Mr Blobby

So a bloke came on our site today (from another building firm) and asked if we are doing a plate load test after the hardcore is compressed down for our KORE slab. Before work started we did get an engineer on site to dig some holes and peer in to see the ground make up. He was happy enough for the KORE slab to go in. The site is not liable to flooding. There was a house on the site previously although most of the new house is on virgin ground. What is a plate load test and do I need one? I don't want an extra day of a digger on site waiting to see if it sinks (if that's what a plate load test is). Did anyone else do this? Seems a waste of time to me. Comments please.

Does anyone know if openreach allow the ONT to be installed away from the cable entry into the house?

The DNO is ok with that then? That would make my life simpler in splitting a single phase into the house.

Sorry, I meant > 4kw. Final number will be more like 8.5 kW total. For a hybrid invertor with batteries to support this I need a 3-phase invertor right?

Thank you everyone for your responses. Through the cavity and up the wall it is then. That's one less thing for me to worry about when the slab is laid. Inner leaf block is 140mm so should be enogh depth, I hope, to bury the cable and make the thing airtight. I know nothing about SWA and regs but hopefully this is fairly standard to chase the tails into the wall. It would need to be SWA all the way to the CU I guess? Is it bad to be wrapping the house twice? Now here's a can of worms just opened. Single phase into the house with the three phases to an adjacent box and then the EV chargers at the front makes a lot of sense but, what about the PV? I will have > 4 kW pv on the roof and I had assumed that I would need a 3-phase inverter to satisfy the DNO that there is <4kW per phase. Is that right? Also I figured I would need CT clamps on all 3 phases so that the EDDI could recognise the net postion and divert into the immersion/batteries properly. (I think a lightbulb has just flickered on in my brain) Yes I have made a rod for my own back here. The meter box and EV chargers are on the left side of the house the inverter is in the garage on right-hand side of the house, and the consumer unit is in the middle of the house (The plan did start with everything in the same place 🙄) The electricians have proposed a 3-phase CU. Is this overengineered as house loads (hob+7kw ashp) would be small enough to run everything off a single phase? The question is, I guess, do I need three phases to the PV invertor? If so then would it be possible/sensible to bring the invertor/ batteries into the plant room on the same side of the house as the EV chargers and (with a DB here?) then take just a siingle phase from there up to the big house CU? The reason I haven't done this already is because of concerns about the invertor/batteries generating heat I don't want inside the house.

The DNO here in Northern Ireland insists on a recessed meter box near the front of the house. The consumer unit in our house is not near the front, but about 15 metres away from the meter box and on the first floor. Supply is three phase. How do I run the meter tails from the recessed meter box to the Consumer unit? Should I run the meter tails run through the masonry cavity and then chase up the wall to the ceiling void and run the tails across the house in ceiling void and up into the consumer unit? (I know a fuse will be needed for meter tails > 2M, but AFAIK that fuse can be in the meter cabinet.) Are there any building regs about chasing meter tails into walls to run up into ceeiling void? Will I need to install some armoured ducting to do this? The other option is to run some conduit from the meter box down into the KORE slab (within the insulation?) and run the tails in the slab to emerge under the comms room. Are there any regulations prohibiting running meter tails within the insulation because of heat or anything? What should I do? Run the meter tails through the wall or in conduit under the floor?

So I'm trying to finalise services through the KORE slab and would like some help on heat pump and manifold connections please. So, for context, the house is masonry (250) cavity on kore slab to passive standard. ASHP will sit outside the plant room at the rear of the property. UVC and buffer tank in plant room. UFH manifold in centre of house under stairs. Two questions: 1. ASHP flow and return, is it: (a) 32mm pre-insulated FR pipe through floor to ASHP. Its rocky at about 400mm and so with the bend radius requiring a deep hole is it worth it? or (b) seperate plastic insulated pipes through a hole in the wall. This seems simpler, but what about airtightness etc? Do I build in a pipe or core drill after? Does that matter? 2. Flow and return to UFH manifold from buffer tank. What pipe specification? Where to run it. Within the floor insulation or under the insulation? Or not in the floor? Please help me decide before I meet the plumber and builder to decide this stuff next week. (who will probably ask me why I'm not installing an oil-fired boiler like everyone else 🙄)

Here's that tree in next doors garden that blocks a connection to the pole on the other side of the road 😬

Is that black thing the fibre box? Are you getting your fibre connection from the pole or paying to go underground? My openreach invoice just hit my inbox. With VAT 😕. I was hoping openreach do like NIE (and builders) and exclude VAT from their invoices for new builds. Is that not so? Will openreach re-issue the invoice without VAT or do I just have to suck it up and reclaim it at the end of the build? (or get my builder to pay it and let him claim it back)

Indeed. That neighbour used to be my GP before he retired so he's loads of money and no reason to be a tight git with overgrown trees. Especially when his overgorwn trees block the pole and hang over into my site. I think I'll pay to go undergorund and then take a chain saw and cut a vertical line up the middle of his tree at my boundary. Problem solved.

New Pole outside front of the house on our side of road (option (ii)) is ruled out. It would be a visible eye-sore and the neighbours would likely end up connecting to it. And that really would p me off. That leaves the other 2 options. Either free overhead from the pole across road or pay to run under the road from same pole. The free overhead option would run the suspended cable through the middle of the neighbours overgrown tree so is only feasible if he cuts his tree in half. Its an ugly thing. (the phone line from the house we demolished ran through middle of same overgrown tree) Had a chat with neighbour and he seems to expect me to contribute towards the cutting of the tree on his land. Tight git. So not cost free if I am to maintain good relations. No idea how much it costs to fix a tree. Underground looking increasingly attractive. Will be doing my neighbours a favour too if I pay to bring that fibre across the road to a new junction box on the pavement.

Met with openreach chappie on site today and discussed options. (i) Overhead line from post other side of road. This is free but cable would go through next doors overgrown tree at the corner of their garden that already hangs into our site. It would need to be cut and maintained. Horrible leylandi thingy. Cable would enter the loft at the gable end on the hidden-ish side of the house so not too bad. Would keep the router in the loft and cat6-e to the patch panel. (ii) Openreach put a new pole in front of our house. Free option that would avoid the tree but I don't really want a pole in fron t of the house because the houses next door would likely migrate to that pole and I'd have wires hanging all over the front lawn. (iii) Underground from the pole across road. £2,300 ish to include the 500 quid trafic management as they dig a groove in the road for the cable. Is it really worth 2 grand to hide the overhead cable? What to do?

Its the cable laying outside the boundary that's the issue. The pole is either across the road or 80 metres along the pavement and under next door neighbours driveway. I did think that a wire hung from the pole would be more succeptible to failing in the wind but I guess that the cable underground would come down from a pole supplied with aerial cables anyhow. So maybe coming from a pole does not present reliability issues. The visuals remain of a wire from a pole but not a big deal. I'll put some conduit in the agreed place to pull the wire through. I did phone Fibrus, who are another fibre infrastucture provider here but they won't even discuss installation until youve ordered the fibre connection. And they suggested on the phine it would be from poles, which is odd as that would be from the openreach pole. I'm meeting the openreach guy on site tomorrow to chat through the options.

I finally get to speak to a local openreach guy whos coming out to look at the site tomorrow. It looks like fibre from the pole is free, fibre underground means they need to dig a trench that will cost a couple of thousand. Is it worth paying for the underground connection or do I get the free option from a pole and a wire to the house?

So openreach email me today to tell me that my site registration, that took me six weeks and numerous phone calls to complete, has been rejected. The openreach developer portal does not support sites in Northern Ireland. If only they had a decent website with some guidance 🤔 So what was the 3.5k quote all about then? For those of us building in Northern Ireland the place to register sites for a new fibre connection is... https://www.openreach.com/building-developers-and-projects/fibre-for-developers/registering-your-site/sites-in-northern-ireland

That is good news. Did Openreach connect to your conduit at the boundary? Openreach finally phoned me yesterday after six weeks of trying to register on their devloper Portal. The good news is I registered the site on the portal OK. The plot is in an urban area with houses either side connected to fibre. We demolished the old house that had a phone connection. Fibre to the premises is showing as available at the address on BT/sky etc websites. Openreach are quoting £3,840 to put in a fibre connection. WTF? What do I do now? I guess I can't just lay conduit in the ground as I will need to agree with openreach where the fibre will cross the boundary?

Openreach have still not set up my account on the developer portal. Builder tells me openreach don't allow the the cable up through conduit in the slab, which is my preference. He says it has to go through the wall. Which seems a bit shit. I'm sure I read on here somewehre that full fibre connection can now come straight in to the house without an ugly box outside. Is this true? Can I run the fibre cable in through conduit in through the floor?

I'll DM you...

Our KORE slab is scheduled to be installed in April. The installer is I think from Co. Donegal and recommended by KORE. The builder's groundworks team will be doing the initial excavation works.

That report says "In addition, recent evidence suggests that exposure to increased NO2 concentrations arising from emissions of NOx, may give rise to human health impacts that are as large (or indeed larger) than those from PM2" .. which is not quite the same as saying that NOx is more dangerous than PM2, rather it seems to say that PM2 is the gold standard of harmful emissions but increased concentrations of NOx can be as harmful. That report is also from 2012 and a lot has changed since then so its conclusions are not very reliable. NOx concentrations have fallen (fewer dirty diesels, thanks to VW) and PM2 concentrations have risen (more woodburners). <tldr> I didn't read all the report so correct me if I missed some detail </tldr>

Its not obvious or intuitive, but there is a self-build option on the openreach developer site when registering for an account. Not that it does any good though. I applied for access on the 7th Feb. Having heard nothing I raised a query on the 13th. There is supposed to be a 48 hour reponse time to queries. Still heard nothing so have escalated it today. Over two weeks and still no access allowed to register the site on their portal. Are openreach always this useless? Anything else I can do to move this forward? Shall I just go to Fibrus instead?

Correct. AFAICS there is no heating system specified in my PHPP spreadsheet, only heating demand. Back to the OP's original question, UFH is a no brainer I think because of cooling potential and low temps for heating. Also changing a window size should be no big deal. My architect shares the PHPP sheet with me so the OP's architect should be doing similar.

I really wanted to read the labels. Any chance of a larger image?

Thank you for the advice. Will contact open reach through their developer portal.

Guy Fawkes? That's a GB celebration. Nobody in Northern Ireland has ever heard of him.