Leaderboard

I hesitate to post this because there have been some howls of anguish posted recently about extortionate mains electric hook up costs. In the interests of balance self building is not always like a crazy golf course littered with £10k hidden costs. I took a call from my regional supplier, the surveyor assigned to my case announced there would be no need for an onsite meeting because he had visited the neighbouring plot already and furthermore he took it upon himself to contact the plot's owner to ask if my mains cable could be ducted up the side of his plot for a joint dig through the road. No probs was the response and so today the quote arrived, £1,200. In other news our workhorse car failed its MOT this week by a £700 margin.

I am purring cables to every room but not necessarily terminating them just now. They will get connected when a use for them arises.

One roll and i can get someone to pick it up. Hands off bad boy !

Stumbled across the plans for this development today (I have no association with the owners). A new little village inside the grounds of a traditional estate. I have never seen this quality of architecture for a large-ish development. I have attached the design statement for anyone that is interested. APP_2016_3282-APPROVED_-_FASQUE_HOUSE_ESTATE_DESIGN_AND_ACCESS_STATEMENT-7506275_(1).pdf

Why not consider a flat roof with some sort of orangery type lantern to it ..? It would mean your window above the back corner could also still be used as a means of escape as you would currently be stepping out into glass .. would simplify the design and also allow you to gain light at a lower cost.

You will always need a 5 mil base coat on most surfaces other than concrete blocks

Like @nod says - off with the lot and start again... Polymer render is thinner too in a lot of cases so you need a decent base to work from and a mess of renders isn’t what you want. How old is the main house ..?

Yeah thought it was only put on.

Hi, as above it is a Hormann door, just from a dealer local to me. Sectional insulated, I think it was about £1600 ex vat, fitted. This included the electric opener & 2 remote fobs.

I normally tell custermers If it’s to hard to knock off it’s ok to go over it But that’s useally when the top coat has shelled off leaving a rock hard base coat In any case you will need a scratch coat with reinforced fibre mesh troweled into it To stop the same thing happening again and to help cope with the suction I suspect that the galvanised beads are the culprits They are real water magnets The was a spell when mainstream builders were allowing them to be used I rendered a house thirty five years ago near were we live I didn’t use any beads Looks as sharp as the day it was done

@oranjeboom Are you confusing ACH with m3/hr/m2?

Until not so long ago,with the state of our post 2008 finances combined with ftb status & two young kids,that was the approximate value of our two vehicles combined :))

I think those particular plots are 2 - 3 acres, so shouldn't have people passing too close by.

I failed on both these counts! Printer is now against only wall of the study with no cat 6 sockets and with doors either side, no option to trail a cable. While only 10ft from the BT HomeHub, still flakes out now and again - never had any issues when wired in. Revo in kitchen just about connects to WiFi, again, could have had a socket just behind it. Ideally, I'd have one per wall next to a 13A socket to give you maximum flexibility on layout, plus obv. where you're going to put TVs etc.

With the growing popularity of power-over-ethernet (PoE) devices in home automation, I am tempted for my build to install ethernet almost everywhere, and in some unusual locations, such as outside by the front gate, by the front door, where I can imagine having a car charge point, where I want blinds. PoE is now being used for lighting, security cameras, doorbells, and a host of internet-of-things (IoT) things. Who knows if this will bloom and become a ubiquitous standard but if you install the wiring at least you are ready if it does. Changing the subject, if your house is larger than can be covered by a single WiFi router then consider where two will go and give each location an ethernet socket. Buy specialist access points that offer seamless handover (such as UniFi by Ubiquiti) rather than consumer units (including the trendy mesh ones). Ethernet connections between access points is always superior to mesh. It is essential in my opinion that you buy access points that support seamless handover. Two low-end consumer routers will not work nearly as well. They hold on to the waning signal for far too long. UniFi units, for example, which are used widely in commercial installations, have seamless handover, are remarkably cheap, and are rock solid. They offer models for outside use too. Unifi APs do however take a little knowledge to set up but once done require no fiddling.

I have cat cables in seemingly every room, have never used them and have no real idea what to do with them to make them look neat .

I put up to 3 in key rooms (e.g. study, home theatre) and a few points with 1. In most cases I rely on wi-fi. Do factor in your wi-fi point into first fix - make it as central as possible so it covers your whole house (in both horizontal and vertical planes), and allow for at least 2 2x13A sockets, 2x wired ethernet cables, 1x telephone cable to that point, direct from your master BT point. Our kids do not need ethernet points - modern slim devices like laptops, smartphones, kindles have wi-fi only. Xbox is wireless and it works well. Sky Q is crap on wireless in our environment. I also wired one to the garage in case of future integration with car charging / powerwall or similar. Our 16-port switch is in the plant room where I wire in a few plant devices direct - alarm panel, Immersun, solar PV. I did not do this, but you might need to allow for external points in your first fix, especially if you are aiming for an air-tight build. E.g. you may wish to add an external wi-fi booster or antenna, and in our case I gave up with landline-based internet and added an external wireless dish. Another factor for later (not first-fix) is your wi-fi modem / router. Dump your ISP provided one and buy a good device for this function. I wrestled with 4 BT routers before I got this message, and the TP-Link AC2600 has been stable and issue free for a few months now.

I have cat cables everywhere........unfortunately the whole system is down and since moving in I have had variable access to internet and phone. There is a gremlin in the data cab and we have not found it yet!

Put in several at each point where you will have a TV. Everything is connected now - Sky box, console (or two), recorder, smart TV - it all adds up. You can get by with wireless for some of these, but in my opinion wired is better where you potentially have a lot of bandwidth. If you have a study, or somewhere a printer/scanner will go, it's useful to include an outlet or two there. While most printers are wireless-enabled, if you read the reviews, wireless problems are high on the list of people's complaints. I have another where our music streamer is located in the kitchen. Lucky catch, as it happens, because putting the microwave on interferes with the wireless signal enough to stop the music!

I put 2 sockets for cat 6 in each room that was likely to ever need them. We have everything from smart TVs , xboxs, android boxes,desktop computer and firesticks plugged in to them. All the cables go back to a 16port gigabyte switch. The wired connection works much better than WiFi. Doing it this way means it's only your phone/tablet using the WiFi.

the price of oil will be back up to $120 any day now

Too late...I'd drink it not sell it...

I've got about 60m or so from memory in 2 or 3 pieces that are free to a good home... postage is at cost...

They're builders, not communicators: so the norm is that they do all of the above all the time, and they know they're doing it, they don't care that they do it . I never now believe a trades person until he or she delivers on time on budget. So far just one tradesman (in three years) has done what he said he'd do when he said he'd do it, charged what he said he would charge, supplied an invoice and kept us informed while planning to do the job. The exception that proves the local rule. It never happens in South Wales for example (?)

Easy enough, but you do need to refer back to the BCO (not the building inspector, usually) and provide additional information to show that the modifications meet building regs. Main issues are like to be Part A, Part B and Part M.

We had a great advantage when using the Total Station as we found one of the Ordnance Survey spot height nails at the side of the lane adjacent to where our drive was going. The position and exact height AOD for this was on the DXF file I downloaded from the Ordnance Survey when creating our site plan, and by pure chance you could see almost every point on the site from that nail. Every time we wanted to check anything really accurately we could just set the TS up exactly over the nail and measure from there. To save having to go out in the lane for the day to day measurements, we set up another fixed reference point right in the corner of the plot, where it wouldn't get disturbed, using the TS to fix that. That nail in the road has been a godsend, in several ways. The last was when a neighbour complained to the planners about our roof being too high, when ten minutes standing in the lane with the planning officer and the TS proved that the roof was really a bit lower than we'd stipulated in the plans (probably because I added 100mm to the ridge height in the planning application, just as a precaution.........)

Sounds similar to ours. I set it all out with a laser level and a surveyors tape measure. For temporary marking I used a roll of red and white marking tape stretched between canes. Then sprayed with floor marking paint when I was sure it was all correct. I had a planning condition that I had to mark the site and the planners needed to visit and check the marked location, and then I dug to exactly that, so there can be no issues with it in the wrong place. On the basis the trench foundations were conveniently 1 digger bucket wide, I measured and marked the centreline of each trench and dug to that. When the builders came to pour concrete and build the footings, their man did not believe I could possibly have got the trenches in the right place by doing that so they spent a whole morning setting out profiles and string lines and measuring then re measuring and concluded my trenches were spot on.

We've put shadow gaps at all floor-to-wall joints and around all door linings in the living areas of the house where we have hard floors. We haven't used them in carpeted or tiled areas. We've used them for their aesthetic. We have minimal steps/rebates/shoulders etc. around any features and have tried to keep that theme running throughout the house. We have used a very simple skirting/architrave in carpeted areas. Our logic to this was that the more hoovering required in these areas would risk damage to the bottom edge of plastered walls if we used a shadow gap against carpet. We also wanted a slightly softer look in the bedroom areas. Some thought needs to go into how it is best to deliver shadow gaps around door linings. Two schools of thought: 1. temporary ply liners in to board and plaster to, then remove ply liners and fit final liners, or. 2. fit final liners and mask/protect then plaster up to them. We went with 1. and found we got some cracking around the liners as we fitted the final door liners. As the liners were screwed in they pushed against the edge of the shadow gap trim and the plaster cracked behind it. This happened on a couple of doors and required chipping out the cracked area and filling. If it was a painted or varnished finish to the door liner I'd try 2. next time, but natural, lacquered or oiled finish and I'd stick with 1. to avoid staining on the finished door liner. We used Qic Trims https://www.qic-trims.com/product/type-r/ After decoration you will need to mastic the gap from the edge of the shadow gap trim to the floor/door liner. There will always be gaps that need finishing. Shadow gaps do seem to mean different things to different people. To me they are a small rebate at wall-to-floor and wall-to-frame junctions that disguises the actual joint in a shadowed area. I know they are also used in conjunction with skirting to create a rebate above the skirting, but to me that's not a "shadow" gap. Our version of a shadow gap: