puntloos

Interesting, sounds like a good idea if you have a little space to store it. Honestly I don't know, I went to a M&E team's site and they showed me a hot and cold buffer. (not a newbuild, and a fairly large house). Presumably though your heating rationale would apply to cooling too? If the house wants to be cooled you can draw on it without instantly engaging the thing?

It sounds like the cost of sinking a tank if you already are digging up your garden is almost zero (2000ish quid maybe, based on this tank - 1500 quid incl delivery) but I don't know if the plumbing gets a lot more complicated?

I'm still toying with the idea of a basement. One of my M&E team says that having all plant (MVHR, chiller coils, cylinders etc) in one place will make the plumbing meaningfully simpler and more efficient. Same really with smart home networking etc. Having simplicity over complexity. Also given the size of my basement I probably can even fit a spa - but that's not really a selling consideration. Anyone have any insights on this one? How much better is having a central plant room vs having all the services stuffed away in under stairs cupboards, eaves etc etc? Design: (the yellow 'ear' is the full-house-height service shaft - 600x600ish

Recently saw a design of a house that had: - ASHP - Hot water main cylinder - Hot water buffer - Cold water buffer Can anyone tell me what the 'point' of these buffers is? Obviously they can somewhat act as 'heat/cold batteries' but no idea if that's a big deal or if it's only going to help something in the most extreme circumstances (such as hosting 5 extra guests, or the hottest/coldest days of the year?

I'm probably 2 months away from starting to buy meaningful amounts of supplies. Let me know if that's too late

I was thinking the same thing.. if the fan breaks it's not like the thing will explode. A dead fan in an ASHP would be much more concerning. https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/200mm-Ultra-thin-horizontal-ceiling-concealed_60757000125.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.normal_offer.d_image.63de6de78wknwQ is interesting in that it's only 200mm deep, possible to hide in a void..

This sounds lovely but how would you be able to split some "15C" coolant(water?) into the UFH and 5C (coolant?) into the coils?

That sounds fairly reasonable indeed. Especially a thick/heavy enough board should be sufficient to prevent a young kid from getting under it.

Funnily I was thinking roughly the same thing about getting a garage pit. Seems almost 'cost neutral' to dig a bit of a sleeve into my garage. Thing that stopped me was worrying about my kid falling in but perhaps I can create something reasonably safe..

"one" - a lift? or a pit? What did it cost?

So if you're already digging a foundation, would you put the tank under the house? Or under e.g. the terrace? Middle of the garden? I imagine terrace might be easiest to service?

Not old yet, so this is only 'provisional' but would it make sense to have a pit below my provisional wheelchair lift shaft? It seems most of them don't need a pit (probably since they're often installed after the build when people age) but since it's so easy right now...

Well remembered - my current feel is that the PV tiles or embedded in roof systems are not worth the extra hassle + price compared to the classic panels, but I'll be getting an idea with the ME design soonish.

OK, so I should move my plot North. Got it. But seriously, hmm, so cement-style tiles are in short supply in UK, but @Conor says he had no problems in Ireland (I take it?) .. Also @SteamyTea's link on commodity prices - https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/ - seems to say we had a bad period but it's improving somewhat. Will definitely keep an eye on it and perhaps go for actual slate rather than 'xyzcrete' Any other supplies that are terrible? How are "foreign appliances", e.g. Neff (german, I believe?) ovens etc etc.

Why slate (other than delivery)? Looks? Quality?

Need some help decoding this Just an example really, point being is Nolte faster in delivery? Or Leicht? Or siemens? Why? Delivery times? "Taking the face brick down"? I'm not sure what that means?

So at this point I'm picking building materials, brands etc. Was just wondering if anyone has collected (or should we start to collect) unusually extended delivery times? For example if we know Velux is struggling and Fakro is fine we might choose Fakro if all else is equal. What about Slate vs Concrete for roof tiles. Hacker vs Leicht kitchens. Has anyone spotted any trends, anecdotes, facts around crazy delays? Better to know "now" than be confronted with them later?

Since Jan 1st-ish it seems that costs for raw materials have meaningfully gone up. But I'm wondering if anyone has any rules of thumb for me on how much? If a stack of bricks on Jan 1st would cost $100, how much would it cost today? Same for all the usual others? Timber? Concrete? Paint? Windows? Electrics? Heating? Labor? Or am I thinking about it wrongly?

So I'm quite tempted to go for the interlocking roof tile - it's quite cost effective for what you get, and it seems elegant enough... But am I missing ay downsides? FWIW th tiles I'm primarily thinking of are: Forticrete Minislate Edgemere Concrete roof tiles

So to be clear: No Basement: 40K - Foundation 28K - Slab 5K - Demo 15K - Drainage --- 88K - Total Basement: 100K - structure 5K - demo 15K - drainage --- 120K sub total and then dressing the basement: (electrics, finishes, sprinklers, walls, stairs) - maybe 25K? So effectively you are paying 32K extra for the raw basement, maybe 57K extra when all is said and done?

Can you elaborate on this somewhat? The crucial question I have is, how much is a 100sqm traditional slab, vs how much is a 100sqm slab that-so-happens to have a basement embedded in it. Basically the "net cost" of adding a basement... My house is already way bigger than I wanted or need (literally 3x floorspace of my current house) but there is a certain level of elegance to having all plant electrics, networking etc in there, so I'm really only looking at a 25sqm, not full-slab basement.. I'll have soil investigation back soon but the SE said it looked fine, standard british clay, not a good soakaway though.

Fiverr is not bad actually! Many of the render teams are terrible with lighting though, might be because they're trying to do things quickly. I found a few decent ones..

Why the tiny piece of roof? But yeh looks like having black downpipes tucked in corners does 'contour' the shape of the house nicely.

Haven't 100% decided if we want black or white windows.. I'm leaning towards black really. What does your design look like? Do you have any pictures or something that fairly closely matches your ideas?

Here's an implementation of 150x150 square downpipes, 2 in the corner, and 1 'artificially extending' the front of the house somewhat. As @AliG noted curving around the actual roofplanes is a hassle (can't we go through without introducing major issues?) Would this work? Also, are there triangular downpipes to really squeeze into a corner? Or is that (again) asking for trouble?