Thedreamer

Hi @SteamyTea can you expand on the energy conservation part? To be honest I was unsure how this set-up would run before I moved in but it's working really well on very little power and seems to be very efficient. I'll need to wait until a full year has passed before I can reflect fully on the installation.

I have a mini air exhaust heat pump on our 260 litre hot water tank inside our house. It sits in a cupboard within our utility room, but produces virtually no noise when the doors are shut. Presumably the larger one that are outside for underfloor heating are much louder. I would think in a self build with triple glazing, airtight, modern heat pump it's not going to be an issue.

Hi @Micharlblueboy Hopefully you will stumble across one. In the meantime plenty of time for research.

Agree with this. I would say that the build costs are higher than expect so going to need to take on the project manager yourself to allow it to go ahead. I think this will depend on your builder. We worked on a subcontractor basis but had a single joiner who did the bulk of the work. I have a bit of an eye for spotting details and he was great at keeping me from sweating over nothing. Good regular communication is important to ensure everybody knows what the expectations are. I was lucky in the fact that I lived on site, would pop down in the morning and take a note pad to record any materials needed or whether a decision was required. I learned pretty quickly that you will have problems along the way, sometimes you have to park them as you have other areas that require your attention to keep the whole thing moving along.

Interesting looking back at this thread. In the end we had a SAP rating of 78 and used a different building society for the mortgage. Although we upgraded along the way slightly, I would expect our score to remain the same. Our built has around 20m2 of south facing glazing and our designer mentioned that this would help our score. There are loads on here who know more on this than me, but your report @SuperJohnG shows 6.00 for your air tightness I would have expected it to be a lot lower if you are having MHVR?

Are you on good terms with the neighbours? I would imagine as well as the noise, tight access and distance to the road you will have to keep that pretty clean if used by others. It might also need to be tarred when finished from damage during the build.

Hello, welcome to Buildhub from Skye. If I was starting I would have a good look at ground conditions avoiding sites with bedrock/peat and look at potential utilities costs at the earliest possible stage. Two architectural firms on the island used frequently are Rural Design and Dualchas.

Strongly agree with this. Try and get the local team out for a sensible conversation. I did that for our quote, took a pinch bar with an SSE employee and we chartered our way through the bedrock for the wayleave route.

Sure Just to provide some background our connection was 220 odd meters, through a single track road road in 2015. Looking back on my emails and there are quite a few, the quote started off at £10,900, then dropped to £6,300 after reviewing the route and options regarding a couple of 3rd party wayleaves. The quote was £1,900 cheaper with me doing this. The prefer choice was for SSE to blind the trench with sand. I had to supply the ducting and a rope at a cost of around £350. North of Highland so only for self build/community groups up here. £1,500 received from them. Not that well know even here, might be other charitable trusts which provide similar grants in other parts of the UK. My quote included the road opening. No apart from the post being mentioned at the start it was not considered again. Family live in surrounding houses and the cable was just supplying to many house to support another property. Our cable was really thick but we have a single phase. To summarise I spent £350 on ducting A day work on the digger £400 Electricity connection 220 meter and road opening £6,300 Less grant £1,500 Less £980 - this was a cheque I received at a later date. Total connection cost just over £4,500 I then constructed a box for the temporary supply from old fence posts and scrap materials. I paid a further small fee of about £150 to move the cable into the house from the temporary supply. The road crossing for SSE had to be close to the transformer they had their own local contractor, but for the water/phone connection, I dug down to find a duct which had enough room for another water pipe and phone line, threaded a drawcord through and cost nothing apart from a minor permit for apparatus under the road about £100.

I've nearly finished our self build on the basis of just dealing with subcontractors. Buying materials yourself takes time if you are not familiar with the products. The only materials I didn't supply were the brickies stuff, underground drainage pipes and the staircase and balustrade. Sometimes I just had to be realistic as to what the wastage would be and difficulties knowing on the quantity order. All these trades charged VAT at 0%. Contractors not registered you should buy the materials. Some contractors that are not registered might want you to buy the materials to keep their turnover under the registration limit.

I would disagree with this. I went backwards and forwards with our DNO. The first quote came down by thousands when I suggested an alternative routes. In terms of time spend to £s saved this probably added the most value to our self build. I would rather send out three or four emails then lose thousands of pounds.

Nearest Asda is three hours away and I thought that Ed Miliband retired but now he is back.

Thanks RedOctober. The house name is now registered, we just paid that annoying fee. We share a similar name. Druim nan Darach

Thanks Temp had a look at the link but I think they had shut down for a bit.

I would imagine that would look smart and last a long time.

Who was the seller?

We got ours down by: using ducting and a drawcord own contractor did trench work and back filing applied for a grant (this connection was with SSE) went back and forth for months with SSE with a view to reducing the quote as much as possible was not expecting this but sometime after the connection was done and dusted we received a random cheque from SSE no further information just that we had been overcharged. I checked the quote all was as expected so must of been an internal error that I had never seen. The connection should be zero rated for VAT if for a new build.

Would anybody be able to recommend a company that produces signs for a house name? So many when I googled. Going to be mounted on a gate

That all makes sense.

My point was if you live somewhere where smokes settles you might not be able to use MVHR much in the winter. Plenty of small glens here I pass one on the way to work that has been gutted and MVHR fitted and next door an old croft house burns coal, wood and peat through the year the smoke often lingers in the air and I can only presume that it is pulled into the system. Would filters work effectively in this situation? Would their be a difference between the air sucked in via mechanical means rather than through the fabric of the building? My point is that location might be a consideration. Why would you fit MVHR in that situation? Vent the air via extraction fans and fresh air then through the trickle vents.

We have the standard ones after while they just blend in and you forget about them.

That is good for you. I think there maybe some luck when it comes to developer houses. Prehaps I've read to many Daily Mail articles.

Guess if it works well in Orkney that answers the exposed location question!

Hi Matt welcome to Buildhub. Lots of good info here. Maybe we might see a few pics?

Another here that didn't put it. I think location is important. I am not sure I would put say if I had neighbours close by with stoves and my plot was in a valley. I would be interest ed to hear from those that have installed it how it performs in a exposed locations with 60pmh winds. I would only install it if I was responsible for the air tightness. If you buy a house from a developer that has not had an individual airtest close to completion it may be a complete waste of money. For hands on self builds or if using good trades it make good sense to install it.