vivienz

Does anyone have any experience of a green roof? We're considering incorporating an element of this into the new build. Still very much at the pondering stage and everything is dependent on cost (of course) but we'd like to do it if possible.

Unless the mother in law comes around, I'm not even going to dust until we leave for the new place. Probably a year away, but you can draw some really pretty patterns in dust.

Given that domestic electricity supply is rated at 5%, is it possible to reclaim the VAT charged on electricity used to build a new property?

Hi Russel, Did you line your ponds with anything to retain the water?

Lovely pond, Russell. It looks a little bigger than our planned one, but OH seems to be getting more ambitious by the day. Well now, Peter W, this pond could, indeed, be used for water storage for the stock. In fact, thinking about it, that could be its main purpose in life. Ahem.

I'm not sure if the distance between the pond and house would be too great - approx 300m. The pond won't be particularly deep as it more about having plenty of shallows and marginal areas, but water source would be excellent if I could figure out how to get it.

We're planning to put a fairly substantial wildlife pond onto the agricultural part of our new plot. I understand that we need to apply for PP for this as it will be quite large. Has anyone else gone through this process and is there any advice to be had?

Beech makes a lovely hedge and is native, too. Even though it's deciduous, it hangs onto its leaves until the new spring growth pushes the old ones off, so you get quite a good screen even through the winter.

OH and I are off to plant 550 bare rooted native hedging shrubs at the new place today. They will go around approx 2/3 of the total perimetre and give a nice divide between our bit of the field and where the neighbouring farmer grazes his cows. We sourced the shrubs from a nursery that we've used in the past for the same type of thing, albeit on a much smaller scale. If anyone is after a similar type of thing, I'd recommend them as their pricing and service is excellent. They are Hopes Grove Nurseries: We ordered the plants on Sunday evening and they arrived on Wednesday afternoon, very well packed and in excellent condition. Hopes Grove Nurseries

I'm still considering a ground source heat pump for the new build and came across this document in the course of my research. It may be helpful/interesting to someone if they're struggling with insomnia! gshp_jet.pdf

Ta very much!

Can anyone tell me what you call those snazzy looking lights are called? They run along the corner between the wall and ceiling, where there would often be a cornice.

Joking aside, our new place will have a flat roof and I plan to have all the solar arrays on top of the roof, so they will be the highest points around for some distance, I think. Somewhere else for the lightning to go makes a great deal of sense to me.

Don't forget charging the laptops, tablets and phones when their batteries run out.

Our electricity supply somehow managed to fry itself during the night. My radio alarm woke me up with a flashing display, made the electronic equivalent of a gurgle and died. Being a person who believes in action, I noted this and thought that we must be having a power cut then rolled over and went back to sleep until 6am. I had already given a little thought to this as the new pad will be out in the sticks and very dependent upon its electricity supply; whilst having my tea and breakfast by candlelight this morning could be considered romantic by some, everything that goes with it is a PITA. Our current power supply still hasn't been fixed and we have an SSE generator bigger than my husband's Fiat panda on the front drive right now, sounding like an idling transit van. I can't help thinking that when we eventually move into the new place that we should have a diesel/petrol generator as a back up. Is this common practice?

I'll see if I can take a couple of photos tomorrow. The bin also has strapping around it and the ability to remove the bottom panels mean that you can take out the finished compost without disturbing the fresher layers. We were thinking about getting another until recently, but in truth, one more than adequately copes with all our kitchen waste, and we get through an awful lot of fruit and veg. It's also fantastic for disposing of confidential paperwork - I just shred it up and use it as one of the aerating layers in the bin. Once it's turned to compost, no ID fraudster will get hold of anything useful for it, unless they can read worm poo. I should add that once you get the mixture right, it really doesn't smell at all. A mild boiled cabbage smell when you open the lid, but that's about it. If it smells bad, you've probably let it get too wet.

We've got a Hot Bin composter. It's like an insulated compost bin and reaches temperatures high enough that you can compost pretty much any kitchen waste (it gets up to about 60C). I layer up the kitchen waste with shredded waste paper (all the junk mail and surplus paper) and just keep on putting the stuff in. It rots down quickly enough to rarely get full. It cost about £130 (they might be a bit more now) and I'd certainly recommend them. It's about the size of a tall washing machine. Even during the recent cold spell, it did its thing and whenever I opened the lid to add more, it was all steamy and full of wriggly worms inside. Think of it as the passivhaus equivalent of a compost bin. Here's a link to one seller: Hotbin composter

Despite his general lack of culinary abilities, my husband makes very good soft boiled eggs using a kettle. The only problem is when the shell fractures and the albumen leaks out - doesn't half make a mess of the insides of the kettle.

Mmmm...nice. I'm sure I can lose £1500 somewhere in the kitchen budget. Hubby will have little or no say over the appliances given that he could burn water doesn't cook much so it's nice to have real life opinions on the kit. Off to ponder the joys of double ovens now.

We're a very long way off planning the kitchen yet, but I like to start my research early. Does anyone have any experience or particular opinions on induction hobs? Our new place doesn't have gas and I do like the easy to clean sleek look of induction hobs. I've used gas hobs fuelled by bottled gas plenty of times and found them to be perfectly satisfactory, but don't really fancy having to lug bottles of gas around. My sister in law is a chef and expressed a very positive opinion about induction, but she hasn't actually cooked on them and I think she largely felt that she ought to have a firm opinion, given her day job.

I changed my BT broadband package a few months ago and moved off unlimited. When I was talking about which one to move to, the sales bloke at the other end was able to tell me exactly how much bandwidth I had been using so it might be worth giving them a call.

Great, thanks Bitpipe. I'll get onto finding a suitable SE as soon as possible. I'll see if the artchitect has any recommendations, but do a bit of my own research too, I think. Love this forum.

A useful resource I have come across. Only for a very limited area, but having just read another post about BT Openreach wanting to charge £7,500 to connect up broadband to a new house, it's worth a mention. Our eventual house will be in rural north Dorset, nowhere near a BT broadband cable, or anyone else's for that matter. We can, however, connect up to Wessex Internet who provide up to 50Mbps. Costs vary but are less than the BT equivalent and the install cost is a few hundred pounds. Worth looking out for similar set ups in other rural locations.

Thank you for the detailed information, Jeremy. I've spent a couple of hours this evening reading your blog and I have to say that I'm going right off boreholes. That aside, my main reasons for leaning towards GSHP rather than ASHP were my perceptions of the former being more efficient and robust and the latter being noisy. One of the really big things for us moving out to the sticks is for the relative peace and quiet and the thought of a noisy ASHP system was off-putting. I will PM you about a couple of other things, but thanks again, everyone, for the thought provoking comments.

Can anyone give me any pointers as to reputable companies around north Dorset/south Somerset who carry our ground tests? Or do I need to go further afield, or does it make the slightest bit of difference where they are? We want to have a basement incorporated into our new build and need to find out whether this is possible, particularly before the architect makes too much progress with his design (only just appointed today, so nothing happened so far). Also, I'm considering GSHP and a borehole, I'm guessing that I'd need some sort of ground test done for the borehole, too, so I may be able to kill two birds with one stone. Or not. Are there any particular questions I should be asking or warning flags that I should be aware of?