Thorfun

I think that's exactly what I wanted to hear and probably what I'll end up doing! not sure about buying from Europe though as I'll have to pay upfront. if I buy from Jewsons and put it on my account and then pay that off on the credit card I can push the credit to about 3 months! that's worth quite a lot to me as I juggle funds.

Hi all, getting ready to put the PIR internal to the timber frame. When I had a condensation analysis done and spoke to Isover they recommended just taping the PIR to form the airtight layer. but I am worried it won't be enough and also worried of off-gassing and think it might be better to keep the PIR and it's off-gassing behind a silver AVCL membrane (like Protect VC Foil Ultra) instead. Was just wondering what other peoples opinions are on this? is off-gassing really something to be concerned about from a health perspective and would sealing it behind an AVCL stop any of the potentially harmful off-gassing?

if you're going to make changes like that I presume you'd need to go back to planning for a minor amendment. if so, may I suggest something? you seem to be in a very similar situation to us. we bought a bungalow that came with outline planning permission for a 1 1/2 storey house and full planning permission for a bungalow. we didn't want to build either but knew that planning were willing to allow a replacement building. So we got our own plans drawn up for the house we wanted to build and submitted a new planning application which also allowed us to live in the bungalow while building the house and then it demolish afterwards. it seems to me that you're willing to design things around these plans to fit in with what you want but the whole point of self-building is to build exactly what you want and not what someone else got planning for. I would seriously have a good think about starting a new application with a design that you want. yes, there'll be more professional fees involved but, unless it's a build and sell job and not a forever home, you might be thinking 'if only we did it this way'. just a thought.

price? GSHP inside units are big so need a bigger plant room?

welcome! looks like a wonderful project and I look forward to following your progress. one thing I'd say is does changing the existing bungalow in to a garage affect your zero rated VAT status? might be worth double checking with those on here that know more about VAT claims or HMRC themselves? good luck with it all

we have a new 3 phase connection (it was about £20 more for 3-phase so was a no-brainer really) but the whole house will be run on a single phase so we are having a single phase inverter for our 10.5kWp array. just seemed to make sense to me.

this is a pertinent subject for me as our windows are going in next week and I was going to ensure the breathable membrane was correct this week. Are you saying that the breathable membrane should stop before the windows rather than carry it on past the windows?

thanks. it's a GoPro.

awesome. will get that sorted out Monday. thank you. ?

nice one. I have previously used some non-shrinking grout underneath some structural steels. I presume this is a similar product?

no idea but following with interest as we need 4 of these at about 800mm wide and would like black fixings as well!

greetings. in our basement we have a structural opening for a sliding door. it's a 250mm reinforced concrete insulated slab. long story short, I need to raise the floor level of the structural opening 13mm from the current level so that the sliding door is at the correct height for the level threshold from the FFL. Can I lay 13mm of concrete (I guess I'd have to get small aggregate pieces) or will that simply not be strong enough to take the weight of triple glazed 2.5m sliding doors? how else could I raise floor level of the opening 13mm? I asked the window company if they could simply use packers and they said no.

Congratulations! Good luck with the next stage of your journey.

but you can eat them in your secret batcave. makes it all worth it.

I just had an amazing idea (as I said previously it's easy to spend other people's money!). could you have a 'secret' garage built in to the hillside with a hidden door (think Batman and his Batcave!). you could still have the normal garage for the 'normal' cars and have the secret agent/Iron Man/Batman type garage for the 'special' cars.

seriously, dig into the hill a bit more and put the plant next to/near the cinema. you could have rooms there that don't need natural light so it's perfect for a cinema, gym, plant room etc. means you won't have to use up your garage with plant.

welcome. my advice is to keep us updated with progress! we love a good self-build on here. ?

I agree on that point. personally I think the entrance will be awesome and love the way that the house is hidden and only that small building is visible. I hope you get this project going and update the forum as I will follow this with much interest.

it is very easy to spend other peoples money! and I'm not normally one for commenting on designs as they're such personal things. but...... ? if you're digging into the hill to create the cinema could you not take a little more out and build a gym? or another room that could be used for another purpose? obviously budgets are an issue but it seems a shame to not make the most of the space in the hill now when it won't cost too much more than try and cobble something else together at a later date? we were originally planning a basement only under half our main structure. in the end we decided that it wasn't much more to just make the basement the whole of the main structure. it definitely wasn't the same cost again as plant was already on site, formwork was already being made etc. now we have rooms that can be purposed as required. anyway, just a thought.

nice looking project! I'm no expert but we like a large utility room where you don't have to shuffle past someone/something to get to the other end. could you not increase the size of the utility room and reduce the garage size? a 4 car garage seems a bit excessive in a 3 bed house! The cinema/media room seems a little pokey and also looks a little square. have you done the research on ideal dimensions for home cinemas? might be worth doing that first and then building the room to fit those requirements rather than trying to fit a cinema in to a square room of arbitrary size. just a couple of thoughts but I look forward to you, hopefully, updating these forums with your progress. looks like a very interesting project for sure.

once we've built our house I'll let you know what we love about the lighting! but, we did employ a lighting designer to design an overall concept for the house and we love what she did. now it's down to us to put it in place.

we used Proctor Roofshield (https://www.proctorgroup.com/products/roofshield) as our roofing membrane. This is allowing us to fully fill our 197mm rafters (actually putting in 190mm due to availability of thicknesses) of Isover Frametherm 32 glass mineral wool batts with 90mm PIR below the rafters. you could try this route. speak to your preferred insulation manufacturer and ask them to do a condensation risk analysis on your chosen make up and they'll do the calculations for you.

so now you've made me doubt myself! when the surveyor left site he ordered me ducting to run from the proposed new pole to the house and a 'box' chamber to put outside the house for access for them. then said when I was ready for the new line to be fitted to contact them (although it might have been to contact BT) and they will come and fit the pole and connect the line to the ducting I will lay. maybe this is what you mean by FTTPoD?

yep! ? but I never knew this checker existed. I found out when an OR engineer was working on the pole and I went out and had a chat and he said it was FTTP. so when I spoke to them about the new connection for our new house it was fibre all the way. I originally wanted the connection to go under the road as I didn't want wires overhead. the surveyor said that's fine but it'll cost quite a bit with the road closure, digging of the road, running the cable etc or they could put the pole up and it'll be free. wasn't a hard choice.

probably not something you want to hear but our FTTP connection isn't costing us a penny! the pole across the road has fibre all the way from the exchange and OR are fitting a pole at the edge of our property and I'll run the cable underground in to the plant room. it's probably worth speaking to OR as you never know and you might be surprised.