ProDave

I went for 38 degrees rather than the building regs max 42 degrees. How many more years will that give me?

Forget electric showers unless you like showering under a dribble. If mains gas is available then it's a no brainer. Decent size combi or system boiler and unvented hot water tank. I would go UFH Wet UFH downstairs, radiators everywhere else with individual trv's so can be turned up / down / off as required or even UFH throughout on all floors. Remember a key feature of UFH is an individual thermostat for every room so unused rooms turned right down and your bedroom set to your cool temperature.

Hi and welcome. The Sun amp's main feature is much lower standing heat loss and smaller size than a conventional tank. There are several on here using them. I think most here would suggest quality tripple glazed windows. The likes of Internorm, Nordan, Rationel and many others are all worth considering. A lot depends on any special requirements and what finish you want. Remember if having mvhr order the windows without trickle vents.

Absolute minimum of 2, otherwise what do you do when No 1 is on charge. If you are only using 1 tool at a time that would suffice. But if you have a helper using another tool at the same time, then that need 2. So simple answer is 2 per tool in use. Now determine how many tools are likely to be in use at any one time.

It's the cost of some battens. You will have the OSB anyway (or whatever you change it for) so omitting the service void just mean you put the plasterboard straight onto the OSB. It then makes it a pain to run cables through the frame (drilling the web of the I beams) and then cutting through the OSB and plasterboard for back boxes. Then there is the issue of making it all air tight. I have omitted the service void in a couple of places where I know there are no services (stairwell head wall and bathroom outside wall) just to gain an extra 25mm in the rooms, but all other rooms have the service void.

The designer of my house specified OSB3 as both the racking layer and the air tight layer (with taped joints) on the inside of the frame. I later decided to add a proper air tight membrane on the inside over the OSB. Then later the structural engineer upgraded it to 2 layers of OSB to give the required racking strength. Definitely stick with a service void. If changing the external layer, check with your SE re racking strength, particularly if moving from a T&G product to a square edge product.

If you must have oil filled http://cpc.farnell.com/search?st=oil filled radiator But they are more expensive than convector heaters this is the one that is still on special offer http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-elec/pel00022/convector-heater/dp/HG0091607?ost=hg0091607&iscrfnonsku=false&ddkey=http%3Aen-CPC%2FCPC_United_Kingdom%2Fsearch I bought 3 of them to keep the caravan warm. There is also a version with a timer built in for slightly more http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-elec/pel00023/convector-heater-with-timer-turbo/dp/HG0091707?ost=hg0091707&iscrfnonsku=false&ddkey=http%3Aen-CPC%2FCPC_United_Kingdom%2Fsearch

Why oil filled? I already mentioned the cheap convector heaters CPC had on offer recently. If you want I will find the link again.

My key mantra is leave it safer than it was before I started. Sometimes it may not be perfect but a hell of a lot better than it was.

Was it wind or waves that pushed the wall over and the window in?

I would be very surprised if building control will allow the sub floor slab to be lower than ground level. up here it WOULD fill with water sooner or later and you would have to make provision to remove that. This was something BC were very particular about here that the slab level could not be higher than ground level. This was addressed in our case by creating a trench along the front of the house containing a French Drain that runs around the side of the house to the back. It only works because of the sloping site and ground level at the back is a lot lower than the slab.

Simple answer is BS7671 is not "the law" just one way to comply with it. There has to be a bit of common sense. e.g a Crabtree rcbo would be no more or less likely to catch fire in a wylex box than a crabtree box. Those components are sold in the UK by a trade only distributor. To make up an all rcbo set up like that costs roughly double the price of a standard split load twin rcd setup, and for me unfortunately most of my customers I have offered that to reject the cost and opt for the standard twin rcd split load board.

I might be getting confused with members but were you not the one having lots of issues with the build? I could be confused after driving 11 hours today. Yes it's technically okay but not what I would expect if you were having a "rewire"

As others have said, it's technically okay but not perfect. I would not expect it on a "rewire" I sometimes do similar things when doing alterations if it can save a lot of work or trashing the decor, but I always discuss the options and pros and cons with the customer. Sadly yet another example of the generally poor work you have had done.

I did a house with a built in vacuum system. I got the impression from the owners that unwinding and fighting g with a very long hose was far more troublesome than using g an upright vacuum cleaner.

How did you fix the pavatherm. I would have expected lots of those big plastic screw things. Also what are you doing to give the frame racking strength. I don't see anything yet

You seem to me making the "mistake" of having the FFL level with the outside ground. I would not want a suspended floor like that. For a start how do you ventilate it? Aim for the bottom of the suspended floor structure to be slightly above ground level. Then your frame can start at FFL or even a bit below, not raised up as you have it. I am not even sure that would pass building control. We had to ensure the floor underbuild had to be brought up to at least outside ground level.

Like I tried so say before, if you try and partition the eaves as a cold space, then yes you will be heating a smaller volume, but chances are it will be so hard to get the detail right that you will lose more heat into the cold eaves space and end up with a higher heating bill.

Downlights in a conventional house have bugged me for years. Not only were they a terribly energy hungry form of lighting (not so bad now with LED lamps) but they put a bloody great hole in the air tight and insulation layers when used upstairs in 99% of houses. I used to hate them, and lost count of how many times I have removed a perfectly good 58W flourescent and replaced it with 300W or often more of halogen downlights. Likewise switches and sockets. In most of the housing stock I work in, on a windy day when you remove a switch or a socket, a cold howling gale comes out of the hole. In a well insulated house that has had some attention to air tightness in it's construction, and a warm vaulted roof, you will have NONE of those problems. A good test of an air tight home is on a windy day, open one door or one window, and you won't feel a draught and it won't blow shut (or further open) Insulating your entire roof space including the eaves spaces would use less insulation (less surface area than insulating down the ashlar walls and across the ceiling) so cost less, and would be much easier to detail correctly, and you would not have to take any special measures to seal cables, pipes, ducts etc that pass through the eaves space. In your case if you stick to your plan, you are going to have a particular problem with any switches or sockets on your ashlar walls. So much of the improvements we can make to buildings is not just about extra insulation, it's about attention to details to prevent massive air leaks. One such being create an air tight structure, then a service void within that before the plasterboard, so all cables and pipes have a free run without penetrating the building structure or it's air tight layer.

I don't see how vaulted ceiling is "bad" fr the environment. Yes is increases the heated volume. BUT it is a LOT easier to get the detail right and maintain continuous air tightness and avoid services penetrating the insulation layer. So I suspect in practice a house with a warm roof vaulted ceiling will be a lot more eficcient than a cold roof loft with lots of leaks in the insulation layer. Ours is room in roof, which is pretty much the standard for housing in the countryside up here, so part of it is habitable space anyway. It just made so much more sense to enclose the whole lot, loft storage space as well, inside the insulated envelope.

This is why it's good to discuss this before you are at the point of no return. You have a room in your roof, so most of it will already be insulated at rafter level. So insulate the entire roof at rafter level. It makes it easier to detail, to join the roof insulation to the wall insulation, and gives you 2 warm eaves spaces for storage or services.

This thread reminds me of a loo in student digs that was so small it had knee holes cut in the door.

In Scotland you must have an accessible downstairs toilet and demonstrate you have space to install an accessible downstairs shower in the future. Oh how relaxed things are down south. As noted if you can't comply with the accesability requirements, don't fit it yet, just make a cupboard that happens to have a capped off drain fitting......

I wired a new house this year where he started out with trickle vents in the windows and mechanical extraction ventilation., but he saw the light and converted part way through the build for mvhr. My mvhr unit cost just over £500 and all the ducting and vents from BPC was about £1K so you should comfortably get a system for under £2K Have you got a SAP assesment of your build yet and any idea of your heating costs? Mine I expect to cost less than £250 per year to heat it, and there are several on here with even better houses with lower costs. It really is worth putting in the detail now to get it right, ignore it now and it's a major job to improve it later.

If only I didn't have a wife who won't accept anything second hand........