Kelvin

Do you know how hard your water was before? Softened water is generally safe to drink. It would only be advisable to not drink it if the water was very hard originally. There are guidelines on the ppm levels so worth googling that. The caveat to this is that babies shouldn’t drink it or people on a low sodium diet.

Wtf if money is no object then by all means but £1800 for a 3D render. No thanks. I used Roomsketcher to draw our floorplans. It can produce 3D renders that you can manipulate. It’s a cheap to buy and easy to learn. It can’t do the whole house externally or the roof but it’s fine to visualise the inside and is a little limited for complex shapes but as ours is a rectangle it was easy enough.

Indeed which brings us full circle really. You achieve very high levels of air tightness then you need to fit an MVHR system.

Plus isn’t there a consultation going through just now about improving air tightness standards to passive levels in Scotland? If I could achieve the air tightness levels I want and provide the necessary ventilation without putting more equipment into the house I would and I’m sure most of us would.

Not had a chance to read this yet but argues MVHR has a place in any nearly every domestic house. https://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/UserFiles/File/research papers/MVHR/2020.04.27-The Case for MVHR-v7 new cover.pdf

Rather than tell me I’m missing the point explain how a house built to passive standards achieves the ventilation needed throughout the whole year without using any mechanical ventilation system which is what seems to be the suggestion. Some examples of where it’s been done would be helpful too. Everything I’ve read says otherwise. The reason I’m struggling to accept that Victorian standards of hospital building 100 years ago can be used as a comparator is because air pollution in the same period was awful and worse in the areas with the highest coal intensity. They might well have been better ventilated but that air was likely quite polluted. There’s an interesting study done on this that shows men born and living in the most coal intensive areas were over an inch shorter on average (WWI data) Hospitals tend to be in urban areas so it is likely they were in quite polluted areas too. Why that matters is because we still have quite polluted air in urban areas. Clearly one of the benefits of any kind of mechanical ventilation system is it’s likely to be filtering the air. With regards to COVID then any recirculation of stale air in a building could transfer airborne pathogens around the building. MVHR separates the incoming air from the outgoing air so in theory doesn’t suffer from the same limitations.

Yes but MVHR uses less energy to run than the energy it saves in an airtight building.

And poorer air quality

Is it possible (with examples) to achieve passive levels of airtightness with the above approach of very passive ventilation control. Also the example of people preferring to open their windows needs to be compared against examples where people are using MVHR optimally. It’s a good debate as my other half is a every window and door open person. I’ve explained how MVHR works to no avail so we’ll see how things end up when the house is built 😂 The hospital example isn’t a corollary with houses unless it was comparing it against very modern build methods and designs. If the comparator was decades old hospitals then I can understand the problem it causes for respiratory diseases and infection control. Just to clarify what I’m asking. How can you achieve this completely passively throughout the whole year not just the summer months.

That doesn’t sound terribly practical though especially in the winter or when it’s pouring with rain. As others have said, MVHR systems are relatively simple things so hopefully reliable. The point about them failing 15 years down the line and no parts available is a good point though but that’s true of every appliance in the house of course.

Sure but how do you control the ventilation in an airtight house (airtight to best practice) when you aren’t using MVHR or anything similar.

This is the key point. The general view is make the building as airtight as possible how does that square with natural ventilation?

The wool thing is interesting. We were driving to Lossiemouth about 18 months ago listening to the wireless. The news came on and there was a report about wool and how it’s valueless and often being buried in the ground. My other half asked why aren’t we stuffing the house with that? I said cost. So she went on a crusade and did loads of research but it still boiled down to cost.

London rates I guess but that is dear. Not sure how you get to some of the amounts. Different World.

On this point. MVHR is fresh air filtered from the normal contaminants that is in the fresh air all around so I don’t quite understand this point. I too worked at Torness during its commissioning as a systems tester for the Ferranti Argus 700 control systems.

I have a lot of sympathy for Gus’s position. It’s never great when a country is able to become dominant. It’s likely I’ve swallowed the increasing anti-China propaganda but I actively try and avoid buying Chinese made products, which isn’t easy. When we first started looking at building a house we started from a position of very simple, no technology, simple heating systems etc. Every extra device, pump or valve is another point of failure. We’ve not ended up there as the house will have a lot of stuff in it some through necessity some through choice. I hope it all still works in 20 years. In 30 years it’ll be a problem for my offspring. 😂

The way HH operate catches people out I think. It’s not that they’ve necessarily put prices up and folk still buy their kits. This is how they operate: 1. They have published prices on their website. You can select various options including partial turnkey and turnkey, add kitchens and bathrooms. This gives you an indicated price. Clearly a lot can affect this price but on its face it should be in the ballpark to build a house to a reasonable standard. However I very much doubt you could get anywhere near these prices in reality. They also talk about price transparency on their website. It’s anything but. The current prices they publish are from 2021 and they have a health warning saying they are due to go up soon so add inflation to this. However this is a recent update as last year the prices were quite a bit lower. 2. So you’ve had a look at their prices and you think they are in the right range of affordability. You phone them up and organise a meeting. That eventually turns into a contract. You pick a design, make any desired changes and submit the planning application. They can’t give you an estimated cost at this point so you still only have the website cost to go on. 3. You eventually get an estimate from them roughly at the same time you achieve planning. The estimate doesn’t include the steelwork so the final cost will be higher. The estimate is also much higher than the website price. But you now have planning approval so what do you do. You’ve already burnt a load of money to get to this point, you have approval for their house design so if you pull out where does that leave you so you decide to carry on to the warrant stage. HH will encourage you to engage a QS and they have a guy affiliated to them. Last year I gave an indication of his extortionate fees so consequently I’ve done it myself and fairly accurately too. The QS works up an order of cost so you now have what you think is a reasonable final cost plus or minus a bit. 4. You burn through more money getting through the warrant process. You still don’t have the final price but you’re pretty much committed at this point and you have the QS numbers so have an idea. The warrant is approved and eventually you get the final price and it’s nothing like their website price, nothing like their estimate, and nothing like the QS order of cost. How can that possibly be? They build these houses all the time, they are standard designs, simple squares or rectangles so no complexity, the QS is their affiliated guy so knows their houses and what it takes to build them and knows what previous builds cost. The builder they are using for the turnkey builds is their long term affiliated builder so they know what he charges. Given all that how can the final price be so wildly inaccurate? I have spoken to two other people and this is roughly the process they went through and it caught them both out to great personal and financial cost. There are others too. I think there are two possible explanations. One, this is their cynical business model. They know if they were actually as transparent with their pricing as they say they are a lot of people wouldn’t go with them. Therefore they operate the way they do knowing that people will find the extra money from somewhere. Two, their website prices used to be accurate and a fair reflection of actual prices pre-COVID and inflation. But they’ve been caught out by the rapid increase in costs so none of their pricing models work anymore. I am only doing supply and erect and my final kit price was within a few thousand of what I anticipated. But I can see how many other people could and have been caught out. There’s even a closed Facebook group for clients of HH who have had issues with them…

Sure but to be double the original estimate. HH build enough houses of similar designs so their estimates ought to be more accurate than they appear to be. I’ve spoken to a few people now that have been caught out by them.

Sounds typical of them I’m afraid. I’ve PMd you my number.

Hello. Yes we are building a HH in Perthshire near Blairgowrie. Kit arrives in 4 weeks. I would be happy to share our experience with you as it’s not been the best experience with them. In fact it’s been rather poor and I’ll be glad to see the back of them frankly. The difference in cost from estimate to actual is also typical after speaking with other HH clients. We are only doing supply and erect with them though.

Exactly the conclusion I came to.

People keep saying this but I know of three examples where they have paid out, two on the same house (different owners)

I’ve just checked my documentation and they say Natwest accepts their warranties but this list changes. This is the link the documentation refers to. I’d call Natwest and ask or call Jeremy at CMLC https://lendershandbook.ukfinance.org.uk/lenders-handbook/

Invite the neighbours round for a poo and eat more fibre.

Yes I wouldn’t be importing hokey electrical stuff.