puntloos

Very nice, I guess even "cold" airflow works better than only natural air movement! I was purely thinking on demand though. It's a fair point that I hadn't thought about that you could, well, fan the flames.. but if the issue is smoke or noxious fumes, being able to turn the fans up to 11 sounds like a very helpful idea.. I'm thinking some system where indeed MHVR is the main source of comfort in the house, but when needed (perhaps triggered by heat sensors, or by 'the projector turning on" the more extreme functionalities switch on. But I also seemed to recall you mentioning 'running the MHVR in reverse' or something.. OK so my idea is not practical? Or are there ways to have "all the air types" (cold, normal, heated) available at all times on demand that are not insane? ? I think the dream would be to have the MHVR be the main system, but having AC be available as backups that can kick in if there's a short term demand for more. Is this doable/feasible?

A few items I added recently: Ceiling sprinklers (fire) Outlet for christmas lights under eaves Hidden Safe, ideally in hallway so you can grab important stuff while running out (fire) Switched outlets for lighting in garden Outside faucet with hot water for washing the dog, filling swimming pool gas line to shed for that BBQ Extra Water supply line for irrigation Floor drain in bathrooms Floor drain in garage (washing the car, boots) Dumbwaiter Hidden Power Sockets in floor of larger rooms. Don't want to run power to center - trip hazard Light + Jamb switch in closets Roof Angle: 32 deg for optimal solar Mini secondary staircase - safety and also convenience Micro Shower in garage. If you ever want to convert to airbnb, but also to wash the kid, dog. Tiny hidden room - ok this is just for fun, but there could well be tiny spaces left over, and I wouldn't mind a 1.5x2 room with just a comfy seat, some bookshelves and a TV stapled to the door (obviously ethernet) Integrated Pest Control - lots of design choices are possible to stave off pests Pests Building Guide Led lights on some switches - we keep on forgetting the light in the garage, for example. Psychology knows why

1/ I'd love to extract hot air away from (&HRecover/reuse it, ideally), and cold, dry air onto - Computer (electrical) cupboard - Ceiling mounted projector - Fridge/Freezer? - Gas fireplace (decorative mainly) 2/ I'd love to put dry, heated air into - Airing cupboard - Clothes storage. 3/ STRONG air in kitchen/garage in particular for fire/smoke/fumes My questions: 1/ Can any MVHR do this by default, or do I need a special setup? 2/ Will MVHR be able to do this all the time, or will it only produce hot air when it's actually cold outside, and will it only produce cold air when it's hot out? 3/ Any other thoughts/ideas?

Couldn't find the info for my specific situation, and perhaps someone knows this offhand - 140m2 1970s house with no occupancy (waiting for works to start). - Slight mouldy smell, but could just be 'unused' smell. - No visible mould. Carpet in bathroom(ugh) is a bit suspect but nothing obvious What to do, especially with the rainy/cold season coming up I was thinking: 1/ Get humidity meter, make sure it actually is humid 2/ Get dehumidifiers 3/ Air freshener. But should we: a/ Get an expert? How can we make sure that it isn't dangerous? Price? b/ Heat the place? Waste of money if unnecessary. c/ Ventilation?

Ha, yes exactly, we want the architect to do exactly what they are good at: - Imagining an actual living house that hits the right wishes, compromises, beauty and balances for the client - Getting to the things us newbies might not realise - Work within the seen and unseen limits I am not good and/or lack the experience of this creative stuff, and I lack the design skills, but I do know how I can nail down requirements, needs, stories, reasons why, etc. (kinda my dayjob) Our documents, are specific on what we want to do and why, but not on how it should look

OK so you do think of this as part of the 'selecting architect' process, not of the 'when you have hired them, client-side input of the house design' Oh we are very needy. Agreed, quite nice. And maybe even 'one word'. For us it would possibly be 'cosy'. Let me dump my brief in the original post.

Yes, I fully intend to very shortly, would love our stuff to be critiqued too. Am I correct on my earlier point though, that the brief is the 'principles that the architect needs to start drawing', not the presales stuff? Once they are actually designing your house, would it not be helpful to have as much detail as you can muster, as long as you try to avoid pinning them down on specific "shape and layout" things?

Ha, that's a great idea. (and I didn't know location trackers could have that level of detail inside..) To be fair though I have a pretty good idea what this would give in my current house. And this was reflected in our brief as well, we want a low *number* of rooms, but of large size.

Going back on topic - we went a different way and produced a ton of detail on our brief. (both me and my wife are engineers...) But, of course, you need to 'dose it out' rather than overwhelm the Architect, although each and every architect we asked explicitly said they wanted as much detail as we could generate (it was one of our architect selection questions - 'what would you like to see from us regarding the brief') FWIW: we just selected our architect this weekend. We're meeting her this Wednesday to kick off ? We created: 1/ A full house design in 3D. While just playing around It was really eye-opening to see how a bunch of compromises just fall into place once you have a to-scale canvas of your plot, with locations of other houses, roads etc. "Oh, you want a 10x6 livingroom? I guess you don't want a garage then..." We do not intend to show, and limit the architect's thoughts with it until she produced a reasonable draft 2/ A cinemaroom design. Just the ideal locations of speakers, projectors etc 3/ Our "requirements" spreadsheet. This is the big one. 6 tabs: Rooms - Our descriptions for what we'd like to see in various rooms, including sizes, functionalities. 'houzz' column with houzz ideabook links Lifestyle - Various habits and situations described, "dinner party for 6 people", "bedtime routine" Ideas - Loose ideas around the house. A little outdated at this point Storage - mostly our current storage situation, extrapolated to 'ideal' Requirements - Individual items, classified by various criteria, rooms etc Brands - if we have specific ideas for devices/products we have seen and like, we've already jotted them down. Awnings by xyz 4/ The "one pager" brief, that indeed contains the high level idea of the house.

We took quite a while to select an architect. Our approach: A/ Get a good selection 1/ Recommendations, of course. Local facebook group, as well as asking some local builders who they worked with. 2/ Recommendations from RIBA - they have the find an architect service but #3 gave us the best results: 3/ Image Search Google for "riba architect oxfordshire" - and then pick images you like B/ Actual vetting 1/ Check their website, check houses they list etc etc 2/ Mail them, ask for rough pricing for your idea ("250m2 detached 2-story new build") 3/ Select a top 3, call them. They probably offer to come over. C/ Ask proper questions with them onsite. (can put our question list in another discussion if you want - this is getting too much off topic [edit: Quick note though: maybe I am misunderstanding but we provided architects with a "10 point, single pager brief" before/during stage C. This is not what I call a brief. Instead, to me a brief is the "human readable" description that the architect works off once she actually puts pen to paper. Effectively, to me, anything that's not in the brief will likely not make it into the house. (unless it's some small flourish of course)]

What is the best type and amount of detail brief to provide the architect? [edit: To be clear, in this context I am talking about the information you would like to have in your architect's head the moment they put pen to paper] We've been going quite far with detail in our brief preparation - for example have a spreadsheet with 128 requirement lines of (roughly) the form: "The X room should have Y so that we can Z" - e.g. "The kitchen should have a separation so that during dinner we don't have to see the mess". Is that even useful? Should we instead (or additionally) create lists of use cases? "When friends visit we will take them to the kitchen to have a glass of wine and perhaps help with cooking, dinner is in the dining area, then we move to the livingroom for some drinks and watching a movie"..? What about sending them an actual draft design? We've dabbled in a 3D program so we actually have a house design that "kinda, sorta" works for us, even though it's designed by an absolute amateur of course. We're tempted by both directions - either dump all the info on them, or literally letting their imagination roam free as much as possible before constraining them.. Would love to see some of your briefs, and the resultant design! - as well as other thoughts.. Already found this forum post: Writing a Brief for the Architect - but only 2 there.. When we were reaching out to Architects our email contained the following description: X, Y and 1.5yo son Z. Property purchased: <location with maps link> Goal: Family home for ourselves for the next 15 years Plot size: 27m x 15m Minimum about 185m2 (2000sqft) floorspace, happy to discuss cost vs benefits on making it larger. Min 3, max 5 bedrooms. Large rooms, rather than many rooms Large open plan living area with serious integrated home cinema High ceilings, ideally 2m75, especially downstairs. Upstairs 2m45 could suffice. No real plans for a loft, but perhaps worth doing for resale or add quirkiness to 2nd floor rooms. Good standard throughout. We don't care about 'brand' but do care about quality Elegance - not just an average 'box' but attention to lighting/atmosphere/details Budget wise, 185m2*ruleofthumb gives us xyabcz GBP. We have buffer allocated to cover unforeseen issues.

Yeah that's the thing, history is littered with people saying 'you will never need more than X'. But obviously space waste costs $$$ For one a Tesla Powerwall could fit nicely in some cupboards..

Actually I only meant that the cupboard needs to be ventilated/airconditioned - no HVAC gear in here (for one, RF noise...) Noisy. That's a fair point, perhaps some sound insulation would be a Good Idea(tm) too.

Anyone built a "serious" electricity/networking/smart home closet? What design considerations did you have, and did it turn out OK? In particular: - I probably want to be able to fit half a 19" rack in there (typical size: (hxwxd) is 0.9m x 0.6m x 1.1m for a server or 2, sonos style stuff, maybe networking gear - Consumer unit, including higher power stuff (charging car, high-power induction hob) - Smart home stuff, I am imagining every room's main power cable should probably end up here and be switchable? - Air conditioning/ventilation - All network cables should end up here so the broadband gateway, routers, a switch or two.. I *think* a closet of 1.5x1.5x2.6 seems sufficient for all this, but perhaps I'm underestimating how much stuff goes here?

How about a lift shaft (at least preparation for it)

Thanks AliG, I think your experience makes a lot of sense, didn't think of the cleaning part too much (although I imagined only a single "V" shape really, with one neat groove. Still, the surface tension indeed might ruin it enough to not be worth all the extra specialized architecting/stoneworking etc. Recessed> I do a lot of handwashing, just because many things don't go well into the dishwasher or I want immediately (and we only use dishwasher once every 3 days or so). Worth considering I suppose. Do you have a picture of what you had in mind?

I suppose the main reason I brought this up is that in my current house I often have water dripping on the floor, and I don't think I'm 'unusually wet' in how I use my worktop. It's clearly not a 'massive deal' but if there's some cool way to do this I'd like to know about it.

Clearly (?) there's often some water and other liquids on a worktop, and I was wondering if it made sense to have it tilted as to control the water running off? I could imagine some clever "v" shape in an island might have all water run into one spot - similar to a wet room I imagine.. Has anyone ever seen, let alone done such a design?

Newbie question: how do doors typically come together anyway - are they sold all-in-one or can you get a door separately from the glass, separate from the frame, and in particular separate from the knob I ask because perhaps if you can just buy a 'smart knob' from the internets and plumb it into any door you like?

Great find - and they do have UK dealers: https://www3.marvin.com/?page=find-a-dealer&intl=United Kingdom

Is there any technology that can tell me if all external doors and/or windows are actually locked? Would love some 'all lights green' lock status of the entire house for e.g. leaving on holiday situations. (In current home I have a kitchen door that's left unlocked way too easily, but I can imagine you need pretty specialised doors or hardware to detect if it's openable from outside?)

Silly question perhaps, but is an overdimensioned ASHP (e.g. 15kW even though the calc says you only need 9..) going to be quieter since it doesn't have to break a sweat? Is that a good reason to go large? I've never been 'near' an ASHP, so not sure how loud it is in best and worst cases, but I hate to be a bother so if I can go for 'quiet' I will..

Can I interject with one small question - people seem to speak about ASHP without ever mentioning brands etc. Are there any particular ones that are "clearly the best" according to certain metrics? Obviously I want the quietest, powerfullest, cheapest..... (I know, I know.. pick 2..)

Problem. I like sitting in the garden in the sun! But when I'm honest, there's a really thin area of comfort associated with this. - Not too hot nor cold - Not too bright - Not too much effort to get there - Quick way to hide from a small shower - Needs to be a comfortable chair that's not wet - Needs to be okay in the shade So .. What do you all do to do this? One thing I will likely do is have dedicated chair storage near the sitting area. But how do you all handle getting into the most comfortable state?

They might be slightly smarter than we give them credit for - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_(spider) Ton of instinct too but perhaps if IR attracts moths, it is beneficial to them to also have 'IR sensing' equipment to go where moths would go etc tec