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OH and I are off to plant 550 bare rooted native hedging shrubs at the new place today. They will go around approx 2/3 of the total perimetre and give a nice divide between our bit of the field and where the neighbouring farmer grazes his cows. We sourced the shrubs from a nursery that we've used in the past for the same type of thing, albeit on a much smaller scale. If anyone is after a similar type of thing, I'd recommend them as their pricing and service is excellent. They are Hopes Grove Nurseries: We ordered the plants on Sunday evening and they arrived on Wednesday afternoon, very well packed and in excellent condition. Hopes Grove Nurseries

John: I've sent you via DM a sample spreadsheet for a house design which I sent out for tender responses in July 2015 here in Essex. It only makes sense if you have a set of detailed plans - but you should get an idea of the level of granularity. I was very disappointed with the responses from Tenderers. I sent seven out - the cheapest quote was for £415k and the most expensive £735k !! I put a lot of effort into the design, but in the end we threw it away and started again. Second time around I hired a PM who had their own crew and they are building it. The job's going generally OK. Its running at about £1,500 psm (if you want a guideline). One year old and a month to go. I feel I can now speak from experience. So here's a health warning. Even though we put a lot of effort getting good quality plans drawn up, and providing detailed specifications of materials and fittings, there have still been a huge number of changes we have negotiated with the PM. You might think you can get to a point where you working from a fixed price - but as soon as you start making the decisions that you didnt know you had to, the potential exists for you to get hit with additional charges over and above your contract. Moral of the story? its all about the relationship you have with the builder, and how much effort you can put into specifiying things beforehand. Suggestion? get the builder to give you three reference sites of clients they have constructed custom builds for.

not if there aren't any ceiling joists. @Dee i presume one of you knows how to work out the true lengths, plumb and seat cuts? this, https://prezi.com/qnjmw9dbfnic/traditional-cut-roof-geometry/ may help, we don't use saddle boards, just the crown rafter which is the same as a common, the compound cuts of the jacks/cripples are fun. simon

Dee, have you mentioned that your a brave self-building lass yet . Avatar please ! And are you really doing the dormers ? I know you can drive an excavator so I won't be one bit surprised TBH.

A ridge board isn't load / weight bearing. A ridge beam is. If your making a 'cut' dormer then your looking at triangles, with the bottom horizontal timber being your ceiling rafter. If that's the case, and they're not vaulted, then you don't need a ridge beam . That help ?

A ridge beam is a structural element to the roof that carries and spreads the loading on the rafters. Am I correct in thinking that you are doing a "cut roof" and not using trusses or have I got the wrong end of the stick (again)

For information to NI folks I am told that Ulster Bank are due to withdraw from the NI selfbuild market with pending applications to be with them in the next 3 weeks. This is apparently down to them aligning closer to Natwest

I used a couple of the fairly large DIY two-pack foam kits a few years ago, to insulate the inside of steel-hulled canal boat a friend was building. Pretty easy to use, once you've got used to the way the foam reacts under different conditions. A few degrees warmer makes it expand a fair bit more, so the trick was to try and guess the expansion room needed as the inside of the boat (which was in a big shed) warmed up. By the time we'd finished we'd both got pretty good at guessing the expansion rate, so there was less waste from the end we finished at than the one we started at.

There's quite a few videos on YouTube (mainly American I think) for DIY foam application. Kits as well as services offering it on eBay too.

I also might have some MVHR spare which I think includes a plenum - I'll find out what is in the left overs box

What are you going for?

Ha ha, not a problem. Just as an aside, I don't know what you're cladding the dormer cheeks with (lead or tile hung or other) but if you simply nail another piece of timber to your outside spar you will have something to nail the main roof tile lath into where it butts up against the dormer. Yes it will carry without but it's a better job with.

Not only do I agree, but I also think there are some things in a self-build that are worth doing just because of the pride you'll feel looking at them in years to come and remembering all you had to learn in order to make it. This brick is more than just a brick, isn't it? I had a go at making a hand-made brick during a visit to the museum at Ironbridge, years ago (it was supposed to be an activity for kids, but they didn't mind an old bloke joining in). The mould was a timber box and the clay was thrown into it really hard to get it to fill the box completely. The only release agent was a dusting of very, very fine sand and I think the chap showing us how to make them mentioned there was some sand mixed in with the clay, too. This makes sense, as a lot of bricks seem to have a sandy texture. The excess clay was cut off the mould with a cheese cutter wire and then the bricks stacked to dry. I remember being told that they would leave the bricks to air dry for a long time before firing them, up to several weeks, depending on the weather. The kids making bricks were given stamps to make their own decorations, initials or whatever and the fired bricks could be posted on a month or so later, IIRC. If you watch the TV programme "The Great Pottery Throwdown" there is a fair bit to be learned from there about how clay behaves, the sort of drying times and firing regimes used for different thicknesses and shapes of clay.

Sparky ran standard 4 pair telephone cable from where the BT wire entered the basement and ran it up to the loft (passing through another BT box) where we originally planned to have the master socket and where all the cat6 cables terminate. This was also our plan B location should we need a drop wire vs the ducted option. Another 4 pair cable ran back down to the study. We have two lines, voice only for house and a voice DSL that I use for work (and expense so need it billed separately). We had BT install the broadband master in the loft and the voice only master in that second basement BT box. When we hooked up the Smarthub, the wifi signal wasn't good enough so sparky moved the broadband BT master socket back to the basement, right next to the incoming BT line, a bit of rejigging with the interior cable allowed this line to exit in the study which is where the Smart Hub now lives, ditto for the voice only line - we have a nifty MK euro module with two BT sockets side by side. This also took a bit of length out of the internal phone wiring circuits which wont hurt performance. It's also good practice to have the BT master as soon as their line enters the house as this is used for testing performance if there are ever issues and this way they can't blame your internal wiring. So I'd plan to have the Master where the drop wire will enter and then run multi pair (for redundancy, future proofing) from this to your desired location. The BT masters have internal connections for extension wiring which they will happily connect. if you're not planning to hang anything off the master, don't get a face plate with a built in filter otherwise you can't locate your smart hub further down stream. Just ask for a standard one (or even be cheeky and ask for one of each) and then use the micro filter that ships with the hub at its final location