Kelvin

Measure the air temperature around your building on a sunny day. I think people get fooled because shaded areas feel cooler despite the air temperature being much the same. When siting an ASHP the sun is the least important factor.

I never spotted that on first reading. Makes even less sense then to go with such a poor airtightness target.

Once the fan starts running it cools the air anyway so whatever the benefit might be on the sunny side of the building will be lost. Length of pipe runs to the manifold matters more.

My cynical view too. Plus better insulation is easier to understand for the average home buyer and easier to achieve for your average builder. I also think some of this is because they knew that setting a much better airtightness target wouldn’t be achievable by the building industry. Also when you get to three or below you increasingly need active ventilation which adds to the complication and cost. An opportunity missed imo.

Indeed but I meant the impact on the outside air quality. The only argument my wife and I had about the house build was over the fitting of a wbs. She loves them and wanted one in our house. Not for any practical heating reasons more because of the romance and cosiness of a real fire on the worst winter days when it’s blowing a gale outside.

Sure but the argument is that the impact of wbs in rural homes is minimal. I’m with you but I can understand the other side of the debate for rural houses. The house we rent is freezing. You’d have to set it alight to heat it. It does have a wbs and we get free seasoned wood from the farmer which is all produced on the farm. But I hate the thing. It’s makes a mess, the heat is hard to control, the air quality in the room it’s in isn’t great etc.

Like many on here we haven’t put rads upstairs but have wired for panel heaters. I hate radiators anyway. Ugly things that take up space. I get the argument that says fit them for when you come to sell but we’ve built our house for us not the next owners. I did contemplate taking pipework upstairs for radiators so that rads could be added later but didn’t. The temperature in the upstairs rooms is perfect for us so far but yet to fit doors.

It’s more the ambient temperature around the ASHP which doesn’t vary much around a building as I understand it.

No. This is only new builds. There’s a separate consultation underway for existing homes and buildings.

Significantly cheaper than Howdens based on the quote they gave me for our utility room (£6.5k vs £2.6k) Diy-kitchens quality is just ok imo. There were a few problems with ours with missing items and poor quality finishing on two of the doors. However they sorted it out quite quickly.

They are individual but yes easy to get out. There’s also a container underneath the hob to catch any spills.

Inside the hob. There are two sets of filters. Disposable carbon filters and washable grease filters.

We debated for some time about whether to extract to outside or use a recirculating hob but this was more about air quality in an open plan design than air tightness. Because of some aesthetic design decisions we decided on a recirculating hob with the caveat that we hardly ever fry food. We will also need to ensure we replace/clean the filters much more regularly than any other house we’ve lived it. Most cooker extraction hoods are far too high above the cooker to be effective anyway even if they are extracting externally. If you look at commercial kitchens you’ll often see the hood is much closer to the bob than in domestic kitchens.

Top and middle (see pic above) with a black plinth. The difficulty we had was wanting the dishwasher on the end rather than where the sink is. The fitter had to build a carcass on-site which required that wee extra bit of wood on the bottom left corner.

Our kitchen was £31k inc VAT and fitting including both AEG ovens, full height AEG fridge (freezer is in the utility room),Neff N70 recirculating hob, Neff N90 dishwasher, stone worktop, and Quooker.

This bloke is as this bloke does most of the cooking. We hate cupboards and shelves preferring drawers as they are more practical and easier to access. Our island only has drawers and the tall cabinets all have pull out drawers at the bottom and shelves at the top. This also future proofs the kitchen as we get older and less able. And double drawers are more practical. The problem is all these drawers massively increase the price. Kitchens are stupidly dear for what they are. The shadow gap feature we wanted all around the island cost a small fortune.

Welcome and congrats on getting this far. Can you just clarify one point. You also have three other plots in addition to the one you are building on or there are three other plots for sale? Can you share the details of what you are building. It’s always of interest to on here to see what others are doing especially build method.

This is the key point. Could the op’s objection realistically stop the development. If yes then don’t make it easy for them. If no then you end up with the development and no benefit.

They should stay banned. A new house built well to the new standards would overheat with them anyway in most cases.

I noticed that too. While the U values are good the air tightness is still poor.

Yes. Drainage fields have a high chance of failing so what then. If it’s a treatment plant into a soakaway then it’s less of a problem as the effluent is mostly clear water but that’s assuming it’s all well maintained but I still wouldn’t want it that close. As a general point I wouldn’t want someone else’s services like this on my land just like I wouldn’t want mine on someone else’s land.

Here’s a reasonable article that might help. Every day living produces quite a lot of water vapour in a typical house (20 litres for a family of four according to this article). Your mum’s small poorly ventilated house with plastic in the walls will keep a lot of this water vapour trapped in the building. https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/assets/Services-DCCS/condensation-booklet.pdf

Nordan are less flexible than many others. It also all got a bit difficult with max sizes and weights too. Our sliding door was originally 5m with a 1m tilt and turn window. But Nordan and the installer had different opinions on whether that could be 3G as it was too heavy according to the installer although Nordan said they could do it. In the end we fitted a 3.6m sliding door and a 1.4m French door which was the better outcome for us as the French door is a proper usable door whereas the tilt and turn windows are windows that can open like a door but they aren’t really that practical for every day use and are likely to get damaged.

Our 3G Alu clad Low E Nordan windows including a french door and a sliding door with all the others tilt and turn were £760/m2 fitted. Jan 2023 prices. They went up significantly March/April time apparently. Ours were supplied as part of the timber kit so there would have been the kit suppliers margin included in that.

Yes apologies. I meant you can buy a specific ‘primer’ for new plaster but it’s quite dear.