Gone West

It took three or four days to do our borehole.

I don't know what all the others bits would cost but I had a 47m deep borehole drilled through clay in 2010 and it cost £3000 all in.

Have I missed the next installment or has the main event taken over? We're starting to plan our shed made from the usable timber from dismantling the bungalow. Did your idea of using the thinner narrower slats to cover the joins work at keeping the rain out or did they cup? We've got most of a roll of Tyvek Housewrap somewhere which we were thinking of putting around the frame before cladding with the floorboards from the bungalow so would we need the cover pieces?

We just sent out drawings and went with a company that was recommended.

Ours went up in October 2010 and was taken down in December 2011 and cost £2500 all in. It was for fours sides, two lifts and two hop ups with one side being an oversail of a single storey part of the build.

Would it be possible to mould one in glassfibre, would help with the thermal bridging?

@JSHarris Is it possible to publish a detailed set of plans without contravening any regulations?

Congratulations, it's a good feeling.

@newhome Apparently we weren't charged VAT for the asbestos removal. Wendy has looked after the accounting side of the build, she's better organised than me with paperwork. So potentially still quite a wait for us .

We're just coming to the end of the dismantling of our timber framed bungalow. It had a 30 degree roof so working on that was easy for removing slates and sarking boards. We were lucky that it was constructed largely of 4x2 and Freecycling that was easy. The old 1920s bricks from the chimney found a home via Freegle. So far the only cost has been for asbestos removal and electricity disconnection. We hope to crush the blockwork and concrete floor from the kitchen/bathroom extension and reuse it. You'll have no trouble.

@oldkettle when the planners initially refused our application, making incorrect statements about the plans, I complained to the Council CEO and when that didn't have the desired effect I complained to the Ombudsman. That didn't work either, and wound them up a treat, but made me feel better. Probably the reason the Head of Planning got so annoyed when the Planning Committee overruled him .

No, because our demolition is taking place after we submitted out VAT refund. We had been living in the bungalow up to completion of the house. The VAT refund application is now at 13 weeks since submission

We recently had Chrysotile boards removed from the walls and ceilings of our 1920s bungalow. We also removed all the Chrysotile roof slates ourselves and had them taken away. We had several quotes which varied between £4400 and £9500. We accepted the lowest and made sure they denailed and provided all the necessary documentation.

We had 22mm CaberDek laid on our first floor while the frame was being constructed. It comes covered in plastic and the joins on ours were taped as well. It survived out in the open.

@oldkettle Stick with it and don't give up. You can beat the buggers.

Yes we found a lot of those in the roof when we were demolishing the bungalow. I don't know what made them but it wasn't the common wasp.

You have discovered, as did I many years ago, that planners have only a small vocabulary and the same words are used whether correct or not. Those were exactly the words used for our application. We had to hip the roof and dormers to get around that one. I can't see what they are talking about in your case. I can't see how something that is not visible can add to the massing but unfortunately there is no logic to their thinking.

Bring her over again. I promise she won't suffocate

Hi Michael, welcome to the forum. So is that a public road outside your house? Nice scenery.

I must admit to 5 and 9.

Although from what I've read designing a PH bungalow is very difficult, although it's something I've yet to try. The ground floor makeup is:- Earth 200mm compacted type1 50mm compacted 4/8 granite fines 300mm EPS300 (Peripor) 200mm RC 30/35 Porcelain tiles There is a 200mm thick EPS300 upstand around the slab. I can't say because it's dependent on the outside temperature and amount of sun. Last winter before we had the electricity connected IIRC it used to be around 16C/17C first thing in the morning but I don't know what the weather was like. I like the idea of the small ASHP being incorporated in the MVHR as it's a neat solution which could be increased in size for larger PH buildings.

Certainly not significant if set up for PH ventilation rates.

@Nickfromwales I’ve been thinking about your comments on PH space heating in relation to floor temperatures. A PH isn’t just a conventional house that doesn’t require much heating. In the short time we’ve been living in our new build I’ve come to realise just how true all aspects of PH are that we had to consider when we designed the house. In our house, walls and floor as well as all the other surfaces, are at much the same temperature as the air. Even the glazing is similar and it is that similar temperature which creates the comfortable feel in the house. If the air is at 20C, 22C or 24C the surfaces including the floor will be at a very similar temperature. If you create significant convection currents you start to lose the feel of comfort. UFH creates convection currents so in order reduce the negative effects of convection the floor temperature is kept at only slightly above air temperature. When we designed our house we considered UFH but we wanted a ‘dry’ house, a house without water based heating. We found from modelling our house in PHPP that is was feasible to have a warm house without conventional heating. If our house had been larger we could not have used our system. In the house design in which you are currently involved it seems that there isn’t a suitable product which will provide the level of warm air heating required due to the house size. With the PH concept I like the idea of moving away from traditional wet systems with large tanks, boilers and UFH and with Sunamp, Genvex Combi etc it should be possible to design novel systems.

If there is a greater differential between floor and head height as there would be with a 24C temperature then it would be more noticeable. I'm sure you asked me to measure floor and air temperatures and IIRC the difference was very small. As heat rises, with UFH you should have a greater differential, but you won't unless there is high temperature water in the UFH.

'Surviving' sounds as though it's a struggle whereas it seems to be a simple and effective solution in my house. The reason we keep the internal temperature high is because that is what Wendy likes. The primary heating is via the electric towel rails in the three bathrooms. In our view the rooms you want warmest are the bathrooms so it's an effective way of achieving that and then extracting from those rooms via the MVHR. The EASHP in the Genvex Combi will increase the supply heat to the other rooms if required. So primary heating is from the towel rails. The problem with quoting PH alone is that it is a maximum requirement for space heating of 15kWh/m2/yr which may result in a whole house heating system being needed but when the specific requirement is significantly less that 15kWh/m2/yr there are novel ways of achieving that without wet UFH. Decrement delay is mentioned a lot but it is not simple to model and how important it is to achieving a comfortable heating/cooling balance is going to be dependent upon the wall and roof construction, shading and weather. What are the effects of ventilated spaced surfaces within the wall construction or having the house shaded by large trees all day or living where it is always windy. Not so simple .