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We've nearly finished our lovely Somerset barn conversion. The parents in law and my 99 year old mother have moved into two separate annexes. It all started 8 years ago and we've been building ever since inspite of lockdown and a nasty bout of cancer.

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

Sorry to hear it OP, these houses can be such a massive emotional and physical heavylift.... But the shitshow will be temporary and the satisfaction and enjoyment is a lifetime. I promise you it is all worth it in the end, but you do need to smile and endure.

I know there have been a few of these but I thought I would add our VAT reclaim journey to the mix. We moved in on 23rd February 2026. We received our BC completion certificate yesterday (18th june) following a painless final inspection. I reviewed our spreadsheet of project VAT invoices today: By comparing it with the spend spreadsheet I'd kept to manage the budget, I found an additional £1800 of VAT I could reclaim - not sure how I missed those before. Some of the paper invoice copies I had, proved to be no such thing - rather, sales orders or pro-forma invoices. A few calls and emails managed to secure real VAT invoices. 161 invoices in total, totallying £20.9k VAT to claim Plenty of company names on invoices didn't match the official HMRC company names for specific VAT registration numbers. For instance: Screwfix is really Kingfisher and Toolstation is really Travis Perkins (with the same VAT reg no.). I am not sure how much of an issue that is but I corrected them anyway. We had maintained a spreadsheet in the HMRC template format so populating their template was a simple cut and paste. I used the online HRMC form to submit the claim, guided by Google Gemini. I know AI gets a bad rap but I really like Gemini. I guess we'll see if my trust is misplaced. Some points about the online submission. There seem to be some trick questions, e.g: When did you occupy the property? Gemini advises making sure it ties in with what the Council know because HMRC can check (really?) But in our case that means three invoices since 23rd February could be discounted. I changed the spreadsheet description for these entries to make it clear we had to do this work to pass BC. We'll see whether HMRC allow those. How many kitchens or utility rooms do you have? In our case 1 of each. Gemini advise entering 1 kitchen, 1 utility room but you can only put in a number, so I entered 1 (as in 1 kitchen or 1 utility room. The risk in entering a number >1 is that HMRC assume it's a multi-residency project and will reject. I received an email confirmation of my submission straight away, will keep you posted on progress or issues.

That's what we do. We don't know the full background or your experience. We may have forgotten what you explained earlier. I've been in the design and construction business 50 years and get people telling me things I know or am even very expert in. I don't mind. Because there are some valuable nuggets in there. And because others reading behind the scenes might gain from the info. Looking forward to following your progress and teaching you how to suck eggs.

3 months since it was last attended to but it’s time to change the pre filter again, it’s fan noise that alerts me more than any diary considerations. When the fan speed automatically increases in the mornings and evenings it’s generally inaudible but as time goes by it starts to become noticeable. The pre-filter is collecting so much airborne dust! It’s also letting the tiny flies through, but I can see the route they are (involuntarily?) taking so I’ll endeavour to get that sealed up before the refit. (I ran the hoover over the centre section to see how thick the dust and dirt was).

He said yes.

I would say wrong saw for the job. You want a chop saw for that. A table saw is normally used with a fence for cutting a length of timber down to a particular size. The complete lack of a guard over the blade does not inspire confidence.

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.

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.

Minor set-backs my friend! Seriously, I'm sure half of us have had that 'wtf did I start this for' feeling when waking in the small hours soaked in sweat and dreaming of -insert current snag here -. It's hard to keep perspective when it's your life/money/sanity, but it will be worth it when it's finished and the PTSD subsides 🙂

I’m totally agnostic but I think there is something in the bible about ‘thoughts becoming flesh’ and the dangers thereof. I’ve seen this concept given a positive spin by motivational gurus and I think there’s something to the idea that by thinking about something enough we can cause things to start to happen. You are just much more likely to make the appropriate choices that will lead you along the required path if your head is already in that space. The next step which creates a very scary momentum all of its own is actually voicing these thoughts and ideas to other people - very quickly these then go from ‘I am thinking of’ or ‘I might’ to ‘I am going to’. Suddenly there are no excuses or reasons to delay. It’s happening. This is the jump I have taken since my previous blog posts (which have in themselves also been an act of ‘starting the conversation’). People I have been speaking to re the house build: Gus Potter - structural engineer/designer/former builder Gus and I had a two hour phone conversation that was incredibly useful and informative. It’s hard when all the ideas live in your own head and it’s easy for the fear and doubt to kick in, but hearing Gus agree with many of the choices I plan on making was a phenomenal endorsement and morale boost. He also raised a lot of points which I hadn’t considered which have been extremely useful in mapping out this project in my head and hopefully avoiding pitfalls along the way. As a result of the call I felt a lot clearer as to the next steps I need to take. Estate agents all over the borders I’ve seen a plot that I would like to make serious moves on, but it seemed wise first to physically call in to all the agents I could find in the Borders to ask them if they are aware of any plots in the planning pipeline or such that will come to the market soonish. Planning is a lengthy process after all and so it was possible there might be plots out there that agents know about but which can’t be seen yet by Joe Public. There weren’t, but at least I know that now. The other thing to do would be to scour the planning notices, but I haven’t done that yet. The owner of the plot I got frustrated at not hearing back from the selling agents regarding the plot I was interested in so I contacted the owner directly via an email address I found on the planning portal notices. Initially I got crickets there too and both myself and the agents started to worry that he might be incapacitated somehow but it turned out he was just abroad and not very good at checking emails. On his return he replied to both myself and the agents and was kind enough to agree to meet me for coffee and a chat. I really enjoyed meeting him - he is a bit of a kindred spirit I think and it seemed as though the discussion went well. I recently sold a property to a guy who was an absolute dick in negotiations and the contrast with Mr Plot Owner couldn’t have been greater. He was emotionally mature, open, honest and straightforward and our conversation was friendly, civil and respectful. I wanted to explain to him in person why I think it is that his plot hasn’t sold in several years on the market and why the offer I would be making him was considerably lower than the asking price. By doing so I hope that he won’t automatically reject it and feel angry/pissed off/upset/disrespected by it. He is a really nice guy and I got the feeling that he would like to sell it to someone who loves the plot as much as he does and also has strong local connections. Whilst I tick those boxes I think it’s fair to say that he was disappointed in my offer. I’m sure he would like to get more for the plot, but unfortunately I can’t offer him any more. It seemed worth a punt to ask the question - I’d be gutted if I saw the plot reduced to what I would have paid at some point in the future when I had already committed to a compromise plot I don’t like as much. He was generous enough to not reject it right away but instead to say that he would think about it and talk it over with his partner before getting back to me sometime next week. I can ask no more than that. Other things I’ve been doing to prep Watching YouTube videos of Robin Clevett and others who stick-build. Selling my possessions on eBay to raise funds. Optimising the return on my savings. Working on the renovation of my flat which will need to be sold to fund the build. Working on a rough house plan layout to prepare for the PPP application. Learning about products and materials. Financial planning based on my convo with Gus - vaguely Gantt structure. Quietly crapping myself.

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.

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. .

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! ❤️

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 shouldn't dry at all. It hardens chemically , but drying weakens it. A very light spray of water at most, then polythene over it, or hessian and then wet it. After a day it will be hard and can be soaked but the concrete should be kept damp for a week, (and isn't full strength til 30 days.) Then the small amount of free water can be allowed to evaporate.

Just embrace them, make them a feature. Be proud to be doing your bit for your pocket first and the environment second. Nothing wrong with panels on show. In six month time you will going out to see they are still there, because you and no one else really sees them.

Sorry to hear about your issues. In terms of flexing, the door dropping common issues are: 1/ It's the glass that holds the door leaves stiff and prevents distortion, dropping. If the glass is not packed properly in the frame this will happen. 2/ The door frame is not properly secured to the surrounding structure. 3/ The hinge screws have been over driven ( the screw threads are stripped) and the hinges are moving. 4/ The structure is moving as it gets loaded sideways. You can experiment yourself to see what is causing this. The following notation is.. A relates to item 1 and so on. A. Is the glass packed properly? Get some 50mm masking tape. The wider the tape the better. When the day is not too hot or cold and the sun is not on the doors gently put strips of masking tape between the glass and the frame. Let it bridge over the gasket, i.e not touching the gasket. Don't stretch the tape, let it settle but not touch the gasket. . Do this each side of the corners of the glass, in the middle vertically and mid point of the head and base of the glass. Open the door a little and see if the tape wrinkles. If it does it means the glass is moving relative to the frame. Repeat but this time smooth the tape around the gasket so it is in contact all the way round. Carefully take a Stanley blade and cut between the glass and the gasket and the gasket and frame. The objective here is to see if the glass is moving relative to the gasket, the gasket moving relative to the frame or both. This is a bit of a moot point but later we may want to check is the correct size of gasket has been fitted. If the door is dropping by 10mm and it's a glass packing problem then you should be able to see this with the naked eye or a magnifying glass. What we are doing here is the same in principle where we may want to accurately monitor a building for settlement. B. You can carry out a similar exercise to the above but where the frame meets the walls. C. The hinges often have a vertical adjustment. You may have 3 or 4 hinges. If they have not been balanced (to share the vertical load) then all the vertical load and then a share of the sideways load ends up on one hinge which can over stress it. If the screws are stripped the heavily overloaded hinge may be moving. It's tempting to fiddle with these yourself.. but as soon as you do the last man on the job gets the blame.. which will be you! But have a look at them and see if they look like they are carrying equal loading. Look for unusual gaps between the shims and see where there is no gap in others comparatively. D. You say that the door drops as soon as you open the door? The loads at this stage from the door leaf will be mainly in the plane of the wall. If the movement gets greater as you further open the door then the structure may be flexing. This is the last thing we would look at, try and rule out common issues first. @paro I see you are using a spirit level and a laser level. Often the accuracy of these is disputed. To avoid any doubt at your end go to B & Q and get a bit of clear plastic pipe. Get some water and put a dye in it, mostly fill the tube and tape it to the door leaf at eye level when shut. Now we have a water level and the physics of this cannot be disputed. Mark the BOTTOM of the meniscus. Open the door, remark, measure the difference. This is going to be within 1-2mm accuracy at worst. In terms of the gasket and brush bar fits.. it does look a bit rough. Bare metal cuts are common, often these are hidden. Here we may want to get some touch up paint. If you fancy having a go at this it should help inform you or at worse rule out what is not causing the problem.

So assuming this is without all the plasterboard etc fitted. Going better than 0.64 is chasing numbers, to say look at me. Further gains aren't worth the cost. Get a couple of tubes of air tight mastic if needed.

You're already in the top 0.1% of air tight homes, spending £2,000 (and £2,000 of TF money for use elsewhere...) to enter the 0.01% of homes is not worth it IMO. Future sellers won't care, friends and family won't care and realistically you'd never notice the difference even if you really really tried on a really windy day. The second anyone opens a door you've undone several hours of airtightness anyway. Ours is at 2.7 (no sniggering at the back...) as a hugely volumetric bungalow with several sliders everywhere... And despite wibbling about it for years, and being obsessed with trying to seal everywhere that I could.... Its fine...

Thanks for the photos. So it can be done, just doesn’t look as tidy as a collar, but needs must. Brickie two is not returning. An ego the size of England, unable to understand who the client was and seemed unable to read plans regarding door openings and lintels.

We didn't have as many internal walls (open plan), and being timber frame /no radon barrier /different construction may not be helpful , but we did exactly that....popped off some of the internal walls to allow slab/insulation etc to be much easier and then rebuilt internal walls off slab (we did check it out with both our SE and timber frame supplier). Felt like a backward step at time, but was worth it for later simplicity... self build unfortunately does feel like a steps forwards can be followed by steps back

Agree, we had four different Planning Officers from Pre-App to final Decision (and I think all of them were only part time, 2-3 days/week). I'd also add that, from the perspective of someone suffering planning over the last 18 months, I'd say the biggest issue is trust and confidence in the system. No amount of 'full stack' back office tools, 'resource efficiency', or 'feedback tools' are going to change this (I'm quoting management phrases from the MHCLG Digital website here...). Trying to have a discussion with anyone in the planning department was almost impossible - it's almost as if the Council had a 'no communications' policy (they certainly don't publish an Org Chart of names/telephone numbers). I applaud any efforts to improve the system but I think focusing almost exclusively on tech (as this initiative seems to be doing) is probably not the best way forward. Talk to people face to face, don't 'guide them through a set of tasks'.

There’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying, especially around the importance of actually listening properly to clients and not just pushing a preconceived solution. Where it gets tricky in practice is that “just deliver what the client asks for” only works up to a point. Clients often describe what they think they want, not necessarily what will work best in terms of buildability, cost, performance, or long-term maintenance. So there’s always a bit of translation work involved, otherwise you end up building something that technically matches the brief but creates problems later. On the self-build / contractor side of things, the reality is somewhere between the extremes. Yes, you can absolutely save money and get better control by being heavily involved, but it comes with a significant time and stress commitment. Disputes on site aren’t theoretical — they happen, and how they’re handled can have a real impact on cost and schedule. The passive house / high-performance build angle just amplifies that, because tolerances are tighter and workmanship matters more. You’re not just building “a house”, you’re building a system that depends on execution quality at every stage. That’s where good communication and the right team matter as much as design intent.

That's the structure completed now. All that remains is to cut the excess off the top of the supporting posts, and choose then order the roof sheeting.

A table saw is for sheet material, or trimming down timbers lengthways, not for cross cutting etc. You'll just hurt yourself or the saw. You'll be able to do mitres etc with a chop (mitre) saw too.

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.

That's only applicable to ToU tariffs. If you want no extra charges use a flat rate tariff. ToU tariffs are an option, you make your choice and then live by it. Our battery takes us through the expensive periods. Never use grid energy unless in a cheap period - until I mess up things, which happens to everyone.

You need a stove covered in soapstone and a low capacity to slow everything down. After the first year lighting ours twice and melting, we tried the second time the following year. But now only add one small log at a time, turn the air down to lowest setting to still get a clean burn. Now that log lasts maybe 1 to 2 hours, the heat spreads across the whole house, 2 logs on the coldest day is more than enough. NO it leads to depressurisation of the house. You cannot install a WBS in a house with MVHR safety, unless it has primary and secondary air from outside. It is something the OP needs to think about and plan for. Where will they put the air duct, took us an age to find the correct stove

Fixing it in the open position will guarantee to make your house hotter during the day. Bypass should only be used (and should automatically turn on) when the outside temp is below the inside temp. Your MVHR shouldn't ever be delivering 31 deg air. In normal, non-bypass mode, the MVHR will work to maintain any existing temperature difference between inside and outside. In summer that means it will transfer most of the heat from the incoming air to the outgoing air, significantly reducing the temperature of the air delivered to the house. So if it's 30 deg outside, and 20 deg inside, the air delivered into the house will be something like 22 deg, depending on the heat recovery efficiency of your unit. Summer bypass only comes on when it's cooler outside than inside. Depending on the unit, you might be able to adjust the temperature at which it kicks in. To maximise effectiveness: Reduce airflow when it's really hot outside, cooler inside, and you want to minimise incoming heat. Turn it off if you like, but you risk a stuffy, humid house. Personally I'd avoid that. Summer bypass won't operate in these conditions. When the temperature outside drops below the inside temp and summer bypass kicks in, bump up the flow rate to maximise purging.

Imagine being the persons sent down there to install those props?!?!?! They’d have had the 2-finger salute from me. Feck that.

Hi All, Excited to join the forum – I hope you don’t mind renovation projects as opposed to a proper self-build. Mrs and I are in the final stages of buying our dream home (1950s bungalow) & just waiting for the paperwork to be finalised by the solicitors – they seem to be taking 5 weeks to do what AI can do in 5 minutes. Good news, the house was so run down, it was within our budget. Even better news – the home report is mainly “2”s, so there’s several years of fun work for me to do to get it into top condition. Bad news – while I have extensive fine woodworking skills, and can do some basic electrics & plumbing, I’m pretty much a newcomer to major home repairs. We’re still in a bit of “what have we done” phase. As a matter of priority for phase 1, I’ll be looking to fix the pitched roofs and repair & replace a couple small flat roofs (porch and bay windows). Trace any leaks & moisture spots. Then consider insulation & window replacement and radiators replacement – so I’m prepared for winter. Any internal decoration works will have to wait for phase 2 I guess, but there’s a major re-wiring on the cards, with a view of getting a modern consumer unit installed within a couple years of moving in. There’s also a (likely) single skin extension that the Mrs wants to eventually turn into a bedroom and there's a garden to overhaul. Phase 3 would include a garden room (I’ve built one from a kit before but will likely do a scratch build this time) and maybe even a garage roof terrace if things are going well. Apologies in advance for daft questions.

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

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

Our Starlink gen 2 died about 7am this morning we think. The LED on the router no longer lights up. It had been working since the thunder / lightning storm Monday night. Lad contacted them. "Yes, we can see a problem with your set up, we'll send you out a gen 3 kit, foc, under warranty, asap. Do whatever you want with the old kit". Can't fault the service.

Well I had a play today with my old surface pro - it has a GTX 1060 GPU with 6Gb of RAM, its about 9 years old! I thought can I get Gemma4 4b into that and drawing. SO I gave it a try and after some messing about I ended up with this - some HTML code output at about 25 tokens / second. Using an un-quantised Gemma4 4b model - not bad I thought without any flooding into CPU memory.

0.64 is very very good, so bin that off and keep the £2k for sure. I’d get AB in if I found the initial test to be 1.0 or above, simply to maximise MVHR and heat / cool efficiencies, but also to future proof the AT getting progressively poorer over time. If you sealed up the leaks associated with fenestration, you’d be around 0.45 I’d guess, maybe better, and if you know that air is leaking through these then you’d defo NOT want the AB product sealing those locations; I would be advising you to fully mask off the doors / windows / roof lights and only allow the AB product to find every other nook and cranny instead. Your as-built test will be warts & all, including open (wetted) traps in all kitchens, bathrooms and utility etc / open service ducts (albeit you would defo be sealing these back up long term with FM330 foam / CT1 / AT tape etc of course) / MVHR (open pathways to atmosphere), and more. Leave it alone now, as you’ve done plenty good enough a job sealing the fundamental fabric of the dwelling. So, “congrats on a good job’” 👍

Pause, sit back, breathe deeply. Now your relaxed, read the advice, research solutions e.g. the resting bend collar issue, and work out your plan of action. Write it all down, and cross it off as you go. This is satisfying as you can see progress. Regarding the brickie. From the picture it looks like what he's done is good work. Unless you have had a major falling out with angry words exchanged, it may be worth eating a little humble pie and asking them to return when needed.

Your quartz fitters should be pre-aligned to walk through this ‘issue’? They make small cuts in the underside of the quartz to accept stainless L section ‘tabs’. These are done and then the quartz cleaned, dusted and decontaminated. Then clear CT1 (NOT SILICONE) is applied to the mating surfaces of the stainless sink, where it marries up with the underside of the quartz. This should be with the quartz upside down and the sink sat on top. Once aligned the quartz fitters should be making up a mix of 2-part resin bond to set the tabs into the slots, maybe 6 or 8 of them for your sink. This takes no longer than 15-20 mins to cure fully, and then you’ll need a stick of Semtex to get that bowl back off. Very standard stuff, shocking that they’ve not explained this process to you comprehensively….