ProDave

It's the garage wall so not bothered about any chilling effect. Re a heat alarm, just use a domestic heat alarm normally fitted to a kitchen ceiling, then it can be linked with a 3 core cable to all the other smoke / heat / CO alarms in the house.

I note conventional wisdom is to place the ASHP so the unit (and the fan) is parallel to the wall and half a metre or so out from the wall, drawing air in between the unit and the wall,. and expelling air perpendicular to the wall. Is that really the best orientation? I am giving consideration to mounting it perpenducular to the wall, so it takes air in once side and expells air parallel to the wall the other side. My main reason for this thinking is the direction of expelled air will be away from the habitable rooms of the house and therefore less likely to be audible. Also most of the time here that would mean the flow of air through the unit is going with the prevailing wind. In this scenario the unit may be closer than half a metre to my rendered, wood fibre clad wall. I guess thee is nothing stopping us fitting a heat alarm inside the top of the ashp and linking it to the house alarms?

The sheer key will do nothing imho. It's only keying into hardcore that is laid on a slope, and the whole lot, hardcore included could, no make that probably will slide down the slope. I would level the site in steps so at least the infil is sitting on level ground. Perhaps another footing and dwarf wall at each step? Buttress walls on the inside of your wall which I think is what drawing 3 is trying to show? and buttress walls on the downhill side of any intermediate dwarf wall. To level the site in steps, you will be removing a lot of soil. Use that removed soil to raise the ground around the garage. You will be removing the top layer of organic soil anyway won't you?

Report it as a fauilt "somebody has driven a tall vehicle down the lane and snapped my line"

You won't pop a fuse and 50V will only give you a tingle if you have wet hands. Just make sure you photograph or otherwise note how it connects and in particular what pair of the incoming cable is the live one (it's usually at least 3 pair cable)

There are reports floating around (NOT FACT) that the owner of the flat where it started packed his bags before leaving. Yes finding the cause of the fire is important, but the fact remains, however it started, a fire in one flat should not lead to the destruction of the whole block and massive loss of life. I see the manufacturers of the cladding have been identified and are falling back on "it met building regs" I have not heard one person say "well in that case the building regs are wrong and need changing PDQ"

Re the outline PP (actually called Planning In Principle up here). You need to read the small print and conditions of the PIP carefully. There is a "trap" the owner may have fallen into. When we found our plot, it had long lapsed PP (from 1980) so we made an offer to buy it subject to getting PP for it, and then submitted a PIP application. The application was very scant on details, just a very rough idea of the size and very rough position of the house, but no details. The PIP came back with a set of standard conditions relating the the "housing in the countryside" local policy about being no more than 1.5 storeys, white render finish, 45 degree roof, natural slate roof, vertical emphasis on windows etc. Now this was fine for us as that was what we intended. We did argue the point about not using slate at the detailed plans stage, and instead used the only one "slate like" concrete roof tile that the planners would allow. But if you want to build a really contemporary house design, it may be allowed, but you really want to state the details as early as possible. Applying for something contemporary when the PIP conditions say traditional, and it may well be refused. It definitely sounds like you want a bespoke house built to your design, so looking at a company that makes a few standard designs is not going to get what you want. A Tee shaped house is what we built last time and is very common up here so you won't have issues with that. Re the land purchase, do as we did, make an offer to buy it subject to getting planning permission for what you want. If the seller is happy to accept that sort of offer then you submit a planning application (you don't need to own the land to do that but you must serve notice on the owner that you are doing that). Then the buying process goes on hold until the planning is sorted. If you get the PP you want then you "conclude the missives" (Scottish equivalent of exchange contracts) otherwise if you can't get the PP you want, you walk away and the deal is cancelled. You must use a Scottish solicitor to make an offer for property in Scotland, preferably one that is experienced in building plots. There are lots of other things to consider like access, location of services, waste water drainage, any deeds of servitude (easments) required if any services have to cross other land to get to your plot etc.

I have used that type and more than one person has commented they look cool and contemporary.

Serious sugestion. Should one smoke hood per resident not be an essential item in high rise to allow you to evacuate even if the stairwell is full of smoke?

That is very true. It is a great tragedy for all those involved and a lot of lives have changed forever as a result. But what I think strikes us all, was this was totally avoidable. Had the block been left alone and not clad, I suspect there would have been a fire in one flat, with no loss of life and it would barely make page 2 of a local rag.

Hi and welcome to the forum. Are you looking for a permanent home or a holiday home? The site you linked to I would say are aiming their product at holiday homes. You only have to look at the layouts, no proper kitchens just a kitchenette. And the price per square metre, particularly for the smaller units seems a bit high. I think you could do a lot better with a traditional timber framed design which we are good at up here. Do you have a plot already? if not that is your first goal.

Jeremy made an excellent summary there. Surely, in the case of a building that relied on it's structure (concrete) being totally inflamable, then building regs should not allow a flamable cladding to be put on the outside? I expect the enquiry will fluff around the edges and avoid the real issue, as most enquiries seem to.

Yes, but faulty white goods might result in a fire in that one flat, it should not lead to the destruction of the entire block.

I bought the Dewalt cross line. It's more versatile than a rotary, use it a lot internally for setting out and in my work for setting out downlights etc (where you need the vertical line) It was still fine for landscaping levels and surveying the plot. No bother to go and turn it round if you have gone out of range of the sweep of it's horizontal line.

Is there an easy setting (volt free contact?) that will allow you to change the set point, e.g 40 degrees for UFH and 50 degrees for DHW?

I have had a look around all my different windows. The two single fixed pane ones are the only ones that have the cladding in one piece going under the render. Where I have two panes, one opening and one fixed next to each other, the fixed pane has been done like my stained glass window, with a separate trim around just the glass. I just need to check with Rationell how that trim is secured. In a previous house, we had externally fitted UPVC doors and windows. We had an attempted break in where the perpetrators removed the external beading, but removing the glass stuck in with double sided foam tape defeated them. The police logged it as "criminal damage" rather than attempted burglary. So I am not concerned about security. I documented my search for windows on a previous forum. I had quotes from about half a dozen quality window suppliers. It was an easy choice as Rationel were the cheapest and almost the best. Only Internorm had a very slightly better Uw value, but at twice the price and the most expensive by a long way. All I wanted was good 3G windows with aluminium cladding. Whether they were internally or externally fitted glass was not a consideration. I have to say I am very pleased with the very simple crisp external and internal detail of the Rationel windows.

^^ Interesting. I have just found the Pavatex wood fibre board I have used has a Euroclass of E which doesn't sound any better than XPS or EPS, yet that Russian bloke with the blow lamp could not set fire to it. That makes me question the rating applied in my case? I'll bet his blowlamp test would have been VERY different with a sheet of EPS or XPS

What did stand out is the inability to tackle a fire so high up a building from the outside, which of course is why there is so much emphasis on containing a fire to stop it spreading and fighting it from inside. The fear now has to be a 9/11 type collapse of the building after the stress it has endured. I can't see anyone going inside for some time.

Yes that confirms what I thought, that normally the cladding is all one piece, but mine is split to allow the glazing to be fitted later. I will have to seek guidance from Rationel how to fit my split surround. It also raises another issue. Should I be unfortunate enough to break a window in one of the fixed windows, there is no way to remove the trim to change the unit without hacking the render off then re doing the ingo's.

Just watched some of the news reporting. The main message was from the fire chief who said they had never seen a fire spread so quick in a high rise before. They are all being politically correct and not speculating on the cause until the enquiry. I predict 2 things will come of this: This type of EWI will be banned from high rise, and may even retrospectively be removed where already fitted. And (cynical I know) domestic insurers will slap a premium on anyone with EWI on their house.

I don't suppose you have the drawing for the fixed pane version (this window is fixed) I seem to have a "problem" here. The window in question was supplied, unglazed. The aluminium trim is in two parts, one that covers the wooden frame, and one that covers just the edge of the glass, with no clear way of attaching the trim over the glass other than tape. I have two more fixed pane windows in the house and they came pre glazed. It appears on those, the trim is all one piece covering the frame and the glass in one go, and it's easy to see how that clips the the wooden frame. That's a question I need to address to Rationel when I have the glass. but for now it looks like 4mm gap at each side looks favourite.

The right hand one, the second one they put the blowlamp to, looks like the sort of wood fibre board I used. After several minutes of the blowlamp, when they took it away, it smouldered a bit and that was it. I will sleep easy. P.S i love the pump up blowlamp, my dad had one a bit like that.

Are you saying the PUR / PIR foam is just as flamable? for some reason I thought it was only EPS / XPS that was the danger?

Thanks Craig My windows are Rationel if you know them in detail? Looks more like the left hand of your drawings although their aluminium profile is a lot less bulky. Looking at the bare window frame, what I have is a recess on the outside that the glass "fits" into, somehow. Then an aluminium surround goes on from the outside (the windows are all ali clad timber) So I had assumed the glass fits to the frame with double sided glazing tape, using wedge packers to position it and get it square. The rest of the windows that came pre glazed you can see a thin bit of grey rubber / foam between the frame and the glass on the inside which I assume to be double sided tape. The aluminium outside trip has a rubber profile built in to seal to the outside of the glass, though I am not sure yet what holds that trip in place. What I am wanting to know is what size to specify the glazing unit. If you say a 4 to 6mm gap, and I have 20mm "available" then it sounds like they need to be about 15mm larger on each side than the visible glass area so 30mm bigger in each dimension overall. Another way to address the question it, is what is the thickness of the spacer that goes around the edge to separate the 3 sheets of glass. All the pre glazed windows, the edge of the frame lines up with the inner visible face of the edge spacer (sorry no doubt wrong terminology) so if say that spacer strip was 15mm wide it would reinforce the make it 30mm bigger idea?

On the basis that Knauf have removed the references, one can infer that it was their insulation used. Are we able to determine from that, what sort of insulation it was?