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July 2013 Douglas (Doug) came into my life. We hadn't even quite completed on the purchase of the plot then. So in the early days he sat on my drive waiting. Time for me to fettle him a bit, service his engine so he was ready for action. It wasn't long before we started working as a team. Sitting in his big comfy arm chair, pulling his levers, and his rams responding to my commands. We had some good times together. Clearing all the scrub from the plot and grubbing out some tree roots. First real test was preparing a pad for the static 'van. Then preparing the proper site entrance. Then the real fun started. Getting services on site, and digging the foundations, that was the biggest single job, shifting over 200 tons of soil in the process. Next was all the drainage, including putting the treatment plant in the ground. That had him reaching at almost full stretch down into a big hole in the ground. Then all the rainwater drainage. The last job was leveling the site and basic landscaping, Spreading all those heaps of soil about to make a flat and level(ish) garden. Then the work was done. There's nothing more to do. Our time together is finished. Time for Doug to move on to new challenges in a new location for a new owner. Today was the day he departed and I can honestly say not without a bit of sadness. I sat in that seat playing with those levers for a total of 164 hours in the time we were together. Here he is about to depart for adventures new. I had no trouble finding a buyer. I already had an interested party lined up, the man that bought some of my scaffold a few weeks ago said he might be interested. You may also recall I recently discovered a structural defect that needed some welding. I faced the choice of find someone to fix the fault, or be totally open an honest and see if the new owner would buy Doug knowing the fault and what needs doing to fix it, at a reduced price of course. And that is what happened, the new owner has bought Doug knowing he needs a bit more TLC before he is ready to embark on his next adventure, helping a self builder on a croft about 15 miles away realise his dreams. And to anyone reading, buying my own machine for this build was absolutely the right choice for me. It has been so handy to have the machine there for whenever I needed it, not to mention the cost saving compared to hiring a machine.

Finally starting to feel like I'm building a house! Steel reinforcing for the retaining wall has been put in, concrete in, first Building Control inspection and first warranty inspection all passed. Builders lockup is now on site, I'll be taking my caravan down tomorrow so we can have bacon and brew facilities. Feels nice ice for the property to be moving upwards in direction after so long going down in the ground! If the concrete is in am I finally out of the woods with groundworks, or is there still potential for any nasty surprises to come out of the ground?

I ll take it within a couple of mm and use a rubber gasket to stop it rubbing on the tiles, ditto at the glass end of the steel. The tread is going to have a 5mm rebated shadow at the end also. Perhaps I need a sign advising fat people to stick to the inside of the treads, and put an outright ban on any Americans going to the first floor!

Superbly summarised!

Sewage treatment 101: - mains drainage. A pipe connects you to the public sewer. - cess pit. Your pipe goes into a big tank that fills up and gets emptied by a tanker. Big running costs, may not get approval (banned in Scotland). - septic tank + soakaway. The tank does a basic 'primary' breakdown and the watery outflow is discharged to ground where it should be broken down by bacteria in the soil. Standard option for off-mains drainage for many years but these days significasntly better performance achieved by... - treatment plant + soakaway. This is still a tank and a discharge field, but the tank has some active systems to introduce oxygen into the contents, achieving a much higher degree of breakdown. The soakaway field is allowed to be only 75% of the size of a septic tank one. A useful reduction, but probably not enough to make the difference to whether or not you can fit a soakaway on your plot. Oh and also: - a filter mound soakaway can replace a conventional one, in areas of high water table - a Puraflo peat-fibre system can also do the job of a soakaway in a much smaller area, again suitable for high water table areas - reed beds can also be incorporated but I can't claim any knowledge of these systems myself.

Here you go..... I ll have to measure thickness of the wall but it's nothing excessive. The treads are two box sections welded together. I have a cad drawing of it if it's any use?

I was in that sort of mood last night to fired something off. Not sure if I'll get a response. Thanks for everyones feedback - glad it wasn't jsut me. As I allude to in my email, her views are of course valid, but as 'expert opinion' to the government - I think it was woeful. The other contributors seemed to know what they were talking about and had some good ideas thankfully. But as stated elsewhere - why such a limited and unrepresentative panel? Dear Mr Golden, I am contacting you following the Committee session on 20th September 2016 on 'Greenhouse Gas emmisions', at which you were present. I would normally contact Mr Greene, but as you are part of the committee I thought I would contact you in the first instance - I'm such Mr Greene will be glad to be spared another email from me. I should explain that currently, my partner and I are building our own house near Largs - and I mean building quiet literally. When reading the transcript of the session, the contributions from Sue Roaf started to make me wonder and by the end, I was rather concerned about her input as a so-called 'expert'. Why was she chosen to participate - what are her credentials in this matter that make her a choice above others who may be equally or more qualified? Also, given her long standing commitment to solar power, should an interest not have been declared? I had never heard of her previously but following my reading of the transcript, I looked into her background and found - not surprisingly - that she is a massive proponent of solar - to the point that as an expert, her opinion is clearly fairly subjective and possibly biased. In the grand scheme of things, her contribution was only one of many opinions being heard, but I would suggest that many of her claims are quite simply incorrect, or cannot be stated as fact. Others clearly were designed to promote her own agenda, rather than offer a balanced view to the parliament. Her contributions would have been really good as part of a debate, as they are in most cases, one view or side of an argument, rather than facts that can be proven conclusively. I'm not sure what can be done now, but given that we are building our own house and I'm familiar with almost all of the issues Sue Roaf raised and that so much of the evidence provided is, I believe, so flawed or subjective, I felt I should highlight this to you. Ultimately, politicians like yourself rely on such evidence when making decisions or recommendations - and so the standard of evidence should be very high. I believe Sue Roaf's falls way short - her opinion and evidence frankly is worth as much as anyone with even a basic understanding of energy efficiency and house building or design. I have provided commentary below on some of the more stand out comments below. Regards, Jamie “Homes are incredibly important to Scotland because citizens are important to their legislators.” what does this statement even mean? Has this been recorded incorrectly? This early comment drew my attention to subsequent contributions. “Now we are beginning to realise that, with the next generation of housing, we have created problems. For instance, in modern, light-weight, cheap-to-build, highly insulated timber housing with very little air movement, people are experiencing very bad indoor air-quality problems. Such houses often have big windows that do not have bits that it is possible to open. The solution is a small machine.” Her view on air quality is very subjective and cannot be relied on as - the magnitude of the problem should be quantified. We, for example, are building our house to high airtightness standards and fully aware of the ventilation requirements, which are also covered in any case in the Building Regulations. Houses cannot be built without the correct ventilation systems in place - the incorrect operation of the MHRV systems is usually to blame as opposed to a fundamental failing. This 'small machine' is a very sophisticated piece of machinery that not only circulates and introduces fresh air, but recovers heat from the stale outgoing air - you wouldn't be able to gather this from Sue Roafs contribution. I would suggest she completely misrepresents the system and those 'lobbyist-driven vested interests' would be able to mount a firm and strong rebuttal to her claims,with scientific data to back it up. “If we genuinely want the domestic sector to have a resilient and robust future that includes large emissions reductions, we will need to start ventilating houses naturally again, getting rid of the machines and running them on solar energy” - I am baffled why Sue Roaf refers to these as 'machines' - these are low energy Mechanical Heat Recovery and Ventillation systems. Their purpose is to do away with 'natural' ventilation as this is hugely inefficient - it is pointless building a house with high insulation and air tightness levels and then undoing all that work by opening windows or having trickle vents that let in cold air, and create draughts - something Sue Roaf refers to later. “People—myself included—can build or design houses that do not need much heat any more. That is the solution. One way of doing that is to incorporate thermal storage in the buildings, as we always used to in cavity walls, for example.” We never used to build thermal storage into cavity walls - certainly not by design. This comment baffles me. “We would probably do the citizens of Scotland more of a favour if we mandated for thermal storage to provide resilient heat over time than if we tried to force them to put in extremely expensive and often inefficient and expensive-to-run heat-pump systems.” This is a purely subjective opinion and should not be presented or taken as 'fact'. I would also love to hear how Sue Roaf plans to retrofit thermal storage in houses and measure the efficiency and cost effectiveness. “I do not know how many members have looked out of their windows and seen what I call the great eye of Sauron—the huge gas flame on the horizon—over the past week. For 10 days, millions and millions of tonnes of gas have been flared off. It looks like Mordor over there.” I've not checked, but suspect this is complete and utter nonsense - 'millions and millions of tonnes' in 10 days? Might be worth checking this out of course, but I think Ineos would confirm pretty quickly it's a nonsense claim. I'm surprised the Greens didn't highlight this. Incidentally, not one contributor mentioned in the analysis LPG as a fuel for combustion engined cars - something I've had in two of my cars and has virtually no support from any government, despite the far lower level of noxious gases emitted. A serious ommision from these 'experts' who think it's electric or nothing. “Singapore recently irked Elon Musk by refusing to allow Tesla cars into its market. It has done that because it does not have any renewable energy and the Tesla is a really big car that uses a lot of energy to get from A to B, irrespective of its being electric. Therefore, the simple message about the size of vehicles is critical.” This is quite simply wrong and misleading - there is no 'simple' message and to try suggest there is, is frankly disingenuous. Maybe Sue Roaf would like to speak to Mr Musk to get the other side of her one sided (and questionable) statement. “There is also the point about tariffs. There might be a tariff that reflects excess wind on a particular night.” - The less said about this comment, the better - but is the Scottish Parliament seriously relying on experts who will come out with this type of comment? Can you imagine a government or private company even considering such a proposition? Excess wind from Sue Roaf I think! “We need to take a new approach and say to designers, “When you design a new building, you need to put in a safe climate room for extreme cold, heatwaves and so on.” We can start incrementally by putting insulation into the roof of that particular room, installing double glazing to get rid of draughts and putting in a nice warm carpet. Making every building energy efficient will just not happen.” This final session is so riddled with inaccuracies it is almost beyond belief. Firstly - someone of Sue Roaf's standing should understand the difference between a 'roof' and a 'ceiling'. The distinction is clear, and important. Secondly, installing double glazing DOES NOT get rid of draughts. Again, someone like Sue Roaf should know this. Thirdly - there is no such thing as a 'warm carpet'. Yet - it has the feeling of warmth, but a carpet offers little insulation qualities and offers not additional heat source. Maybe I should pop down to Carpetrite and ask for one of these new 'warm carpets' and see the look I get! If only I knew about these new 'warm carpets' - I would not have bothered putting in 150mm of XPS insulation under our new floor!

Self build meets CSI Miami

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