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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.

OK reporting back: after trying out lots of options, we cut the angle with a Proxxon Thermocut 650 and a home made jig. It lacks a bit of oomph and was fairly slow, but the flipside was that it didn't burn or smell much. We made the straight-through cuts with a big-assed circ saw - not crazily messy. You can get bigger hotwire cutters than the Proxxon and specifically for insulation, but we wanted to specifically cut 200mm deep. p.s. the wire is very thin and breaks quite easily. Although it comes with 30m of wire on a little spool, you might want some extra.

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.

Not a chance. I used to work as ground crew on one of the Goodyear Blimps (considered the second most dangerous job in avaiation (after test pilot), as it is the only role where you are required to run towards a turning propellor!) The Zepellins NT and Airlander are a world away from the crappy old balloons we used, but they still have most of the same problems: Helium! this is a finate resource, and desperately needed for medical and manufacturing purposes. Won't be long until we have a world shortage. Airships (even modern ones) leak like a teabag and it get worse when they get older. The lightship (BC A-60+) we had was end of life (the ballon was condemned and patched with aviation duct tape all the time I worked on it) and it leaked more than 90m3 per day of Helium per day! Speed Unlike our blimp, Rigid and Semi-rigids like Airlander can make headway in higher wind conditions, but that ballon is a huge wetted area to drag through the sky and top speeds will always be limited. Think of it more like a seagoing vessal than and aircraft. Air lander is a lift-body design with better aerodynamic controls, but even they cannot fly in the same conditions as a standard aircraft. Handling/Landing Even the latest airships struggle in high winds, and once they are staionary they are effectively just kites. Zeppelins and Airlander cannot land in higher wind speeds, or gusty conditions, despite their vectored thrust nacelles. Unliked fixed wing aircraft, loading/unloading (or just removing engines for maintenance) is an issue and needs careful ballasting. Boyancy also changes with air pressure. Putting them 'on-shed' is easier with these, due to their mast vehicles, but is required every time you do major maintenance, unlike fixed wings. (Hands down one of the scariest things I've ever done in employment was try to put our blimp into the Friedrichshafen hanger) Airspace Airports shut when airships land due to the handling issues. They have priority over all other craft except for emergency landings. They have limited ceiling height due to gas expansion (around 300 feet), limited by lift, air density, and envelope strength so airspace and landing slots will be vastly reduced. I've seen concepts for giant solar powered airships proposing emmissions free travel. You'd still need to find a replacement for the Helium to make this true - nothing wrong with Hydrogen of course. It was the airframe and fabrics that burnt on the Hindenburg, not the gas! But try and convince the public of that... You'd also need vastly more efficient flexible PV panels and lightweight batteries. It won't happen in time to help with the climate emergency.

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.

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.

The top layer does a few things a very important one is stopping runny concrete getting under the sheets and floating it up, which would be a bloody nightmare. for £20 install it.

Are you aware that you can look at resources like the British Gypsum 'white book' to see a variety of stud wall constructions and their expected sound performance, thickness etc... https://www.british-gypsum.com/specification/white-book-specification-selector/white-book-overview For our extension/refurb we have used Habito on some timber stud walls with 100mm acoustic rockwool infill - and don't forget to soundproof apertures like electrical sockets with acoustic putty pads. You might want to vary choice of construction somewhat depending on the requirements for the rooms in question and other factors. For example we have a wall with a pocket door where we wanted the wall to have decent sound resistance at the pocket and so have it double boarded with Habito then skimmed. Walls for a TV/music room potentially different requirement from other rooms etc. Consider dealing with noise sources at source - e.g. insulated soil pipe or acoustic wraps. For timber stud make sure to get good straight timber. Very best acoustic performance is normally from constructions where the two sides of the wall structure are isolated from each other - staggered stud construction, resilient bar etc. We wanted to also maximise room size on an existing footprint which took us away from staggered stud. We had a small area needing thermal insulation at minimal thickness and used an aerogel MgO board from Proctor - aerogel with a few mm MgO. It does tend to crack if you drill into it.

Can you move another 400mm away from your neighbour?! That would simplify things greatly.

Hmm, no. The logic defies me here. There is no possible means of producing a proper objective measure in comparison. Instead I'd hope that Rasmus et al would be making more sensible decisions around the necessity and means of travel and thus reducing it as far as possible, not trying to justify it on the basis of 'I do more for the environment so it's okay for me' which just gets us into more trouble and bickering. To affect change in behaviour there needs to be systemic change, because the system absolutely rewards air travel financially as a start right now - just think of the cost of a short flight from the SE to Scotland for example versus the equivalent cost of taking the train. The economics right right are shear insanity. But there are also other systemic factors that blind people to the environmental cost of activities and decision - so this becomes a societal aspect, but then there is of course the individual responsibility about taking a stand and making a statement, which in itself may affect the societal and systemic. But who is actually making this kind of stand in such a way as to shift the curve? Our politicians aren't, nor are other leaders, nor are celebrities really doing this to a great extent... but there are lots of more quiet people just getting on and doing it - maybe they're the ones that will eventually provide the gravity necessary to shift things from the bottom up? Who knows, but the winds are blowing in a direction that rather depresses me right now - it feels like taking a positive environmental stand is the higher risk path, both personally and professionally versus embracing and continuing with the status quo.

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.

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.

I prefer to keep things simple and assume a heat pump will cost about the same as gas as long as you can achieve a COP or 3 or better. Yes with TOU tariffs you can do better but that means running your heating at the cheap times not "when you want" which will work with a well insulated house and an UFH slab with a bit of mass. But no use pedalling that off peak usage option to someone retro fitting an ASHP to a mediocre house that does need the ASHP on at times when you need heating. If you do insist on a competition of "look how cheap mine is to run" then all you do is build up a lot more disappointed convertees when they can't time shift the usage in their mediocre house. So keep those ideas here for those with good houses, not for the mass market without.

Hi Rick. You make good points here. A common thing on BH is that folk split design into packages to try and get a handle on the build cost. But this is not the most efficient way to design or execute a design. Design needs to be holistic.. and that is the dilemma that Build Hubbers often face. You'll often see folk on BH discussing insulated raft concrete structural slabs (passive or otherwise) thickness and worrying about the slab say being 50mm thicker. It understandable as no one takes the time to explain the cost benefit of using a thicker concrete slab. As an SE and designer when considering a self build and the constraints about say getting a builder that can follow a drawing I often start by selecting say a 200 - 250mm slab. What I'm often doing here is to avoid local thickening of the slab, different levels of sub base, doing funny stuff with the DPC / possibly gas membranes etc where we may have line loads from internal load bearing walls. I always start with the simplest and stupid design option, even though this may seem counter intuitive. To get best thermal performance we want to see if we can have an even thickness of slab as it gives us the best chance on site of actually delivering what we have designed. Good thermal performance requires good workmanship and attention to detail also.. so let's not make the workmanship element too hard? Now if we opt for a slightly thicker concrete slab it lets the SE add rebar easily in the bottom of the slab to take the line and point loads from say internal load bearing walls. But if we then put the UFH pipes in the same bottom slab zone is impacts on the rebar bond strength and makes it hard to install the UFH pipes. It all gets really congested and that leads to you paying for something that is not likely to get delivered on site. That leads to disputes.. which we want to avoid.. self building should be fun! One reason I start out with the simple stupid option is that it lets the Client see and opt for it, yes there is some compromise.. but then we look at more complex stuff and compare costs as we have the simple option as a benchmark. But to finish your observation is correct.. ish. But I know from experience that having designed and installed UFH heating in my own houses for decades is that if you put the UFH pipes in the top of the slab the response time is less than if the UFH pipes are in the bottom. In some ways it's a moot point when you look at all the other practical plus points that go with buildability. The easier it is to build the less the cost. But being easy to build, if well thought out does not mean we need to compromise on thermal performance or quality for example.

Is it insulated? If so it should straddle the insulation where we that is, other than a set distance. If not insulated then any distance to suit how things look

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.

These type of videos are always good to watch, informative. As a designer I see stuff that makes my hair curl a bit, I've not got that much left mind. Their rebar is a bit of a disaster for example. Anyway I'm not going to point out where they have made life hard for themselves and by the looks of things paid for something that has not actually been delivered on site. It looks like they are happy folk so leave it at that. This is key to good design in the self build market is.. keep it simple so you don't end up paying for something that does not serve it's intended purpose as a result of it not getting delivered on site. The positioning of their UFH pipes at the underside of the structural slab is "innovative". I would tend to put the UFH pipe towards the top of the slab as it reduces the response time not least. The Isoquick is one effective solution. But if you are doing a full hands on self build then I would look at other options where you use standard insulation, be that PIR or EPS. As a kind of hands on SE I like the flexibility it gives you on site, especially around openings or where you may have high point or line loads. Here, if hands on self build we would look at cash flow, maybe it's best to pay as little as you can for the materials that are easily sourced from a local merchant as your labour is "freeish"? "Raft" type foundations are fascinating things to design..there are many permutations, some are generically described on BH as rafts.. but they are actually not. From time to time I'll sit down with a Client and design from the ground up and explain in terms they can understand what I'm doing as a designer and it gives them a feel for the ground and how the structure works from there up. This allows them to make informed choices. The decisions you make on the ground, foundations translate all the way up though the structure. I really enjoy this process as it triggers the enjoyment I get from teaching. You see a light bulb coming on in the Clients heads where they see the jigsaw coming together, I see their confidence building. It doesn't matter if the Client has never done a self build before or if they have technical knowledge. I always start with a "refresher course" as it helps the Client and I explore our technical ability, our strong and weak points. The door swings both ways here. I don't know everything! As I've said before. If you set up your build well and find the right designer for you it is hugely rewarding for both. Of course there will always be issues on site.. hiccups all the way to what seems like a disaster! .. but if you plan well you can often avoid the worst. Even if something "bad" does happen then if you have spent time with a helpful designer then you can phone a friend and also use the skills they have taught you to find a work around. @Square Feet Keep researching!

It's not strictly an earthen floor. It's a kind of hybrid we're working on ourselves to allow us to use some of our excavated clay in the floor, which seems like a cool thing to do. First trial was great. Second was a shocker. We're now on six and it's getting there. What one might call a bit of a punt! Would certainly be easier and cheaper to go for the originally planned concrete, but where's the fun in that? 😁

Absolutely agree with @Bancroft, its the personal aspect of the planning process that has gone to pot. I changed career in 2009 and did a AT degree and after qualifying worked for myself until I retired in about 2021. I lived and worked in Wiltshire and from around 2005 - when I was renovating a couple of houses - to when I started submitting planning apps in around 2012 things had changed significantly. I used to be able to pop round to a council office in Trowbridge, chat through my plans with a planning officer and get valuable feedback when I doing the developments. By the time I was submitting plans as an AT communicating with planning officers was starting to be difficult. When I did a couple of planning applications for friends after I had retired in about 2023 the PO that visited site was a trainee, had to submit his findings to a senior planning officer (who could not be communicated with directly). For our planning application for our build in Dorset the job of communicating with the planning department was pretty much impossible. There seemed to be only one planning officer dealing with apps in our area and he just continually kicked the can down the road. It was only by complaining and going over his head did we eventually get the application approved. Something has to change, certainly the staffing issue seems to be the main area of difficulty and until this is addressed then I suspect that nothing will improve.

We are, but I think I can bend it back around to my house build again 😂 It's also worth checking whether the person has actually asked a question first. In the case of most posts on here that is true, but blogs are a bit different I think. I did ask a question in my first post and the answers were very helpful. As a result of the advice I was given I have now agreed the purchase of the whole (2 house) plot, with the goal of building just the one house on it. I'm really excited about that idea and to be honest I might have just offered for the one plot otherwise, with a whole heap of compromise thrown in for good measure.

If you're looking to hook up panels to the inverters second MPPT dont use micro inverters as they push out AC whereas your inverter is needing a DC input. Optimisers is what you want if you're connecting to the MPPT input. I don't know how much Tigo optimisers are but I beleive you can use solaredge optimisers with any inverter if you turn off the safe shutdown function with a Solaredge optimiser Key. You can pick up SE optimisers off eBay very cheaply if youre prepared to wait. Last time I looked the Key is about £80

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Let them cut their 'carbon footprint' first and then us plebs can follow.

If I'd done no research and just listened to 90% of my installers, we'd have ended up with worse outcomes in just about every area of our build. I think it makes good sense to get an understanding of anything technical before taking advice from someone whose job involves maximising profit from you.