dnb

I did the original survey at ground level and all was good to 3mm when the 1st course of blocks went down. The error has most likely crept in from the beam and block floor - made to nearest 25mm if you are lucky... It is all manageable, just a lot of messing around I didn't want to do swwing as i am the builder until who knows when... (can I sack myself? ?) Going to chase perfection again tomorrow.

...you get all the corner blocks bedded in, double check the measurements at the end and find the last diagonal (and only the last diagonal) is short by 10mm? Grrr. That's an afternoon I won't get back.

Pint in the Horse and Groom next time we are allowed out?

Do you think we could be related? ?

I am considering an out of the box idea at the moment but before I go too far I need to know about certification requirements. What certification etc does a thermal store tank need. (Just the tank. Leave any immersion heaters, accessories etc aside for the moment) Let's assume it is designed to be vented so it isn't a pressure vessel and that we would expect the usual ISO and CE markings as appropriate. Thanks

You are far from nuts. One of my friends is looking to doing much the same thing.

He certainly does! He is most concerned about ensuring the site doesn't flood and turn back into a swamp. See earlier comments about the high water table.

I am getting the last few bits of my building control paperwork sorted out. One of the outstanding parts is a drainage plan. I have read through part H and it indicates that I should have all plastic pipe at a depth of at least 600mm. Am I understanding this correctly? Because on the initial submission for building control my architect has some inspection chambers with inverts 100mm to150mm or so shallower than this 600mm from table 10. All of the areas in question are lawn with no vehicle access requirements. I would prefer to go with architect on this because the site has a high water table in winter and this could easily flood the treatment plant if it has to be placed lower in the ground (as happened to my neighbour this winter)

They sound ideal for copper smithing.

Welcome. This sounds like a fun project. Good luck with the piles and the budget. 1000/m2 is really tough - it was my desire too but I'm now forecasting going over budget. But even so, it's not going to be an overly expensive house - I just don't get that new(ish) Jaguar at the end. Your ideas are not too different from mine - I've just finished the piled foundations in an oak infested clay swamp ? laid the beam and block floor, and am waiting for the C19 crisis to end so the SIPS structure can go up. I would very much like to discuss the Loxone automation with you at some point. Don't worry too much about the piles. Get to know your soil - you can do a lot from published documents - then speak to a few piling contractors who have worked locally to get initial ideas about costs and requirements. I was originally planning to use augered piles too, but had to change to driven piles because of a very high water table (bad time of year for the work) and higher than predicted chalk content in the clay. Are you planning a ring beam with suspended floor on the piles?

Me too. But the red here was close to £1/litre unless you could find space for a 500 litre tank before the virus kicked off, so not much difference. I am doing 100mm for the drains as in diagram 10 part b in Approved Document H

10 base 2 Ethernet was a "radial" as in lighting circuit. 50 ohm co-ax cable between T pieces on the network cards and a terminator resistor at each end. Nobody has used it for years - almost as long as IBM token rings. A "star" configuration is probably a better description of modern Ethernet (e.g. 100base and 1000base copper)

A friend took his daily walk past my site a couple of days ago. He had his drone with him so indulged in some aerial photography. Not a bad picture of the house foundations and site. Much better now the site has drained. We can't wait to get on with the next stage.

How much copper sheet? I too would be using tin snips or a nibbler unless there were several miles of cut. Or if it were small enough I would take it in to work (when I'm next allowed to attend!) and use the guillotine.

The insulation upstand is a very simple idea. I plan to batten the inside of the house to create a thin (30mm apprx) service void between the SIPS and plasterboard. This void only needs to extend down as far as the wall sockets. Below this, a 30mm thickness of PIR will be attached to the SIPs panel down to the bottom of the floor insulation. Thus the insulation is as contiguous as possible and the thermal bridge at the sole plate is minimised. I'll dig out a picture. The aircon is simply a 6 kW Mitsubishi unit that will fit in the plant room ceiling with ducts going to all the rooms through various service voids. It will share some ducting with the MVHR where this is sensible. The nice thing about modern inverter air con units is a good coefficient of performance whether it is heating or cooling. And I expect the house to spend a lot of time requiring cooling.

I was due to be writing about the happy day when my SIPS kit arrived on the Island, but instead I find that I have closed up the site and reduced outgoings as much as possible because the SIPS team can't be accomodated and fed on the Island given current restrictions, and travelling the length of the country is hardly sensible conduct at this stage. Just so there is something to see from the site, here is the beam and block floor going in. Close to 1000 blocks and 68 beams placed in 3 days by 3 people and 1digger. The white blocks have good thermal properties and will be used along with a PIR insulation upstand at the sole plate interface to reduce the thermal bridge. So now I have to find something else to write about. I haven't said much here about the house design and my goals. Here are the floor plans as submitted for planning permission. Chris (my architect) and I spent time discussing dimensions and circulation spaces but the overall concept remains to my original plan. The only change from planning to build is that the main bathroom has been flipped so that the large cupboard will double up as a service access. These pictures show the elevations (apart from north west - which is really boring). The planners decided I had to have real wooden cladding instead of cedral. Bricks were similarly not allowed. You may ask why there isn't a window in the obvious place on the SW elevation. It makes the bedroom layout impossible! The master bedroom has a vaulted ceiling, so the half round window will provide light from the SW and the window on the SE will provide a good view of the garden. I have designed a sundial to fit in the place where one might otherwise have expected a window. The house will be a SIPS panel build, aiming for a good SAP A rating without "cheating" by putting a vast solar PV power station on the roof. Because of the design of the roof, based on SIPS panels and purlins, the attic space is open. This gives a good amount of space for hobby rooms or allows eventual accomodation of 6 double bedroooms. There is a designed in space for a spiral staircase to access the attic. There is no mains gas and I am not keen on burning things within the house so it will run on electricity. I plan to fit 6.6kW of solar PV panels (apprx 20) on the southern roof space. This should generate sufficient energy for 60% to 80% of hot water and heating needs. Heating and cooling will be provided by a ducted airconditioning system and hot water by a thermal store or unvented cylinder driven by an immersion heater. I will be allowing provision for water heating by ASHP but initially this seems unnecessary. Similarly, I am provisioning space for a battery storage system but will wait for battery pricing to drop. I will be installing a rain water capture system and using it for toilets, garden and probably clothes washing. I know the payback is long, but my building inspector is quite keen I make an effort at meeting the water use targets, and this tips the balance and allows the bath that the boss has asked for. Final SAP rating for the design was 96 (with limited solar PV) and well over 100 with the full 6.6kW.

Thank you. My application is insulating over a beam and block floor with a 65mm screed over the PIR. TW can be had a lot cheaper than TF so since it's not load bearing and it has the same (near enough) thermal properties it would be nice to take the economy saving if I can have it.

Apart from the name, what is the difference between Thermafloor and Thermawall? The specifications look about the same to the untrained eye. Is anything done to the PIR to make it more rigid or uncompressible if it is for use in floors? Or is it as I half suspect all down to marketing?

Fairly sure it's true. Subaru ownership seems like a lifetime ago now. Welcome to Puff.

Friday was a near perfect day for concrete pouring. A little cold at first, but by the time the concrete lorries arrived it was warming up nicely. The pile caps are all tied together nicely. The first lorry arrives. Disapointingly they didn't pump the concrete because of equipment availability. One of the snags of living on an island! The concrete was poured into the dumper, then the digger used to bucket it in to the beam. Half the long run done. Plenty of "watchers" on hand to use the poker to get the air out. The Driveway will take a bit of cleaning up now! The finished ring beam. Order says the house is a postage stamp and thinks the kitchen is way too small. Another view of our tiny new house. And now the start of the celebration for completing stage 1. Only three more to go.

It's all much appreciated. It's always been really useful to discuss things here. At the end of it all, simple (so it functions properly) and easy to work on (so it's not like doing wheel bearings on a Jaguar) are the goals. Fewer pipe runs seems a better solution - more water flowing through fewer pipes ought to keep them cleaner by my crackpot thoughts. I think I will add back in the inspection chamber at the bottom right based on the above comments. It gives a bit of scope for a change in fall too. I seem to have won the discussion with Order for the moment, so the second, simpler drain picture looks like it is possible. It's actually good to get the north (top) of the house clear because there are a number of services congesting that side. I don't really want too many ICs in the lawn to the south (bottom in my pictures) of the house, so yes there is a little bit of me worrying about asthetics here. Come to think of it, I don't think I've posted anything in my blog about what the house will look like! I ought to fix this.

We did. I haven't sorted out all the photos so no new entry yet. The weather was perfect for the pour.

I have spoken to my local Jewson (no TPs locally now) and they've suggested a sizable discount on list, similar to your experience. A bit of thought later and I have got to this: It removes 2 inspection chambers but doesn't really simplify much. The pairs of 45 degree bends as drawn could easily be a mixture of fittings or a long 90 degree bend (because one bend is probably going to be cheaper than two) - I'm just being lazy with the drawing. ADH suggests 22 metres between inspection chambers is OK. My longest run is 17 metres, so happy days. I can't resolve the rodding access to ensuite 2 and the downstairs WC any other way than I've drawn. There isn't the height above the ring beam to do what @Dreadnaughtsuggests. I had hoped I could make more use of access points inside the house, but this proved difficult because parts of it would be right in the way. It's probably a good idea to have that long run easily accessible from both ends so it's probably serving a useful double purpose. If the external vent could go on another wall I could do quite a bit but I'm not allowed to do this by Order (for those of us who remember old Pratchett books and encourage our children to read them ) Order often forbids or commands things to happen round here.

That's a good idea if it fits. I have a bit of a constraint there in that the treatment plant is getting close to the RPA of a tree I want to keep. I like cheaper too! That is something I thought was on the "don't do this" list, along with a strong preference for drains to take the shortest route to get out from under a property. Very happy to be wrong of course! This is why I'm here - this place has saved me from lots of trouble so far. The original scheme drawn above is from my architect and it certainly complies with part H, but I suspect costs can be cut. Especially when you see the scary prices in the Osma catalogue (that I assume nobody actually pays)

This is the current layout of the soil pipe I am installing later next week. I can't help thinking that it can be simplified. Simple is good according to part H after all. All the soil stacks have rest bends at the bottom (I believe this is a rule - please correct me if I'm wrong) and I can't have pipes joining where they would be inaccessible. So that's nowhere under the house. The larger circles on the diagram denote inspection chambers. All internal soil stacks will have an AAV on the top (so that I don't get thermal bridges) and the system will be vented with an external vent pipe on the north wall. It's out of the way there and nobody will really see it. It would be really nice to get the area supporting ensuite 2 and the downstairs WC to be simpler. Before anyone says it, I know I've made a rod for my own back by not collecting the bathrooms together in the house for plumbing installation efficiency. I decided that I will hopefully live in the house for rather longer than it takes to design and build it. But I may of course be very wrong here!! I would love to hear if there's such a thing as a rest tee piece, but I think I'm out of luck on this one. Thanks for any insights.