deancatherine09

Oh thank goodness & hope they do the same in England - hate the things. Around here pretty much every house has one and the air in the winter is sometimes like smog 🤢 so much for 'fresh air' in the countryside We've luckily got MVHR which will filter out the pollutants from WB smoke in our house.

We've got non softened water piping to our kitchen sink, tap in outside BBQ area & fridge supply. Didn't bother with the other bathroom sinks as I never normally drink water from a bathroom tap!

Go to the NSBRC if you can and play around with the exhibits there, most (if not all) suppliers mentioned on this thread have displays there. We were 100% set on a set of sliders until we tried some of them at the NSBRC. Same with windows, lots of the 3g ones have very thick frames. ETA Nordan windows are awful - they have them in the Scotframe exhibition house in NSBRC. They are a significant cut below the other manufacturers IMO.

The size of the windows was the biggest surprise for us too! Progress is looking good! Love the window seat idea

That's very poor Ours are all clipped at 600mm centres and fully insulated.

We've got Velfac - have been very happy with the windows and doors but they've only been in 1 year. We chose them as they have the thinnest frames and also offered the bi-parting slide door (which suited our requirements perfectly). However, performance of the approved installer with regards to manufacturing and fitting the cills has been a different story.....

That's positive!

It really isn't clear. After posting here I went on the BuildHub guide and on there it seems to suggest otherwise. I think, to be on the safe side, I will buy everything pre completion cert. For us its things like patio materials, tiles etc - things that are not needed to be finished for Building Control completion but would be allowable on the VAT reclaim.

Can you still claim for things bought after the official completion cert is issued?

We are going with microcement. Bought the kit from Relentless for 120sqm for just under £3k for the whole of downstairs and going to apply ourselves. Ours is an insulated raft with power floated concrete / UFH already in so the microcement will just sit on top.

We've always had a F&P double drawer dishwasher and love them. For us (a couple), they are excellent as you only have half the space to fill and so it means we are not running a half empty dishwasher. It also saves a lot of bending when loading / unloading the top drawer (which is the one we use most often). We got ours several years ago and paid £800 in the sale.

We've got a Velfac door which is beautiful, good U value (and was a reasonable price too!) but maybe too modern for you? This is ours, but they do other styles

We love the style of Steel Crittal windows / doors but were building a passivehouse, and the two don't really mix well! In the end we went with Velfac 3g units in black with glazing bars, which look really nice.

Diagram below shows house, red line is hardcore. Second pic is aerial view of what they have dug, green line original retaining wall.

All So we are 75% through the build of our house (MBC twinwall with passive raft). Doing exterior cladding & first fix at the moment. Relations with neighbours were great until planning went in and then they immediately stopped talking to us and started creating problems. They have now, I feel, come to the realisation that no matter what they try to do to us, we ignore and carry on so they have started trying to separate themselves from us (great as they are nutcases!). As part of that, they started to erect a fence on the boundary line, however in doing their preparations for such fence, have removed a retaining wall on their property and excavated 1-2m of earth (retaining wall on their property, so obviously they want to erect the fence at the lower level & at the boundary). The retaining wall was about 0.8m high, ish and retained the soil on our property. Problem is, where they have excavated is within 0.5m of our compacted hardcore under the EPS base, and 1.8m from said EPS base. It's lower down than the founds. I don't believe they are planning on replacing the retaining wall further back as they have dug fence post holes right next to boundary line. I think their intention was to just put up the fence and tell us the soil retention was our issue? When we realised we immediately sent them a cease & desist letter requesting that they stop the work and follow the Party Wall Act. No response (although they have seemingly stopped work on that area). This happened on Tues 15th and we delivered letter Weds 16th by hand, with another copy send via post. We are also following up with a surveyor. My quandry now is, should we tell insurance company (Protek)? Technically there is no visible slippage of the soil etc, no visible structural damage to the frame / foundations and thus no actual damage to claim YET but I am sure they would be interested?