ProDave

The UFH I would always do one thermostat per room, the system lends itself to that perfectly. Room stats upstairs as well would be my choice as you get a setting in proper degrees rather than the usual 1-5 on a TRV. It will also be controlling the temperature at a useful point in the room, not down close to the floor. Though in a well insulated house that won't make much difference. Individual room stats also opens the possibility of programmable thermostats, e.g no point having the bedrooms heated all day when you only want them warm in the evenings to go to bed.

Yes indeed we do. Not only is the insulation amount very poor in the caravan, it is of a low decrement delay type.

The cooler weather is on the way. It was stinking hot this morning, I had to abandon lawn mowing at 9:30 because it was too hot (having started at 8:30 to try and beat the heat) but by mid day it was clouding over and now it's full, but thin cloud. No sign of the thunderstorms, just the odd spot of rain. house a comfortable 19 degrees, only 1 degree up from last nights open window cool down.

In a well insulated house that reacts slowly to ambient temperature, if you want to cool it, you open the windows ONLY when the air temperature outside is lower. I did this last night, left all the windows open a small amount overnight when the air had cooled down. The house cooled to 18 degrees as a result and now they are all shut again and the house is staying a nice cool retreat from the heat outside. You don't want to be opening them when it's hotter out than in.

Our new house, (not yet occupied so no heating, no passive heating from living activities, and no mvhr running yet) reached a peak of 21 inside downstairs today amd 22 degrees upstairs. To the south of our house are trees, and these are almost in full leaf now, blocking out a lot of the daytime direct sunlight, yet in winter when they are bare the sun floods in. It is really only now the sun is in the West that we get much direct sunlight. It's been 27 degrees here today, and the temperature in the caravan is unbearable. We have t keep all the doors and windows open and the best we can hope for there is to cool it to not much above ambient. All shut up would be stupidly hot. Thunderstorms and back to normal forecast for tomorrow. (British summer = 2 hot days and a thunderstorm)

You are addressing this from the wrong angle. I would be asking why are you even considering a 100mm frame today? Our previous house, built in 2003, used a 150mm frame. That was about the time up here that 150mm became the normal, because you simply could not get enough insulation in a 100mm frame. Now "ordinary" houses up here use a 150mm frame with added PIR on the inside. Our new house has a 190mm frame in our case with added insulation on the outside.

I recommend Knauf Earthwool frametherm 35 for between the frame, a lot less nasty to work with than other types of glasswool insulation. This was a top tip from the builders that built and erected my frame.

I did consider leaving out the floor insulation (suspended timber floor) under where the larder is going, but changed my mind as it would then be a major PITA to put it in later if we changed our minds and didn't construct the pantry. Our new house is performing well in this hot weather (it's even hot up here) remaining nice and cool inside. The inside temperature of the south facing walls is just 0.5 degree hotter than the inside temperature of the north facing walls.. Thanks no doubt to the insulation with a long decrement delay. The caravan on the other hand needs all the doors and windows open to stop it becoming like an oven. The ground slab under our suspended floor (there is one bit still not insulated and accessible) is still measuring 6 degrees today, so if we wanted to cool the larder a simple fan through the floor to draw up some cold air would probably work well.

Can I raise my wacky larder / fridge theory again. Think about how a fridge works. Basically the compressor etc is there to remove heat from a fridge. Most fridges expell the removed heat via some form of plate on the back. So the back of a fridge will be warm, expelling the extracted heat. The inside of a fridge will be cold. The front and sides of a fridge will therefore be cooler as that's where heat is drawn in to replace what has been extracted. So to sumarise, back of fridge is hot, front and sides are cool. My wacky idea therefore was to build the fridge into one wall of the larder, such that the font and most of the sides were in the larder, and the back was outside the larder (in my case it would have been in the hall) The theory that the cool surfaces of the fridge would continually be removing heat from the larder thus keeping it cool. It would need a fridge sized hole in the wall and the fridge sealed to that hole. And the rear side of the fridge would look silly sticking out of a wall, so I would have put a false wall up just beyond that with air vents to allow the hot air out. I won't be putting this into practice as SWMBO has decreed the fridge is not going in the larder, but if anyone ever tries it, do let me know if it worked.

We used the Baumit.com render system with their Silikon Top final coat. That is definitely very waterproof and robust. It might be asking if they think that would adhere to what you have.

The standard here is ordinary blocks laid block and flat. (one block on edge, two laid flat gives a wall about 330mm wide

This is what I have done in the same situation A small retaining wall made of railway sleepers. A French drain along the front with the level of stones lower than the air bricks. In my case it will remain open like that. It's only along the front as the side and back the ground level has sloped down and it's not needed. I will bridge across it when I form the ramp and path to the front door. Could you do something like that with the paving slabs cantilevered over and keep the drain open at the ends for airflow?

Use a glyphosphate (sp?) weed killer like Gallup360 That's what I used to clear my plot and it worked well, with a borrowed backpack sprayer.

If you want it to last, build the whole lot out of engineering bricks, a mix of red and blue to get your desired pattern. Unlike a house wall, a garden wall will remain damp for long periods, and the frost gets in to a normal facing brick and you see the results. Same applies for cement render to a garden wall, seldom lasts long for the same reason. Engineering bricks tend not to absorb water so less likely to fail. I like the English garden wall bond one with a row of soldiers on top, rather than concrete capings.

You can abstract small amounts without a licence, I forget the figure. If I was going to water the garden from the burn I would just drop my submirsible pump in, use it, then remove it, and tell nobody. In my last house we had the old well in the garden. I had a pump in that for watering the vegetables. Yes I am happy for him to culvert the whole lot if he puts a big enough pipe in and SEPA have approved his plans. What I was against was him putting a small pipe in that from my experience would not have coped with the flow on at least 2 occasions since we have been here, hence it would have backed up and my garden wold have become a pond.

If you hate dormers, consider my idea of "gable ends" instead. Ours (like just about every house in the Highlands) is room in roof, but I built big gable ends, instead of dormers. Think of a dormer, but don't chop the sides off. I first saw this style of house on Skye and liked it. I have to say I am very pleased and just about the entire floor area upstairs has standing headroom.

This is not over yet. The neighbour has still not spoken to me. But he has been speaking to my tenant in my old house. But he is apparently applying to SEPA for permission to culvert the burn across his garden. It will be interesting to see if they give him permission or not. At least if they do one would hope they will be specifying a proper size of pipe to be used.

A victory for common sense.

The only thing I would do differently is sell the old house first before building the replacement. The inability after 2 years trying to sell the old house has left us working on the new house in dribs and drabs on an almost non existent pot of money.

Hi and welcome to the forum. Finding a plot is always the crux, that needs to be your main priority. Until you get that, then detailing the plans is not a priority and should be regarded as just putting ideas and concepts onto paper. Until you find a plot, you won't know what size and shape the house will be, and how you want to orientate the house with respect to views, sun, neighbours etc.

One can only wonder what goes on in someone's mind to make them hate others (and themself) so much to do such things. Only when we can begin to understand WHY they do it will we ever have hope of changing that behavior

How does this work if you have an air tight layer on the outside of the cold roof? Surely in winter that will be a recipe for condensation? Don't building regs demand ventilation of a cold roof, meaning your air tight layer must be at ceiling level and only there?

Can you find any builders near you using it? I got mine via a local builder so was able to take advantage of their bulk buying and got it a lot cheaper than any on line supplier and no delivery cost.

Tripple socket means all 3 connections are female http://www.screwfix.com/p/floplast-equal-junction-triple-87-5/12152 So the bottom will just plug onto the stub coming out of the ground. Your new branch to the wc will plug into the side, and a bit of pipe then the slip coupling out of the top. Yes that's an underground one, the first I found the the same applies to the above ground ones as well

The slip coupling will NOT go at the bottom. The branch for the pan will need to be a tripple socket branch and will go straight on the stub of pipe coming out of the floor (cut to the right length) The slip coupling will go somewhere above to enable you to join it all back together (as you can't pull it apart) and you might need two slip couplings and insert a short bit of pipe between them. You may also need to expose the stack a bit higher, it might not be possible to get it all in what you have exposed.