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Gamekeeper turned Poacher!


Fredd

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1 hour ago, daiking said:

Do Travis sell popcorn?

 

I'm going to need FIBCs of it for this thread.

 

My thoughts exactly! It's good here in the cheap seats! 

 

I have learnt though that I aspire to living in a niche house however!

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4 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

The style of Fredd's conversation is familiar, education is needed, rather than confrontation.

 

 

Who's with me on kidnap and leaving him stripped naked in one of his houses o'night with no heating or one of the passive ones on here?

 

xD

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3 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

Offence taken, deeply, sorry, but I don't take kindly to the implication that I'm some sort of thick fool who, quote "can't see the wood for the trees".  It is offensive to me, and was directed personally at me by being a quote, just like this is directed at you.

 

You aren't looking at things from a self-builder's perspective, which is always going to be a fair bit different from a mass builder's view.  Our site was like a fair few self-build plots, awkward, expensive to clear and level, and a solo plot with no mains water or drainage.  Straight off we had to look for a build system that would cope with the clay soil that was remaining after we'd removed around 2.5m depth of soil and undergrowth above to level the plot.

 

Trench foundations were a non-starter, because of the ground conditions.  If we went deep enough to use something like this, with clay boards, we'd have been below the local water table.  We're adjacent to a stream inside an AONB, and opposite a listed build, all of which put tight restrictions on what we could and could not do.  That's not untypical, a fair few self-build plots tend to be like this in some ways - they are usually being sold for self-build just because they are too damned awkward for a small builder to take on as a job he could do and make a profit on.

 

Our build is 130m² over 1.5 stories, with a 6m x 4m detached garage at the other end.  The total cost for the foundations, UFH, insulated, weathertight, frame (including the garage), guaranteed to meet or exceed passive house standards, including an air test that was below 0.6 ACH (I think ours was around 0.43 ACH, or about 1.22m³/m²/hr in BC terms) was around £63k.  Taking away the detached garage cost, the house foundations, UFH, insulated, airtight and weathertight house worked out at around £423/m².  To that cost has to be added the external larch cladding (around £7k including labour), the 3G glazing and all the external doors (around £8.5k including fitting),  and the slate roofing, guttering and downpipes (another £8.5k)

 

Before going down this route I explored other foundation options, in particular, given the  challenging nature of the ground, and we were looking at around £12k to £15k just to put suitable foundations in.  A passive slab won hand's down, on price, speed, giving us a finished floor internally, with no need for screeding, inclusion of UFH, etc.   One major advantage we had was that our power floated slab, because of the passive design and the need to be absolutely flat to get the frame to sit square with absolutely no packing (any packing would have messed up the airtightness a lot, and needed loads of work filling and taping up things that wouldn't otherwise need it) resulted in us having a very flat and smooth floor that we could tile and lay timber flooring on to with minimal preparation.  Before tiling (with large format graded 12mm travertine) our tiler spent around 40 minutes going around the ground floor with his laser looking for the highest point.  He couldn't find one, and concluded that the floor was flat.  That saved us 9 bags of adhesive for the travertine, at over £20 a bag, so was another small saving.

 

You say that saving 26 sheets of plasterboard over the original estimate that included normal cutting losses due to things not being dead square, or the actual size they are supposed to be, makes, quote "zero difference".  To me saving over £100 to spend on something useful, is worth having. 

 

As another example of a side effect of building a house in  a factory to tight tolerances, as ours was, I was looking to buy a corner desk a few weeks ago.  I had the drawings handy and they gave the depth of the corner, from plaster skim to the plaster bead on the corner, as 962mm.  I checked this with a tape and it was 962mm, the damned house is built exactly to the drawings, even down to the allowances for plasterboard and skim.  That's been repeated time and time again with significant time savings on things like fitting out the kitchen and bathrooms, where all the dimensions were within a mm or so of the design, which meant cabinets etc all fitted exactly.

 

FWIW, we have no energy bills at all.  The only bill we have is the Council Tax, and that's partially offset by the ~£1000 a year we get paid for the excess energy we export.  We wanted a house for our retirement that had no bills, and we've got one. 

 

Finally, let's compare values and see how they stack up.  I agree that the zero energy bills means sod all to the average buyer, but we did fit the house out internally to a fair standard, with solid oak joinery everywhere, even the skirtings and architrave, solid oak stairs, solid oak fronted kitchen units, Silestone worktops and kitchen/dining room internal window cills, toys like comfort cooling in every room, an integrated boiling water tap etc, massive shower, solid oak bathroom furniture, etc, etc.

 

Build cost was probably on the high side of average for most self-builders, based on costs we've shared on here, at £1380/m², including the cost of the insulated and lined garage, with electric door etc.  The plot cost £90k, the ground works (not including the house foundation) cost £56k, the borehole for water cost £8k, the electricity connection cost £3.4k.  The total build cost came in at £270k and the market valuation last year was between £330k and 345k. Being a passive house reduced the valuation by 5%, according to our valuer, because in his words, he felt that "an eco house is in a niche market".

 

 

ok well then i apologise as you is upset, and im the last chap youd meet who likes upsettting folk. i didnt read the whole lot, but if i upset you im sorry. it wasnt my intent and if we  met in the local im not the not of chap who would upset you bud.

 

yaki dah

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4 hours ago, IanR said:

 

There's quite a few here that have a different experience. Here's mine, 465m2 of C35 reinforced insulated raft, with UFH included and ready to take final floor finish. U Value: 0.1W/m2K

 

image.thumb.png.3a1cbed19a21d9c625e86b8529a4baf1.png

 

Might be worth having a read up and update your knowledge on Insulated raft/slab foundation systems. Here's a few links, if you search Google you will find many more.

 

http://www.advancedfoundationtechnologylimited.co.uk/our-product/

 

http://www.springvale.com/products/groundshield/index

 

https://www.kore-system.com/kore-products/floor-insulation/kore-passive-slab/what-is-kore-passive-slab

 

http://mbctimberframe.co.uk/passive-foundation/

 

http://www.isoquick.de/construction-process.html

 

 

Edited to add: Very cost effective as well. 

 

whatever you paid the groundworkers to do that wasnt enough! 

 

work of art that.

 

i'd sack the plumber who put the underfloor tails that high and spread out though. terrible.

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1 hour ago, Nickfromwales said:

We are trying my old mukka ;)

 

 

Indeed we are.  TBH we could do with some of the bigger builders popping in here from time to time, if only to illustrate how very different a single self-build on a solo plot is from building even a small development of barely-meets-our-crap-building-regs houses for profit.

 

I think one big issue is that to make a decent profit means cutting costs to the very bone, and then some.  In the main, self builders are cost-conscious, but rarely to the point where they will build something as bad as a typical new development (and I've got to see three of those, warts and all, over the past couple of years, and I doubt a single house actually complied with Part L1A in reality.  The thermal survey I did earlier this week on one of them showed major construction flaws, and I'm not at all surprised that the new owners are complaining that their heating bills are massively greater than they were promised by the builder's sales guff.

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5 minutes ago, Fredd said:

 

whatever you paid the groundworkers to do that wasnt enough! 

 

work of art that.

 

 

Our slab was dead flat and smooth, too.  The blokes poured the slab, pokered it, trammelled it roughly level, let it sit and partially cure, then power floated it to get it dead flat and smooth all over.  The build system they use means that the slab has to be mm level, or else the structural part of the factory made frame doesn't sit tight to the non-structural 200mm wide insulation upstand all around the slab edge.

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8 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

Our slab was dead flat and smooth, too.  The blokes poured the slab, pokered it, trammelled it roughly level, let it sit and partially cure, then power floated it to get it dead flat and smooth all over.  The build system they use means that the slab has to be mm level, or else the structural part of the factory made frame doesn't sit tight to the non-structural 200mm wide insulation upstand all around the slab edge.

Thats why our frame doesnt sit right beacuse the slab was such a nigtmare! Hopefully we have it covered now by sorting it ourselves.  The people who put the frame up were as bad as the slab layers. We obviously got rookies on everything, not what you want when building a house!

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5 minutes ago, lizzie said:

Thats why our frame doesnt sit right beacuse the slab was such a nigtmare! Hopefully we have it covered now by sorting it ourselves.  The people who put the frame up were as bad as the slab layers. We obviously got rookies on everything, not what you want when building a house!

 

 

well i thank you in a roundabouts way.

 

Please tell me, why you went down the frame route and lets go from there.

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3 hours ago, Declan52 said:

How do you deal with the obvious cold spot round the edge where the beams sit on the wall???

How much insulation do you put in the cavity???

How much insulation do you put on top of the floor???

As far pure luck getting a floor screed level I think your doing the MBC guys a big disservice. They do massive amounts of work under neath the floor to get it level. 

 

the beams and blocks are insualted from the rest of the build by the celotex, ill take a picture of the next one. there are no cold bridges.

 

100mm in cav. 400mm in loft.

 

Floor is screed only after the shell and windows are in, pre-plaster.

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9 hours ago, Nickfromwales said:

Speed building to maximise profit, by turning out houses built to current regs ( or usually worse )  isn't really the ethos of this forum.

 

I am new around here and I cannot speak on behalf of the "spirit of the forum", even so I hope @Fredd sticks around.

 

To date I have been a consumer of that spirit, I am intoxicated by the forum's ethos and tolerance of a newbee with a list of elementary questions. From my perspective I sense many here have a passion for getting it right even if that takes years and the cost / m2 creeps up. I represent a different sort of prospective self builder who just wants to create something a little better than a commodity house and break even at the end of the day, as a consequence time is an essential measure of success for me I and hope to benefit from Fredd's no nonsense experience.

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3 hours ago, Onoff said:

 

Who's with me on kidnap and leaving him stripped naked in one of his houses o'night with no heating or one of the passive ones on here?

 

xD

 

jesting aside, the build we finished just before chistmas, the room stats reported 18 (underfloor heating). and i pulled the breaker chistmas eve. went in new years day and it was 14.

 

them screen floors sitting on celotex hold the heat for bloody ages.

 

but i'll not argue against being stripped naked !!

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6 minutes ago, Fredd said:

 

the beams and blocks are insualted from the rest of the build by the celotex, ill take a picture of the next one. there are no cold bridges.

 

100mm in cav. 400mm in loft.

 

Floor is screed only after the shell and windows are in, pre-plaster.

But the beams are sitting on the foundation walls which  the inside skin then carries up. Do you use light weight/ thermal blocks here at this junction to stop the cold bridge.

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3 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

[...]

From my perspective I sense many here have a passion for getting it right even if that takes years and the cost / m2 creeps up.

[...].

 

I reserve passion for my wife.

However, substitute 'very keen' and you are about right. It's the visibility of the  expenditure on every single nut, bolt, bag of cement, batt or  Glulam that plays a large role in the way we work.

 

Rather than just paying for someone to arrange a mortgage and booking the removal van.

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2 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Less of this get thee behind md Satan!

 

Let's aim for a religious conversion I say!

 

download.jpeg.0731182c33a8caf67dde461bd7ffc11a.jpeg

 

 

 

 

 

dont get me worng, i'd love to build houses with passive and fart tight. noone would be able to afford them.

 

you lot here are a very lucky bunch, you getting amazing homes for life. most folks are not there, they are on the start of the journey.

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3 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

But the beams are sitting on the foundation walls which  the inside skin then carries up. Do you use light weight/ thermal blocks here at this junction to stop the cold bridge.

yes your right.

 

its the inside skin which is insulated by the cav, block, board, plaster and paint. ok it could be better but expensive. not worth the ££££££ to a first time buyer.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Fredd said:

but i'll not argue against being stripped naked !!

 

See, we've already found a common ground! :)

 

Have you been in a proper passive house! Difficult to describe but dead quiet, draught free, coccoon like almost. That was with no heating. The only one I have been in hadn't got the MVHR running but I love the idea of a majorly dust free house and breathing FRESH, clean air. I'm in a 30's bungalow with multiple Jerry built extensions currently breathing RAT. Trust me it's 'kin grim! 

 

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17 minutes ago, Fredd said:

 

the beams and blocks are insualted from the rest of the build by the celotex, ill take a picture of the next one. there are no cold bridges.

 

100mm in cav. 400mm in loft.

 

Floor is screed only after the shell and windows are in, pre-plaster.

 

 

There are thermal bridges for sure, as you can't eliminate them this way at all, only partially mitigate their impact on the peripheral heat loss.  The higher heat loss rate because of the greater ∆t between the inside of the beam and block floor and the ventilated space underneath is another reason why beam and block is poorer in terms of real-world performance than an insulated slab.

 

Even our foundation has a small amount of thermal bridging.  That has 300mm thick EPS under a 100mm thick reinforced concrete slab, with the UFH pipes tied to the reinforcing fabric.  There are 200mm thick EPS upstands all around the slab as edge insulation, and clearly this is both not as good as the main underfloor insulation, plus it's exposed to a higher ∆t for the above ground part (the ground stays at around 8 deg C, outside can easily drop well below zero).

 

We have 300mm of blown cellulose in the walls, 400mm of blown cellulose in the roof, with fabric U values that are:

 

Floor - slightly less than 0.1 W/m².K

Walls - 0.12 W/m².K

Roof - slightly less than 0.1 W/m².K

Windows - 0.65 to 0.7 W/m².K

Doors - 0.7 to 0.9 W/m².K

 

If the house is heated to 21 deg C and then left with everything turned off, it initially loses heat at around 1 deg C over the first 36 hours, with the heat loss rate slowing (in accordance with Newton's law of cooling) at an exponential rate after that.  With no heating at all I've never seen it drop below about 17 deg C, because even in the coldest weather there is usually enough solar gain to overcome the small heat loss rate.

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Fredd said:

 

dont get me worng, i'd love to build houses with passive and fart tight. noone would be able to afford them.

 

you lot here are a very lucky bunch, you getting amazing homes for life. most folks are not there, they are on the start of the journey.

 

Big difference I suppose if it's a self builder doing it for themselves where they can invest free time. Stick around and marvel at the anal attention to detail! :)

 

I bet the average first time buyer wants to move in and be up and running? Sadly I bet I know where the majority would go if you offered a budget kitchen and MVHR or a top spec kitchen and draughts! 

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1 hour ago, Fredd said:

well i thank you in a roundabouts way.

 

Please tell me, why you went down the frame route and lets go from there.

 Well Fredd we went the frame route because I wanted it to be different from my previous brick and block house (which we had built for us 30 years ago). I wanted to be environmentally light, I wanted to leave nothing but footprints if you see what I mean.

 

For me the choices were a frame package or a full package house from one of the prefab suppliers.  We chose the frame as I am not really the sort of person to be in the prefab machine, far too independent and maybe even eclectic.

 

We chose our frame supplier after much consideration and with due regard to all their excellent reviews. I had favoured another frame company but they did not do  the frame and slab package and I was told that was the best way to go then no issues with one company blaming another if it didnt fit together. Hey ho!

 

I think we had a really unfortunate experience with our frame and slab and as has been said earlier rookies on the job and the company has now sorted those issues going forward. Too late for us but if lessons learnt and no one else has the same problems then thats something.

 

So we have sorted our issues and moved on. I have the best carpenter in the world and without him I do not know where we would have ended up. He is a magician with wood and has rectified problems where required and disguised  cosmetic issues with it not being straight.

 

Leaving aside the nightmare of frame/slab (which impacted on so much else) other than my leaking Internorm sliders I am thrilled to bits with my house.  I am totally happy with my choice of timber frame construction. The insulation and airtightness are fantastic, it is so warm and we are not even moved in yet.  I love my house aleady and wouldnt change my method of construction although I would have wished for a few less problems along the way.

 

Thats not the scientific builder response that you may have been hoping for but it is my genuine from the heart feeling about my lovely wooden house I leave the technical stuff to all the wonderfully helpful and knowledgeable chaps on this forum who have been so generous with their time and advice to this rookie!

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1 hour ago, Fredd said:

yes your right.

 

its the inside skin which is insulated by the cav, block, board, plaster and paint. ok it could be better but expensive. not worth the ££££££ to a first time buyer.

 

 

How do you insure your dot and dab on the inside skin doesn't become a thermal tent?? 

How do you seal the blockwork up to prevent this???

It's would be a course of thermal block on the inside of the founds. At most maybe 100 block at a £1 extra each. Same price to lay so it's a £100 maybe extra but would definitely help. 

That's kind of the difference here, most here tend to go that extra step as it's their own build. For you it's just a job and at the end of the day its all about profit which I fully understand as it's what keeps the rust off your frying pan and the bed clothes dry. 

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1 hour ago, Declan52 said:

How do you insure your dot and dab on the inside skin doesn't become a thermal tent?? 

How do you seal the blockwork up to prevent this???

It's would be a course of thermal block on the inside of the founds. At most maybe 100 block at a £1 extra each. Same price to lay so it's a £100 maybe extra but would definitely help. 

That's kind of the difference here, most here tend to go that extra step as it's their own build. For you it's just a job and at the end of the day its all about profit which I fully understand as it's what keeps the rust of your frying pan and the bed clothes dry. 

 

 

You can't, it's an appalling way to line walls, especially on masonry which will always lack airtightness unless it is parged.  Dot and dab should have been banned years ago, as there are better cheap ways of doing this, anyway.  Pink grip is far quicker than dot and dab, still allows the cheap build technique of just quickly bonding plasterboard to masonry, but because the technique uses a continuous peripheral bead the infamous "plasterboard tent" effect is avoided.  It always amazes me that cheapo builders put in the bare minimum level of insulation that can get away with (often fitted very badly, especially in cavity walls) and then allow that insulation to be completely bypassed by using dot and dab plasterboard, where cold air can just flow around behind the rear of the plasterboard, bypassing whatever insulation was put in the walls.  They may as well have left the insulation out for all the good it does.  There were examples of this on a thermal survey I did of several new build houses and apartments in a new development nearby, where the new owners are already complaining about the high heating bills they are getting, far higher than they were led to believe by the builders.  Given the big gaps in the insulation and the generally dire overall build quality I can't say I'm surprised.

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3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Probably best, you don't.  You are a chippy and we don't have many of them.  If you had to build a few houses, say 5 or 6, would you build them on site with sticks and twigs (or rough sawn, or whatever you call it), or would you knock them up in a shed and just nail them together in the dry.

 

I would do it as I have done with this one, panels in the dry then a Brick skin, (no maintenance on bricks and I think they look nice when laid well)

I don't like blockwork, I don't like masonry hangers, I don't like B&B floors, I don't like the way bricklayers insulate, I don't like channels for cables, I don't like dot and Dab, I don't like fitting linings in masonry, I don't like cracks and I don't like how out of upright and level brickies leave everything. Other than that its each to their own and obviously that is just my opinion ;) 

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2 hours ago, Fredd said:

whatever you paid the groundworkers to do that wasnt enough! 

 

It's a win-win with an insulated slab, not only out performing "traditional" foundation systems, but costs less also (for a flat site like mine with a reasonable bearing capacity of the sub-soil)

 

2 hours ago, Fredd said:

i'd sack the plumber who put the underfloor tails that high and spread out though. terrible.

 

IF there was an issue, I'd only have myself to blame, but the tails are no higher than is normal, the photo is taken at ground level to exaggerate any out-of-flat of the slab so the appearance of the height of the tails is a parallax effect.

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