ProDave

Jeremy wins on a technicality. You know when I said "you" you know I meant the pair of you. Anyway congratulations. I know what it's like to be building slowly with no third party help.

You have just laid the very last brick?

@joe90 I have laid in all my mvhr duct today. I have 13 metres of duct left over, so I doubt that is enough to prevent you having to buy another roll is it? If you don't want it then in due course it will go on the for sale forum.

I had to fit double check valves. I have three of them. All fitted in the 25mm mdpe before the stopcocks (I use mdpe in, copper out stopcocks) One for the standpipe, one for the static caravan and one where the mains water enteres the house. Scottish Water would not make our connection until I had fitted the NRV's for the standpipe and static 'van but once fitted made the water connection, so they must be okay with them being before the stopcock. You can of course shut it off at the boundary box if you need to change the NRV. I don't think anyone is ever going to come and check the NRV is present in the house, but it is there should anyone wish to see it.

That graph is interesting, and really confirms what I have thought is houses are no less affordable than they were when I bought my first house. I remember to get a mortgage, to buy literally the cheapest house on the market in the county (a tiny 1 bedroom new build "starter home") I had to borrow 3.25 times my salary, and they even took into account a pay increment due in 2 months. That still left me nearly 20% short of the house cost which I had to fund by savings, and selling just about everything I owned, including selling a good car and buying a rust bucket old banger. Bear in mind I was relatively well paid then, so people on "ordinary" wages would have struggles even more, and remember this was interest rates of about 10% (which then rose to 15%) And the older guys that bought their houses in the 70's for a few £000 could not believe how much I paid for such a small house in such a poor location. It has NEVER been easy to buy a house. The difference now is with less council rental property, more people who would have been council tenants are struggling to buy rather than private rental.

Some workings on how you worked out the flow rates to each room would be useful. I have read the BC documents and I need to do some sums to work out the volumes of each room and hence the required flow rates. Then when I measure the flow rates, I will me measuring linear aie speed with an anenometer, which has to be converted to volume of air knowing the area through with the measured linear air flow was measured. When the time comes I was going to put this all into a spreadsheet so I just end up with a target linear airflow per inlet or outlet vent. If someone has already done such a spreadsheet that would save me repeating a lot of work.

Having tried for 2 years to sell our old house, I have a very different view of the market up here. Houses are under priced because there is little (or in the case of large houses almost no) demand. When I say under priced I base that on the fact even with the low cost of building plots up here, if you bought a plot, and built a house, even doing a lot yourself to save money, you would be doing very well indeed if you then managed to sell it for enough to cover your costs. The housing demand in this country is largely skewed towards the SE of England, where demand far outstrips supply and prices reflect that, yet many parts of the UK have depresses or stagnant housing markets where you can buy cheap property. What seems to be lacking is the will, or even the know how, of how to regenerate the depressed areas, spread the jobs and wealth around the country, increase demand in the depressed areas so reducing the demand in the SE. A lot has been talked about doing that but not much has really changed.

@joe90 My pallet full of big red duct arrived today. If you have not placed your order yet, you might want to wait until after the weekend. My plan is to try and lay all the duct in this weekend so I will then know if I have any left over, or am a bit short.

It will depend if there have been any changes to the local plan since the last permission was granted. Our plot we are building on had permission in 1980 which had obviously long since lapsed, but it still met the criterea set out in the local plan for allowing housing in the countryside so permission was re granted and we bought it.

That's a job you can justifiably be proud of. Well done. Is it finished inside as well?

M digger has gone, but the Landrover. No way.

I wired a few houses at the Findhorn Foundation, where we were not allowed to start work before a certain time because we might disturb meditation.......

This is a topic I will watch carefully. I will be wanting battery storage, because by the time I get any solar PV panels there will either be no FIT or it won't be worth bothering with, so battery storage to ensure near 100% self usage will be essential. What I have seen so far, with the life of batteries and cost of replacing, the "free" stored energy ends up costing not far short of retail prices when you factor in battery replacement. I am leaning towards NiFe for the very long life, and hoping by the time I am needing them, there will be more of a market and the price will have fallen.

A self builder here is in a predicament. He is building a pretty well insulated house and detailing the air tightness well. But he has chosen not to fit mvhr. Instead he has a central extract system on each floor extracting from the bathrooms, kitchen and utility and trickle vents on the windows. After his air tightness test he was told it was "too good" and he is now looking at adding positive input ventilation as well (i.e mechanical ventilation without the heat recovery) I did try telling him mvhr was the way.......

At the risk of asking the obvious, why not change the design for something that will fit in with the character of the area?

What guys do up here is simply tape a bit of clear plastic over the floor. If you see any moisture under it, it's too wet to lay the flooring.

I have a number of 40mm and 50mm solvent weld pvc pipes to fit into boss adaptors. I have previously used the "rubber bung" type adaptor but people on here seem to say bad things about those. Trouble is, I can't find a solvent weld fitting to allow a 40mm or 50mm solvent weld pipe to solvent weld to a boss.

Think out of the box. I would seriously be looking at "caravan" technology, i.e an LPG fired Morco instant water heater a bit like the 11KW one we are using in the caravan right now. It gives an acceptable shower (I say acceptable as I am used to a deluge from an UVC and good mains pressure and flow so have been spoiled) If sticking with electric, watch the volt drop or your 9Kw shower or water heater might be quite a bit less than 9Kw in practice.

Yes the Barriair is cheaper than the Intello that I started with (left over from what the builders used when making the frame) and yes it has built in air tightness tape at each side one on each face so when you join two adjacent strips it's a tape to tape seal. I know I complain about how much air tight tape I have used, but it would be a couple more rolls had it not been for the air tight tape built into the barriair. The built in tape certainly seems to stick well, but as all these things, you are trusting the manufacturer that it will stay stuck over many many years. Most of the tape I have been using is Tescon Vanna, but the last lot I got cheap off ebay is Icocell Airstop, that I got for just under £9 per roll. I have spent more on tape than I have on membrane, making the tape feel a lot less good value for money.

Yes indeed the current regs up here demand you make provision to fit a shower downstairs including providing a drain point for it, but you don't have to fit it (we are not)

I'm managing to keep the build ever so slowly moving forwards so a new entry in my blog at the usual address www.willowburn.net Look for the entry "Air tightness detail upstairs" which not surprising is lots of photos or air tightness membrane and tape. Lots of tape. I can't believe how much air tightness tape this house is consuming. Fortunately I found another few rolls going cheap on ebay. Also before I could do the membrane upstairs I had to lay the proper chipboard flooring in all but the bathrooms (separate more complicated issue as those will be wet rooms)

If it's an opening window, I understand the wedge at the bottom goes at the hinge end, so the weight of the pane is taken at the hinge end. If you put the wedge at the outer end, the weight may distort the frame. The top wedge goes at the opposite corner.

I remember when cement came in 1 Cwt bags.....

So I cannot (as a man working on my own) pick up anything heavier than 10Kg off the floor. If I stuck to that, my house would never get built, sorry not going to happen. We don't all have a helper on hand to assist. Welcome to the real world.

Interesting about doubling up. Most of our runs are long due the to mvhr being off to one side in a plant room above the garage. At building warrant time my designer got a quote from a different supplier (not BPC) and they designed a very similar system based on the same size radial ducting, and specified two pipes for each run, so that is what I am sticking with. The only short runs are the utility and en-suite and as these are high flow rooms I guess they need two pipes anyway.