ProDave

I found there was slight leakage from the bubble you pump it up with. Solution: Kink the pipe to the bubble to seal it and it holds pressure well.

I have this one from screweys http://www.screwfix.com/p/bailey-drain-air-testing-kit/19536?_requestid=433848 It does the job and has satisfied BC so far.

Windows, you meed to be SURE you have the sizes right. Three of our windows, we changed the size as the frame was bing built (before ordering the windows that all fitted like a glove) Buy a container to store everything dry (or an old static caravan ) It's the Brexit effect and devaluing of the £ that is likely to make the biggest change. Are you already to late to avoid that?

The "proper" air tightness tape I am talking about is very much like duct tape in it's dimensions and is single sided, but obviously has a much stronger adhesive that is expected to last a long time.

Use proper air tightness tape, sold for the job. It is not cheap, but you can reasonably expect it to stay stuck.

I contest that a day rate gives you best value for money, IF they work all day and don't charge you to sit around drinking tea. As an electrician, it's how I prefer to work. If I have to provide a fixed price, then it will be a higher price, because I have to price in every thing that could make the job difficult. If those difficulties don't arrise then with a fixed price there is no mechanism (or incentive) to charge the job cheaper than the fixed price. It all comes down to trust, do you trust the builder and his team to charge you for hours worked? and keep you informed of how the job is progressing and what difficulties they are encountering?

Wait for the price to drop if they are not shifting?

All that would happen in that case is little energy would get transferred. your heating bill would go down but so would the temperature of the house. The only way I can see a "saving" would be if you had un insulated pipes under the floor (wasted heat loss) and by making the energy transfer more efficient, you could lower the temperature, and therefore reduce the wasted heat loss.

That appears to be what they claim. But the water is just a medium to transfer heat to the fabric of the dwelling, so simple conservation of energy theory says how can that save money on your heating bills? The house will still leak the same amount of heat and still need the same heat input to maintain the temperature.

I thought the pool heaters were A2W heat pumps? the only difference being the pool temperature is lower so they may not heat water very hot? but probably hot enough for wet under floor heating. Welcome to the forum by the way.

Call me a skeptic, but it removes air from the system. HOW will that save money on your heating bills?

There is a simple answer to that, sell your big house and buy a smaller one. Oh hang on, ours has been on the market coming up to 2 years without a buyer, suddenly it's not as "simple"

And leading on from that is why party politics has any part to play in the local council? The council is there to provide the services that central government say they must. So why should there be any difference in how a "labour controlled" and a "conservative controlled" council deliver those same services or how much it costs to deliver them?

I am VERY cynical about property taxes. I had just bought my previous 2 bedroomed 1930's ex council semi detached and it had an ANNUAL rates payable of £260. I paid that one year before the POLL tax was introduced. Now as a single person at the time, you might think if everybody (not every property) pays, then it would be cheaper. WRONG when the poll tax came in I paid more. Then when eventually the poll tax was scrapped and the council tax introduced, guess what , the council tax on the same house was MORE than my poll tax had been. Now the SNP have "reformed" the council tax an hey ho I will pay MORE. Forgive me for being just a little cynical about it all. Change = MORE

The only person that can give a definitive answer is your building control that will be signing it off. A related one perhaps was I did the wiring for two terraced cottages that were being knocked through to make one larger cottage. There was a great deal of discussion about whether they would have to meed the current insulation requirements for the whole building (which would have been very hard to achieve) and in the end the answer from building control was only areas where alterations were done needed to meet the current insulation regs. Readiong between the lines that would mean the new upstairs would need to meed current regs, but not the existing downstairs?

This "scaling off drawings" issue. How much of it is not being given the correct information? There was one point in our build where the builders were making the frame in their workshop and the called me for help as they were having "trouble with dimensions" So I went to have a look and they were trying to scale measurements from an elevation drawing. I looked through all the drawings they had and none showed enough information to be precise. But somewhere in the back of my mind I was sure I had seen the information they needed. A quick check of the full set of detailed drawings (which I had as a PDF set) showed all the information they needed, but showed the designers, when printing a set for the builders, had missed one vital drawing. A quick phone call and I had them print out a full size copy of that drawing for me to give to the builders and all was well. I wonder how many times that missing drawing was just "solved" by scaling from the wrong drawing?

The SNP promised us they would replace council tax with a local income tax which would have reflected your ability to pay. They cowered away from that and stuck with the council tax, but in the process increased the council tax rate for higher banded properties to "tax the rich". Excuse me for feeling a little betrayed. I am certainly NOT by any measure "rich" Regarding the word "fair" you can usually change the phrase "it's not fair" to "it's not to my advantage" and in 90% of cases it wil have exactly the same meaning.

That's a very interesting analysis. I suspect our situation is very atypical, but we "made our money" in an earlier life down south. We now live mortgage free in a large house, due mostly to the difference in house prices between SE England and the Highlands. So now we don't earn very much, about 10K each self employed both only working part time. What we find is we no longer pay income tax as the threshold is something like 11K so above what we each earn. With no mortgage to pay, we find we can live comfortably under the income tax threshold. We both pay a little national insurance, and of course VAT on most things we buy, and the BIG one for us is council tax is now our second largest bill (second only to food and more than heating or road transport costs) The most bizarre thing about our situation is they choose to give us money "back" in the form of tax credits. Who designed such a bonkers system? I have to say, having such a high threshold before you start paying income tax is no incentive to "work hard" Towards the end of the financial year, I see little point personally in chasing more work if it would push me into the income band to start paying income tax again. But again I am very atypical, as an older worker, working towards retirement and looking to reduce, not increase the amount of work I do. It would be interesting to see if we are in fact net contributors or not?

But adding extra internal insulation will make the frame colder and may lead to condensation issues. That can be a problem with SIPS around the sole plate area. The one thing I got by having mine designed properly was a proper thermal analysis of the whole wall make up : Ignoring the fact it's in German, what you see is there is no condensation risk, and it has a long decrement delay, so changes in outside temperature will only slowly affect inside temperature so the risk of overheating on a hot day is minimised. you really want some similar analysis if you start adding insulation to a standard product. u-wert-berechnung (10).pdf

Thanks. That's filed under "101 uses for an old plant pot" That neatly solves my concerns about getting an accurate and more importantly repeatable reading. So I'll go and buy one of those cheap wind vane jobbies from ebay. probably this one http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Digital-LCD-Smart-Anemometer-For-Wind-Speed-Gauge-Meter-TemperatureHT-/401104748056?hash=item5d63b4be18:g:uscAAOSwgApXDOMa

If you are saying an air vane type is okay, then you can buy one for not a lot over £10 on ebay from China. I had my doubts that an air vane type would be adequate, since we are talking about measuring a low flow rate from effectively a point source, so I would have thought positioning of it with respect to the vent would be critical, and it would probably be right at the low end of it's ability to read. that's why I thought the more expensive thermal type might be better? I want one for my boat anyway, so I will probably just buy a cheap Chinese one and give it a go.

So Sensus, can you tell mt WHY when I approached architects, with a sketch of the flor plan of the house I wanted to build, they all just wanted to quote a price based on a percentage of the construction cost, and none would give a simple price just to detail the design?

What I found with the "standard" timber frame kit suppliers, was as soon as you mentioned you wanted a really good air tight well insulated house, and you would supplement their standard package with extra insulation and air tightness detail, then they suddenly refused to quote. One said "there is no synergy between what we offer and what you want"

The MBC quote would probably have included the foundations which I will bet the other quotes don't include? and the insulation in the walls and roof. I tried MBC but had a hickup so never actually got a quote, but my shell cost has turned out at roughly £500 per square metre which is on a par with what most people pay MBC so they look to me to be correctly priced. A vaulted ceiling will require a ridge beam to support it and that is what I have used with my timber frame. 140mm timber frame is to small, I went for 195mm suplimented by the 100mm wood fibre external insulation as well. I found Touchwood to be expensive but ovbiously not everyone finds that to be the case. What I found in the end was rather than go to a specific package builder, I employed an architectural technician that understood low energy houses, to design it for me, and then a local firm of builders constructed and erected the frame to their design. That approach can yield whatever you want, and I know there is a house half a mile from here being built entirely of I beam joists for floor walls and roof.

How about what I am doing? Timber frame with external (wood fibre) insulation board and render direct onto the wood fibre board. A lot of this typer of build is possible DIY if you are on a tight budget.