Thorfun

it's a shame that the main entrance is at the side of the house. I would've thought having a central atrium with the tree and staircase as a main wow feature as you walk in the front door (central-ish to the property) with rooms leading off it would be amazing. it would also mean you'd be able to remove the corridor feel upstairs to the bedrooms. you could treat the house as having 2 wings. one side of the house upstairs a large and luxurious master bedroom and then 2/3 bedrooms the other side of the house (personally I don't see the point of adding extra bedrooms just for the sake of it. if you're like us and never want to move again then the financial return of the extra bedroom will never be realised except for your dependents who inherit it. we're building a 400m2 house and only have 3 bedrooms as we only have 2 kids). then you should still have room upstairs for an upstairs living room. I also don't see the point of a laundry room upstairs and a large utility downstairs. why not put the laundry in the utility room? the above comment are with the caveat that I'm not a designer! we used an architect and let him let his creativity go wild within the confines of our brief. he came up with a few ideas of which we liked bits of each. he then amalgamated those bits into a design that we love. you're doing a great job but I wonder if with the size of the house your budget would stretch to using an architect or architectural designer then they might come up with something that you hadn't thought of? anyway, I'm not (or not wanting to) raining on your parade. as I said, the house looks lovely, I just feel that professionals are there for a reason as they do what we can't even though we think we can! during our build there are some things I've simply left to the professionals as I know it will be better than I can do as I know my limits.

my wife keeps one of these. basically a short sentence summing up each day. https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Line-Day-Memories-Rainbow/dp/B09MYXS2Z6/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=line+a+day+diary+5+year&qid=1677941670&sprefix=a+line+a+day+di%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-3 might be manageable for a self builder to write a line of a quick summary at the end of each day rather than worrying about keeping a full diary as that could take up a lot of time.

I certainly can! as per the site guidelines https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/guidelines/ Starting a Blog Many members choose to record their project by using the forum’s blog facility. A blog is a great way of recording your progress and sharing it with others. The blog functionality can be enabled via a request using the Contact Us link at the bottom of the forum. Once the functionality has been enabled you will have the ability to ‘Create Blog’ from within your user profile.

congratulations. one thing we learnt after appointing an architect is that they never work as fast as you want them too! 😂 start a blog! it's a great way to track your progress and a source to refer back to. it's also great to see how far you've actually come when things start to get on top of you and getting you down when you feel things aren't progressing. i don't regret starting our blog. also, even if for personal use only, take loads of photos and also timelapse video footage. you'll forget so much as you go through your journey it's great to look back occasionally to remind you of what you've achieved.

man maths wins every time. make sense. although you could install a dog slide.

actually, i believe the experts suggest rectangular rooms are better dimensions for a cinema than square! so removing the corridor and making the room 22'x15' might get you a better cinema experience. 😉 wrt your design and to throw a massive spanner in the works, have you considered an upside-down house? if you say that the best views all round are from the first floor then by having the bedrooms on the ground floor and the living spaces upstairs it means that you get the great views during the day.

thought about changing that? for us i figured it'd be easier to not have to worry about light fittings penetrating the airtight layer if at ceiling level. also, it means that anything i store in the loft will be at house temperature rather than outside temperature! it just kind of made more sense to me.

if you have a warm roof (or warm loft) with the insulation between the rafters then your loft space will be within the heated and airtight envelope which will allow you to run services in the loft space easily and without worrying about heat loss in to an uninsulated void or penetrating the airtight layer.

a few comments... i can't believe that 280mm Phenolic insulation on strip foundations with (i presume block and beam?) is cheaper than 300mm of EPS with a poured slab! Also, 280mm PIR (let alone phenolic) is overkill in my opinion. you get diminishing returns for thicker insulation and 300mm EPS is enough to satisfy Passive House critera. (note: i've not performed the calculations for 280mm phenolic insulation vs 300mm EPS with regards to U-value.)

our groundworkers did our insulated slab and didn't even use a precut system like Kore. they simply bought loads of sheets of the relevant EPS and cut to size on site. it was their first insulated slab and did it with no issues and with very good accuracy. i think an incompetent groundworker could probably do a pre-cut system like Kore! i saw our friends MBC build and the Kore insulation was basically like lego.

I can highly recommend Norrsken! great quality and good price. I've put pictures and details on my blog about them

and for £7m you get a plank of wood at the top of the stairs for a study! crazy.

£7m! **** me. that's insane.

TSD designed our insulated slab. they designed with Kore products but had no issues with us using a.n.other type of EPS as it's all the same as long it's the same compressive rating EPS! TSD were amazing to work with and are still answering questions i have over 2 years later.

sounds like you've got your head screwed on properly then. maybe you can bring it in at £1590/m2 i wish you the best of luck.

stunning. i really do hope you post your progress on here. i, for one, would love to follow your build. and well done on having a Lithuanian mate! 🙂 just in case you didn't know, the Lithuanian company that actually made my burnt larch was https://degmeda.eu/

sounds amazing. maybe you can share some drawings! i got my burnt larch from Permachar. they were the cheapest i found in the UK. the wood comes from Lithuania but when i tried to contact the factory directly in Lithuania they just redirected my enquiry to Permachar. Also, the more you buy the cheaper it becomes. tip.....don't under order as when you have to purchase more you won't get the bulk discount price! i made that mistake and it was pretty costly.

what size is the footprint of the building? I presume 166m2 (500m2 / 3 ). burnt larch is expensive (ask me how i know! 😉 ). what is the area being cladded in that? it's really hard to give an opinion on costs without knowing sizes etc. e.g. screed costs? liquid or sand/cement? area of screed? project managing will save you money but unless you're getting your hands dirty i don't think you'll hit the £1500/m2. as others have said £2k - £2.5k is more likely.

fair enough! thought I'd do a bit of quick research. interestingly Saint Gobain don't seem to publish any sort of acoustic performance details for their acoustic roll (https://insulation-uk.com/products/isover-acoustic-partition-roll-apr-1200). in the declaration of performance data sheet for sound absorption it states NPD (No Performance Determined). all they refer to is the BG White book. whereas the Rockwool Datasheet for the RW range states at dB sound reduction for their products. makes you wonder what Isover have to hide! I'm sure they all do a very similar thing though. I'm a little way off needing to do this work so I've still more time to do the research.

Any idea how the Isover compares to the Rockwool for performance? (I apologise for my laziness and not looking it up!) also, how was it to install? I used isover 35 between my studs and it was itchy as ****! One of the nice things about the Rockwool is it’s not itchy.

glad you added this as i was going to ask what you used to seal the unit and was going to say "there's no way you're using airtightness tape, right?" 😂 0.32ACH.....very impressive. thank you so much for sharing this. it's something i want to do before getting an official test and this should help me (and many others) create their own unit.

late to the party here but +1 for wall washing lights. you have a couple of walls where artwork can be displayed so could have wall washers at each end and then central outside the doors? if you have the time download Dialux and render it out different ways to see how they look. at least then you can make a more informed decision!

ok. i get the convenience but if the contract is just to watertight and you're going to have to find a contractor/subbies to finish off the build then i would've thought sourcing the roofer yourself and saving some money would be pretty trivial.

what benefit does this give over simply finding your own roofer and managing yourself? seems to me that they'll just cream a little off the top for the service without really offering any benefit. if you have to find your own contractor then i just don't get it.

yeah. exactly. a breathable layer on the outside of the TF and the AVCL internally. thought it was pretty standard.