Meanwhile in the UK 
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No rain today, so prep again
ta daaa
put wall plates on…questioning way, as usually their purpose is to give a tie down and make a flat plane for a roof. Also, the timber was a bit bent Cleaned up though
Ahhh they’re close enough, if the occupant complains that marbles are rolling around, I’ll pack it 
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tidied and cleaned up, next job will be timber work starting with floor joists…be strange to start with the roof!
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Trying to make progress today, despite heat and work
making the top wall plate
starting on the joists
design has changed a bit, not much
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teeny tiny floor joists on, quite funny that my brain is in building autopilot and make sure they were less than 400 centres (just under 16") 
and test fit of wall plate
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Good job so far!
Jeepers though, how big is the tortoise?
Looks large enough for an pony smol african elephant alsation!!!1!!!
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Cheers!
“apparently” tortoises need a certain height and just so they stay warm, they’ll be two floors, with a hope that the top floor will be warmest and have fancy bulbs (busking or something).
If we ever move to Africa, I’ll have something for a baby elephant too! 
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Please tell me there is a teeny, tiny little tortoise lift to traverse between the two floors… 
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Building code wouldn’t permit it unfortunately, no upstairs windows to jump out of in case of fire 
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back to the roof today, putting the side packing on
put the edging on (nearest face is where water comes off)
packing for insulation, to leave a little air gap to prevent rot
insulation to roof done
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What type of insulation is that? I assume you guys use R value over there?
From my little knowledge I assume it’s polystyrene EPS or something in that area.
The version with black inserts is probably the regular white version, only produced after the graphite version and contains a small amount of residue from earlier productions.
Some manufacturers(Jablite…) apparently use this as a distinguishing mark.
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Thats what I was guessing, but think most of ours in the US is just a solid color so was wondering what was up with the formula
I don’t see from the documentation that they used anything special for these spots. So the legend of intentional coloring may be true, although I wouldn’t bet my head on it.
Dotted Styrofoam is created by combining white and graphite Styrofoam. The white part of the Styrofoam contains characteristic dark dots of graphite Styrofoam, which is one of the most valuable insulation materials on the market. The production process of Dalmatian Styrofoam is quite simple. Graphite Styrofoam balls are introduced just before the production of white Styrofoam boards and are a remnant of the production of graphite Styrofoam.
Sounds like AI so who knows…
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@TimHolus is right, here’s the stuff:
I got this because it’s basically cheaper
We do indeed, though they’re just called “U-Values” over here.
Buildings here need walls and floors to have a U Value of 0.18 W/m²K (Watts per square meter per Kelvin). Roofs need 0.15.
It’s a real pain to achieve this and sometimes with roofs, we actually propose thicker rafters to accommodate it, rather than having slithers of rigid insulation to the underside, which is a hassle to install.
It wasn’t as extreme as this until 2022, for example before this we could have 100mm brick, 100mm cavity (part or full fill with rockwool batts) and 100mm blockwork internal leaf. Now we need 150mm cavities with specific cavity fill, reducing room sizes and of course making the cost go up slightly.
What I’ve done is going to make a difference, but it’s no where near the regs for a real house, as that would make the walls a minimum of a foot thick!
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Wonder what the ROI time is on the newer regs
Good question. The figures I gave are for extensions to existing buildings, new builds are probably where the return gets better, as the building envelope is completely insulated. I think the maths is too much for me to do (unless I’m paid ), so we could instead compare a house with none and a house with full insulation. Last week I arrange floor insulation for a house sized structure and that was around £4k, if we say the wall area is about twice that, then add the roof at about 1.5 times the floor area, total could be around £18k. Now looking at the energy savings, perhaps the uninsulated house is £1500 a year and the insulated could be half that or better, lets say best case at £500 a year.
So lets say nearly 20 years or so, but if energy prices continue to go up, it could be reduce by quite a bit.
Retrofitting insulation probably has less of a return, unless you go full bore on it, but that then costs more money which then takes longer to get a return.
Has to be said there are so many variables it could drive a person bonkers, so I’m largely ignoring that and just going with my gut! These are incredibly loose figures and anyone with a calculator and the inclination could rip them apart…and they’d be right to do so!
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