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We don't really know the full story, but from what you've told us, I'm a little concerned about how much you're reading into at least some their actions (and I'm aware of this possibility because I know I personally over-analyse and worry about things). Regarding your previous comments about them aggressively calling for their cats off your land, cats are utterly unbiddable, so the cats are there by their own choice. I can't see how else you get a cat back into a house other than by calling it, so I'd be careful about reading too much into someone shouting a cat's name towards the general area where they know the cat is likely to be. Same with the poo in the planting area - cats love a planting area where someone's gone to the trouble of loosening up the soil for them to take a crap in. That's by far the more likely answer than someone coming and burying cat poo just below the surface. Re: the hedge, what do you mean by "eyeing up"? Unless they've said something, how can you conclude that they're planning criminal damage to it? The best piece of advice I've ever heard is that you can't control other people but you can control yourself. You may be angry or upset, and that's a perfectly rational first response when people behave like arses, but fundamentally the thing that's making you unhappy is your response to the situation. Your reaction to other people's actions is something you can learn to control. Work on how you respond, and your stress levels will reduce, for sure. All that said, I'm not sure how I'd cope being in your situation. I don't cope well with bad behaviour in others, and I don't understand why some people insist on being tits.

@newhome is spot on, and I speak from experience, having become obsessed with dealing with a neighbours problem tom cat. Getting that thing to stop crapping on our drive drove me to distraction, and was out of all proportion to the level of nuisance it caused. Neighbours don't have any legal responsibility to control cats, unlike dogs, and my experience has been that cats can't be made to do anything, they will behave as they see fit. The garden of our first ever home was a good example. I decided to create a vegetable plot and spent hours digging and sieving the soil to get a really nice seed bed. Needless to say it was used as a cat toilet as soon as I planted the seeds, both making a foul mess and digging out the seeds. I ended up covering the plot with chicken wire on a frame, just to keep the cats out. We have got wound up with a neighbour once, but quickly realised that the most sensible option was to just move house, as it didn't take long to realise that there was no way the neighbour was going to change at all. A bit drastic, but the good thing was that we moved to a lovely village over the other side of the Rhins, Portpatrick, where we had really wonderful neighbours. There are some people who delight in being able to wind up, or take advantage of, others. You're not likely to change them, so all you can really do is come up with a strategy to stop them getting to you. I know that's easier said than done, but staying quiet and ignoring provocation, whilst putting in place the best measures you can to secure your boundaries and reduce the nuisance caused by cats, is the best course of action, I'm sure. Back in the early-1970's, I worked with, and became close friends with, a chap from Antigua. He found me my first bedsit when I was kicked out of home. He had a car, when I didn't, and we'd often go out for a drink together, along with a fair bit of partying at weekends. It was great fun, as he saw it as his job to turn me into an honorary West Indian, educating my on the delights of West Indian music and food. What shocked me was the discrimination he faced everyday. Back then few garages were self-serve, and attendants would invariably refuse to serve him because he was black. The same happened in the bank one lunchtime - the clerk openly refused to serve him and told him to go somewhere else. If this had happened to me, I'd have flipped, but his way of dealing with prejudice and ill feeling was to be extremely polite and thank the person, with a massive smile on his face. He explained to me that he'd found it was pointless trying to change people's behaviour, as doing so would just get him angry. By letting their prejudice and rudeness wash over him, and just smiling and being polite, he managed to cope with it and just get on with life. He shouldn't have had to, but he'd learned the hard way that some people just won't ever change.

Where would the fun be in that?

Well Iv started. The little plastic bit is fantastic. Now to choose and machine up the other side.....

The "resolution" to this is on it's way. Literally. Firstly how did I persuade them to take the issue seriously? Well mainly thanks to another forum member, I found that the company I bought it from, and the brand name that it was sold under, are owned by a well know national company that owns amongst other things a builders merchant and a DIY chain (I did not know that at the time of my purchase) So I stopped talking to the monkey and went for the Organ Grinder in the form of the CEO of that parent company with my issue, keeping the message polite, factual and non threatening. I typed my message last Thursday and kept in in my draft folder reading and re reading it until I was sure everything was correct and finally sent it late Thursday evening. By mid Friday morning I had received a phone call with the offer of a resolution. They really don't want to repair this unit and then have to support it throughout the remainder of the warranty. So the resolution offered is they are sending a different make of heat pump, a more well known make and still a current model. I now have confirmation it is on a pallet en-route to me. There will be a small amount of re plumbing and a lot of rewiring when the new one gets here but lets hope this one is not another dud. At least I will be connecting and testing it quite quickly after it arrives. They don't want the old one back.

Well, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. First the references given from Nulok (I had asked for customer references) were to companies that fitted Nulok, not end customers. But frankly I'll take @PeterStarck at his word any day of the week. So I wasn't too concerned about that. Its a niggle, though. I had a long phone chat with Paul Stevenson, and no, the company doesn't take Credit Card transactions (there's no call for them) I pointed out that that might be because CC transactions aren't offered. Self-fulfilling prophecy and all that, maybe? The tone was cordial and we came to a simple agreement: fetch them myself. So, I'm going to hire a wagon, go to their yard in Birmingham and pick them up, and wire the money to him. Convenient living not far from the M6 innit?

We all have our obsessions, but we need to be aware enough to take action if it starts to effect our mental health. Sometimes we can see that for ourselves and other times it needs someone else to help advise as we can be so immersed that we are too blind to see. A few years ago mine was work. I was running an IT site in SE England and I was obsessed with managing every small detail. I ended up working 70 hours a week to try to cover everything, plus I would lie awake for hours at night trying to work out how I was going to fix something of particular concern. When I moved to Scotland I changed role and resolved to do less hours, but it really took until my hubby got sick for me to learn not to sweat the small stuff because suddenly I was able to put things into perspective.

Very few pre fill joints and beads nowadays That’s why there is so much poor finishishing Two of us mix a bag fill all joints Then mix five bags to two coat everything takes an exstra ten minutes per gauge Half an hour per day for a perfect finish If you don’t pre fill it’s easy to exsposed the tape and go in and out of the tapered joints Also if it is something you are not familiar with It makes the job in hand far easier Hope this helps

I think it is to do with the unmeasurable effects of different noises. Quite often they seem irrational. There are certain noises I really hate, barking dogs, crying children and dot matrix printers spring to mind. But then I hate dogs, small children and really hated the women in accounts who ran the DMP. So probably nothing to do with the noise, just pure, healthy prejudice.

Warning! Do NOT buy a timer with a Service Interval feature as in the post by @Alexphd1 above. I made this mistake and bought the Si version, and it becomes a useless brick after a year and shuts down. You can only reset it with the very expensive service interval resetting tool, which costs a lot more than the programmer. You also need to reset it every year when it shuts the system down. The "Si" models are intended for rented properties where landlords have a responsibility to ensure boilers are annually serviced. Unless you intend to use a service engineer who has got the proper resetting tool and make sure that you always get the system serviced and the programmer reset, you will end up with the system just shutting down. I found this out the hard way - anyone want a free single channel Si programmer that's bricked?

Is there a bullet proof way to establish if a council applies or has enacted CIL? I cannot find a definitive statement on my district council's web site about the application of CIL. A phone call to them could result in a work experience teenager picking up the phone and giving false information which feels too random when possibly £4000 is at stake.

Having just completed hard landscaping, I've had to deal with a few poorly located chambers - two were partially covered by my path to the driveway and another was too close to the house. ICs can more or less go anywhere so do some thinking on where hard and soft surfaces will be, boundaries (fences, walls etc) and make sure your chambers are well clear of any interface. Can't really move them once they're in! Agree with Mike that IC covers in lawn are tricky - you can try and keep them low so a mower will go over them (paint green ) - turf tends not to do well on top of them.

You will need intermediate chambers as you can only go 11m (IIRC) between chambers so maybe thats what the architect was thinking as these chambers will have covers and perhaps you won't want them in some places, eg the middle of a lawn!

Love it!

No expert, but the established practice tends to be minimising long foul runs under your slab to enable maintenance, rodding etc. Both your architect and builder seem to be following this convention. I have a similar arrangement, basically a square footprint with fouls front and back, main sewer to front. The rear fouls exit the house and follow the house footprint with an IC at each turn. Felt like a bit of overkill but there was enough fall to make it work and wasn't that expensive in the grand scheme (also worked for us as we had a caravan at the rear of the site during the build that used that foul run also). I've had a few blockages since and have been glad that rodding the whole run is straight forward. N.B. best practice is also to have ICs every 8-9m as the rodding kits are typically 10m long. If you use Clarke style covers then they blend in very well with paving or other hard surfacing. You seem to have plenty of fall (1:40-1:80 is the recommended range) so no need to minimise the length of the run - what's your motivation?

It’s all worked out pretty well though. You’ve now got a (hopefully working) current model that should work great. I know you will still be thinking that it was hassle but I thought that you may end up with your money back and struggling to replace the item for the same ballpark figure. I didn’t think they would want the unit back because let’s face it you live in the back of beyond and it would have cost them to retrieve something that was ultimately worthless to them. Find out the price of the new one and that will cheer you up I’m sure. Probably the ultimate bargain.

Pretty sure @epsilonGreedy is in the same LA as me - East Lindsey District Council. I saw a Pdf dated 2017 where they on about CIL not being feasible at the moment due to low residual land values - they just using S106 at the minute. If you have an S106 liability it will say in your PP if I recall correctly.

I think the best approach is really to just fit as much PV as you can afford/have room for. I've never heard anyone complain that they have too much PV, and, providing you can afford it/have room for it there are no problems with having more than you need in summer, as that then gives you a bit more in winter. No need to switch anything on and off, the inverter does all that already, in effect, and will maximise the energy delivered from the amount of sun shining.

I don't know why the brick slips I used would have to go on a backing board. They are only stuck on with what looked like exterior tile adhesive. The only thing I can think of is possibly different expansion rates but then a flexible adhesive should sort that out.

Defo a very strict requirement for a specific brick finish. Some English bond as well which might rule out the backing sheet system used by @PeterStarck. You might be thinking of this thread where @jack explained frustrations encountered.

JSHarris thank you so much for your replies, this one is so pertinant. If only I coulod have a bit of your firnds' dignity & class.. What Im experiencing is bullying, minor mental type in the big scheme of things yes (tho not so minor if it affects my health on occasions?). The worst/ the pinnacle of it tho- racism & something that I feel connected to. What a magnificent chap your friend was- sheer dignity, strength & class. On this note I URGE everyone to watch my favourite film (I think should be on the school syllabus/ it is free on youtube)- FIRE IN BABYLON- my greatest film ever made &betterthanCitizenKanebecause: A) its about the bullied beating back SO magnificently, B) its about cricket, C) it has the grooviest soundtrack you'll ever hear ("Don't tell me I'm a blcak b'satrd.... because I'm not": Viv Richards saying this/ so dignified- like your friend). godamm bullies. I leant this film to mrX, that friendly we were, & after mrsX's vitriol, when I was out an hr later cooling off (demanding an apology of her, to mrX in his shop in town) she'd stuffed it back through my letterbox. zoot

Yes pre fill everything casings and beads It allows us to mix the finish quite thin The thininer each coat the less likely to have ripples or drying lines If there not there before troweling they won’t be there afterwards

You can add a little more cream in this weather

I have a Panasonic unit, 9kW 3-Phase. They do 9, 12 & 16kW in single and 3-phase options in most models.

We've only disabled the inbuilt immersion in the ASHP. We have two immersions on the unvented cylinder, and they are used with a PV diverter. The entire tank reaches 75+ deg C on many days during the sunnier half of the year. As for winter, after a lot of research, I concluded that our situation involves a low risk of Legionella: domestic situation with smallish-tank for the size of the house (= complete turnover of tank water every couple of days) no iron or steel components (= no sludge or rust for Legionella to live in) softened water (= reduced build-up of calcium deposits in which Legionella might live) a sealed system (gravity fed systems with open header tanks are a potential vector) occupants who are not at high risk (no elderly and infirm occupants, or regular visitors who might use showers). I therefore don't run a Legionella cycle. We do have one relatively long dead leg, which is the run to the guest room ensuite. The shower in that room is never used, and in theory that could be a problem, but a Legionella cycle at the hot water tank wouldn't really reduce that risk much. Within the next year or two I can see this bathroom being commandeered by one of the kids, which will remove this potential issue. Some units just have a code you input via the service menu. It's done that way because the Renewable Heat Incentive doesn't pay out for units with a cooling mode. The lockout is a way of getting around this. Personally I haven't bothered with cooling mode on mine. The main place we have issues with heat is upstairs, and there's no UFH there. A foot of snow sits on top of the unit and on the ground around it? Makes no operational difference as far as I can tell.

Honestly the more they see they upset you the more they will continue to do so, so do try to stay calm mostly if you can. The cat thing will pass but only if you don’t bite on it. Unless you have evidence that they are putting cat crap in your garden there is nothing that really can be done because cats are free to roam and crap wherever unfortunately. Better to direct your energy into getting your house sorted internally since that will be what makes your house nicer to live in and should improve the value. It’s easy to write this from here as I have great neighbours but I have had an issue with a neighbour in the past and it’s not fun I know so can sympathise.

Whoever you do go with get the email address of the sales rep. It's a lot easier to order the correct stuff when you are writing it down. How many times do you go to buy stuff, groceries clothes etc and forget what you really went for. It's also a good record to have so you can keep checking up on what you ordered, how much and when it was placed. And just because you said you would only use the chosen building merchants doesn't mean it's a pinky promise type deal. Always lift the phone and check just to make sure your getting the best deal and if not speak up and say how come you are charging me £9 per length of 100mm pipe but X building merchants can do it for £8 per length. It's all part of the game you have to play and in order to keep the build in budget. Its a game you need to play well and be as cheeky as you can, if you don't ask you don't get.

Eek. The £2000 for the warranty is money that could fund a swanky bathroom or MVHR, even so this is not the prime concern. I was talking to another self builder the other day who was stung for £10K additional build costs when the building control inspector and warranty inspector had a dispute about how to build the house properly, poor guy was in the middle of this professional crossfire. And finally there will be additional set up costs for even a small mortgage. Building a house is hard enough without of posse of yapping middle class clipboard huggers steeling one's build budget.

Thats good to hear as ours is 4Kw and is a bit of a punt regarding being adequate ?( it was cheap on Ebay).

That sounds like a massive heating requirement to me, way, way more than I think is realistic, even for a house that is only built to "just" comply with building regs. Our house very worst case (house empty, no appliances etc running, maintained at 21 deg C) only needs 1.6 kW to maintain that internal temperature when it's -10 deg C outside. In reality, with two occupants plus the odd appliance, PC etc running, it rarely, if ever, needs as much as 1 kW of heating. Most of the time in winter it only needs a few hundred watts, if that, and we often have winter days when the heating doesn't come on at all. To specify the requirement, you first need to define the heat loss, for the worst likely case. There are several ways to do this, but I wrote a fairly simple spreadsheet that works OK, although it was only intended to be a "what if?" tool, to allow the quick comparison of changing design elements, when looking at the cost/complexity/benefit. The spreadsheet is here, if you want to play around with it: http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Fabric-and-ventilation-heat-loss-calculator-Master.xls

Miss read that at first and lost the 'on'. Then though it is not your arms hurting you need to worry about. Oh you Welsh boys make me smile sometimes.

http://cil.quod.com/ Can't confirm it's up to date but it is certainly right for Barnsley

Good spot, I missed that. The si should be supplied deactivated but the danfoss can be reset over the phone with a code but only for a gas safe engineer. Still safer without the si part.

I could watch skilled trades working all day. Beats actually doing anything myself! You can see why plasterers either have amazing shoulders or serious shoulder problems. My shoulders are aching just watching him do three minutes on the ceiling.

Ours is tucked around the back of the house, about a 18" from the rear wall, and about 4 ft from the back door. The area is very quiet, no traffic noise and really just wildlife (and the sound of the occasional mower). It's inaudible from the back door, and there's no way of knowing from inside the house as to whether it's running or not, other than by looking at the command unit on the wall. It can't be heard in the garden, or by the neighbours, either.

Depending on your soil type heavy rain and make the sides fall in on open trenches. You want them left open for the least amount of time you can. As for all the items you need on your list take your self on a nice wee drive around all the building merchants in your area and go and ask for the manager and explain your doing a self build and what kind of discount is he able to give to you if you buy the majority of the what you need from him. Be open and honest and say your also going round the others in your area and will pick whoever will do the best deal. Also don't forget as they all want your money they will be rolling out the red carpet so don't be taking how they treat you then as an indicator on how things will go in the future.

Don't tell me you bought the one Jeremy was selling?

Well. After a year of negotiating on a plot and trying to meet the many challenges it presented, we have, at the eleventh hour, reconsidered. No plot purchase, no build. We'll still be selling up and downsizing, but no fixed plans after that. There might yet be a future project, but there's nothing in mind at the moment. Thanks for all your support and advice. Might still drop by on occasions, meanwhile... Au revoir Dee

Have you got a cupboard etc somewhere else in the house where you can have a practice and get your technique in the groove? Even a damaged sheet of old plasterboard temporarily tacked to a garage wall?

The curse of the auto-correct.

The multi finish isn't a problem if you are skimming over it, the cracking you are reading about is probably where people have used the tape and fill method only. My concern was how flat is your wall now? Simply as multi won't sand as well as joint cement. You also need to make sure all areas have the same prep. What you don't want is patches of wall here and there going off at different rates

I might be giving off procrastination vibes so timely advice. Things are happening behind the scenes: The foundation digger man is booked. Concrete ordered dig + 2 days. Got an even lower price on the concrete because wise old owl builder says the concrete wagon will have no problem on my now very firm green field hence no need for pumpable stuff. Concrete supplier is going to pop around and double check ground condition. Wise old owl semi retired builder is loaning me his £600 laser for the setting out levels levels. Meeting building control inspector on site this Thursday. Now I have time to speculate what happens above dpc.

He has horsey neighbours who will have power tools (aka electric clippers) for such things so he can go with a bag and collect the hair. Not much clipping going on this time of year though. About another 4 months to go before that will start up again . I think we may want to see the plastering finished before then .

We will have to judge the order beer and wine we’re consumed once we have photos of the plastering ....

I fully second this. The house that we're building now is very different to the initial concept, and the change to the heating and hot water systems are probably the most radical. When I first looked at BH, before we had bought our plot, I hadn't a clue about a lot of the stuff going into our house, or how the house is being built. I'm a couple of years older and wiser now - wise enough to realise that there's even more stuff about which I know somewhere between zero and absolutely nothing.

Hi Caroline, I have only one bit of advice as your head is probably exploding. This forum has a habit of doing that - you think you've made a decision (just one!) and then you come on here and start reading and everything changes. Keep an open mind ( even to things that you had previously ruled out) and you may end up with a much better house that you started with in your head, I know I have. Good luck!

Have a read of @dogmans recent post (we used the same company and were very pleased with them, so I'm a bit biased!):

As I understand it, most oak frame/SIPs combinations now have the oak frame inside and the panels wrapped around the outside of it to avoid cold bridging through the oak. The thing is, SIPs are themselves a structural option, which makes the oak frame largely redundant. If you do follow this route, then I would suggest thinking exactly where in the house you actually want to be able to see the oak - it may for instance be possible to work some oak timbers into the structure of a timber-framed building without needing an entire oak frame, saving £££££. More importantly, if the SIPs are on the outside then the only real limitation on thickness is the internal and external dimensions of the building. That means any insulation level up to Passivhaus is possible with a full structural timber frame - see https://www.oakwrights.co.uk/siteI/cfbc0416c099a39a8bd816131025b2d8/press/39935ffd63b49558c7873a6fea6f430e.pdf - but the best way of doing it may not necessarily be with SIPs (the couple in that example didn't use them, for instance). If I'm understanding things correctly, the UK building regulations at the moment should limit consumption to about 50 kWh/m2/year for space heating - about 9,000 kWh/year for your proposed buildings. For comparison Passivhaus is defined at 15 KWh/m2/year with a rather more rigorous modelling system to back it up - about a 70% saving over building regulations even before you start looking at heat pumps. By the time the heat demand gets that low even electric resistance heating (which is really cheap to install) is economical to run. Don't feel forced to go down the heat pump route - I happen to think it's a pretty good one, but the better insulated your house the better it works. If you're planning on only meeting the minimum PP target, then I would think seriously about alternatives like LPG or Oil: they're well understood, cheap to install and deal well with increasing the output temperature a bit because say your radiators were a bit too small. Personally I think heat pumps are the best solution for a low-energy house, which is why I want to go down that route, but don't make the assumption that they're the best option for every house. Good performance is critically dependent on them supplying heat at a low temperature - the worse the insulation, the harder this is to actually achieve. Assuming total annual consumption is about 14 MWh (plug loads, hot water, etc.) then you need about 1.5 MWh/year from PV to meet the PP specification. As a rule of thumb, a 1kW panel facing south in the UK will give about 1 MWh/year of generation - so you could meet it with a 6 x 250W panel system costing maybe £2k for a ground-mount system. That's almost certainly the cheapest way to meet the target, and will be why the PP suggested it. I would suggest taking a step back and thinking through (in order): What your energy target is going to be - the minimum to meet PP, minimum cost to live in afterwards, or something else. This will define the insulation levels in the structure, which will make clear what else is practicable. If you want to have a play with that, @JSHarris has written a pretty decent heat loss calculator at http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Fabric-and-ventilation-heat-loss-calculator-Master.xls When you know this, work out how you want to deliver the heat - radiators, underfloor heating, warm air, something else? Underfloor will work with just about anything, but warm air and radiators don't play well with heat pumps. Then you can do a meaningful trade-off between ASHP, GSHP, electric resistance, LPG, etc. - knowing the annual heat consumption and peak heating load is critical here because it changes the design of a heat pump system radically, while a traditional boiler system really doesn't change a lot. If you want building regs minimum and radiators, then you should probably look at LPG or oil - you need quite a bit of heat delivered at a high temperature. Building regs minimum plus underfloor might well be the sweet spot for a GSHP as demand will be high enough for the COP gain to be worthwhile. It's worth running some calculations on this though - the SCOP figures published by the manufacturers should be good enough for this, divide heat load by SCOP to give electrical consumption and work out if it ever pays back over an ASHP. If you want Passivhaus or close to it - particularly with underfloor heating - then you should probably look at an ASHP like @jack as the heat load will be so small that there is no point to a GSHP. Resistance heating is feasible at this point, however, and gives you low installation cost with bombproof reliability: at 15 kWh/m2/year and 15p/kWh then your heating bill for a 180m2 house is only going to be £400. @TerryE has gone down this route and it has worked very well for him. When you've done all that, then is the time to think about renewables (PV, realistically) - more insulation or underfloor heating is an utter nightmare to add by retrofitting, while a ground-mount PV system is incredibly easy. Make sure you've got the things that are locked in done early, and worry about the rest later.

I can vouch for the fact that an electric fence wire, set about 8" above ground level, and energised by an old motorcycle ignition coil, run from a 12V power supply and timing relay, will VERY effectively "dissuade" cats. After the incident with the sprinkler and the postman, SWMBO was not impressed with the sprinkler system, so I rigged up a bare copper wire, fitted to short lengths of plastic conduit as stakes, around the edge of the drive. The most impressive thing about this cat deterrent was that it gave satisfying feedback. The first time the tom cat from next door tried to take his early morning dump on our drive after I'd fitted it, we were both woken by a very loud "yowl", presumably as his nose touched the wire at around 15,000 volts.

"All" is open to debate. Savings should get us to a habitable shell of a house. After that I will have to work to finish off each room. I am on the cusp of the generation for whom retirement is a vague distant concept that will never arrive.