ProDave

So you are saying this is a new build, wired like that and no insulation fitted? Best compromise, unclip the cables, lay them flat on the plasterboard and insulate over?

They must have thought copper was expensive in the 60's, because most installs from that era the cables are strung bar tight, and there's barely enough slack behind a socket to pull the front off a fraction.

I am planning just 25mm battens and counter battens. My thinking being I don't want the wood clad portion to be any thicker than the wood fibre and render portion. So 25mm batten, plus 25mm batten plus 20mm board plus 20mm board = 90mm overall thickness. Using 50mm for one of the battens would make the overall build up to 115mm which I don't want.

That assumes I am prepared to pay the higher standing charge and higher daytime rate, jut to get a few KWH cheaper at night. But I like the thinking of immersion heat just the top half of the tank for "her" morning shower and the legionella cycle. As long as half a tank lasts 25 minutes or I will be in trouble.........

And I plan to be different again and have solar PV (almost certainly without any FIT by the time I get there) so the emphasis will be on maximum self usage. So the daytime is when the HP needs to be working most, not over night. if I had my way, a dribble of luke warm water from yesterday would be plenty for a morning splash of the face, and let the HP do it's thing when the sun is up for a nice tank of water for the evening which is when we do the washing up (don't let anyone tell you a dishwasher does away with washing up, it just reduces it and deals with the fiddly stuff) and for my evening shower. For this "plan" to work, I have to convert SWMBO to having an evening shower rather than a morning shower. Any advice in that department appreciated.

That's a good point. I don't think so or rather hope not. The mezanine is a storage platform, nothing more, nothing less that happens to be open to one of the bedrooms. If the issue is raised I will be arguing that it should be treated like any other bit of loft space and noise transmission is not an issue as there is normally nobody there to create noise. I will be filling the gap between the floor and the ceiling with some form of insulation (probably whatever is left over or can be bought exceedingly cheap) I will admit it is a deviation to the plans. The plans showed two adjacent bedrooms, each with half a vaulted ceiling (i.e the dividing wall going right up to the apex) But we had a think about it and decided it might look a bit odd so we hatched the idea to put a ceiling over one room creating a mezanine accessed from the other. It saved having to build a 4 metre high partition wall.

That is certainly a good solution and is what I have in my new house, but the higher cost puts some people off.

There is a LOT of work in moving a consumer unit by any distance. Just "extending" all the cables is not always the best option. It is often better to rewire the first leg of each circuit with a new run. It has to be taken in the context of what other work you are doing and the disruption it's all going to create.

Question for Jack. You seem to imply you only want to heat the tank once per day with the ASHP and hence the "boost" with the immersion to make it "last the day". Is this so you can run it overnight on E7? Otherwise I can see no reason why the ASHOP doesn't top it up as you use DHW during the day.

On that basis I think I will go with 12mm ply, providing I can find some that has a decent surface finish.

Yes, but 18mm would give you a structural board at 400mm centres, so logic says at 250 centres you need less. Looks like I am not going to find any official guidance here as nobody does it. I am just trying to maximise the headroom in a tight space, so yes half an inch may be the difference between hitting your head or not.

Too much work and fiddle to infill flush. I'm looking for something that will just go down as a thin floor. the trouble is I put my joists at 250 centres deliberately to allow a thin floor, but nobody else works to less than 400mm so nobody specifies what will "do" with 250mm centres. I will probably look at the ply in the merchants next time I am there and see if any is good enough to sand and varnish as a finished floor.

It's a structural t&g board fitted straight across the joists, secret nailed.

Our present (solid Maple) floors were sold as "random lengths". In practice that meant there were 4 different length pieces and a lot more of the shorter ones than any others. The best tip I had was "close your eyes and pick up a piece" then use it, rather than looking at the pile. Even then you had to be careful not to end up with two adjacent joins in line etc. I "added" to the randomness by using whatever off cut was left from one row, to start the next.

It amazes me just how many new houses I see around here where the whole ground level at the front has been raised to floor level to give level access. It clearly must be bridging the DPC as there is seldom any effort to separate the ground from the wall. In my case I have left a large French Drain. I did talk to my BCO about putting the ramp at the back but he referred me to the "access to principle entrance not reasonable" bit. Just because you don't like the look of a ramp is not justified reason to put it around the back, there has to be more of a technical issue at the front before you can do that.

This is the floor surface for the mezanine floor above bedroom 3, that will be accessible from bedroom 2 (daughters bedroom) which will be open to the vaulted ceiling. The mezanine comes out to just beyond the centreline of the main room, and even at this point, there is barely room to stand up. So I am doing everything possible to reduce the overall make up of the mezanine deck to preserve as much headroom as possible. Originally she wanted carpet up there. With this in mind I have spaced the joists a lot closer than normal at 250mm centres, planning something like 15mm plywood as an adequate thin floor to span that small gap between joists. I currently have a temporary sheet of 11mm OSB up there which seems fine. Now she tells me she wants a "wooden" floor up there. I thought about laminates, but they are not normally regarded as structural. I strongly suspect they would be okay spanning 250mm centres but no manufacturer is going to state that. i guess at a worst case laminate onto my 11mm OSB? Does anyone know a "thin" and "Wooden" floor that will span 250mm centres? It's not like it's going to take heavy traffic, have heavy furniture on it. As I say you can walk on one bit at the edge, anywhere else you will be crawling, it really is more of a storage space than a "room"

They do in Scotland

You have to consider building regulations as well as planning. They DO set minimum sizes of an "apartment" and things like door width, corridor width, space in kitchens, activity space in bathrooms etc. So in effect they set the minimum size a house has to be. Of course you can have a 1 bedroom house with two very small "studies" or "store rooms" if you can't meet the regs for all 3 bedrooms, so there is some wriggle room.

Check your local planning policy. There will be things like minimum distances between facing windows, a certain amount of amenity space being needed such as parking, possibly turning space, bin storage space, clothes drying space, maybe even bike parking space etc. if the outside space is very small, they might remove your permitted development rights. That is a PITA if you want something simple like a shed. So perhaps preempt that by including any sheds you are likely to want in the initial planning application. It certainly amazes me sometimes here just how little outside space you need. In the town here, there is a trend for back building behind existing houses which leaves both the original and the new house with only a tiny outside space. But it seems if you can fit two wheelie bins and a rotary clothes line it seems to be "enough" There are other building regs things to think about, like if you have a window very close to a boundary it might have to be fire rated glass etc.

And some of them only got "built" for £100K because they were not finished.

Which part of Scotland? Is this a plot you have bought or a knock down and rebuild?

What size of house? To get under £100K is doing well, I doubt I will achieve that in spite of me doing so much of the work myself. As Peter says, No 1 is insulate, insulate, insulate. No 2 is air tightness. No 3 is good doors and windows, No 4 is an MVHR unit (mechanical ventilation with heat recovery) Then you can think about heating, which should not be much. I am going for an air source heat pump and to buy one for self install should be under £1500, possibly under £1000, i.e not a great deal more than an ordinary boiler. I personally would not have oil or LPG again, the price is too volatile. (though I will have LPG for cooking, the usage is so low that the cost hardly matters) I will be fitting solar PV, but by the time I get there, I doubt the (already low) feed in tariff will exist any more. So that means a DIY installed system bought as cheap as possible, and almost certainly some form of battery storage to ensure near 100% self usage. Tell us more about your house design and where you are building. Oh and welcome to the forum.

That needs a "hatch" also higher up on the inside of the cupboard to fill the stack from above. I have never seen someone set the spacing of a stud wall to match the standard size of a loo roll before.

Well this lot moved in with just bare stud walls so all "open plan" upstairs.

Some different terminology in use here. So now we know what lookouts are. Can you explain in the second picture what the "Moat" is please? ( I really don't think it's what I know of as a moat)