Cpd

I can assure you that I don’t have or try to have an overheated home, the main living room / kitchen is heated with a wood stove. It’s the only room that’s heated throughout the day. Bedrooms are only heated when people go to bed and most are heated to aprox 15 degrees. The cabin is used by geusts who I assume like to cook themselves but they pay for the privilege. Yes I will check Bulb Info as it looks promising, due to the nature of occupation I know that I can’t make good use of E7, I will however get some energy monitors to try and ascertain exactly where all this electric is going, from there maybe I will be able to re look at E7 When I first moved back here I was working at reducing consumption and my bills went down each year for 3 years, that was before I became a family man........ from that moment on it’s been a steady march to madness. There is a big old chest freezer rumbling away in the shed........ I will make it my mission to track this monster usage down. I assume this sentence is aimed at others with well insulated houses ? I really sometimes feel that my electric usage is just “unreal” and that it has to be something wrong with the meter..... but there are two meters and they are both working fine as when you turn everything off the little red light does not flash like one of those flashing red lights on the back of a push bike !

HELP ! As a single guy living frugally I was able to keep my electric bills just about under control - add in my partner moving in and 2 children and then (surprise surprise ) I get Chronic Fatigue Syndrome....... then skip 4 years and I’m in recovery and the realisation is ..... my electric bill is now out off control. Admittedly I have two houses, one cabin and a BIG shed... I have two supplies and two meters, both just standered ones. One in the cottage that has a spur to the cabin and one in the main house that has a spur to the shed. The house is lived in 24 hrs a day for 365 days a year, two children two permanent adults and at least one additional adult for 8 months the shed gets a LOT of use ( well I hide in there quite a lot.....) The cottage is in a state of renovation (long delay due to ill health) but obviously lights and power tools but NO heating the cabin is used extensively through the year, heating, hot water, lights etc. estimate of two adults for six months solid. The main house is total sh!te with very little insulation The cottage will be well insulated The cabin is poorly insulated..... The shed is uninsulated I had planned to get the cottage done and rent it out over the summer and live in it during the winter while I undertook the work on the main house but again those plans have been on hold or going very slowly for 4 years due to ill health. So over the last 4 years my usage has gone from aprox 2000Kwh to nearly 9000kwh Obviously this is just madness and I will be doing all I can bar moving into a cave to get things back under control, this is not going to be easy. I have one electric reader that you plug in to an appliance to see what it’s using but will get more ASAP and try and find out where all this electric is going....... pretty sure I need to switch electric provider as SSE have hiked there prices to eye watering levels. I am pretty sure this is all just down to me not paying any attention to this escalation and letting things slip as I was in no state to think about anything but getting better. But I wanted to put this all down (as embarrassing as it is) to make sure I’m not missing anything obvious or doing something really stupid, or some other random thing I have missed. I have included a copy of the last bills (one from each meter) And also an internet quote from bulb and octopus energy based on 9000kwh usage ( which I hope to dramatically reduce.....) if people have anything constructive to say in regards to this situation then I would love to hear it as I need to seriously deal with this mountainous task.....

I don’t know the property but I expect it will find a way out unless it’s really airtight, give it a go and see how it performs , you could always add a vent at a later date. I have a PIV in my cold loft to try and deal with damp...... it’s definitely improved things but My attempt to get the other house hold occupants to open windows and cook with lids on etc has not been a great success so I still need to be very vigilant and respond with bleach spray if i see any mold.. in my situation I am not surprising as the house needs knocking down...

How not to get a large 100kg stones up to the top of a house to repair a chimney. No further comments from me on this one. I also deny having anything to do with this, don’t even know the these guys or where this is.......... and NO this is not a screen shot iof a video..... it’s just a random picture of the internet ?

I have found that torx screw heads are very forgiving on non specific impact bits, the fit is just so much better and as long as you go steady they seem to hold up just fine.

Hahaha...... it’s my shed ! It was seriously damaged in a storm and needed reroofed and one job led to another and I I ended up re cladding about 75% the velux were the prefered option over clear sheets of corrugated as you can open them and this helps with ventilation. I got given a huge amount if new double glazed glass for nothing and try and use it where I can, I was playing around with a lot of ideas and in the end I liked this configuration on the gables, the aim is to give a sense of familiarity to a church window but not so much that it could be mistaken for trying to be one....... if you get what I mean!. I am rebuilding the doors at the moment, there are three as it used to be a very traditional threshing shed with two doors exactly opposite each other so the wheat could be beaten and the chaff would blow out the opposite door, the third door was probably where the animals or humans lived, I am replacing all the doors with stable doors so you can open just the top section if you like, again great for lots of ventilation. The upper level comprises of two mezzanines and would have been used for storing wheat and hay or other goods you wanted to keep dry. Ok well off topic now........

Depends on your own personal perspective, I shoot for my own food or to protect my own or other people’s produce from vermin. I shoot to kill and the easier the shot the better. There is no level of sport in my shooting beyond enjoying being in the great outdoors and always trying to make each shot I take better than the last. I have nothing against sports shooting it’s just not something I personally enjoy. Hmmm I never give what I’m shooting a chance, I have found myself in an awkward situation a few times when crawling round the countryside to get myself into a good position only to find what I want to shoot is actually far to close when I take a sneaky look from my advantage point..... anyway serious thread deviation...... sorry.

Ha! I was looking at those hills really hard and thinking I know those bloody hills...... I kept thinking Cairngorm but could not get the placement, well that’s because the only place I have never viewed then from is Angus ! Never even been there. Spent many years building walking tracks, dry stone walling and timber cutting in the Cairngorm and if I was not working Them I was playing, winter and summer climbing, snowboarding, hill running, shoooting, Fishing etc... it was always going to be there or here that I lived and in the end the ocean won and I settled in Argyll.

Crazy, I see people offering old working ones for free as they upgrade to different systems, maybe have a look for a second hand one.

Well you should be looking at seeding it with a wild flower meadow mix, would be great. I have a huge sprawling garden that I have created from heavily grazed sheep land, it’s a work in progress but I’m six years in.......

Definitely, then either turf if you want an instant lawn of seed if your not in a big rush. Both of these do need final levelling / raking depending on how good you want the finish.

The velux flashings are complete with pre made valleys and DO NOT need adjusting AT ALL. The flashing apron that needed the extra fixings is designed to be moulded into the profile of your desired roof. I use this type of ridge as I have it on my two other buildings either side of this one and I wanted to keep it looking uniform, however I WOULD NOT recommend this type as it is NOT SUITABLE for this job without adapting it at the cost of lessening it’s life span. I will at some point replace with the recommended ridge. To stop water blowing up as it does where I live you need to insert a rubber strip, with the correct ridge this would work brilliantly but with this ridge it was a right faff to fix and I had to depress the edge of the ridge in every corrugation to get it to hold the rubber in place....... so go with the standered ridge. I would also highly recommend getting a slightly different sized flashing than standered for the gable ends, it’s normally 200x200mm wide but this looks really shed like from the end of the buildings instead consider getting it at 200x115mm the 200 goes on top of the tin giving good coverage and the 115 goes over the gable and looks way better than 200mm and still works 100% any other questions just ask. Col just tried to to upload photos but it’s refusing to work..... I will try again soon.

I built one on my cabin, it’s been a great success and was a bit of fun to build. It’s a total DIY and I used basic materials. My build up from the inside out was. Large internal vented gap 22mm sparking board X1 layer of old carpet underlay x2 layers of DAmp proof membrane heavy gauge black plastic x1 layer of pond rubber x 2 layers of old carpet x 1 layer of ground fabric 25mm gravel and some insulation to save on cost of gravel and weight. X1 layer of ground fabric 50-70mm turf cut from an old lawn I did not want it works great and has been up for 4 years without fault, due to it not being specific sedum plants it does dry out in summer droughts (I don’t bother watering it) but regrown very quickly at the first hint if rain. I have a 150mm gravel perimeter round the edge of the grass. During storms it makes the whole cabin really cosy as it sits up there like a big stable hat and you don’t hear the rain on the roof, just hitting the big window sideways at 75 mph......... I put hidden Gravel gutters in that feed to a down pipe, all works well. I would do it again.

Thanks for the help, I ended up getting him the one below, it’s the best of a bad bunch...... he is now waiting for some nice weather. I will report back if it’s been a success or failure.

As @Onoff said then.

And what’s under the gap, a timber of fresh air ?

Loosely fitted rigid insulation in a hidden cavity......business as usual I’m afraid.

If it was me..... I would be levelling the top surface with cement and then putting a solid wooded bearer onto that which will then be attached by either drilling and fixing directly into the concrete core or with straps over it and down the sides and screwed into the blocks.... bedding the wood onto the cement when it’s wet should give you the opportunity to get the final timber surface dead level. Then it’s just a matter of attaching it. I may have missed the point though ?

@Hastings my approach has been similar to yours, built a timber frame inside the building with a variable gap behind due to uneven walls, infill studwork with calotex and then covered over the whole lot with more calotex. I have been incredibly carful with the detailing to ensure an airtight envelope is created before I consider a service void or final wall coverings. I live in a very exposed part of Argyll right on the coast and IMHO am confident that I have got the ventilation of the void rigth for my specific design and location..... time will tell. I put a lot of efffort into everything with even more care around the roof, slate -breather membrane - 22mm sparking board - 50mm ventilation gap - 50mm calotex fully sealed and taped inside the roof joists - 120mm calotex fully sealed and taped to the inside edge of the roof joists - 25mm calotex over the top of everything fully sealed and taped. Next I will put up osb and then plasterboard. I will have MVHR one day....... one thing I am absolutely confident about is I WILL NOT HAVE A PLASTERBOARD TENT. Time will tell if the condensation mitigation measures I have taken will work but even if there is some condensation build up it will occur either in a well ventilated gap or inside a big old stone wall that’s ventilated on both sides and with a rubble core... I will report back in a few years time that it’s either fallen down in a big damp pile of rubble......or that it’s working as designed and is a pleasure to live in.

Ooo I just saw this in your instructions about cutting the tin of at an angle, I either missed this or it’s been recently added but definitely a good idea to help with getting the tin up nice and high and getting the flashing to sit down snug.

Looks like your on the right track. Just be aware that you need to be carful when it comes to this part of the flashing, you want to get the tin as far up near the window as you can without damaging the flashing, it’s not as easy as it looks. If your in a windy location (I am in a very exposed spot) then I would advise adding in a couple of fixings as shown in my photo, it’s not a good thing to be screwing through a flashing but for me when it was not done the flashing would lift in wind and rain tracked straight up the corrugations and under the flashing. I flattened a very small section of the flashing, drilled the holes in the centre of the flat spots and put plenty of CT1 in and around before screwing down. It’s withstood 75mph + winds over the winter without any damage.

I found when cutting anything above 50mm thick to get an accurate cut , ie 45 degree or whatever I use a cordless circular saw and then finish it of by hand saw. Also agree with cutting, wedging and foaming.

Some good door hinge porn turning up on this thread......

My living room has a suspended floor below ground level and I was getting water ingress as the house faces directly into the prevailing wind and rain.... huge amounts of water just had nowhere to go quick enough. I extended the base of the house out with an apron and fitted a big old cast gutter pipe and it’s been working really well. Every location will be different but this worked for me, the rusty streak is the air vent.