Russdl

Could the stud wall, where it is fixed to the ceiling, have gone through a pipe, water dripping down behind the plasterboard and appearing at the floor?

No idea. Ours were double glazed velux, one in the en-suite and one in the hallway outside the main bedroom and only listened to at night when it was quiet.

I second what @JohnMo says. We had a velux in our previous place, never again, it was a bit like being inside a kettle drum when it rained.

The skylight in the living room seems unnecessary. It looks like that room is planned for TV watching and you’ll probably be wanting it dark in there, the skylight will defeat that. There is already more than enough glazing if you want it light. I like the master suite (probably because ours is similar) in the fact that the en-suite can be used without entering the bedroom making it almost a second family bathroom. Rename the ‘dressing room’ to ‘walk through wardrobe’ and make sure there are wardrobe doors fitted you won’t have any problem with clutter. How much time do you envisage sitting on the bed looking out of the corner glazing? Will it actually be worth the expense? Most of the water usage will be on the west side of the house, I’d move the plant room to that side, combined with the utility room, to shorten pipe runs (and bin the pantry, what actually goes in there?) if you go with MBC you really have to aim for a passive level of build as that is what they will start you off with.

Great advice from @MikeSharp01 re the PV. Currently it looks like your longest roof spans will be facing north east and north west, if you can spin that round so they face south east and south west and pop some PV on there you’ll reap the benefits (depending on the shading). That would I suspect put the garage in jeopardy though.

@Adsibob That’s all new plumbing isn’t it? Our new shower drains slowed down after a very short period of use, one of the drain runs were pretty convoluted to put it mildly, but they didn’t really have any other way to go. What fixed it for us was using the hand held shower thingy and blasting that down the drain on every shower cleaning session, so once a week or so. Not had an issue since.

@PeterW way too late for me but hopefully that nugget of info will save someone else the almighty tug-o-war that we had!

That should be fine for getting any of the services into the house but a long radius bend would of course make it slightly easier, especially for the water. We did have a struggle getting the BT cable to the vicinity of the house. It came down a pole and into BT ducting which was about 25m long and included 3 ninety degree bends before it got to the entry to the house. That thin cable in a long narrow duct with the three bends was a bitch to pull through.

@Garald our experience is the same as @JohnMo we have 10mm gaps under all doors. I thought there would be an issue with noise leaking under the doors but the reality has been that it is not an issue. Not at all.

Holy crap. That first neighbour doesn’t look like he’s planning on being friends.

We probably need a bit more info, but if you’re being assured it’s not going to overheat in the summer are you also being assured it’s not going to lose heat massively in the winter? because as Iceverge points out

@AD1 We used Portman frames, almost to ceiling height. Got fire door blanks from Howdens (I think they were around £30 each) and had them sprayed. It all looks very nice. However, The Portman system is expensive and it proved difficult to fit, the pocket is made of what almost looks like wriggly tin and when you screw the plasterboard to it, it’s almost impossible to not distort the frame making the pocket narrower in the middle and a bit of a squeeze to get the door in. In fact for us it was so much of a squeeze that we had to, er, re-engineer the whole pocket to make it a wee bit wider. This meant the intumescent strip either side of the blank in the pocket was pointless. We bluffed the inspector by fitting brushes to conceal the gap but he never bothered to look anyway. Like I suspect with the vast majority of pocket fire doors, they remain open 99% of the time. Another downside to the Portman frames is that once the door blank is in, it’s in for ever, I think with the Eclisse there is a way of getting the blank out after the whole thing is finished? Redecorating the blank for us is not an option which is another good reason to keep them tucked in their pocket pretty much all the time and out of harms way.

@revelation your kitchen is spookily similar to ours. Our worktop is as near as damn it flush. If it bugs you it’ll probably bug you forever but I guess you could live with it for a while and see if it does actually bug you?

I suspect you’re asking about a built in fire? We have a small portable 2kW one. It sits on the coffee table during the winter months and gets put away in a cupboard for the rest of the year. It’s been lit probably half a dozen times in 18 months and we let it burn for 20-30 mins. It satisfies the urge to see real flame and bumps the room temperature up a notch two. It does exactly what a small electric fan heater would do but it cost more money however you do get more flames!

What @Dan F said. Get hold of it and tweak it to see what works best. For what it’s worth, the few sunny days we had recently had us warming up a treat, it wouldn’t take many sunny winter days for us to consider lowering an external blind or two.

Gotcha.

@joe90 I guess your Permitted Development rights have been withdrawn then?

Well, the numbers don’t quite add up (it says it will run the MVHR for 7hrs at 15W output) but perhaps it’s still calibrating? Regardless, I think it’s exactly what the Dr ordered. Very happy with the solution to our power cut problem.

@Furnace Indeed it looks very nice but I’m surprised at the form factor if a Passivhaus consultant was involved and as @IanR says you’ll need to watch out for that south facing glazing. Do you have shading/blinds planned for that? if not and it’s built to passive standards it’ll get mighty hot in there in the summer. Oh, and fill the whole south facing roof with PV whilst the scaffolding is up. Daft not to IMHO.

Ours is around 3 years old…🤞🏻 Did Sunamp give any explanation regarding the failure.

@PeterW too many numbers in that. I can’t work out how long it would run the MVHR for in the event of a power cut. Also, what is ‘proper EIC cabling’?

@SteamyTea @Adrian Walker and if it takes £200 to get close to a similar setup I’m happy to spend the extra on having it all in one box.

£269 the cheapest I’ve seen so far, so an expensive solution to a rare problem but it’s not a one trick pony which is what tempts me.

@Kelvin Thanks for that, the plan is that it will be plugged in 24/7 so fully charged all the time and only discharging to the MVHR in a power cut (or when I take it away for a day trip up some mountain somewhere). It would appear from the blurb that its was primarily designed for off grid use but also functions as power station, UPS, call it what you will. I think I’ll go for it.

@Nick Thomas fair point. Trades description act and all that. Passive ventilation is available but no good in a passive house as you throw all the heat away and get nothing in return.