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The underrated Mr. Luxton is self-building in the Cotswolds, as covered by the overrated H&R magazine. I thought the Passive Slab fans might be interested in the system he's using: Full playlist at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hiRazqQFrU&list=PLwMzOUIf2_b6FIG18FbvgQZUrBMxOsO_r

You only need to ask. If you have bought and read a "ready reckoner" you will know as much about straight forward roofing as I do. It may not give you the experience but the theory is all in there. as for getting over the rest of it that's why we started this place. Its clear from the rest of this thread that your builder is down the road. But I really wouldn't underestimate what is left to do before you can sub the rest out. You need to look into getting a "mate" asap. Even if they are just a fit labourer. Roofing is a Bastard by yourself. TBF anything is a lot harder on your own and although I don't want to admit it, it will wear you down quicker than you think. Both mentally and physically. Different people deal with the mental side differently and as long as you set reasonable milestones to celebrate you should be ok. But if you go and bugger your back lumping blocks/timber about and have to stay in bed for any amount of time then you will soon find out how strong you are mentally. If I can find any time to come up when you are about to start roofing I will try to take some time off. Faye won't be happy but I'll see if I can wangle it to involve some wedding food tasting.

Just thought I'd update this thread with some real life observations now our own SIPS house is in place. Really surprised at the comment above re 1st floor being supported *on* top or inserted into the panels - they should really be using joist hangers so there's no penetrating the structure at all.This is kind of fundamental to take advantage of all that insulation really. Even where we had to have steels in because of some.large spans they've cleverly been terminated without going through the wall (big strong upstands on massive timbers) The only things that go actually through the construction of our SIPs (done by clays) inside to outside (that is to say exposed in the 55mm cavity between the sips and the stone outer wall or under the roof slates) are 2 beams where we have a very large roof window I believe called a cabrio?) which needed that extra support, and ditto on our really large dormers, which would not be a feature in a normal 2 storey. However, even then since we are applying a layer of insulation inside too, nothing in fact will be cold bridging dorectly into the interior of the house. We certainly don't have any of those massive timbers referred to acting as cold bridges. There are large timbers involved but have quite cleverly been designed to be *within* the envelope. As for gaps, so far the only air gaps we have been able to discover were some timy ones between the sole plate/DPC and the thermal blocks it is sat on - and I think they were down to slight irregularities in the blocks/block laying actually. But these were sealed and we've gone over it all ourselves again and silicone the edges above and below the DPC even though it wasn't really necessary. Similarly since we'd bought boxes full of sealant, we sealed all the joins in the panels ( which was pointless to be honest as I saw how they were sealed together but attention to detail seems to be key, and I've tried to provide jobs that everyone in the family can feel part of available for them to do) Where you may see expanding foam used is I watched when they fastened the panels together - talk about thorough... the panels were spline joined, so no big timber cold bridges (the splines also being SIPS themselves), and they "glued" the insides first with low expansion sticky type foam, then the panels were pulled together under a lot of pressure with a device that reminds me of a fence tensioner, so a lot of the foam squeezed out at the joins of course then literally about 100 nails were fired in each edge( I stopped counting at 100. I reckon those house must weight an extra ton from all the nails ?) I was quite genuinely amazed how thorough the guys were - particularly when we got torrential rain and they were literally soaked to the skin through their waterproofs even. Needless to say, there's not been a lot of gap finding to do despite us going over quite literally every mm of join - but I do have to say that the guys were unbelievably thorough, I mean to a degree *way* beyond my expectations and possibly not all firms will be quite so exacting. I also think bridging from big timbers had been thoroughly thought about, because you *could* build it in a simpler faster way for the builder, but have those timbers bridging between the cavity and the interior. I think our checking out of the various firms for a few months paid off. One thing I have noted is that the breather membrane touted as waterproof for up to a few weeks has not stood up to some of the heavy rain we've had amd has definitely let water through... but the roofers started today and being a belt-and-braces type is actually felting over the lats too! So even if we lost a slate at some point in the future there would be 2 layers in fact between the outside and the osb face.

Just a second though to possibly make your life easier. If your builder is being evasive, it could be because he don't want to be there. He may feel out of his depth but knows he cannot do the job to the standard expected. You will be doing him a favour getting shot of him.

You can use a brick cut in half if you can't get any of the 50mm blocks. If you can get the blocks just standard blocks will do.

Thats who supplied our blocks of EPS 200 for the basement foundation and the EPS70 to clad the basement walls. Just plain 2400x1200x300 blocks, no fancy forms.

Kay Metzeler in Chelmsford (Essex) At least, they make the grey insulation that was mentioned (as well as EPS 75, 100, 200 et.al.)

Thanks for finding that, would anybody like to hazard a guess as to the company he got the insulation off.

Good taste in Teeshirt colour. I know a 15 year old who has just painted her bedroom that colour, and it looks quite cool. (Update: Her dad is going to repaint the skirting and the picture rail, and then introduce her to the concept of masking tape.)

Just about get the 5 pairs ( days written on the labels ) of @PeterW's favourite cream and brown Y-fronts ? ? in there.

Ian, You have gained a great deal of experience. You know how to build your house to the standard you want; that's clear from the way you've been picking up errors made by your builder. You can project manage the rest of the build, and hire sub-contractors directly; that will be less stressful than trying to carry on with your present main contractor. You have backup, in the form of lot of people on this forum who will respond to your questions quickly and openly. As a brigadier I used to work with used to say and who had a big brass plaque behind his desk with these initials on it, JFDI

This... 300mm deep machine, well I never! 4kg capacity too, handy for some things?

Glad things going to plan and you having plenty of luck

My experience of Scottish water is the local surveyor is "GOD" and what he says goes, or does not go. He would not accept a pipe buried that HE had not inspected the track for. They tried to refuse to connect a neighbour because they had not put the toby in exactly the right place. In any case, the pipe across the field will be theirs ans they will choose the size. Your pipe does not start until after the toby which will be on your land. On the good point, SW were the cheapest of all the people we approached for the road crossing. If any of your other services have to cross the road, install appropriate ducts ready for them while the road is up. I laid ducts for telephone and electricity while SW had the road up. If you need that, insist on a cut trench, SW were mooting the idea of molling under the road until I mentioned I wanted to lay other ducts at the same time. Also, knowing now how fussy SW were, I would recommend ALL you have on your site when they come for your track inspection is a standpipe very close to where the toby is going, nothing else, and you must have an in line double check valve connected to your stand pipe or they will refuse connection. Regardless of farmers good will or not, SW will get a proper wayleave to lay the pipe and that might delay the process. In my case they dug up a bit of the field while in crop to make the connection.