Wumpus

If the house is correctly designed to have great insulation and air tightness it’s perfectly feasible to heat with a post-heater in the MVHR with a small top up when it’s very cold. Running that type of system would need high confidence in the insulation and air tightness of the building. Is there anything from the builder that shows heat loss calculations or air tightness test results? it can take a while (possibly days) for a passive type build to warm up and find its balance, but it sounds like you have been in for a while now?

Take a look at the rooftrak IFP300 fixings. They use the same membrane as your roof covering and do not invalidate the warranty. At least that’s what they told me, and we plan to use with Hertalan. You supply the company with your membrane and they make them up. my notes from a discussion with Nicholson’s technical department: We will provide them with Hertlan EPDM to make the patches over the plates so that the whole system is compatible They will warranty the connection between the EPDM patch and the fixing collar They will provide the same 20 year warranty as Hertlan. The fixings will be thermally broken and are compatible with the 18mm OSB T&G roof deck

Completely agree, I would say the proposal is unimaginative. When putting together our scheme we talked to a professional lighting designer (who we didn’t go with due to cost, but shamelessly took many of the ideas) and their single most helpful comment is to think about where you don’t want light and darker spaces are just as valuable as brightly lit spaces. A full matrix of LED downlights will certainly give even and bring coverage, but is that what you want? Even bathrooms can have a more subtle mood with lights in niches, and darker spots of the room where you don’t need to be dazzled. Light goes over basins and in showers, perhaps highlighting a picture with a narrow slot. No, you don’t need pendants everywhere but they can definitely be helpful in specific locations to create impact, for example over a dining table, over stairs, in your entrance lobby if there’s enough height. Equally you can have light at different levels for a more subtle mood, and 5amp circuits can still give good control and dimming. Table lamps, lights that arc over a sofa, bedside lamps, desk lamps are all part of the scheme. Recessed LED strips can work well, but equally can be overdone if too many. Slot lights at floor level can light your was to the bathroom in the night with a low glow. Pictures can be picked out rather than lighting the whole floor. Reflected light is often softer and more appealing than direct light from a downlighter. So many options. We had a basic principle of not wanting to see the source of the light, just the effect. We didn’t always achieve that, but it’s a great starting point. A lot of that is by using flush plaster-in angled lights like wall-washers. if I had one suggestion it would be to break up the matrix of downlights and put the light where you need it rather than splashing light everywhere. As to how you control it all, there are so many options from manual dimmers, DMX, KNX, Loxone, WiFi controllers, zigbee etc. I would suggest refining the lighting scheme before worrying about controls.

Agreed, I can’t watch at the moment. Near to moving in, but it’s been a test of endurance. I have enough of my own problems without watching anyone else’s.

I provided our contract budget because we are using a single contractor. I imagine any QS estimate would be acceptable. they are really helpful, so just ask them?

Just working an application with Ecology right now, agreed in principle. First of all, I think they are great - very helpful and easy to work with. To your question, when they set up the initial phone discussion they ask for: Approx. Building costs including 10% contingency. If New/Self Build, Predicted SAP Rating completed on plans and drawings If Renovation, current Energy Performance Certificate for property Confirmation of Own Funds Estimated values of the property in present condition & on completion. This could be your own estimate or a professional opinion if you have one already. …or at least that’s what they asked us. hope it goes well for you.

You could look at Starlink. 200mbit/s but it’s pricey.

I had suggested Intello fabric strip to cover the whole double joist and tape to the adjacent fabric, but I missed your point about it running the entire width of the house so you will likely have a gap at the ends?

Ignore me, bad suggestion.

Also, is 1.2m the exposed height of the wall, or including foundations? The structural design should take into account the design for the foundations as they will likely need to tie together.

I agree that a structural engineer should take a look at this. There are different systems possible, waterproof concrete is a different approach to traditional tanking and can work well with the steel needed to reinforce the structure. I would definitely plan on something to take the water away such as a land drain. Some projects will use two methods to be absolutely sure that water does not penetrate - for example waterproof concrete AND a membrane on the inside out outside. You may need to think about any breaks in the concrete pours if the wall is long, and how to make the joins watertight.

An option could be to put in a suspended ceiling up to 100mm below the metal web joists to take services. Depends on your ceiling heights and whether you can afford the space. Have the posijoists been designed yet? You may need to go larger for the spans, perhaps 253mm, and then there might be space above or below the steel, between the webs.

We went through the pre-app process and would do so again. The meeting itself was very short and we never did get written feedback, but took copious notes. The value we gained was being able to reference comments from the planning officer in our reserved matters submission, showing that we had acted on the feedback given. As an example, the planning officer wanted less glazing than the initial plans. We reduced by a small amount that we did not miss but were able to comment that we had reduced based on comments at the pre app discussion. Similarly the modern style of the house was supported at the meeting, so we commented that in the planning submission.

I think so. We took a self build mortgage with Ecology building society who will do a higher ratio than 50%. I am retired but with a good pension coming in every month and my husband is self employed. They wanted 3 years of accounts or tax returns to prove contract income. Ecology are great to work with and very little fuss or delays.

Second vote for Octopus. I had a new 3 phase line put in by western power distribution and it was only Octopus who would install a smart meter, which they did in February. It did take a while to get an appointment but I could wait as it’s a new build.

I think you’ll find that a sewage treatment plant will still need a drainage field. We have just put our drainage field in. It has 3 rows of slotted pipe giving a total of 34m to look after 11 people (it s shared with our neighbours). Our soil is pretty average I would say. you can do your own percolation test, it’s just a 300x300mm cube dug down into the soil and record the time for the water to disappear into the hole. Do this 3 times. You need the time from 75% to 25%, not full to empty.

For me, it’s unusual for your builder to lead the discussions with your architect. You are the client and things can get lost in translation at the very least. It may also result in something optimised for your builder and not you, and may put off any other builder competing for the business. Obviously your choice, but it does put a lot of trust and faith in your contractor. Thermal performance and air tightness will probably not be a priority for either unless you make it so. There’s a decision to be made about what kind of house you want - highly insulated and Passivhaus-like, good, or whatever your builder decides. One thing I found invaluable is to have a highly detailed schedule of works that defines what will be built, how and to what standards. If you want to have an MVHR working effectively, you might want to put in an air tightness standard to be achieved by the contractor, for example 3 ach for “just about good enough”, or perhaps 0.6 ach for Passive. Your architect can help to put this schedule of works together, but I would be cautious of having your contractor write it without independent expert input.

Not sure I’m going be a lot of help, but as I understand it from our foul drainage design, the drainage field also needs to be a min of 15m from any building, so you might need to allow for that too. At least that’s what the drainage designer told me. I was also told we need sufficiently slow percolation/infiltration rates. In our case the tests were too fast if we dug down, so we have a minimal dig and then 500mm of cover over the top to give the right rates.

You could take a look at Norrsken, who are doing our windows. They are certainly at the level of insulation and air tightness needed for PH and found them to be competitive on pricing. Their lift and slide is not super slim, 202mm deep, but very solid.

I have a sage machine and absolutely love it. The critical thing is getting the temperature of the water under pressure correct, less than 100 degrees, we run ours at 93. Not all machines can do this and push steam or boiling water through, which scorches the coffee. The sage machines have 2 boilers to manage the coffee extraction and to produce steam. costs a bit more, but very much worth it.

It does look like a great site, I’m sure what you have will work well. A few random thoughts. Im not sure your utility is doing what you want as a boot room. Could it be designed with an outside door so you have more space for a mud room/airlock? If I understand what you want, it might be possible to out in a bench to sit on when putting on boots etc., but I don’t see enough space in the plans. As you have 2 kids sharing a bedroom, could bed 3 or 4 be smaller and larger to give the 2 sharing more space? I would show single beds in the plan to be clear about that space rather than a double bed as shown. I don’t see the fitted bedroom storage you wanted, which is ok but it takes space and you won’t have a lot of height so I would be sure it works. I would allow a bit more space in the en suite for bed 1, 1m wide will just about work but will feel a bit tight and you have space to do more. Would it be possible to design your room over the garage so it could also or later be a bedroom with en suite shower, either for guests with a sofa bed, or for one of your kids as they get older and want some independence? Hope that helps

I think there’s some great advice here. I hope you don’t mind the opinions expressed which will be hard to hear. My view is that I would want to get some natural light into the living room space and not have it be a corridor to the kitchen and dining area. You have a huge sliding door to the garden, would that not be better used for a larger living room area with some natural light? The kitchen could be further back into the darker area of the building and still be reasonably accessible from the garden. Secondly I agree that the front elevation will be hard to make appealing and does not, in my opinion, reflect a £1m house. I would explore the option presented earlier of putting the first door to the side so the front elevation is less complex. When coming into the house you are walking into a corridor - could this be a more impressive and welcoming space with more light and height? Finally I would try to get more natural light into the building, whether with more or larger roof windows, opening up the middle of the building in some way, especially in the hall and stairs which will have very little light. All that said, everyone looks for different things in a house, and there is never a single right answer. If space is the single most important thing, that’s what you have. I realise you have been working at this for many months, and I absolutely understand how hard that can be, but with the kind of budget you are talking, a slight rethink may be a good plan?

Completely agree with this. Our architect was very helpful in navigating the local council planning officers and managed to work their way through potential objections. I think the key skill an architect should have is working out what the client wants and having the confidence to say no when it’s not a match. I also endorse the comment that architects do not understand costs. A QS would be a great member of the team, but it seldom seems to work that way. We out designs to the QS who costed them, but between the architect and QS were unable to advise when the design was over budget. They both seemed clueless on how to bring everything in on budget.

This is what we did. It worked well for our ground conditions, just depends on whether your SE can see enough ground support for the trench foundations under the clay. Our main contractor worked out the plan with the SE and came up with some good savings and simplification between them. The original was a lot more concrete poured as a slab.

Nothing too complicated, just a steep slope dug out behind and some heras fencing so nobody fell off the edge. We were lucky that the ground conditions were pretty much self-supporting. Our cost overrun was pecking out the bedrock to be able to dig far enough back, it was higher than the ground conditions survey suggested. it’s a relief to have it all backfilled now.