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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

Block and beam? No! Ground bearing slabs. A decision that has given me sleepless nights and resulted in some serious hard graft. We had 60 ton (that’s what we were told 🤔) of Type 1 MOT delivered and had to then proceed to get into the bays and levelled up, before compacting it. The brickie was an arse as he should have stopped building and said “get your hardcore in and laid”. His work was rather shit, so I knocked some of it down to enable me to get a dumper in distribute the piles to make levelling it quicker. Building control were fine with me using grano dust as the top layer. This compacts nicely and gives a much harder surface than sand. Below are a few pictures. Hoping to get everything finished by tomorrow. I’ll breath a sigh of relief that it’s done and dusted.

We're first timers in our sixties, renovating a 200 year old Gloucestershire property as our last home. It's very basic (no central heating, damp) with a stone centre, brick semi-added pre 1860 and s 20th C. extension at each end. Removing the plaster and some ceiling my wife has revealed questionable [cough] building techniques which explain some of the cracks and a patched up Inglenook which we plan to restore. Early days but we have a builder and architect for a garden room style extension. We have lots of ideas and plenty of time, but of course not enough money :-) If you've done anything like this by all means tell us we're barmy, it just say hi. Met a couple this morning and got chatting about this, and they recommended this forum highly. I'm learning so much useful stuff from others offline and online. For others I can recommend Mastodon (a non commercial social network - no ads or algorithm getting in the way). Posting questions there has been a great help.

And yes, that title is a nod to the wisdom of the Beverley Knight song. But it also applies to self building, methinks. [Health Warning: The following diatribe focuses on the 2% that’s not gone perfectly, and risks massively underplaying the 99% which has gone right. But maybe that focus is what makes selfbuild what it is, and why for normal people, it just doesn’t add up.] We are now in, living at no. 11. Well, not this exact moment in fact. Right now we are cooking in Flora the Explorer (campervan around which our garage was designed), parked on a cliff top on the Isle of Wight overlooking the English Channel. Being boiled alive (slight exaggeration) in a Fiat tin can is at least variety from being boiled alive (bigger exaggeration) in a new build. We moved in to a substantially but not completely finished house just in time to enjoy some heatwaves. How very fashionable. The decision to categorise the main bedroom fancoil as ‘to be done later’ seemed such a good idea when the choice was delaying moving out of the s@#*, I mean rental, and in my few rational moments I know that it was a good idea. If we had stayed the rental would have been much, much worse than no. 11 is. But if I’d had free choice I’d not have started our living in our new pad in a heatwave. Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda (henceforth SWC) put the fancoil in. It’s made a bit worse by our choice of sleeping in the west facing front (sort of) bedroom, which sits next to our biggest window, the one above the front door overlooking our stairs and hall. We passed part O with flying colours, so we now view the afternoon solar gain with incredulity at what a house would be like that didn’t pass part O. But every day is a school day, and the first thing we learn was that we could comfortably sleep in no. 11, even on a sofa bed, at temperatures which would have prevented rest at our last house. It’s hard not to attribute that to the life support (MVHR). The worst days at our last house were when the nights were completely still, and I’m guessing that meant higher humidity and CO2 levels. No more, not with life support. We are now in the habit of whacking the life support onto Boost n Bypass once the outside temp falls nicely below the inside temp. Even when we have the upstairs windows open it seems to help. To start with opening a window (in my mind) required kneeling to confess our sins and three Hail Marys, but I soon got over it. And whilst we still don’t have our fancoil(s) thats how we are managing the upstairs overheating. Downstairs is a different matter. Downstairs we have porcelain tiles throughout, gently cooled by Maxi the moody teenager heat pump. It has helped enormously and once we have a way of transferring some of the cool to upstairs life will be peachy, though it’ll likely be 6°C outside by then, given the current todo list. We’ve wrestled with Maxi to get it to a sensible working arrangement, and that work is ongoing. At the mo if we set the WC curve (no, thats not the shape of the toilet pan) so that the flow temp is set to 15°C Maxi bothers for about 20 to 30 minutes and then sulks for an hour or two. Following a call with the Energy Lab, the distributor of Maxi, it’s better than it had been as some of the settings weren’t sensible, but it must and will do better. Our tiles sit at 19°C to 20°C, which matches the return temp to Maxi after a few minutes of sulking. That makes for a noticeable improvement in downstairs temperature but it’s as low as we can get it without cranking up Maxi to full condensy by dropping the target flow temp loads. A work in progress which is currently delayed by The Energy Lab being about as responsive as I am when a glowing J asks when I hope to get the fancoil(s) in. SWC properly tested Maxi when first installed. Sigh. It has given us the ability to start the balancing process, which I think is a good thing. The downstairs bedroom and bathroom floors were colder than the rest of downstairs, enough to make it slightly uncomfortable in bare feet, so I’ve tweaked the flow controls on the manifold and that has helped. The downstairs bathroom is in the process of being renamed the paddling pool. We have gone for a sort of wet room shower and loo, etc. and it looks the business even if I do say so myself - it’s just that we didn’t realise how wet a wet room would be. That bloody great big rain head shower jobby feels great when showering but oh boy, the water distribution! I think we can get away without a sign indicating which is the deep end, but for some guests we might need to sand bag the door. Some friends of ours came to dins recently, they have a nice big downstairs shower wet room with a bloody great big rain head shower. No doubt that was part of the subliminal thinking route to choosing them ourselves. During the inevitable tour (we are in huge danger of continuing to be self build bores for years to come) we shared our concerns regarding the paddling pool. “Oh yes” they happily said “we never use ours, far too messy”. Humph. SWC asked them methinks. And you can guess how good a nicely cooled tiled floor is at drying out. But there’s a ‘learn’ even there. We’ve discovered that the floor dries out much better if the door is left closed. The mechanism seems to be that the undercut forces the whole room to be ventilated, whereas if the door is open, which is how I automatically left it when it needed to dry, the moving air goes through at a higher level and the floor stays wet. Who knew? (Everyone with life support, probably!) Anyways, all that misses out all the fun of getting from our last post to here. Maybe that would be a good thing, but if you don’t have a strong constitution, look away now…. Last time I happily reported that we had dug our trench to connect our poo pipes to the sewer, and we’d found the capped off sewer, and the levels all worked. Happy days. Till the next step. In theory all we had to do was uncap the sewer, put the last few meters of pipe and a manhole in, and then bury the whole shebang. In theory. In practice when one of the groundworkers popped the plug out of the sewer we had a bit of a foul fountain. Quite a bit in fact. He was so shocked he literally just stood in the hole with his mouth open (yes, literally), whilst I and his workmate screamed at him to get out. He did, but he was rather messy. I threw a block into the trench and pushed some soil in to limit the aromatic expansion. It subsided with about 8’ of swarfega consistency sewerage filling the trench. Lesson: it’s not happy days till the hole’s filled in. I knew our sewerage run was old and wasn’t on the Anglian Water sewerage map. I didn’t think that mattered. Wrong. Not on the map means not maintained. We are the second from the end of a run of perhaps 5 houses on an ancient spur running to the main road main sewer. There had been reports of the drains backing up in the past (danger sign no 2 I missed), and I knew from my water level that the whole run was very shallow and had little fall. Danger sign no. 3. In the year the sewer was capped off the debris that had sat in the pipe for decades had collected lots of gooey solids and was apparently only letting liquids through. If a few more months had gone by next door would have noticed it backing up, but we hit the jackpot timing wise and many linear meters of pipe’s worth of thick sludge finally saw daylight. It took a week to get the whole run blasted out and the stuff that came out was horrendous. We had excellent service from Anglian Water, they even dug out and took away the by then remaining solids from our trench, before spraying many litres of disinfectant. Then work could resume. It delayed some things by a week and made site access a nightmare as walking a plank over septic ancient sewerage is not for the faint hearted (or the sensible). I’ll remember that long after I’ve forgotten the excitement of seeing the bathrooms tiled, or the downstairs porcelain floor tiling grow daily, or the test lighting of the woodburner, or us exporting lecky for the first time. Yet in many ways things like those or the posh Lino going down upstairs or the Pax wardrobes sprinting into shape or the furniture going in and looking just right or many, many happy things are far more important than the wrinkles. Over a relatively short space of time the shell of a house got coloured in to start to resemble our home. Making one’s self stand back and notice current status, let alone daily progress, is a skill that will always ellude me. When there are others on site (old fogey repeating himself yet again warning!) my time disappears in a whirl of checking and answering questions and tea making and organising and tidying up and ordering for other days and and and…. and I get nothing done myself. Except that is getting something done but it doesn’t feel like it. Bits of kitchen and utility room arrived and got fitted, painting got done, internal doors finally arrived many weeks after they were due and got fitted, and in odd moments late each day and at weekends I got to do stuff myself, including some plumbing. Doesn’t feel like plumbing in many ways as there’s no flux or burnt fingers involved. It’s more like Lego. Cut the pipe to length with glorified scissors, select the correct bit, click, realise the mistake, swear whilst taking off the incorrect bit, click on the actually correct bit, turn on the water and wait for the drip that doesn’t appear. So simple it’s almost surreal. I’m used to electrics just working, perhaps because it’s my background, but with plumbing it’s almost like I need to find and fix a leak to feel comfortable. In my mind the time leading up to us moving in is a big mix of memories with few distinct bits, but between J and I we kept things just about under control enough to get ready to move in, meaning J kept an overview in the form of lists of the bits we needed done. Vital. One big milestone was commissioning the life support and the dreaded air test. I built a nice strong stand for the Zehnder unit as otherwise it would have been hung on the block outer skin of the downstairs bedroom wall and we were convinced the hum would keep guests awake. Good news if like me, one doesn’t like guests, but apparently not a good thing. So when I turned the system on I realised it was faulty as it wasn’t running. Only the air was moving but it was just so ridiculously quiet, so actually it was working. (SWC gone and stood next to a working Zehnder to realise I could have saved myself time and bolted it straight to the wall). It defaults to a lot higher flow speed than we needed, and even then it was nice and quiet. So after commissioning it’s wonderfully invisible, apart from the odd shaped vent thingies in the ceilings. Works brilliantly at clearing the steam from the one little shower room we had working to move in with too. Very happy. The air test was not quite such a happy thing, however. Over and over again I was told I’d done everything needed and we were bound to be fine. Rolly, our chippy, had never seen such an airtight build and he knew we’d be super airtight. If only. 1.65. Bugger. During the first test, after a false start where I’d left a 40mm waste pipe uncapped giving us a 5, it was identified that I had a sodding great big leak at or near the base of my internal soil stack. I just knew I’d have a problem with our flat roof and the junctions thereof so I put lots of time into that. That was all fine. I absolutely knew that the entry point of the 15 MVHR ducts into the house would be a problem so I put time into that too. All fine there too. I knew from what I read on here that my Heath Robinson DIY loft hatch would leak. Nope. I thought I’d taped to death the DPM round the soil stack. We all know what Thought did. The DPM forms the bottom of our airtight layer, being taped everywhere (or so I thought) to the VCL. I knew all along we should take time out to test the airtightness. I even borrowed a leaf blower to have a half baked go at it using our loft hatch to test airtightness. But I never took a day out to do it. There was always something else that needed to be focussed on at the time, the silly and arguably unnecessary air test can be done later. Only it never was. SWC cubed. The leak appears to be near the bottom of the soil stack but as it’s all but encased now in studwork and plastered plasterboard so where the actual breach is is impossible to tell. I went nuts with the Passive House Systems airtight and insulating foam but it made no difference at all. There’s little leaks in the external doors but nothing like the one near the soil stack. I’m guessing we are looking at a hole about the width of an index finger. Perhaps something a single piece of tape could have sorted. Who knows? But does it actually matter? Well, there’s a good question. I’ve not rerun Jeremy’s spreadsheet and in truth the horse has already bolted. And if that means Maxi is actually slightly undersized for -3°C outside then at least we do have the woodburner and we could always invest in a little fan heater. But as you can imagine, I am royally annoyed with myself. The house is shaping up to be a really nice home to live in. The garden is coming along a treat. We love living in that location. That’s the 99% I need to focus on. Maybe writing this interminable blog is part of that reconciliation, and I know it will happen, but I’m still really, really, really annoyed at myself. In case you aren’t familiar with the song I’ll share one particularly apposite line from it. "Shoulda woulda coulda" are the last words of a fool. Sigh.

Hi everyone - I'm Tim Newbie selfbuilder here, in the early stages of planning our self-build project in South Wales (But currently living in Bristol). Looking to build a family home to passive house principles, and avoid any Grand-designs style crises during the process! Excited to be part of this forum, which is a great source of info! I look forward to picking your collective brain more as we make our design choices and progress with the project.

Stop trying to reinvent this job. sealing around the service pipes is easy. you do not try and cut a hole in the membrane and seal that to the pipe. cut a 300mm hole in the membrane, poke it over the pipe, then cut a 600 mm square of extra membrane, cut a 120 mm hole in the centre, poke it over the pipe and tape it up, then tape your patch down to the main sheet. easy, each pipe penetration will take 15 mins max. why buy two membranes to do one job. if your finish concrete is rough the pir insulation won’t give a monkeys it will just deform to the shape of the slab when it has 15 tonne of screed on top of it.

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! ❤️

Lift the 5a one as much as possible, then same for the socket to see if you can hide this. Plasterer was shite, decorator equally as guilty. Just unbelievable that this incredibly low standard of work could have escaped the 80’s and still be so prevalent today in 2026. I bet neither of those two tossers houses look like this. Utterly embarrassingly low standards from these people. The ‘fix’ is to remove the outlets, PVA the openings, apply EasiFill and allow to dry fully, then sand and paint, then, repeat if necessary, and paint. If you have a PM then send the bill to them.

I was recommended a screed company, I was told they are absolutely shit hot, I met the main man and he knew what he was talking about, I asked about screed curl at the edges and covering the screed to slow down evaporation. he said it wasn’t necessary. so I did some more reading and asked a few questions. they did the screed, an hour after they had gone I hosed it down with a very fine mist spray, I then covered it in polythene and also covered all the windows to stop the sunlight coming in. the result is I have the flattest most level screed I’ve ever seen. you need to satisfy yourself how it should be done, and any short comings in your opinion you need to make up. buy the polythene and install it yourself or do you due diligence and insist on a curing agent. if you think they are good why do they not want to cover it ?

Flanagaj, I think maybe you are trying to be a builder without being a builder. I write with sod all experience except my own troubled extension. We ended up having to ditch a bad builder and then decided (as we had a dry shell by then and good alternate builders were not available for 18months plus) to continue by bringing in trades to get to completion. It is not an easy process because unlike a proper builder... 1/ You do not have a little black book with several good contractors for each and every trade - people you know from experience are capable and you can work with. 2/ You do not have any real clout with trades because for them you are a one off customer - a few £k's or £10k's of business - builders will be known sources of regular business 3/ Some trades people may be wary of a novice builder, or sometimes take advantage. 4/ You lack deep knowledge and experience of your own - of trade specifics, trade tendencies, what to watch for, how to specify a job These things do make it difficult. Finding good trades can be a lengthy process where the only proof is in eating the pudding. These things affect timeline enormously, you can never call in a favour from someone, no one will ever call you looking for work, you are potentially the job that gets delayed in favour of others. For your slab specifics, do you have a concrete mix specification defined that is what they are going to meet. My SE sepcified the mix for us. And where you don't have a contract only a price/purchase order/invoice then I would suggest always emailing to ensure you have something in writing which defines your requirements. In case of dispute at least you then have something more than verbal conversations and a price. You can even then write down what the contractor has told you verbally about the job, answers to your queries, etc. But try and get someone you can talk to, I've always been able to talk to my SE or Architect or the QS that dealt with closing my original builder contract, to get bits of advice or a site visit.

Why can't everything just be moved under the sink? Don't think I've ever seen any plumbing, water or waste behind the actual machines. Yes you lose the cupboard space, but so be it. My machines have a recessed section at the bottom so pipes can travel past it without interfering with the space. For what it's worth I did that in 2 places on the opposite sides of the room in my gaff, no regrets.

To add, if you do just decide to DIY something and there is an underlying structural issue that then reappears later, you may be invalidating the NHBC insurance (or at least giving them a lot of ammunition for an argument) and exposing yourself to much higher costs down the line.

To break his arguments down by section 1. He makes the mistake that declining N.Sea production is a choice - it isn't the rate of decline is slightly modifiable but not to any significant degree. We are arguing over the green line or the red line. He also makes the mistake that our high gas and electricity prices are due to us deliberately running down our production. Aside from my point above, they are high due to the high price of gas and the international price of gas is not changed by the UK output. The price is set by the international markets and those are (nominally)supply and demand. Even at best, our output is too small to change the international price. It should be noted that the rise in electricity prices and gas prices was very closely correlated in 2022 because a much larger proportion of our electricity came from gas. In 2026 the rise was much less direct because less of our electricity comes from gas. He talks about the supply chains for renewables being dirty and having emissions. This is a variation of the landman rant (and the "EV's will never pay back the carbon used in making the battery" argument before that). Study after study shows wind turbines, solar panels and EVs are all net negative for carbon well within their lifetime. It also ignores the carbon and pollution from fossil fuel extraction as a comparison. 2. He talks about "what happens is the gas prices fall?" Well, they will eventually for a while,until the next crisis. Then they will fall again until the next crisis and so on. So far we have had 2 massive "once in a lifetime" shocks in the current decade -that we are only half way through... Does anyone want to bet Trump doesn't do something stupid I'm the next 2 and a bit years. What would happen to oil prices if the world's largest oil producer suffered massive political instability? Say a the kind caused when a leader who loses an election tries to cling to power using a paramilitary police force or even elements of the armed forces.... Who wants to say that is fantasy land? 3. He seems to get mixed up on the cost of capacity. With renewables capacity is a more statistical figure than gas plants etc. With ccgt plant the peak cavity is easy. Just an engineering question -"that plant, at full chat, will produce 2GW of electricity." With renewables there is a theoretical capacity - what if everything was perfect, but that's only a few % of the time. A better question would be "what is the 95% available capacity" ie the level it can produce 95% (or whatever arbitrary figure you want) of the time. So my 11kwp solar array has a 95% figure closer to 1kw (during daylight obviously). Essentially we will have to dump a load of capital into building these assets. Once e have built them they will provide cheap energy for decades. Or we could kee the capital and dole it out to buy oil and gas as we need it. That's our choice. Right enough for now....

It is worth pointing out that we started the transition to low carbon generation nearly 2 decades ago. Apart from some very small scale wind farms, hobby PV and a bit of hydro, we had virtually nothing. Since the we have added 55 GWp if wind and solar. Now the name plate capacity if RE cannot be compared directly with thermal generation, but it contributed close to 40% of our generation. It also contributed to our pumped storage as well. I have not looked at storage capacity in a while, but must be close to 1 GWh now. I cannot see any reason why we should not hit 90% low carbon generation by 2040, except if there is not the political will to do so. I think the political will is there, we tend to hear the naysayers more because they are the vocal minority, the majority says nothing. I am going to repeat what I said about cost. Wind and PV are the cheapest forms of, and it is coming in bold , NEW generation. It is not competing with the same contracts as legacy generation.

It depends! But here is a rough outline of how we go about designing steel fire protection. The following is in the context of the self builder, not multi storey, multiple occupancy structures. Ok, the process / theory is.. roughly this. The starting point is to understand how steel behaves when it gets hot. Someone ask me / others a while back.. why does my oven not start to melt / distort when I cook a pizza hot? The above is what we call a fire curve (SCI, Steel Construction Institute data ). There are different fire curves. They vary depending on fire loading (how much and what types of stuff can contribute to a fire, how "intense and rapid" the heat delivery) but the above is one we would refer to in a typical domestic self build. You can see that up to about 350 Celsius the steel maintains much of its strength, which is why your oven does not "melt" and fall to bits. After that the steel strength starts to plummet. When we fire protect steels as @saveasteading says This is correct. All we are doing it to stop the steel from getting hot enough, then soften too much, and thus not carry the loads on it for the time required by the building regulations for example. Now we can either select a geometry of steel member and make it very heavy such that there is so much mass of steel that it does not get heated quickly enough to soften to the point of failure. In lay terms. If we had a solid round bar of steel say 150mm in diameter it has a large cross section area compared with the exposed surface. This is what we call the heated perimeter / cross section area ratio (Hp/A), the Euro codes have slightly different way of presenting but they mean the same. They are presented using the ratio Area / Volume, A/V. But if we have the same cross section area of steel and weight in an I shape (a universal beam) it has a much larger surface area and thus will heat up much more quickly and thus lose strength more quickly. Now we ain't going to be using solid 150mm diameter steels. What we could look to do is is insulate the steel. This could be by way of fire proof plasterboard or intumescent paint. But also we could build the steel into a masonry wall and maybe have only one side exposed to the fire on the inside of say a garage. Or we could have the steel built into a floor that in itself insulates some of the exposed faces of the steel. Below is a screen shot of a table that shows how we need to consider the exposed sides. They key here is that the lower the section factor the slower the steel will heat up. The section factor changes depending on how many sides of the steel are exposed. But to go back to what @Great_scot_selfbuild asked., which was how heavy does a steel need to be so it does not need fire protection? The info below is taken from Corus literature 2003 as an easy generic example. The bottom line (Hp 61m^-1) is of interest to us here in a domestic self build. Using a design temperature of 550 deg you can see that the bottom blue line hangs in there, all other things being equal for 30 min. So let go back now and find a steel section with a section factor of lower than 61 m^-1 to try and get a handle on how big a column needs to be for example. A 203 x 203 x 86kg/m is a candidate if it has three sides protection (section factor 60), but that is a heavy steel. You also need to handle this safely on site. Ok let's see how a box section compares. Ok we can get down to 60 for three sides exposed protection.. not much difference. But if we reduce the sides exposed the numbers get a lot better. I've not shown them here. That main remaining key bit is what we call the load ratio mentioned above as 0.6 ratio. When we design a beam / columns or pretty much any structural member in your house we design for the normal expected loads. The self weight, permanent loads and the imposed ( live loads, people, book shelves etc) but in a fire we recognise that the floors, roof etc are probably not going to be fully loaded with people for example during a fire, the permanent / self weight load is still there. So we can make a reduction in the load if a fire occurs. Its based on probability and the loads that could be reasonably expected in the case of a fire. We call this an accidental load case and the safety factors get reduced for example. If we designed everything for the worst case buildings would be too expensive to build! The load ratio is the load (stress generated) during a fire compared with the ultimate capacity of the member. Often we design beams to be restrained by say a timber floor.. but if this has burnt away we can't count that. To conclude: The above I hope, gives you all a bit of insight into what we need to do / think about to design steels for fire. The take away is that sometimes it works using a heavy steel to avoid the expense of fire protection. The design can become much more complex if bolted / welded connections need to be taken into account. This kind of design consideration is a bit complex if you've not done it before, it's not common bedtime reading! It can be a tricky subject once you get into detail, something that many Architect's, BC officers are also not too familiar with. But it's a fundamental part of producing a safe design. My objective in writing is to try and help BH folk gain a bit more knowledge so you can ask and phrase any questions you have to your designers from a lay person perspective. You make a good point. Yes steels expand in a fire and will change shape and distort the surrounding structure, to the point it often has to be later demolished. The objective is that the building hangs in there so it does not fall on the fire brigade, set light or fall onto a neighbouring building not least.

Sorry I don't mean I am personally hoping the English and Welsh get these wind farms and pylons in the numbers we have been "given" in Scotland. What I am saying is while for so long England in particular has banned them, they have instead been built up here so the good folk of England who largely make the rules, have not seen the blot on the landscape that they are, and if the good folk of England don't see them, they obviously think they are good.

To an extent, outside of a very small number, none of us, no matter how well read are able to be experts on any particular topic, so we have to take our views from those who we see as experts. I have not read all of the source material, conducted my own experiments or submitted my theories to scientific challenge so any assertion I make is potentially a call to authority. The same is true for the other side of the argument. All any of us can do is weigh the situation in front of us, which seems to be following a common playbook. First - deny. Next, obfuscate - its not anthropogonic etc. Finally, fatalism - we cant do anything anyway. Some things are clear however: It is hot. Much hotter than when I was young, and hotter every year. There is a physical mechanism for this heat being caused by C02 emissions Modelling and predictions of the C02 effect are matching reality If it is C02 and if we don't do anything we are in for a very bad time If it isn't C02, and we reach net zero, we are in for a pretty good time still It does make me laugh (cry) when people blame renewables for high prices. The UK spent at least £75 billion on supporting energy prices just during 2022-23 due to gas prices. It is also the case that renewables knock out the most expensive conventional electricity generators, so the wholesale price of electricity is reduced by renewables, which gives the impression of a subsidy but the reality is the reverse - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oct/wind-power-delivers-ps104-billion-net-benefit-uk-consumers I do get frustrated with people who just raise problems like there will never be a solution. The nature of progress is you don't always have all the answers, if you never started a journey unless you knew how it could be done then nothing new would ever be invented. It is also a demonstrable fact that renewables are more suitable from a security perspective. More distributed generation, less reliance on critical things like pipelines, LNG facilities and so on - we're literally right in the middle of 2 wars that are being defined by attacks on energy infrastructure. Really?

I am quite happy to do a design for you…..please let me know if I can help…..

I would have done a design for free!

I was interested also, so I had an internet search. Compared to one of my units (Titon HRV), see images below. Heat exchanger size on the Rega is very small. Insulation between air streams almost none. Casing insulation almost none. Just about as basic as you can get - maybe and most likely poor performance as a result. Fan motors on Rega mounted in the steelwork, Titon mounted within the insulation, giving better noise attenuation and vibration dampening. Electronins away from where any water could collect etc etc Rega unit Titon HRV unit

Depends what you’re doing, of course. But, we tend to use (for a timber frame build) 3 x sets of bought in sawhorses with sheets of 18 or 25mm ply on top. No vice, maybe the occasional clamp. We’re largely cutting sheets of ply and C24 at this point. Not much use for an mft yet. A tool strongbox for somewhat nickable tools, some wire shelves for non-nickable tools and supplies (these are both undercover now) and a 20ft container for less used tools, fixings etc.

Just looked back at our gas and electricity bills in 2023, we had £89 Direct Debit for gas and £180 for electric. Since then I have added more solar and a battery. Plus we now get export payments. Plus got rid of boiler and installed an ASHP. Battery and additional solar cost me around £7500. Fully installed. But current DD is a total of £52. Instead of paying normal rates for electricity I pay 10p per kWh, can only do this because I have a battery. So in simple terms I am saving £214 monthly, or £2568 per year. Nice round 3 years pay back on the additional solar and battery. And an added bonus, this month via Axle VPP, have earned an additional £20 directly from having a battery. So taking this into account in the the above, now pay back becomes 2.7 years.

The impact we can have on our own lives, especially as self builders is pretty big. Some of the first things that come to mind are 1. Designing in good passive means to heat protection. Lots of insulation with good decrement delay. Limiting glazing, espically in bedroom's. Appropriate shading. 2. Active colding, even a fused spur and a short 70mm duct will allow an A2A unit to be installed at a later date. 3. If opting for batteries get a change over switch to cope with power outages. 4. A store of water, even a rainwater butt will allow toilet flushing if the mains is cut off. 5. Raising the floor level well above current food level. 6. Shuttering for windows is something t.o would like to have e done. Maybe PVC rollers but even a stack of appropriately sized OSB sheets stacked in the garage would offer a a lot more protection than glass windows from extreme weather.

Not to the detriment of the functionality A lot of "cheap" designs have fresh supply vents almost immediately above doorways of bedrooms etc, and near zero air flows across the room. If you need to have a long run, and want quiet operation, you simply double up on the ducts. This is something sewn into the heart of the build fabric, with near zero chance of 'putting it right' retrospectively. It will also be on 24/7/365 for the rest of your life there, so maybe not somewhere to cut all of the meat off the bone Buy a good quality Brink unit from Air-Haus.co.uk, oversize it(!), and make sure to install proper attenuators on the supply and extract ports for super-quiet operational sound in the rooms.

It's easy. You can certify it yourself with an anerometer and a spreadsheet. I think there is an MVHR design sheet floating around the forum somewhere. Tl;Dr, make sure your duct runs are as short as possible and your diameters are as big as possible.

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. .

Now you need the will to live these days. I don't do this regularly (primarily as an SE) but for one reason or another I end up representing Clients that are making a claim on their warranty. I've done this for the last 15 years or so. I spent some 20 years as a building Contractor before that, cutting my teeth and learning how devious folk can be at times. In some ways I'm a poacher come game keeper. It's not part of my core business, I do it as it's good for my soul and I don't like to see domestic Clients getting taken advantage of. That said, over the last 15 years I've recovered on behalf of Clients a few million quid. The amount of money is less important, for me it's about justice and holding folk to account. What I've noticed in the last few years is that some of the warranty providers are more and more sub contracting out to Claims handling services. 25 years ago lots of the warranty providers withdrew from the market. At one point there was the NHBC and Zurich pretty much. Now we have lots of new entrants.. and it seems to me that there is a bit of a race to the bottom. The terms and conditions are a bit of a minefield for the unwary. There is a common case where they initially come over all friendly but then tell the Client they need to employ an SE like me at their own expense to provide a report. This happens even if the Client has provided photographs that clearly show there is a problem. It has come to my attention that they (Claims handling services) are ramping up the; deny, defend and delay tactics.. always been the case but recently I've noticed that they are cherry picking part of my SE reports and trying to fob the Client off. Even to the extent that they will quote part of a paragraph of my report.. which totally changes the context. Often young folk just can't afford this so they throw in the towel. It's a disgrace. Now this may be a genuine lack of understanding .. or a deliberate intent to defraud the Client. I'm happy for them to dig themselves a hole as often when doing a warranty Claim I'll turn it into an HSE (safety) issue. This makes folk personally liable and risks the HSE getting involved.. a big black mark if you are a warranty provider. My question is. Are folk finding Claims handling services helpful or not when you think you have a case for making a Claim.

Nope. Needs a building control application first, with support from an architect or architectural technician (the latter will be cheaper and simpler). Then, you reach out to a few 5-6 reputable local builders for estimates / quotes etc and come back here with the results for us to see who's good / bad / ugly. ONLY use a builder who will take you to other jobs, let you meet other customers, and avoid the cheapest quotes!

Skips: I hate them. Specially this one: after ten years at this game, the last one (maybe) And I love them (other peoples). The day before they are picked up, I dream about them. Sad Bastard ======================================== Monument to ten years toil You hold the decade carved from sleep, Heavy tax of muscles, laughter, cash, and tears. Buried in your belly, dark and deep, Miscut rafters from the early days, Hardened mortar from a novice phase, (I know how to mix mortar now) Are stacked like layers of a lifetime spent. Each rusted panel of your hollow frame Has watched us age, yet stayed the exact same, (apart from the rusty bits) A silent witness to a spine well-bent. Ten winters bit our hands upon this ground, Ten summers scorched the dust into our skin, While every spare pound that our pockets found (well some of it was found down the back of someone else's sofa) Was swallowed by the walls we stood within. Now blueprints yield to final, finished stone, ( well cladding aksherly) And you receive the scraps of what has grown, ( to be fair some of it was rotten) The final clearing of a warrior’s field. Go ride the lorry down the tarmac track, Take all our toil, don't look back, For out of waste, a home is finally sealed. Still not signed off. Stuff it. Ain't gonna sell it anyway Little Miss Muffit. ( her from the LPA) Now other peoples skips - I just love em.

It is subjective but firstly is your whole frontage brick, may make a difference.... We only have a plinth, (9 at highest where ground slops at back of house) so we chose high contrast mortar that "matched" the cladding. If it had been the whole house, would have been too stark for us, and maybe the planners. Having said all that my vote would be nit no.1 (too warm), no.3 if your looking for high contrast, no.4 if you want it to "blend"

For future reference, these are a fantastic way of getting around bad edges. Several on the market, but these 'skim over' ones are loved by the plasterers I've fitted them with. As they can just go straight over. They even make downlighters ones

For me this is a interesting challenge to design a solution. I appreciate that you find it far from interesting and it's a worry. Stage 1: One option I would be inclined to look at first is to install another beam or beams below the ones you have if it turns out they are so heavily corroded they are well below capacity. Remember we would look initially to design these for the latest loadings prescribed in the design codes. The following is based on using a trick we deploy when we are needing to support say a large opening in a historic building or repair steels, more applicable to you. The existing beams have a point of support on say the main walls. Thus in the round we know these are the strong and proven points. It's a reasonable starting assumption the walls locally will have pretty much finished settling in and around the existing supports, thus we want to put our new point loads at these positions. Let's say, as we don't have much information that the beams are supporting the ground floor flat but also an internal spine wall that runs up the building and it turns out there is a fair bit of load. It make the challenge more interesting. This is in a bit of reverse order. How do we calculate the loads and do some other thinking. Well the loads are easily calculated once we know the building layout, floor and roof span directions. From that we can calculate the forces on the existing beam/s. We would want to split these between permanent loads ( dead loads from the materials) and imposed ( live loads) from people, furniture, snow roof load etc. Next we would want to have a look at the existing corroded beams, try and identify their section properties when new and as they are now, corroded. We can then make a reasoned guess as to what their original design strength was and what it is now. The extra thinking comes for example as one obvious question is why has it not fallen down to date? Have the beams deflected a bit too much and shed load elsewhere. Remember a building does not often fall down until it has exhausted every alternative load path. This is what SE's often call redundancy, which helps stop what we also cause disproportionate collapse, like the domino effect. We would want to get a handle on this before we access any confined space. Any Engineer is going to want to do a pretty comprehensive dilapidations survey. This heads off any "adventure’s seeking to take advantage, but it also protects the honest residents if some further cracking occurs during the works. In summary stage one is doing some fag packet calculations, a survey and from that we can get a feel for how the building is "working". Stage 2: Again not quite in the right order but it easier to hold the narrative. Lets say we can install beams under the existing, then do some bolting etc to support the loads, maybe by stiffening the webs of the existing beams or by using other simple plates / angle sections. This means the new beam/s load the supporting walls in the same place, proven to have worked so far. The big thing is that there is a good chance you won't be able to get the new beans into the basement in one complete length. Thus splices will be required, which tend to flex a bit. Also critically the new beams won't take up the load unless we pre deflect them. For them to carry load the building would need to settle onto them.. high probability of cracking as we move up the building. There is a technique we use on historic buildings where we get the new beams in with a bit of clearance and then jack between the old beams and say the top of a new beam to pre bend the new beam so it takes up the load. We have calculated the loads so have a bench mark as to how much we need to jack / pre bend. We are only talking mm here so we would use say dial gauges. In practice what we do is jack it a bit then run up stairs and see if cracking is starting or if existing cracks are opening up, doors starting to jamb an so on. This takes time, it's not a one day job! Stage 3: As above and in reverse order. The new beams often need to rest on a new padstone below the existing one spreading the load from the existing corroded beams or we need a spreading arrangement. This is partly a detailing and practical thing. But once access is gained with a fair wind usually there is a way of applying the load to the supporting walls in the same place as the existing beams are. Again simplistically we just trick the building, it's sub structure into "thinking" nothing has changed above. But this is not an exact science and 99% of the time some minor movement will occur and that has to be communicated to all parties. Comment: Infilling the basement or sifting the loads to a different place invites lots of potential settlement problems and so on. You would need to investigate the basement floor and the soil under which is going to be less consolidated than the soil under the main load bearing wall for example. Construction safety is going to be the driver here in terms of a structural solution. I would look to have at least head height clearance for folk to work. Two means of escape from the basement. Make sure we have a good ventilation strategy during and after the works, avoid any welding, use of volatile paints etc and make sure there is compliance with all the regs relating to working in confined spaces. In summary it may turn out that the SE solution is not complex, it will likely need a diligent / experienced and well supervised Contractor. The hard part is herding the rest of the cats, project administration and agreement of where the liability lies etc. This goes along way towards explaining why many designers don't want the hassle of a project like this, the design fee has to be attractive not least.

Amtico Spacia are the cheaper brand and the planks repeat more often than its more expensive sister-offerings You are also hampered by the laying pattern you have chosen. (IMO) Straight patterns show up repeats and duplicates more obviously. This is one of the reasons we chose a herringone laying pattern for our Amtico Spacia. Over time and especially as you fill your room with rugs and other furniture the repeat highlights will become less noticeable Regards Tet

Is this attached or detached? Fire regs may need that closed and FR. Closing as per the pic is normal, and garages are classed as cold ventilated spaces so why would you care about a small cold bridge when the whole garage is 'cold'?

Our Amtico supplier/fitter provided the information when asked Our choice is both heavily patterned and embossed with a wood grain pattern. The format is 5 tiles (individual)in a 450mm square, so although there are repeats they are way less visible than they could be. Even then a couple of tiles were removed and repositioned during the process. At the end if the day they are not wood, and were bought with long term practicality considerations as well as aesthetics. Photo shows the initial laying out process (after the floor had ply and leveller) If you are really unhappy is it too late to change design now? Better that than live regretting it for the next ? years

Depends what you're measuring/comparing. Personally I'm comparing cost, performance, flexibility of system, ease of install. If performance is your main comparator, then all on this list below can achieve performance beyond PassivHaus (I believe), although maybe not all are PH Certified, and some will require specific super structure construction to fully avoid cold bridging. If you want a full package, Design, Supply and Install, then it's difficult to avoid the premium price that Insulated Rafts attract in the UK and most of packaged options in the list above will be similarly priced and that price will suggest that an insulated raft is more expensive than a traditional foundation system. It is better performing so most accept the additional cost. If your focus is very much on cost as well as performance, then there are two areas of an insulated raft system that can be targeted. Self install allows you to avoid paying a premium for the labour, concrete and steel. It's difficult to avoid a small premium for the EPS as I don't believe there's any EPS Suppliers in the UK that will sell the bespoke forms direct to a retail customer. They all appear to be locked into whichever system uses their product. ie. Springvale EPS for AFT foundations. You can also target the cost with an "optimised" raft, ie. one that is Engineered for the actual super structure that will be built upon it and not over-engineered with 250mm thick concrete and 3 layers of mesh when it's not required, as you end up spending twice as much on concrete and three times as much on steel as you need to. AFT prefer you to self-install and their rafts were optimised for reduced concrete and steel. They also have different options for different ground conditions, performance and different timber/ICF/masonry super-structure construction, so are/were no one trick pony. It was a while ago that I sourced my raft, and at the time only Tanner's system offered the same cost opportunities, although he didn't offer as many tailored solutions for non-Larsen truss construction. MBC's rafts are optimised and good performing when combined with their Larsen truss structure, but I found them inflexible and only available as a package at a premium price, so the customer doesn't benefit from the cost optimised design.

Every windfarm is cleared (or not) by MOD. Much overstated, see any research on the topic. Not specific to wind. They are going regardless. North sea is a declining basin and fewer fields are cost competitive. Oil can be sold regardless of whether it is used in the UK - see Norway! Blade factories in Hull & IoW. Vestas Nacelle factory coming to Scotland Monopile fabrication facility on Teeside JDR Cables at Hartlepool, multiple Prysmian cable factories We probably make as much of wind farms as we do oil and gas facilities. Piper alpha?

We knew our new house would be very well insulated and air tight so the heating demand would be low. Our rational response to that was to only put UFH on the ground floor because bedrooms should always be cooler and heat rises. Now we are thanking our lucky stars that our ASHP can cool, I wish I had put UFH in the bedrooms. During the current heatwave our ground floor is lovely and cool: 22c / max 24c, that coolness doesn't reach upstairs except via the MVHR mixing. I think if I had my time again I would put UFH (or rather Under Floor Cooling) in the bedrooms to aid sleep during heatwaves.

I got an answer back. From a bot it would appear but it was a pretty much instant response: "Good afternoon, Regarding your question about running two Indra Smart Pro chargers on a single-phase supply: yes, this is possible with each charger using its own CT clamp on the same incoming meter tails for independent load curtailment. On a single-phase installation: - Each charger can independently monitor the total load on the supply using its own CT clamp and will adjust its charging rate as needed to protect the main fuse. - Each CT clamp should be installed at the main supply, before any junctions, and as close to the main cut-out fuse as possible, with the arrows facing the grid (incoming supply). With this setup, both chargers will independently perform load curtailment based on the total current measured by their own CT clamps, so there is no requirement for a dedicated multi-charger load-sharing configuration in this scenario. If you have any more questions or would like help checking your planned setup details, just let us know and we can escalate this to a human agent for you. Thank you for contacting Indra Renewable Technologies Ltd. Best regards, Indra Renewable Technologies Ltd AI Agent"

Get some neoprene insulation material 100mm wide, wrap this around the soil pipes at screed level. 2 wraps around will leave you with a void around the pipe so when the screed is in and dry you will either have a bit of wiggle room on the pipe, or you have the ability to pull the neoprene out which leaves a void that a pipe coupling will fit into. as for sealing them you will be putting your dpm on top of the beam n block so you seal the pipes to that.

That’s mostly just down to using good quality thermostatic showers vs ‘manual’ mixers. Decent ones will work with quite erratic flows and temps, so I always advise my clients to spend some money on such daily drivers.

You don't get that option 2 either

Lay the floor flat and level, ramping it up at the door will look like dog shit, you will see it, you will notice it on the skirting around that reveal. 10-12mm step up is absolutely fine at that cill area.

It's not just about points 3 and 4, but if you can cover the points below you could be OK. I have been my own PD. https://www.castlepoint.gov.uk/documents/d/guest/guide-to-dutyholders-designer says: Competence: To satisfy the requirements and carry out any design work as the designer or principal designer, a person or organisation must: - − have the relevant skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours necessary to undertake the function. − carry out the design work in accordance with all relevant requirements. − provide adequate supervision to those in training within the design role whilst carrying out the work and ensure that those under supervision are not appointed as principal designers. − consider that an individual wishing to designate themselves as a principal designer within an organisation must take all reasonable steps to satisfy themself that they have the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours necessary to manage the function of principal designer.

Not a blog, but a few words would be interesting. Then in a year you can reflect on those notes and realise everything is fine really.

If you have the top hats then use them they work. the problem is these things get designed on a computer by a bloke who wouldn’t know what end of a trowel to hold. on site you very rarely get perfect conditions as you have found out with the pipe collar being exactly where you need to seal it. so you will probably find you chuck a couple of top hats away and just use more tape. Hardly heath robinson this one, it’s just done, finished move on get the concrete on top and it will become a distant memory.

+1 for all comments. As a building virgin 4 years ago I can say there is a lot to understand about how building works, and that the project management is far more demanding than you might imagine, even if you have done project management in commercial business environments. Most independent trades people are small outfits, often one man bands, sometimes 2 or 3 working together. Your job is typically small beer to them - perhaps 2/3/4 weeks work. You are likely a one off customer. So you don't have much power over them turning up compared to a builder that may give them a steady stream of work year after year after year. Even if you stay on schedule they can say I can't come that week now, will have to be 3 weeks later. Can't come wife is ill, going on holiday, cut my hand, another job overrunning, got the flu, having a baby, etc. You mostly have to suck this up. A good builder will know multiple people in each trade and have some power - I give you £80k work every year - be there monday or else. So what you are doing is herding somewhat ferrel cats. No tradesperson will EVER phone you. They will NEVER call and say, 'just after an update - do you need me again next week', 'just thought I'd let you know going to be out of the country next month' etc. You have to call them, always, they may not respond - for days or even weeks. (It gets somewhat better as you move up the stack, finishing trades have to have customer relationship skills) There is stuff that crops up 'between trades'. Who is going to sort that threshold gap before the flooring people come ? Too small a job to interest any tradesperson - do it yourself or get stuck. A builder can usually call in a favour to get it done. You need to know what is right and what is not. Who you going to ask ? You need to be able to call an architect, or an SE, or BuildHub, or YouTube, or ChatGPT. A stitch in time saves ninety-nine. Stuff done wrong is disasterous. Now it has got to be undone, then redone right. Maybe pay twice over. Everyone frustrated. So you have to be eyes on - all the time, everyday - catch things straight away - that doorway needs to be 6 inches over - that alcove isn't deep enough for the kitchen units - that reveal is well out of plumb, those pipes are in the way, etc etc. Catch it early and one spoken sentence on the day fixes it. A lot depends how much quality/precisian you are after. As a self builder likely more than average. I had an architect tell me some builders in London were trying to write contract terms saying the building would be within 10% of drawing dimensions !!?! Good trades peole are good, good builders are good, but they are hard to find. Find a good builder early - check them out diligently. By far the most important thing is openness and honesty - stuff happens.

Language matters. Reading it with care matters more. Thats why any text should be read with polite, respectful scepticism. Hardest of all is reading ones own words with the same detachment.

We just got back from a holiday and the apartment we stayed in had one of these. thought it was a great idea and something we’re thinking about building. The good thing is the wood beams are far apart so removing the fabric in the winter will still allow the solar gain whereas the tight spaced pergola fins would probably still reduce solar gain in the winter as well.