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@Jenjen I've built 6 houses over the last 20 years and have financed them in both of the ways you're thinking about. I would say both have pros and cons. Stay in your current house - potentially limited in what you can borrow on existing terms (if the lender allows it at all), you may also be restricted in what potential lenders will allow in terms of a new self build mortgage i.e. looking at your total outlays and affordability - gone are the days when you could borrow 12 times your earnings (as I did at one point before it all went bang). You also have to think about what happens if you cannot sell your house or get what you hope for - this can be very stressful. Plus side is you get to live in your own comfortable home through the build. Sell up prior to building - your fortunate in that you have the cash to buy the plot, so worst case could secure that, get all your ducks in a row whilst selling your house. Once the house is away, you fund the build through the equity released and new mortgage route. Positive are you know where you are finance wise, don't have the stress of an unsold house hanging over you, and should comfortably be able to borrow given you own the plot and have a chunk of cash. Downside is you end up in temporary accommodation ranging from a static caravan to a luxury pad at £000's a month. What level of discomfort you are prepared to put up with is a decision you have to think about. Living in grotty accommodation isn't fun... Best advice I can give is think about what compromises to your current lifestyle you are willing to make, how much stress would you be comfortable with, and think carefully about how much you want to spend - do you for example really need to build a 5 bedroom 4 bathroom mansion if its just the two of you. Maximising value doesn't always mean building the biggest house you can.

Just got another 4 bags of adhesive (£11/20kg), can of primer and... Naughty, naughty, very naughty!

Assuming the concrete oversite was laid properly, i.e on compacted sub base etc. then the additional weight will not be an issue, the additional weight will be nothing over that footprint. I would be looking very carefully at the existing concrete, you want to look for cracking, separation, sinking etc. if any of these exist then you should not start to add more weight without investigation works or taking precautions. So here are your options: If the oversite concrete looks undisturbed and in good condition then I would be happy to pour over site, don't let the new concrete touch the existing wall, create a expansion gap with thin (10mm) EPS or dense foam (you can buy rolls specifically for this) this will stop the new concrete potentially causing damage to the walls. I don't know what your current oversite has in terms of a DPC but if it is already sealed then you don't need to add any more, simply roughing up the old concrete surface, cleaning it, removing all dust will then give your new concrete something to bond to, alternatively you can use an agent to ensure good bonding. Then pour to required FFL. If there is no DPC (but what is stopping damp coming up into the floor area now anyway?) then I would be putting a DPC in much like you would when putting it over a new site ready for the dwarf walls to be flooded, again use a EPS or foam around the edges to minimise contact with the wall. Then pour. If the oversite concrete is showing signs of cracking, sinking etc. then I would cut out 350mm squares of the existing concrete every 1200-1500mm, and dig down till you reach compacted hardcore or if none, soil, repack properly, and pour strong piers with re-bar, your new concrete will then essentially sit on these piers, go for about a C35 and this concrete will then be self supporting on your new piers. You can do this pour all in one and I would strongly advise just getting the concrete delivered rather than mixing by yourself.

Original poster (OP) here. Wow, thank you all for your contributions! I have read through them twice. The consensus is clear: go for height. And I am inspired to try and do something imaginative with the ceiling/roof, not just a flat-roofed box.

It hasn't ever done so in our case, and I've had floor cooling set up and working for a couple of years now. Although the flow into the UFH is typically around 10 to 12 deg C, the floor surface has never yet dropped below 18 deg C, and to get condensation on the floor surface at 18 deg C with an air temperature of 22 deg C would need a relative humidity of a bit over 78%. Currently the house RH is sitting at 44%, so way out of the condensation risk zone. To get condensation on the floor with a 22 deg C air temperature and 44% RH would mean cooling the floor surface to just over 9 deg C. I have found that the UFH manifold sometimes gets some condensation on it, so have rigged up a plastic drip tray underneath is. So far I've never seen any water actually drip into this though, so assume that it evaporates away.

My underfloor cooling is working a charm - maybe that's why I'm so unusually relaxed!

I’m one of those DIY insulated raft installers, like @Alexphd1, I got a local guy in to help pour the concrete. This is is what I’m doing this morning, tying the steel work ready for the next concrete pour.

A self build mortgage is a drawdown so no one is borrowing that sort of money from the outset. You still need to be able to draw down the final payment to finish the house. So the OP is just asking a straightforward exploratory question. That comes across to me in the first post even though they’ve had to repeat it now for some folk. And it’s very easy to quote figures when you’ve only dug the foundations. People who have completed builds with real experiences like @Christine Walker who has 2 builds under her belt and embarking on a third, clearly has a wise head on her shoulders and is in Scotland to boot is where I would look to for advice.

To put this in context and perhaps I could have been clearer in the original post but before we do anything we will have as much as humanly possible researched and costed. The financing route is one strand of about 20 things I am currently looking into and researching. I have meetings set up with architects this week to get initial advice and this will hopefully inform some of the questions around size/costings and eventual market value. All of which will be known (to the extent possible) before we do (or don’t) embark on this journey.

I don't think anyone said price literally doesn't matter if it's "your forever house". What was said is that your planned length of ownership will have an impact on how careful you need to be with the finances. I don't think that's an unreasonable position as long as it isn't taken to extremes. If you aren't stretched and you expect to be there for 20 years, you genuinely can spend more than if you hope to sell in a few years and trade up (or move for schools, or retire, or whatever). I agree with the sentiment, but I don't agree that a lack of consensus about one complex issue involves us falling short of this general goal. I think your comments about recklessness etc have been useful counterpoints to the other views that have been expressed (and you have to admit there have been a decent variety). Those views, and the associated debate, are the only sort of "useful advice" that the forum can provide on a topic as complex and subjective as this. Perhaps this topic has reached a natural pause until the original poster has had a chance to digest and come back with any other comments or questions.

The point is simple. Given the the figures quoted, it looks like based on the report (I assume you’re quoting headline and haven’t paid the £750 for the detail) that the median self builder in their report is making 8% equity at the end. That’s an incredibly low buffer and very tight on the current market where pricing on materials is constantly moving. The “forever house” scenario is nothing to do with a boomer generation - there are a number of builders on this forum who are doing just that with young families, who are looking to play the long game on the potential that house prices will rise - even at 2-3% - so it is a long term investment. My advice - not that of the forum - is to buy wisely on a plot and not be drawn to a “perfect location” and work with the plot. I have seen a number of instances where “perfect plots” have turned into nightmares where new housing estates have been built in front of “countryside views” that added the premium to the plot price. In pure accounting terms, your fixed pricing is invariably the plot, the variable pricing is the build. Reducing the fixed price as much as possible gives the most flexibility in financing the overall project and that is key to being able to weather any fluctuations however they are caused. If you have dumped >50% of the budget into the plot then the fluctuation in variable costs is going to be harder to manage.

I think it looks great though! Very interesting. Ours is power floated too and we have quite a number of small holes and rough areas, We are planning on filling them in with a either a coloured resin or metal to make a feature of them. Mind you, our whole house has a very rough/industrial aesthetic to it, so it might not be your thing. I also hate terrazzo, far too shiny. I don't do shiny things as they tend to need polishing, which I also don't do! I will see if I can find a pic of the kind of thing I mean. Fascinating, apparently there is a whole japanese art dedicated to repairing broken pottery using a similar technique. Gorgeous. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/val-jon-farris/from-broken-to-beautiful-_b_5903994.html

Hi all, I don't know if any of you read Passive House Plus magazine, but I have found it a useful source of information and inspiration. They are Ireland based, but put out a UK version of the magazine. It is probably more geared at Architects and the like and so can be a bit technical, but I like to see which way the wind is blowing and learn about new ideas early, even if I don't always completely understand them! Anyway, they have just launched a new trade directory online which I thought might interest some. It has only just gone live, so hopefully will grow a bit in future. https://passivehouseplus.ie/directory?featured=0&geolocation=0&radius=100&resetSearch=1 If anyone is interested in seeing what the magazine has to offer without subscribing then they will send you two free copies if you give them your details: https://passivehouseplus.ie/enquiries

For various reasons (I can go into details on a separate thread if anyone is interested) my wife and I had to postpone/put on hold our self build and instead moved house at the end of last year. I’m not convinced the heating setup in this new house is as optimised as it should/can be so am looking for some pointers. I know you guys like details, so here’s what my investigations have found. Apologies if this is too much ? The house was originally build around 15 years ago – it is 1.5 floors with 2 upstairs dormers into the roofspace - and then extended 9 years ago. The extension used the full house height to add a 4 meter high open plan area and new master bedroom suite (again, into the roofspace). So the current downstairs setup is an open plan kitchen-dining-living area, with the double height dining-living area and a double height master bedroom/en-suite. Downstairs also has a separate family room, a small study, and another downstairs bedroom, also en-suite, but this bathroom is a weird Jack-and-Jill type setup where it also doubles as the downstairs public bathroom. Upstairs has two bedrooms, one en-suite and there is also another public bathroom. The downstairs has UFH throughout and is tiled. Upstairs has 3 radiators with TRVs (one in each bedroom, one in top hall) and there is a towel rail with valve in each of the bathrooms. The stairs and top hall are carpeted. Both bedrooms have laminate flooring. Both upstairs bathrooms have tiled flooring. As well as the 4 showers, we have one bath - a monster in size but only used approximately once a month. I don’t know the makeup of the insulation of the house walls or the UFH. The original house was developer built, one of 3, so I suspect it’ll have passed the reg’s (of the day) but little more. The extension was done by a local builder. We’ve not been in long enough to really understand the heating needs of the house yet - we had a mild winter, then that mad snow in March, so I haven’t yet got a handle on how good or bad it might be. We do have 3 south facing Velux windows (on the sloping part of the roof) and lots of North facing glazing to the open plan living area, another 3 Velux windows to our master bedroom and 1 to the master en-suite, and we do get quite a bit of solar gain in that space. The boiler is situated in cupboard by the front door and is a mains gas powered Bosch Greenstar 42CDi Classic. The 8 port manifold is around 10 feet away in a cupboard further into the house and was fitted by NuHeat. It serves the 4 downstairs zones (living area, master en-suite, second bedroom en-suite/bathroom/study and family room), each with its own thermostat (Danfoss stats with wireless comms to the two Danfoss receivers fitted above the manifold). As far as I can ascertain, the upstairs radiators/towel rails are fed directly from the boiler but there is no upstairs stat! This means that, unless I am missing something (I can’t follow all the pipework), the upstairs rads can only work when at least one of the UFH zones is calling for heat! There is no Thermal Store (is that @Nickfromwales screams I can hear....) and no easy place to add one. There are no PV panels and no plan to add any. From a usability perspective, just me and my wife (and 2 cats) live here for the majority of the year, so the upstairs is pretty much shut off unless we need to get to storage or our daughter is home from university (not regularly). We do have family visiting 2-3 times a year in which case typically have a full house (we have 5 staying with us at present, 3 adults and 2 teenagers) so all 4 bedrooms are in use. Based on my reading of the threads here’s here, and taking into account the advice posted on ensuring condensing/modulation/reduced short cycling etc, this is what I’ve done with the setup: I’ve put the boiler DHW setting at the E setting (economy, approx. 50C according to the manual) I’ve put the boiler CH setting at around 3.5 (approx. 55C according to the manual) Reduced the manifold blending value to 40C (it only goes down as far as 35C and the UFH has not actually been on since I did this so this is a placeholder for future experimentation once the it starts to get colder –typically September in Scotland ?) Put the TRVs for the 3 upstairs rads to 15C and turned off the two towel rails, I’ll change this as we come into winter if we have people to stay or if it starts to get cold in this part of the house – it has been overheating in the summer unless we open upstairs windows. I topped up the boiler pressure which had dropped to 0.5bar (the manifold blending valve has a very slight leak) Some questions: Does the above setup seem a reasonable starting point for me to experiment with further as it starts getting colder? Am I missing anything? In particular, could there be a way the upstairs rads call for heat without a stat when all the UFH zones are at their respective setpoints? Is there an issue with all my upstairs rads having TRV/values – did I read that there should be somewhere for the heat to flow if these are all off? Could there be something in the pipework that I’m not seeing that is achieving this? Any other advice on what other optimisations I could make? To those that made it this far, thanks for reading. (I’m going to try get some manifold pics off my phone and will post them next)

Another m2 'ish done as per the Welsh Wizard's expicit instruction! I actually got brave tonight and LIFTED 3 tiles I felt were low. More muck and re-levelled. It's not the best but it's the best bit yet! Had to trim 3 tiles that were tight when I dry fitted them tbh. Out the door tomorrow hopefully!

I'm sure we'll get there. Directly under the wires, there was already a concrete hard standing for some sheds that disintegrated over the last couple of years. Also, the wires continue over our field and an access track for the farm next door. The farm workers regularly go scooting along the track in a JCB with loads of animal feed in the raised up bucket and I haven't seen any crispy farmers lying around, so we should be able to work something out.

Sparkle is good ???

I wouldn’t bother with non slip adhesive A 50 x 10 ml planed batton will be much better I have an account at CTD and find I have to beat them down on the price of adhesives and tiles There showroom tile prices should be 40% less They usually offer 20% but will negotiate if they think you will come back if you want to open an account and get almost trade prices Tile giant are pretty good Carry pretty much the same range as Topps But much cheaper

Another £100 down the tubes. ? Give me strength. Use the laser you've already bought !

It was a while ago so my recollection may be hazy but I don't think I was actually asked what I wanted the remortgage money for TBH. I think I said I was moving house if I said anything at all. I was offered 75% LTV back in 2009 but then the banks all went pop and borrowing became much harder. The only reason I remortgaged was because I didn't sell my house in time (due to the housing market having tanked). Ideally I would have sold well in advance of the money being needed. Thankfully the house sold a few months later but it would have been a complete PITA to have to keep paying a mortgage on a house we couldn't even live in due to it being 400 miles from where the plot was. Personally my preference would be to sell the old house, and be sure of having money in the bank before embarking on a self build, but that's just my personal preference. Can you even get a remortgage AND a self build mortgage at pretty much the same time?

Agree totally with @Stones, This build and the last one we stayed in a caravan mainly because we wanted to know what cash we had to play with and also self building is stressful enough without worrying about whether or not your house is going to sell at the end of it but it definitely depends on how much you can rough it, my daughter and her husband would love to self build but my daughter could never live like this

This is what the MBC guys used to compact the hardcore for my foundation. On the right, in case you're blinded by the rubble.

We were initially going for standing seam but have switched to either corrugated or box profile on grounds of cost. SS is much cheaper abroad I can't understand why it isn't available more readily in the UK! One of the box profiles I've seen has fairly wide flat sections compared to most between the ridges and might look pretty similar to a standing seam? Most are spaced around 120-150mm and this one is 270mm so quite a lot more.

That won't be an issue with us as the garage door faces north, so I don't expect it to bake in the summer. But I don't expect much from a thin bit of insulation in such a door.

This will take some meter readings to get your real life costs and work out which is cheaper. Gas (assume gas boiler?) is far more efficient for heating than electric. Let's say the boiler is using a unit of gas per heating cycle at 3-4p and the immersion heater takes maybe an hour at 3kW at 12p an hour then you need to work out how often does the immersion come on i.e. would 1 hour at 3kW (36p lets say) heat you enough water for the average day? Or would it be better to blast the boiler a couple of times a day but it only costs a combined 24p? So how do you do this real life check. I would take both meter readings at say midnight tonight and again at midnight tomorrow using the gas boiler, then kill the boiler and switch to immersion and do a 24hr period meter read again - I would try and do it on a standard weekday and try and keep costs similar - so for example cooking a full roast with the oven on for 4 hours on one of the nights is going to give you a false reading. I don't know what your household is like and how many of you there are but another option is to wait until you can more or less control all the variables and try and replicate similar loads on the electric in particular each night. As for gas it's easy, you could probably do a day with only hot water and don't use gas for anything else so you know your gas consumption is only hot water. Another option is to take both readings today with gas boiler, and then take the readings again same time in 1 week and then switch to electric and then do another weeks readings - a weeks view would probably be more accurate and would account for variations in cooking habits etc. Another thing to bear in mind is that boilers like to be used, leaving a boiler off all summer can also lead to issues. I cycled my boiler last week for 10 mins just to get a flow through the system and actuate all the valves etc. We have a combi-boiler so the boiler is on demand and is in use everyday anyway but the CH circuits are not. I don't actually understand why anyone would install anything but a combi setup. The idea of stored hot water in this day and age seems madness.

I like the feel of option 2. Sorry - did not have time to read the whole thread except for Zen Jack and his moderately cold feet. But there is an option 3 below. My comments are: 1 - This is a high risk time, with Brexit and so on, and unpredictable markets, and in your area taxes recently changed to slant against you should you sell. In my view that means bigger contingency up front and leave some of your final spec items a little less defined, then you can have lollipops if you haven't spent the lollipop money on known or unknown unknowns. I would suggest perhaps a 20% contingency, and be aware of possible compromises that you can make should it be necessary. 2 - The one thing to include a lot of in your budget is time, whether elapsed or spent. You sound to be doing your due diligence, which is good. The thing is the old insight that things become an order of magnitude to fix each time you go one stage further into your project. So make your mistakes on paper, by learning enough up front to have a good enough idea of what you want. Then you don't need to keep changing it. 3 - On the finances I might try and avoid a self-build mortgage altogether. 5.5% for 3 years on 200k is an extra 15-20k interest over a normal mortgage. I would max out your current one to buy the plot if you are happy, because the trend in interest rates is a slow up, then see if you can get to habitable stage in the new one out of savings to get a normal mortgage on *that*, then work from that. There are tradeoffs there vs what to include in VAT reclaim, costs-benefits of staying renting or selling your current one, cost of the new one, and so on. Run the numbers for you. 4 - WRT to the plot, you need to work out the things you don't know about the plot that could impact you later - eg ground conditions, expensive services (if there are still some to get), planning conditions that will be imposed, ologists, and so on. That is about risk management, but it is also about the way you may need to negotiate your deal. Given that you have planning but will want to change it, make sure eg that your seller will not object to the kind of thing you want if they live close by. I assume you have had a chat about your ideas with the Planner. Ferdinand

Ardex is good stuff - price isn’t bad too

The regs are different in Wales. For example they require sprinklers to meet Part B. Not sure about foundations though.

It can if you run it too cold, yes. I only run 15 deg C water through the circuits, and the floor temp doesn't drop below about (I'm estimating) 18-20 deg C, so no risk of condensation. There isn't even a haze of condensation on the metal UFH manifold, so I think the floor is safe.

Good points newhome. I'm sort of used to filling/ sanding albeit on the woodwork front.. so I've some knowledge about how 'perfect' a finish is likely needed prior to painting. Saves £alot & prob not a major headache. Good practice too for the upstairs BIG job I'll have to tackle after the winter. Its all about doing w'out pro's so far.. so ideal if I can do all the job.

Ok good got the tapered edge PB coming thurs, instead of the std PB. Cheaper at Jewsons in fact/ stocked. Easier than I thought that! Cheers zoot

@jack good idea. But the neighbour/vendor is particularly concerned about light pollution. They have a raised patio at the house end of the garden, directly looking towards my plot and, despite it being in the middle of the city, the site is pleasingly dark at night. Thus any window directly pointing at them is to be avoided. Very good point. The roof lights need to be well designed to be a benefit and not a curse. I hope I am up to it.

I put it down to the hot weather.

My property has a single extension that was built in the 1970's and the walls were constructed using 140mm light weight blocks with polystyrene insulation in between batons, covered with plasterboard and externally rendered. In an ideal world, I'd have the whole thing re-built to today's standards but for various reasons (cost being the main one), I can't do this. From an insulation point of view, the building is fine but I'd like to raise the concrete floor. At the moment, there is a wooden floor floating on wooden joists that were laid directly onto the concrete base. For years this has survived but as you can imagine, it's noisy to walk on and 'feels' cheap. I would like to remove the wooden joists (they are floating) and raise the concrete floor (about 70-80mm) so that I can lay some ceramic tiles. Would this be better done in concrete with a final top screed layer or is it better screeded that thick? A big concern of mine is the additional weight the aggregates will add to the base and the surrounding foundations. Should I be concerned about this? Having had a peek at the foundations around the extension by digging deep down, they do go down further than 800mm and appear to be constructed with concrete slabs at the base and block-work further up. The internal floor area is approximately 5.1 x 2.8m. Any advice would be welcome.

@Triassic That picture looks very similar to our next build. 3 sided icf basement with bigger raft footprint area on 1st floor.

I think it's absolutely impossible to give any specifics about the ratio of plot cost to finished home cost, given the absolutely massive disparity in one-off plot costs across the UK and NI. In many areas it's often as cheap to buy a house and demolish it, just to get a plot, as it is to buy a building plot. That's not untypical around here, where plots under around £120k just don't exist (and at that price they will probably be a tiny infill closely packed between other houses). Many around here end up paying between £150k and £200k for a pretty average plot - that's just the reality of being in an area that's within the London commuter belt. The flip side is that in some places you can buy a really nice plot for between £50k and £100k, if you don't mind being in a more remote area. Likewise, the "rule of thirds" gets blown out of the water in some areas. Developers around here work on a margin of between 8% and 10% profit, well over 1/3rd of their cost being the plot. Other areas I know are different, and developers can still make substantially more, in % terms, per house, but less overall because the sale prices are lower. We looked at several areas when plot hunting, and found very substantial local price differences, often over a relatively short distance. For example, plots on the Bristol to Gloucester side of the Severn were generally a great deal more expensive than those on the other side of the Severn - it wasn't unusual to see a like-for-like differential of well over 50% between one side of the river and the other. Likewise Cornwall has some really daft plot prices, higher even than here in West Wiltshire, and when we were looking around down there we concluded that the cheapest way to buy a plot was to buy a house and demolish it - at a guess we'd have paid nearly double for a plot that was similar to ours. Each of us can argue a point from our own experience and location, but none can really offer a solid formula for the relative price of the plot, the house construction etc as there are just far too many regional variations, without taking into account the many other variables that impact on build cost.

Wade through this from the beginning, enjoy! https://flic.kr/s/aHsk23FYzd

I think it all depends also on how long you intend to keep the house, when we built our first house we did it for around £60k, after keeping it for 14 years we sold for £235k, at the time we had looked at buying instead of building and for the £60k we would have bought a much smaller house which would have doubled its value in the 14 years, I know this for certain as the one we’d looked at sold recently for £130k.We then went on to use the profit plus £40k to build another which We kept for 8 years, it certainly didn’t make us as much profited the previous one but that was down to a property beside us which had been used as a general dumping ground by the owner (purposely) as we didn’t get on . We did make maybe 20k . The place we bought was tiny in comparison and took most of our money however it had land which we were able to obtain pp on and we hope to finish this build for the price of the small property and it’s 3 times the size, so if you buy your products carefully it can be done, of course getting the land cheap has helped

The OP is exploring it as an idea and people are suggesting a few ideas as to what to do to see whether it is financially viable. It’s clearly their first look at it, nothing is set in stone and there will be a lot of thought going into whether this might be something they want to do. Presumably there will be further posts if they move to the next stage in the decision process and people here can provide more specific advice when plans are known. They are out meeting architects to see how much building a house might cost, not signing on the dotted line. And you’ve read it wrong anyway. The OP is not mortgage free, they even mention their current mortgage in the OP! I had no mortgage and a wedge of cash in the bank when I started my self build. Would you therefore have told me to run for the hills? On what basis? I have finished my build and still have no mortgage. And I’m sure @PeterW will be delighted to be called a retiree ?. I’m not a retiree either but can still see the benefit of building the house you want (if you can afford to) vs the house someone thinks you should have. But again it comes down to personal choice. Not everyone wants to build a house for the cheapest price they can. It’s a personal decision that only the OP can make.

The only way you'd be able to do that would be if you made stilts to support the second row of tiles as you cant fit a batten with screws unless you screw through the tanking. Also, you may well find that the batten sticks to the tanking and when you remove the battens you'll take a section of tanking with it. As its you were talking about, lets devise a completely long-winded, new, and ingenious method.................. For the wet area and pocket shelves I take it youve worked the pocket cuts so the wall tile is a factory edge against the bottom tile trim leading onto the 3o sloped shelf? Cant grumble, a man after my own heart. So, you cant ( dont want to ) screw through the tanking to fix a batten. How about laying 3 tiles on the floor with the spacers in to get your measurement from the the top factory edge to the bottom factory edge ( or whatever number of tiles gets you to the first grout line etc ), then transfer that to the wall and add 2mm height for the flag of the tile trim, ( go balls out and add 3mm if I were you, as you can just add a bit more adhesive to the 3o tile whereas you cant take it off ). Then get a piece of plasterboard 300mm x ( X ) mm and lay it lengthways on the floor, starting at the 45o wall and running back towards the WC. Get a block and mark the scribe for the fall into the tray. Get that spot on ( like you need telling ) and then, once happy, fire up the laser set at distance X derived from laying the tiles and spacers out. Cut the PB 3mm shy of what you want so if youve accidentally overshot you dont have to pull it all down and re-cut the PB. If you have a deficit in height then its easy you just pack spacers out with stiff cardboard ( cardboard form an empty screw box cut into 1" strips does great, but you could get NASA to laser cut you those out of Unobtanium if you wish ). Once happy that the PB is "in the zone" you then wedge that against the wall ( batten and some deadman studs off the opposite wall? Dont forget to cover the ends with a plastic bag so they dont take to the tanking ), and then you can start tiling up off the PB. STICK TO THE SLOW SET ADHESIVE AS THESE WILL NEED TWEAKING. Use 3 spacers per tile so there is no risk of the weight of the ascending courses pushing the spacers into the PB. Tile 4 tiles wide and go up to meet the pocket shelf. As you complete each horizontal course lay a 1200mm level across to see what needs tweaking to horizontal. It won't be perfect because your off a scribed PB so you really do need to check each course and adjust as your going. VERY IMPORTANT TO GET THE FIRST COURSE OFF THE PB PERFECT ! Once at the shelf reveal, chuck the CliveMaster2000 3o benchsetter against the tile and check with an off cut that you have sufficient clearance ( your tiles are high enough ) and repeat.

We did our garage with trestles not scaff. Its a flat roof. It wasnt a problem. Its a detached garage. We didnt have MBC do the garage though we built that in block and brick. Good luck.

Grey grout! ?

That's pretty good. Mine cost me £1200 9 years ago. Some people have had quotes more than 10 x that amount. Mostly because the nearby supply has been at capacity so they need to pay for new provision to be made. So that is what to get them to confirm; that there is spare capacity within the existing infrastructure to allow your connection. The minute you have to pay for a new provision the costs skyrocket. This site is very good. There is a huge amount of information here already to look up and digest, and there are people here who can help with your own specific questions in pretty much every area of self building. Just keep asking (with a post in the appropriate forum ...) as this may well help you avoid expensive mistakes or give you options to think about that you may not have considered before. It's very easy to make a mistake, get taken for a ride, or simply be faced with not knowing what to do next and this forum can help with pretty much everything.

We very much see it as a forever home so as long as we don’t end up paying more than it’s eventual value we will be happy to essentially break even. The plot is fully serviced as 2 other houses have recently been built next to it, I checked eight electricity company and was quoted an estimate of £2k for connection fees. I’ll look into the architect technician option too, thanks for the heads up! So many small details make such a huge difference. It’s so overwhelming when you have zero experience of it all. I feel this site is going to be a god send if we end up going down this route!

A well documented record of what is photographed above. Hopefully the issue causing you concern will blow over once you talk to the guys in the morning. The others above have suggested alternatives and I'm sure the builders will work off trestles. I know our stone man is and is happy to do so as our scaffolding went a week or so ago. edited for typos.

...............with integrated rise and fall biscuit holder and whacka-plate mode?

Extractors only allowed if they ventilate. Recirculation not permitted. Cookers such as range cookers allowed if they also provide heat for the house (AGA). Furniture allowed. Appliances not allowed Worktops allowed Boiling water taps are in the grey area. If its an all in one then its been allowed in the past but I dont think they are up to speed on this one. sinks - allowed A supplier is allowed to zero rate all of the above including installation but not installation of any non-allowable appliances. The rules frankly are pretty stupid and I am quite surprised they are still as relaxed as they are. For instance you can claim for fitted wardrobes provided there is only 1 shelf and 1 hanging rail but they havent mandated for instance that kitchen cabinets are allowed but soft close mechanisms arent.

Sorry for late reply, been busy. I am using a guy called Ken Armstrong, (Hillside Veneers, Google). Really nice guy with small overheads and the price is amazing compared to Deuren doors.

Ok @Andrew, that's about what we were charged. Ask for the PDF to be unlocked and NOT flattened, or to put it another way, for all layers to enabled and the document to be editable. I suggest that because there will be times when you want to illustrate an idea based on the pdf. If it is cluttered with irrelevant information, it makes that job hard. A locked, flattened document will prevent you from showing only relevant information (or conversely switching irrelevant stuff off) Making sure you can switch layers on and off at will will simplify and clarify the message you want to give. And God knows the building sector needs to learn how to give clear, accurate information to those who need it.