Gone West

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.

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.