Kelvin

I do with the two different sofa’s but not with console table. I’ll post up when I’m back home. The other advantage with them being on legs is the robot hoover fits underneath to clean the dog hair. Before that all got trapped underneath it.

Our open plan living room, dining room, and kitchen is almost identical to your plan in layout and size. What we did is made the island quite big at 1.2m deep by 3m long and fitted it with deep drawers so there are no cupboards at all in it. We also put the dishwasher, sink and hob on it. I think many would say not to do this but it actually works really well. That then allowed us to remove the cupboards/sink at the end and we made a feature of that wall (where your window is) and we moved the island up a bit. This gave us more space and took £7k of cost out of the kitchen. We had the same concern as you about seeing the back of the sofa. The sofa we moved in with was a huge L shaped thing that dominated the living area a bit. However we sold that in the summer and replaced it with a new sofa I think what they call a matching snuggle chair. They are on legs so takes away some of that back of the sofa look. We tried a console table behind the sofa but it becomes very easy to make a big space look crammed in. I also used some planning software to 3D render the room as I found it really hard to visualise such a big open space. That really helped.

Two companies I spoke with were a little reticent about fixing it to a standing seam roof when I spoke them. There are fixing systems to do it. They were much more comfortable fixing to our metal workshop roof as it’s more bread and butter for them given all the industrial buildings they fix the panels to. I have zero penetrations through my house roof and glad of that.

Took me over a year to decide what to do about our PV installation. I ignored it pretty much until May this year as I needed to make a decision and get it done to get the house signed off. I really wanted to ground mount it and have created a flat area to do that where it will be mostly hidden but it’s not straightforward hence why I put it on the garage roof instead. It was installed mid July and it’s generated 2MWh

I decided not to fit PV panels to my standing seam roof for a few reasons one of which was aesthetic as it’s a nice looking thing and PV panels aren’t. I fitted 19 panels East/West to the garage roof instead. Likewise the batteries and inverter are in the garage so it made the install much easier. It works really well. Our North facing flat roof gets loads of sun in the summer months and I contemplated using that too but it would like awful so will ground mount any other panels.

Our downstairs loo is on an adjoining wall with the study (which might eventually become a bedroom) I built a bulkhead to fit the frame for the loo and to run the waste pipe. I made it slightly deeper than I needed (had plenty of width in the bathroom) and separated it from the wall. The wall is insulated like an exterior wall. I also added some acoustic foam mainly because I happened to have it. You can’t hear anything in the study so while it’s best avoided you can mitigate it. The mistake I made was with the upstairs shower and the floor beneath it it. It sounds like it’s raining inside the hallway below.

Nice layout. I realise it’s early in the process. I wouldn’t have your hob at the window end of the island. Have it beside where the ovens are either in the end or in the middle to give you working space either side.

No the total included the UFH too. My point was more comparing it to the quote earlier where it was another £16k - £20k on top of the BUS grant.

Similar to ours. No issue at all. Nice and neat.

We didn’t have a bad experience with our MCS installer (other than them wanting to install an ASHP that was far too big). Total cost to me was £2000 so there was no advantage in self-installing it. We had the uplifted rural Scottish grant so the full cost was quite high but nothing like some of the quotes people mention on here. We had a similar experience with the PV panels, battery storage, and gateway. 8.45kWp, 24kWh, plus gateway for £12,500 after the grant. To get both the heating system and the PV/battery system for less than some of the mental ASHP quotes alone feels like a bargain.

Our last house was like this. 200 year old barn and a stick built frame assembled inside. The windows were fitted to the original brick wall like @JohnMo describes. We didn’t convert this barn, we bought it as a new house from the builder. They didn’t do a terribly good job with the insulation detailing unfortunately. There was plenty of it just not well done in places. The window reveals were particularly cold.

Is there any automation available within the app? Or possibly a setting that tells it what to do with the battery in certain circumstances like a discharge priority? For example, I can configure my system to dump the battery to the grid (export tariff) then charge it back up at the cheap rate. However it’s dependent on me entering the correct figures and TOU.

Looks like the stuff I put down on my driveway. Drains well. Right at the start of our build the wrong type of MOT was delivered and put down when I was away (loads of really large stones) Was too much like hard work to take back up so I left it. It was mostly around the back of our house where the patio was going. Fast forward to now and we are putting the patio down but had to dig all of this stuff out as no use for a base. Fortunately I managed to get a local to take it.

It’s not loud but more audible than the blower. Ours is 35m from the house and 55m from where our outside seating is so you can’t hear it. If it was much closer to the house you would hear it.

My Graf blower makes hardly any noise as long as it’s sitting properly on its rubber feet on the metal plinth. If not it can vibrate. What does make a noise, in our case, is when the airlift pump is pumping the waste water into the drainage field which is a light bubbling noise from the vent pipe.

You’d be as well getting ChatGPT to draw you something as what you’ve done is very poor. Take @ETC up on the offer.

That is a big hole.

Yes but it was part of a £12k install including PV panels, gateway, inverter and two other 8kWh batteries.

That’s expensive for a 5.2kW battery. It cost us £2400 for an extra Sigenergy 8 kW battery. Which battery is it?

I applied for the final building sign off yesterday so we’re done as per the building warrant. Consequently I’ve given the question of would I do it again a bit of thought. Despite all the issues and stress I’ve changed my mind and would do it again. We love our house and it’s just about perfect for us. There’s one design flaw with it that we always knew was there (no muddy boot room) but other than that the house is working as we hoped and better in some ways. I would do it very differently next time though. We thought the approach we took would reduce the risk and stress but it was the complete opposite. My other half wouldn’t let me though so this is it until an kark it.

I was disappointed with our plastering too. Fortunately there are only two areas where we have this problem although it did change our lighting design a bit as wall lighting will also highlight it. I did as described above. Sand m, easy fill, sand repeat until it was flat and then several coats of paint.

Agreed. I read all the pros and cons and decided to add it for the same reasons as you.

@Lincolnshire Ian I’m still away. Back tonight so will let you know tomorrow.

I’ll message you separately when I get home tomorrow and let you know exactly what I have.

I might have some I could sell you at a fair price. Let me know exactly what you need and I’ll have a look at what I have.