ProDave

My only comment is that makes the living room window face north west, so will only get late evening sun. Is there anything stopping you putting windows in the south west facing gable end? I guess there must be as it would be so obvious if you could? Site layout might help make things clearer.

Which way is north? or more importantly which way is south?

That's why I asked the question about discharge to surface water. If it is surface discharge it will need replacing.

I assume your tank discharges to surface water, i.e. a stream or ditch? If the question is "who pays" for the electricity for a shared system, then it is a wholey predictable amount of usage (for my own treatment plant 2KWh per day) so you would feed it from one property and the other would be obliged to pay half that cost to the other. Same as you would share desludging cost.

No I didn't. As theunderfloorheatingstore.com gave free delivery there didn't seem to be much point.

I really struggled to find anyone to build what I wanted. In the end, a local architectural technician detailed it all and a local firm of builders made and erected the frame. I am dong all the rest myself.

I was going to ask the same. Have you made enough profit to make it worthwhile.? The results look fantastic.

Our previous house was built to "wind and watertight" on a fixed price by an Inverness builder. They generally did a good job. But being on a fixed price contract, as soon as you changed ANYTHING the "notice of variation" would land on the doormat in a day or 2 outlining the additional cost of that change. We tried to strike a similar deal this time, only to find they were completely disinterested. All they wanted to do was sell you one of their standard house designs, on one of their own plots, as a complete build ready to move into. They went bust 2 years later.

They were one of the companies we considered, but didn't proceed with.

Care to mention which BM is giving away free insulation?

Hi @Ralph What is your actual build budget? We are building a 3 bedroom detached house and expecting the the total cost to be about £220K We are only achieving that because land is cheaper here, and we are doing a LOT of the work ourselves. I am sure we will have saved at least £30K in labour costs by the time we have finished. The "problem" for us if we don't nail costs down in every way we can, is the house might end up costing more to build than it is worth. I suspect that may be an issue with you as well?

I could not find an off the peg frame company that would do what I wanted and was affordable (Beatie passive and Touchwood came close) so in the end it was all detailed by an architectural technician, and then built by a small local firm of builders. They built the frame in their workshop and bought it to site and erected it just like any other timber frame. The thing that makes my build different to standard, is I did not want a blockwork outer skin. That is just an expensive rain shield and adds almost nothing to the insulation. So mine is clad with 100mm thick wood fibre board that screws to the frame, and a thin coat render system applied to that.

Scotframe were the ones that refused to quote me, when I started talking of taking one of their standard offerings and adding extra insulation to it. Don't let a frame supplier bully you into a particular make of window. Contact ADW and get a quote for Rationel windows, you may, like some others here find they are the cheapest and almost the best of the quality triple glazed windows. Of the 6 quotes I had they were the cheapest, and only Internorm offered me a slightly better window but at twice the price.

Agree those U values can be improved. What type and thickness of insulation are they proposing? i.e what it the wall roof and floor make up? 4KW of solar panels can be had for £2K that's what I will be starting with and ground mounted as too many trees shading the roof. Triple glazed windows will be comfortably under 1, some of mine as as low as 0.8 From your plans you propose a biodisc treatment plant. I caution you abour using a treatment plant with moving mechanical parts down in the smelly stuff. Trust me you do not want to be the one repairing it WHEN it goes wrong. Instead consider one of the treatment plants that works with an air blower such as the Bio Pure, Conder, Vortex, Graff and probably many others. If you can't go for a pure oil boiler, have a look at the hybrid that Grant make, a combination of oil boiler and ASHP

Obvious thing, is the fan isolator turned on? Tenants are notorious for turning them off, then complaining about the condensation and mould. My rental properties had the fan isolator removed. That's a posh fan that probably runs 24/7 on trickle speed with a humidistat to tell it to boost. It should not really be your problem, just phone the landlord.

What sort of U values are the walls and roof coming in at? It sounds like the basic structure is barely good enough and the computer has spat out that by adding 0.5KW of solar PV you would scrape a pass. ASHP would be my choice, actually got my new house it IS my choice.

Pipes that pass through an un heated part of the house should be insulated. Also the big pipes between the inlet and outlet and the mvhr unit should be insulated even if in a warm space (as they will contain cold air) Some forms of insulation for this have a foil wrap, but not all (mine don't)

On a project like this, I would not go for outline (PIP) planning. I think you would be hit with lots of conditions you may not want. Instead fully detail what you want and go straight for full planning.

That looks an interesting project. Just be warned there may not be much in the way of foundations under that. Someone local to me bought a steading for conversion and when they started scraping away the earth floor to lay a new solid floor, found the walls just to be sat on the earth and unstable. He ended up knocking down and rebuilding. Lets hope yours is better. Making new openings in those walls will be challenging. For upstairs. I would be thinking of dormers, or I much prefer as I have done on my house little "gable ends" gives so much more room upstairs. They are not really gable ends as they don't project outwards, think of them as dormers that don't have sides, instead they continue all the way to the bottom.

I will try that. They already know the house name and deliver post here, I will see if they have the clout to do anything.

You are just getting a normal Highland night. Nothing unusual about -12 had plenty of those this year. Now this "beast from the East" has arrived up here, it's a balmy -5 and 6" of very dry powdery snow.

Just to finish this off by saying I chose the McAlpine in the thread above. They don't do it justice in that description, not only are you buying the bath trap and overflow, you are buying a click clack type waste. The waste mechanism just lifts out (mainly to give top access to clear the trap) but of course in my case it means it can be serviced or replaced from above should the mechanism fail. So hopefully this should achieve my goal of never ever needing to lift the bath out of it's housing. For the same (lack of ) access issue we have chosen a floor mounted bath filler with shower head.

My first delivery from theunderfloorheatingstore.com arrived today, a back to wall toilet and floor standing bath tap. What I find is that they came from bathrooms.com and when you go to www.bathrooms.com they too are owned by TP and somewhat annoyingly are very slightly cheaper.

I intend to if I get the chance. Once the gas is connected I have to go back and earth bond that, so I am hoping I might meet the plumber then. It is not a plumber I know from other jobs.

As it happens I have been watching some contractors laying gas to a house where I have been working for a couple of days. In this case they only have to dig up a pavement, not a road, so just fencing off the trench seems okay, but 1 1/2 days in , they have done about 10 metres, only another 20 to go, then up the side of the house and in the back. I hate to think how much it is costing.