Gone West

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.

Yes my frame is a timber I-beam portal frame and was cut and joined in the factory except for the largest frames which were made in two halves in the factory and joined on site. These largest ones were actually erected by hand and the smaller ones lifted in by crane. This picture shows one of the first being lifted in by crane.

I fitted one in the bungalow when I was letting it. It worked for a couple of years then packed up. There was no way of knowing if there was a fault without switching it off and on.

We didn't check out our TF company through Companies House we just asked them if we could visit some of their builds. They were happy to arrange that and we were happy after speaking to the owners who gave us the low down warts and all.

Welcome to Buildhub and good luck with the planners.

@vivienz Congratulations, it's all looking very good. I like the all black PV panels, what make are they?

The housing for the air pump for my system can be either surface mounted or semi buried. I fitted ours semi buried and bedded on sand with the air pump standing directly on the base of the housing. The hum from the air pump can't be heard more than a couple of meters away and we live out in the sticks where it's pretty quiet.

Yes we used Lacomet for the dormer apron and frame. Good for flat surfaces but not malleable will only bend in one plane. It's two thin layers of aluminium sandwiching a layer of non-metallic mesh.

I was accidentally filmed at a Flog It programme in Canterbury many years ago. I was in the auction rooms and the presenter, Paul Martin, decided to stand next to me to do his introduction.

We used Bluclad board with the Wetherby detailing which is for render or brick slips.

We went for pre-app advice, which was free many years ago in our area, and it was a complete waste of time. As has been said on here, and what we were later told by the Planning Dept., is that Planning Officers have different views on applications and therefore there will be different outcomes.

You're going great guns. It took us eight years to do our build. It's taken us over three months to dismantle the old bungalow and we still have the back garden to do.

Welcome to the forum. Sounds like a very interesting project in a stunning part of the country, so lots of pictures please.

When I fitted my WPL Diamond DMS2 over eight years ago it came with a Secoh EL-100C rated at 110-120W. I've noticed that the latest technical information for the DMS2 states that the air pump is now rated at 80W. Whether they have changed anything else I don't know but I could probably fit a lower rated pump without problems.

If it's like mine the whole of the front comes off but it's not heavy. Mine is held on with hex bolts so it can be undone with an allen key or hex head on the screwdriver.

This is a condensate drain isn't it so can't the drain be filled from inside the unit by taking the cover off?