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Oof, that confirms my suspicions!
Even timber frame is hard for some people to get their heads around. Our architects/structural engineer/builder are all cool with it but our landlord next door neighbour misread the drawings and thought we wanted to build a stud wall against his extension, so that's cost us £1600 in party wall fees.
Cheers landlord.
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Tank it and it could double as a swimming pool 💦
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We're doing timber frame at the moment, I looked at ground screws but struggled to find impartial recommendations for them, especially in London clay. I also got the impression they might end up being more expensive as concrete foundations are so well established, the materials aren't expensive and everyone knows how to do them, even if they're more labour intensive. I didn't get quotes though, so that could be totally wrong.
Even with a timber frame extension we'll still need 1m deep concrete strip/pad foundations because of the clay. I have managed to get the structural engineer and building control to agree to reduce the strip width to 450mm from 600mm though.
The extension you linked to is very eco for sure but: I wonder how they'll deal with services, they've basically created a rat hotel and our structural engineer specced a steel across the outer wall/sliding doors with ours because in his experience you get cracks otherwise (we've swapped this out for a flitch beam to save some money/carbon).
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Happy to have a look at your quotes and try and work out why they're coming back so high if you like.
And if you want to learn about different UFH types and options I'd recommend Continal's training webinars which are free.
https://www.continal.co.uk/resources/webinars -
The original design included wet UFH, but all tenders came back with that being £15k.
I went down a massive UFH wormhole earlier in our project to the extent that I now know more about underfloor than a lot of people working in the 'industry' (that's a slight on them, not me being boasty) and I can tell you now there's no way you need to spend £15k. For comparison, the (very good) plumber we're planning to use has quoted £10k + materials to replumb our entire house, fit UFH everywhere and get us ASHP ready.
What sort of outfits did you send the tender to? Are the quotes you've had for design, supply and install? It's normally much cheaper to buy the bits and get a decent plumber to install than to get a full service quote from big players like Wunda, Nu-Heat, Continal etc. Plus the design service from a lot of specialist UFH places isn't worth the PDFs it's written on, they're often just computer generated based on them ticking a few boxes and entering room sizes, with no consideration of the reality on site because they've never actually visited.
You could use a local UFH specialist who will of course, but that's likely to need even deeper pockets...
Also I agree with @ectoplasmosis and would like to know the construction rationale for a suspended floor in a new extension given it will have much lower thermal mass, be much harder/more expensive to get airtight etc.
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Have you had any detailed info etc from them then?
Nope, just what the guy told me when he came round to do the survey, nothing in writing yet.
I was too busy repointing to keep warm yesterday, so will chase next week now when it's better sitting at a desk weather...
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To be fair they said from the start if I wasn't happy with the design they'd refund, and while I've chased the individual geek I've not contacted the mothership.
I am still interested in seeing it, plus I really want the funky cylinder they're getting Newark to make for them and everything else is taking ages anyway, so it's not really a problem. I'm therefore not minded to go nuclear yet.
The geek in question told me he was completely swamped last time I chased which I can believe, I think the real issue now is even if we can afford an install with them I'm not sure I trust them to do it on time :/
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Paid 7 months ago for a design proposal and estimate, still waiting, despite chasing 💩
Going to send some 'directional' emails today.
Not with Walsh and Sons so hopefully YMMV.
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Oh Romain...
🦊