ProDave

Hi and welcome to the forum. I am not sure if your "cottage" is the building on the left or the right? or do you own the whole lot? Looks like an interesting project.

What do you need to move in? For me personally if it was warm, had a working (not necessarilly finished) kitchen and a working bathroom, I would be in. Even if that meant climbing a ladder to go to bed. We thought about moving in just to sleep but with no kitchen or bathroom operational yet, we would still be using the 'van for those so decided it would be more trouble than it was worth. Some time next year when we can get a bathroom and some form of kitchen we will move in, a long time before it is finished.

When we built the last house we paid for the nhbc Solo for Self Build. That has now passed it's 10 years so arguably was as waste of money. This time round we have not bothered, we did get some quotes and the costs had more than doubled.

From my perspective, usually the "electrical design" was done by the architect in so far as every switch, light and socket is shown and oven and hob positions etc. The reality is I rarely follow that. I spend an hour or so walking round with the client, and a big black marker pen, discussing where to put switches, sockets lights etc. Invariably since the plans were drawn, a door or 2 has reversed it's swing, the kitchen layout has changed and the architect never got the sockets where they were wanted in the first place. If you are going to "pre design" this sort f thing, then you must pre design EVERYTHING that includes the kitchen in detail and all bathrooms in detail, and then not deviate from that detail design. I can see the merit in pre design if you are giving a builder a turn key package to build you a house ready to move into. But most self builders are more hands on and involved and like to tweak things as they go along.

In my case the bathroom UFH IS within the joist space. OSB support "trays" held in place by bearers screwed to the underside of the top member of the posi joists. Whern the floor deck goes down it touches the spreader plates. I put a few dabs of sticks like on each as I laid the floor to stop "creaking plates" The fiddly bit is threading the UFH pipe through the web where it needs o cross a joist. Ok on a small room with a short run but it would be a rel challenge doing this on a large room with a long length of pipe. Now back to my question: cheapest place to but impey trays and tanking kis?

Pushes the price of the tray up not to mention the price of the drain. It would work for one of them, but since the drain usually runs along the long side, I would have to cut a big notch in a posi joist which of course is a no.

Okay I am bringing up this old thread as I am getting close to buying my two wet room formers and tanking kits. Have settled on the Imprey formers and tanking kit. I need 2 formers each 1200 by 900 and two 5 square metre tanking kits. (One room will be a little over 5 sq m the other a little under) My confusion is what is the difference between the impey easy fit and the impey aqua dek? Are both self supporting (i.e supported on joists alone)? Also where is the cheapest place to get these., I started looking at prices and was quite shocked. Everywhere I have looked there is a huge (> £100 extra) if you select a drain for tiles vs a drain for vinyl. Thar can't be right?

I see nothing good here for the self builder. All I foresee is more regulations, more inspections and I fear more items that will require some professional sign off.

Yes be careful what gravel you get. You want crushed stones that will be angular and bind together. Don't male the mistake I did once and got a load of "20mm gravel" All lovely roundish stones. It was like driving on marbles, hopeless.

It depends if the pitch of your roof is suitable to convert. In my friends case it was not, so entire roof off, and a new, steeper pitched roof on. You would not want to be living in it during that.

I envisage a trap door, and a clever hinge mechanism to lower the light fitting into the door opening for servicing. The beam for the block and tackle would make it look the part.

The cheapest airtight membrane I could find was Protect Barriair, from Jewsn but not in stock they had to get it to order. Over the normal stud spacing of a TF there is no way you could stretch it tight enough to prevent the socket box pushing it in enough. However you might need to deliberately leave some slack if you need a box very close to the stud. With 11mm plasterboard and a 35mm deep box (I wholeheartedly recommend nothing but Appleby for dry lining boxes) the box will protrude 24mm beyond the back of the PB so with 10mm battens that's just 14mm of give you need. As stated you only have 20mm before it hits the PIR so lets hope you don't hit a thick bit.

Hi and welcome to the forum. Yes I would make the insulation follow the roof line all the way. It will be easier to detail and give you a warm eaves storage space as well. I have a friend who did a very similar conversion. Initially he planned to remain in the bungalow during the work, but later decided to move out for the duration, and said that was the single best decision they made.

That house would look right, with a little door in that gable end to give access to the light from the loft space

Why did it need to be that high. I would go no higher than you are comfortable with on a 2 section ladder. That 14M would probably need my 3 section ladder and it becomes harder.

In effect I did that on my build. For the whole of November I had a single electric convector heater on 24/7. There are no internal doors fitted yet. Each day I compared internal temperature and external temperature and concluded that the modest 700W of heat was maintaining the house temperature 10 degrees above outside temperature. You do need to tun this test over a long period as the house responds very slowly to changes in outside temperature. I did this test as I was doubting the insulation was as effective as it should be, but the test confirmed the heat loss was exactly as predicted using Jeremy's heat loss spreadsheet. So I know I am on track to have a maximum heat input requirement of 2500W when it's +20 inside and -10 outside. When I complete the new house, I will almost certainly buy an electricity watt hour meter and install that to just measure the power consumed by the ASHP so I will have a real measure of heating power separate from all other electricity usage. I didn't have any doubt about the type or amount of insulation fitted as I fitted it all myself.

Top one will give more even temperature. Bottom one might give a slight temperature gradient from one end of the room to the other.

If this rule applied to on the plot, then I would be in trouble. My water and drainage both run along the front of the house but in separate trenches, but they are only about 1 metre apart.

The 13l/s is with the mvhr on boost setting. The whole house rate is 29l/s with the mvhr on normal trickle rate.

But if they re collated screws in a screw gun, why are your fingers near them? Definitely a hazard when manually screwing. If so hold the screwdriver bit to steady things, not the screw.

Well anyone that uses a Royal Mail service will get the same rate. There are some cheeky buggers on ebay that advertise RM delivery then try and stick a surcharge on for H&I. There are also some firms that refuse to switch to a different courier to avoid paying extra. My Hermes, and Interparcel are some couriers that don't charge extra. I buy a fair bit lately from http://www.discount-electrical.co.uk/ Their free delivery comes via FedEx and is genuinely next day even up here and FedEx have their own fleet up here. A lot of the other couriers don't have any of their own vans up here so sub contract the last leg to a couple of local delivery companies. That adds an extra day and is probably the cause of the extra charges. I bought my flue pipes from https://www.flue-pipes.com/ Not only were they the cheapest I could find, they gave free delivery here. Likewise for building plastics and drainage http://www.plasticdrainage.co.uk/

Remember if you just have a vent on the wall or ceiling, it needs to be a higher extraction rate than if it were a cooker hood. My neighbour realised on the day of the cmpletion insprction he didn't have an extractor in the utility room, so he cut a hole in the PB and "fitted" one. It was not wired and there was no hole in the wall, but it passed. I do have some sympathy as that was the one extractor in our last house that we never ever used,. and being forced to have it just made a 4" hole in the wall for no practical reason.

Yes there must be a get out clause, or it will be "available" but at an astronomical cost to reflect the work needed? The cmmunity council here tried to get a private system installed, delivered to each home by wifi, but that has stalled because none of the suppliers tendered to install the system.

I noticed a pledge in yesterdays Scottish budget, for super fast broadband to all homes in something like 2 years. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

I know the heating requirements of the house. 2KW of heat input would have it comfortably warm. I used SJHarris's heat loss spreadsheet to work out the theoretical heat loss and did a test for a few weeks with a constant low heat input and verified the temperature it maintained matched the prediction. It's only cold now as there is no heating on as for a few weeks work has halted and it would just be a waste of electricity. It took quite a while to cool down to where it is at now, it's barely been above 0 for a week now and several nights down to -10