MarkH

Thanks! Ask a simple question, get a mass of interesting and comprehensive information in return.

I'd like to run the slightly vague ideas I have past the forum-mind: How do you bring in mains water through your wall(s) and up through the slab? My hazy idea is that I run the blue alkathene through a suitably lintelled hole in my (solid, 215mm) wall, sleaved in 110mm soil pipe that is in turn surrounded by 'pea gravel'. Then presumably the alkathene is directed up through the slab to a stopcock (under the kitchen sink in our case, just the other side of the wall). Does the pipe run un-sleeved up through the slab concrete? How is airtightness maintained? I'm a bit clueless here, all info gratefully accepted.

Rosebay Willowherb? Also know as fireweed. We had a patch last year which we did nothing much about and now this year they are eveywhere and spreadin up our lane. I've been chopping them when possible.

We're off grid now in a caravan on our plot and will remain so when the house is built. Our connection was going to cost £20k and more and it just seemed more interesting to go off-grid plus I have a strong aversion to overhead cables (just don't like the look of them, they chop the sky up). We have a measly 1000W of P.V., a 600w wind turbine and a 48V, 460amp/hr battery bank. Once the garage is finished we'll fit our currently ground-mounted PV to the roof and expand the array to 3kW. Our house is small and uncomplicated and we don't (and won't) have a 200 inch TV, we currently run a brilliant A+++ rated fridge that uses 65kWh a year. Jeremy is right about PV in winter. Last November/December was very, very dark. Some record for lack of sunlight was broken at a weather station near here and one day we only generated a ridiculous 35w/hr. We got to the point where we had to borrow a genny to avoid battery damage and considered getting either a genny or a wind turbine with the turbine winning. Once the turbine was installed we were fine, winter weather is rarely dull AND calm. Whilst turbines need a good site (ours is OK, not perfect) and don't do much in lighter winds they do provide 24 hours a day of juice when the wind is blowing and that makes up for a lot. Our turbine has been shut down for weeks now - we don't need the power and we have slight issues making the solar reg and diversion controller play well together - but it was a good buy and certainly preferable (for us) to a generator. I'll be interested to see where battery tech goes in the next few years. Something better that our flooded cells is likely to come along and if it doesn't I'm likely to look for a better solution. It's a minor but regular pain in the arse maintaining them.

Thanks Ian - your design looks great, what did you use to produce that model? Yes I am considering something similar to you (although my question was more about truss materials, vaguely worded though). We're tucked away in the woods here which we like but I was disturbed to see, whilst out on a boat a while ago, that you can see our caravan from miles away! I'd like to modify our inherited (from previous owners) design specifically with respect to the appearance of the building which in the approved plans is rough rendered and white. It'd be good to blend into the surrounding landscape a bit more and I've considered larch cladding on the seaward side which with the woodland backdrop would render us invisible! Wood 'tiles' would be good too but my knowledge of those is minimal, so thanks. Our planning permission contained several spurious references to the 'vernacular' though so whether we'd get away with not using slates as specced is questionable, we're already pushing our luck with changes we've made. Why not? Aren't many glazed gable ends exposed? That is a good website.

In terms of the wood varieties you can build a roof with, what have people used and why? Our original plans specified green oak, the architect told us it was all the rage at the moment as if that was a selling point. The dimensional instability of oak puts me off a bit, I rented a new oak build in France for a few months that was almost on the other side of the road by the time we moved out. A friend is building the trusses and he seemed to think most hardwoods could be made to work and it's all down to the sizing of the beams. Douglas Fir has been mentioned. One gable truss might be exposed to the weather, depending on how we glaze it - I guess that's significant as we wouldn't want to use anything that had to be treated or otherwise maintained. All thoughts appreciated.

It's part of the view - the rest is pretty good too! If the caravan wasn't slowly being absorbed into the woods we might be less inclined to crack on with the house... It's a very remarkable spot here, we're surrounded by woodland with no neighbours within a half k, down a long, dead-end track but only ten minutes from the nearest town. I've got a 1970s scrambler I ride to work on (I drive a boat around the island in the photograph) with most of the journey on a green lane that no-one ever goes down. It's a good commute! We're very lucky to have snagged this spot. I grew up nearby and played around in the ruined cottage that was still standing here until a few years ago, even at 8 years old I quite fancied living here. A series of very unlikely factors (including amongst many other things a freak storm off the coast of Morocco and the death of a 1930s Olympic rower) all aligned to let us buy the place at the exact time we were able to.

We've just finalised our window order with Velfac. We managed to secure a substantial discount from the original quote mainly by procrastinating for weeks and occasionally namedropping other manufacturers. The last straw seemed to be when we mentioned we were going to the permenant exhibition at Swindon to check out Internorm. I don't know whether what we got knocked off the total is better than usual - probably not - but we're pleased as both of us are usually rubbish at negotiating.

As a longtime harvester of forum knowledge for a boat build I completed a while ago I am familiar with the bizarre ecosystem of online forums and the need to pan for the nuggets of gold amongst the crazy gravel and try and ignore (or resist the urge to participate in) the aggy clashes between dogmatic keyboard-pounders foaming at the mouth in dark rooms sometimes half a world away from each other. I was therefore very surprised when I found ebuild which seemed to be an oasis of informed and good-natured conversation populated largely by apparently pleasant people - with an added sprinkling of Obi Wan Kenobi build-gurus sporting almost laughable levels of in-depth knowledge. I was sad to see ebuild die, hope this place will be as good. The signs are positive. I'm building a small (not tiny) house in West Wales, solid wall with EWI. We are off-grid electrically already with PV and a small wind turbine (live on site in a caravan). We intend to have an unecessarily deep bath. We might not have a woodburning stove now (partly seeing sense, mostly seeing the price of decent room-sealed stoves). Our windows are going to be bigger than is wise. We don't really know what we're doing.