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Yes, this is an obsession. The ten years might seem a bit misleading. I was 22 when we put in out line planning and was earning a pittance after finishing university, the credit crunch hit and nobody was lending especially to first buyer, let alone first time buyer and self builders, but now I have saved enough money and earn a salary which allows me to get a self build mortgage. Yes I think when it properly starts I will keep a blog. Here is a picture of the site roughly where the digger is.

Here is what we are building. The site itself is surrounded by family agricultural land so it's more than just a plot to us. When we realised that building would be our best option to get on the property ladder it was just a case of picking the best spot for the house.

I agree with all the above, I am well known for NOT being P.C. Or H&S conscious, my kids used to play on our scaffolding when I built an extension ( single story) and I got in trouble as a scout leader for “ not abiding by H&S rules”( so I left). To this day my kids ( now young adults) regale stories about great fun with their Dad doing what other kids could not do. It’s all about managing risk, not writing a legal risk assessment document but judging the situation as it occurs. My 7 year old granddaughter loves nothing more than sitting on my lap in my JCB driving and digging ( a few years yet till she has a go herself?) It’s a shame that kids nowadays don’t seem to have the fun that we did. old man rant over?

Fortunately that is not the case yet ... though eg in the past the BMA supported helmet compulsion. Arguably they were mugged by enthusiasts, and have edged away from the policy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet_laws_by_country https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/nov/24/no-plan-to-make-cycle-helmets-compulsory-in-safety-review-minister AIUI it is more a case that people running activities enforce it for alleged H&S reasons (which my sceptical head says may also be liability reasons and may be a condition of insurance policies), and ban kids who do not wear helmets. Though Theresa May does not have a good record on resisting emotion driven single-issue campaigns. IMO 'sensible school' is a better term than 'old school' (said the giraffe, sticking his neck out). Ferdinand

Hi all, Has anyone heard of this? I'm not looking for a self build mortgage as such, just a conventional residential mortgage but secured against the plot. Reason being it would be easier to deal with than a conventional self build mortgage. Basically I'd like to remortgage now to a mortgage company that won't care if I knock my house down because their money is secure (plot with PP is worth double what I want to borrow). I then have my own cash to build the house.

I know that most people here are building homes that will far exceed the minimum standards required by Part L of the Building Regulations (Part L = conservation of fuel & power) I finished my own build about a year ago - it's a small 2 bed holiday home on a remote site in N Wales and I decided to build it to just meet the minimum standards allowable in Part L and I thought it may be useful to give those of you who are exceeding Part L requirements an example of minimum compliance for comparison purposes. It's a single storey timber frame and timber clad bungalow with a net internal area of 71 m2 and an internal heated volume of 234 m3 (we've exposed the pitch of the roof internally). It's a rectangular shape on plan as it's built along the contour of a 1:8 sloping site. (Small rectangular bungalows are about the worst shape for energy efficiency). It's heated by bulk LPG and a combi boiler. No PV or other renewables. Naturally ventilated with no MVHR. These are my SAP figures: EPC C71 [Edit to add EI Rating of B81] Averaged (area weighted) 'U' values for walls, floor and roof of 0.15 Actual 'U' values are: floor 0.1 (we have a ground bearing conc slab with Hive app controlled underfloor heating and 300mm of EPS under the concrete) walls: 0.21 (minimum allowed in Welsh regs). Roof: 0.13 Windows 3G 0.8 Air test actual figure of 3.7 m3/(h.m2) (no special tapes or air tightness layer) Energy demand figures from the SAP calculation: Heating demand 3400 kWh (this equals 47.9 kWh/sqM of internal area) Hot water: 2290 kWh Electric for pumps and fans: 120 kWh Electric for lighting: 314 kWh (all LED) Primary Energy Demand: 106.1 kWh/sqM/year [Edit to add: CO2 emissions: 1,596 kg/yr CO2 emissions: 22.49 kg/m2] The house is warm and draught free. The things I like most about it apart from the location and spectacular views are the open plan layout with tall 'cathedral' ceilings, the u/floor heating and the 3G windows. I'd be very interested in seeing comparative figures for your own builds. Ian

Would it be possible to split the plot and not demolish the cottage. You could then sell the cottage and own the plot outright, which would help with a mortgage. What is the size of the current plot and where about in Aberdeenshire is it?

Yes, I naively thought the value of the land would be good enough a security, but this is not what the "standard product" covers. If you find anything - let us know, we are interested. At the moment in our case it seems paying an extra 4%+/year for a self-build mortgage defeats most benefits of demolition.

A self build mortgage in arrears may be what you need. You would need to have a strong cash position at present thought as I'd imagine your ground to only be worth around your current mortgage amount 250k ish. Possibly need to demonstrate you have enough funds to demo and get out of the ground before stage payments advanced

Yup, but Chinese slate needs a scrubbing brush for the grain on the last pass, then a final mop. Seal the slate first of course

Not sure if this is feasible. You want to demolish the very thing that provides security against your mortgage. You might need to borrow against the notional land value as a self build mortgage which pays out in stages as build value increase. If that is right you may need to inject cash to reduce the initial loan value. I took my mortgage with the Melton. Might require a discussion to plot a way forward.

Nice tile. Do NOT put a grey grout in....PLEASE! @joe90 A top tip for grouting, after sponging to get the first wipe out of the way, switch to a cheap mop to remove the remainder. A caretakers mop, rather than a fibre mop, is the best as it doesn't drop into the grout lines. Cleans this stuff up ( especially the charcoal / black ) in minutes, whereas with a sponge and bucket you'll be there for hours.

Yes, I did. I used the Testo to measure the velocity in m/s and then converted it using that spreadsheet. Part of the reason for writing the spreadsheet was so I could take my small notebook PC around as I took the measurements and just enter the flow velocity and get the flow rate in l/s, to see if it passed or failed the requirements in Part F.

It's starting to feel like the finish line is in sight now. Since my last entry, I've largely finished the interior including all the flooring, the doors, most of the kitchen, the windowsills, and the huge and daunting task of the bathroom (big thanks to @Nickfromwales for answering my hundreds of questions on that one!). I got a plumber in to install my UVC (sorry Nick, forgot to get a photo of that). I've also done a bit more of the cladding, but the exterior work has been on the back burner. I've also gone back to work full time since my last blog post, which is why everything has slowed down so much. Still managing to get a bit done in the evenings and at weekends. You'll notice some furniture has appeared, some of this was given to me by a neighour and was very handy for storing all my tools etc; the bed and sofa were in storage with family and eventually I exhausted their goodwill and had to take delivery of them! The shower has had a couple of test runs, and SWMBO reports that it is very nice indeed. The plan is to be open for business in April, which should be tight but doable. I expect that at that stage I'll still have some outside jobs left to finish but the inside is only a few days away from completion now. Sorry for the crappy image quality- will have to do a bit better when the time comes to do the proper marketing shots

Well, apart from a few tiles in an awkward corner I have just completed 40 sq metres over the weekend and feeling quite pleased with myself, although I ache a little I think the knee pads did a Stirling job. ( let’s see if I can get out of bed in the morning ?). only 24 meters of stone and 32 mtrs of wood to go?

The English standard is the same, if you just meet the minimum fabric standards in Part L1A then the chances are you won't get a "pass" in SAP. It's one of the things that makes it essential to juggle all the various insulation level, airtightness level, fuel type, use of renewables etc around in order to make sure you get an acceptable outcome.

I am half tempted to set up a new business sorting out flat roofs. Only trouble is, I hated running my own business last time, I went quite odd.

Ah gold star at last? I'm guessing it has been overlooked then? How I came to think about this was one of the daughters had an expensive (money no object) kitchen installed and you open the cupboard with the bins in and it STINKS

I'm not entirely sure all the manual information available is 100% accurate, to be honest. At best some of it is confusing, at worst some of it is just wrong. I ended up drawing my own diagram for the control and relay connections, and this almost certainly is the same as your unit: I never managed to find out what terminal 16 did, but note that it is used in your system. I have a stack of different wiring configurations for this control board, but they are all intended for use with specific control system products, so aren't of much use except that they confirm some of the connections above, like this drawing:

You CAN certainly get remote activated breakers but I think they're more for an industrial setting. I will very likely see the Schneider technician at work this week so will ask him. They do a Reflex range. ABB and Eaton I think do similar. As for control I THINK it is maybe RS-485 or some sort of bus control. A bit beyond my red wire live / black wire neutral mindset tbh!

You can get standard DIN contactors that have DC coils. I have a few that use 230 VAC coils, but the data sheet shows that these are available with 12 V or 24 V coils. Doesn't meet your 5 V control requirement, but they do fit in a stepped DIN consumer unit style housing and almost replace an MCB, but are a bit wider. I'm using them in my garage CU for the emergency stop buttons. The two 20 A protected socket radials are each DP switched by a single 4 pole 25 A contactor and that contactor is powered through a low current circuit that contains the normally closed emergency stop buttons in series. If any of the buttons is pressed it opens the contactor and kills the power to the workshop sockets, leaving the lighting circuit and the door circuit still powered via separate MCBs.

I have a few SSRs controlling things, and they will happily work with a 5V signal direct from a microcontroller pin. My home made excess PV diverter uses a 25 A SSR driven like this and has been working faultlessly for a couple of years or so. The only slight snag with the DIN rail SSRs is that the high current ones have a pretty big heat sink as a part of the mount. I have a spare DIN rail dimmer that accepts an isolated DC control voltage, too. They are quite expensive, though. The one I have here is a Carlo Gavazzi, rated at around 20 A, IIRC, that accepts an analogue control voltage and has selectable operating modes, semi-random burst control, phase control etc. I was originally going to use it as the control for my excess PV diverter, but then decided to use the "energy bucket" method, which only needs a standard SSR and TTL level control.

Yes, that's what I meant, that's the same as our terminal fittings (except ours are blue, and HB+ ones)

Christ, 9kW, that would have the floor tiles curling up at the edges in my house.

A bin extract would be neat, not possible for me though. Reminds me of Jeremy's cistern extract idea, which is pretty clever.

Slightly off topic but no mention of an extract in the kitchen pull out bin cupboard, any reason or overlooked? ooops I now realise this is no use to the original question my apologies

I suspect @JSHarris means this where you have a terminal and you can run 2 ducts into it. This is Ubbink 90/75 (90mm external / 75mm internal), I also have some 75/63 doubles.

Are there any modular / rigid GRP systems available that come on the back of a lorry that would be suitable? If they can make GRP boats or roofs for bay windows (as we used to do) it should be straightforward ... though in 2018 costs might kill the idea. (Persuades himself not to post vintage Aldi advert for gin) Ferdinand

Nope

I have cash accounts because i like to walk away with THE piece of paper that needs to get filed so I can do it immediately, not wait for a monthly statement...and I can see the debit to my balance immediately, thus keeping me in a state of continuous financial alarm and vigilance rather than just the once a month heart attack.

I tried to get my daughter to have a go driving the digger, but she wasn't interested, the most she would do is sit in the cab with me. Ah yes the things we did as kids, and survived. I remember the climbing frame in the playground at school was on tarmac. It taught you if you fell off it hurt, so you did not fall off. Today they all have cushioned surfaces to land on........

absolutely These days kids can't ride bikes without helmets, can't climb trees, can't build go carts out of old dolls prams (and if they did they can't use them) or 'dens' in the wood, Then at 17 are given the keys to a (potential) killing machine without ever learning that actions have consequences (and consequences that are frequently painful).

That's a proper dad showing his kid life skills. Better than stuck on his phone or glued to the TV playing his Xbox till 2am.

We bought a digger with tracks. But I still lust after a JCB with front and back 'tools' It was the first machine I drove as a kid, learned the 'trade' made lots of (lucky) private mistakes in a field miles away from anyone's view: the farmer who got me clearing ditches would have been in jail for child exploitation and modern slavery these days. £1:00 for a whole week's work (1964. I was 11)

Don't think I'd admit to the wife not having felt the earth move...

Quik answer is don’t do it TP are one of the most exspensive merchants There must be a better builders merchants near you

@mvincentd, you are far from alone, I think there are many of us here that have found ourselves in the same position. My view is the same as yours, that I felt that my personal interest in things being done as they should be, and as we wanted them to be, made me more diligent than a professional may have been. My problem was solely a lack of understanding of the way that the various building trades normally work, and particularly how they interact. If I ever did this again I'd definitely be a lot better at it, but for many, perhaps most, self-builders it's a once in a lifetime project.

Yes, that scenario works better for me than an external project manager, ....and certainly on a cost/benefit basis. Yes, it goes without saying that my build needs a project manager, but there's no reason why it can't be (inexperienced)me. I want sufficient involvement in my project that I know and understand it inside out anyway, and i'm prepared to give it all my time. If I was only going to 'visit' the project a couple of times a week it would be unthinkable to me not to use a main contractor who was effectively project managing it and replicating my level of understanding of the project as a whole....so why would I then add a project manager. A project manager is like any other contractor....interested and committed in accordance with his remuneration. My biggest problems are occurring at seemingly micro-detail on the drawings, missed by architectural technician, structural engineer and building regs.....so I don't believe an external project manager would have spotted them prior to them becoming an on-the-ground problem either....unless i was paying him to be extremely inquisitive from early on. I do believe his trouble shooting of them would be superior to mine but he'd still have to refer to the team of AT, SE & B'regs...so he wouldn't have fundamentally changed the situation but what help he brought would have been at great cost. Don't get me wrong, i'm having huge difficulties with my build and have made horrible mistakes. Self project managing won't be viable or palatable to everyone or suitable to every project but please lets not rule it out as something else best left to professionals along with almost everything apart from shopping for windows and floor finishes.

Well we just installed oak stairs and they look fab but I would not go without carpet ( personally) so as a compromise we are having a runner with stair rods, we are still able to see the oak but have “safe” carpet to walk on.

Slippery is matter of what you finish it with. We used Osmo polyx, and our teenage boys run around in bare feet or socks and no issues so far. Osmo also have a non slip finish if you are worried. In terms of noise, I suspect this will depend on construction method more than anything else. If your treads are light with limited bracing you have a drum effect and resonant structure. Thicker treads will be better. We have chunky treads with no risers. Solid and noise free unless used with hard shoes. This is where MDF is good, it is not as resonant as a hard wood. Maybe engineered or veneered stairs?

It's interesting looking at how the big developers are really good at building right down to minimum levels, yet still manage to get acceptable SAP results. One development that I've become fairly familiar with (largely because I drive past it every day) has utilised the ability to trade off one element against another in order to get an acceptable SAP result very cleverly. One of the things they did was to add a few solar panels on some of the houses, often not at all well located (in one case on the north face of the roof). The fabric standards for these houses weren't great, but they did use reasonably good doors and windows. None have MVHR, as all have trickle vents in the windows. I worked through some SAP rough estimates, based just on what I could see, so very much educated guesswork. What seemed clear was that they were gaming the system. Adding a few solar panels made a big difference to the SAP rating, even if those panels were unlikely to deliver their rated output, for example. Similarly, using better than minimum standard windows and doors on the smaller houses compensated in part for just building the floors, walls and roof to the minimum standards. Most had small (pretty impractical) draught lobbies that were probably exactly at the minimum floor area of 2m² tacked on the outside, again I suspect this was just to slightly improve the SAP rating. My personal view is that although what's been done is compliant with the letter of the regulations (assuming the workmanship was OK, which from my observations it doesn't seem to be), in practice the houses are very unlikely to perform anywhere near as well as the SAP EPC suggests. What's happening is that an illusion is being created that energy efficient new houses are being built, when the reality is that they probably aren't.

Thanks guys for your replies, yes I thought 5mm silicone would work. No worries Nick, thanks for looking, apparently round here every trade is flat out so I’m going to suck it up and crack on myself, how hard can it be !!!!

Right, I've dug back through the emails and found the order. The hoses came from BES: https://www.bes.co.uk/braided-stainless-steel-flexible-hose-3-4-x-1500mm-8131 I used ones with bends on the end as they better fitted the tees on the bottom of the pressure vessels. I also used shorter ones with bends on (900mm IIRC) on the back of the ASHP, as it made the pipes run in a loop (to kill the transmitted vibration problem) neatly.

We also had a great experience with Ecology but I accept they're not applicable to everyones situation. They released the money as we needed it with no questions on what it was for or any proof of progress. We took 50% of the cash at the outset and then went back for two more 25% chunks as needed. All it took was an email and the funds were there in a few days.

I think there may be a difference between the different makes of site trouser ones. Being a cheapskate, I bought a couple of pairs of the Screwfix trousers, when they were on offer some time ago. I had the same problem with @joe90 in that the pads were flat and wouldn't bend properly, but also found that the pads were too low, so my knees were just on the very top of them. It probably pays to shop around for ones that best fit your own body geometry, if that's in any way possible (I can just see the reaction in Screwfix if you dropped your cacks to try a pair on................)