Leaderboard

Hi I'd just said hello on eBuild back in late February when our project consisted of nothing more than ideas and aspirations. The site closed before there was anything concrete to say. Talking of concrete....thats what i'd planned on minimising the use of as I gravitated towards an MBC or similar structural approach.....but the plot dictates eh....and now finally after failed attempts to get offers accepted on land in first Frome, then Castle Cary we now find ourselves about to complete on a sloping plot in North Dorset with permission granted for a pretty much underground design....so concrete is now the key ingredient. Other fun factors include the water main running bang through the middle of the plot, the architects cost projections being in another galaxy relative to our funds, the impossibility of extracting a static caravan once the house is built, our currently living 2.5 hours away in Brighton and having no head start via local knowledge/contacts, area house prices not supporting this concept even if we bring it in relatively cheaply, the sum total of my building experience involves throwing darts into old railway sleepers as a 9 year old to replicate wood worm (my contribution to my dad's self-build/renovation). Pic of plot and permitted house attached. I look forward to picking many brains here...thanks in advance.

There are lots of things that are "right" that when you first see them you think someone made an "error" The first was when I first saw a bath panel removed, and I literally laughed out loud at the fact they had cut a hole in the floor boards for the bottom of the trap to stick through. Then my dad told me that was perfectly normal. Then I tried to fit a pair of bath taps for the first time. If someone had tried to design a fitting (tap connector) with the design brief to make it as awkward to fit as absolutely possible, given the restricted access, then they wold have come up with....... a tap connector. There are plenty of electrical items that fit this category as well..... If things were designed to be easy to fit, nothing would be flush, and the bath taps would be along the font side of the bath where it's easy to get at them.

Thank you everybody for your wise words. Please do not forget fire and safety, in particular the automatic control of your MVHR should there be a fire. I will leave it to the moderators to decide whether a new thread should be raised, perhaps a checklist for fire and safety requirements both in design and secondly during a build.

Looks like wifi is your only option if it's the other side of the road. We've done some stuff with Ubiquiti before and they have (had..?) a range of directional wifi repeaters that you can "focus" on a spot to give maximum signal strength etc

Where does the hut get it's power supply? Umbilical from yours or fresh supply ( on the same phase ? ).

Yes, our engineer designed an 'open box' basement so there was a lot going on at the wall / floor interface. As such she was reluctant to have UFH pipes in the structural slab aside from a smaller area in the centre. We decided to forgo UFH in the basement anyway as it's well insulated and will have plant and other equipment generating heat so I'm not worried about it being cold. Also, UFH would have heated up the whole basement box, not sure how that would have worked. Lovely and cool at the moment, definitely the trades favourite place to work! We have decided to forgo tiles for Karndean as we were worried that it would be a bit cold underfoot.

I was thinking more some of those sworskofski (spelt entirely wrong!!!) crystals inset into the treads for anti-slip