Nick Laslett

Great suggestion. Another option is the Google Earth app specifically on PC/Mac, this allows you to see many more satellite images going back 30 years. You have to download the app to be able to do this, it is not available in the web version. https://support.google.com/earth/community-guide/256123000/versions-of-google-earth-desktop-web-mobile?hl=en

Hello all, my build is in IP31 mid-way between Bury St Ed’s and Stowmarket. We broke ground back into 2021. My wife and I have tried to do as much of the work ourselves. We are halfway through the internals. On site most days pushing the project forward. Found BuildHub very early on in the thinking process, so was able to incorporate a lot of the ideas discussed here. We have an insulated slab foundation, and used ICF for the fabric and EPS boards for the roof. ASHP, MVHR, UFH in the slab, Solar panels in roof. Target PH airtightness. Metal framing, Fermacell boards. Sun cool solar control glass. Very happy to have visitors, if you want to get a better feel for some of this stuff, please PM. We are complete beginners, with no previous building experience. The people and resources on this forum are amazing.

@zzPaulzz, @Alan Ambrose, I have sent a PM.

If sound is your main priority this looks like an ASHP worth considering. Spec sheet says: Sound power level (EN 12102) = 48 dB(A) The equivalent spec for my Panasonic WH-MDC05J3E5 is: Sound power level (EN 12102) = 60 dB(A) Vaillant aroTHERM plus 7kW Sound power level (EN 12102) = 53 dB(A) These are all at A7/W35 They seem especially pleased about the low noise and have made a video about it.

I used a local Suffolk firm for the groundworks, Kore for the materials, Tanner for the design and MBC team at weekends for assembling the EPS, reinforcing mesh, DPM, UFH, etc. They then did the pour and the power float. The only company I have in my bookmarks that @garrymartin hasn’t listed is: https://futurefound.co.uk But I never contacted them, so don’t take this as a recommendation.

I have an MBC slab. Their team did mine at the weekends, whist doing MBC ones in the week.

That is a great find. Bit annoyed all my searching in 2019 didn’t unearth this. I did look at Warmup, but must have not looked hard enough.

This was my main concern. There is a post somewhere from @Nickfromwales in one of the insulated slab threads where he talks about how robust these pipes can be. I tried to find a UFH pipe where they specifically said it could be tied to rebar in a concrete slab, but was not very successful. Even the question “is pert more robust than pex?”, or the other way round is very difficult to find an answer to. I believe the HDPE outer layer of the Wundatrade pipe is why they claim it is okay to go in screed. Another outfit, Optimum Underfloor Heating which uses PEX(b) pipe, in their installation instructions has an install in concrete slab. Page 4 of their installation guide. https://www.optimumunderfloor.co.uk/s/Optimum-Installation-Guide.pdf This is not to say that PERT-Al-PERT is not good for this requirement. I’m sure it is excellent and will do a good job. It would just be reassuring to have a manufacture confirm this specific use case, without having to scour the internet with a fine tooth comb. It might just be as a homeowner, I don’t need to see this info and the installers have a handle on which is the best pipe. Unless I have missed the particular thread in question, I don’t believe on BuildHub anyone has shed any greater light on this specific use case, but I could be mistaken. Very happy to be corrected as this question comes up a lot, and things like ease of installation and pipe memory, are secondary in this particular use case, where robustness is the biggest concern. *Edits Here is a good discussion from the early days of BuildHub about the robustness of various UFH pipe. Here is the post I was thinking of from Nick.

Hello @NSS, any success in trouble shooting this problem?

Here is the thread where @Nickfromwales states his preference.

I see a lot of Crittall W30 style steel doors listed with "Energy Rating B'. This website gives a good breakdown on the different types of steel door, W20, W30, W40, W50TB. https://www.aluminiumtradesupply.co.uk/steel-replacement-windows-doors/information-about-steel-windows/ Energy Rating B would be equivalent to a U Value = 1.4W/m²K. This is the minimum acceptable value for a new build. More details on the "Energy Rating B" https://www.aluminiumtradesupply.co.uk/47862/u-values-and-window-energy-ratings-what-you-need-to-know/ We very much wanted Crittall style steel windows and doors, but they were beyond our budget. We went with the Smarts Alitherm Heritage aluminium doors and windows. https://www.marlinwindows.co.uk/french-doors.html?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjLGyBhCYARIsAPqTz19XEuOe7T-DMdEeIT4fOovmPHRodqjYGyD-_p_sRMX_v0-_W3jmuBIaAnugEALw_wcB I would recommend sticking with the actual steel doors if the budget allows. Crittall and some of the other manufacturers do steel doors with much better thermal breaks, which will give you a whole unit U Value = 1.1W/m²K. MHB SL-30-ISO was one product we looked at. The two main advantages of triple glazing, are the extra pane allows you to have another reflective coating and the extra sound insulation. You can get double glazed units with U-values 1.0W/m²K, a typical triple glazed unit will be a U-values 0.8W/m²K. Have you done any modelling around your cooling demand in Summer? You can get specific glass to cut down on your solar gain.

Hello @joshwk, I have to say I’m not much of an expert in any of this stuff, so please don’t give my experience too much weight. If you raise any of these questions in their specific sections you might get more discussion. Usually it doesn’t take long for some of the more knowledgeable people to chip in. I have added some comments below in green text.

I’ve seen this topic discussed here before and it did give me pause for concern. These thermostatic valves seem to need a minimum hot supply temp of 50°. Looking at the specs of some models and they want 60°. In the spec of one Mira model it states: So a hot shower at 40° needs a minimum of 52° hot feed input. The Grobe Rapido T states in it’s spec that it only needs 2° different between the hot feed and the desired mixed output.

Not with my ridge tiles. The picture is how the roofer left it. A cap might finish it off a bit neater. It doesn’t even look very rain proof to me. I wonder if there should be a cap.

Good luck with your project. I can safely say that having the exact opposite experience, e.g. discovering buildhub 3 years before my build actually started. Has made more of a difference than any other factor. I had no previous DIY or building experience. In no particular order here a few areas where BH was instrumental in shaping my house build journey. 1. Insulated slab foundation. 2. UFH in slab, not screed 3. Proper ASHP configuration. People like HeatGeek on YouTube are now advocating this stuff, but back on 2018-2019 BuildHub was already there. I have an insane quote from a Heating company in 2019 pricing my ASHP/UFH set-up @ £40,000+. I would be surprised if my ASHP/UFH install cost me more than £5000. 4. Going from resisting MVHR, to embracing it. The sooner you incorporate the MVHR ducting solution into the fabric of your build, the easier things will be. Every structural decision needs to accommodate how the ducts are going to route through the building. 5. Ducting requirements for ground works and in the slab. The insulated ASHP pipe is a particular pita to install. 6. Getting an electrical supply kiosk/water supply as soon as you own the land. All these services can be changed by you later in the build without involving the infrastructure companies. 7. Do your own heatloss calculation using Jeremy Harris’ spreadsheet. There is also a great MVHR calculation spreadsheet, but this might not be as robust. 8. Manifold approach for domestic plumbing. Also hot return, if applicable. 10mm pipe for certain outlets. I did all of the plumbing in my build, this was only possible because of the discussions here. The manifold photos are just eye candy to me now. I find the best way to search BH is with Google with “buildhub” at the beginning of the search string. For some reason the internal site search is not very effective. I find the best way to catalogue interesting threads is to use the “Follow” thread button, but without email alerts. You can then more easily find topics when you need to go back to them. The “Activity” drop down allows you to filter the site just showing threads you follow using “My Activity Stream”, “Content I follow”. Unless I am mistaken using the heart reputation button on individual posts, does not actually allow you to find them again, it does not function as a “like” button. Just found out this is not exactly true, see edit. *Edit. Thank you @joshwk, just playing about with my profile screen, if you click on the green reputation button, you can see all the posts you have hearted. You can do this on any users profile.

The perfect thread to use the random photo I took of my ridge tile showing the fixing method. I still marvel that one screw and some plastic tabs are all that holds the ridge together. I look at the giant steel beams they made me install for the roof and wonder at the dissonance of modern buildings regs.

It is all about trade-offs. You can still have an external venting cooker hood, but it needs to have an airtight seal and be insulated, so as not to affect the MVHR effectiveness and add heat loss. Passive house Institute has a general guideline on this topic. https://passiv.de/downloads/05_extractor_hoods_guideline.pdf

EWI, Baumit, K-Rend, Sto. Like @Conor said, find a plaster first that has done EWI or ICF silicone render. I had an EWI branch near me, so I asked them for some local recommendations.

Might be these two threads you are thinking of? Member @MortarThePoint used MF and made some good detailed threads. Member @willbish also used MF and made some good threads too.

I bought this kit. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224480494499?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=oGB3l66TRIO&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=-pz3vhJaRz2&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY But my electrician actually used his masonry wall chaser for the cable runs. As you can imagine it made very light work of the EPS. Very little mess because his kit had good dust extraction. I didn’t actually like the hot knife very much and used my multi-tool for all the plumbing pipe chasing. I did use the hot knife to create a channel for a piece of timber, but the EPS caught light. Luckily the fire retardant in the EPS did its job. Obviously user error, but be careful with this thing.

It is only PVC jacket cable that is a problem. LSOH/LSZH jackets do not contain PVC and will not react with EPS. The only cables I have that are not LSOH/LSZH is the special coms cable from Panasonic to add LAN to my ASHP. You can easily get electrical cable, speaker cable, hdmi cable, cat6 cable, etc with non-pvc jackets.

Talk to your electrician. How are you finishing the ICF, plasterboard on battens with service void, or direct fix to EPS? Do you know that you can’t run standard electrical cable in EPS, because the PVC jacket will perish over time. Standard 35mm deep steel back boxes fixed to the concrete work fine, but that does depend on how you are finishing the plasterboard.

Panasonic “J” series ASHP. Just for future reference, here is the page from the Service Manual, with the key presses to unlock cooling mode. You need to enter the installer setup first before pressing the buttons.

@Dave Jones in this context what is the “home assistant”? I just managed to get my ASHP installed in time for the April cold snap where it hit 2° overnight for 3 days in a row in Suffolk. Now looking forward to some hot weather to test the cooling.

The xgimi aura is a very capable projector. The Texas Instruments DLP Chip 0.47” DMD is in a lot of these short throw projectors. This guy does a good projector ladder where he covers what you get for the more you pay. There is really only 3 price bands for USTs, sub £500, £1500-£2000, over £2500. He also does a good round up on the various screens. If you go down the AliExpress route you should be able to get a pretty decent screen, just make sure it is for UST, these have different requirements to long throw. UST needs a lower gain. I prefer a fixed screen, but this is so room dependent and not SWMBO friendly. In the projector community they tend to upgrade their projectors a lot. But the screen is a long term investment. Try searching AVForum.co.uk for any successful ALR AliExpress outcomes. Or you might be able to get a 2nd hand screen on the AVForum classifieds, these don’t often make it to eBay.