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That's the excuse of the less well informed that you are repeating. The vast majority of scientists are too busy being scientists (knowledge, analysis, complicated stuff) to get involved in politics. They are not inclined to lie or push propaganda either. They will also say' it isnt that simple ' unlike the worst of politicians who say what the audiene wants to hear, Those who don't understand science are often disinclined to believe just how clever some other people can be. If you excuse me I will exit this otherwise useful conversation: we self builders are designing with climate change in mid after all, and maybe become old if we can keep indoor temperatures in control. after passing some rather tricky exams at school . It's much easier to not understand and to assume it is bluff.

Because it has been blotchy for a while so not rally 10 years aesthetically. thanks for the names, Ill read up a bit incl Hammerite. Rustoleum I know the name, but the others are new. Only one typo is good going with my fingers. I dont fancy taking it down as it is probably 70 years since it was last fitted (we are told that the roof was originally shingles but didn't last long.) and will be 25 years older than that. Just the steel brush perhaps, then whichever paint seems to be the stickiest.

Nonsense argument. 🤦‍♂️. ”Disabled visitable”, “Disabled adaptable”, or “Disabled persons home”? Do you expect a wheelchair bound visitor to your home to be able to reach your oven isolator? A disabled persons home would be built around their own, stated, specific needs, such as @Benpointer. Apologies for terminology, I’m never sure if I should be saying “less-abled” or other. If the home owner is 5’ tall, the electrician should suggest things to suit their stature, much as this week I have asked my (non 5’ tall) clients if they’d like to accept my suggestion that we raise the vanity units by 30mm to suit their ‘tallness’. If you told said 5-foot nothing lady she doesn’t need wall units in her kitchen because she’ll never be able to reach them, I’d expect her to punch you in the bollocks, without bending down, and then go get a step stool out for you to sit on until the pain subsided. .

I’ll be brutal, apologies in advance, but you need to accept that you can’t cut out necessary steps or avoid processes / associated costs. What you ‘wanted’ is perhaps unachievable, unless you become the master of all and DIY this single-handedly, a-la @Russell griffiths , but the side effect is then how long it then takes you to do these things. Saves money, but costs time. A guy I worked for many moons ago told me “short cuts take 3 times longer and always cost you more in the long run”. He was correct.

This is just getting ridiculous now. Don't you know you're suppposed to have disaster stories, compromises, rogue workers, and budget failures? 😉 You and you're wife must be so happy and proud - deservedly so; you've done an amazing job. Love the terraces, and as @MikeSharp01 notes, we at least deserve an update once the planting has settled in, just so we can be a little more jealous than we already are. 🤣 Love it! ❤️

Ok. Thanks for clarifying. I've realigned my expectations and accepted that more money will need to be spent and more trades hired 😞than I wanted too

Interesting - actually taking action against "cartel" like activity. On the other hand, the further I've gotten into self build, I simply don't understand how building houses is a viable business even at their inflated prices. On our last one (sold mid 2025) we broke even if you ignore 10 years of inflation and all the free labour - so a massive loss of wealth in reality - glass half empty ; or we lived in luxury rent free for a decade - glass half full? The current one is shaping up much worse. Looking like it will cost approx 150% of its market value to build despite me doing everything for "free" post water tight shell. Doesn't bother us as we do it for ourselves and have exactly what we want (which is the entire point of doing it) - but we have realised some understanding of why new builds are thrown together with appalling quality when you see how cheap they need to sell them vs the costs of build and materials.

Looking absolutely lovely, and yes lots of planting opportunities

could a 5-foot-nothing lady see and reach said isolators? Wheelchair user?

I know this site is more for self-build than for buyers of new-build, but posting this anyway as it's pretty significant imo: https://consumervoice.uk/homes/housebuilders-claim-new-build-buyers-compensation/

Lovely european feel to that - Bravo

^ This 100% When I applied for planning permission for a 2 storey house extension and a single storey garage extension I had 5 objections to planning from neighbours - all were over-ruled (3 because the extensions wouldn't be visible so them) and 2 other the reason for objections were already covered by the plans (obscured glass in one window for one side and no window on another wall for the other) Having gained planning I then had to put up with further complaints from the two all thro the build - people can just be knobs about the pettiest things. Final complaint was related to the boundary fence which I was re-instating to 6ft as per original and planning were advising that it could only be 3ft and I ended up telling the planning officer to take me to court if they wanted (in the meantime I made the 6ft fence into a 6ft gate ) which really pissed the neighbour off

Wow - that's some landscaping - its been so long since one has seen so many terraces in a design- looks great and once it has grown in it will look amazing. Until the epilogue then.....

If I got an EPC done it would state that with a gas boiler the heat energy required is 18,000 kWh for CH and 3500 kWh for HW We heat 24/7 with a weather compensated flow temp that peaks at 35 at -2.5 Deg C outside and actual kWh is 8000 for CH and 2000 kWh for HW Just as bonkers - EPC's aren't worth a toss IMO if I was looking to buy a house I'd want to see the last years worth of energy statements - far better guide than an EPC

The consensus seems to very much be on the let sleeping dogs lie side. After the initial visit I placed a couple very visible ring cameras by the road side and that may also have discouraged further complaints as you can't take photos without being recorded doing so.

Back by popular demand! (Well, one person asked.) I said the previous blog was my last. I lied. This bonus edition focuses our efforts to landscape the garden. Just before we moved in in February the rear ‘garden’ looked a bit like this: Fortunately, we’d stayed close enough to the build budget to have some funds still reserved for landscaping. It turns out that landscaping is expensive - similar costs to groundworks in our experience. Last year, while waiting for planning and itching to do something, we’d engaged a garden designer to help us meet some key requirements. We wanted to create a small garden with multiple planting and seating areas with level access from the house and wheelchair access to all areas. The designer came up with a design we liked - an interesting mixture of curves and angles, with planting and seating areas as requested. We ended up adapting this design to form the skeleton of the garden. In truth we were never likely to take any design without tweaking it but if we attempted the design ourselves it would have been very boring compared with the garden we now have. (We also ditched the designers planting list suggestion but Mrs P. was always going to have the plants she wanted, and why not?) One reason we had to adapt the design was that the fall in height was more than we planned for at 1.6m, and we only had about 12m distance to manage it given we wanted a terrace with level access next to the house. For comfortable wheelchair access I find it’s best to limit ramps to no more than 1:20 gradient, which implies we needed to fit in 32m of ramps in a 12m x 15m area. So the paths became a bit more meandering. Here’s my amateur attempt at trying to gauge shape and fall of the paths. Our excellent local landscape gardener Ashley Ralph (Ashely Ralph Landscaping - I’m not on commission!) started work in February to turn our amended plan into reality. Marking out was fun! This photo shows just how tight a space Ashley was working with. Cern Abbas Giant eat your heart out! Anyway... we needed quite a few retaining walls, which means a lot of trenches and footings. It rained a lot in February too, which added to the challenge. It would have been nice to achieve this with less concrete and fewer concrete blocks but I can’t think how that could have been done. Ashley, with Francis driving the dumper. The block walls were capped with sandstone copings and given a sand and cement render finish. We remembered to run some armoured cables and blue water pipe to allow couple of electric sockets and water taps. In the end we decided not to bother with external lighting even though we’d got planning permission approval because we rarely need it and are happy to use portable rechargeable lamps when we do. The paths and seating areas are in resin bound gravel; here are the paths edged in red setts then with and a concrete sub-base on type 1. Here’s the scene before the resin top-coat is laid but after the planting beds have had their topsoil put in. Troy's taken the idea of 'beds' too literally: For the terrace we used the external version of the internal 900 x 600 porcelain tiles we use throughout the house. The external tiles are 20mm thick rather than 10mm and have a slightly rougher surface for slip resistance. We used the same tiles for the front porch area. The walls at either side of the rear garden have drops of over 600mm so our building inspector insisted we put up ‘fall protection’ which we did using locally sourced cedar slats, fixed horizontally to posts ‘resin-studded’ to the walls. This doubles as screening from our neighbours and provides extra shelter and structure for climbing plants, so we were not too upset at having to do this. (The wider gaps at the bottom are deliberate here, to allow jasmine to grow through from the other side. Beer at bottom right is entirely incidental!) The final step for all that hard landscaping: the resin bound gravel surface. We think it looks great. It’s very smooth to wheel on and all the gradients are good too! For the planting beds we imported a fair amount of loamy topsoil to go over the existing heavy clay. Hopefully this will give a good balance with the underlying clay retaining water whilst the surface soil doesn’t get waterlogged. The beds are not enormous but it is going to take a lot of plants to fill them. That, and time to allow the plants to grow and establish themselves. Er… planting beds Troy! Obviously Mrs P. is in charge of the planting as I haven’t got a clue. The beauty of raised beds is that you can put the soil you want in them. One of the beds closer to the house will have sharper drainage and is going to become a Mediterranean garden. Another has been filled with ericaceous soil for acid-loving plants. I do know that we have some of our favourite plants already planted or planned, including roses: Nye Bevan, Claire Austen, Queen of Sweden, Champagne Moments, Donahue; also various peonies, hydrangeas eryngiums, achillia, lavenders… and lots of others. But plenty more planting opportunities according to Mrs P. - I’d better check that budget again! Well, that’s it for this bonus edition garden landscaping blog. A big thank you to Ashley and Francis for all their incredible work building our garden, and to Mrs P. of course for great plant choices, all that planting, and green fingers. After all, what is a garden without plants? That’s definitely it now… …until the epilogue maybe. Ben

I doubt you’ll have such fraying, as the cuts will be from a sharp blade. If you told them to use up 5m and have the rip in the bay then ok, but if you didn’t vocalise this then you can’t add that as a term retrospectively.

900 - 930mm to top of worktop, then another 450mm to the underside of the bottom shelf of the wall unit. So not very tall

How tall do you need to be to operate those switches.

Nope, just you’re misinterpreting what they’re saying. It gets “finished” by the dapple bar, and that is not ‘perfect’, but is as near to ‘shit hot’ as you’ll ever be getting. FYI, power floating also goes seriously wrong if the person using it is a numpty. You’re not going to get anything like you’re expecting, so realign yourself with whats to be expected in reality, as it’ll need ‘refinishing’ no matter what you put down; unless Jesus is on the bullfloat.

Relax. The planners are well aware that the complaints were vexatious. if there are more then they will contact you. I've had such complaints and as long as you aren't deliberately cheating then it goes away or needs a simple resolution such as retrospective approval.. eg. to high? above what? they don't know. Too wide? an inch is not remotely significant. and so on. If you've added a wing or converted an attic without permission then that's different. Come back to us if there are any more contacts though, of course.

Thanks @Nickfromwales the manufacturers state that no further finishing is required, eg power floating. Looks like they are being slightly disingenuous with that claim.

Bancroft had it well covered, my view as a self builder and as a project manager as a day job. Avoiding a main contractor and managing the build yourself will save you upto 30% of project cost. BUT... Getting trades will be tough. You take more responsibility and risk. It takes a LOT of time as you have to learn and do at the same time. It's much more satisfying. The key thing is to make sure roles, responsibilities etc are clearly defined. "However, a close friend, who I trust, is a self-employed carpenter and runs a carpentry/renovation business with his business partner. They do not normally operate in my area and they do not have the experience/capacity to take on the whole project, but they do have good experience working on renovation projects. My idea would be for him to take on the elements he is comfortable with and help me coordinate some other packages." I would absolutely not do this. Recipe for disaster. Grey lines. No cost control, you take all the risk. You'll fall out when something goes wrong. Much more to it than this but I've no time to say more right now. Something that you'll soon be familiar with 🤣

Thoughts from an amateur learning as I go... We're doing similar to you but on a bigger scale. We've contracted a main contractor to do the groundworks, slab and ICF build for a new house. Were now preparing for phase 2 - everything else. Things that have come up/been discussed with the architect and other thoughts: Check the Building Regs. Something this big may need a designated main contractor/duty holder. This could be you but be aware of what your responsibilities might be as a result. A main contractor will probably cost more but could save money by being more efficient and less stressful. If you sequence a plumber to come in on Tuesday after the electrician finishes on Monday - but the electrician doesn't - then you're left holding the baby. That will probably make you more likely to build gaps into the timeline which, in turn, will increase grief and nausea from the other half because things drag on so long. If you do use a main contractor be ready to have lots of discussions as to why you want the Heat Blaster 3000 heat pump while the MC insists on the Gentle Waft 5000 - because that's what he's always fitted. When I told a Tesla Fan Boy electrician I would not be having anything with the word Tesla on it in my house on principle his face was a picture of 'does not compute...' Boundaries and responsibilities - if you're going to get different people in to do all the different jobs, how are you going to get any of them to take responsibility when something goes wrong? The roof leaks and knackers your new MVHR - who pays for the new MVHR? Probably easier to get an answer if one MC was responsible for the whole lot. I think there are three key elements here - time, cost, risk and only you can understand the importance of each one. We're going down the MC route because of the size of our project but there's part of me that wants to be the one in charge - because this will be our forever home but, as far as any builder is concerned, for them it's just another job to be forgotten about in a few months' time. Whichever way you go throughout the contract, by all means delegate but never abdicate. As soon as you take your eye off the ball, or allow someone else to do things in ways you wouldn't, then you're opening the floodgates to ending up with something you didn't want.

Never ask a question you don't want the answer to. If they had issues you would be the first to know and know already.