Originally published on the closed forum March 2016.

In submitting our planning application, I had purposefully had the external walls and roof depth drawn as 450mm thick, reasoning that this would let me investigate construction costs for a variety of different construction methods.

First port of call was MBC, but our geographical location meant that was a non-starter for them. Next, I got in touch with Danwood, who were happy to travel and build on Orkney, but were not prepared to build what they described as a complicated roof engineering design, and were unwilling to use metal as a roof covering.

Having previously built timber frame houses (kit and stick built on site), it was only natural for me to price this type of construction, so I obtained a kit price from Scotframe for their Valutherm system. Their basic and super insulated kit prices were in line (per m2) with the prices on their website. There was however a significant uplift (about 20%) to form a vaulted space high enough to accommodate the mezzanine /full height over the living area.

I put the plans and a detailed written specification out to tender, approaching four separate contractors. Two would price for a timber frame build, based on the Scotframe kit, and two for an ICF build. We were fortunate in this regard as ICF has been used on Orkney for a number of years, has established itself in both the social and private sector, and is respected and understood by local surveyors and estate agents.

It took around 9 weeks to get all of the prices back. One TF contractor was very honest in saying that he wouldn’t be able to start work until at least the middle of 2016 due to other commitments (and I have since heard he is not taking on any new work until 2017). He had priced at a significant premium and was therefore ruled out. The others were all able to work to my planned start date, and had come back with prices, which although more than I had originally budgeted, could at least be worked on.

I spoke to a number of locals obtaining references, identifying my preferred contractor (ICF) from that process. I thereafter visited two of his ICF builds, one in the early stages of construction and one near completion. I was very impressed by what I saw, both technically in terms of what ICF could offer, and in relation to the construction and final finish. It was clear from viewing his work, that he paid a lot of attention to detail and took a genuine pride in his workmanship and that of the small group of tradesmen he employed. The icing on the cake was that we got on and were comfortable with each other.

I decided to progress our project with this ICF contractor and commissioned a building warrant submission, so the contractor would have enough technical detail to give me a final price. On previous builds I had always prepared and submitted the warrant myself, but I was persuaded to use a local surveyor, as he had a good knowledge of the system and all the relevant information to hand. The cost of going down this route was reasonable so I came to the conclusion that although I could get all the information myself, the extra time it would take me to pull everything together would probably outweigh the savings of doing myself, as we’re currently in rented accommodation.

As part of this process, we revised our plans slightly, rejigging the layout of the bedroom section and bathrooms (and in the process reducing the footprint slightly), amended some window sizes and positions, re-positioned the staircase and mezzanine.

In a minor wobble moment of 'have we got the design right' we also looked at re-positioning the rear section of the house to reduce the area of dead space between the two sections of the build (effectively moving the stagger), but couldn’t develop a revised layout that didn’t involve compromising other things that were of greater importance to us. 

We had planned a mix of concrete tiles and profile metal sheeting for the roof, but concerns regarding profile sheeting, and the additional costs of a standing seam roof made us think again. Purely by chance we passed a house under construction which like ours, had a mix of render and timber cladding but was under an all tile roof. The finishing touch, which tied the roof to the differing wall finishes and gave the house the look we were after, was the use of a local verge treatment – lead covered skews. Having a passionate hatred for the look of dry verge systems, this was the perfect solution and should ground the house as a modern interpretation of the local vernacular;

  

After consulting with our planning officer, the changes were accepted as a Non Material Variation. We were fortunate as changing to an all tile roof was acceptable within the conditions specified in my original planning permission.

The house now looks like this;

Main plan without spec and name - A1.pdf

Mezzanine & Sections without spec and name - A1.pdf

I’ll go into costings and technical detail later in the blog as we're still finalising some elements / finishes.

Our building warrant was submitted at the end of January. We had hoped to have it back by now (end of March) but additional calculations were requested in respect of the roof and a couple of other minor queries have delayed us slightly...

Next entry - Delays