Dave Jones

go for 300mm EPS. cheap and good bang for the buck. You have the room already. simplify your buildup. trench block + concrete common then beam on top.

just looks crap. built into a stud wall is soo much cleaner.

very very bad year for pollen, my eldest is really struggling. the hepa+uv filter on the mvhr will be a godsend.

the slab wont be level enough to lay flooring on. Dig it down more and the problem is solved.

take it on the chin. some flooring is worse than others for expansion. You supplied it so ball stops with you really. Not a massive job, remove skirting, trim it back and put new skirting on - repaint. Get some karndean next time!!

just be careful scaling off printed plans. not all printers print to scale. This can work in your favour should enforcement come knocking, a pencil line on some drawings is 100mm on the ground......

not necessarily. Depending on your ground type building control can cover upto 2.5M depth. £25k is daylight robbery. Have them do plans and elevations to your liking then sack them off. If you have the time and inclination all the rest you can sort.

just to derail your thread, the mrs wanted bars on the new windows but they cannot pass new regs with them. ruins the U value apparently....

correct. unless HMRC now have below ground footings inspectors with X-ray vision.

shame the correct flooring detail below FFL is often overlooked. see a lot of threads here with same. A simple thing to get right at the time, very hard after. Yet another basic building function architects are clueless on.

i use these guys, they do a water and tear proof paper. https://www.ezeeplan.co.uk/

you have cold bridging there. we are delinking the footings with Marmox block here to avoid it. bloody expensive too

150 batt 150 cav etc.

interesting, how did that work stopping the cold bridge to footings ? Having to use marnox blocks to achieve this on ours and they are horrendously expensive....

maybe there is a double ashp so in cooling mode it can shed the heat into the other pump to blast the dhw.

have 9.9kw solar, this time of year the heat pump will be in cooling mode though so not available for dhw.

they dont need it, limitless virtually free natural gas (waste product of their massive oil reserves).

dont confuse the two issues, green is bs politics. Insulating homes is common sense.

would have extended the cill to the wall rather than leave a little gap. Doesnt look that bad in fairness, decent decorator will polish it up.

Plan to have a play and find the sweet spot. Hoping the solar will mean very little is needed from the ASHP apart from deep winter.

i use enphase micro inverters for this reason. bit more expensive but a doddle to fit.

https://www.superglass.co.uk/products/superwall-32-cavity-wall-batt/

minimal upside, more downsides. more expensive, no batts to keep cavity clean while being built etc. For retrofit they have a place, wouldn't bother with new build.

have exactly the same issue with our current build. 5 beds / 4 baths. Current plan is an accumulator to maintain cold pressure and starting with 2 x 300L tanks with space to add more. I'll keep adding them until we dont run out of hot. Heating the water, will use ASHP to get it 45ish then overnight immersion to get it as hot as safely possible. Solar PV dump when available etc.

when you say water pipe do you mean mains? Should remain 750mm below ground then insulated where it comes up into the house. our water board inspect and wouldn't entertain any above ground clipping.