Hello, Sorry in advance to bring up an old thread/subject, However looking for any additional advice/direction i can get on comment from midesign0401 below... mldesign0401 In Victoria a range hood is a requirement in new kitchens. No longer is it acceptable for a simple exhaust unit, rather it must now be ducted to external air. So your range hood must be flued either through your roof space or via a horizontal duct to an external wall. It must be installed and signed off, and your house insurance will require your sign off document if your house insurance is to cover damage due to fire, or you will find yourself in a predicament. The provision for installing a range hood above a gas cooktop is a minimum placement of 650mm above your cooktop, and 605 for an electric hob. Including induction. Hope this helps. Our new home got handed over to us by builder just before Christmas (21/12/2018), We are still waiting for under mount rangehood to be installed into our kitchen, The house was delivered with no rangehood as the hole they provided was to close to accommodate rangehood selection, After a couple of visits we have been told that cupboards are to be removed and replaced, Which we are still waiting for as the 'cabinetmaker is very busy', My inquiry is to see whether there is a building code reference/link I can forward on to them to hurry the process up, Also concerned that insurance would not cover our new house if there happened to be a fire Thanks in advance, We look forward o nay help, Regards, Ken and Nadia Buxton

Ours never leaked. We'd installed it, then lived in the house 7yr. The previous skylight was leaking badly when we bought the house, it was one of those plastic dome ones- revolting. It was pretty easy to work out why the flashing had corroded in the old skylight- it was chock full of leaf compost. After that- every year the husband would get up and clean the roof gutters and the gutter of the skylight. Like anything regular maintenance will prevent leaks. I'm not sure what the rules are with cyclone-zones. Velux are made from toughened glass. I'm sure their website would give you this detail. Yeah- they get dirty, then it rains and they are clean again! At one stage we got a little bit of lichen growing, but then in Summer it died and just went away! The dirt/dust never bothered us....it's not like you walk around staring up all the time. It doesn't lessen the impact of the extra light and height.

Judging by the plan, the photos and your comments it appears that too much heat is coming in from high light glazing (clerestory windows) into the lounge and dining areas. Both rooms will be cold in winter because the direct heat from these windows is not enough and not absorbed in an thermal mass and they do not have ground level windows or glazed doors facing north. The elevated floor means that it is cold under the house so heating in winter goes down as well as up. The roof would lack adequate insulation due to the period in which the house was built. The roof tiles probably have another 15 years maybe a bit more so it is costly to insulate from the top (i.e. taking roof tiles off adding insulation then putting roof tiles back in again. The colour of them is contributing a lot to the heat. So what to do. - add external shading device to the highlight glazing, maybe timber battens 40 x 40 at 20mm spacings. This will block direct sunlight within the shading season. That helps to reduce heat intact and see how you go. If that does not work then - add a rigid foam core board to the underside of the timber ceiling, e.g. Foilboard which is 20mm thick r 2, then install a 12mm plywood ceiling lining under this. That way you retain the timber rafter ceilings but also one that has a light coloured (hoop pine ply) timber in between. (Note this is costly) - big gains in heat loss is achieved with underfloor insulation. Try r3 bulk squeezed tightly between the floor joists. Then you can plan for the future with the following - change glass in windows and glazed doors to a low e glass - install insulation into the cavity of the external walls using a company called envirowall. - replace roof tiles with a light coloured metal roof, replace the existing roof battens with a 100 x 40 batten so that you can install a 100mm thick anticon insulation. All of the above costs money and if you don't do it then it costs money to burn energy to keep the living rooms between 21 to 27 degrees year round (what we consider comfortable) so if it tough to decide what to do or not. As an alternative For about 40k you could spend 30 of it on solar cells, and an awesome battery (Tesla powerwall 2) and buy some wall mounted ac units. But that would be kicking the can down the road. But sometimes you have no choice. Good luck

HI again! I've spent the past few days visiting far flung industrial estates to look at where the CarbonLite product is manufactured and my friend's double/triple glazing factory. (I, too, am more comfortable with the panelised wall/floor/roof systems than modular, after visiting the Modscape factory...which was very impressive but ...not for me). On my travels I was a bit disappointed to find that the CarbonLite walls in the factory, ready to go out for construction, were not made with the 'recycled PET bottle' insulative layer but with glass wool batts. Also, some of my queries couldn't be addressed due to a lack of technical knowledge on behalf of the person I made a time to speak to at the factory. The fellow I spoke to the day before, who has a potentially rival business, was extremely knowledgeable and I'm hoping to work with him towards costing our house, which is still in the design phase. Our site has excellent views to the south east which is what got me thinking about triple glazed windows and now I have fallen down this rabbit hole of new ways of thinking... Nevertheless, I have become much more interested in the Passive House concept and intend exploring further to see if 1. we will be able to afford it 2. if we can find a skilled, Passive House certified builder for South Gippsland and, 3. if we can work out whether it is just a bit of a fad that may be overkill in Australia! Do you think Passive House is here to stay? I'm trying to reconcile the passive solar/passive house principles- I've been so bound to the idea of thermal mass it's a hard one to let go of! However, i do prefer not to live on a concrete floor! Having just read 'dreamer's' link I think I may have been bedazzled by the triple glazing fairy dust rather than our reality of not being millionaires! Habitech looks interesting but I think it comes with the external cladding and i don't love the versions I've seen so far... I am completely in agreement with you regarding designing a house with the space you need rather than building some voluminous thing with space to burn, just for the sake of it! Ridiculous and irresponsible on a planet that is already using up far more resources than is sustainable over the not-much-longer term.