Mulberry View

I'm sure he must just be talking about the bunch of pipes as it enters the living room. That's all that really changed between the earlier design. I wish I could jiggle with this myself, but I just can't get the software set up satisfactorily.

Here's a re-jig of the design. The supplier said the following - "I have opened the pipe spacing to 150mm in the Kitchen. This will be fine if you are going to run the Kitchen and Living Room as 1 zone. If the Living Room is to be zoned on its own thermostat then I would keep the pipes at 50mm. I have put just 1 manifold in the Kitchen. This will give you uncontrolled heat in the Study, where the pipes route to and from the manifold from other rooms. Also, the Shower Room is quite a long run to and from the manifold. The hall and Utility are now controlled on 1 thermostat.. might be good to keep them separate, so that you always have the option to control separately in the future if needed?" The Living Room is only separated from the Kitchen by a partition, so it's somewhat open plan. I'm not sure if the uncontrolled heat in the study is an issue? Also, I don't see the issue with the Hall and Utility being on 1 thermostat as an issue, there is now to be no door between them anyway. Any thoughts on this? @JohnMo?

That's what I'm saying, those values aren't reflective of what is there. Even based on the standard Nudura figures of 0.24 for their blocks (keep in mind these were ordered before the new regs came in). I don't understand the technicalities, but ICF houses seem to perform differently to their relatively poor quoted u-values. At least half of the building is going to be rendered and will receive a 30mm layer of EWI in the detailing. The Architect designed a 50mm battened service void on the inside, which I may do away with on the perimeter walls or replace with PIR, yet to be decided. That "design" is very preliminary, perhaps should be taken at this stage with a pinch of salt. The software I played with was Heatpunk, maybe I could try Loopcad.

I've had a preliminary ASHP quotation which included a heat loss analysis. Keep in mind that no commitment has been made to any of this. This is the output of that in terms of heat loss. Seems high for a triple glazed Nudura house... Then I noticed that they appear to have used "placeholders" in the construction materials section... The standard Nudura blocks are 0.24. The figures for the floor and roof seem off. I'm having 230mm PIR in the floor (I'm sure that'll be substantially better than 0.18). There are 3 large rooflights, but these are Vario by Velux triple glazed units (1.1 u-value I think) I'll be very disappointed if I don't achieve sub 1.0 ACH, I'm looking for 0.5 really. I don't want to go too far with this design as I'm not vested in them and don't want to end up too deep in obligation to them. The house will also have MVHR of course.

The whole house is 200m2, the ground floor is 140 ish of those m2's. The quotes I had from Roth, Continal and at least 2 others, all seemed to go for 150mm spacing, is it just that they're a bit lazy? I tried one of the softwares mentioned on here (don't think it was Loopcad), but I really struggled getting the plan properly laid out.

The ASHP is going adjacent to the Utility Room, top left corner of that plan. The manifold in the middle would be about 10-12 metres away from the ASHP and 600mm higher than the closer manifold. I'm not against doing it in one, but I guess the supply and return pipes will be reasonably long. This could be shortened if I can pass them under the internal walls (in the Marmox blocks), but not sure if that's senslble?

I guess a second manifold was added due to the floor levels? The Kitchen is 600mm higher than main part of the building with the Utility etc and the Living Room (lowest on that plan) goes up another 400mm. Would it be difficult to bleed with a manifold at the lowest point?

I tried to do a design myself, but getting the kinda complicated floorplan uploaded saw me fall at the first hurdle. Any tips? The space above has 3 ground level heights by the way.

I have a UFH design, done by the company who'll be doing the screeding. They are able to supply quality components without the mark-up the likes of Continal et al enjoy. But what of the Supply and Return pipes for the manifolds? We haven't bottomed out an ASHP design yet and ideally would prefer to kick this can a little further down the road if possible. Is it normal for these pipes to be placed in the screed to be considered later? There is a manifold in the Utility Room, very close to the ASHP (no need for buried pipes?), plus one in the Kitchen and a possible third one for the first floor (I can't imagine that needs considering in the ground floor screed).

Maybe I'm overthinking it, it's normal for me. 🤣

Can I just use cavity batts cut down in the same way do you think? Or must they been sleeved for some reason? I guess something is needed to stop anything going down there, birds etc. Not that I can imagine how they'd get in once its finished.

This is the high end of my Car Port, 10° Monopitch roof. The inside is facing brick, 65mm cavity, medium dense concrete blockwork outer leaf. The bevelled wall plate has a DPC under it and is resin-bolted down. I didn't have the foresight to utilise a wide DPC to allow me to use it to close the cavity. The outer leaf is to continue up to the underside of the deck. I'll then attach a circa 100mm deep OSB fascia to the ends of the Posi joists for the single-ply membrane to turn down onto and with ventilation behind it. Is it sufficient to attach a DPC to the inner vertical face of the DPC, then turn it over the cavity, landing on the outer leaf? I wouldn't want to lap it in by more than 20mm or so, because of course the final blocks needs to bond. Any words of advice from the invaluable Buildhub experts?

Haha! If only you knew about my problems! A £60k court case is causing very much procrastination and too much time to think about stuff like this. The steps as you see them will have 150mm of PIR insulation on the horizontal treads and an effective 100mm of PIR on the vertical risers. With 50-60mm of screed over, followed by a 4mm microcement finish. It's more wanting to avoid any irreversible regret. I have this vision of walking through the house in a state of blissful house completion euphoria and the sensation of a stone-cold step bringing me back down to earth with a chilling bump! Call me an over-thinker, it's the truth, but I hold dear the attention to detail that quality has allowed me! Thanks for your help all, as usual.

My main worry is that the steps would feel colder than the adjacent floors. You don't think they will?

These are the steps I'm building. This is the arrangement from the Entrance Hall to the Kitchen/Dining Room. It will be fully insulated and hopefully shuttered and screeded all in one with the main floor areas. I would like to pass the pipe through each step. This is the finished look... From the Kitchen/Dining Room to the Living Room I have this arrangement... That's going to be a 150mm high plinth step. There will be a second uninsulated (hardwood) step, then the living room floor. The Nudura face can be battened and boarded over to give a void for the UFH pipes, some pipe slack can be accommodated there. This is the approximate look desired there... Any feedback on running the pipes through these transitions is greatly appreciated. The steps are pretty hefty and solid.