rh2205

Here’s our bungalow conversion no increase in footprint (we took down the conservatory), same foundations using timber frame above, we still destroyed a lot of it. Hardly groundbreaking design but we are happy. The planners are conservative round here & even outside a conservation area they tried to get us to use ugly brick slips (fortunately the NMA worked). By all means it’s not perfect probably would of only got that if we’d have rebuilt & done everything ourselves and spent ALOT more time thinking everything through but ok for a first go. Timeframes worked for us this route & we lucked out when we accidentally bought something known as an empty property so wasn’t an obvious route for rebuild on VAT. The footprint is 110sqm so was an expensive foundation to replace round here. FYI these photos are 1 year apart before we’d got planning or even spoken to builders.

Hmm will think about it at the weekend it was actually a parent that did the tiling (a professional), so this could of all turned out better if we had just discussed it more about everything that’s involved in planning, just bad at comms with said parent too ?. Does also mean we can go to the struggle of correcting without so much extra cost but I think we will have to live with the alignments as that may well be taking it too far and will mean attempting to get two tiles up in conjunction with trying to save the trim (taking the one below up not likely as much damaging). Thanks for all the thoughts. Anyway it’s a learning curve we certainly have learnt how so many things could be improved along the way, first time doing anything other than replacing a boiler we’ve been that lucky with previous houses!

@ProDave to be honest I am not calling out the tiles.. we know we messed up that one though I noticed the low water pipes issue first because it feels like the bottle trap detail is completely lost! It’s just a culmination, we hadn’t considered the complexity of using a larger tile for a small complicated space. Got similar on the other bathroom, thank god you just walk in towards a bare shower wall with just large tiles on and that is basically the end of wall tiles in that room! Can’t return tiles it seems already asked that one ? Totally agree this is a first world problem & it only serves one purpose just don’t like it if an element looks DIY...

Just wondering if we can get a cabinet to fit with the sink. I mean made to measure means we might as well just correct the work!

@PeterW 600mm wide, 380mm tall, 430mm deep. You probably can get some not so appealing pedestal, but I’m not sure with the expensive bottle trap whether it would be better to rectify. The builder told us it was meant to be like that, I just laughed and said but the sink manual shows the water tails above the waste pipe outlet... why would you buy a chrome bottle trap?

Also trying to find tiles in lockdown has been a pain that kind of process just doesn’t work with everything shut so we just gave up without thinking things through. Wish we’d gone with the initial white walls and wood effect floor & normal sinks with cabinets, easy and very neutral less likely for screw ups & cheaper!

@ToughButterCup thanks for the support, hindsight’s wonderful, I’d have ditched porcelain tiles and the overall style in a second if Id realised what we were getting into with the complexity of grout lines and not to mention the pain to install. Obviously the bathroom is also just way too big but we just went with the architect who looking back probably rushed lots of things & you know what I guess there was only so much we could manage and correct as we didn’t have the luxury of time and just wanted a house ready to live in without it taking 5years.

No idea went to some cheap online porcelain store, hardly likely to find a compatible piece given the heights set now ?

You haven’t seen what’s behind the wall, a tonne of jointed clipped together plastic pipes with loads of joints for the entire house. We just wanted it done literally even though maybe long term it’s not the best plumbing arrangements throughout. We just don’t want visible screw ups now.

@joe90 are you saying it’s our mistake then? Even though they had all these bits before they started? Why would you buy a chrome bottle trap and a sink without a cabinet otherwise?

I agree it does feel like no one considered the height of the floor would end at, even though I raised it as we have a 2m tall person in the house. Anyway nothings ever perfect the tails are the only really irritating detail. I wasn’t happy that the flush plate was set higher than I would of liked which adds to the effect of things looking the wrong height, but hey to me the tails actually look like a diy job & we paid a professional...

@ToughButterCup am I being too fussy???The sink manual didn’t show the water pipe placements to such effect but rather set above the water outlet..

Haha yes there are numerous little errors, turned out using big ish porcelain tiles on walls involved planning furniture around it, because the tiles could only take certain cuts around some things without breaking so you had to centre them around things like the tray etc. It was actually the tap tails that really bugs us, what’s the point of buying an expensive chrome bottle trap with the water water pipes coming out below it!! New bathroom so all pipes for sanitary ware were set in situ for the sink not because that’s just where the pipes were!!

Here’s a clue, look at the sink...

@stewart I know resurrecting this thread! How did you get through so quickly? Also what size heat pump have you got? I didn’t find anyone with an install cost under 11k went out to 4 including one non mcs accredited installer before COVID obviously didn’t hit the jackpot like some of you as all were within 500-1k of each other just wondering if it’s the cost of our quote but then we need a big heat pump as big house but I don’t know what the hold up is other than some of us have bad luck at this rate we’ll be moving back in with no heating arghh

This seems to be the general consensus, ours will be in front of some big kitchen patio doors & we did not have the foresight to powder coat them before they were in. Though I don’t really think any special finish will change our regret at listening to the architect to add them as in hindsight they will be an eyesore regardless. I think @Jtb will have a lucky escape with them in a garage! Nonetheless ours will be getting done by means of roller or brush in the next week (whichever works best at time) and then we will sand and spray over them with a non pro Wagner using compatible paint so you’ll have a reference point.

Ditto ! We have bought aqua steel water based paint similar issue. Have also just bought a Wagner sprayer for rest of the house though we were hoping to use it with at least compatible decorative coat maybe to hide all our sins. When we spoke to Rawlins they said we were better off painting at least the base coat with a brush over ALL other options even for visible areas. If someone enlightens us before it’s too late in the next week that would be handy otherwise I will report back on our painting & sanding mess :).

In some areas they are pretty strict now, I’d plan for some kind of vortex they can be manufactured pretty small like mentioned unless you are somewhere super hilly with high runoff rates plan for a device working to 2-5l/s as anything lower will just cause a maintenance headache and no sensible person would want that done anyway. For small developments stay away from orifices or other small pipe arrangements unless you can design a completely sealed system or like picking out leaves and flooding your driveway. Also most authorities hate any kind of pumped system and then your really making a rod for your back as you might want a back up pump to avoid flooding yourself out of the first pump fails in a storm. Make sure you are not just relying on some crappy building regs guidance on sizing a soakaway written in the 1990s as it’s moved on a bit since. There’s some free websites online for calculating both greenfield runoff rate and storage requirements: https://www.uksuds.com/drainage-calculation-tools/surface-water-storage

Welcome we are also Cambridge way. We know some people down the road who’ve been at it for 7 years now and still use a ladder to get upstairs, glad we entered their house before we started to understand they weren’t joking. Best advice the local structural engineer and neighbours gave us, go to a main contractor in this area and keep the work you do to a minimum unless you can rent for an unlimited time, earn rubbish money so working on it effectively pays or don’t mind a building site, they weren’t wrong. We found extension and remodel much harder to do without the main contractor as you can’t just buy in the structure like a new build (eg go to a timber frame company). Local construction is booming, and refurb is just more complicated all round, but we did initially try to get trades lined up over 6 months and our experience was difficult to say the least. It was a whole new floor and remodel totalling 220sqm so we were frustrated no builder would even do the main structural and extension part of the job. Our fall back was to hand it all over to someone bar some small bits as time is also money as they say, sure we will be in within 9 months like our builder promised so we are happy with our decision though it was not as planned. Fortunately the quality of the work has been good and reasonably priced, don’t think we’d of done it cheaper subcontracting going on what prices we did get early days (unless we’d done the work ourselves) and I’m certain it would of added a lot longer on timescales. Hopefully you are in it for the long haul and time is not your limiting factor. It’s worth saying even with this route we have done bits ourselves, demolished 10 walls, stripped house, pulled ceilings down, we are improving the air tightness ourselves sealing everything, installed the log burner and no doubt there will be other little bits so we probably still average 2 days a week on site between us just doing evenings and weekend mornings. Then the rest of weekend is for working out what’s happening next and making sure we are happy with the details. But this is not a stressful process and it’s good to see things happening quickly given there’s more man power. Certainly we have been shocked by just how much resource has been needed for this size property though if you’ve got a simple symmetric box it will be easier so good luck with the project ?

I am surprised by the variability in size we have had a 13kw & 14kw quoted, the 13kw said our calculation came in at 7.5kw in the software but we have very high sloping ceilings, a lot of unheated dead eaves cupboard within insulation envelope & it’s a refurb so felt there was more uncertainty than your average house I was happy there was a buffer given I was also concerned it would be sized too small. Our old EPC is useless as the house is double the size now. We’ll be using radiators at 45C throughout approx 200sqm. I contacted 5 other companies on top of the two others and really have given up with getting a third quote so will just take a stab at the grant using cheapest quote, to be fair I got one quote before the grant was even announced and before COVID times and it was in line with this so didn’t feel 11.5k was extortion for area even though it seems like it is.. one of the companies refused to quote using the grant scheme even though they had all the certs, would still do RHI installs, maybe they had the right idea!

This all sounds a bit crap then! Ours includes 300l tank, buffer tank, full commissioning, concrete base etc. We are in Cambridge & most stuff is a rip off so I’m not expecting any better elsewhere even if someone was interested in pricing for it which most aren’t as there’s too much commercial green building work nearby. @joth be interested to know your installer as they might travel our way!! But maybe not at that price.. would rather be left with a cheaper install if this won’t pay out though!

The installer had to resend the quote yesterday as soon as I mentioned we wanted to apply ASAP for the grant, it’s a pretty lengthy detailed breakdown so I am wondering whether they are already dealing with these issues on other submissions, couldn’t quite figure out how it differed from the first quote letter as it looked pretty similar but they said we’d need to use this one for the application! Installers must also be getting irritated as they said it was a much more difficult submission than RHI which sounds bad enough ?

@joth what price did you have? We are due to submit one today for a 13kw heat pump at 11.5k including VAT this was the cheapest quote we could find only two firms would even get back to us.. Just wondering if we should also prepare to be stuffed given application is only now going in!

We are having EWI with render installed, the patio doors are therefore moving right to the front face of the existing brickwork rather than a normal 20-30mm set back from brick work (with the new 100mm insulation providing the setback). The approved window installer is now recommending we basically have a sill with pretty much no overhang as the EWI does not extend below as we are having an internal (but not external) flush threshold pretty much at dpc level (though we’d don’t really have a dpc as old house) so they don’t think there will be anything to rest the aluminium sill onto properly, the builder initially talked about using a steel angle or similar to help support the sill but now no one sounds keen on doing this as they think it will be too flimsy or look really obvious and crap. Could it lead to problems to not have any proper sill overhang and if so how can we get around this so both the builder and window installer are happy with a solution to support the sill on? Worth mentioning the patio doors themselves are big and thus the deadload of the door itself will rest on the brickwork still so this is just a question of how to get the sill itself to be supported properly without having any setback below as the EWI won’t continue underneath.

Wouldn’t even stress you wouldn’t be the first just don’t say anything, it’s very unlikely to be spotted unless you have an immediate reference point next door, and let’s be honest there’s probably quite a few different points on most plots that ground level could be measured from for a small discrepancy! Best now you erase from your mind this conversation was ever had with the builder or partner to never be spoken about ever again.