Mr Blobby

I like the idea of check reveals but are they worth the effort in a block cavity build where the external render will overlap the window frame in any case. Are check reveals required under Northern Ireland building regs as they are in Scotland? If using check reveals then I would still fix windows with straps to the inner leaf I think, with check reveal cavity closers (if available for 250mm cavity) instead of DPM. Are the windows more securely fastened in a check reveal, being pressed up against the outer leaf? Is there less room for error on the window sizing/installation? Is there a better seal against the outer leaf? How much extra effort to build check reveals and do the benefits justify the effort ?

NIE specifications are like this: ... the problem is that the required 600x600x270 semi-recessed box doesn't actually exsist. Or at least I can't find one. I have reasied this problem with NIE who insist that a GB box at 770x550x210 just won't do. https://www.meterboxes.co.uk/products/mitras-3-phase-recessed-electricity-meter-box NIE won't provide a link to a suitable product but instead told me to ring around the local builders merchants. Am not having much joy. Anyone have a link to a big permali box? ... and no NIE don't allow a stand alone cabinet or suface mounted box.

I was thinking door opening into plant room, that would leave about 2 metres (by 1.1) for UVC, buffer tank and plumbng manifolds. That's enough room surely? My thoughts exactly. The 'boot room' will soon become a dumping ground with shelving, so maybe even have some wheeled storage against the door to the plant room. I also figured the mains water stop valve would be in the plant room so internal access just seems like a better idea?

Yes if consumer unit was there it would need to have internal door (I think this is building regs?). Main consumer unit will be in comms room elsewhere in house (but having internal door to plant room gives option for secondary CU for kitchen?)

Our plant room will be at the rear of our house. Mains water supply will go into here. It will be 2970 x 1092 and house just the UVC, buffer tank and plumbing manifolds. Monobloc ASHP directly outside so any internal ASHP gubbins in the plant room too. Ideally UVC to be 400 litres so diameter will be about 710 mm. Architect thinks plant room access should be by external door, thus: Being obsessive about cost and airtightness, I think the plant room could be accessed internally through a door to the adjacent storage (boot) room. What should we do? Internal or external door to the plant room?

Unlike @Dan F I haven't implemented any of this yet, but this configuration comes out of the panasonic box and is what we plan to do. Basically yes, but because the MVHR air flow rates are so low and the capacity of the air to transfer the heat from the heat exchanger quite low, then in realoty the temperature difference will likely be smaller, more like 35/25 heat, 15/20 cooling. I think anything more will result in a very hot or very cold heat exchanger in the comfopost that the air supply in the ducts cannot transfer quickly enough. At 35 heat and 15 cooling the COP should remain > 3. For the cooling our solar PV will be powering it all anyway so there is no energy cost. What I am hoping to acheive from the mixed circuits is the ability to tinker with different temps to see what suits us best. In reality I expect the comfopost to make a small difference upstairs where the UFH will do the heavy lifting in the more important downstairs. Good question. I don't know. I do know the Zhender units are not cheap and other MVHR units with heat exchangers are available.

Because when the wind isn't blowing and its dark outside and all of good energy's customers put the kettle on to make a nice cuppa in the adverts of coronation street, do they get a cold cup of tea?

Yes its the marginal price, hence E7 overnight is far cheaper and greener because demand falls off a cliff. Remember also that not all gas generators are equally efficient and may bid in a MWh electricity price higher far than their MWh fuel cost price. And of course there are diesel generators and other peaking plant that may be even more costly than gas generators.

Not sure I could face changing to TF this late on, surely would add even more delay ? How would I even go about such a transformation?

Just got off the phone with him half hour ago. We have kissed and made up.😘 Done and done. Exactly this. Or I could spend more time with darling wife. 😒 I did think about a TF construction but the site is on a busy main road hence I was concened it would be too noisy indoors at rush hour. Maybe I'm worrying too much, but at my age I like bit of peace and quiet. I'm hoping to have a builder on board soon to get me to watertight and then review from there. I had reckoned on him doing goundworks and slab too. No? Prefferred builder suggested that I change KORE slab to exclude attached garage so that telehandler can get round back for house build and then build garage on raft foundation afterwards. This seems like a practical suggestion, is it? Is the only alternative a crane, and if so I guess that is mega bucks?

not an accident 😉

Just to wrap this up, my electrician dismissed my concerns about getting the earth rod in. It will be a piece of cake he said. I didn't feel quite so foolish however when he tried and failed to drill into the ground anywhere along the front and side boundary, hitting rock every time. The only option was to get the demo firm to break through the rock to dig a big hole near the tardis to sink a rod. Even this proved a challenge but we got there in the end with a hole about 6 metres from the meter box. Power was finally connected at the end of June.

She's giving me a lot of grief over this house not being started yet 🙄😕

And my QS hasn't commented on this lunacy except to say I should just pay it. What a massive waste of time and money he has been.

Just right. Me too. Just wish I figured this out in February instead of listening to my professional advisors and missing the summer buld window. Thank you @Conor, I'll need all the help I can get once things get started. The immediate question is whether to kick this into next year to build over summer '23.

Not very large or bespoke at all, and in Northern Ireland! House is 2 storey 270 m2 total area. 4 bedrooms. 3 bathrooms in total. Warm roof standing seam alu on top. Insulated foundation. Hollowcore first floor. Concrete stairs. Basic block shape and simple cut roof. Site is flat and acessible. 705k price is a joke. The tender response, for example, wants £10k for running shielded cat6 from a patch panel to a few rooms. The QS has refused to do any cost analysis, he simply says I should accept the lowest quote. Which comes from a builder he introduced. I don't think so! This. I actually think I might enjoy it once the shell is up and watertight. And I think I'll do a better job on details like airtightness than trusting it to a main contractor. It will be interesting to see what the local builder comes back with to build to watertight compared to the big firms who responded to the tender.

I couldn't agree more with what you say about keeping control and oversight on the build. The alternative to 'hand posession' of the site over to a main contractor fills me with terror. Our circumstances are very good to manage the build. We are renting a house round the corner from the site, and my day job is only a few days a month so I can be on site every day no problem. It just seems a no-brainer to build to watertight and oversee progress, as you say, trusting airtightness and clean cavities to a main contracter trying to maximise profits leaves me very uneasy. What I'm really naffed off about is that the plans were all approved last summer and I had hoped to be building this summer. Everything, including finance was in place to start this summer. The root cause for this delay goes back to the spring when the M and E consultants issued a draft tender document full of errors. They then issued their 'final' tender document at the end of April that was rubbish so I told my architect that the tender should be issued without delay and without the M and E so that things could move forward to try and rescue a summer build. This would in effect have been to tender to watertight. My architect came back to say he had discussed this with the QS (not me) and they had decided this was not in my best interests (conveniently it would be in their interests as it would trigger their tender payment milestones). They wanted the tender to go out with incorrect specification. I still can't see the benefit of that approach because the tender specification cannot form the basis of any meaningful contract but would instead leave me captive to the main contractor in negotating out the errors in a time-consuming and costly change control process. Which would have triggered another 'negotiation' payment milestone for my QS. Win win for him, lose lose for me. With no faith in the tender process I lost interest some time ago in what my QS and architect were doing and got down the site to sort out the disconnections and demolition of the old house, much to their dissaproval. As expected the cheapest tender came back for 705k with overstated M and E costs, but in reality, even if it came back at 300k, the specification was wrong and I would have spent the winter refining detials and paying professional fees for wasting my time. Building to watertight is what we are going to do, and what we should have started this spring. It is just a crying shame that my professional advisers refused to discuss options and persuaded me not to do this. The reality is that it was in their best interests, not mine, to issue a full (incorrect) tender in one go with the minimum effort to hit their payment milestones but sabotage my summer build in the process. A few weeks ago I emailed my architect to explain how I would have been much better off if I had tendered to watertight earlier. Architect does not agree. He says the tenders should always go out with maximum detail, even if its incorrect. I can't quite figure that out. When I told him I had the finance in place to bulild this summer and that was my primary requirement, something I had told him many times at the start oif the year, his response was that to build to watertight is a self build. His firm doesn't do self-builds. His clients aren't self-builders, and 'we don't work with self builders'. When I asked why, he said that self builders consume more of his time. I thought this a dangerous position to take because it is prioritising his own interests over his clients. I wasn't surprised when he recently called me back to say he didn't mean what he said about not working with self builders and that he would continue to support me. Where I am now is that I'm talking to builders who are very interested in building to watertight. I still haven't had any numbers back though and the clock is ticking for this summer. I guess I'm left with two questions. Do I postpone the build to May 23? And do I get rid of my architect at this late stage? We've always got on OK and I always pay his bills promptly but I think he was manipulated by the QS and is unable to recognise conflicts of interest. This has the effect of undermining trust. How easy is it to change architect?

This is where I went wrong. I contacted TSD a few months ago only to discover my architect had already instructed his SE to do the work without telling me or providing me with any of the drawings. Should have gone to TSD to get this done months ago. Oh well.

Firstly, can I say how much I enjoyed reading through your quotes. Blimey. The ASHP price seems high, they cost about 5k for a small panasonic unit including the KNX interface boards. I think there are things you can do now to start the process moving that may save you money. Contact your utilities to price the disconnections. Get your asbestos survey done and get some quotes for demolition from the bigger local demo firms. All this can take time to sort out and you can probably get the demo done cheaper going directly.

So, if I understand this, you put in a traditional trench foundation and then an insulated slab on top of that? So no hard core under the insulated foundation for drainage, just around the outside? ... I agree on insulating the garage floor, but had thought the only option was to go the traditional route of concrete subfloor and then insulation and then screed on top.

So things have moved sideways a little. Builder on site has suggested excluding the garage from the KORE slab to build the house first and then add the attached garage on a strip foundation afterwards. His reason is that this would leave room for a telehandler to get round the back of the build and remove the need for a crane. That side of the site also slopes away a little (about 500mm) and appears not to be on such a firm rock base as rest of site. Image in earlier post above shows garage attached to right hand side of house. On the face of it, building the garage on a strip foundation seems like a good idea. Is it? Has anyone else built a block structure with part strip foundation, part KORE foundation? Of course I will raise this with my SE but very interested in feedback here as I have no idea if this is a stupid thing to do.

Thanks for this. Others on this forum have attached the window to the outer leaf of a cavity bllock construction, which I like but I think would eliminate the cavity closers. Which is probably not an issue.

Where the cavities are closed, and the window is in the cavity then what do you attach the straps to? The inner leaf reveal?

My QS emailed me with scope of services, prior to engagement, to include cost estimates. He then refused to supply any cost estimate when asked to do so. I will be asking him to return some of my fee (fat chance) and referring him to RICS. Legally this would be either misrepresentation or breach of contract, take your pick!

but the RICS code of practice should stop this and doesn't, so its a lottery. I'll be complaining to RICS of course, not that it will do any good.