ProDave

When the wind blows, our trees drop a lot of small branches little more than twigs. they would normally be a nuisance to get rid of. But I collect them, dry them, and use them as kindling to start the fire. That saves splitting larger logs to make kindling.

I am not sure there is one? Vaulted to me, means the ceiling follows the line of the roof (so no loft space) I guess our bedroom might be described as semi vaulted as it follows the line of the roof a long way up and then is cut off flat just to give us a small loft space?

I burn wood here in a WBS. In a property with trees, I would say it is pretty essential. All the wood from maintaining and trimming the trees including dead wood goes on the stove. That plus other wood collected locally meets our needs. If I didn't have the stove, then all the tree maintenance would provide a lot of "waste" wood which I would probably be giving away to somebody else to burn on a stove. I have also in the last week or so been re thinking how our heating runs and trying to reduce (it's already low) cost. That is reduce cost, not necessarily reduce the amount of energy used. Up to now, the ASHP has just been on a timer to come on at 6AM and then under the control of room thermostats. That works well in the winter when the house needs several hours of low level heat to meet the heat losses. But now, in the shoulder seasons, stating at 6AM means the house has had all the heat it needs for the day early in the morning. So for the last week, the timer has been off, and I have manually been turning the heating on at 10AM once the sun is up and the PV is generating well and by 10AM on a sunny day, the PV generates enough to power the ASHP so although I am still using the same amount of energy to heat the house, I am getting it all from the PV on a sunny day. That is a future project to automate that, probably along the lines of @TerryE system to predict the daily heat input needed and then determine the operating time of the ASHP to best use solar PV generation.

If choosing a stock design, make sure it works with the site and house orientation. e.g you want to enjoy the best view from the living room and/ or catch the sun. I have seen stock houses put on a site backwards to try and achieve that with rather odd results.

No difference in foundations between 1.5 and 2 storey. If you want cheap foundations, you want a square / rectangle design not that more complex T shaped house. The extra costs of the T shaped house extend to the roof, tiling etc. Isn't this a new thread just continuing the discussion of the previous thread? If this is a house in the countryside in Scotland you won't get permission for a full blown 2 storey house, there has to be some element of room in roof.

My ASHP was sized to give enough heat to heat the house in the worst case here of +20 inside and -10 outside. That was calculated with Jeremy's spreadsheet that turned out to give a much more accurate result than the SAP calculations. I am in the "An ASHP works well when properly specified" camp. But at the same time, I also recognise if you have mains gas available then an ASHP is very unlikely to be cheaper to run than a gas boiler.

When I did our first build 19 years ago, I specifically checked with BC could the duct just come from under the ventilated timber floor and they said yes. that one just came to a floor vent behind the stove cast into the hearth. This time I didn't bother asking the question, I just did it. BC noted the ducted air into the stove bud did not ask where exactly it connected to.

Primary is air in at the bottom of the firebox, for coal. Secondary is air in at the top of the firebox for wood. Some stoves only take the bottom primary air from the duct and simply open vents on the door to take the top secondary air from the room.

Hi and welcome We look forward to your questions, but the house should not be particularly complicted.

Our stove is ducted air intake. IIRC it was an 80mm diameter inlet connector and I just bought 80mm flexible aluminium pipe, not the really flimsy one but quite solid. That connects to my adaptor in the wall that leads down to under the ventilated suspended floor. The pipe connecting to the stove must be non combustible. I really can't see any risk of flames going down the intake. The intake is well below the firebox underneath the ash pan. I cannot imagine what sort of backdraught situation would send flames down there. If you touch the vent pipe when the stove is running it is cold, because it is drawing in cold outside air. Take care when buying a stove that it takes both primary and secondary air from the ducted intake, not all do. BC didn't seem bothered that the stove I fitted was different to what was on the building warrant, they just wanted to see the manual and check the "distance to combustible materials" stated in the manual had been met.

What I like about Arduino is there is no OS to learn. You load the programming software, write some code, send it to the Arduino and it works. I had done plenty of C programming before so coding was easy. If it's your first time using a Pi and you are not famillar with Linux then that's another learning curve to climb before you even start coding anything. But they are very different beasts, it all depends what you want to do. the Arduino suited the simple program for my PV dump controller.

So the unusual "feature" in this build is the DPC and start of the timber frame is above the finished floor level, so the bit of wall the skirting is fixed to is the block wall below the DPC with little or no insulation. I would be looking to take a bit of skirting off in one of the rooms and see how it is fixed. The block wall seems set back a bit so there might be scope to get some thin PIR insulation in before putting the skirting back.

Why can't you do a heat pump? At a COP of it 3 would be about 9.3p per kWh

Yes. Brain freeze, fingers did not type what i was thinking. You are clearly the first person to actually read it and correct me.

Good summary. Even in perfect conditions, a heat pump is not going to be cheaper to run than a gas boiler. BUT that may change of gas carries on rising faster than electricity. Heat pumps work better with lower temperature water than a gas boiler so you really need UFH (AND the floor insulation needed to fit that) or over sized radiators. And you need a larger hot water cylinder as the hot water is not the scalding hot you get from a gas boiler. For many older houses, it is going to be upgrading the floor insulation that is going to be expensive and messy, particularly houses with uninsulated solid concrete floors.

You NEED twin wall through the wall. Most twin wall flues are rated to be 50mm from combustible material. A single wall has to be more like 300mm or more from combustible material, that would be one BIG hole in the wall and dangerously hot for anyone passing the cabin to touch.

Thanks they are viewable now. Please take this as a constructive criticism, but it is much better to film "things" in landscape by turning your phone on it's side. Would would see much more of what you are filming. You never see a television program or a film shot in portrait.

On the subject of long, or delayed builds. There is an individual plot in town where they have done the foundations, erected the ground floor timber frame and then sheeted it up and left it. The frame for the upper floor appears to be there covered in sheeting. It's been like that 3 or more years. the delay appears to centre on the overhead power cables over the plot right above the house. I don't know what the story is but you would have thought they would have had them moved before starting.

That is why I fitted a wood burning stove in mine. Free heating, but keeping up the supply of logs was a challenge.

But I don't have a log in with vimeo nor do I want one.

I get "Video is not rated. Log in to watch"

I miss typed, if it's better than 3 you need MVHR (I will correct previous post)

In Scotland, if your air tightness is better than 3 you must fit mvhr

And don't you think it was worth spending a little to get to an EPC A? Surely in the present energy situation, being able to advertise it as EPC A would be a big plus point?

And there in one post is the reason to self build. Builders building to sell don't care about the house as long as a scrapes through building regs and don't care about energy efficiency. Perhaps part of the problem is buyers don't care, but with the rising cost of energy it is time they did care and were prepared to pay a bit more for a well built efficient house.