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Where's the "this thread is useless without pictures" icon?

I turned hay on a 135 for most of my childhood. I can still remember the old man shouting that I don't NEED to turn on a sixpence at full speed at the end of every row. ?

If it was on Skye it would be rented out on AirBnB and making a killing. It's crazy up here. I'm thinking I might rent out my wheelie bin as a minimalist glamping experience.

Can I raise a dissenting POV? Surely there are two different answers here: What's the best way if you are a professional and need to do this on a routine basis? What's the best way if you are a self builder and only doing it once? In the first case, you really need a tool which is accurate and quick; no doubt about that. In the second case you only need to be accurate, but is it really worth spending an extra £100 or so to save yourself an hour's fiddling around getting it right? I think not, but then again I am not cash rich at the moment. Though if you haven't any accurate laser level, then ~ £100 seems a reasonable price. What you need at a minimum is a way of establishing a set of datums, one per room that establish a common level throughout the house, and preferably each near the door connecting to the common hall / access. There are loads of ways to do this. The water level works really well (I did a blog post about this). So does a Dumpy if you have one, or any kind of calibrated laser level. If you are using levels then IMO it is important to chain from room to room at the doorways. If you want to double check then back chain from the extreme back to your primary reference. This will throw any systematic errors in your level. Do this a fixed amount above FFL and mark each datum well so they don't get lost in subsequent building works (e.g. screw or bond a bit of wood to the wall and cut a notch in it and mark it with a sharpie.) Then if you do need to redo any room you only need to measure down the fixed amount from the datum to reset the level in that room and you can be confident that it will still be correct. And then you need to establish reference levels around each room, and here pretty much any type of calibrated laser level will do the job. The expensive ones will only save you 10 mins extra setup per room. And I wouldn't worry too much about a few mm systematic error across the chain, because if you think that the builders or you will end up laying the FFL exactly to that level then you are mistaken. Even if they use a decent self levelling cement to finish off each room, do you think that they are going to use the exact amount of cement to hit the level? They make it up, pour it in and give it a float and leave it to find its level, and if they are good then you'll still end up using the door thresh or carpet bar to hide the hopefully few mm offset between rooms. In my current house some of our "level" floor slabs are about 1cm out across the room.

Multiple brands approach this differently but I will stick with the most popular options If they are different makes, a 50mm bridge and then appropriate cutouts for individual hobs. If they are Miele domino hobs, connecting strips are available and a single large cutout to encompass all domino hobs is made and hobs dropped in with connecting strip between hobs. Miele however does not allow a domino to go in with a normal hob. Siemens/Neff/Bosch - Individual cutouts or combined single cutout with connecting strips. Domino hobs can be combined with normal hobs provided the normal hobs are of the right specification suitable for combining with dominos. Domino hobs arent a cheap option but they do offer a degree of flexibility.

As you said in your original post, it's 45m to ALL points of the building, and the furthest point appears to be the back of the section protruding rearwards on the driveway side of the new house. Incidentally, just checked and those sprinkler prices included provision of water storage and automatic fire pump (@ circa £1.500) on the assumption that there may not be sufficient mains pressure, so the lower price was £4,800 if you exclude that. Our house is circa 165m2 so not much bigger than what you're proposing. By the way, my understanding is that the 45m is measured from the rear of the appliance and the brigade assume forward entry into the site. That effectively adds the length of the appliance to that 45m measurement. Not trying to be difficult, just passing on the lessons learned from our own experience. Thankfully we found an alternative solution!

Yes you do. It pays off later in life. All the accidents and adventures I had in vehicles taught me valuable roadcraft skills. I now get cheap insurance and very really scare myself these days. Glad it is not just me. 30 years of the indicator on the right and then they have to change it. Like my mothers fridge, for 22 years it was hinged on the right, now it is on the left. After 7 years, I still open it the wrong way (actually, I don't open it, just rock it a bit till the pot plant falls off).

Oh Gauuuud. Three doors down from me is the trendiest of Trendy Shepherds Hut. Been up for a year and nobody has used it

Hope you and the neighbours get on well as you'll need access via the top of their garage of course. What's the score I wonder party wall wise if you do an extension now and they want to do similar later? Might be worth considering at the design stage. @Bitpipe had a 12'x38' caravan for sale I think, you could land straight on top....too wide?

That is a bit dramatic Crofter, I was just thinking of parking it on its side. Anything to avoid dealing with a BMW Mini car dealership

Your poor broker God rest his soul I would think that the way to finance may be to take a 3 or 5 year smallish say 60% remortgage on the other rental you were talking about and pay for the build from that cash. The Osborne tax is coming in over the next few years so you squeak in before too much damage is done. Perhaps do it via a lower rate taxpayer if one is available to avoid that. Ferdinand

You may also want to check out the CIL liability as this also is only exempt for self build and retrospective if you claim exemption and then live in it for less than 3 years.

Seriously, she should talk to Jan. The doors and panels for all of the major kitchen suppliers are made by a couple of companies. Ditto the carcasses. Wickes kitchens just use the standard suppliers. Ditto the hinges, closers, drawer units, etc.; these are top notch suppliers such as Blum. I can't fault the quality here. The major decisions that you have to make are: Self fit or trade / subbie fitted. IMO, anyone who has very basic carpentry skills can fit a kitchen, though knowledge of techniques such as scribing a profile and a level of adeptness with a table saw or the like help a lot, as well as tools such as a decent chopsaw. Fitting can be ~30+% of the total cost (and often a lot more if the fitter is supplying you the kitchen at "trade" prices, but actually buying it a 30-40% discount). If you have disposable time (as we as pensioners have) then I would recommend that you seriously consider doing a lot of work yourself, especially if you can get a couple of days help from a friendly chippie for the more difficult bits. Flatpack or pre-assembled carcasses. In terms of the finished kitchen, IMO there is nothing to chose here. Flatpack is going to add a few days assembly time, but same test as above. If you do go pre-assembled then you have to get JiT delivery because storing assembled units is a total pain in the arse. I really don't think that anyone looking at our kitchen would think anything other than "quality product". I just can't see why paying a 50% mark-up to some fancy kitchen designer for nowt material makes any sense. OK, if both partners are working and doing 50+hrs a week then your decision might be a different sweet spot, but you two are in a very similar situation to us

Now knowing that the house has a ground floor extension, an upper floor extension balancing it out makes more sense. You might consider is would it make the house much larger than all the ones in the area which might limit the price. Even if he garage isn't big enough to open the car doors, it would be expected in a house this size and I would be wary of losing it. This is the biggest issue - I am guessing from your comments that is a 7'6 or 8' garage door. As someone said there is a good chance that the wall in the centre of the garage is a single block non load bearing wall. Not only would you need a steel to support a wall above it, but an insulated cavity wall would be a lot wider. You will also need to frame out the wall on the other side against the house. You could end up with less than 8ft internal width in the room, so something like 19x8 assuming a normal garage size. It might be that you cannot use a cavity wall and need to use some kind of wood clad box to keep the thickness of the walls down. This may or may not look OK. Ideally considering the size of the house you'd be wanting to add a double bedroom with ensuite. This might be possible if the bed goes at one end with the back against the short wall and the en suite at the other but is likely to be very tight, you'd only have 18 inches each side of the bed!

Just trade it in for one with a sunroof, much easier!

My stick frame was purchased as part of a design, supply and erect package with an air tightness guarantee. I'm not able to erect myself so I needed to pay someone to do it and I feel the 20 years of experience with the system the company I used has benefited the built frame and I hope the air tightness (not measured yet). If however I could have erected the frame myself and I was "just" after very good air tightness rather than "best in class" as well as a cold-bridge free design, then I would look to Cullen Timber Design Ltd. to design and sign-off the frame. If needed they can send cutting lists direct to joist/beam supplier and provide a very detailed drawing pack. What I mean by the air tightness comment is that the frame design inherently has good, robust air tightness detailing that I feel would deliver a very good result, but the experience of the install team lifts it to a level probably not achievable by someone new to the product. CTD did the frame design part for my package and it was a very good experience working with them develop the frame for my rather complicated site.

I will answer your question, partly by referring to your REAL question, how to build your next house. I know someone who built his own house single handed stick built on site. He worked offshore and spent his 3 weeks between shifts building his house. I know the house well because I wired it. It took him nearly 3 years to get it wind and watertight, and I believe there were issues with his structural warranty company due to the length of time the frame was exposed. My present house was TF but built as a kit and assembled on site, normal (for the time) 150mm frame and block outer skin. This time around I didn't want to go that route. 150mm is not enough insulation, and the block wall is just an expensive rain shield adding little to the insulation. So this time I have a 190mm frame directly clad in 100mm wood fibre board and render onto that. So all 300mm of the wall build up is insulation of some form. this was detailed by a structural engineer. I then had the frame built (off site) and erected by some local builders and I am doing the rest. There is no reason given the time and inclination that I could not have stick built it on site myself and with the SE's drawings there would have been no "sign off" issues. If I could give two bits of advice (just my personal feeling) is forget a brick of block outer skin to a TF house. And make the roof a warm roof supported on a ridge beam so the whole internal space including any loft is within the insulated and air tight structure of the house. So much easier to keep everything sealed and less chance for things to go wrong.

We stick built in 2005. No real reason for doing so, just thought we would give it a try. We did price out using a TF, but there was very little difference. I had plans drawn up to my own design, an SE did the technical design and drawings ( panel design, bracing etc ) and signed the build off. Good savings to be made if you are building the frame yourself rather than employing skilled labour. I'm a convert to ICF, so probably wouldn't go back to TF, but I do think it's definitely worth considering.

Yeh, what's wrong with red brick houses, that's what I am building ?

Obviously we don't know the layout of your house, but unless you have lots of kids, an extra room downstairs may be preferable. As the population continues to age an ensuite bedroom downstairs which could be used as a gym or family room today, but could also suit ageing people in future might have more value, although it will be more expensive to build due to needing foundations. The other thing you might consider is a big open plan kitchen, again this may add more value and maybe free up say a dining room that is rarely used to be a more functional room. Depending on the direction your house faces, it may also allow you to make better use of the light and create a sheltered area in the garden. A lof of houses have way more bedrooms than public space nowadays, but is it really useful when not many people have more than 2 or 3 kids. I guess an agent may help to answer these questions and you can look at the sums of cost to build per square metre versus value added. Although tbh you could just look at Zoopla and find out prices in the area yourself as this is pretty much all estate agents do. If you do go along the lines of building above the garage, you have to consider that it has to look correct relative to the original house as it will be very visible. The risk is you build one thing on your side and then the neighbours build something similar but not exactly the same. It ends up looking very untidy. And as pointed out you end up with a semi which probably cuts a few percent off the value of your house.