ProDave

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.

Why do you regard installing some renewable energy that will save you money every year a "disaster"?

Voltage drop calculator https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Technical/Charts/VoltageDrop.html

Well done on moving in. Sorry about your "tipsy" beer that ruined the laptop. It's hard to describe to someone who has never experienced it just how nice the constant temperature inside a well insulated house with mvhr is.

I was trying to be brief. I forgot to mention decent triple glazed windows etc as well.

Frametherm 35 is stiff enough for that, but not sure it is available that thin. Look at wall batts that might be available that thin.

If I had bought a Persimon box, I would be living on an over crowded housing estate, in the same type of box as many other people, complaining about my higher than expected heating bills and complaining about many aspects of a design meant for the average family that are not to my liking and not tailored to the individual plot. Instead I am sat inside my warm, low energy house, looking out at the setting sun, over fields towards the mountains in the distance still with some snow left on them. I like the fact I can only see a few houses from my windows and the house layout and features are exactly what we wanted and designed to work with the plot and it's orientation with respect to sun and views. I love the individual details like the west facing kitchen window specifically to see those snow covered mountains. I like that all the fixtures and fittings like kitchen, worktops, doors, floor coverings, doors, skirting boards and even smaller things like door handles, socket types and exact position, were all individually chosen by us to our liking. I like the fact that the house was built with all the AV and network cabling we needed all built in and hidden in the walls, including hidden cabling for surround sound speakers in both main rooms. I like the fact we have under floor heating from an air source heat pump. You don;t get many, if any of those tailor made details by buying a developer standard design house.

They are correct. the VAT refund scheme is only for where YOU have purchased materials and paid VAT for those materials which are incorporated into your build. If a builder supplies and fits materials in a new build THEY should zero rate their invoice for both materials and labour. If they have incorrectly charged you VAT, you must go back to them to reclaim the incorrectly charged VAT

I am intrigued why an under stair cupboard needs a fire door?