Kelvin

Well done to everyone involved. It looks excellent. Very homely. As you know by shear coincidence I’ve walked around that steading when it was derelict which was only a few years ago so can see how much work has gone into it.

The only bit the Brits did was the foundation and they got that wrong because they couldn’t read the plan. The kitchen was also hand made in the UK by a local cabinet maker although he was Polish. The plant room is especially impressive but they do a proper HVAC routing type design so they know where every bit of pipe is going etc. and optimise the layout.

Wife’s uncle built a Hauf Haus and it very nearly was 2 months to complete the whole house 😂

So were we but weathertight to completion is the time consuming bit.

Good stuff. The thing about entrance hallways is that it’s the first thing you or anyone else experiences about the interior of your house. Some hallways have a wow factor to them if you have the space but as a minimum you want it to feel welcoming and to give you a feeling of what lies beyond it. I’ve said this before but it’s hard posting your plans on here for people to pick apart. The comments all come from a good place though because we’ve all been where you are. What inspires me most about BH is how genuine and generous people are with their views and help. We all want each other to succeed. Ultimately the decisions rest with you and you regardless of what anyone else suggests of course.

Agreed. I don’t see how you could complete in two months from weather tight. Have you been involved in a client self-build that has been done that quickly?

You need more dehumidifiers running spread around the house especially upstairs plumbed into something even if it’s just a much bigger bucket to reduce emptying. Windows open when you’re at the house. Get the temperature up and keep it up. It should feel humid. It’s incredible how much water is in what you think is a relatively dry building. We’ve been plastering in spurts so it’s been a bit easier to manage.

I don’t like to comment on other people’s designs generally and a lot has been said already. While not overglazing the house is a good thing generally having rooms with no windows at all is a mistake imo. Even just the external visual aspect of large expanses of wall with nothing breaking it up. The hallway at the front door forcing everyone that visits into the TV room to get to the open plan area is an odd choice. I’d flip the cloakroom round against the TV room wall and remove the door if you want to keep bigger or keep the door and have a smaller cloakroom. You then create a new opening from the hallway into the lounge and possibly have a glass door here. Otherwise you’ll have a really dark hallway depending in how you do the front door although you could a vision panel to the front door to let in more light. The long narrow utility room is a poor use of the space especially if you had a really long worktop with loads of cupboards which will either be empty or full of stuff you never use. The suggestion of shortening it and adding that space to the lounge is a good option so definitely consider that.

You’ve just added a lot of extra weight into the building so it’s likely caused some movement of the timbers.

Do a search of this topic on here as it comes up a lot so theres some good information about it in other threads on the forum. You don’t need 3 phase for an EV charger unless you want more than one charger or a faster charger. We aim to use all the electricity we generate either by consuming it or storing it rather than sending it back to the grid.

what we did too.

It’d be hard to get enough speed up 😂

Sticks the EV in reverse and demolishes the house.

Yep but I don’t trust delivery drivers hence the fence which I fully expect to get whacked but it’s several metres from the house.

That’s a pia. At least they fessed up to it quickly. I’ve planned my driveway such that we have a parking and turn area away from the house with the fence between it and the house for this very reason.

It will be very heavy too so lots to consider structurally, and access to fit it. Our 3G 2.1m by 3.6m sliding door weighs 347kgs.

Seeing all those joints that will be hidden in walls underlines why I used Rehau pipe with no hidden joints! I can’t see how insulating them will do much given the clips, elbows and difficulty in access around them. I had the same challenge with my cold water pipes in the garage. The garage is insulated but unheated. However I insulated all the exposed pipes with the thin grey stuff anyway.

No downlights fitted yet. Nothing over hanging it to drip onto it. I thought there was a slight depression in the plywood here a while back when I was up on the roof as I noticed a very slight puddle of water in roughly the same location a few weeks ago. I have four speaker holes cut out in this room and one of them is close to it. It’s not easy to see up inside it with getting a camera in there.

Looks like we have a gap in the insulation in the flat roof. I can’t easily get to this without cutting out area beneath it to find out what the problem is. Should I be concerned about this?

Could you cut the pipe and fit some plastic drainage pipe slid inside the flexible pipe and sealed.

The pipe under the ground won’t freeze as long as it’s not just below the surface so you just need to insulate where it comes up out of the ground. Our standpipe never froze no matter how cold it got. It doesn’t take much insulation to stop the pipes from freezing. The standpipe housing I used was completely self enclosed with the tap inside behind a lockable door. I stuffed extra insulation inside this. I’ve had a similar worry with our borehole headworks chamber. I’ve lagged all the pipes inside the brick chamber and also in the garage albeit the garage is also insulated. I will insulate the walls of the chamber and the lid with some leftover 25mm PIR I have.

Aren’t they lagged with insulation? I had a standpipe in the paddock of the last house. The box was GRP, the pipes plastic, and some insulation stuffed in the box. It never froze as the horses would have complained.

Yes I’ve ordered a couple.

It’s not installed yet.

I still don’t have the ASHP installed, hopefully in the next couple of weeks. I have three small oil filled rads running on the medium setting and the house temp is 19°C. If anything it’s too hot. Humidity is pretty high with all the water that’s still in the materials so also have a big dehumidifier running.