Alex C

If you can choose any colour in the spectrum, then please don't make it ral 9007 anthracite grey. It is the equivalent of magnolia. A colour for people who don't know what colour to choose. Western red cedar looks better with either darker or lighter greys if that's your thing. A brown painted door has the real potential to look terrible.

Another for selfbuildzone here. The Building Control part pretty much comes for free compared to other warranties with separate building control. I asked about discount for insurance as well and they said no chance as it is through another company. What was interesting though was that my insurance quote actually went down when I extended the period from 18 months to 2 years. My policy is 2 years and converts into normal building insurance once the build is complete. Building control was contracted through BBS.

As above choose anything from bright orange, through dark brown, to silver grey then it will match perfectly.

My BC/warranty assessor wasn't fussed at all, he said he had seen plently of insulated slabs. All he wanted to see was that the steel was fixed properly and would have adequate concrete cover.

I was very lucky having only 2 conditions. The pre commencement was for exterior samples and the other was to show 10% renewables. The planning officer told me to email them if there was no response by 6 weeks, demanding a response within 14 days. If there was no response by 8 weeks it would be deemed to be approved. I was led to believe this was national policy, but it could well be a local one.

Buypvdirect are about £120 each for perlight triple black

Jack that's very interesting to hear as I wasn't going to bother with any ufh in the upstairs bathrooms. I could run a manifold upstairs for wet ufh or maybe make do with electric. I'm not sure how they stack up financially. Does anyone also have any thoughts on wet vs electric for towel rads in a passive house. I think the plumber quoted about £800 for a separate loop to run them wet. They would need to be separate to the ufh as running at a warmer temp and also year round.

Passive slab all ready for the pour. Just finished pressure testing the ufh pipes

Hi Stuart. A couple of the guys drove from me in Surrey to Scotland for the day to pour a slab then came back again the next day. I assume this was for your place. Still working on the best way to control heating and have found a mixer manifold that goes down to 20 degrees to run off a gas boiler, but that's for a thread elsewhere.

Hello I came across the ebuild forum whilst researching lending and warranties for timber frame timber clad builds. I had already met the MBC guys at a trade show and had them price my frame and slab, so was pleased to hear good reports about them on the forum. I knocked my existing house down in March and MBC started the slab 2 weeks ago just as the other site stopped. With no where to post any longer I set up my own blog at http://www.passivehouseselfbuild.co.uk/ which I will try and keep up to date with progress and my thoughts along the way. I spent the morning today connecting the ufh pipes to pressure test tomorrow for the pour on Tuesday. Exciting times.