Gone West

The odd thing is we've never had any local complaints right through from the planning stage to the end of the build. Perhaps taking eight years to build it was just too much for them.

Yup, and they're both up for sale. Must have been something I said or they don't like living near half dismantled bungalows .

As an update. We have had a complaint made to Planning Enforcement about the time it is taking to demolish our bungalow. We had a visit from a Planning Enforcement Officer who went away quite happy that we are doing as we should in the time allotted. As someone local is not happy with us we decided to have the Openreach cable removed by Openreach. It turned out that removing an overhead cable to a property that is being demolished is the only free service Openreach offer. So the engineer turned up yesterday hooked a pole over the cable and pulled it down. He cut off the excess at each end and went away saying that was the quickest job he had ever done. Five minutes maximum.

We had a resin bound entrance to our drive laid about two and a half years ago. They laid 200mm type 1 then 70mm porous asphalt and a 20mm layer of resin bound. The asphalt has to be left for a minimum of seven days for the oils to come out before the resin bound can be laid. After about a year we had a problem with a small area of the resin bound lifting. They came out and removed the faulty area and relaid. It's been ok since. As it's expensive I am going to cover the rest of the drive with resin bonded to match and I'm hoping to do it myself. Resin bonded is fine for a driveway but scattering onto hot bitumen, a cheaper alternative, doesn't tend to last very long with the chippings coming off.

Hi and welcome to the forum Cazza. We have just finished building a house in the garden of our bungalow in East Kent. We are now in the process of dismantling the bungalow after having lived in it while we were building. There are endless types of build structure and it took us a long time to decide want we wanted. Don't rush into it and think about all the options open to you. Our blog is copied to this forum so if you want to see what you may be faced with have a look. Good luck.

@willbish okay I'll dig them out (it was just over eight years ago) and PM you later.

I have an Isoquick insulated raft foundation with 300mm insulation under the raft and 200mm thick upstand. The raft is constant 200mm thick RC35 reinforced with two layers of A393. The maximum GBP is 50 kN/m2. There is 200mm of type 1 compacted in 50mm layers and 50mm granite fines under the insulation extending out 700mm beyond the edge of the insulation. I could PM you a copy of my structural calculations if that would help.

I used Hunter Guttering on my last house, it has several sizes and styles with hi-flow etc. https://www.hunterplastics.co.uk/products/rainwater/125/

I used one of these http://www.vitrex.co.uk/products/diamond-blade-200mm-ultimate/ in one of these http://www.vitrex.co.uk/products/versatile-power-pro-900-bridge-saw/ to do my wetroom floor tiling. Some people have like it and some thought it too fussy.

@worldwidewebs what type of inlet vent do you have on the outside of the house? Does it have an insect screen? Could you try a test run without a vent cover on the inlet if it is easy to get to?

It's an AEG BP730402KM. Not as much as we thought there would be, but I guess it depends on how much cleaning it needs. We also put the cooker hood on while we were doing it. We also thought there would be a load of ash to wipe out but there wasn't any.

Our oven told us it needed cleaning . We've never had a self cleaning oven before. We set it up for a medium clean and an hour and a half later Wendy said she thought the fairies had been in. She opened the door and it was spotless . Who ever said things were better in the old days. Mind you the temperature in the kitchen went up to 28C and we had to open all the doors and windows, be good in the winter though.

I clad my house with cedar. I used grade no. 2 clear and better which had no knots. These pictures are of the north side of the house with a gap of around five years between them. We bought the cladding from the local timber yard who machined it to my specifications.

I'm sorry I don't.

We have Rehau Geneo triple glazed t&t frames and a couple of the sashes are 930mm wide and 1200 high. We also have a Rehau Geneo fully double glazed porch door that is 1100mm wide and 2370mm high. No problems in the last six years.

We have horsetail here which is a sod to get rid of. I have tried all the usual glyphosate based weedkillers without much success, but by accident found Bayer Lawn Weedkiller wipes it out quickly. We had weeds in our lawn, including horsetail, and it killed the horsetail very effectively. http://www.bayergarden.co.uk/Products/l/Lawn-Weedkiller---ready-to-use-3

That is why modelling the climate data correctly for where you live is so important, as I have mentioned in the other thread. Over the last month or so our maximum night time temperature has been 17C, which was on one night only, it's usually around 14C. The maximum daytime temperature has been 27C which again was on one day only with most days being around 23C. There is usually a strong easterly sea breeze every afternoon here, which has the effect of keeping the air cool in the shade.

That is exactly what I found. I started playing around with PHPP in 2009 and found climate data had a significant effect on the results. I used climate data from Meteonorm, Manston, SE England and also Vlissingen to compare results. I also found the limited wind screening aspects and therefore micro climate effects modelled crudely. I think this is why modelling decrement delay is so difficult and why it is so important in your situation and not in mine. I don't have the latest version of PHPP, mine being updated in 2010, so maybe things have changed since then.

Well for my house that is a Genvex Combi 185LS. Compact and everything in one box. It works for us but wouldn't work in every house and I don't think there is a 'one size fits all'.

That's what we thought, which is why it took eight years to finish .

900mm deep is fine depending on what you want to use it for. You won't be able to have a dining table out there but we just stand on ours leaning on the rail and watch the world go by. You get a completely different view standing outside the walls than you do through a Juliet balcony or windows. Finish them and enjoy the summer evenings while they're warm.

It depends on what you want to use the timber for. There are lots of different treatments. For my fence I used Creoseal and my local timber yard use Protim for above ground timber, which is what the BCO wanted. http://www.kopperspc.eu/products/protim.html

Welcome to the forum John, Devon is a nice part of the world.

That is around the size of our house and it has worked fine for us but it hasn't been tested for a long cold spell. Our house has a very low space heating requirement but a PH could have a higher requirement and still be a PH so taking that into account I wouldn't like to recommend it for a PH larger than ours.

We don't have PV yet but hopefully will later this year. The larger of the Combi 185s the LS, in my view, would struggle to provide space heating in a PH larger than around 130m2. My view has always been to keep all aspects of the build as simple as possible. So in a PH larger than 130m2, without wet UFH, I would use electric UFH run on E7 or E10. In the Genvex the DHW can be set to anything between 0C and 55C with an optional weekly immersion boost of up to 65C if wanted. We keep the DHW at 45C because to heat it higher than is needed is a waste of energy and 45C works well for us. I'm not sure a Sunamp and Genvex are the best combination and wouldn't be my choice, but then as I said I like things simple and try not to make my head hurt if I can help it .