Since starting this build we've had a handy mound of "spoil" from which I have been taking regular photos from the same(ish) spot to remind me of progress during the "down" days which we self builders all suffer from time to time. I thought I'd share this with you. It starts in May 2021, when the major groundworks had been underway for a few weeks and goes up until April this year - about 2 years.
First a picture of the mound of spoil for reference:
and now the "tim
Energy production is as variable as the weather. 🙄 But how much does it change the results in a month or year?
Based on calculations using the PGIS data over 10 years I thought I would share the results. In one calendar year the energy produced can vary from the average by +/- 5%. In one calendar month the energy produced can vary quite widely! From +24% to -28% from the average!
Here's my summarised results:
It has been a long and windy road up to this point. I bought the plot in February 22 and have had over a year of ecology surveys, useless solicitors including the county solicitor and a few changes of plans along the way before planning was granted earlier this year.
The old house which was formerly housing for workers on the fruit farm had been used as site offices for a national house builder. When the builders left it looked like they just finished on a Friday and locked up and went home
Day 48 of the build was a big one, we poured the ICF ( PolySteel) walls.
Following the slab pour 2 weeks earlier, we start on building the PolySteel ICF walls.
I've no experience with ICF, and thus can only comment on the usability and quality of PolySteel. The process is straightforward, all the blocks are t&g on all edges, so you simply use a bead of fire rated foam and push the blocks together. Each block clips to the last with two **clips joining the metal mesh inside th
Day 31 of the build. (this is taken from the day we started shuttering the foundations)
The weather up North has been spectacular for about 3 weeks, so we (Mandy and I) pushed to prepare and pour the slab before the weather changed, as I'm sure we will get a few weeks of low pressure, wet changeable weather after this spell.
Following on from the foundation ICF walls, I'd already loaded around 20ton of 40mm to dust in a pile the slab area. Sat on the sand blinded radon barrier.
Jo
So - Attempt #1 of trying to build my house failed - Made Ground (Poor soil bearing), a buyer who wouldn't grant me legal permission to access the mains water after I sold and changed their mind after I'd let go all the builders, and my planning permission extension was refused.
Attempt #2:
Re-Applied for Planning permission from scratch - preliminary decision due July, final decision August 2023.
Place my house back on the market in the meantime somewhere between tho
A busy couple of weeks and favourable weather has seen some progress at The Windy Roost.
When in use the word I, or we, I mean Mandy my wife, and me. So far that's the only labour on the build. Mandy has worked office based for 40 years before we moved here, so this is an all new world for her, and although she regularly tells me she's older than me, and she's needs a day off, I can't be more proud...
It seems that the engineers really worry about the wind here, which is fair e
After the worst of the cold weather was out of the way, i decided to start chipping away at my huge jobs list this year, some is finishing off, and others additional bits.
Started getting the block paving back down again, as i was fed up of bringing sand in on my feet all the time, was very time consuming as each block needed individually inspecting for chips, and cleaning of its old sand and sealer around the edges, but kept doing a bit every other day.
As many on this hub are aware DIY self-build is a slow and sometimes lonely process, particularly when you are a novice.
HID knows how to build, but he's never had to make the plans or decisions previously, he's just been told - dig that trench, lay that foundation etc. etc.
So, we are finding having to explore in depth every step is time consuming and pretty tricky and there is no one place with all the details.
We don't know what we are looking for - how do you kno
Finally made a start in earnest. The original plan was to stick build on site, but the cabin builds opened my eyes to the winds up here, and established concern for getting the house airtight.
I priced ICF, and although the costs are higher in the begining I think, I can self build for similar money, but get a far superior product. This is a budget build, most of the nice to haves have been dropped. The only redline is we want to ensure this is future proof, so all on the ground floor.
You think getting planning is the final hurdle, and then you start talking to building control, structural engineers and steel manufacturers! Thank goodness we didn't have to talk to builders as well, as we had made the bold decision to do it all ourselves. I am a plumber by trade with a weird niche sideline of repairing solar thermal systems so i have some site experience. Having worked on a lot of new build single plot sites and with a variety of builders, project managers and architects I ass
Three years, two planning applications and an expensive appeal later we began preparing works. And no we didn't get permission for a new build. Instead we got planning permission for an 11m extension, basement and loft conversion of the old existing house, plus a large stable block in the back field.
The new design involved extending the rear of the house out 4m as three stories and then a large flat roofed single storey a further 7m, which will sit over a 30sqm basement.
This old house turned up for sale with a largish four acre plot at the back. Our "plan" was to knock it down and build a modern ICF passiv haus on the land, and also keep horses and pigs on the land. Well you know what they say, if you want to make God laugh then tell him you've got plans....
Well, it's really happening.
HID left work last Friday, spent the weekend fixing the horses fencing, but it didn't matter as he can now work on the build.
I've created a very detailed project plan for his for 3 days and intend to keep this going as he works much better this way.
This will approximate timings which will no doubt go out the window.
We did have an issue last week, he had dug a trench, we had torrential rain and one side fell in, some of our soil is
Well, everyone is back from holidays today and my Structural Engineer made a comment about the Ground Investigation Report I've been digesting all day. Turns out my soil is very poor despite hundreds of houses being constructed all over the rest of the estate 25+ years ago, I'm the one with a problem now! I'd have to dig / excavate nearly 2 meters of soil to reach sufficient bearing capacity which means my plans to start groundworks next month are almost dead. If you see results like mine....RUN
We moved from Manchester to Cornwall 6 years ago and we are very happy with the overall location. Our existing converted barn, was converted by the previous owner and is very nice but is built on three levels and has 4 double beds, kitchen, dinner, lounge and snug and 3 baths so it is far too big for us when we retire. When we bought the house I always say we chose it for the working barn apx 300m2, not the barn we live in. We are building for our future in the hope that we can continue to li
Despite watching lots of Grand Designs, building a house wasn’t something I’d ever considered until about 18 months ago. Fast forward to today and we’ve bought a plot, instructed an architect, and I’ve traded my evening telly time for browsing the Buildhub forum. So how did we get here?
My partner and I want to start a family but agreed that we wanted to move into something larger first. We drew up a list of what we wanted and started our search. After months of searching / viewing w
I am in the state at the moment of wondering why......
I never realised it was going to be so complicated to get all the paperwork sorted just to lay some blocks with holes in for windows and doors and a roof on top and preferably some heat, cooking and washing facilities, but I would even have considered giving up on those at some point.
Due to the complete lack of time we decided that the builder (HID) would take voluntary redundancy and early retirement and then build
So I'm in the middle of the sales cycle for my Home. The first buyer pulled out but after a month I lined up another. The market is doing well enough despite % increases. So I had the estate agent around today to perform a valuation, the Surveyor comes around on Monday for 90 minutes to inspect the property and I'll be ringing the solicitor to get an update on where the contracts are at! I'll feel a lot better with them signed and a move out date to close the deal (hopefully!).
In the mean
Prompted by @haddock's query here:
and my few charts to show what has happened in my house, I have finally got all my data together and after looking at dozens of charts, have reduced it to two that show the most useful information about my house cooling, or heating.
Initially thinking that the difference between internal and external temperatures was the best base to chart against, I soon realised that it shows hard to understand results i.e. a larger number, the colder it is.
Since the last blog, a lot has happened in a relatively short time. The last blog was Stage 1 of the Amenity block, needing cladding and the roof, and as I'm sat here early in the morning , with the wind constantly blowing 20MPH, 2mm rain p/h. and a toasty 8 deg. inside the static, which is our home now - yey. The Cabins are complete. A lot of work and a move thrown in to the mix since the middle of August.
The cabins are stick built on site, under the supervision of Building cont
When we first decided to self-build in 2014, Jan and I visited quite a few passive house builds and talked to various experts; we soon decided that a low energy approach was broadly the way to go for our build. One of these experts, a passive-house evangelist called Seamus O'Loughlin, emphasised that a conventional heating approach (where boiler demand is based on some central thermostat set point) doesn't work well in a passive house, because the time constants of a high-thermal capacity low
So it's mid-2019. After 4+ years of trying to find an 'oven ready' place that suited us, we finally gave up and went the alternate route. Build our own. Found a bad house in a great location. Main downside was the small garden, but you unless you're absolutely loaded you can't have it all. And of course the real estate agreed with our timelines.
"Yes, if you buy in may 2019, the design will take you into december, and you can probably start early Spring, and maybe even be done before
