Cambs

+1 for Elfa. We’ve had the wall mounted shelving and storage baskets for about 20 years now. Used it in the garage in various houses - it’s been moved multiple times and has stood up very well.

Here’s a link to a video of the PH15 system. It shows window installation, including the use of the split tapes, starting at about 22mins 25 secs. https://en-gb.facebook.com/phstoreuk/ I hope the link works for you, I don’t have a Facebook account and it seemed to work ok for me. I found it a really useful, practical and informative video. Better than any others I’ve seen from the timber frame suppliers.

We have a heat pump tumble dryer - the other big advantage of it for us vs a conventional tumble dryer was that there is no need to punch a great big hole through the fabric of the building to vent it to outside. Plug it in and go.... We couldn't plumb it in where we were, so just need to empty the water tank every so often.

This is an interesting product that (following a quick search) I've not seen mentioned here before - conventional looking switches, sockets etc. with an on/off switch and aimed at the UK market. https://getden.co.uk/ It's taken them a while to get to market and website is not overly detailed but thought it might be of value.

I’ve been to both and wouldn’t bother going to Swindon unless it was for one of their twice yearly shows. You won’t see much there that you wouldn’t see at the NEC one, apart from a few more permanent displays e.g example foundations and the Potton show home.

It’s not to everyone’s taste, but I’d be tempted to go open plan. Something like this, perhaps?

We are in similar circumstances to you - our plot is alongside a Grade II listed building. Our conservation officer was not amenable to a chat - it all had to be done via applications and comments on the website, with the occasional email exchange. We engaged a Planning Consultant and it proved to be a godsend - we wouldn’t have succeeded without him. Local knowledge and recommendations are key for engaging with the right consultant. You could start by looking at your local councils planning website to see where a planning consultant has been used to support an application - try looking for similar applications e.g. close to listed building and in a conservation area and look for a Design and Access Statement which will often by written by a Planning Consultant. I will PM you with our conservation officer’s comments on our application. It will help you with some of the laws, policies to look at etc. I would redact it and post the relevant parts here but I am away at the moment and don’t have the tech with me to be able to edit the PDF.

Not sure if you've seen the manufacturing video on YouTube but might give you some idea of the quality.... Looks like they have made significant investment in manufacturing plant... Edit.... At about 2mins 40, there's a box of Blum fittings being poured in so looks like reasonable quality there...

We fitted one from diy kitchens on our last self build about 10 years ago. Good value, ready assembled and it stood up to wear and tear pretty well. The soft close door mechanisms only lasted about 5 minutes though - they may have improved them since then. It wasn’t helped by people slamming them I suspect..... A mix of oak and painted shaker. The painted bits had a grain in them that started to show the dirt after a few years. Drawers and hinges stood up pretty well. Delivered what was ordered and all well packed with no damage. Overall, I’d have a look at them for my next kitchen.

There is a possible online solution that would let you access from iPad/Mac/any device - Smartdraw. It does cost though - $9.95/month. There are a number of templates in there - look under "Engineering" https://www.smartdraw.com/templates/

Q1 and Q2 can probably be answered together and it was one of the things that caused a bit of head scratching. Bedroom 3 is not huge and Bedroom 4 is small - this solution keeps these bedrooms the same size as they are now and puts a landing immediately outside the two doors, so yes we can access both bedrooms from this landing (Check Q1) but if we were to make the 2 quarter landings into a single larger one (Check Q2) and added a stair to each of the stairs at the top level, then we would no longer have a viable landing for Beds 3 and 4. Similarly, I wouldn't want to lose any more space by pushing the stairs into the kitchen/living level.

Thanks for your feedback @Ferdinand, it took a bit of pondering and head scratching but I think I might have got there with the stairs. Had to dust off my rusty SketchUp skills. The issue I had was that the upstairs wall in the Bedroom 3 and 4 area was only 1m high, so I struggled at first to get the required 2m head height. This is what I came up with and it works for me.... Uses 2 quarter turn landings rather than winders. As you suggested, using the dead lobby space next to bedrooms 3 and 4, takes the existing staircase out all together giving me a kitchen/dining/utility and study area largely unencumbered by staircases and frees up more space for Bedrooms 1 and 2. All good .... Hopefully the screen shots below will give some idea of how it looks. Undecided as to whether to make it a feature (i.e. glass, steel, open treads) or to, at least partially, box it in to reduce noise transmission to upstairs - that's a decision for the future, I think....

I think the missing skylight is on the roof plans. I only posted extracts from the drawings. Re 4 bedrooms, yes, we do need to squeeze a box room for one person in to the plan

Hi @Ferdinand, please don’t be quiet!!!! Your help is very much appreciated and it’s one of the reasons why this place is so good. Thank you for all of the time and effort you have put into this. I need a bit of time to fully understand what you are proposing but I think it is a great idea. The issue that springs to mind is do I have adequate headroom to do this.... I’ll have a cogitate over the next day or two and see whether I can make this work for me

Hi @Ferdinand, thank you for your comments. Can I begin by saying that we would never have designed the house like this had we been able to start with a blank sheet of paper.... It was all dictated by the planners The plot already had planning permission. The plot is within the curtilage of a 17th century listed building and in a conservation area. The Conservation Officer strongly opposed the original application. We went through various pre-planning discussions for redesign which fell on deaf ears. We could have submitted and appealed but chose not to. Apart from some external tweaks, the only change that we managed to get through was to sink one wing of the building into the ground by a metre to enable us to get a second floor (just about) above it. Ridge heights, footprint and external layout were pretty fixed. I was not happy about this! This drives complexity into the design, to an extent. Now, on you some of your comments.... The kitchen layout was for planning only - it’s not the final design and something that we are considering now. You are right about the lack of circulation space around the island - it’s not enough. I agree with you about the stairs - I’d prefer a more straight flight and it’s something I’m looking at. It is driven to an extent by the complexity of the roof structure and the level changes and the need to be able to “land” upstairs with the necessary headroom Good point about the WC - next to the utility might be better. I think the upstairs layout with the plant room and two en suites in a row works pretty well to keep plumbing runs straightforward I’m OK with not “flumping” (as it were!) in the kitchen - I’d just like to get a dining table and an island in there

I’m hopeful that the combination of stone skin + cellulose insulated timber frame and roof will give us sufficient decrement delay to regulate summer temperatures. If I have an ASHP (site has no gas) then this may help matters in the very hot weather. In our last house, we had an MVHR with (supposed) comfort cooling - it did reduce temperatures by a degree or two but nowhere near sufficient to really cool anything down. I think the expression “I was sold a pup” springs to mind but then I didn’t know any better then....

Hi @TerryE, how have you found the summer temperatures in the “rooms in roof” floor? Our last build was a one and a half storey with a number of dormers, and it used to be unbearable sometimes during the hot weather, albeit it wasn’t a super efficient build.

We had a sweep inlet in our kitchen, but never used it, to be honest.

Hi @ProDave, there’s definitely a knack to winding these things. I first saw these in my brother’s house in Canada - they’re common there. You wind and unwind the hose by laying it flat on the floor and then wrap a big Velcro strap around it to keep it together. Dead easy once you get the hang of it..... honest!!

Thanks for the kind comments re the design.... I'll certainly upload photos as I go, not sure about the blog. We'll see nearer the time

We're in rented now, so using a regular upright again. I've been told (in no uncertain terms) that we'll be having a built in in the new house, so I guess that counts as a seal of approval for them. It's much lighter to push around than the upright, sucks the dust out of the house (depending on placement), and only needs to be emptied every few months. We've got dogs, so need something powerful and built ins seem to work for us. Not sure if the new EU power restrictions will impact built ins - I suspect they will. Next time, we'll buy a hose for each floor to save lugging them up and down stairs

Hi @Nickfromwales, the self builds have been over a 20 year period with the last one being finished 10 years ago, so fairly standard building regs minimum stuff. This'll be the first real high performing one. All the builds have been contracted out to a single builder - it's more cost effective for me to keep working, so no great skills to bring to the build. My role thus far has been to find the land, get the designs done, get planning permission, spec the builds and find a builder. I do like to do one or two things to say that I have made a contribution to the build - last time was to install the piping for a central vac and also terminate all the Cat5 pulled by the electrician. I'm getting pretty good at making my mind up early, though..... I found early on that changing my mind during the build was an expensive mistake. It does help me to get nearer to cost certainty to get as much specified as I can, as early as possible in the process.

Hi - Been on here for a while and planning to start self build number 5 in 2018, so seems like a good time to introduce myself. We got planning permission towards the end of this year so time to share some plans. We're on the Cambs/Lincs borders, in a conservation area, in the grounds of a listed building and with a Planning Department which was split as to whether this should be approved or not, so it has not been an easy process.... We got there in the end, though. It's our "downsize" self build - the last one was about 320 sq. m and this one will be around 170m so quite a lot to try and squeeze in. Aim is to build to PH standard, but certification may prove difficult due to form factor. Got a PH designer on board (he did the drawings attached), so will get him to do a quick and dirty PHPP calc to see how close we can get. I think the form factor (dictated by planning, with little room to change) will preclude it, but we'll see. It'll be a timber frame - we're in discussions with some of the firms who regularly pop up here. We were aiming to hand over to a single builder but that is proving difficult, so may have to get more hands on than ever before. My son's in the building industry, so he'll prove a useful source of hopefully good tradesmen. Thank you to everyone on this forum - it has been a great source of information, inspiration and entertainment.... and I'm sure that it'll continue to be so during our build.

Good spot..... just bought it. 795 pages long. No catch as far as I can see.

AFAIK, there is no penalty in PHPP for uncertified windows, but there is one for uncertified MVHR units: For windows, from Green Building Store website: *It is not necessarily required to use a Passivhaus Institut certified window when designing or certifying a Passivhaus. The actual requirement for Passivhaus Institut certification is either that the Uw value should be < 0.8 W/m2K when modelled with glazing Ug of 0.7 W/m2K, or that the Uw installed should be < 0.85 W/m2K with the same glass, and including the linear thermal bridging coefficient of the installation. For MVHR, from "PHPP Illustrated" by Sarah Lewis: "If a non-certified unit is being used you must take 12 percentage points off the manufacturer's stated efficiency e.g. 90% becomes 78%" The PHPP manual is a bit more of a difficult read, but it says this re MVHR: "if there is no certificate, then the value ....... is assumed with a deduction of 12% for ventilation outputs up to 600m3/h" There may well be other components that are penalised, but these are the ones that I am aware of.