Thorfun

nice! i have a big pile of sandstone that i want to build a wall with. wife says it'll never happen though. 🤣

get an architect to design the house you want and then send the plans to as many TF companies as you wish to get quotes from. even if it costs a little more it gives you the flexibility to find a company you want to use.

SBR? can't find it in the acronym thread ignore that...it was on page 2! 🤦‍♂️

sounds like something @pocster would do

yes, increased to 50mm x 50mm to give us a 100mm gap (we have battens and counter battens for our vertical cladding) to accommodate the blinds. this definitely added extra cost! yes. we 'probably' could've got away with using narrower battens on the elevations without blinds but, tbh, i never even thought of it nor am i clever enough to figure out how that will effect everything! track. you can see the track in the photos on the blog entry but the chippie did a great job of hiding them with the cladding so they really do disappear. we're not finished yet so 'no' and 'not enough'! 🤣 although last summer when we had that heat wave i lowered them all and it definitely reduced the internal temperature so i have high hopes for when we finally move in and can use them.

our external blinds are built in to the fabric of the building above the windows and so aren't visible from outside when retracted. maybe consider them for solar shading? do loads more research on it all and get price comparisons. to make the external blinds disappear you need to design them in from the beginning which our architect did in conjunction with the TF company. here's our blog entry which contains our Brise Soleil and external blinds.

i'm actually happy if it takes 9 weeks as that means it pushes out the date we need to be removing the roof by before the license expires! i'll take an extra couple of weeks.

we installed external blinds for solar shading. can also be used for privacy to reduce the need for curtains internally, although the effectiveness of that is still to be seen if/when we finish the house.

our bat license application is being submitted about now, we then have to have the roof stripped on our existing property by November otherwise we need to pay for more bat surveys and a new license. it has certainly given even more impetus to get the house finished so i don't have to incur those extra thousands of pounds of costs.

i love a balcony and managed to convince my wife to allow us to have one. but, the way yours are drawn will introduce a thermal bridge in to the building as i would presume they'd be built by cantilevering steels back in to the building. those steels are a cold bridge. you could build them with stilts externally to reduce the thermal bridge. @ProDave is building his own like this. balconies will also give rain protection below so you could, in theory have the GF sliders open if raining in the summer but with the brise soleil the rain will go straight through. brise soleils are probably more expensive that you think although i don't know how much those balconies will add either.

how does he know the 50mm air gap is maintained with PIR? i assume it's because the PIR is flush with the rafters....therefore it's the same argument for mineral wool! Although i didn't have to worry about the air gap as we fully filled and had the air gap above the rafters using battens and counter battens.

fair enough. Norrsken used a 3rd party company for our installs and they go nationwide. I can recommend them as they were excellent and really nice guys! Elite Installations Nationwide Ltd (https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063628057428&sk=videos&_rdr&refsrc=deprecated#_=_).

there are many other windows that are as good as Internorm where they have good installer experience! We had a choice between Internorm and Norrsken in the end and we went with Norrsken for a number of reasons but one of them was the bad reviews for the Internorm installers. if you're worried i'd suggest walking away from Internorm and looking at others. especially as your issues with them seem to be more than just installer reviews! Gaulhoffer that @craig offers are another good premium brand to consider that a few on here have had.

i put 190mm glass wool batts between my rafters with 100mm PIR below and my BCO said it was fine. is your BCO saying that he wants PIR between the rafters? if so i didn't think they could mandate what insulation was used as long as you hit the regulation U-values and it has a BBA certificate it should all be fine.

that's 3.7kW which, to my basic P=IV physics knowledge, that makes it need a 16A fuse? our sparky says that anything over 3.2kW needs a separate isolating fused socket (or something along those lines!)

The asbestos removal will be pricey as well I think. You didn’t say it was included in the price.

ok. but with a DPM on top of the insulation the screed will be poured on to that and so water loss in to the insulation will not happen? understand about evaporation to the room though.

oh, right. so water from the screed going through the insulation downwards which would hit the slab underneath? nothing to do with damp rising up from below? but would've thought the concrete slab would be pretty impervious to water penetration, no?

thanks. not planning up updating the drawings tbh (costs more money!) but if BCO insist then i will. our ground investigation also shows no radon requirement but good to know i can get a formal certificate if required.

no changes, it's just that the SE drawing didn't have the insulation under the screed and is missing the sole plate but the architect's BR drawings that went to BCO did and BCO didn't say anything.

no yellow where we are. 🙂

floor levels are correct from plans in this specific section. it was always the plan to have a layer of insulation under the screed and on top of the slab. not done any calcs on benefit for heat capacity but 50mm EPS is a lot cheaper than an extra 50mm of liquid screed. 😉 above the basement, though, we were originally going to have a hollowcore floor but at the last minute changed it to block and beam. this meant that the floor level was 50mm lower that originally planned so we have 150mm to fill to get to FFL and so i'm adding 100mm EPS above the B&B above the basement to get a 50mm liquid screed level. plus there are extra savings as i can use UFH pipe staples rather than click tracks fixed to the slab.

no. we didn't need Radon barrier. GI didn't show any so we just used basic DPM. np at all. 🙂

I think we're getting our wires crossed here @nod! our external walls have a strip of DPC under the sole plate. I apologise that the original image doesn't show that detail but here's one that does. so this is already built as is shown. we have a DPM under the insulation and structural slab with DPC strip below the sole plate and TF attached to sole plate. so all good so far. above the slab I am having a screed to cover the UFH pipes. below this liquid screed I am adding 50mm EPS100 to build up the depth (which reduces the thickness of the screed) and also to fix the UFH pipes to. do I still need a DPM under that insulation? it is internal and sitting on a structural slab that is wrapped in DPM externally. hope that makes sense!

well, it's all a bit moot now anyway as the superstructure is up and all the foundations were finished and paid for about 18 months ago! but we have clay here and are surrounded by woodland and we have a basement which these above ground 'arms' of our building are against. so it's quite complicated but i asked the SE for an insulated slab under the basement and 'arms' and that's what they gave me. if it's overly cautious then i'm ok with that. better safe than sorry.