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So after 14 months of stress and worry we were granted full consent, for a replacement dwelling on our plot. A couple of years ago we where told we would not get planning full stop, so being a bit of an awkward bloke I decided to go for it. We have had to jump through plenty of hoops and spent a big chunk of cash but it’s done, PASSED. I would like to thank @JSHarris for his encouragement in making a scale model, I think this shocked our planning officer to the detail we had put into our application, I think he was also shocked when I produced photos from the 60s showing our plot and our neighbours house. so the moral to this is don’t give up if you feel you are right and also supply as much supporting evidence as you can. Im going to add up all the bills and see what it has cost us, if anybody is interested I will put them up. Thanks to anybody who offered advice or encouragement. Russell and Lorraine Griffiths.

Hi to all. I,m 71 and still building after 3.5 years having built most of our retirement bungalow myself in our West Dorset country plot. I have a traditional design using traditional construction method, all well tried and tested. It proves as a practical engineering type person it is possible, but you need fitness, time, tenacity and a very patient spouse. I use builders merchant, internet, building inspector for that extra knowledge. Always was a tight budget, priced out all material and a small amount of labour at the start, but confirm I am still on budget. Have a few build tools that I have finished with such as "Marshall Brickwork Profiles" plus an under floor heating pipe stapler all at a good price. Now working the inside and need to know other self builders views on plasterwork so will post a separate topic on my issues. Regards

What total kw rating have you achieved with this combination? I am currently specifying Sunamps for 2 customers, and this post.... ...is indeed the one for any prospective Sunamp clients to wait for the conclusion of I would like to take this opportunity to thank @AndyT for his boundless patience and enthusiasm. I've picked away endlessly at his brains over the telephone, to a point that he admitted defeat and offered to come to Swansea Tuesday coming to meet me face to face, over sausage and mash and a shandy, to bring me up to speed on all things Sunamp. I am very happy with the technical support and customer care this company has demonstrated so far.....really a breath of fresh air.

@Russell griffiths thats brilliant news!! Well done for giving it a go and for being persistent! It’s such a great feeling when you win against all the odds isn’t it! We had a similar situation with our own build in an AONB in N Wales . I had an initial meeting with the Planning Officer and showed her some drawings of what we wanted to do. She told me very bluntly that there was no way we would be granted PP. 2 years later (+ an appeal) we got full PP for a building larger than the one I’d initially shown her.

I would counter batten over the pir board because it's bit spongy and you'll get screws popping. I think you'll get better u value, a service void and you'll see what you're screwing into, rather than guessing through the pir.

yep I know - but it will be when I next visit.

Why not just notch the back rail??

......dousing with kerosene and ?" I thought that was going to read

And in one simple post, you've illustrated the key thing about self-building: the need for persistence. Yes, I for one would like a general indication of how much it has cost you: no need for detail. It will help to counter the oft repeated saw that self-builders are made of money.

I would think you could be creative here and just have a legal agreement, not attached to the property, that allows him access across the land that he could enforce. If you ever come to sell you could then pop it into the deeds with all the other legal stuff always supposing the issue still exists as time has a habit of changing situations.

I posted about this before: The kits are not cheap, although I'm sure with the right technical / chemical knowledge you could make your own pretty cheaply.

I have a sewage treatment plant and have an external vent in the flower bed a short distance away. The vent is around 500mm above the ground and close to the tank. I have AAVs in the house and the BCO was quite happy with the arrangement.

One thing I have observed. A "normal" build where the frame goes up, the services go in and the plasterboard goes on, as quick as possible, seems much more prone to issues like this as the frame settles. Our frame has been standing for 2 years now The first plasterboard went on last year and then a while later the plaster. It is my perception that the frame has done most of the settling it is likely to do now, so cracks are less likely. There are advantages to being slow.

In my previous house the entire place was decorated in F&B. Its not only the chalkiness its the depth of pigment and how the colours change in the light you are paying for. The copies cannot match it in any way, at one point I tried the copies in Johnstone and Dulux no-one who knows would mistake it for true F&B. Decorators universally hate it because it needs more care and coats to get an even finish. In my new house I am going for Dulux Trade Ulramatt tinted to my preferred shade....not a F&B copy colour. Having had F&B in all its glory I said never again. It is a nightmare to keep looking perfect and I am a perfectionist so every little mark drove me nuts and cost me fortunes in redecoration. We are a 2 adult household no kids so didnt have any real wear and tear but still every little mark shows. If you want F&B in a wipeable finish go for the modern emulsion not the flat estate emulsion. It was not for me its the hint of shine in the modern I dislike I want the flattest flat matt. One F&B product I would and will use in preference to main stream paints is their eggshell for wood. Its brilliant. Nice alternative to F&B if you want to pay the premium for designer paint that is a bit more robust is Little Green. I love Craig and Rose paint but its even more difficult than F&B to keep perfect. Join the million discussion boards on Mumsnet about F&B and the pros and cons and the best copy colours. Hours of fun!

Welcome, There used to be a solar power option for the unit we have, the Bio Pure, that they only stopped producing because the batteries and solar panels were vulnerable to theft (or that's what they told me at the time). This means that it is possible to use the very good blower aeration technology without mains power. It might be worth ringing Bio Pure (they are only a small company) as asking if they can till supply the solar system, if you think that in your location theft might not be a significant risk. I've had an in-depth look at the amount of power an aeration system really needs and it is a LOT lower than that used by the majority of the pump systems that these companies use. The bottom line is that the aerated treatment plant companies are using pumps that are designed and manufactured for aerating large fish ponds (most are made for Koi carp ponds) and just re-purposing them. The fact that they massively over-aerate a treatment plant is only really being addressed by one or two companies, and even then they only use pretty crude timers to reduce the amount of time a standard fish pond pump is on. There is definitely scope for a system that measures the biological oxygen demand (BOD) in the final discharge chamber and then intelligently adjust the aeration level to maintain that. This would allow for periods when the house is not occupied as well as periods when there are guests staying, all the time maintaining exactly the right amount of aeration to avoid the need for tertiary treatment. Sadly I know of no company that makes such a system, but AFAICS it would not be hard to do. One of my long-term projects is to add some form of BOD measurement sensor to the effluent chamber on our system and see if I can come up with a way to run the air pump more intelligently. Although pumped aeration is far an away the best system, because is both aerates and stirs up settling sediments for digestion, passive systems can be made to work, although some have had mixed reviews. One system that works extremely well if you have the space, is a settlement tank followed by a reed bed treatment system. Reeds are exceptionally good at providing the aerobic final treatment stage, as well as removing pretty much all the nitrates etc, so will usually give a very clean discharge. The down side is that the settlement tank (nothing more than a conventional septic tank, really) will probably need emptying more often than with a pumped air system, as there is no mechanism to circulate and digest sediment. There are some really quite poor designs around, but the key thing is that to work well the main treatment stage must have adequate aeration, and this aeration depends on the usage. Conventional septic tanks relied on aeration from the land drains and aerobic soil bacteria, but this is inherently poor, as within 10 years those land drains will have grown biofilms and have become anaerobic and septic. The easy check for this is to dig next to one and check the soil colour. If it's turned grey or black then it's septic and no longer treating the effluent, whatever drains away will have a high pathogen count and a high BOD, without a doubt. Both are bad news for watercourses nearby, as well as livestock and wildlife.

+1 to all the contributions so far. I have built a MBC timberframe house and used an independent BCO. I started off by sending a full MBC design package, including SE Caculations and foundation design, asking to be advised of anything else that was required for BC approval. I received the following " Do you have a building regs specification as I need to do a plan check and comment on compliance with the building regs ..." I then responded "Not sure what you require for the "building regs specification" - can you please clarify for me? I have sent you a calculation and drawings package for the timberframe and the foundation. What else do you require and I will arrange to provide it? " He responded " with all jobs we normally see a detailedspecification to cover aspects such as fire/ means of escape. ventilation,staircase design etc the plans provided so far cover the structural aspectsand thermal requirements " I asked "Do you an good example that I could use to ensure that I cover everything and i will then quickly develop a detailed specification specific to Eastcroft?" I never received a response. So I did some research online, including Websites such as http://www.buildingregs4plans.co.uk and looked at what @JSHarris had done and what @Bitpipe was experiencing with questions from his BCO at the same time . I then proceeded to develop my Building Regulation Specification and sent it to the BCO with the following note " I have done some research, looking at similar documents, and produced the attached Building Regulation Specification for your review and comment. I have endeavoured to detail all the relevant information but if you require more detail the please advise and I will revise to meet your requirements It refers to various drawings, calculations and related documents (which I attach for your reference and convenience, as I have already submitted most of these documents to you before) and have included them all in one zipped folder for your convenience " I never received any nore questions or comments, though he did visit site on a few occaasions and I kept him updated with regular emails and photos. I requested approval of a couple of areas - proposals for fire/smoke detectors installtion and forjuliet balcony fixings - to which he responded and gave approval. I attach my Building Regulation Specification without the attachments. On reflection, it is not particulalrly good document and I could have included a lot more detail/definition of various systems. I thought that it would require updating with specific information, as the BCO asked questions but the questions never came and I never updated it... On the positive side, it did force me to read and understand all the Buiding Regulations as they applied to my build. Building Regulation Specification for new build house.pdf

I've argued about this ( in my head ) as I'm often suprised that someone would starve themselves of such a worthy luxury for the sake of a few pennies a day in lost latent heat and the 20-25w pump power. I fail to comprehend how, after building a low-energy, cheap to run home, there would be such concern. ? @TerryE, would you be a darling and run some numbers for us? Based on 9mm Armorflex insulation maybe with 30m of 22mm pipe and 30m of 10mm pipe, and as much as all the juicy bits in that link appeal to the boffin in me ( ?? ) could we get a real world ( aka thick plumber ) POV in pence per day estimated running / losses costs ? One for @SteamyTea too, me thinks. He loves this kind of thing, nudge nudge wink wink.

I have joined the electric revolution. Just picked up my Model X. So smooth, absolutely lovely. I had to put it in "chill" mode as they are scarily fast.