Thorfun

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.

every day is a learning day! 🙂

so no breathable membrane on the outside either? just the 'breathable racking board'? i thought it was pretty standard to use OSB covered in a breathable membrane externally? i guess there are many ways to skin a cat as they say.

and the very knowledgeable folk on here that give great advice or even another avenue of investigation. once you start on here you will soon realise the number of rabbit holes that you can fall in to trying to find information. but hopefully you come back out of the hole in a more informed position!

my Intello Plus is inside of ALL the insulation. i fitted 140mm glass wool between the studs, 80mm PIR on top of the studs, then my AVCL membrane, followed by a 25mm service cavity. i don't recall reading a single self-build on here where they didn't have some form of VCL membrane internally to the insulation. even if that was simple plastic sheeting. i'm a cynical ******* and so i'm thinking that a company might say anything to save some money and not have to install a physical membrane! maybe post a question in the relevant forum on this subject? or do a quick search to see if anyone else has done it.

maybe! i don't know. i'm working on the theory that it's better to have and not need than to not have and need. can you tell that we're winging it? 😉

hey, this comment has me a bit worried and maybe someone else who knows more than me can comment. but even though taped PIR/PUR may act as a reasonable air tight barrier i don't think it's a vapour control layer. most people seem to use a specific AVCL membrane or some TF companies use airtight OSB (i believe it's called propassiv iirc). @SteamyTea is a smart cookie and might know how good PIR is as a VCL.

this is my understanding but, as you'll find out if you read some of my other threads, i'm wrong quite often, especially when it comes to plumbing! 😂 our M&E consultants specified a 12l buffer. when the heating engineers came to install it all i had a discussion with them about the buffer size as i thought it was small especially when reading about other buffer sizes on here. after our chat we decided that as they had a 100l buffer in the van going spare that they would install that as a straight swap for my 12l buffer as they had another job that required a small buffer so they weren't out of pocket at all. seemed like a bargain and win-win situation for me so i said go for it! so that is how my decision on buffer tanks was made. not very scientific at all. hopefully it will all work out well in the end.

most TF companies will offer a timber frame and windows but to get to weather tight you'd need the roof being put on as well. this is normally out of scope for TF companies, at least it was when i was looking. i presume you're going to project manage the rest of the project post weather tight superstructure erection? if so, what's stopping you from sourcing your own roofer? that way you're not limiting yourself to companies that offer the roof as part of the erection.

well, the Loxone light switches have built in temp sensors so I will also have room sensors. I'm treating the basement and, eventually, the gf ufh as a 'let's live in it and see how it goes' experiment. a lot of folk on here say that you only need a single zone for heating in a well insulated air tight house so that's how I'll run it for a year or so and see how it goes. if we find that we need individual control over certain rooms then I can add actuators that are controllable by Loxone to allow that.

sounds good to me. do your TF company offer any sort of guaranteed airtightness level? it'd be a shame to put all that insulation in only to have the house leak air! if they've not mentioned anything maybe ask them what their airtight policies and procedures are.