Kelvin

Don’t let water sit on the sealant regardless of how good it claims to be. We wipe down and dry the shower every time we use it. Done it for years and never had any mould problems.

Heb Homes and Dualchas are sister companies run by two brothers with one running Dualchas and the other running HH. Dualchas is the architectural practice doing all the bespoke stuff whereas HH are focused on building ‘off the shelf’ designs in three types of houses in the traditional Scottish style of a Longhouse, Steading, and Whitehouse. I don’t know much about Dualchas and how they design and build a bespoke house. I assume they are much the same as HH kits so either a SIP or a CPS. I note that HH have recently changed their CPS system to the Sigma II twin stud system with blown cellulose insulation. That’s a step in the right direction and you’d expect better thermal bridging performance and hopefully air tightness albeit they don’t set themselves a particularly high bar compared to say MBC, I assume because it’s easier to make sure they achieve it. Regards their ability to build to near passive standards. I saw zero evidence in my dealings with HH on any real knowledge or ability in passive or near passive builds. Also the kit erection team they used for our build have no idea what passive is. Dualchas might be more knowledgeable on the subject however. Ultimately I think it would be down to you as the home owner to do all the relevant research and ensure it was built to whatever standard you were aiming for. I couldn’t recommend HH at all. I spoke with someone recently who is currently building a HH and their experience sounds exactly like ours so nothing seems to have changed over the last two years. I can’t comment on Dualchas so it might be better run. Generally though, their houses are very attractive and sit well in the rural landscape. They also make efficient use of the interior space . Our house is performing really well so far but this will be our first winter living in it. That said most of that is down to us rather than them.

My Reolink doorbell stopped displaying a picture at night as if the IR lights had stopped working but they were fine. I marked it on the todo list to sort but it seems to have fixed itself. I have a Reolink Go Plus with a solar panel that isn’t even oriented in the most efficient way and the battery charge rarely drops below 100%.

Frames are flush which made fitting the Nordan cill on the full length windows difficult as it has a crimped edge that needs some force to make fit. The custom made cills were easier to fit but less secure so I glued them in place. Because they are flush it does make sealing around them easier. I used Wigluv tape on the outside and Pro Clima on the inside. Our walls are a space frame system with a 302mm stud depth. From outside face to inside face it’s almost 500mm. Consequently, even with the windows flush, our internal reveal is 245mm. It means we get all the performance benefit of the windows being inside the thermal envelope of the building and the deep reveal look we wanted.

The cill is 170mm deep to give us the recommended drip over the edge of the cladding. These are 3G windows so quite deep themselves. A standard timber kit SIP wall build and 3G windows fitted flush would give you a very shallow internal reveal.

You’ll need to have cills made up. Nordan don’t do them deep enough. Caused us a huge amount of grief. All our windows are flush with the kit. The French doors and sliding door have a few mm overhang but our walls are pretty wide for a timber kit so we have a deep interior and exterior reveal. I can post some pictures if it’ll help.

Rural Perthshire. All overhead lines round us. One power cut for a few hours in 3 years. We had more power cuts in Cambridgeshire. Cooking could be done with our portable induction hob connected to the car as could some heating but it’d beed to be really cold with no power for long enough to really drop inside the house. The EV is rarely below 50% so that’s a fair amount of power available to run a few things. The bigger issue for us is access to water and getting it into the house as everything is pumped.

12cm bullnose. I contemplated oak skirting and mocked up a wall with it but didn’t like it. We have a lot of exposed wood and it was just too much wood. Which was just as well as it saved a shedload of money. The floor is smoked oak with a white Osmo oil. I covered it up after it went down with ram board. When I uncovered it three months later it had turned a nicotine yellow and looked awful. The supplier assured me it would change back to its original colour after a few days. It took 3 weeks in total. Worth knowing if you go for smoked wood that uses ammonia.

I can finally say something is 100% finished. Upstairs is fully done !

Our service cable from the pole comes into the kiosk on the right through ducting onto a 38mm hockey stick. The cable from the kiosk to the house comes into the kiosk on the left. It’s 35mm SWA and also ducted. All on a sand bed as per DNO instructions with warning tape above. The kiosk is a larger 3 phase one rather than a single phase despite the single phase supplyThis was also on advice of the sparky who said the single phase boxes were too tight.

And the council house I grew up in. The house was stupidly big and as nice as it was I never felt comfortable in it.

Our previous house had a particularly huge entrance hallway that was 10m x 5.5m with a 5m ceiling height. The staircase went up the middle to a galleried walkway to the bedrooms either side of the house. The staircase itself was a bit cheap but it certainly had a wow factor when you walked into the house. It also had two long corridors downstairs that took you off to the two wings of the house with all the other rooms. But it was an awful lot of wasted space. We did eventually put a big dining table in it so was great for family dinners. The house we built is half the size but we use all of it so oddly it feels bigger than the previous house.

Long corridors waste a significant amount of space. As does a stairwell in the middle of a house unless you want to make a feature of the entrance and stairs. We mostly designed out the internal corridors as there were two, one upstairs and one downstairs stairs, both pokey and dark. The neat feature of our stair design is it hidden behind the kitchen wall so takes up very little floorspace and creates a big cupboard off our kitchen and a wardrobe under the stairs off the guest bedroom. The 45° roof pitch and ridge beam also gives you a lot of flexibility in how you finish the upstairs ceiling both in height and style. We also removed the coomb storage on one side of the upstairs and made the other side slightly wider. Consequently the two upstairs rooms feel big and airy. A room in roof design creates quite a neat compact looking house on the outside and plenty of extra space on the inside.

Yes. These two things aren’t really connected. Every home needs ventilation and air circulation regardless of however else it’s built. If you want the room to be pleasant and free from mould it needs to be insulated, heated, and ventilated to let fresh air in and remove stale air.

Why? Every question that gets asked on here is generally answered with people giving their time to do it. Consequently there’s useful information for anyone else with a similar question. Buildhub is publicly searchable so it’s a great resource for everyone.

Plant room size is an interesting debate. At the start I wished I’d gone a bit bigger as we made the hallway 400mm wider by stealing it from the plant room. However as necessity is mother of invention I made it all fit relatively neatly and the wider hallway is far nicer. Unless you’re going to also use the plant room for storage space with cupboards and shelving then it just needs to be big enough.

Our previous house was a barn conversion. Huge thing with the lowest ceiling at 3m. The conservation officer absolutely insisted that the windows could only go where the holes in the walls were. Consequently most of the window cills, other than the living room, were all above head height 😂 The windows were enormous and gave you a good view of the sky. I bought my wife a step up ladder (as a joke) for her birthday so she could see out of them. 😂 I also fitted a camera on the external south elevation attached to a screen in the kitchen so we could see out into the paddock to keep an eye on our really old horses and chickens!

Yes Gryphon Roofing from Glasgow. I wouldn’t recommend them unfortunately. There are a couple of others that quoted but they seemed reluctant to travel. If I was doing it again I’d use Sarnafil as there seems to be more installers.

We’re happy enough with the finished house. It’s the right size for two of us. I should have put more thought into cooling the house than I did but it’s mostly addressable. Where I missed an opportunity was despite getting planning for the detached garage to be built like the house with an open plan living space above it we elected not to do it and built a metal garage with the same dimensions. Part of me also wonders what if we’d gone into the side of the hill instead as my wife’s architect father was keen for us to do. Next time.

Are you saying there’s a possibility the roof won’t be insulated at all? That’s a huge mistake if so. Warm moisture laden air hits the back of the cold OSB and condenses which eventually leads to mould. It absolutely needs to be insulated and a warm roof design is typically the best way to insulate it and avoid condensation and mould. What flatroof waterproof membrane are you using?

As far as finding someone to do it. They do exist especially in the SE. There are specialist builders out there who do builds on such a grand scale. Who builds the houses for the rich and famous after all. I’m sure there was a TV programme about a builder who only worked on high end large scale builds. The CEO of the company I worked for had an extension built that effectively added a kitchen and dining area plus landscaping. Cost £1.5 million. A friend was telling me about an Edinburgh town house that was being renovated top to bottom and they were flying in the best people for each stage from around the World!

There’s space then there’s useable space. Our last house was twice as big as the one we built. The one we built feels bigger in part because we use all of it. I reckon we used 60% of the previous house at a push. There was one bathroom I never used once and was only in it a handful of times. I know someone that lived in a huge house. Not as big as this but still huge and a bit sprawling. It was terrific but he said they spent their life walking miles everyday as it was badly laid out until they eventually remodelled part of it to create a better living space with kitchen living room and a couple of bedrooms and an office. Almost a house within a house. All done to a high standard. He is a network consultant and placed activity monitors all round the house to track how they used it. They found they rarely used the rest of the house. To add it’s a stunning looking thing and more power to you for considering it. Our plot is on a similar slope and for a brief while we contemplated doing the same on a much smaller scale but similar idea.

Why is it so big? Do you really need so many bedrooms? You could half the size (which would still be enormous) with a similar design. There’s a £2 million saving. Unless you really need a commercial sized building I’d seriously rethink the design especially as you are already baulking at some early estimates.

It wasn’t Heb Homes was it? 😂 I had a similar experience.

I’ve been open about the issues with our timber kit on here albeit not a SIP kit.