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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.

Ohhh don't even think about picking up that phone.

@Spinny You really do not understand the scientific method do you. Have you thought of going to university and studying it for several years?

If it lasts 10 years, why not use the same again - Hammerite?

Still trying to figure out what "cat iron" is to be honest 🙂 But, IMHO, take the guttering down, clean it all up removing loose paint and rust with a good steel brush (maybe use something in a drill?). Paint. Yes to a primer, then you top coat. If you can afford it Farrow & Ball do downpipe paint (but I guess its for the guttering as well). Other alternatives - Rustoleum, FLAG, Bedec and Centrecoat

Some scientists tell lies and push propaganda narrative lines when they should know better... https://dailysceptic.org/2026/06/29/hottest-ever-really/

From experience, planning enforcement only tends to get involved when someone makes a complaint and draws things to their attention. Even then it has to be sufficiently serious for it to be worth them getting involved. Let's face it, I doubt if many on this forum have actually built their houses exactly in accordance with every requirement of their planning permission and there are very few enforcement cases raised on here. The Council have confirmed the case is shut and my view is to let that very sleepy dog lie and steer well clear of it............................

If they have confirmed the case has been closed, I would just crack on

Yeah, but the idea is they don't leak the heat away during the day when you're out and then be spent in the evening requiring you to use fan heaters. Storage heaters are a shit idea based on the old idea of "spare" elec always going free at night. Which was true in the days of big coal plants. Less so with renewables, batteries, ev's etc. . But there we go. This is the official EPC system that we are forced to adhere to. I get about half as much effect on my epc for replacing all the single glazed windows with double glazing as I do by just swapping the panel heaters to HHR units....

Towards the start of my build, I had a site visit from planning enforcement because of a complaint on the roof being built too high. The officer was somewhat confused when they arrived and found that the house didn't actually have a roof yet. They revealed that they'd had complaints for 9 other things including not following the landscaping plans, when no landscaping was close to even starting. This led them to concluding that the complaints were obviously vexatious and I never heard from them again, other than to confirm the case had been shut. The house has been completed now, and I'm willing to bet they received a variety of other nonsense complaints during that time. I'm wondering if it's worth contacting them myself now to ask them to officially confirm they're satisfied the house has been built to plans, or if its better to let sleeping dogs lie? My concern on the former, is if it's inviting them to go through everything with a fine tooth comb, potentially leading them to find a wall is an inch out, then asking me to rebuild it or apply for a planning alteration, which I believe would invalidate the CIL relief. My concern with the latter, is that if they decided in the future to investigate a complaint of 'the wall is an inch too wide' they might try harder to find fault than if I had contacted them myself to take a general overview of the house.

MBC do it for every client in their passive rafts, unless someone says they are going to rub their arms to keep warm…… You’ll need some smoothing, so tile adhesive if tiling, and self levelling / smoothing compound if anything else. Nothing will go directly on to a newly laid slab, that’s just wishful thinking. Current MBC one, great guys, SCC:

Yes they did, and for very good reasons. Basically India and China are going to burn less coal than original thought. Unlike your opinions, scientist change their minds as new evidence appears.

I think that's more ambiguous as the answer should technically be 0 if you have a kitchen but no utility room.

How would 'high-retention storage heaters' make any difference? Electricity in = heat out eventually no matter how high the retention surely?

I guess the M&E spec should have been tighter? Did you tell him to fit manifolds with isolators?

Interesting. The problems you face seem to be common. Too many 'builders' will happily say "Yes, we can do that", when in reality, they can't and should be honest and upfront that they cannot If I read your post correctly, you did not use SCC for your slab?

Sensationalist headlines get clicks. Hottest Evah, wettest evah, worst storm evah. There is a decent living to be made cranking out the stories. DMGT no doubt happy to crank out anything that gets clicks. One day - we are all dommed, doomed - click,click, click. The next day - it is all a climate hoax - click, click, click. Climate scientists and the IPCC officially retired the extreme worst-case emissions scenario, RCP8.5 (and its successor, SSP5-8.5), for future modeling. What that means in practice is... most climate scare stories of recent years quietly confirmed as fish and chip paper.

@Spinny I am surprised at our comments considering the article came from the DMGT stable.

For our extension we have the heating pipes in the concrete slab. So the makeup is hardcore with sand blinding layer over, DPM (in our case also a radon barrier), 150mm PIR, Vapour Barrier, about 120mm readymix poured (pumped) concrete slab with reinforcing mesh and heating pipes attached to mesh. This was the preferred method of our architect who advised this was more efficient for heating given the higher thermal mass of the concrete slab. I repeatedly asked our builder how level the slab would be and was told 'within 6mm'. I always found this hard to believe. Yes it was false and the slab had a 30mm variance from highest point to lowest point when actually done. I measured it and queried it when it had dried but was told it was not too high and would be fine and a refusal to come to site and measure it with me. Of course when they opened the knock through to the existing house 2 months later it was clear the slab was too high. We had to overcome this by raising the floor level in the existing house using a pipe in board u/floor heating system. There are some challenges associated with putting the pipes into the slab, particularly arising from the fact the slab is constructed at an early stage as the build is coming out of the ground... 1/ You will need to know your pipe loops and layout and have it installed before the slab is poured. Including connecting the pipes to a manifold and ensuring they are pressurised and the pressure in monitored/checked. 2/ The slab needs to be protected from water ingress. That is stop water from being able to get onto and under the completed slab and into the insulation layer underneath. It might soak through the PIR edge insulation, or enter through apertures for conduit and services etc. The walls and roof structure are not in place. So you need to keep rain off the slab whilst you build the walls and the roof structure. A seperate temporary roof over the site is much preferable at this point - but our builder did not quote or provide for one. Consequently we spent money and time protecting the slab as best we could as the build went up. The risk is the insulation layer turns into a small underslab lake necessitating cutting out pieces of the slab and pumping it out etc - mucho cost and delay if this were to happen. 3/ Is a slab laid outdoors by ground workers ever going to be properly flat and at the right level ? A slab that is too high is potentially a major problem. You need good professionals with the right equipment, experience, and verifyable skill levels to get a good result. Do you know your FFL ? Are all your door openings at the right level ? 4/ You need to get your conduits and services/apertures in place before the concrete pour. My experience is minimal (1 extension by troublesome builders) but I would find it very hard not to plan to use a floor leveller over the top of the slab once the build is dry. I wouldn't say pipe in slab is a no brainer cost saver. Best to have pros that have done it before providing some assurance of qualtiy/levels etc.

Have a heat pump but no PV or battery. Octopus Agile since 1 April 2026. Average unit rate consumed: 13.9 p/kWh. (I schedule the heat pump to be off in peak periods.)

I wonder if we can get some opinions please? we are having our carpets fitted and have come across numerous issues with the installation. The carpet we chose comes in a wider width of 5metres. In our bedroom they have installed it at a 4m metre width and added a join at the point of the opening of the bay window. Into the bay window the width would be 5.2 metres. The concern is that the join will fray, as it is a traffic area (moving into this area to draw curtains and there will be furniture etc). What are your thoughts? we expected a 5 metre carpet and a small join somewhere more discreet. Picture attached, which shows the carpet pulled up, because they also left a floor board loose which they agreed to fix down.