Kelvin

Do you know how the walls are built up inside to outside and type of roof you have. How is it clad in the Douglas Fir? It’s not easy adding insulation to an already built house without considering lots of other factors. Post up some pictures. It’s always easier to understand with a few pictures.

Yeah they told me that too and it took months. Complained to ‘Greg’ and while it didn’t happen any faster I did get £150 compensation

You need to be clear on your units. MB/s vs Mbps or MegaBytes per second vs Megabits per second. For Starlink we nominally get over 200Mbps download and 20Mbps upload. I’ve seen it as high as 257 down and 30 up. It’s also been very reliable.

Occasionally, with my Hue system in the previous house, I had to actually reset the Hue bridge rather than simply switching it off and on to solve problems like this. Hue has a holiday mode are you using this or are you going in remotely every day switching lights on and off? Are you using any Powerline type adapters on your network?

Then prepare yourself for your really detailed plan to fall apart at first contact and you start making everything up as you go along. 🙄

Don’t underestimate how long some of this will take. It took us 11 weeks to get the SE drawing pack for example. We got the basic information needed to apply for the warrant and we got the warrant before we got the full SE pack. I couldn’t get any groundswork quotes until I had the foundation design from the SE. In the end it only caused us a 3 week delay because I took a chance and did a lot of things in parallel. There’s nothing stopping you doing the basics for services and forming access etc. If you’ve not lined up any of the professionals you’ll need I’d get onto that now. The building World is replete with architects it seems but there’s a lack of everyone else.

Part of the reason we chose the space frame system over SIP (as the kit company offered both) was for the aesthetic of the wider walls creating deeper reveals at the windows.

😂 I sanded the walls of a previously badly plastered house and the finish was really nice. The plasterers I am using are top notch.

All my planks are screwed. 12 per plank roughly. Screws come with a new bit and pencil per box. My foul drains are under the slab. Dunno about sanding the plaster yet as not got there.

I didn’t think they could be ceiling mounted. Ours are planned to be wall mounted.

Yes SIP would be my last choice.

To clarify my comments. My reasoning for suggesting stick built if doing it again comes down to financial exposure going with a timber kit company. There are a few threads about it on here. Basically with a timber kit you have to front up the money before the kit arrives on site with very little to no financial protection should the kit supplier go bust.

There’s no reason for water to penetrate the outer skin. You’d have much bigger problems if that happened. Can you clarify what you think you mean by timber frame? Do you mean stick built on-site? Also are you talking about a timber kit company supplying the SIP panels or having them made to an architect’s design. SIP panels aren’t necessarily more airtight by design than any other timber framed building, it’s all in the details. My house is a timber clad space framed timber kit from a kit company. We are atop a hill and get the weather for sure. I have no worries about wind driven rain though. I’d still have no worries if we were on the Atlantic coast. Plenty of timber clad kit buildings dotted around the Scottish Islands. If I was to ever do this again I’d go with MBC and blown cellulose if building a timber kit. Stick built on-site if not. I’d also look at ICF as that is inherently airtight but again it’s all in the details.

Sealing around the ducts coming in through the slab is straightforward. I’ve not decided how to insulate and seal the ducts yet. For the ducts I’ll definitely never put anything else through or ever remove what’s there I’ll fill with wool and then seal using duct sealant. For the few that I might put something else through it later I’ll use use a Rise type kit as they are quite dear. I have two ducts that are spare just in case. I might make up something using pipe insulation and and a rubber gasket over the top then taped.

Ours, in this variegated golden colour looks phenomenal. Orange I’m not keen on. Unfortunately we’ve treated it so that it will silver to driftwood. I may have made a mistake!

It’s ’surprising’ how often this happens to listed buildings shortly after they are sold.

It also has a waxy coating. It’s horrible stuff to deal with and the best you can generally hope for is to keep it at bay rather than eradicate it completely. It can obviously eventually damage the tarmac if left unchecked of course.

https://www.progreen.co.uk/blog/kill-horsetail-marestail/?utm_campaign=1738487495&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=338772559406&utm_term=&adgroupid=66923715046&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIu8uklPbJgAMVwIdQBh182gFqEAAYASAAEgJ4OPD_BwE

Well done. Third big step after deciding to do it then finding a plot! Look forward to hearing more about it.

Keep them separate. Yes multiple data cables through a single duct is fine. Use as small a diameter ducting as you can get away with. Run extra data between hard to reach areas. Out of interest, why didn’t you take more of the ducting through the slab to minimise penetrating your building and giving you options for future proofing without drilling holes in the walls? I have 4 power penetrations using 25mm conduit, one for each elevation, two data penetrations for cameras, one for a doorbell, and one for the alarm. Everything else is ducted under the building. The only other penetration is the emergency copper pipe from HWC. The SVP is through the garage roof and I moved the PV to the ground rather than on the roof but that was largely for aesthetic reasons. I filled the ducting in with a fire resistant foam rather than standard foam that’s non fire rated. I sealed around the ducts both internally and externally using a combination of the pro-clima Roflex 20 and Extoseal which I preferred overall.

It’s unlikely as they are saying the result depends upon a few things not least of all your main contractor. Does the timber frame cost include the airtight membrane and tapes being supplied and fitted, just supplied, or neither? In my case the timber kit company supplied the membrane and tape but didn’t fit it as it needs to be done a bit later on in the schedule plus I wanted to do it myself. I also didn’t use the stuff they supplied.

I’d say so. Why quote better than passive. Is it a passive design?

I got the same 32 page style report and mostly ignored it. I took some of the dimensions from it and plugged it into the Jeremy Harris heat loss calculator on here which gets you close enough. The as designed tends to err on the side of caution ad they expect to better it as built. In my case it was the cautious as designed ACH target of 3 they quoted me as they know they’ll beat it. I very much doubt they are claiming to achieve 0.3? They are setting themselves up to fail that. Are you reading it correctly?

How easy is it going to be to investigate it? One of the best tools I’ve bought is a non-destructive moisture meter. I’ve found it very useful at mostly putting my mind at ease. It might help you trace the problem. They do throw up false positives (screws/nails)

It’s a new house just at the first fix stage. Screed was poured a few weeks ago. There was a lot of moisture in the air but we kept it well ventilated after the initial 24 hours. If rained a fair bit yesterday after I cut the foam out and there was no evidence if water ingress. We are a while away from plaster boarding so will leave it open and see how it goes. I’ll try and pour water over the window and cladding to see if any comes in. I’m now pretty confident it’s not rainwater though as there would be a lot more off it given the heavy rain we’ve had. If it is condensation, and I’m confident it is, I assume it will be fine when re-foamed and fully sealed airtight?