Mr Blobby

It should have a drainiage ditch against it filled with stones wrapped in geotextile with a drain at the bottom. The geotextile will stop the drain clogging up. I agree with comments above block flat, wider at the bottom. Single skin without any drain is not good I think. For extra points paint the back of the blocks with bitumin paint and/or seal with a membrane to keep out moisture and protect any finish on the blocks.

Latzel still delivering to Northern Ireland ok and no customs charge. Not sure about claiming back the VAT but even including the vat the prices are still about 30% below UK prices.

What battery are you installing? My understanding is that the fire risk with LFP lithium ion phosphate batterries is greatly reduced. We plan to install a pylontech force battery which is LFP (someone correct me here please if this is not the case!) We are also installing 3-phase inverter and 3-phase supply into the house. Our inverter and battery anre going in the garage which should be the goldilocks temperature of not too hot and not too cold. And outside the thermal envelope to keep the heat out of the house in the summer time.

We got prefalz aluminium standing seam and would definetely do it again. At 200 m2 its not cheap but it does look amazing, despite some crapness from the installers. Aluminium gives colour options to match windows and gutters if that's your thing. A couple of things to think about with standing seam. Firstly, the roof buildup costs a bit more before the standing seam beacuse sarking boards need to be laid under the metal. Also, maybe consider narrower seams. We asked for 400 centres instead of the standard 600 centres. This costs a little more because of the extra labour required but looks, I think, awesome, and supposedly reduces canning. Time will tell if canning is actually reduced. Closer seams also gave us more options to attach pv panels with S5 clamps and repeated nicely across the panels. On the back of the house of course, where they don't spoil the look of the roof.

https://task32.ieabioenergy.com/publications/advanced-test-methods-for-firewood-stoves/&ved=2ahUKEwiImuWLmdaFAxW6V0EAHY5VDoQQFnoECBQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1WUtpQXEuNQ2I6Fw9m_ZKB

The calorifc value of timber is required. The official particulate number relies on efficiency greater than 65% at 4.7 kW. What are those smoke numbers like when the fire is first lit? The smoke from my neighbours house is at its most obnoxoious when being lit, when efficiency will be poor and output very low. I suspect these emissions, which will be in the many grams per kWh, have been excluded from the official data.

Well that's not really true though is it. A bit like menthols or marlboro lights being less harmful so smoke as many as you like. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/wood-burners-emit-more-particle-pollution-than-traffic-uk-data-shows

And then there is the actual science and the facts. Particulate matter is very bad for you. All that nasty pollution comes from wood burners. You may not like the facts but that does not make them any less true.

If extracting to the outside. A recirculating hob on the island with mvhr extracting the steam is better than a sink I think. At least that's what we are doing. Hob on island, sink on wall.

Top result. Please tell me what construction is your build? Timber, ICF, block cavity?

Ok, so I'm completely ignoring the OP question here to ask another question. Why have a centre bar if its not required to open the window? A planning restriction? The window above does not need to have a centre bar, so why not have a single pane across the whole window with less visual obstruction? I ask because on the first floor of our build we have non-opening windows with a centre bar and my darling wife is complaining that they obstruct the view (of her church, which is a big thing here in Northern Ireland 🙄)

Down at the site today and under the slab in the void the hot and cold water pipes are running tight together with hot and cold alternating. So cold-hot-cold-hot-cold. Which is the order they come from the sink/shower/wc above. They are mlcp insulated pipes so the rate of heat loss is reduced but I asked the plumber to reroute them to be hot-hot-cold-cold-cold to reduce the heat loss. Of course the plumber said with insulated pipes it makes no difference. The run is across about 7 metres. The insulation on the pipes is only about 6mm. I like my hot water hot and my cold water cold and as I see it the hot and cold pipes will ultimately transfer heat between each other and it would be good to minimise that. Does the order of the pipes matter or is the plumber right about the insulation making the order of the laying of the pipes irrelevant. Am I being too pernickity here?

Saw the panasonic inside unit and assumed split unit with compressor inside. Serves me right for skimming, thank you for the update, very useful.

Thanks all, I'd forgotten about the requirement to get an f gas registered engineer to sign off the spilt unit because of the refrigerant. You all confirm what I had thought, that the monoblocks are nice and simple and quiet. I suspect the scaremongering I got from the plumber over monoblocks stuck in a defrost cycle come from poorly designed installations demanding unrealistic high temps. Monoblock it is then.

Two years ago I decided we would install a 7kW panasonic monoblock unit (Aquera J series) into our house when we finally get to building it. A releatively simple decision I thought. Now that the house is finally watertight (mostly) the time has come to get on with the plumbing. On site today and the plumber said that all his recent installs over the last year have been split units. Nobody installs monoblocks any more he said and suggested I review my heat pump decsion. Which is fair enough. I had always thought the split units were for larger unit seeking higher temps, and the split unit brings the noise of the compressor inside. Plumber says the split units have smaller holes in the wall and no chance of freezing. I understand the difference between split and mono, but is the monoblock really dead? Another thing that has made me stop and think, as well as plumber comments, is that Panasonic lateset series K and L series, all now seem to be split units. I've not been keeping up with latest ASHP technical developements for the last couple of years. Is the monoblock really dead, or should I stick with my original simple choice (and keep the compressor noise outside) ?

We have a really bad selection of pans in our cupboard. They are all either aluminium or the lids have been broken and chucked out. New pans will be purchased when we finally get the new house built, but I agree, three is all we need. My wife can burn pasta (she really has set it on fire) so I guess no saucepan is going to fix that.

So what pans are best then?

On our site we had loads of timber offcuts from the roof in a skip. Passers by and delivery drivers would ask if they could take it to burn it on their log burners. I explained it was tanalised and it can't be burned becuase the fumes would be harmful. Sure enough over a few weeks the wood magically disappeared out of the skip. Why anyone with children would fill the air with arsenic to save a few quid is mind boggling. While most people may not do it, a lot do burn toxic wood and it is not and cannot be policed, hence a ban is the only way to stop this madness.

Most trades are on fixed price. Some are on time+materials. While some trades may sit on their arse drinking tea and playing cards all day if they are paid by the hour, this has not been my experience. I seem to have good trades who are happy to get on with the job even when paid by the hour. I suspect such productivity stems from their relationship with my builder. I reckon if I ran the project myself and engaged the trades directly they would be more likely to take the piss.

There is still an incentive for our builder because he only gets paid according to the activity. No progress, no payment. Our builder actually moves faster than I like and trades are always on site when required. I guess its about perception of risk and I'm ok with risk. Besides, I'm not sure a contract and a fixed price eliminates risk altogether unless you are prepared to sue a builder for any breach of contract. Which then means dealing with solicitors which is far worse that dealing with builders.

We do, and despite all the whingeing I do here, I like it and it works ok. The fixed priced tenders we looked at all had extra costs that couldn't be justified. And a fixed price contract would lock in a detailed specification without any changes and lock me out of the site. For us it works well but only because I have time to be on site every day to do the crap jobs that nobody else wants to do like sweeping cavities, getting airtightness detail right, and putting red bull bottles in the bin. There are fixed prices as we go along, so fixed price for blocklaying, fixed price for metal roof, etc. The builder overees progress, gets good prices for materials and, most importantly, gets good trades on site. I know from expereince that when I phone, say an eletrician, they don't even return my call, but will pick up the phone to my builder straight away. Open book arrangement also gives me the option to save some cash from things like buying the scaffold and provideing water and leccy on site. This saves on the extortionate preliminaries in a fixed price contract. I can also retain control over stuff like roof design and mvhr layout and do some of the work myself. Even though I have no idea generally what I'm doing. 🤦‍♀️ Its not for everyone but if you want to be involved in the project and are prepared to cancel all your holidays (my wife is not talking to me) to be on site every day (and have a builder you can trust) then an open book arrangement is a good option. It will be interesting, when I get to the end of the project to see how the cost compares to the FP contracts but I think so far it is looking very competitive.

I also thought the window fitters may actually screw into the block to fix the windows. How foolish of me, a nail gun is far quicker. 🙄 And why spend a tenner on new straps when there is a bucket of spares to use. 🤷‍♂️

To screw into the side of the window frame or clip on ?

So our window fitter didn't have enough of the specific fixing straps that clip into the side of the frame of our very expensive internorm windows. He said he would drill into the side and that would be fine, but it just seems a bit crap to turn up without the straps and then improvise on site. When I asked him to use the proper straps he said it would take too long to get them from Austria. The window fitters are off site for a few days and coming back to finish fitting the remaining windows (including the very big windows and slider that will be the most challenging) next week. (We are responsible for the delay) Should I insist on the proper fixing straps or let him drill away?

Even with a check reveal (compriband on front face of window frame) and external render to the window frame compriband is still the solution? Would compriband push the window inward slightly? We would render over the compriband to the frame? Or stop bead near to frame I guess.