Adrian Walker

I would strongly suggest that you get your design checked for heating and cooling using PHPP or similar. This will save you £Ks is building and running costs.

Welcome to Buildhub Tony

Which self-cleaning oven do you have?

Do you mean this - https://dcfw.org/larch-house/

Thanks for the welcome, you're a lovely bunch (collective word needed) of people Correct. I'm not going to build all of the houses myself, many will be self- builders for this and CLI (housing tax) reasons. I will be doing the infrastructure and possible a golden brick.

A warm welcome to BuldHub

The current plan is to build more than 3 houses - all the same design. The physical construction of the 3 building systems will show the balance of on vs. off site construction and the speed. All will use the same insulated foundation slab.

Thank you, I'll have a look (https://www.warwickshirerha.org.uk/developing-new-homes/the-development-pipeline/exciting-new-passivhaus-project/) . A lot of social housing developers are seeing at last the benefits from using the Passive House concept. I did track down this on about the Bournville Trust https://ourbirmingham.wordpress.com/solar-pioneers-of-bournville-2/

That's really interesting and I would love to know more, on here or PM?

Actually, the owners aren't volunteers, they actively want to provide the data.

Thank you - both. The rationale for using 3 building systems is to find out which is the best system to design with, build with and most importantly how comfortable the houses are to live in. It's an experiment, the houses and occupants are monitored 24/7 to gather data and provide answers. To get a good price from suppliers you ask them if their system is the best!

Joined BuildHub last September and thought it was about time that I introduced myself. Had a small farm in Hampshire (near Stockbridge) that I sold a 5+ years ago, but kept 2 acres to build a house on. Pre-planning showed that some affordable houses would have to be part of the planning permission deal. Since then I have discovered the Passive House concept and the plan now is to build a number of Smart, ECO and affordable houses. By affordable I mean less than 80% of market rate, so about £300K. I have some very innovate building and funding ideas that I will share as the development progresses, including having identical Passive Houses built using 3 different building methods - ICF, SIP & Timber Frame. At a visit to a Passive House in Andover last November I met member Dreadnaught and I'm helping him with his project. This is a very early design (animated gif), but it gives a flavour of what I'm trying to be achieved on the site.

If you have zero(ish) budget, then Howden's is not the place to go IMHO

Great. They often call this type of drain around the perimeter a French Drain, nothing to do with France, but after Henry French, born 1813

Are you planning to have a path/hard standing around the house? It's worth considering doing it sooner rather than later since this makes an acceptable base for the scaffolding. Some companies won't put scaffolding directly on earth, so it worth checking now.