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Well, I know I have been quiet the last 4 weeks or so... ..been biting my nails and waiting... BUT..A few days ago we got APPROVAL of our 3 Bed Home !! Thanks to all that helped me with advice and sent me samples and guides to look over for the statement and gave me other advice Special thanks to Forum powerhouses ... Ferdinand and Jack I now have to get these conditions signed off for building reg I guess...so maybe I will be bothering you lot again soon regards Ed

Well, I never, look what I found........

@Nickfromwales I think we can just about squeeze in. I can't argue it's not excessive but it's a lifetime dream and I may as well enjoy living in my money as having it in the bank. I'd like to hope that the house can stay in the family when I am gone but who knows what the future holds. Really thanks for the LPG idea, without the heat we would not be able to move in before Christmas. It is on today(I think) they were supposed to have it on last Friday which would have been even better. The airbnb is a 2 bed apartment, maybe we'll enjoy that just as much. Airbnb is great in this situation, it would have been very hard to rent an apartment for a couple of weeks a few years ago without paying an exorbitant amount. This works out at the same cost as the local Travelodge. I didn't know until a week ago that getting the gas and electricity connected up did not mean we had meters so they still could not be used, luckily there was only a 6 day lead time on the gas meter. I will be begging for the easiest possible slot for electricity next week. It reinforces that I am sure we could do it better if we did it all over again. I am sure that loads of work will still be outstanding when we move in, particularly exterior stuff such as guttering and garden walls. We will also have a temporary stair and no fitted wardrobes, just the spaces where they go. I don't think will have all the decorating finished either. The family would rather stay on a building site than in a rental. I think if we had not set a fixed date when we had to move though in that the build would have dragged on for another 3 months. I'll post some pics when I am there on Sunday and you can all marvel at how unfinished the house looks despite our plan to move in in 2 weeks.

We were hoping to move in on the 8th of December, but this is just proving too tight. Luckily we can use Airbnb to tide us over for a week or 2. However we have 5 people coming to stay for Christmas and New Year on 23 December so have to be done by then. The shell is complete and we are working on decorating, tiling flooring etc. However what has caused a lot of issues is temperatures and heating. Anything wood needs the house to be warm and acclimatise before it is installed. This includes doors, floors, kitchen and staircases. On the other hand, tiles need the floors to be cold to be installed. This would not have been an issue in September as the ambient temperature was close to the normal temperature but it is an issue now. The kitchen people refused to install the kitchen this week incase it warped as the heating came on. The gas and electricity are connected up next week but we then need the meters connected up to get full control of the heating. For the moment we have just got LPG connected up and working as of today thanks to @Nickfromwales Perhaps this is useful information for other people, it seems that the timing of final finishes is quite awkward due to temperature issues, especially in winter.

Can we please separate out P2P lending from crowdfunding? The two are totally different concepts, and I fear there may be confusion here between them. Crowdfunding Crowdfunding is solely a means of raising capital, with no absolute obligation on the recipient to pay anything back at all. It is primarily used to provide investment for start-up companies, where initial investors may receive a reduced price product in return for their investment (assuming the company gets off the ground), and more recently has been adopted as a way of raising non-refundable donations for specific charitable cases (like sending a person to another country for medical treatment not available in the UK). It is not a lending or borrowing scheme in the usual way we would understand such a thing, and anyone who invests in a crowdfunded project has to treat it like any other high-risk investment or donation and not expect to ever get their money back. There are exceptions, but this is generally how crowdfunding works. In terms of self-build and renovation, I can see a place for crowdfunding a start-up company that has come up with a product or service that looks to be beneficial to self-builders. I cannot possibly see how crowdfunding could be used as a substitute for a lending scheme, like a conventional mortgage or loan. P2P (Peer to Peer)lending and borrowing P2P is a means that allows usually small investors to invest money at an agreed rate of return to borrowers that they choose. It's a logical extension of the principle of informally lending a friend some money for a time and then getting it back, with the difference that P2P almost always carries some interest with that borrowing, although often far less than that charged by conventional lenders. P2P also allows groups of investors to amalgamate a number of small investments in a single project, but this is the only similarity with crowdfunding, and is, I think, where some confusion may result. The key difference is that with P2P there is a formal agreement that the investor will get their investment back after a defined period of time, plus an agreed level of interest (usually, there are schemes that operate within Islamic law that get around the issue of interest, as interest is haram in Islam). In my view, I think we need to dismiss crowdfunding, in the context of individuals who are self-building or renovating and looking to borrow money. What we should concentrate on are P2P models, how they operate, how the agreements are structured, what the typical investment return should be, how the organisation of investors and borrowers is arranged, and, most importantly, how the law and financial regulation applies to such agreements that are made outwith the normal regulated environment of the banks and building societies. I don't want to make an issue of this last point, as we already have schemes, like car personal lease plans, that similarly fall largely outside FCA regulation, so it is not, in my view, a show stopper.

I have a strong feeling that there are many of us who have done a bit of research privately but, unlike @jamiehamy, not told anyone else. I think we - that is this discussion group / board - should provide a space for us to 'dump' our research notes. A simple repository of unedited, un-filtered information. I will personally commit to check and summarise that information and publish it here for comment by all. My question is: do you (that means anyone reading this thread - anyone at all) agree that we should provide a work-space for anyone to contribute? The end in mind is clear. We should examine whether or not it is possible for us collectively to provide some sort of crowd funding organisation for self-builders? For my part, I'll have a word with the Forum Management Group and see what the mood is there. Who knows, I might have read this thread wrongly.....

Hi. I went through this challenge earlier this year, and my thoughts are as follows: as above, your cavity closers need to cover at least three bases; fire protection, thermal insulation and damp ingression (If your windows don't span the cavity to meet the outside skin and cover your closers, then you'll also need something aesthetically acceptable). If your block work isn't up yet, you can diy it by fixing timber battens around openings wide enough to fill the cavity (100mm), set back to allow for say 50mm of celotex, with a layer of dpm sandwiched in between that and the blockwork (I stand to be corrected on the correct location for the dpm!) I decided that was too much hassle, and used kingspan thermabate. Not cheap, but fire rated (unlike the cheaper stuff which appears to be really only suitable for brick and block builds), damp proof, and easy to work with for a first-timer! Prices varied widely, so shop around when you're pricing up the options.

How many loans before a pool becomes "exhausted" eg each person has maxed out their comfort amount. I think to be fair this was initially raised to help poor old @ProDave out, so let's stay focussed on that as there's nothing worse than feeling that hope was within reach but then fizzled out in the peripheral white noise.

1) Agree an amount to lend 2) You state that the repayment need to be a min of 2 years / max of 5 years 3) You state any interest / fees / terms and agree the settlement amount. 4) You exchange emails stating the outlines of the agreement and each agree by return. 5) As its unregulated you hand over the ?and it's done afaics? There can't really be any more to it if it's on trust. ?

And that would cost? £5000? 100 of us £50 each. @ProDave moves in. Too simple?

You can do what you want, within reason, but even if you just do the very bare minimum to comply with Part L1a you will end up with a reasonably well insulated house. Not great, but certainly well into the region where you my well find that a wood burning stove puts out far too much heat for an average sized room a fair bit of the time, so won't get used as much as you might think. There's no doubt that a well-ventilated house (specifically with MVHR, as ventilation rates from these will, in practice, be lot higher) will dry things much faster. It's one of the most noticeable things from fitting MVHR, second to the noticeably better air quality, that things like damp towels just dry a great deal faster with MVHR. One conundrum with any combustion stove and even building regs airtightness levels is that you're pretty much pushed towards having a room sealed stove, which does little to improve ventilations rates. Finally, there is your health, and that of your neighbours, to consider. The particulates and other toxic emissions from burning wood are massively greater than from other well-known air pollution sources. In very rough terms, a conventional wood burning stove is around 100 times more harmful than a diesel car, so you can roughly equate having one running to having around 100 diesel cars parked outside with their engines running. Ultimately, it's your choice, but my guess is that we will see increased legislation against burning wood and coal before long, plus you may well find that, even if you build to the very worst energy performance standard that will still scrape through Part L1a you will still be stuck in a situation where a wood burner puts out far too much heat a lot of the time when you want heating, which then leads you towards having two heating systems, one that can be run when modest levels of heat are required, and the wood burner for days when the weather is very cold.

Just done £900 on oil! If we're lucky that might see us through until Spring. Friday night and I'm sitting in the lounge with a bobble hat on wrapped in a blanket. YES the boiler is working and CH is on for all the good it does. You know it's Christmas when you can sit and watch the ceiling decorations gently swaying in the multiple draughts. If it wasn't for this place I would have thought that's just what you do in the winter. Ah! There's the comforting sound of the boiler short cycling, aka pi$$ing money through the gaps in the "-----" (fill in walls / ceiling / floor) as appropriate!