Choosing an architect is like a job interview. If they mess up, you can loose important features of your new home, you can end up needing to re-do work that you have paid for and you can end up with bills from the contractors which don’t make sense. When you are making some initial enquiries, try probing these points.
For heating, we are planning to add solar panel to the roof (9kWp should be easy), and install a heat pump. This means ‘free’ cooling in the summer when generation will be way in excess of demand (and export only pays 4c or so, so any use is likely to be a win). The question in the winter is a little less obvious since there is far less sun in the winter. If the architect doesn’t realise that grid import is also an option, or that batteries can improve the day-round operation too – you should suspect there is a problem.
Under floor heating. This was already mentioned in the DPE report, and we ended up laying a 15cm screed on one floor, so had some options. The architect we chose persuaded us that UFH for only 1/3 of the ground floor space (the now well insulated room) was not ‘worthwhile’, and so we have a solid, un-insulated concrete slab, covered with €10,000 of tiles (materials and installation). We now think this was too complicated a question for him, but it is hard to understand where to draw the line. What would it have cost to add pipework? Even for future use?
Plywood vs OSB. OSB tends to be used in France as a flooring support, whereas in the UK chipboard is more common. OSB is much more moisture tolerant. The third material is plywood – built up of alternating thin layers of wood (rather than the fragments in OSB). Plywood is more of a structural or cheap finishing product than OSB (which is really intended to be hidden). We had quite a revealing discussion (far to late) where marine ply had been used to finish an exterior window reveal. Probably OK from a durability point of view, but an architect really should recognise all three types of sheet timber product.
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