ProDave

Why 2 dishwashers? I once heard it discussed to save emptying, you just leave it in the first one, remove each item as you need them the put into the second?

Just a thought, would it not be a whole lot easier to treat it like a caravan, fetch your water from the standpipe in an aquaroll, and deliver it to the taps with a caravan 12V submirsible pump?

Re going length on stairs. I have never had a staircase with enough going to accommodate the entire length of my slippered foot, and I have never had an issue tripping or slipping. If you must have a long going, try and match it with a near maximum allowed rise to reduce the number of steps. Go to somewhere like stairbox or pear stairs where you can design a staircase on line, play around with rise and going and see it in 3D We are aiming for a slightly shallower staircase, just because we can but I doubt we will have a going more than 270mm

Another one not bothering with a structural warranty. Not planning to borrow or sell. The previous house had the nhbc warranty, but the cover from that expired last year so proved pointless in the end, but this time around I found the cost had doubled so making it even more of a waste of money. I also found some ridiculous things like the nhbc inspector was telling us to do the exact opposite of the building control inspector, ended up having to pretend to each we had done it "their" way.

I would echo what Jeremy has said. PIR /PUR types as you are proposing have a relatively low decrement delay, meaning the house will cool down quicker when it gets cold out side (very basic version) I am using Earthwool Frametherm 35 to insulate in between the studs (195mm studs in my case) and 100mm thick wood fibre board as external wall insulation. Both have a longer decrement delay (though you need more of them to get the same U value) Frametherm or similar is a lot easier to fit into a stud wall (that's what it's designed for) Stiff enough to push in and stay without slump even in a sloping roof, but compressible enough that you don't need to be perfect with your cutting. Fitting solid slabs into a timber frame you need to be precise otherwise you leave an air gap, or be prepared to fill any gap with expanding foam. I hit a brick wall at the early stages of planning my build. As soon as I mentioned to a standard timber frame kit builder that I wanted to upgrade and add extra insulation, they refused to quote. I ended up getting a more experienced architectural technician to detail what I wanted, and a local firm of builders to build the frame to that spec and erect it.

There's quite a few here from Scotland, but as far as I know only 1 who is north of me. Welcome to the forum

You can design your stairs and see them in 3d at http://www.stairbox.com/

We have a dehumidifier so I will bring it into the house and see how much moisture it finds.

I have put in my request to update the PAF. Last time I tried I was trying to get them to add the new address and hit the brick wall of only your local council can inform us of a new address..... This time, since I have found my electrical business has it's own entry, I have tried telling them that the business has moved,. i.e this is amending and entry in the PAF not adding one. It will be interesting to see how I get on with that (when they find the address I have moved to is not there)

Sounds like he is much more reasonable. Keep us posted.

I would have a metal one in a garage anyway, much less likely to get damaged. The metal ones are only mandatory in "domestic" so some delving into that definition is needed to determine if it really needs to be metal or not.

This raises a few issues: I thought insulating the cavity between a timber frame and the blockwork skin was a big no no? A lot iof insurers won't insure a timber frame that has had cavity insulation added. You are supposed to put fire stop beads in the cavity at first floor level and around windows, so that rules out a tapered cavity. I see no option but step the first block out, or take a course or 2 off and re lay (so the step is below ground) On our previous bui;d the brickies must have had a wonky tape, or miss red the drawings. The blockwork stepped in about 20mm, then 2 courses up, stepped back out 20mm. Thankfully all below ground level so not seen.

I am guessing that where it is it would not qualify a a permitted development garden building? We had a slightly similar situation with our static caravan, but it is located in a position where it would qualify as a permitted development garden building. Initially our PP granted temporary permission for the static 'van. That was until I made the point to the planning officer that I wanted to keep it as a workshop and studio, and pointed out that on the day of completion I could remove it from the site, then immediately replace it with an identical 'van in an identical position and it would legally be a permitted development garden building. Faced with that reasoning, they changed the PP to "residential use of the caravan will cease within 1 month of occupation of the new house" so it can remain as my intended use a a work space.

You have got me thinking. Where (on the originators site, e.g Royal Mail) can I access the version of the PAF with company names? If I can find that, I can point out to them that my electrical business has in fact moved to a new address, and that might be a back door way to getting the new address on the database?

I will see how this goes. Yes we are in a very much colder and windier location to Jeremy. I think this is a case of my expectations were too high, talks of 800W of lighting and stripping off to your shorts by the end of the day and I am asking why is my 1KW heater not doing the same?

There are obviously multiple versions of address database out there. If you go to Royal Mail and search there, then you just get (in our case) all the house names in that postcode listed (no houses here have numbers, the road does not even have a name) But last night I booked a hotel, and the address database that threw up not only listed all the house names, but all the businesses, including my electrical business, and a couple of neighbours trading names (some that I didn't know) The FB would get here just from the postcode. Our postcode just covers the one road with 12 houses in it.

It is the planners that decide when it "starts" Our planning had a number of pre comencement conditions, and then a condition saying the first thing we must do is form the new entrance from the highway. I got the pre comencement conditions signed off then notified the planners we were starting making the entrance and they informed us that the development had "started" So I guess in your case the demolition is the start, so get that CIL exemption before the digger arrives. I would get the site insurance in place. It's your public liability and there's plenty that could go wrong with demolition.

Just to add the building should be "dry" the walls have not yet been plastered or painted. It has been wind and watertight for well over a year. No slab, it's an insulated suspended timber floor. Yes there will be residual moisture in the timber but that's all.

I am steadfastly avoiding paying this "postcode database" tax. I thought it would come to a head when the Council tax man came to assess us (in the caravan) for council tax, but no, he seemed to accept the address. Likewise BT and SSE just accepted the address. So far the only "issue" is we are not on the postcode database so I have to keep entering the address manually. Normal post and parcels to the new address arrive without problem. I have tried a few tricks like reporting a missing address to Royal mail. They just say they can do nothing until highland Council inform them. I have phoned Highland Council Had a bizare conversation where they confirmed our address was in fact on the councils own address database, but until we pay the fee they won't inform Royal Mail. So I am steadfastly refusing to pay £150 just so the council can inform Royal mail of one address that is already on their own database. There is something about council fees having to reflect the actual cost. Well I recon if I pay their £150 I will be paying for a staff member for a whole day. So I am just not doing it at the moment. We will see what happens.

Re timescales. 8 weeks in, my planning officer STARTED talking to me. More than twice that before it was decided. Best of luck, looks nice and sharp. Hope the planners agree.

My Very rough DIY air tightness test was about 0.8ACH I now find that test was done with a 40mm waste uncapped, so open to the vented stack, so should be better now? Timber frame, wood fibre outside then rendered, average wall roof and floor U values about 0.14 average window UW values about 0.9 So how many KWh will it take to raise 79 sheets of plasterboard by 1 degree? then there is the 2 layers of OSB on the inside of the frame before the heat even reaches the insulation. What is bugging me is okay the house takes a lot of heat to warm it up. Why then do people find 3KWh of input from a WBS overheats the room so it can't be used for days? It would seem to me if my house had been allowed to cool down, it could quite hapilly absorb many hours of input from a WBS before it got too hot. Why is my house so different to those that reported that issue?

So our house is pretty well complete from an insulation and airtightness perspective. There are still a few outstanding items that will improve it later, but it is basically there. With the trees to the south of us in leaf, there is little solar gain, perhaps some in the afternoon through the west facing windows. Consequently it seems to sit pretty much averaging the outside temperature (over many days) and only changing temperature inside slowly. In the spring we had a hot spell and the inside of the house remained cool without overheating, remaining at below outside temperature for many days. I took that as a good sign. Summer has ended abruptly here. It's 10 degrees, cloudy most of the time, wet and windy and has been for some time. the house remains at about 15 degrees inside (still cooling down) Now (and this is where I think it's not performing as expected) I decided to introduce some heat to the house. Before I post any details, I have input the house size, U values etc into Jeremy's spreadsheet and with a 5 degree difference between inside and out, we should have a heating demand of 376W just to maintain the present temperature. The permanent heating (ASHP and UFH) is not ready yet so I have a little plug in fan heater in the house now. With no thermostat on it I only run it when I am in the house. It's only a 1KW heater and from the spreadsheet 376W of that is just replacing the heat lost, so 624W should be heating the internal fabric of the house up. Over the last 24 hours that has been on a total of about 10 hours, so 6.2KWh of heat has been pumped into the house. That has only raised the internal temperature 1 degree. I read on this forum if Jeremy runs his hoover too long the room overheats. If someone lights a 3KW WBS then in an hour (3KWh of input) the room has overheated and can't be used for days. So why has 6KWh of heat input to my house had negligible effect? I am not concerned. Yet. It is the heat required to maintain equilibrium that matters, not how much it takes to heat the fabric of the building when it is cold. but it is not "ringing true" with what I read here about modest amounts of heat input seriously overheating a well insulted house very quickly. For further information. the house is plasterboarded upstairs but no doors are yet on. Downstairs it is not plasterboarded so in effect one big room. The MVHR is on, and appears to be working. Outside air is 10 degrees. Extracted air from the rooms (measured at the plenum box) is 15 degrees, and supply air also measured at the plenum box measures at 15.2 degree so somehow very slightly higher than extracted air. This at least shows the heat recovery is working.

So he sold you the wrong item. I repeat my claim it is not fit for the purpose you specifically asked for so it IS their problem.

I say no, but I don't know the labour rates where you are. All the testing is done, so the "testing" bit of a normal consumer unit swap is done. The replacement CU will cost less than £100. It would only be a couple of hours work to swap it, but let's be generous and allow half a day (the new CU will come with all the stickers) So he's saying £400 for half a days work or £800 per day. I somehow suspect labour rates are not that high where you are?

Perhaps not that simple. searched a bit and found the same issue with a Danfoss controller. Now if this IS some more nanny state dictat about having to enforce a service interval, then is should be made CLEAR that some models have this "feature" and is should still be possible to buy them without, e,g for an electric boiler.