Stones

I take the point about making building regs ever more stringent - insulation levels do reach a tipping point where the cost far far exceeds the benefits, but to policy makers, you can see the attraction of the passive house model, a house that doesn't need heating - great, we get rid of fuel poverty and reduce our carbon emissions. The biggest problem as I see it is the inspection regime (or lack thereof). You can see the attraction to developers - why spend £2 - £3K testing a house and having to install an MVHR system when you can use a default air permeability value and simply get away with trickle vents and a few cheap extraction fans. The vast majority of people I have spoken to see trickle vents as nothing more than a source of unwanted drafts. Likewise extraction fans, they view them as noisy. Nobody really stops to consider the impact of closing vents or switching fans off, they just go ahead and do it, then wonder why problems develop. It's not much of a leap to suggest the same would happen in a PH house with someone not interested or acquainted with what is needed. MVHR units get switched off because the householder is told / believe it is costing them money, they fail to check and replace filters, they refuse to increase ventilation rates etc. I did a bit of experimentation in our last house with ventilation rates. Day by day, I gradually reduced ACH to building regs minimum and then slightly below. The result was a fairly unpleasant internal environment and condensation forming on windows. Increasing the ACH got rid of these problems and led me to conclude that the prescribed minimum ACH was simply too low a rate to properly deal with all of the consequences of modern day living (especially drying laundry inside and daily showering). As every house (even when it has the same design / layout) will perform differently according its location, occupancy etc it stands to reason that every house has to be tuned / managed to meet the specific needs of its occupants. The only way of doing that is by trial and error, seeing what works and what doesn't. That brings us back nicely to the end user. If he or she is interested and prepared to go through that process, then they will have a very comfortable and pleasant house to live in. If they aren't interested, then their surroundings will always be a compromise and in some cases develop into some of the problems referred to earlier. Not an easy one to solve as no matter what handover information is given, some end users will choose to ignore the advice they are given. I for one, wouldn't even consider building a house without having MVHR installed. I'm currently renting a house without adequate ventilation and it is horrible. Properly managed (including getting the right rate of ventilation) there is in my view nothing to beat a well insulated and airtight house.

Just the particular ICF product my builder uses. He has recently been on an awareness day for a system that puts the additional insulation inside the formwork, but the cost of that system is that much more that it still makes more financial sense for him to use the system he currently uses, even though it involves more on site labour. Cladding wise I guess you can fix on anything you want, including brick slips.

I'm building with ICF - have a skim through my blog. Certainly competitive with other forms of construction if you can find a contractor who is used to building with it (I was lucky in this respect, there being two ICF contractors up here).

I don't understand the problem, all a passive house is, is a house that meets certain standards, the most notable one being the amount of heating input required. All of the concerns you have, air quality, solar gain etc could apply to a house built to less stringent insulation and air tightness standards. It's about how you choose to live in the house. I like a fresh, well ventilated house, and far prefer the air quality offered using an MVHR than a house without, I just choose to mechanically ventilate at more than the minimum or optimum passive house level. If I want to really freshen things up I throw open the windows. I like my house nice and warm in winter, and will happily heat it 24/7 at a higher temperature than than the prescribed design temperatures used when filling out PHPP. So what if it costs a bit more? At the end of the day, it's your house, and you do not have to be a slave to some predetermined rules unless you choose to.

Yes, if grid connected you need to inform your DNO. Info here You have to go through all of that so the DNO is satisfied that the equipment you connect is safe and will not feed electricity into the grid of in the event of a power cut so their workers are protected. You won't get paid for any export doing this. As far as I understand it you would have to persuade a supply company to buy the export from you. When I last asked SEE couldn't give me an answer on how I would go about doing this (other than the usual MCS route).

+1, not an expert but seems to me to be 100 times better than what was there before.

I was quoted £900 (+ VAT) for a Panasonic A2A fully installed. I loathe storage heaters (currently renting a house with them) with a passion, and think them far from user / tenant friendly, although Dave has a valid point about simplicity. It is for those reasons I would discount oil, too much to go wrong. Likewise, I wouldn't touch an A2W heat pump in a rental, you can just picture your tenant trying to constantly produce hot water. A2A certainly seems to have a lot of traction up here as a simple and cost effective retrofit (and for a lot of small new builds).

Air to air heat pump for heating and E7 for DHW? I suspect that would be the lowest capital cost option and reasonable in terms of running costs for tenants.

I remember the tyre house (as you say, a lot of very hard work involved). 2003, IIRC is when plot prices in particular shot up dramatically. Certainly in Perthshire their was huge competition for plots, which meant vendors could name their price and get away with it. House prices seemed to be forging ahead too, which meant would be developers could buy an overpriced site, spend a fortune getting around the difficulties and still make money simply because the market had gone up.

Thanks, assumed that would be the case.

Several members have by virtue of their site, ended up building quite substantial structural retaining walls, and in some cases have had to tank those walls as part of their build. It is this additional cost that has always put me off building an earth sheltered house, but I am aware of a couple of projects locally where houses are getting built into a hillside, utilising one of the many former stone cuttings / quarries that are dotted around the island. Having generally only served local communities, the majority of these cuttings are small, and nicely proportioned in terms of putting in a medium sized house. I remember watching a Grand designs many years ago where they used such a cutting / quarry, but again they resorted to expensive retaining walls and tanking systems. In an idle moment, I began thinking about such cuttings and why people go to all the expense of building a new retaining wall, (which they then tank and backfill) when there is already a perfectly sound retaining structure already in place (the quarried rock / stone face). I began musing on the possibility of building an new structure close to the quarried face, leaving a sizeable cavity (lets say 600mm). A turf roof would cover the build and extend out to cover the cavity, continuing out until it met the surrounding ground level. The cavity would be ventilated, either mechanically or passively by chimney effect with a drain at the base, to deal with any water / moisture. To all intents you would have something that had the appearance of being buried in the ground, without much of the cost normally associated with that type of development. Open to comment...

That's the route we've always taken as well, although I think in days gone by, timber frame was a very rough and ready product, so it probably didn't matter as builders were happy to hack a bit off or add a bit in as required.

Our last house, the timber frame came with a tolerance of +/- 2mm IIRC. It was fitted onto a sole plate (which two joiners had spent the day getting correctly positioned, measuring and remeasuring critical dimensions. In comparison, our first house had a tolerance of 50mm and was subject to quite rudimentary adjustment on site! Timber Frames have come on a long way.

Another LED query: We have a 5 Amp circuit for occasional lighting in our main room. Would it pose any issues (other than needing an adaptor) to plug in one of these type of kits into the 5A circuit? http://www.beamled.com/led-strip-lights/led-strip-light-kits.html

A lot of the tradesmen here operate on that basis, but then its a small community with nowhere to hide. Certainly all of the guys we have had on site have cracked on with the job.

My staircase got delivered today, and all being well, will be fitted in the next couple of days. It's made from pine (stringers and risers) with oak treads, the plan being that we will paint the pine white and oil the oak treads. Obviously I need to prime the pine before applying whatever paint finish we decide upon. My question is should I prime (and indeed apply the finishing coats) before or after oiling the oak treads? Either way I will be masking (very carefully) the treads, but there is always a risk that primer / paint will find its way / bleed onto the edge of the oak. Just wondering what would be the easiest to deal with if that happened.

Certainly one of things I'm thinking about, order two or three spare sets of handles to cover the most used rooms. The problem is how to you measure quality, is price a reasonable indicator. I'm not convinced it is, but the flip side of the coin is that if you only spend lets say £10 per set of door handles, if you decide to change everything a few years down the line, it's not going to be prohibitive. Good point about matching in to bathroom fittings. The only match I had been considering was the window handles, which appear to be satin stainless. Most of our bathroom stuff is polished chrome, so whatever we do, there will be a clash somewhere (we want to use the same door handle throughout).

We like the contrast between oak and dark wood (in fact my wife has just ordered a walnut topped coffee table), but we do want the oak to have the same finish if at all possible. We have had pre finished lacquered oak doors in previous houses, and while these looked great, I don't want my skirtings / facings to look like that, and I think it would look a little odd having the doors lacquered but the other woodwork oiled. The floor is an interesting one, as I can see benefits to both finishes, but until i have so samples of skirting to compare against flooring, it's a difficult one to call.

In a fixed position, i.e. one where there is no movement of the cable, does the fact that the cable may become harder and more brittle really matter?

If they won't deliver, it should be easy enough to arrange collection. I can give you the name of an Orkney haulier who do weekly runs north / south if need be...

We've certainly been through the mill with previous house sales, and considered various options, but discounted them all as they simply didn't help us achieve our aim of moving on, so fully understand why you are considering this. Can't advise on the tax situation, but I can't imagine HMRC being supportive of anything which would in theory reduce their tax take. As per your last post, I think you would have to negotiate with your potential tenant/purchaser that you would only reduce the final sale price by the net amount (your after tax take) of rental paid. Nothing unusual about having an option to buy at the end of a rental period. A few thoughts though: how do you value the house - current valuation or value in 5 years time using an independent valuer (which could go either way for you). How much account do you take of B&B earnings if she grows the business such that it significantly exceeds the amount you were taking in on an annual basis?

Good to know, it's this type of practical information that is worth its weight in gold.

Managed to speak to the electrician this afternoon when he stopped by the site. He confirmed the issue with EPS, and advised that where he had run cables down the face of ICF blocks, building paper would be fitted behind to prevent the cable coming into contact with EPS. He did say that they used to put cables in conduit, but had moved away from this as it slowed down plasterboarding. Interestingly, he said using expanding foam round cable penetrations was okay, as was using decorators caulk.

Just in the process of choosing door handles and we have a choice of finishes / mix of finishes: Satin Nickel and Polished Chrome Polished Chrome and Satin Chrome Satin Stainless Steel Any of those combinations / finishes to be avoided?

I seem to remember watching a Grand Designs where they had quite a fancy floating staircase, but had to put in a slender vertical support half way up to prevent flex, as the occupants were a bit heavier than average. I'm assuming the finished cladding will be taken right to the tile, or do you have to leave a couple of mm expansion gap? Likewise, what size of expansion gap did you leave between tread and tile?