Gone West

@recoveringacademic The metal web joists for our hall were too long because the stairwell was the wrong size. The timber frame company went back to the metal web joist company who told them how to alter the length. I would have thought yours could be lengthened as they are to sit in joist hangers. Have the company told you they can't be lengthened?

Five years ago a friend had an air tightness result of 0.9ACH and she was disappointed because she had put so much effort into taping etc. The house was very comfortable with no cold spots or draughts. To help her I ran the PHPP to see what the effect of different air tightness values would be on the space heating demand. Results below. I asked on the AECB forum why the PHI had set the maximum value at 0.6ACH and had an answer from Mark Siddall shown below. So until you get to relatively quite high air tightness values, space heating demand is not affected greatly. Of course the PHPP has been designed to work at the low end of air tightness. Pressurisation Test Result ACH Specific Space Heating Demand kWh/(m2.a) 0.2 12.1 0.4 12.3 0.6 12.5 0.8 12.7 1.0 12.9 2.0 14.0 A 2pa pressure difference (what you get over 2 a storey building) would mean that assuming a 1m long, 1mm wide gap would permit about 360g of water vapour to be transported through the gap in 1 day. On the basis of the internal temp being 20C/50%RH and ext. temp of 0C/80%RH then you can expect this moisture to hit the dew point as it passes through the insulation. The air tightness threshold is 0.6 so as to protect structure from moisture damage.

Shame we're outside their delivery area.

I wanted to use a percentage of furnace ash in the concrete for our slab and was told by the structural engineer that we couldn't because it would weaken the concrete too much.

Last month I bought ten packs from our local water softener supplier and it was £57.50 inc VAT and delivery.

It's hard all right 320ppm. I'll have to check our cisterns to see how they've been affected since we moved in seven months ago.

It's cold water so there aren't problems with scale and it means we use less salt and regenerating water.

Out of interest what colour is the door?

That's essentially what it is, but because of the lack of space I had to split the cold feeds into two manifolds. There is a 25mm main coming up through the floor into a 28mm double check valve, then 22mm stop cock and pressure reducing valve. The pipe bends right, round the corner and tees off to the manifold with white taps which is hard water for drinking and toilet cisterns. The braided pipes are for the water softener which then goes through a pressure reducing valve to the Genvex Combi hot water tank and to the other two cold water manifolds. All manifolds have a ball valve to isolate them.

Just my style, stunning.

Very smart. Like the green and the blinds with the tiling.

@Big Neil yes we used manifolds. As others have said easy to isolate individual circuits and no joins in pipes.

In the early 00s we had mineral wool fibres blown in to our bungalow walls under a grant scheme. They are pretty inert.

We decided to use the same shade of grey as the zinc coloured metalwork for the doors and windows as well. When the cedar cladding silvers I wanted to rename the house Shadezogray but it was vetoed.

Around ten or eleven years ago when we moved into the bungalow I saw some X10 home automation components being sold off cheap so I bought some with a view to using them in the bungalow. Of course they got dumped in a box and forgotten. Yesterday I dug them out and installed the X10 wireless PIR, switch micro module and transceiver so now my porch and outside lights come on when we walk up the path. It probably won’t be needed when the driveway is finished as there will be a security light then, but at least now we don’t have to scratch the paintwork trying to put the key in the lock. I’m amazed the X10 protocol is so simple and works.

When we designed our house we wanted a low energy usage, low maintenance house, and Wendy insisted on a KISS approach to operating it. So we have one simple control for water temperature and air temperature. Water is set at 45C and air at 23C and Wendy is happy that if I'm not around she is able to keep everything going. I'm hoping that we will be able to gradually reduce the air temperature as we get used to living in a PH. We had the thermostat set to 24C in the bungalow because of the cold spots that existed in there but as there are none in the house we should be able to get it down to 21C eventually without Wendy feeling uncomfortable.

Our upstairs rooms don't overheat and some have vaulted ceilings and we don't have high decrement delay insulation. As I have said before whether you need to use high decrement delay materials is dependent on a lot of factors. From what you have described before, you created a sheltered site which means that the use of high decrement delay materials is very important in your build construction. I'm confident that if I had used a more dense insulation I wouldn't have noticed any beneficial effects.

Quite honestly I don't know because I only used weather data for this site. It would depend on the general weather data for the area and the openness of the site.

@scottishjohn We don't have UFH and use electric towel rails in the bathrooms as our main source of heat. We also have warm air through the MVHR system. The U factor for PH walls and roof has to be less than 0.15W/m2K. The U factor for my walls and roof are 0.095W/m2K, which along with good airtightness, is what contributes to the fact that I don't need UFH . I live in the south of England near the coast which is another reason I can keep my house warm without UFH. I found it very useful to play around with the PHPP using different U factors, glazing and weather data to come up with the the best wall and roof construction. My blog has all the gory details. Good luck with your project.

Wendy's with you on that .

For our planning application nine years ago we didn't carry out any surveys and weren't asked to do any but we still had a long list of conditions.

Welcome to the forum Ian. So what do you do for the winter?

I'm afraid I don't know because we wanted that type of construction because it minimises thermal bridging and it was within our budget for the frame.

There are a series of Youtube videos called 'Little Dockens house build' where the house was stick built using I-joists/beams.

Welcome to Buildhub and good luck with your build.