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Weeks 75 to 90 The plasters have finished the open plan vaulted area and it’s given us the boost to get going again in other areas. At the opposite end of the building is the plant room, this was the first room we started work on to enable the solar to be installed. I’m back in here to tile the floor and since it’s the first floor I have ever tiled I am very happy with it. I have left the service penetrations until all the services are in, we currently have temporary supplies from our existing home. We have a provisional date in August to close our village single track road (that goes to the school so can only be closed in school holidays) and will then have our own services coming into the building I will then seal up any air gaps and finish the tiling. Whilst the plaster was drying in the open plan lounge and kitchen we started on the MVHR installation. We made it as light as we could but it’s size was still too much for me to help with so we had to think of alternate methods of lifting it luckily our business had tools we could improvise with. I’ll let the photos show how this went. In the loft it all looks nice and neat. We could have floor mounted it but it would have taken up a lot of room and the pipes coming down would have needed boxing in. We could have put it in the loft but changing the filters would not have been so easy. This is a good compromise, once the pantry kitchen units are in you won't be looking up as much and we will be able to access it easily with our step ladders for filters and servicing etc. Once the MVHR was hung we moved on to fitting the plasterboard up in the pantry then I taped and jointed it all and painted the lounge and the pantry. Tape and Joint I had the opportunity of using a different corner tape around the velux, since this was not an area like a doorway that was going to possibly get knocked. I have previously used the corner paper tape with the metal reinforced edges. I have found you need to be careful on the corner you don’t rip or sand the paper. Traditional metal corner bead for tape and joiners is too thick and it can be hard getting plastic corner bead for tape and joiners. I do know of few places but they don’t deliver it due to its length and fragility. The tape I used was, SIME edge protection very similar to Strait Flex Tuff Tape both are on Amazon, it’s described as plastic coated and although on a roll when cut and folded for the corner it is not floppy like paper tape, and more like the metal reinforced paper tape but with a stronger corner. After using it around the Velux I decided to use it on the pantry doorway where I was matching up to the wet plasterers metal bead. I am happy with the outcome and will probably use it a lot more. When I first used it I bed it in and wiped out as usual but later found out they recommend to do the first finish coat straight away. The instructions on the tape are in Polish I think but the copy below is from an America website for Strait Flex Fold Original in half at the center crease, with the print-sides facing themselves. For outside corners, fold more than the desired angle with the print-side facing the wall. For inside corners, fold less than the desired angle with the print-side facing out. Apply all-purpose compound to the corner. Press Original into the wet compound and adjust, if necessary, to create a straight line. Wipe down tight and smooth with a taping knife. The first finishing coat of compound can be applied immediately. Let this dry completely, for several hours or overnight. This last step saves a day compared to paper tape that is covered the following day. Second fix electrics has started in the lounge and the light fittings have been put up and testing started for the electrical certification. The kitchen has been delivered and that went very smoothly all placed neatly in the middle of the room then a few days later we have spread it all out into appliances, pantry units and main kitchen units, the island was placed in its approximate location and immediately became a huge flat surface that we could fill. Whilst David is installing the kitchen we are also both test fitting and plumbing in the bathroom and putting the plasterboard up. We need to keep moving on with the bathroom as this will be mainly me painting and tiling whilst David will continue the kitchen installation on his own and second fix electrics. Going room by room works for us well as we can both work to our own strengths without waiting for other trades this will hopefully mean we get to move in later this year but with some rooms completely not started. Thanks for getting to the end of this update, if you have read my other blog entries please note that the posting date today does not match the week numbers as I am a little behind updating the blog. We have been working on the bathroom since May, lots more in the next blog and I have the build costs to update.

Availability of sensible priced plots and then the extra cost of a custom build compared to a standard box, is what limits the number of self builds. If only government were to mandate that the mass market house builders who buy up most of the building land in large blocks, must sell a certain percentage of their plots for self build, at the same per house cost as the whole site cost them.

the reason for that is simply an economic one Iran petrol stations for 40 years before i retired and the cost of tank replacement and new pumps is too expensive for alot of the owners 80k+ for a new tank 10k for each new pump and with a profit margin of less than 3% £160per litre and dealer gets 5-7p top line before any costs -- it comes to a point where it is economically unviable to up grade a petrol station i made all the profit from the shop ==not selling petrol --so unless you have a good shop through put --then selling fuel is a waste of time and every time the fuel price goes up you have to find more money to fill the tanks when i started a load of petrol as about 2k now it is 60k-- and you will only get that dead money back when you close up and sell last tank load so unless you have a through put of over 6m litres a year fuel sales are a waste of time there has never been any credit for fuel sales -- pay by bank draft same day or at best with 7 days you will wait for 2 weeks at least to get your money from the credit card companies and they take half your profit with card charges so to operate a 6m litre site you will need to have money for 160000 litres -what you have in tanks -- your payment for last load and money coming from credit card companies you will need at least £300000k plus your shop stock value -- to operate and that not even allowing any costs for replacement of equipment or staff etc .etc and the loss by evaporation from your tanks -- 1-2%-- which you have paid fuel duty +vat on so would I ever consider going back into fuel sales --no way -- the profit fuel companies allow you has always been pence per litre immaterial of price which is why you see very few if any company owned sites all are dealers --they sold them off years ago to mugs to run that is also why you will not any new petrol stations being built--numbers don,t add up

In my day job I sometimes ask AI for it's calculations for a bit of fun! A lot of the time I find it's completely wrong! I checked a beam design against AI and found it to be a factor of ten out, on the unsafe side. One of the bits it missed was the destabilising loads ( an unrestrained load applied to the top flange) loads, the lack of adequate lateral restraint and the support conditions, all that lead to is being miles unsafe. Now AI aggregates information, you could have ten undergraduates all uploading their student projects and AI thinks.. this is right, but it's dangerous bollocks! There is good reason for BC to reject you! If you want to use AI to generate calcs then you have to be competent enough to make sure it's not rubbish. By all means use AI to do the donkey work for you, but unless you know what you are doing, have the knowledge to understand what the calculations mean then you are an idiot!

Thanks for allowing me join this self-builder community. I'm building my home, and first project of this scale, in Norfolk with my husband. We are trying to be considerate of sustainability and use local materials when possible within our rather modest budget. Our architect has designed a timber framed structure with straw bale walls. We are doing all the construction work ourselves unless it requires certification, specialists or we get stuck! Neither of us have formal building experience, so are learning as we go. I'm hoping this forum will be an invaluable source of information and advice. I'd really appreciate anything which helps us get things right first time and avoids costly mistakes! Hopefully in return I can offer some entertainment value with our dodgy DIY antics!!

There’s a material difference between something like a landscape visual assessment and structural engineering calcs. The former is a nonsensical piece of paper that needs to be produced to check a box on the planning application. Money down the drain. The latter is integral to the safety of the house and its inhabitants, and something I would gladly pay for an expert to do.

If you want (need) to micro-manage at this level then the blame lands in your lap, sorry. You 1000% should NOT have had ANY other trade on site whilst the floor was being laid. You want things done in an extremely particular way, beyond the comprehension of most ‘typical’ trades, which means you need to engage in hand-holding; each plank laid down as you wish, then it gets drawn around with a sharpie, then each plank has a piece of masking tape applied so it is numbered, when lifted the number is written on the floor (inside the sharpie rectangle), and both are complimented with an arrow so the installer knows which way around to then fit each plank. Zero ambiguity, zero personal preference, zero chance of it going any other way. History keeps repeating itself here, so either change what you’re doing or don’t expect a different outcome. Sorry to be brutal, but without this info you won’t succeed. I am principal consultant on site currently and I take this approach with the trades that require direction from me. I explain that it may sound like I am teaching my father how to (expletive deleted), but that is how it is, take it positively or walk away. The good ones actually appreciate this as they can push back, stating that the additional quality etc will add time & money, which my client agrees to and accepts. Sometimes trades just need to know (be told) if it’s a sprint or a marathon.

Your proposal invites discussion, that in itself is healthy. I think it's fair for you to ask the question, most of us on BH won't take a negative view of this as you are exploring if you can benefit the self build market, and if you can make a living out of it and a bit of money then your are justified, a fair days pay for fair work. Here is bit of context and bit of my background. The first 20 or so years of my career were spent being a builder, some of that was building houses for self builders. I had generally 6 -8 full time staff then sub contractors. Depending on the time of year I may only have had four subbies, then at times up to about twenty folk working on one site. To keep them all working I would normally run one big project and say a couple of extensions, attic conversions at the same time. This allowed me to manage resources, deal with changes, cash flow, maybe planning and BC delays. You should be pretty familiar with how this works given your background. When I got to near 40 I could see the writing on the wall personally. My wife and I parted, my German Shephard died and I was left living in my lovely self build on my own with this huge weight on my neck of the business and my duty to my employees. I shut the business, paid all my staff the redundancy, phoned my competitors, told them I was chucking in the towel and pleaded for them to take my lads on. Some did! Now I also squared up all my builders merchants.. some told me, even my accountant.. you are limited Gus, if you walk away you'll be at least £100 - 200kk better off. But I paid the money as I knew my personal reputation can't be valued. Now I was lucky as I sold everything just before the 2008 crash. I then trucked off to university to become a Structural Engineer, graduated, trained and now my consultancy is in October this year going to celebrate it's tenth anniversary. But part of my success is my contacts from the old days! I am still in contact with my old suppliers, they give me names of good creditable builders, as they remember I squared them all up. One of my ex employees is now a BC officer in my local area, his wife, who used to inspect some of my project is now a Senior in BC. They are consummate professionals and remember me as "not a chancer". In summary, my own view is that if you want to build a sustainable business in the construction industry it's going to take 5 years living on the edge, another three years to stabilise, it's really only in the last couple of years that I've felt I've arrived, lots of repeat business and a huge amount of experience under my belt now.. 40 years! Ok, the above is not a rant.. it's intended to let you see there is no fast buck here in the construction industry. Developing an app is not going to work long term, unless you have lots of contacts and an already established business that brings in the bread and butter. Let's say you are digitising and facilitating via an app the procurement and build process, that's just using modern tech, the game remains the same and the profit loss sheet still stacks up the way it pretty much has over the last 40 years. The tek has changed, but the fundamental principle of turn over is vanity, profit is sanity has not changed, you may also want ( I suspect you may not) but just look at Ruskin the common law of business. But the bottom line is that it looks like you want to project manage, use your QS skills.. with a fancy app. To make a living out of this, you need do the basics very well, get repeat business, you'll need to have lots of contacts, cash in the bank, be legitimate, have insurance etc, and be very good at what you do to be able to justify your 10%, your app ain't going to cut the mustard, the app is your potential cream, your USP that delivers that extra profit. I think you need to have look at your business model in term of the app. But if that stacks up for you then it would be welcomed by not least myself and folk on BH.

Thanks for the heads up. Could members please use the Report function for anything dodgy, as we mods then get an alert. I will now put this account on ice, thanks.

Out of interest, in addition to the architectural electrical drawings mentioned above, in France you also need schematic electrical drawings. They're normally drawn by the electrical contractor as part of their contract. Without it the Electrical Inspectorate won't test the installation and, without their certificate, you don't get a mains connection. It's also used for subsequent maintenance. Example below for 1 row of my consumer unit (still in draft, which is why there's a duplicate D2.1):

You are not thinking holistically. The CO2 cost for burning fuel in an ICE car also needs to take into account the CO2 cost of extracting, manufacturing, and shipping the fuel to petrol station, the emmissions cost of spillages, emmissions during filling up the car, etc. Add to that the low efficiency of the engine in using the fuel (60% is wasted heat and friction) and the fun fact that you can only burn it once. Think well-to-wheel, not vehicle mpg and you will start to see the logic of studies like this. Even when burning FF, electricity generation efficiency and minimal transmission losses make it far more efficient. The most profligate EV (Ferrari, Maserati, ancient Enfield Electric) will still use the 'fuel' with +80% efficiency of conversion. And, unlike ICE, you get some of the expended energy back when you brake or go downhill. Add in that the valuable minerals in car batteries and drive systems will be recycled (+99.6% recyclability of materials, plus reusing Lithium from existing batteries saves more energy as it is already purified). I heard an expert from a mining company say that within 20 years, most battery and magnet materials used in vehicles in the future will come from the circular economy rather than mining extraction. The amount of CO2 used in the manufacture of an EV will be less than that to create an ICE vehicle within the next decade. Unfortunately none of this helps me. I drive less than 2500 miles a year and my diesel car has such low running costs in the grand scheme of things (insurance and TAX would both be higher on an EV) and the upfront cost of buying a second hand EV is too great. The second hand value of my car is probably less than I pay for insurance and fuel each year! I would dearly love to have an EV, but will only be affordable if I'm given a freebie, or a government grant/scrappage scheme that allows me to buy a very used EV

Reading a lot of these posts it's pretty clear that that many on BH don't have a high opinion of folk like me who design as a day job. I can see many professionals have lost their compass and are not delivering value for money and are not that good at running a business, hence the poor service delivery. I've been in the construction industry for over 40 years, 20 spent as a contractor running my own business' , did my own self build, really pretty much all by myself on the tools ( took me three years) then off to uni to be an Engineer, now for the last ten years I wear two hats as an Engineer and Architectural designer. Thus have a fairly rounded view of the in and outs of this. I can say that in the last 20 years there has been a race to the bottom, not just from designers, but also say the timber frame suppliers, ground works designers ( UFH and rafts etc) and designers who think that if they curtail their design brief, caveat it a lot the money is going to flow. But in the long term it doesn’t, as often the key to good business is repeat business, recommendation, even in the short term cutting you brief down often leads to problems, queries, design mistakes that just eat into your profit and leads to potential claims or Clients rightfully withholding money. Ok, lets look at some financials. The bottom line for a new self builder ( not someone who works in the trade with contacts) is the tendency to split each element into work packages, say foundations, timber frame and roof ect. Each package supplier takes the cream out of the job, leaving nothing for the self builder. Then you have planning and BC regs on top not least, that all adds to the cost. I work on a lot of projects where I'm involved holistically. I work very closely with the Client, not just as a designer but also do hand holding and participate in all of the design. Now to be blunt. Say for a self build the design fee is £10k. An experienced chippy ( joiner may cost you £250 a day, a labourer £150 as day, total 2.0k per week. All I have to do to wash my face is to save you a few weeks, just on the labour alone and I have well and truly washed my face! The pendulum is swinging back where folk are clocking that we need to "go back to the old days", but now you need someone like me who can cope with the modern code requirements for example, and the modern way of doing business., much less trust and more hard arse stuff. I get this kind of business where folk are happy to pay me a bit more as I can guide them, hold their hand and most importantly we all have fun, we do whacky designs that you only get to do on self builds! We also tend to avoid " work packages where we can, say from MBC et al and keep the cream to ourselves. This also often helps cash flow and gives the Client more control on day to day site activity. Now in the round if you want to make some money then try and find a designer like me that is local to you, with good contacts.

a better finish is achievable, but it doesn’t come flat packed, local company made these 3 doors for me.

I've now reached the happy place of 'offer and acceptance' for my subject-to-planning offer which in Scottish legal parlance means that we have a bargain and timescale agreed. I wanted 12 months to complete planning, the seller offered 3 and we compromised on 9. So I now have until April next year to get the planning I am happy with before I have to pay for the plot and take ownership of it. We've also agreed that if my application is stuck in the planning process through no fault of my own the timescale will be extended to reflect that. I'm not looking for any comments on this regarding legal safeguards just now thanks. This may be a little simplistic, but in my mind there are four possible steps to the planning process: Pre-application enquiry Planning permission in principle (same as outline planning in England). Full planning Building warrant I've opted to skip step 2 as I think I should be ok to move straight on to step 3 once I have a positive pre-application enquiry response. If you've any thoughts or advice on that then I would be interested to hear it. As you can hopefully see from the photo it is a gorgeous plot in a beautiful part of the world. The image above shows what will be the view from my future house. I feel very excited and lucky to have this opportunity.

For a set task by any trade, I am increasingly asking myself ‘what can go wrong here’ and ‘what is most important to get right’. It’s amazing how you can often predict what the f. ups will be in advance. Then make sure you’re around for that part and be firm and unapologetic. A good trade will like that you’re double checking. Listen to all the ‘we normally do it this way’ lines, decide whether you agree and, if not, explain politely why you want it done.a different way. Check in with your trades a lot at first, then less as you trust them.

Your question is fundamental. It goes to the heart of the horror that self-building can become. And is the main cause of self-build-sleep-deprivation-syndrome Humility, respect, time, trust, effort, plain speaking. And knowledge of their (the trade's) networks Self builders are - to the trades we deal with - mostly one off customers. And because we self builders have to invest so much more time , emotion and 'fizz' into our builds than those who 'simply' sign a cheque, many self builders ( not all) think we're special. To trades people, we aren't. We're one of many jobs they have on the go at any one time. Either invest in someone who can manage the situation for you or take the time to understand the trades networks so you can break through their communication blocks and accept that substandard work does occur and that some work will have to be remedied but most of all - be lucky DIY know when an error is something you just have to accept - and when not. After more than 10 years at it, I'm only just getting to know like and trust a core of people who communicate well, do what they say they will do, when they say they will do it to an acceptable standard. 10 years to many people is just too long.

This is with lights on last night

To me the barriers are many fold: Finding an affordable plot in a place you'd want to live Finding an Architect who is on the same wavelength Getting through the broken planning systems - including paying for endless reports by "experts" Dealing with endless planning conditions Dealing with endless Building Control issues Finding out enough to make an appropriate choice on construction method Finding a builder and/or trades competent in their work, affordable, and available Having to make many many decisions on little information and only idealised drawings for reference Lead time from initial idea to moving in date measured in several years. Or you can just put up with the utter c**p thrown up by the nationals and shortcut the whole thing to a few months.

Hi all, I'm Sepehr. Been lurking here for a while and finally signing up properly. About 3 years ago we knocked down an old bungalow and rebuilt from the ground up. Being able to plan the wiring and infrastructure from scratch rather than retrofitting meant I could go a lot further with the smart home side than most people manage — cabling, sensors, lighting and heating control all designed in from first fix, running on Home Assistant. The automation side turned into a proper hobby rather than a one-off job — it didn't stop once the build finished. I'm still tinkering: writing automations, adding presence detection, playing with dashboards, chasing down the odd flaky Zigbee device, that sort of thing. It's the kind of hobby where there's always one more sensor to add or one more automation to refine, and I've learned as much from breaking things and fixing them as from getting it right first time. Learned a huge amount along the way about the building side too (a lot of it from lurking here, if I'm honest) — insulation, airtightness, first fix planning, all the stuff that isn't obvious until you're actually doing it. Happy to chip in on the smart home / automation side where it's useful, and looking forward to learning more from everyone here on the building side.

The conservatives have announced their energy policy It appears to be based on this document https://ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Powering-Britain_-A-comparison-of-policy-pathways-to-2050.pdf The net effect seems to be to get a lot more of our energy from gas than the current trajectory. This makes their cost savings assumptions very dependent on their assumptions of future natural gas prices. They have assumed a stable future price around £24 per Mwh (in 2025 prices) They are also relying on building an extra 7Gw of nuclear capacity (about 2 to 3 new plants). And they will achive this by making government more focused on delivering nuclear - as if this is a magic wand. These assumptions seem to be, in the words of Sir Humphrey, "courageous". Nowhere on the document can I find anything addressing the energy security in the context of being able to source gas from abroad. There is a lot of focus on "security of supply" - which in the context it is used seems to mean firm Vs intermittent power. But nothing on how we secure the continuity of our power supply if there is an issue with gas imports eg a pipeline or LNG terminal being destroyed by sabotage.

My self build journey, to illustrate how things have become harder. First self build 2003. Moving from England to the Highlands. A big motivation of self build Vs just buy a house, was we could buy a building plot and a static caravan for cash without having to sell our old house. If we had gone for the "simple" option of just buy a house we would have been trying to sell and buy at the same time under 2 different house buying legal systems which just sounded like a nightmare. Plus a self lbuild had been on my bucket list for a long time. That first house the only technical design input was from the timber frame company. Total cost of all drawings planning and building warrant £2K No surveys. TF company was paid to build a and watertight shell and we fitted out the inside employing trades as needed. House prices here were rising fast then, and by the time we had finished house value comfortably exceeded build cost. That all worked out well. IF ONLY it was still that simple. A few years later we decided we wanted a smaller house, (done the 5 bedroom thing) and were lucky after some searching to find a plot 2 doors up the road from the first one. The plan had always been start the new build, put the old house on the market and sell it to finish the new build. Our timing was poor. This was post 2008 crash and the market here was dead. The old house was on the market for 2 years and had just 6 viewings. My work as electrician took me all over the place, and I was seeing the same houses everywhere just stuck with a for sale board that had been there well over a year. All the agents and any "helpful" adviser could say if it's not selling, it is over priced, reduce the asking price. That would be all very well if you could reduce your asking price and then reduce the asking price of the house you bought. But self build does not work like that. Try telling a builders merchant house prices have crashed so you want all building materials reduced by a similar amount and ditto tradesmans wages. If we had reduced the price to distress sale levels, we could very well have ended up selling our 5 bedroom house for less than the build cost of the replacement 3 bed house. There was no way I was paying to downsize. Our build ground to a halt with just me doing what I could but held up by bigger things needing doing. Our saviour from this situation came in the form of a lady that wanted to buy the house and run it as a guest house, but could not get the funds to buy it without accounts, so her offer was to rent the house for a few years and then buy it. So we accepted and reluctantly went back to being landlords. That did eventually work out. It ended up being 7 years rental before she finally bought it, and those 7 years of rent, pretty much paid for the completion of the new house. So it worked out financially better just because of that. The actual sale price of the 5 bed house was only £50K more than the build cost of the new 3 bed house. As others have said a self build now likely costs more than the market value unless some house price inflation saves you. As for complications and red tape. The old pay the TF supplier not a lot for all the drawings seemed no longer available. We ended up paying an architecturtal technician and a SE to produce all the drawings that cost us £10K. We didn't have to do any surveys or that nonsense. The only other bits of paper we had to pay for (but not on the first build) were air test, and as built EPC. Building control seemed more stringent on the second build, with the added irritation that we had to keep paying an extra £100 per year to keep renewing the building warrant up to completion. And self build site insurance was a LOT more expensive second time around.

Well done. End of story.

After a few months of delays I'm heading toward finally getting the keys to the new house. In the meantime I've been trying to unpick the house extension history and I think I finally got there. Green is the original cottage. Two (or 3 very small) bedrooms to the left, bathroom & kitchen in the middle, living room at the bottom. I suspect this pre-dates 1950s. Livingroom has raised flooring - probably about 20cm higher than the rest. The ceiling has been raised accordingly and the rafters are visible between the ceiling panels as a feature. I wonder if this was done to retrofit floor insulation at some point... Weird. Wall construction unknown, but from memory, it might be ~10cm thinner than the cavity wall of the top extension, which makes me wonder if it's a solid wall. Will need a closer inspection. Blue extensions were added probably around 1950-60s. Top extension turned the bedroom wing into 3 bedrooms + 1 study. Wheelchair-accessible toilet & wetroom was bolted on to the side of the bedroom wing. Bottom-right blue section is a single-skin flat-roof garage. Right above it is a potential garage conversion into a bedroom/dining room/study. From memory, Flat roof is raised above the garage roof, and walls were quite thick. Will need investigation. Top right pink bit is a single skin utility room. Looks like this is going to be my hobby for the next 10 years. God knows what horrors I'm going to uncover on close inspection.

You can ask for this to be more 'in depth', so they charge more for the investigations and remove as much ambiguity as is practicable.

Excellent. There are a couple of pairs of my Amtico planks that have grain line features that can be partially matched up if you lay them at the right offset on different rows. Sadly the fitters decision to change all my offsets has removed these. At present the plan now is for me to label selected planks that he has laid. And to select replacement planks. He will then take up the labelled planks and replace them with my alternatives. It won't get back to my own careful arrangement, but will reduce the worst of the problem. Unfortunately this means deferring finishing off the floor as my kitchen fitter is back in on Wednesday. I don't mind @Nickfromwales being so frank. I think doing his job you have to be able to be blunt sometimes - to some tradies, and perhaps sometimes beyond that. I do have to say having my sparky on the same day as the floor fitter was not by choice. The floor fitter gave me Thu/Fri as his only dates available before October for completing my job - so I had to take them. The sparky then told me the only dates he had were Thu/Fri. And with Kitchen fitter only being available this Wed before he goes on holiday for a fortnight next week, there was no alternative except yet more weeks of delay. The fitter admitted he knew what my labelling meant and deliberately changed all the offsets anyway. I suspect as a youngster the older guy has drilled him intensly - YOU MUST DO IT THIS WAY - DO NOT DEVIATE etc As a youngster he is also very quiet and shy of speaking. I have spent 40 years surrounded by bright, communicative people - it is difficult to recognise just how closely some things need to be overlooked. Interesting and helpful to see the variety of responses here on such detail and comforting to see I am not alone in seeking carefully detailed finishes, even if others are not so bothered. I will probably email Amtico on the issue. I really do think they could use a much larger image. I suspect you could even give their image to AI and ask it to generate additional similar oak grain and effects on an image and it would do a good job. If brands want to appeal to affluent buyers with claims of permium product, they ought to be doing better I think. Lots of things seem to me to make incredibly slow progress.

Depends what you'll use garage for, but if the floor is reasonably flat swisstrax is an option worth considering. It worked out cheaper and easier than epoxy for us (in part because we didn't need to grind/prep the slab), and it looks fantastic too. There are a couple of caveats you have to weigh up with it though. - Doesn't need much cleaning because of how it's designed, but dust does accumulate underneath it. - You don't want to drop anything very small on the floor! Also water goes through it (which may or may not be a good thing) - Not that confortable walking in socks (there is another models which this isn't an issue with though, although it accumulate more dust due to flat surfaces). On the flip-side, you can pull it up to clean underneath it you want,change the design or replace damaged tiles, things don't bounce off it etc.

It's just that I did a search and that came up, showing it is common. I'm pretty sure we sourced ours through a paint merchant, and it was not a mass market make.

If its a proper screed, nice and flat, then if you just want to stop dust, just use a densifier. Its clear like water and just soaks in. Cheapish, and dead easy to apply. If you paint, you are appying a coating. Again, if its completely smooth, and with proper prep, a single pack product will work up to a point. However, not all single pack products are equal. Id certainly not be buying from B&Q. Ive found Promain very helpful if you ring (an actual telephone call, madness i know!) and explain what you are doing. For me, if painting, its 2k epoxy every time now. But i prefer to tile. Did my last garage with tiles and its absolutely the best solution long term. Good epoxy is expensive. Tiles more so, but the difference if you do it yourself not that big. Depending on the tiles of course!

I think there are two big issues with the "stuff": 1- it disproportionately affects lower budget builds. 2- it mostly has to be paid out early, sometimes years before even starting the build, this can be challenging financially. A lot of this is ripe for disruption but I fear the self build market is too small to make the development costs worthwhile. @Gus Potterhas written persuasively in other threads about the savings from getting a good designer/engineer in early. It seems to me the issue is that obviously makes that professional more expensive, and how does a self builder separate someone who is offering a better service from someone who is just charging more? There is no way of knowing whether a professional has settled for the first option they found or considered 10. This is why I try to do as much as possible myself, I'd rather die by my own mistakes, at least I will have learnt something!

Double C no question. USB A will hang around but anything new will come with C and adapters are easy to get. Having said that, personally I wouldn't get socket integrated USB at all. The prices are high, standards change, the standby energy use of them adds up and the risk of them breaking/costing you more money during their life is not great either. (Some types of electrical testing done during EICRs and fault investigation would require all these sockets to be disconnected before the test is run, that's going lead to the electrician charging more). I'd rather get something along these lines for when USB is needed (not a recommendation just result of quick search - in fact not sure the foldable pins is a good idea). https://www.amazon.co.uk/TEKRAT-Charger-Foldable-iPhone-Samsung-White/dp/B0DNRLYSZ1

Once you have a decent topo it gives everyone a reference for follow on work. You will be surprised how many times it is referred to from planning drawings, services, site setout, groundworks and landscaping.

I'd say confidence is a big issue, most self builders are doing it for the first time and spending their life savings. This leads you to stick to what is known/common which is very often what is used by volume builders. One advantage of self building should be to build bespoke to the situation and to use innovative ideas that haven't reached or aren't suitable for the volume builders; leveraging the experience of others (e.g. this forum) is crucial. Another thing I have found is that you have to try and understand everything yourself. Any professional you employ, no matter how good, has a different set of incentives (being paid, maximising profit, reducing their risk) which are different to your own, you need to try to be an intelligent customer. Easier said than done. I'm still amazed that no one has invented a better way to finish an internal wall than to throw wet muck at it and smooth it over! Probably they have but big plaster has shut them down.

Painfully true. When I started this process 5 years ago - there was still a sliver of a chance that we would come a little bit ahead - i.e. about 10% profit if we decided to sell at the end. It was never intended to be a flip for profit, but doing the math at least keeps you sane when sinking your life savings, blood, sweat and tears into something. A whole host of things since then have happened which means there is no chance I would make the money back if I was to sell it now. The market turned, materials went up, labour went up, we up-specced the material choices (🤨), mansion tax coming and general taxation levels going through the roof. I could easily have bought something of a similar size in decent nick for cheaper than it's been to do the work myself. But, it would have still needed a lot of work to get it up to the right standard and not been exactly what I wanted - so here we are. Will definitely need to live here for at least 10-15 years to stand a chance of the markets recovering and us being able to recover our funds. Luckily, that's the plan anyway 😄

Perhaps explain briefly what a rough experience you have had before, and invite communication right from the start in the case of any doubt whatsoever. Not so easy, I appreciate, if you are not on site, but can they get you at short notice on your mobile to clarify any uncertainties, for example? Absolutely agree with @saveasteading re a dwg. Am I, however, right in remembering that you have only general, not detailed dwgs? Even an agreed scribbled (annotated with dims where applicable if not to scale)sketch can be invaluable in lieu of a detailed dwg, as long as the context is clear and understood.

In the"old days" A first time self builder with no experience could save at least 15% on the build cost of a house. Now in the old days the market was rising, thus the value of the property also increased by on average, say 10%, over say a 2 year build time. You had to be a complete idiot to lose money on a self build. So even if you were not that good your self build could return a tax free return of up 25%, but nine times out of ten you would not lose your shirt. The market has changed a lot. @saveasteading who has decades of experience pointed out.. and I agree, much of the profit for the volume builders now lies in the land transaction, the actual building of the houses are not the main profit element, the house building is just a means to and end, basically a bit of a hassle! Now if you buy a serviced plot on one of these serviced schemes, the seller (developer) has already taken off the cream of the profit, you as a self building then are looking at marginal profit, but carry much more risk. Self building in this case is not going to make you lots of money, it may give you the house you love though and if that has value for you then it's viable. Now say you do a house that sells for 300k. You'll be lucky to clear 20k after all the taxes etc if you sell it on , if your motive is to make money, you'll have to risk dealing with a builder, a huge amount of personal time.. etc.. the reality is you are likely to be better off if you just do a Saturday morning shift in Aldi, you may even get a pension contribution! I've had the good fortune to talk and meet with @Square Feet who has some ideas about how we get back to making self building more attractive, not least financially. It's early stage ideas, will take time to develop, but looks promising. The reality at the moment is for your average self builder the financial risks are high vs the rewards. There are still a good few very well off self builders who don't really mind if they make money of not. But the whole idea is to encourage young folk to self build and improve their financial health which results from their own hard work. But as above.. it really is the case.. you are better off at times doing a Saturday shift at Aldi!

Town and Country planning act of 1947. Fix that and all the other dominos will fall.

Sorry, but that's not the road block to more people building custom homes.

Hi everyone! I just wanted to introduce myself, I'm Hayden. Myself and my wife have recently purchased our dream house, which is in need of a lot of TLC, and it's going to be massive DIY undertaking. I'm really excited to join this buildhub community and will input where I can. If people are interested, I will be happy to share my progress as I go along. Happy building!

Before you get too carried away, I quietened our Conder simply by placing a standard 100mm concrete block in the chamber so the pump sits on that now, not the plastic that it used to sit on. Still not silent but a LOT quieter.

That is for very special circumstances... a bridge, a block of flats. I've not done or seen one for decades.... commercial or home. (on big jobs we had a lab that did slump tests and took cubes for testing, and so did the supplier. The problem will have been the fibres. Adding them to an 'easy flowing' mix will seriously stiffen the whole thing. A vibrating poker would have made it run but obv that wasn't to hand. I've gone off fibres recently because they seem to stick together in great clumps more than they used to, and the handling issue. But it also looks very dry indeed. How did it even reach there? You have nicely laid mesh so cracking shouldn't be a problem... if they get the mix right. In fact your photo is an example of doing things right, apart from the pile of mess in the middle. Cemex you say! Worth noting.

Why are you not doing a sump test when the truck arrives one bucket full out the truck, slump test, if it fails it goes back. every video I’ve seen on scc the test it as soon as it turns up.

For comparison if it helps, in Jul 23 I got 18 cold rolled C section joists delivered, all different sizes (7.4m down to 5.3m) for £1552. And they’re relatively light.

I just used a 25mm to 22mm stop cock. Been installed 6 years - no issues at all.

The patio is too high. Raising it has made it even worse and he should have known better. The wall looks very damp. Could you form a channel next to the wall around 120mm wide x 150mm deep to act as a French drain?

A key benefit of triple glazing is that the inside air temperature next to the glass will be a few degrees higher than it would be next to a similar double glazed unit. If you have underfloor heating, then the closer that temperature is to the target room temperature, the slower the convection currents are in the room. Which creates a more uniform temperature gradient from floor to ceiling, so you don't need the thermostat as high (which is where there's a cost saving). It also removes condensation risk even when temperatures drop well below zero. However, if you don't have UFCH then the first of these benefits goes 'out of the window' as you'll have significant convection currents anyway. And if you do have UFCH + well-specified double glazing (argon filled, low-e, good weather seals, well-insulated frame), then the temperature gradient can still be very good. In short, it's preferable to choose double glazing in a well-insulated frame, rather than a triple glazing in a standard / poorly insulated frame. Uw is the best guide for that.

Health The shock revelation that light bulbs are wrecking your metabolism Since the 2000s, our light exposure has changed drastically as we make our buildings more energy-efficient. Now, we’re discovering how this may mess with our mitochondria, contributing to diabetes, dementia and more By Graham Lawton 10 August 2026 Red light is missing from much of our lives Emanuel Santos Take a flashlight – the one on your phone will do – turn it on and place the pad of your index finger over the bulb. See that red glow? You might think it’s something to do with blood, but you’d be wrong. It’s photons of red light bouncing around inside your finger, looking for somewhere to land. This simple experiment is a doorway to one of the most profound and surprising biological discoveries of recent years. “Light is a nutrient,” says Bob Fosbury, who was an astrophysicist at the European Southern Observatory before he turned his attention to the biology of light. That’s obviously true for plants, which use light to make carbohydrates. But it turns out it’s also true for animals and fungi, all of which exploit light in a hitherto unappreciated way. All living organisms – including us – are solar-powered. Sunlight has long been understood to be critical to life on Earth. But the fact that light is also used to oil the wheels of metabolism is only just, er, coming to light. Long wavelengths, which come from red and infrared (IR) light, are particularly beneficial for creating energy, and are readily available from sources including sunlight and incandescent bulbs. But changes in lighting intended to help save energy have inadvertently deprived us from this crucial supply. The irony is that just as we have discovered the benefit of red light, we are unintentionally starving ourselves of it. How modern bulbs starved us of red light The story begins in the early 2000s with the widespread adoption of two now-ubiquitous energy efficiency technologies. The first was the light-emitting diode (LED), which largely replaced energy-guzzling incandescent bulbs. Although this change helped conserve energy, it had other unforeseen consequences. The second was window glass that filters out IR, designed to prevent heat leaking into or out of buildings. Together, these dramatically narrowed the spectrum of light we are exposed to indoors, an environment where most humans spend up to 90 per cent of their time. “We lost about 95 per cent of the spectrum,” says neuroscientist Glen Jeffery at University College London. “Suddenly, without warning, boom, the long wavelengths go. And that’s a problem.” For the vast majority of human existence, those long wavelengths of light were unavoidable. Daylight is rich in visible red light, which has wavelengths of about 650 to 750 nanometres. It also emits vast and invisible (to us, at least) quantities of IR, which extends out to about 2500 nanometres. People who spend much of the day outside are naturally exposed to these long wavelengths, even when fully clothed. When long-wavelength light hits a human body, it sails through clothing and penetrates deep into tissues (short-wavelength light such as UV, in contrast, is absorbed by clothing, which is why covering up helps prevent sunburn). Red and IR are also abundant in moonlight and in the glow of a campfire. Indoor light, too, used to be full of these wavelengths, either from sunlight streaming through windows or light sources such as open fires, candles and oil and gas lamps. The invention of the electric light didn’t change that, as the spectrum of an incandescent light bulb closely matches that of the sun. But the adoption of energy-efficient lighting and windows robbed us of longer parts of the spectrum. Glass that filters out IR obviously blocks that portion of sunlight, and while LEDs throw out a lot of visible light, they produce nothing beyond about 750 nm. “LEDs are completely dark in the infrared,” says Fosbury. Scott Zimmerman, founder of the lighting company Silas Inc. in New Jersey who collaborates with Fosbury and Jeffery, calls LED light “ultra-processed”, an analogy with ultra-processed food. The combined effect of ultra-processed light and modern glass means that the average human today receives much less long-wavelength light than their ancestors did. Campfires, as well as candles and incandescent bulbs, emit red light ClassicStock / Alamy Stock Photo At the same time, conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, dementia and early-onset cancers are on the march. The usual suspects for this are poor diet and lack of exercise. But according to Fosbury, Jeffery and others, these are only a piece of the puzzle; another reason, perhaps the principal one, is red-light deprivation. “There’s not a single cause, but I do increasingly think that light is the most fundamental and dominant one,” says Fosbury. “And it’s probably the easiest one to solve.” To understand why light is so vital, we have to go back in time again, to the Soviet Union of the late 1980s, where, at the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow, a biophysicist called Tiina Karu was experimenting with red and near-infrared light as a therapy. She discovered that they were useful in wound healing and pain management and wondered what the mechanism was. Eventually she hit on energy metabolism, specifically the pace at which mitochondria inside the body’s cells produce a molecule called ATP. Red light, she found, accelerated this process. Karu’s work never found a wide audience, mainly because she came from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, according to Jeffery. But she was right, and today red-light therapy is everywhere, used to promote wound healing and treat skin conditions, hair loss, cognitive impairment, chronic pain, osteoarthritis and much more. The evidence of its efficacy is patchy, but growing, according to John Mitrofanis, a neurologist at the University of Grenoble Alpes in France. There is much debate over the correct doses and wavelengths, but researchers are in agreement that its effects are mediated by mitochondria. The key to this is the electron transport chain, a complex and highly orchestrated metabolic process that takes in energetic electrons and passes them down a chain of proteins, creating ATP in the process. ATP is biology’s principal energy currency, analogous to cash in an economy. When a cell needs energy to perform a task – say, building new proteins – it uses ATP. When mitochondria are bathed in red or IR light, the electron transport chain runs a little faster and more ATP is produced – a process Fosbury calls “photometabolism”. The exact mechanism by which ATP production is accelerated remains a point of contention, but what’s certain is that diseased cells are often short of ATP, so a boost can make up the deficit. That, says Jeffery, explains why red-light therapy is beneficial. It also explains why taking away red light can be harmful. Jeffery points out that all life on Earth evolved in an environment rich in red light and IR, but humans now mostly live in one stripped of those wavelengths. The result is more sluggish ATP production. To add insult to injury, we have also flooded our indoor environment with shorter wavelengths in the form of blue light from screens and LEDs. Blue light inhibits ATP production by slowing down the electron transport chain. Lose, lose. The effects are insidious. Fosbury likens long-wavelength light to a vitamin and calls the effects of deprivation “21st-century scurvy”, a nod to the disease of vitamin C deficiency that killed and sickened tens of thousands of sailors in the 18th century. Like scurvy, it creeps up on you. “It’s something that accumulates over a period of time,” says Jeffery. It isn’t just the general benefits of being outside, but red light specifically that is proven to have benefits. One of the symptoms of 21st-century scurvy is elevated blood sugar, which, if left unchecked, can progress to type 2 diabetes. This is due to the slowing down of the electron transport chain, which burns glucose as its primary fuel. A couple of years ago, Jeffery showed that a 15-minute burst of red light blunts the blood sugar spike after a large dose of glucose. He has also done real-world experiments in windowless, LED-illuminated offices at University College London. When he added long-wavelength light from a dimmed incandescent bulb, he found that the office occupants had lower blood sugar, on average, than their colleagues labouring under pure LED light. “Their mitochondria are being kick-started by the red light,” says Jeffery. A study published in January found something similar; researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands exposed 13 individuals with type 2 diabetes to 4.5 solid working days of LED light in an office environment, then 4.5 days of natural light in the same location. The participants’ blood sugar control was much better during the daylight days. Jeffery also has concerns about other diseases and health problems usually associated with ageing, especially neurodegenerative conditions. One of the causes of these, he says, is mitochondrial dysfunction, which is effectively induced by red-light deficiency. Clinical trials have found that near-infrared light can slow down age-related cognitive impairment. A recent study of almost 88,000 people in their sixties found that, over the course of eight years, those who spent more time in daylight were significantly less likely to develop dementia, though the underlying causes of this relationship aren’t yet fully understood. Mitrofanis, meanwhile, has shown that red light can prevent Parkinson’s in a primate model of the disease. Cancer and cardiovascular diseases, too, have been linked to a lack of daylight. When dermatologist Richard Weller at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and his colleagues analysed data from more than 400,000 adults in a yet-to-be-published study, they found that people with higher habitual UV exposure – a proxy for sunlight exposure in general – were less likely to die from cancer and cardiovascular disease. Indeed, says Mitrofanis, the success of red-light therapy may simply be down to correction of a red-light deficiency. “Maybe all this is doing is rescuing processes that have gone awry because we’re inside all the time, getting illuminated with blue light.” The fact that longer-wavelength light speeds up energy production isn’t a happy accident. Fosbury and Jeffery argue that it is a design feature of living systems. Life, they say, evolved to feed off this once-abundant resource to maximise the efficiency of ATP production. “Life on Earth has evolved for 4 billion years in sunlight and it’s adapted exquisitely to the properties of sunlight,” says Fosbury. This greenhouse is flooded with pink LED lights, which emit red wavelengths Getty Images/Westend61 One of those adaptations is the ability to harvest and store photons. “The body literally is designed to absorb as much as possible in the infrared,” says Zimmerman. The amount of light energy we take in every day is staggering, he says. “Sunlight is the number one energy input into the body. It’s at least twice, if not three times, as much as food.” Once sunlight enters the body, it scatters, bouncing off cells and organelles repeatedly – perhaps tens or hundreds of times, says Fosbury – until it hits a molecule that can absorb it, dumping energy in the process. This scattering means that a photon of red or IR light remains inside the body for much longer than it would if it passed straight through. This is what you see when you press your fingertip to a flashlight. The photon’s final destination is somewhat random, but occasionally it is absorbed by a component of the electron transport chain. Scientists are currently evaluating whether water molecules in the mitochondria are key to converting light into energy. When they absorb energy from a photon, they vibrate faster and lubricate the passage of electrons down the chain. Remarkably, says Fosbury, each step in the chain requires the electrons to overcome an energy barrier of roughly 0.75 electron volts, which is almost precisely what a photon of long-wavelength light delivers. Without the supply of red light we evolutionarily developed for, we’re getting far less energy. Seeking out more red light exposure Fortunately, the solution to this modern-day scourge is simple: recharge your light battery whenever you can, either with daylight or an incandescent bulb. There are red-light therapy devices, but some of these are overpowered, which can send cellular energy production into overdrive and lead to inflammation. Of course, exposing yourself to sunlight also carries its own risk. But clothing and sunscreen help block cancer-causing UV, while letting red and IR through. For people stuck in modern offices, Jeffery recommends buying a light fitting with a dimmer switch and putting it on your desk with an incandescent bulb in it – if the building managers will let you. “Even when it [the incandescent bulb] is very, very, very dim, it still produces a vast amount of IR,” he says. There’s no specific magic wavelength and so a red LED light would likely be better than no red light at all, but nowhere near as effective as full-spectrum red light from incandescent light bulbs or the sun. A London hospital has created an outdoor ward King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust What would really make a difference, says Jeffery, is a change in attitude among the people who design and manage modern buildings. The pursuit of energy efficiency is laudable but has unintended negative consequences. And in any case, energy efficiency need not be sacrificed. True, incandescent bulbs are extremely inefficient as a source of visible light, producing mostly infrared, aka heat. But the energy consumption of a heavily dimmed incandescent bulb is no more than an LED, so there are no extra costs – and shedloads of savings in the form of a healthier workforce. “We can do masses for public health just by bringing back the long wavelengths of light you’re being denied in your office environment,” says Jeffery. “There’s a real need for change,” says Alistair Nunn, director of science at the Guy Foundation in London, which supports research on quantum biology and its applications in medicine. “At the moment, everybody’s going down this road of ‘let’s get lots of LEDs’, but it’s not doing us any good at all.” Low on energy? A new understanding of rest could help revitalise you There is a state of relaxation that few of us spend much time in, but which comes with profound well-being benefits. With healthier ageing, reduced risk of disease and feeling more energised all on offer, here's how to get there There are signs of institutional change, with – appropriately enough – hospitals at the forefront. Studies have shown that infrared light in hospital wards leads to improved clinical outcomes, including shorter stays. And it has long been known that inpatients who have access to daylight are discharged sooner, on average, than those kept in windowless rooms. Now, some hospitals are taking action. Jeffery and his team recently did a light survey of the critical care unit at King’s College Hospital in London. “It’s a beautiful building, but there’s absolutely no long-wavelength light in there,” he says. “I said to them, ‘obviously I’m concerned about your patients, but I’m concerned about your staff too.’” The hospital managers took heed and, in May, opened a new six-bed outdoor ward on the roof. Two other London hospitals are considering outside space for their critical care patients, says Jeffery. “I think they’ll follow because they can’t afford not to.” And even if you aren’t a patient in a critical care ward, you can’t afford to risk 21st-century scurvy through a steady diet of ultra-processed light. “You can live your life without red light,” says Jeffery, “but you cannot live healthily without it.”

What do I use when it's a cost thing? Aluplast Ideal 4000 (Double) Aluplast Idea 8000 (Triple) Alternatively I would look at Rehau, Gealan or Salamander.

So feel free to have a chuckle to yourself, but the SCC pour went really well and the stuff is absolutely amazing. Slabs level to 2mm. What didn't go well and this was partly due to a lack of information available and me not appreciating the associated risks of trying to pour slabs in weather that is so hot, was the curing. Slabs unfortunately look like crazy paving. Curing agent was applied, but when it states "immediately after finishing" they don't mean dappling and when the concrete is still fluid. Cemex also advised that microfibers should be added, but then somehow didn't adjust the order (yes! I should have double checked) so that didn't help. Having A252 mesh has probably saved me from having to condemn them. But I would still recommend this can be done as DIY. So long as you can use a laser level and set up screed levelling tripods, then you will be amazed at how flat and level you can get slabs just by using a dapple bar. Just be careful of doing it in hot weather, as SCC has low water and a high cement content so not as forgiving as normal concrete. Note - I purposely didn't dapple a shallow pass on this slab as the finish from the first pass was perfectly good enough for below PIR As to pouring the remaining slabs. Well. I'm too nervous now. Especially, given the weather and previous attempt. Was considering using Hessian and water curing, but even then I am unsure. It's 15c at 8am when I poured and by 10am it's absolutely roasting and probably 26c VID-20260801-WA0007.mp4