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Okay, so if nothing else, you've made me feel better! I've got all the above except the bathroom and two beds (although have a working toilet).

We went with a professional consultants certificate, simply as that was the most cost effective way of having some form of certification that the house had been built according to the approved plans, in the event we have to sell. From a buyers (and a lenders perspective) you have to consider that self build is a pretty broad definition, from those who contract a builder to do everything to the other end of the scale where people with no previous skills, build a house with their bare hands. SWMBO has commented to me on several occasions that having seen various levelso of workmanship on DIY self builds over the years, she wouldn't touch certain houses with a barge pole. That's not to say there was anything wrong with those house structurally, or that a builder would do any better, but perception is everything. The comfort blanket of a warranty or a PCC, may well set anxious minds at rest.

We've made a decision not to move in just yet. If I get the main bathroom done we could but still have two more (tiling is hellish!) to do and two bedrooms that have not been plastered. We've decided to enjoy our last Christmas in the wee flat which we love anyway and relax now (I've been flat out for weeks now). I know not the same for you but a genuine consolation might be that you can all look forward to a proper first Christmas next year? I'm quite philosophical about is, as I guess you are. Without meaning to be cheeky to Mrs G, thing could be a lot worse in soooo many ways.

AliG if you were closer I would offer you one of our spare bedrooms for the new year period! Good luck

Do spoiler tabs work?

I assume that this is only relevant for a handful of people, but we have to have a warranty in place precisely because we will not be getting a self-build mortgage To gain CIL exemption as a self-builder, you need to either have a self-build mortgage or a warranty

My OH is a lawyer, a property and planning lawyer of more than 40 years experience. He insisted on us getting a warranty even though we were not getting a mortgage. He looked very carefully at CML list of approved providers and who was accepted by most lenders. We chose Premier Guarantee in the end. We also got a quote from LABC both happy with MBC frame and slab. I am also happy that their inspections give a us a double check as we deliberately opted not to have them do building control inspections too. I like the two separate inspections one may see something another might miss. It is true that you don’t actually ‘need’ a warranty if you are not borrowing to build but anything that makes a future sale easier has to be a good thing in my opinion. OH does know first hand of cases where mortgage lenders have been sticky about the loan because of no warranty in place. I don’t want any future purchaser of mine getting cold feet because there is no warranty in place. Yes there are routes around but its a rubber stamp job for lenders if a warranty from an approved supplier is in place. I think a warranty is not so much for us as the builder but something to make any future sale as smooth as possible. A purchasers finance is not in the sellers control. Who or how they raise funds is for them and as a seller I would always want to facilitate the easiest possible route to a successful sale. We none of us know if we may need or want to sell in the coming decade so I view our warranty as an essential to have in my file. I have spent most of my life in the property market one way or another and anything that makes is easier to complete a transaction is a big plus in my book.

@Ragg87 has a good approach. I, coming from an engineering word, would call that a "Requirements Specification", and would have in my head various principles as well. For my renovation I have things like: Sufficient outside lights. At least 4 double sockets per room. More in the kitchen. (Policy: enough sockets such that extension leads are never necessary, even in 20 years time). Fire alarms as required by law. PIV / HR fan, to ventilate and as belt-and-braces for condensation. Future proofing stuff eg termnanted wiring runs that just need 2nd fit.. And I had a ready-laid template as it was a renovation, but we completely rewired. Then there were user requirements, some for maintenance and from experience, and some to make the house liveable, such as: Ability to live as a 2 or 3 bed bungalow. Ability to use the front room or a bedroom at the back into the lounge /study - both would need a media corner ==> more sockets in that spot. Ability to run in Satellite, Cable etc, without the b*ggers drilling random holes in my nice bungalow. 3 or ideally 4 appliance slots, one or ideally two to be tall, with power, and at least under-worktop ones two with plumbing. (History teaches me that we are better off without combined appliances, which means ability to handle washer, dryer and dishwasher). And so on... On a tiny bungalow I could busk and adjust quite a lot of it. Adding it up, my sockets are just about 1 per sqm of floorspace - 62 in a 64 sqm bungalow. Aha - plus 2 outside = 64. F

I think this thread may be done folks ? Anyone object to it going bye bye?

The way I did it was to start with outcomes. To give you an example of a bathroom (fairly obvious, but baby steps must...) Outcomes 1: water Location of bath, shower, sink, toilet >> initial layout of drains and water pipes, 1F. Type of taps and sanitaryware >> improves 1F e.g. because you want taps that are embedded in the wall and not on the sink. Communicate this to your plumber (in my case he marked positions and we went through it together and I had a big delivery from Megabad prior to 1F so they could rifle through the equipment) Outcomes 2: electrical What is needed, switches, towel rads, electric shower (please, no!), heated loo seat with a bum shower, etc >> initial location of wiring, 1F. Type of equipment >> improves 1F e.g. height of towel rad Additional stuff to think about, again based on outcomes "i want the lights to come on automatically" >> need to locate a PIR >> 1F wiring "I need a humidity sensor for MVHR" >> 1F wiring "I need a wall mirror with backlighting or demisting >> 1F wiring "I need a telephone by the toilet" >> 1F wiring Communicate these to your electrician (we marked switches, sockets and other things by a walk around) Outcomes 3: function based e.g. MVHR or ASHP, these need to be designed based on function and will have impact to both M & E. So not difficult, but you do need to go through it methodically. I do not know how to plumb or wire (nor do I care in reality, other than being able to wire a plug) but I knew what we wanted and communicating this was the key. And avoid too many changes. You're welcome Who ever said doing a self-build was going to be easy!

In my case the bathroom UFH IS within the joist space. OSB support "trays" held in place by bearers screwed to the underside of the top member of the posi joists. Whern the floor deck goes down it touches the spreader plates. I put a few dabs of sticks like on each as I laid the floor to stop "creaking plates" The fiddly bit is threading the UFH pipe through the web where it needs o cross a joist. Ok on a small room with a short run but it would be a rel challenge doing this on a large room with a long length of pipe. Now back to my question: cheapest place to but impey trays and tanking kis?

Oh god, I hope I haven’t upset anybody. Either admin or forum users. Night night. ?

Nothing to do with duct loss at all, and everything to do with the positioning of MVHR fresh air terminals and the way the air circulates. If you could reconfigure the ducting, to switch the fresh air feeds selectively to the specific rooms that have the incidental/solar gain issue, then it might have a greater impact, but the evenly distributed nature of MVHR means that cool air is distributed from several terminals in rooms that don't actually need much cooling. This is all discussed in depth in older threads here, but to reiterate, before we fitted the long wavelength IR reflective external film to the front glazing, we had typical cold, but sunny, late autumn, early spring, days when we would get well over 2 kW of solar gain in the hall way, just from that glazing alone. It wasn't a problem in summer as the shading from the extended roof overhang worked OK. Also, and again discussed at length in other threads, we had a surprising amount of solar gain from the two east facing windows, as I'd overlooked the effect of clear morning air and the duration of the sun from the east. Having around 300 to 400 W/m2 coming in through around 3m2 of glazing added a significant heat input too (and, as discussed in other threads, we fitted external long wavelength IR reflective film to the east-facing bedroom window to mitigate this). The east windows were in a bedroom (with a single fresh air terminal) and in the kitchen (with no fresh air terminals). At 18 deg C surface temperature there is a near zero risk of floor surface condensation, so much so that we've never had (AFAIK) any room air conditions where condensation would occur on a surface at 18 deg C (and is why I selected that temperature, as mentioned in the other threads on this). The RH would have to be way, way higher than we have ever seen, even when cooking, for ground floor condensation to be an issue at this temperature. The duct heat exchangers have a capacity that is similar to the Genvex air to air heat pump, as the limit is really set by the air flow rate, but they do have the advantage of being cheaper. coupled with the floor cooling and run from the ASHP, I would expect that the performance would be around the same. One option might be to separate out the duct coolers from the MVHR and have a separate system that recirculated air from warm rooms through local fan coil units (with condensate trays). This would address the issue where incidental heating is localised to just two or three spaces in the house (which was certainly the case for us). The bottom line is that shading is a better option. Had we had the option to fit external blinds (planning constraints meant this wasn't an option) then they would have been my first choice. I stayed in an apartment in Portugal with electrically operated external blinds and they were extremely effective, and had the added bonus of increasing security.

Have been trying to post up the pic in a url link but my I pad just doesn’t like it. Oh well your all just have to imagine something a bit silly that tickled me. But I am easily amused.

I suspect most people here have done their own design, or used the tradesman to do so. In my case I did not pay for this piece, though architects details did cover locations of some items e.g. bathroom and kitchen. electrical 1F (first fix) - electrician designed it with my input e.g. location of stuff (oven, router, ASHP etc) and switches electrical 2F (second fix) - I selected the lighting and other equipment (electrical included mains as well as alarm, ethernet, telephone cabling) UFH, ASHP, DHW, stats - designed by combination of me and equipment supplier plumbing 1F - designd by plumber with my input plumbing 2F - I detailed the layouts, taps, sanitary etc alarm - I designed and commissioned, electrician did 1F detailing MVHR - designed by supplier, builder did the detail dicting runs as they went along What have i missed? I don't consider it to be difficult but it does require attention to detail - e.g. you have to think about all cable runs you will need and make sure they are planned in before you board it up. This means thinking about all switches, lights, PIRs, doorbell, ethernet (inc location on Node 0), thermostats, telephone points, aerial, satellite, alarm panels and detectors. Many hours of work here.

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.

It's just not going to happen. My wife is beside herself and at this precise moment not talking to me. Airbnb over Christmas and New Year.