Gone West

We had our masonry crushed on site and it was noisy but I guess it depends on how built up the area is and how the sound is reflected around. Not bad around here.

Yeah, he said as the house wasn't finished enough I could make a final test result worse. The result was 0.49ACH so yes policing/conning.

We had a preliminary air test done to find any leaks and it was good enough to pass easily but the tester wouldn't issue the certificate because the house wasn't finished enough. So we had to get him back to do a final test, bit of a con.

It looks like burnt mastic, old school sealant. https://www.womersleys.co.uk/shop/stone_repair_grouts_and_mastic/burnt_sand_mastic_10_litres

@Levo TBH I never considered an enthalpy heat exchanger as an option.

Road scalpings, what the farmers around here use on their tracks.

Yes as @PeterW says we got permission to discharge surface water directly onto the adjacent lane. We would have needed a large storage tank and soakaway area and we have only a small site. I asked the BCO if he would object and he was happy as long as the Highways Department were. Highways were more than helpful and as there is no formal drainage on our lane and it slopes down away to a ditch 200m away it was allowed.

The David Snell book covers all aspects of a self build from sourcing a plot onwards but doesn't specialise in any particular type of build. The Green Building Bible covers all aspects of low energy type builds. The Green Self Build Book covers the same area as GBB but in less detail and it also covers the Segal Build Method and gives examples of individual builds. Some books provide inspiration rather than technical knowledge but for me those three were the most useful.

These are some I've collected over the last 40 years.

I've found in the past that type of hygrometer gives readings that vary quite a lot depending on the type of surface they're on. If it's on an absorbent surface the readings are lower.

I'm only three miles from the English Channel and it's been raining now for a couple of hours and it's 96% outside and it's gone up 2% inside to 52%. The inside RH always seems to track the outside value but it's never extreme inside.

I don't understand how RH can vary so much. The RH in all our rooms is more or less the same and is between 45 and 50 most of the time. The fans run at the same speed all the time and I didn't fit the humidistat because it hasn't been required. The RH increases when showering but it is temporary and is back down again after 10 minutes. It's strange there is so much variation between houses. Maybe it's down to vapour buffering or where you live.

We have an inward opening Rehau Geneo porch door which is under a verandah but if it is very windy and wet we still get a small amount of water creep in. It's exactly as Dave says I don't think there's anything you can do about it.

The episode we watched last night was IMO the best of the lot so far.

That is why I ran lots of iterations of PHPP in order to design a house that didn't need an expensive central heating system.

Had to look that one up.

Been busy today so haven't been able to do much with the data today but just downloaded a simple DXF viewer that allows me to rotate the image. I'm getting there, thanks again.

We had a 1920s bungalow where the whole of the inside, walls and ceilings, were boarded with Chrysotile asbestos sheets and then had plasterboard put on top. If the area has been completely boarded out and there is no suspicious material visible I would leave well alone. If you have a sample of the material it can be tested very easily with a test kit from Amazon. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Asbestos-Sample-Testing-Instructions-Postage/dp/B0862B9JZB/

Will PM you, many thanks.

I was hoping to produce a 3D image of the contours of the area of land I'm interested in, clipped to the actual site boundaries. I was then hoping to be able to view this in 3D spinning around. TBH that is the dream but just being able to view contours would be good. The land drops around 10m from one corner to the opposite diagonal corner and is terraced in two planes. When I tried to view the plot as contour lines it just showed one set of lines which looked like river channels which is why I wondered if it had given me data for the whole OS grid square.

@Moonshine I've had a go at this, not sure I've done it correctly though. I found the OS qrid square, marked out the area of interest using the polygon tool and downloaded the .tif file. When I view it as an image it's just white. I installed Qgis and viewed the file but it looks like it might be the whole OS grid square not just the area I marked out. I don't understand why there are white areas missing in the plot. Have I completely cocked it up.

I don't know what your 'people' are up to but AFAIK adults sitting produce less than 100W and average adults walking produce around 120W.

We didn't have a loft space, open up to the rafters, and I used to see the little buggers on the window sills. They are very small, 3mm long, and IIRC don't survive as beetles for long after laying the eggs. Most of the evidence of their existence are the little dots of wood dust on the timbers.

@Stephen cooper In my first house,over 40 years ago, which was a 17th C cottage we had Furniture Beetle and Death Watch Beetle in the timbers. It sounds like Furniture Beetle is what you have and IIRC they have an eighteen month life cycle and it is the larvae that live in the wood, boring little holes, chewing it away. They chew their way out and turn into beetles which fly off to lay their eggs on another bit of wood. Tapping the wood won't affect them at all. If left unchecked they can completely destroy timber beams.

That is a similar type of construction as my house. I have 350mm I-beams as my main frame filled with Icynene and OSB3 racking on the outside. I then have the membrane and 50mm RW6 Rockwool batts followed by a 50mm cavity and cedar cladding as the rainscreen.