flanagaj

That sounds bliss. Our Persimmon 3 storey rental was 29.5c in the top bedroom 🥵 that's why I'm currently all over designing a decent solution for our build

I’m dragging this post back up as I’m keen to get people’s thoughts on their decisions given the amazing hot summer we are having. Whose house has remained nice and cool. Be honest now!

Excuse my ignorance on this, but I thought ASHP grants are only available to individuals switching from conventional oil/gas to ashp and not for individuals building a new home?

ChatGPT could be completely wrong here, but it seemed to indicate that there wasn't much difference in price between having an ASHP which can operate in both heating / cooling mode, with fan coils in the bedrooms, to having an ASHP which just operates in heating mode (heating / hot water) and a separate AC installation. It did highlight that using the ASHP in cooling mode with fan coils can only reduce the temperate a few degrees due to the associated condensation issues that can occur. I am beginning to think that using the ASHP in cooling mode is not really the best approach and it simply smells of "Upgrade your conventional boiler to an ASHP and switch your rads to fan coils and you can also have cooling too!!!" Yes, it cools by a few degrees, but if you are starting with a blank canvas, why go down that path? It just seems to be a sales pitch from the industry.

So why not simply have a single air to water system for downstairs UFH and HW and then an air to air for air conditioning?

Some interesting responses here, but as mentioned by @jack it seems that the best solution is to keep the systems all separate. MVHR for air circulation, but with added heat exchange bypass functionality ASHP system for heating and domestic HW Separate air con system for key rooms If you then add PV, why not negate all of the solutions in relation to keeping the heat out, eg venetians, solar glass ... When it's hot, the sun is out and you can simply run the aircon for free. When it's time to turn in, it's now dark and the sun is no longer heating up the house and you cooled the bedrooms during the day for free. I had a quote for external roller shutters for 5 windows and the quote came back ~ 8k, that is comparable in cost to installing an air con system. The other question I have is around whether I could use the same ASHP external unit to perform both the heating and running the air con. I appreciate that they probably are unable to heat and cool at the same time, but you could maybe have the HW feature come on at 5am to heat the cyclinder and then after a couple of hours you could put the AC on. M

I am looking for a cladding option that I can hopefully fit and forget. My current thought is to use a thermowood cladding. I have had samples of Poplar, Ayous and Ash delivered, but they are all a very dark brown colour due to the thermo process. The Ash is far denser than both the Ayous and Poplar and the price reflects that too. What I want to understand is how these timbers age with time and whether anyone has used thermowood on their house. If so, please share a photo as I'm keen to see the colour of the wood after being exposed to the elements for months / years

Our structural warranty is with Protek and it's costing us nearly 4k, but I assumed the inspections carried out for warranty are different to those carried out by LABC?

That's very helpful. Thanks I think I'll investigate private inspectors as probably easier going than labc

@MortarThePoint @mjc55 can you tell me what the associated costs are for LABC and a third-party provider?

But what do most self-builders do?

We received our mortgage offer today from Hanley BS. One of the conditions that is stated on the mortgage offer is as follows. Subject to your Solicitors confirming which of the following will carry out Building Control: a) Local Authority b) Approved Inspector (full details required) The use of Approved Inspectors to carry out Building Control is allowed subject to them being registered as approved on the GOV.UK site We will be using Protek for our structural warranty provider, but I don't understand the question. I thought Building Control was always carried out by the LABC team and the inspections carried out by Protek are completely separate and solely to satisfy the warranty provider?

Thanks for the link. I'll drop them a message with my requirements.

Interesting. I hadn't considered a local Smart Systems manufacturer. In fact, I haven't even heard of the term before you mentioned it.