Russell griffiths

There is a new house down the road from me built in them, I called in to have a look and was very surprised at the amount of insulation they had to add to the blocks, it was in effect that the blocks added very little to the insulation value. have you looked into the u value you can get with them.

Yep, the design of having outside finished height 150mm below the damp course has worked well for years, build above this height and your asking for agro.

As long as you are happy you have enough slack for them to connect you could do either, I would rather leave it visible above ground as long as your happy it’s not a hazard.

That makes a bit more sense @Dreadnaught so your meter is going down in the public road end, that will allow a fair bit of play for the connection. I had thought you where going to try and cut your pipe accurately enough to go straight onto the main.

Ooh, that sounds dodgy, are you going to dig right down and up to their main. 1, what if you bury your pipe and you haven’t left enough slack to connect ?? 2, I would be concerned about digging that close to their main, what if you damage it you normally bury your pipe and leave a 1m piece sticking up so they can trim it back and connect it. Did you get a price price for them to do that bit down the access road. How owe do you intend cutting your trench in the access road, isn’t it concrete or do I have a poor memory.

I have viewed your site on google earth so have a fair idea as to what you are proposing. But, if you trench down the access road towards the public road but don’t intend getting it connected at the same time how are you going to leave the end of the pipe. You surely can’t leave it poking out of the ground waiting for a connection, won’t it be a hazard to pedestrians or traffic obviously I don’t know the exact location of the connection, but I would have thought you would need to connect at the same time as you trench and backfill, unless you stick it in a duct.

I think the new building regs want locking handles on everything. Tbh a locking handle versus a non locking handle will probably be pennies, so why not just have them all locking. We decided in the end to fit laminated glass throughout and the cost difference was minimal I think less than 2% over the whole cost.

I just bought a metal cutting blade for my circular saw thin cut, no offset to the teeth. Goggles and full face cover it’s savage. Lovely clean finish.

Some have the blade facing the user the others are on the far side, will find a pic.

I have the 18 volt dewalt circular saw and decided to get the one with the blade on the side facing the user, much easier to see what’s going on.

Will you really have any pipes in a wall, surely they will be in the floor void and come up through the floor boards.

If you get the frame up and it all turns to ratshit just buy a big roll of dpm and a bundle of roof batten you can wrap it all up. I would be more ore concerned with your scaffolding, do you have an open contract or will you be paying by the month. That could get really painful.

Excellent answers everyone i will be back in the morning with more silly questions. 8 o clock is cowboy film time adios amigos. ??

Ok let’s start with the silly questions. Ashp heats the water to 48’ and sends it to a tank via motorised valves and other do,dads. If this is not hot enough, how do I get it hotter?? if I am happy with 48’ what happens with legion aires disease??

@Alexphd1 what sort of tank do you have that will except different types of heating source.

Not sure, need to write it all down, there are other small costs that could add up.

I would like to see how it would work as well we believe we have built a good house, not as highly insulated as some people but we think very good, with a high degree of detail for airtightness. So the house we knocked down was cold draughty and very poorly built, the oil boiler would have been working it’s little socks off trying to keep it warm, but the new place will require less heat input. So will it just tick over and use less oil instead of sucking on it like a fat kid with a milkshake, would the oil consumption just be a dribble compared to my diesel bill for my truck.

It’s 3-4 years old now but had only been in the house a year before we flattened it, yes I have a tank. See ive converted you to my thought pattern, that didn’t take long. Im wondering if I can get a hw tank that will work with both oil and ashp, if the oil boiler lasts 5-6-7;years and goes kaboom, I then switch to ASHP maybe in 5 years time they will be even better than now, this could save me a couple of quid in the short term so I can finish the house. I think we need to do this cost comparison.

@ProDave trying to think how to answer all the points you mention so let’s try something silly that is completely relevant to me. I own an old Izuzu truck, 3ltr turbo diesel with an extra chip in it. It does absolutely sod all to the gallon, every journey I do is like a tenner here or 20 quid there. But I own it outright doesn’t owe me a penny, so do I buy a fancy new van that does probably 3 times as many miles to the gallon and is a third of the road tax per year, sounds obvious go and get one, but it will cost £25,000 so I’m down £25,000 but I don’t spend as much on diesel or tax. Why am I comparing this to how I heat my house. When we knocked the old place down we had the year before fitted a brand new oil boiler, so I actually have one sat here in storage, I also have a tank, so all I need is some pipe a filter and we’re in business. I dont have anything against a modern ashp, I’m just trying to work out the cost to install versus what I have. In 20 years time will I be able to replace it ?? I have no idea, but I would say that 99% of my village are on oil, do you think the government will be able to phase them out so every single household will have had to replace their heating system by then. I very much doubt it, no gas in new builds I can see obviously, but 150 houses in one small village having to all go over to ASHP in draughty old cottages I cannot see how they could implement that, like asking people to stop burning wet wood, never going to happen. Have i costed this out against an ashp, very very roughly, but would like to do this hence my other post about ashp. Maybe we can mix the two posts together and do a cost comparison. Thanks for your input, let’s see if we get anymore input later.

Tell me why I shouldn’t use an oil boiler to provide hot water and heat the underfloor heating. I like to play devils advocate sometimes, to try and stir up a bit of a reaction. So let’s get this nasty fossil fuled discussion going. Why would it be be a bad idea to run a modern well insulated very airtight house from an oil boiler. C,mon let’s get to it. ?‍♂️?‍♂️ ?? ☠️☠️??

Morning all. I’ve got the shell of the house up and really need to sort out the nitty gritty of how the place is going to work. I have had a couple of guys at the house looking at all the different methods of how we will heat the place and supply hot water. Now it has been so long since I started looking into all this that I’ve gone around and around until I have tied my brain up in knots. So I would like a Forums idiot guide to ASHP. What I think I know, ashp is a metal box that works like an air conditioner in reverse. So does this box of magic have a cold feed going into it and after the magic has happened hot water comes out of it ??. The hot coming out needs to go somewhere, where’s this go ?? the temperature coming out is ok for ufh, but not hot enough for a bath or shower ??. how do you get it hotter ??? i have purposely asked some basic questions, some I know the answers to, but I thought by going back to basics I might get a better grip on what I’m trying to do. I have hundreds more questions but I hope this gets the ball rolling so I can ask some more equally silly ones. Stay safe out there. Russ.

I thought it was non structural and just used for fill.

Is there a particular reason why you would want to.

Oh yea, been there done that. Make sure you avoid all bitumen based products as well im not telling you how I know but it cost me two days of hard labour and made a bloody mess.