and have a search on the forum for relevant posts the green building forum has some great info link below https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/ put some photos up of the house and surrounding land as they will help to understand your environment, ie top of a hill - bottom of a bog..... and we all like photos!

That’s very interesting as I ruled out PV as the best location was up a hill at the side of the house, similar distance to above I think..... will have to rethink my long term plans.

I put a triton pumped electric shower in 7 years ago and it gets used daily and is still working perfectly.

Your going to find it a challenge to keep a straight cut with the 140mm.... it gets easier after you get into the swing of things. If I have to do any angled cuts I run the big circular saw through it first as it leaves a perfect angled cut, I them follow the cut through with the hand saw. If your struggling just do the initial cuts with the circular saw and go the rest of the depth with hand saw. Wear overalls, hat, mask and goggles if working overhead, strip of every time you go back into the main house as the dust is unforgiving on your lungs. Remember to take the mask of last. It’s a pitiful job. Decide early on if you going for tight fit or foam fit and cut accordingly. If foam fitting I always jam the insulation boards in place with either plastic window spacers or pre made wooden wedges before foaming it in, the jamming will prevent the sheet from moving and help maintain an even gap round the board. Personally I think your best going for a tight fit as foaming 140mm boards with any accuracy is very hard and will use a lot of foam, but it’s all down to how good you can cut the boards.

I think most people would use an expandable strip to seal round the windows (someone will know it’s name....) and then either silicone or some other covering to hide this. I used expanding foam round the edge of the frames, ct1 silicon between the stonework and the front of the frame and then made a Week lime, cement, sand mix and took this up to the wood as the frames were fitted from the inside. It was then painted and nothing has cracked or moved or leaked in the last 6+ years. My frames are hardwood and made by a friend of a friend. Probably not the proper way but I was just following my instincts.......

The mortar has come away because the sealant has not provided enough of a backing for it and it’s just broken away from the brick, yes it’s just general wear and tear but exasperated in this location. For a quick fix just rake it out and make up a week mix of sand cement and lime and fill it back up again. As @Russell griffiths says come spring it would be a good idea to do a proper job, cut out all the shite and any loose mortar or bits of brick and have it redone properly.

Yes I edited my first post as I only had something negative to say about the sealant.........

Is it just the one small area ?

Hay there and welcome from the west coast of Argyll remember the saying - west is best ! You should be able to make your money work for you if you have a house to sell down south.