joe90

I agree with @scottishjohn that a “heavy” house will be more stable heat/temp wise. (I lived for a short while in a caravan ?) If mass is good enough for storage heaters then it must be good within the house. Yes insulation works on diminishing returns, the first inch does the most good and I have read (somewhere) that over 300mm in the walls gives little benefit cost wise. I plumped for 200mm as a compromise between cost vs wall thickness.

But on a practical level we know stone cottages with thick walls stay cool in hot weather and are more stable temp wise all year. It’s difficult to build a house from water ?. Despite there being no value for mass my “heavy” new build is very stable temp wise and uses very little to heat it. My temporary caravan (lightweight) got very cold and very hot like the temp outside.

Engineered wood is always more stable ?

I think mine moved because they were hard wood frames and all wood shrinks also expansion and contraction of different materials.

Whilst I like practical experimentation @SteamyTea has a point

That’s not a requirement, all my floors are concrete/insulation, it’s what I would do for an extension even if the rest of the house was timber etc.

I forecast the exact same problem, cracks in plaster to window frame joint. I proposed using a stop bead and flexible caulk in the joint but was told it was not necessary, well they were wrong, nearly all windows cracked the plaster edge at this point and not only in a straight line. Sanding and filling followed on nearly all the windows. However when I built the porch I did use a stop bead on the plasterboard/window or door junction and had no problems. Even our Jeremy had the same problem with his windows. I fixed the stop bead to the plasterboard so the flexible caulk dealt with any movement.

Yes if you have no services that need access then why? A lot of digging fir nothing. Like said above why not a solid floor with loads of insulation.

I remember winning my appeal and yes a wonderful feeling, well done (now you can get on with it ?).

But our time lag on heating is so long timing does not work, my heating very rarely comes on so timing does not work, mostly it comes on at night when temps drop and we benefit during the day.

Yes, our Jeremy did the same thing, dumped his complicated weather compensating system fir a single room stat, and I run ours on one.

Very Interesting, unlike @SteamyTea I don’t understand all the science etc but practical experiments I do. I built my house on common sense (and a bit of copying others here ?)

That’s really good to hear ?

I had an account with them for years and found them good BUT I always got a better quote from elsewhere and they always matched it ?. Different branches work in different ways. My local office were very helpful (avonmouth, Bristol) but their centre Bristol office were offhand and not as customer focussed.

Which Christmas? ??? (sorry).

I am staying put ?

No excuse for breaking the law, it has to go otherwise a pressident will be set.

I installed a recirculating hood over the hob with grease filters and MVHR extract next corner, works well. ?

Dead right but the conservatory still contributes a lot of solar gain to the house a lot of the year ?

250mm insulation under screed with UFH pipes, block inner wall wet plastered and parged between floors, warm roof with 400mm rockwall between i joists. 200mm cavity with batts, brick outer skin, double glazing (with special coatings to make nearly as good as triple) hardwood frames. As I said before I did no calculations but went on gut instinct (and copied others here with similar ?)

Yup, insulation works both ways Saves going abroad fir a holiday, certainly cheaper (if it’s ever allowed again thanks to Covid!) Thermal mass??. (I,ll get me coat).

The only reason I can see fir hinges to stick out more is to allow them to open further. I specified parliament hinges to our outward opening doors on the conservatory so they could open 180’ past the cills and be clipped open in summer.

I don’t understand what the benefit of bullet hinges are?

I nearly bought a shed load of old wooden blocks from a school to lay herringbone style but they are thick and would have insulated our UFH and not matched other floors in height, I thought of sawing them all down in thickness but the work was too much on top of all the build work so settled for engineered oak flooring (much easier).

It could not have been good quality tiles, my neighbour (a tiler by trade) tiled his garage with porcelain tiles and he jacks his cars up, does his own mechaniking etc etc and apart from oil stains in the grout it still looks good years afterwards.