The Happy Medium

[Declan52]

There are a good few here who went down the block route, me included, so spend the time before your build starts researching every aspect of it to see how you can improve on the efficiency of your build and come back and post any questions you need help with.

If you are a spark mhrv will be easy to install by yourself, i done my own.

As a side note mine is 220sqm and with a family of 5 my space heating and dhw comes in at approx £300-£350 per year depending on the price of fuel. My PV generation covers my electric bills with £25 profit last year. 

[joe90]

I originally wanted a passive slab but was quoted £1000+ for an SE to design and sign it off, we are on clay and the BC was slightly wary of a slab so I copied the Golcar passive house foundation which is a normal strip foundation but insulated and my BC accepted this with no additional SE costs. He also accepted 200 mm full fill cavity insulation and a warm roof with 300 mm of the same insulation. As stated before the costs of going the passive route need not be much more, it's all about the detail.

[Gorlando]

36 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

As a side note mine is 220sqm and with a family of 5 my space heating and dhw comes in at approx £300-£350 per year depending on the price of fuel. My PV generation covers my electric bills with £25 profit last year. 

 

I can expect mine to be very similar in size and demand I feel. We are a family of 4 plus the mother in law in the newly built annexe.

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, Gorlando said:

Some very interesting lines for me to investigate. The EPS bead fill is appealing to me as it's another fail safe in that I don't have to be watching and worrying about the quality of the wall insulation intallation.

 

This will help also, in regards to my shift pattern, as I will be away from site for 4 consecutive days out of 8 so will not be there to oversee the superstructure build at times. Like I said I do trust my builderbut the less risk attatched to sloppiness the better.

 

In terms of worker control post shell. At present i'm only planning on hiring a plasterer and subies for speacilist commisioning (RHI eqip, MVHR) As said previous, i'm a spark and dad and brother are Gas CH Engineers. Although there's no gas service to the site, they can still do the majority of the pipe work.  Anything else I feel pretty confident we can get it done together.

 

Apart from using a block and brick building method, nothing else is set in stone. Whatever gets me the values I need at the right price is very much on the table.

 

And to summarise what you all seem to agree on is that passive house standards can be achieved for the same or only slightly more thay a building regs house.

 

Correct me if i'm wrong!

 

Once again thanks for all the replies. Really is proving to be a great community. Hopefully this thread will help others who are on a similar thought trail as I was....

 

 

 

That is about right I think as to people's thoughts.

 

Ferdinand

 

[TerryE]

@Gorlando,  if you are going the look at Tony's house Tray and some of his other design details.  Also doing the MVHR yourself is really cheap and straightforward if you use a supplier such as BPC (there's quite a few posts on this).  Good luck

[Oz07]

Something to keep in mind also @joe90 should have no trouble insuring or obtaining finance on build method he has described. Other methods may be considered non standard and cause a hiccup for lenders. Right or wrong that's the world we're in and warrants some thought depending on your intentions.