ProDave

Hi and welcome to the forum. At a target price of £500 per square metre that is going to be challenging to say the least. I wish you well with that and expect to achieve that you will have to do just about everything yourself. There are various man made cladding materials and don't rule out a render finish, but ultimately the decision is more likely to be what the planners will accept not just what you would like and what is cheap. You could choose a super thick timber frame to fill in the walls which is easily DIYable then it's just the cladding to choose. If you like the idea of render then you could clad in a wood fibre board that gives more insulation and takes a thin coat render directly as I am building with. I did have to pay someone to do the rendering as that is not in my skill set (I would have made a lousy job of it)

Not so funny, I saw a friend who is building himself a garage. His hand is strapped up and imobilised having sawn through the tendon of his left thumb when the saw jumped. He showed me the blood trail across the garage floor where it happened........

Tell them to send the cctv to You've been framed. The £250 will pay for the computer repair.

Our house is being done under the 2013 building regs as that is what was in force when our building warrant was submitted, so I escape the need for a CO2 monitor which seems to be new in the 2015 regs. I agree it might be an interesting thing to have, but my interest does not stretch to £200 worth of interest. I completed wiring a new build last year and that didn't need it, but the new build I am currently wiring does have to have this CO2 monitor installed.

Get a caravan. No this time I mean a small touring caravan. Our touring 'van is full of stuff in storage like this. Now, the touring 'van will get just as cold if not colder than the static 'van, but with nobody living or cooking in it, the moisture levels stay low so even though it's cold, you don't get condensation on anything. It's also away from the house and everyday living so does not get covered in sawdust.

If the boundary is not a perfect straight line, then set the garage so it's 800mm from the boundary at it's closest point. Then if it ever comes to "tape measures at dawn" then no part of your garage will be closer to the boundary than agreed and there will be no cause for complaint. you can only set the levels at the front as the plans and the rest take care of themselves. Strictly speaking if the site slopes, then this should have been shown on the elevation drawings. Use any excavated soil to level as much as possible te ground immediately around the garage to make it as level as possible. P.S why did you need planning for a single garage? If it had been 1 metre from the boundary it might well have been permitted development?

Hi and welcome to the forum. That's a big question that needs to be broken down into smaller questions. Do you have any land yet? do you have any idea what you want? Tell us where you are and what your goals are.

For me, the problem is worse in the sloping ceilings of the roof upstairs. There it is just the wood fibre sarking board and an insulated timber frame. There's also the small matter of 2 velux windows not yet fitted so an obvious great big hole to let air in between the frame and the membrane. Obviously it will be a lot better when those are fitted and sealed up. Downstairs where the wood fibre is rendered and all windows are in and sealed, it hardly inflates anywhere at all. But it is certain there will be some air leak somewhere so I was concerned this might continue and be audible. I might look at an extra row of battens in between the ones that are there to reduce the "span" between supports so to speak.

I'm close to finishing fitting the air tight membrane to our house. Inside the house, the timber frame is clad in OSB sheet. The air tight membrane is stretched over, and then battens are fitted (following the positions of the studs in the frame) to both hold the membrane in place, and create a service void before the plasterboard goes on. On a windy day like today, when there's a gust of wind, the membrane on one side of the house will "inflate" very slightly between the battens, and the other sode of the house it will suck tight too the OSB. In doing so you can hear a very faint "crackle" a bit like a rustling crisp packet, but very much quieter. My concern is it's going to continue doing this, and will it be audible once the plasterboard is on? Clearly there are some small air leaks in the frame, and the membrane is doing it's job of catching them. But although it's stretched as tight as I can, it's not elastic and not tight like a drum so will move a bit. Anyone else noticed this? did the plasterboard shut the small sound in?

Have you any idea what sort of external insulation? One option is wood fibre board like I have used that you can buy from Ecomerchant (though in the end with a lot of grief I got it cheaper via a local builder) http://www.ecomerchant.co.uk/exterior/insulation/ecomerchant-protect-ewi/steico-protect.html Ignore what it says there, you can get it up to 160mm thick in one board, and other makes are available, e.g I used Pavatex.

To show the futility of (especially) RDSAP EPC's, I will recall the house I saw for sale described by the estate agent as an "Eco House" and describing all it's energy saving features. Then at the bottom of the page it stated EPC: D One has to wonder sometimes....

You have a good start as you have a lot of equity in your existing house. The equity from that should buy the land so that's one hurdle. If you can slum it, and the site is big enough, you can live on site in a static caravan. In such a case it's normal to ask for temporary planning permission for the caravan with the main planning application for the house. You will have to pay council tax for that, but usually just band A. You can get some quite large static 'vans or even a twin unit if you want more space. We are currently doing just that living in the 'van while completing the house. To build a house normally needs a self build mortgage which releases the money in stages. That will restrict your choice somewhat. I don't have any experience of that but others will come along and advise.

By the time you cut through the small amount of blockwork above the door, allowing for the lintel, there's not going to be much left of it to hold the floor joists above from strongboys. I would be inclined to prop it with planks and standard acro's under the ceiling very close to the wall on both sides. Perhaps as well as the strongboys?

Sounds good to me.

Just use the small size wago's as good as anything. It's not like you will want to unplug it often is it? If trying to remove that, the tip is a really hot soldering iron as you have to heat the mass of the board and the plated through hole. Heat the solder that's there and one leg at a time pull the component out. Only then use a solder sucker or solder wick to clean the hole out. If it's lead free solder, a little drop of 60/40 applied will make it flow a lot better. If you can't desolder it without messing up the board, just snip the wires as close to the board as you can. Solder the new wires onto the board and there should still be enough on the sensor to solder onto.

The DHT11 is a 4 pin digital sensor but only 3 pins are used.. The datasheet is here http://www.micropik.com/PDF/dht11.pdf If you can desolder it and rewire it in the exhaust duct, I can't see why it won't work. The data sheet mentions cable lengths up to and over 20 metres so I can't see why it would not work.

A quick scan of that lot reveals a manual barely adequate ro connect it an use it, even less so for understanding the technicalities of how it works or how to do anything fancy with it. When using the controller you have, it appears to use the terminals HF, LF and MF (high medium and low fan?) to select the speed. There is also mention of a manual 3 speed control using the terminals L(1) M(1) and H(1) * Are these in fact the same terminals,. just referred to by a different name to put us off the scent? * (I am not entirely sure what's in the brackets, you zoom in and the resolution of the image is too poor to be certain) I think it's going to be a case of stick with the controller you have, or forget it (at least as control goes, perhaps just keep it as a display) and configure your own controller. I doubt you will ever need 3 speeds. you will need a trickle speed and a boost speed. Once you know which one is going to be your boost speed then a changeover relay contact will switch speed for you. you then need either a boost timer or your own humidistat system to command the relay.

Do you have an electronic copy of the manual you can upload? I have to say it seems bonkers to put the humidistat in the controller. I have always heard of the humidistat going in the extract duct so it senses the humidity of the air it is extracting. If you can find a manual we can look at, we might be able to suggest something.

25 metre run to the kitchen worries me. Old house, the kitchen was a long way from the tank, and part of the run in 22mm. Result it took an age for the hot water to arrive. I was constantly being told off for rinsing stuff in cold water, and my reply was I didn't want the time, or wasted hot water, just to purge the long run of pipe to get the tiny bit of hot I needed. I would seriously see if you can shorten that. Otherwise, seriously, I would buy a length of 10mm pipe and try it to see if it gives enough flow at a kitchen tap over that distance. Our new house I have changed the layout a bit specifically to get the HW tank closer to the kitchen, where is is (or should be!) used most often. I recall this argument with my father who was an old school plumber. When he plumbed my first house, he insisted on a long run of 22mm to the bath, and the basin fed from that. I argued for a separate 10 or 15mm for the basin, but he just could not see the smaller volume of water in the pipe would make it quicker to deliver hot water.

At the top you can get a proper angle piece to form a drip bead. Was that window £75 including the glass?

Print that reply and archive it. Just in case the issue comes up later.

It's a perception thing. We are having UFH in the two bathrooms. Not because I think it's needed, but because SWMBO thinks it's needed. In my case it's only short runs using left over pipe from the last house, so all it is going to cost is some spreader plates and a small manifold.

I will be interested in your reasoning. The 18mm OSB seems pointless. It's no good as a final floor for carpet, use 18mm chipboard floor panels for that, and it's pointless for a wooden floor as you can just use a structural floor straight onto the battens instead to minimise build up thickness.

Is this where your bins live in the week, or where they go for bin emptying day? At the moment our bins are next to the raised deck step into the static 'van. We find we like that arrangement as it places then right next to the kitchen door and places the lids low down in relation to the floor level of the entrance platt, at about handrail level. We are almost certainly going to replicate that when we move into the house.

If it's a 9" solid brick wall, then I would think the bond would make it pretty impossible to just remove the inner layer. What about external wall insulation?