Where are we now?

Perhaps it's an appropriate time to remind ourselves where we are in the whole process. Our Planning Officer is beavering away on our application with a completion date of 9 December for a decision - the Tree Officer had some queries about how we will protect the trees which are to remain, hopefully he's happy with our response. Peter the architect and his team are likewise beavering at detailed drawings and we're trying to tie down as many elements of the spec as possible. Big chunks not yet finalised are the heating system and the windows. The heat calculations suggest we need between 2 & 3kw to heat the whole house when it's freezing outside - which is roughly the two heated towel rails in the bathrooms plus a little heater in the ventilation system. So we'll have to open the doors when we run the logburner... The average boiler and heating infrastructure generally is set up to deal with old-tech much less well insulated houses. Oil, wood pellet etc don't make small enough boilers to match our heat needs - the only units small enough are LPG. Windows are of course part of this sum - you need good windows to retain the heat. Aside from the big ones, ours are small (!), so we really need to focus on getting the big north windows heat- and draught- proof. Although the payback period for triple glazing is huge, there's a suggestion that by minimising any convective draughts triple glazing actually does rather better than the direct heat loss calculations would suggest. So we'll probably go triple on the big windows and take the cheaper option on the small ones. We're tempted to go tilt and turn for the bedroom windows, anybody got any comments? In particular any experience of Jeld Wen t&t which seem to be very 'sensibly' priced - but are they any good? Oh, and did I say? Stainless steel for the gutters - contemporary and stylish, huh!