ProDave

Do I take it, the answer from the "issue" you had a few weeks ago was the "wrong" result?

If I did that here, the hole in the ground would fill with water every winter if there was the slightest pin hole in any tanking membrane.

I have UFH (upstairs and dowsnstairs) with a Firebird oil boiler (basic non condensing) Never had any problems and I can't say I particularly notice the boiler short cycling. The blending in the UFH manifold mixer seems to take care of everythign and ensure a reasonable return temperature to the boiler. Unless you have insufficient under floor insulation, there is no reason UFH should be any more expensive to run than radiators. How long has it been running and how much oil do you think you have used?

LPG in 47 Kg bottles is VERY expensive, Just filled 2 of mine (used for the gas hob so each one lasts nearly 2 years, so long you forget to check until BOTH have run out. oops) and that was £150. I would not be using it for hot water or space heating. We only use it for coking because nothing beats a gas hob. An electric boiler on E10 actually makes sense, you can pretty well heat a well insulated house real time just by heating in the off peak times with no need to use any peak rate electricity for heating. If you are going to be moving 47Kg bottles about, get a gas bottle trolley. I still favour heating the DHW tank to about 45 degrees with the ashp and using an in line modulating instant water heater to raise it to final temperature if there has been insufficient solar pv to do so already with the immersion heater.

We had a SE involved in the design and BC approved their drawings and calculations,.but the SE is not in any way supervising the build. BC have inspected the completed bare shell and agreed they are happy it has been built to the approved design and don't want any further inspections until completion. so it appears you don't "need" an engineer involved to supervise the build.

It's not just random guesswork. the designer of my house did a moisture analysis that shows there is no condensation risk. It also shows a thermal time constant of 13 hours so it should not heat up / cool down to quickly. (interestingly the analysis shows on a hot day, the house will reach peak internal temperature about midnight) u-wert-berechnung (10).pdf

I never got a price per sq metre for the wood fibre board. the builders that built the shell supplied it so it was lumped into the price of the shell. As it happened I had to lay them off due to lack of money so I ended up fitting it all myself then employing the guy to render it. Yes the wood fibre board costs money, but in my case that is offset against not having to pay for blockwork and someone to lay the blocks, and simplified foundations. the fact it can be DIY fitted is another saving in labour of you choose. My argument was a blockwork skin and cavity on a timber frame adds very little insulation. This wood fibre skin adds insulation, and helps impiove the air tightness of the build on the outside.

Yes that's me. 100mm thick wood fibre board (Pavatex) over a timber frame, and a lime based render system straight onto it with a silicon top coat. There's more on my blog, but apologies I have still not copied over the early entries from the old ebuild blog. So a couple of pictures here for you:

Yes that is right. Unfortunately that applies to the standard design of meter box. I have yet so see one that does not have two tiny flimsy little pins as hinges. It seems to be what everyone makes. they need to be treated with care.

i bought two standard flush meter boxes for about £20 each on ebay.

My "concern" with a steel frame as you suggest, is at some point you need to fix wood and plasterboard to the steel frame. Of course fixing to a wod frame is easy, you use nails, but fixing to the steel frame? And as it's unusual construction, expect building control to want heaps of calculations from a structural engineer. If you can overcome those two issues and you are happy doing it, then give it a go, and post the results in a blog for us all to share.

I recall doing a loft conversion and BC failed the window as the cill was 1" too high. To get it passed they had to install a fixed step 1" high (I kid you not) in front of the window. I am certain if the house was on fire, and flames were licking up my aris, I would have been able to negotiate a cill 1" too high even without the step.

In which case, I would space out the flow and return pipes that are "passing through" at the same spacing as everything else, then make the hall zone what is left over.

I'm late to this thread. My comments: Do NOT bother with an UFH zone in the hall. Our present house, which is nothing special in terms of insulation etc has one, and it NEVER turns on. The hall is in the middle of the house and it only has a tiny wall area at the front to lose heat. It will gain much more heat from the adjacent rooms, so save pipe and effort and forget any UFH circuit in the hall. This will then allow you to space out any pipes that happen to flow via the hall to get to their destination. Same for a landing upstairs, that never turns on either so again do not bother with UFH on a landing upstairs. Don't cram the pipe runs from the manifold all into oner little gap, but space them out evenly across the width of the hall, and evenly where they pass under the stairs. This alone will heat the hall all it needs. The under stairs cupboard will be warm from the manifold, ventilate it to let some of the heat out to the rest of the house.

My trick with the digger when digging a trench, was to give it a final sweep with the bucket turned up, so the teeth don't dig anything and it is in effect the back of the bucket cleaning out the bottom of the trench and compacting anything left loose.

This is an interesting point. At the moment i consider a landline necessary to get broadband, and because we run 2 businesses from home a landline is pretty essential. We only get a weak 2g phone signal here, but with a booster and outside aerial that is usable ion the house but doesn't solve the broadband. Because we are out in the sticks and the broadband we do get is slow and prone to dropping out, the local community are looking to set up their own broadband network delivered to the home by wifi. Perhaps in a few years when we retire, and the need for a landline does not seem so important, then a mobile phone for voice and this wifi broadband might suit our needs an we could drop the landline altogether.

I bought my Wacker plate from ebay. Keep an eye there and on gumtree. I have never heard of using one to compact foundations trenches, just ground you have infilled. I won't be selling mine, it's one of those things like the cement mixer that I will be keeping. I have already hired out the wacker a couple of times and got half my purchase price back.

Refresh my memory with it's specifications, size, weight, power consumption and ventilation rates (size of building it will ventilate) And where you are and how much you want? Probably best to start a new post int he for sale section.

And 15 years ago I designed part of a laser machining system that makes these tiles, at the time we had lots of the bare pv panels kicking about during development of the machine.

That could be the case. Definitely my build method, wood fibre cladding on timber frame and render applied to that is not to be found in any "approved document". But here in Scotland you must submit full plans (no building notice option) and building control approved my design as detailed on the drawings so as long as it's built to the drawings (which it is) should not refuse to pass it. I guess these guys could have submitted their full plans including their retaining wall, foundations, wall make up, insulation etc. But I would have expected it to need supporting with calculations, and how does a structural engineer assess the strength of a yet to be selected round tree branch that will just have the bark stripped off then used?

I have not posted in this thread for a while. but I will say, in the case of a joint that weeps, I still fall back on my tin of "Water Hawk Potable Water Jointing Compound" My Dad has been dead 18 years and it dates back to when he was still working so I'll bet it's pushing 30 years old now. Still half a tin left, that should see me out. But look, it's still available https://www.travisperkins.co.uk/Fernox-Hawk-White-Potable-Water-Jointing-Compound-400g/p/813034 So I would recommend anyone doing any plumbing to buy a tin. I note it says "shelf life 5 years" Oh er.

Are you REALLY so set against an overhead feed to the tune of over £7K? I would take the free overhead line any day.

Re the sewage system. As Crofter will tell you, even if you build a "portable" house that is exempt from building regulations, you will still need building regs to install a treatment plant. So how a solid separator and composting system built inside the greenhouse attached to the front of your house meets building regs is a mystery to me. Personally if I had been building that, I would have made his plastic bag retaining wall to create a flat area, set some padstones on the ground, and built the entire house as a single storey portable building just sitting on the pads (but not touching the retaining wall) and thus exempt from building control. and to avoid building control for the treatment plant, buy a packaged composting toilet system.

Why did you wait so long? I would have chased them much sooner in case your application had been lost and you might have only got a lower FIT rate.

If you lay a sewer pipe properly, there will be no sag. You are supposed to lay it on a bed of pea gravel and then infill around and over it with pea gravel, Yes if you do what most builders do, support it on bricks in the trench, then just shovel the earth back on top, it is going to sag, but no self respecting self builder would do that would they?