Omnibuswoman

Thank you all!! We are absolutely delighted. Very much looking forward to low electricity bills, especially as we also have solar panels that will meet our hot water needs for 2/3 of the year. What we need now is a masterclass from @SteamyTea on how to further reduce our use so that Octopus are paying us to live there!!

Yes we have used blown cellulose

We haven’t installed the kitchen as yet, but our cooker hood will be a circulating one.

Thanks. It’s timber frame

We used Tescon tape. The wide one was handy for window reveals, and the split one was good for the fiddly bits.

We had our first air tightness test today and achieved 0.25 ACH!! 🎉 Absolutely chuffed to bits with that. We have spent a lot of time taping every possible penetration, but I was still anxious in case we hadn’t quite been as scrupulous as needed.

Thank you Steamy. Much appreciated.

Thank you! I’ll message @Moonshine and @Redbeard directly. @markharro I will message you about the invis tape as I may be able to help!

Does anyone have any leftover part rolls of tescon tape they would be willing to sell and post to me pls? I don’t need a lot - just coming to the end of the taping, but suspect I will run out before I get it all done. I want to avoid a hefty delivery charge for just one or two rolls from GBS or similar. Thanks!

Thanks Iceverge. There are wide drainage slots in that channel and I don’t think they are blocked, but I will check tomorrow. Looking at an earlier thread on this topic, it is an issue several people have had with Rationel doors due to improperly fitting door not compressing the rubber seal. I will test the drainage channel tomorrow.

In this case the rain came from the most usual direction: south west. It visits @SteamyTea first and then heads over to us. The back door is West facing, and the back of the house is a bit of a wind tunnel unfortunately, so I suspect this is going to happen a lot unless we find a solution.

During the storm that passed through on Monday night we had a great deal of water come in through the back door. On opening it the door threshold was covered in water (see pic). Any thoughts about what might be causing this? The door and frame are aluclad timber frame from Rationel.

De bene esse

We went with the open book type of arrangement with our builder, over a higher cost fixed price contract. We were not on site daily, or even weekly, and left it to the builder to manage his team. We broke the contract by agreement once the house was weathertight, and I am now managing trades individually (when they actually turn up!). Budget-wise, this has turned out to be the most cost effective method, but not without its issues. We had expected the builder to be on site a lot more than he was, and his team were a bit lazy. So we were left feeling that there were an awful lot of smoking breaks taken, and quite a lot of early finishes, with no consequence for the workers. The builder really didn’t have good management skills, and we felt that he made excuses for some poor behaviour. However, we got to the end of the contract without having had any significant falling out with him, and still think he is a skilled builder of low energy houses. Compared to going MBC or similar it did come in several tens of thousands cheaper for us, albeit that we still feel that things were not done that ought to have been. We placed a high value on maintaining our relationship with the builder, and him staying in business, and in that context we feel that we probably made the right choice overall. Self-managing trades is not for the faint hearted. The time it all takes is considerable. It seems to be really hard to get trades to turn up, even with what seems to me to be a great working environment. Definitely easier to manage costs, but almost a full time job.

Speaking from experience, the initial DNO quote isn’t always the final cost. In my case, I was quoted around £15k to begin with. Some careful research and negotiation with the DNO saved me £14k - we paid about £960 in the end.