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ProDave

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  1. ProDave
    It's not uncommon to get a still, cold, sunny spell here in winter. Open the back door and the air is warm and the ground is frost free. Open the front door on the north side and it's like opening the fridge, and there's permafrost building up where the sun never shines. There is one road near here that I avoid in winter. It's in the shadow of a hill so never gets any sun for nearly 3 months of the year, never gets salted, and that can build up a really thick layer of ice that stays for weeks. There is a huge differene here between north and south sides. Granted when it's blowing a hooley from the west it will make no difference.
  2. ProDave
    Related to this, the easiest for me would be to put them both through the east facing wall. It would be harder to do, but part of me says to put them through the south wall as the air there is more likely to be warmer. Likewise the worst place to put them would be through the north facing wall as that's much more likely to suck in very cold air. Or am I talking nonsense?
  3. ProDave
    Yes that old chestnut. Fire door to go between the house and the adjoined garage. So needs FD30 or preferably FD60 rating. But the house is warm and air tight, the garage, although insulated will be a cold space and draughty (partly due to the building regs requirement for ventilation) So what I want is a good, well insulated, well sealed door that's fire rated. An internal fire door just doesn't cut the mustard. Howdens do some of their exterior doors with a fire rating, but they don't quote U values and it will just be a timber door in a timber frame and I doubt it will have much in the way of sealing so probably hardly any better than an internal fire door. Any suggestions? this seems to be a "gap" in the market.
  4. ProDave
    It's that strip above the eaves protector and the membranne This is the detail for my sun room. The box profile sheeting (mocked up with the spirit level) won't quite touch the ventilator strip. The eaves filler for the box profile roofing will fix (probably with glue) to the top of the ventilator strip. I'm not yet sure how you ventilate the ridge of a box profile roof.
  5. ProDave
    I can't see exchange rates as the cause for higher UK prices. The item still has to get from its factory in whatever country, to the UK and is therefore subject to exchange rate transactions. If anything, going via a third country could add another exchange rate transaction and commission, so logically that ought to be a more expensive option, not a cheaper one. The transport one also bugs me a LOT. A lot of couriers charge a big premium to ship something north of Glasgow / Edinburgh. It has been the cause of many lost deals, when a particular supplier will not even entertain the idea of using a different courier that does not charge silly money to deliver here. They are so stubborn, that's the courier we use take it or leave it, so I usually leave it. One can only conclude they have plenty of business without us in the far north.
  6. ProDave
    Perhaps the law has changed? We had to go the 0% credit card route about 7 years ago, when a certain bank that uses a dark coloured horse as it's logo shafted us and having verbally agreed a small extension to a small mortgage, when it came to do the paperwork they had "tightened their lending criteria" and we no longer qualified for any mortgage with them, let alone a small extension to the one we had. This was after we had paid the deposit for new windows and doors so a 0% credit card became the best way to finance it. The T&C then definitely said payments went first to paying down the 0% ballance. If they were the last bank standing I would not give them, the pleasure of any of my banking business again, having been a trustworthy loyal customer for 30 years before they shafted us.
  7. ProDave
    Attention to detail is the one that gets me. That really costs nothing apart from time. My neighbour is having built what he hopes will be a low energy home. He has cut some corners like only having 2g glass in his rationel windows, and not having mvhr so trickle vents and extractor fans. But while I have been working in there wiring it, I have felt it was never as warm as it should have been. It didn't take long to realise (pre plasterboard going on) that a draught was coming in all around the windows. The windows had been fitted direct into the timber frame with no visible means of actually sealing them to the frame. In the end I felt compelled to mention this to the client as I didn't want to see his house being built with a "plasterboard tent" with cold air behind the plasterboard. I don't know if that got back to the builder and he actually did anything to seal the windows.
  8. ProDave
    If using a 0% credit card, transfer your ballance, then put it in a drawer and DO NOT use it for general purchases. That's because any payments you make go first to paying down the 0% balance, so if you just paid off what you spent in a month, that balance would not go down and you will be charged interest on it at the normal higher rate.
  9. ProDave
    It was even easier for me. I had been using Screwfix before they launched plumbfix and electricfix, mostly buying electrical stuff,. so when they launched electricfix they simply asked me would I like to join? and that was it.
  10. ProDave
    Screwfix do their "trade" versions known as plumbfix and elecrtricfix that give you a few percent discount and a monthly trade account. Plus you can use the trade entrance if you go to the shop and get free coffee. You usually have to prove you are in the trade so not that easy but some self builders might manage it.
  11. ProDave
    Yes as Jeremy says, SEPA have exactly the opposite view to the EA. At the start I even measured the flow rate of the burn (which turned out to accord with their official figures) and worked out the dilution rates but the original answer was a firm NO and it was SEPA that suggested the filter mound system. And yes it is a lesson learned that if you take to long, building regulations can change and what was okay, is no longer allowed. Discharging to the burn is the simplest and cheapest option so I am very pleased that is what we have ended up with. The filter mound would have used about £1000 worth of graded sand and would have left a "hill" in the middle of the garden, and needed a pumped output on ther treatment plant.
  12. ProDave
    I didn't compare. I went for the recommendation of what was best and proven to work with the wood fibre cladding. For my entire house the render materials, that's all the render and all the corner beads, bottom beads, window beads etc has cost £3662 excluding VAT (I have paid the VAT and will reclaim it at the end of the build) That was sourced through a local low energy house builder so some big bulk discounting there. I looked at buying the materials myself and the best price I could find was £5K I don't like to say bad things about other render systems but my plasterer has used another well known render system and says it has big problems with cracking. He has never had that problem with the Baumit stuff.
  13. ProDave
    I only wondered as a lot of people that have floated / polished concrete leave that as the finished floor.
  14. ProDave
    Yes I know this topic very well. We have a burn through the garden, originally SEPA said no to discharging to the burn, so I ended up designing a filter mound system and that is what planning passed. When it came to the building warrant, I suddenly found building regs had changed and the area of land I could put a filter mound on had shrunk, and was no longer big enough. For a while I had no drainage solution = no house, until SEPA changed their mind and said "why not discharge to the burn" Problem solved and we are now proceeding but it was a VERY worrying period. Aparently SEPA only allow discharge to a watercourse as a "last resort" and we had reached that last resort stage.
  15. ProDave
    I fully agree that building regs need to be improved and enforced, but how? The Code for sustainable homes tried that but it failed and missed the target. I have a relative who is a builder and he built a house to CFSH level 5. He said it was just a ridiculous paperwork exercise having to record when the workers had a lunch break and where they went for lunch. I am not sure if he was joking when he said he had to record how many times they flushed the site toilet. There was more emphasis on providing a bike rack to park a pushbike than ensuring the insulation was fitted properly.
  16. ProDave
    Yes it's a lime based render system. No problems at all so far. We have used LESS materials than estimated so far. Base coat is called MC55W and is mixed from a powder. As it starts to go off, a fibreglass mesh from a roll is pushed into the wet render. Next day a primer called DG27 is painted on, it's a bit like PVA. Then the top coat called Silikon top is applied, that comes pre mixed in tubs. You can get different colours and different textures. Temperature has to be above 5 degrees for 3 days after application. No problem at this time of year, even up here.
  17. ProDave
    We are using the Baumit.com render system, marketed in the UK under the "lime green" name (which I think is a very confusing name as peiople expect that to describe the colour) I know from talking to the plasterer today that it can be applied to EPS so should be okay for an ICF build. Here's some pictures of it on my blog http://ardross.altervista.org/Wilowburn/let-the-rendering-commence/
  18. ProDave
    The cheapest price I got was from SIG in Inverness. I believe they are a national chain so worth a try?
  19. ProDave
    I looked at a GSHP. The cost of the pipes AND the antifreeze to fill them is as much again as the heat pump. I could have done the ground work myself with my own digger but it still would have been a lot of work. then there is the anti freeze needs replacign every 10 years, another expense and a problem to dispiose of the old antifreeze. I just decided it wasn't worth it. Niow a heat pump fed from the water in a burn, Too much regulatory hurdles, but one might "experiment" later on when it's all signed off and nobody is looking........
  20. ProDave
    Knauf Earthwool Frametherm 35 is the product you want, available on a roll, or batts. Batts are probably better for a roof.Conveniently available in 90mm thickness and 2 layers nicely fills between 195mm timbers. I am using the roll version in my walls:
  21. ProDave
    All looking good. Clearly this is a well rehearsed procedure that your builders have done before. My only comment is they seem to have drilled holes in the slab to fix the temporary braces to. How do you know they haven't hit UFH pipes and how will you fill those holes so they don't show on your floated concrete floor?
  22. ProDave
    I will throw this in for discussion, I might be wrong: WHY do you need to keep the EPS upstand at the entrance to the garage? I would consider cutting it away so your concrete ramp from the drive up to the garage abuts directly to the concrete slab of the garage. yes it creates a cold bridge to the garage slab, but it's a garage, does that matter? As for water under the garage door. That's a problem in our present house. I kept thinking what's needed is a substantial rubber strip or something, on the lines of a TINY sleeping policeman, perhaps just an inch tall. I am sure I have seen such things screwed to floors where a roller door comes down to meet it, but I have never found anything for sale (but I didn't look very hard) The side door, lay your paving level, but incorporate a drainage channel between the slabs and the garage floor.
  23. ProDave
    My roof membrane is straight on the sarking board and that's normal up here. To do that is must be a non tenting membrane. Draping it over the counter battens makes it more vunerable to damage and is something you would only do if by mistake you had bought a tenting membrane so it could not touch the OSB. As already noted, Sarking board is a building regs requirement in Scotland, I would never want to go back to the English way of not using it.
  24. ProDave
    I wired a straw bale house that had one like this, at least similar output levels. The idea was the high water output heated a large thermal store so you only needed to burn the stove every few days and the low room output was to try and ensure you didn't overheat the house when doing so. I believe from the occupants it is working well, but it's situated in a large double height space that can stand a high heat input for a short time. Put it in a small room and you might have a problem.
  25. ProDave
    Please don't toddle off. Nobody is suggesting you are a fool, your contributions here are welcome. All this thread has suggested is that the claims of one particular type of insulation have in the past been over stated and we don't trust that type of insulation. And we suggested some alternatives that might be better. All without calling anybody a fool.
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