Alex C

Does anyone have any experience of Loxone for home automation, @Jack, is this what you used. I am looking to use it to control blinds and some lighting and am also interested in streaming music and running an alarm on it as well.

Get a couple more quotes, and if they are the same then the simple answer is yes thats what it costs. London prices, London traffic and parking nightmare and London property prices to go with it. Ask how long its going to take and how many guys, and then see if they can justify the day rate.

As above, the key wording is 'aiming at', it does not say achieving. I doubt there would be many Passivehause builds completed and signed off in less than 18 months, only leaving 6 months remaining on the discounted rate anyway. EPC A is easier to reach than passivehouse and may be a better target, although will require a chunk of solar pv to meet.

The NHBC guidelines are for minimum 25mm sound insulating material and 25mm plasterboard. I would be using this as a minimum in my own house. You could use 2 sheets sound block plasterboard. You need to make sure that the svp does not touch any timber as this will transfer sound as well. a 127 stud is no way big enough, you could batten over it to give some extra thickness.

Plastic packers. Foam around the window inside and out then trim back neatly. Silicone the outside and tape the inside for airtightness. what you do with the cladding and battens depends on being horizontal or vertical cladding. The detail linked above is a good one. TRADA also have sections knocking around that are helpful.

The polished concrete or screed should come up to the underside of the sole plate, not flush with the top. Having a sole plate in what is effectively a trough is not good practice and was one source of rotting sole plates in older timber frames and has not been good practice for some time. Any leaks or floods in a building will have the water sitting around the sole plate unable to run out. Not sure what building control thoughts would be on this one. You would normally expect the sole plate to sit on a course of 75mm concrete blocks that would then take up the depth of your screed or polished concrete. Without knowing the full make up of the floor/frame it is hard to comment in full. A passive MBC type slab is not the same as normally you would just tile or fix 20mm wooden floor over the slab rather than a screed or more concrete.

I got 80p a kilo recently for my cable. fortunately the scrap yard is only a short drive a way. All the copper from my 4 bed bungalow only fetched £180 which was pretty rubbish for the work involved.

When I saw what you were ordering a few weeks ago I couldn't work out if you were getting the extra kit to go with the plate. Even though I really like them I decided they were just too expensive by the time you bought both parts. It is all a bit of punt trying to order all the correct stuff in German. Good luck sorting it out.

As above you need to file a section 80 demolition notice with the council which can take up to 6 weeks but is normally processed in a few days. The part that can be most time consuming is getting power and gas stripped back from the building, so get on to the utility companies asap. In the section 80 you will need to state that you have notified the utility companies, and building control sometimes contact them as well. Any demolition company will want an asbestos survey to meet hse and protect its workers, and this is critical if any material is being removed from site to ensure there are not any issues of contaminated waste. Depending on your plans for on site electricity it might me easier to just move the incoming power to the boundary or convenient location, and the use it as a temporary builders supply during the build and then also the final location of your meter cabinet. This saves on paying to move it twice.

To ensure the foundations and coursing blocks fit the frame you could get a surveyor to set out them out and then measure the level of the laid coursing blocks. A specification of tolerance given to the groundworker is then easy to enforce. A timber frame company will give you a sole plate layout that you can work to.

It's up to your structural engineer, although they may not give you a dimensioned drawn layout unless you specifically ask for it.

Unfortunately Jack is on holiday. I just had to send his two guys home as they were doing a terrible job, it's the culmination of a week of muppetry.

I have put a time lapse of the whole passive slab installation on my blog http://www.passivehouseselfbuild.co.uk/passive-slab-foundation/ For anyone considering this type of foundation but don't know exactly whats involved it gives a pretty clear indication of how it is done. I have had comments from every other trade on site about the quality of the power floated finish, so well done to the MBC team.

The habito plasterboard looks promising as it is both more dense and able to take screw fixings. It is almost as heavy as sound bloc, so good at reducing sound, but heavy to carry and install. I haven't looked at cost yet but will be interesting to see how it stacks up against a sheet of 11mm osb with a standard sheet of 12.5 over the top, which is my current preffered route. This gives the ability to fix to any wall and also helps with a flush shadow gap type skirting detail which needs a double panel thickness.

You have to think about it to create a model in exactly the same way as you have to think about it to draw a 2d section. It does not matter how you do it, as long as you actually put some time into thinking about it from a thermal bridge point of view. This is from someone that has spent the last 25 years building 3d models and 2d cad drawings as both a product and commercial interior designer.

It is possible to model 3d junctions, and has to be done if you want passivehaus certification,but I think the reality is that it is a fairly pointless exercise on a well insulated new build and satisfies no one other than mr passivehause. What is far more important is having a basic understanding of what a cold bridge is and how to design them out. I think that it is a worthwhile exercise drawing sections through junctions such as where steels meet on a wall to double check that there is not an accidental cold bridge, rather than know what the psi value for it is. I have spoken to at least one person with a well insulated house that has ended up with some accidental thermal bridges that could have been designed out if spotted sooner.

I think you can only use a method that suits your needs on the project. The really low figures per m mentioned are very unlikely to include any professional fees or much in the way of landscaping. I have worked on a total project budget figure and also a separate m2 cost as for me the total project cost includes all fees including arranging borrowing and also demolition of an existing house which I wouldn't normally include in a m2 build cost.

I think the reality is people probably choose a method to suit their needs.

The mortar will not take the same point load as a concrete block and would need to wait for it to fully cure before putting the rest of the frame up. It is fairly normal to specify a 7kn concrete coursing block that the sole plate is then fixed in to. Timber frames often have point loads from steel posts or cripple studs that would be spread more evenly in blockwork.

Packing under a sole plate might be far from ideal but it is pretty common practice. Very few frames are put up on power floated slabs, you are normally reliant on a block layer to put down an accurate coursing block course. It is always going to be easier to fill a gap as a sole plate is fitted rather than trying to fill it afterwards.

Larch cladding in a decent grade is £28 - £32 per square meter. Price is pretty similar at all the main suppliers. Timber cladding will always weather differently depending on amount of exposure to sun and shading by trees or eaves. You tend to get the mildew black stain on the north elevation or under the shade of trees. It won't ever go away completely, but will look less obvious as the timber gradually turns silver. Sioo is meant to stop the mildew forming, speed up silvering of timber and also make it weather more evenly. Where timber cladding is sheltered under eaves or in window reveals it will always weather differently, and if it is a high tanin content timber you will get a brown tanin tide line which can look a bit of a mess. Sioo is meant to help with this, it would be worth seeing if it is something you can apply once the timber has already got stained. As a word of warning, larch is not really that suitable for tongue and groove, expecially if the tongue is quite small as larch moves a lot over the seasons and can split the tongue. Also look at half lap profiles as these are similar in appearance but allow for more movement. If you vertically clad you will get a black stain line where the planks butt up as the water will track up into the end of the timber. Best to have the house in a single plank top to bottom if possible.

I think the issue is that they live between the felt and the tile. I have had this issue on another job but the ecologist was happy to watch from the ground whilst a few tiles were removed, then climb a ladder and take another look. My ecologist friend tells me you don't normally get bats under concrete tiles as they interlock too close. You tend to get bats on wall hung hand made tiles, or where there is damage to the corner of a tile making a hole. I assume the ecologist found strong evidence for bats living in your roof to have to be present for the whole roof strip.

Warmer feeling floor such as a amtico or wood is a good idea. Could you run pipe work for a radiator and leave it capped at the wall

Does anyone have any experience of Monarch midi water softener http://www.monarchwater.co.uk/products/ultimate-midi/ and how they compare to something like a Harvey. I plumber has suggested it, he has one in his house and seems to think it is ok.

For anyone interested in how a passive slab is installed you can take a look at my blog passivehouseselfbuild.co.uk. There is also a time lapse film covering the whole process.