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..after moving end of August 2016 ! Our independent inspector has been very patient but we were just about at the end of a 3 month final notification period so were still under pressure to get the remaining items sorted, mostly glass balustrade around the external entrance to the basement. Can now start the VAT reclaim, also able to get the warranty issues (looks like Elite will honour our policy even though the underwriter has gone into administration) and our buildings insurance is now valid Still some work to do on landscaping but don't foresee much more spending on materials. Nice milestone, and as ever, would not have achieved it without the support of eBuild / Build Hub.

Being a mere dreamer of building our own property I had previously been a regular visitor to the eBuild forum and was disappointed by it's closure, so whilst doing a recent t'interweb search for Larsen trusses, I was really pleased to find this forum and offer my sincere thanks to all involved in achieving the resurrection. My previous eBuild name was Eyefor and I had asked many questions and gathered very welcome advice on planning procedures, Architects, build methods etc - all of which were asked on the basis of "soon, we would find a plot" but having looked for over 10 years in our area we were near to giving up and buying a ready built. Our son and his partner then showed an interest in a fairly local farmhouse that had adjacent (but definitely separate) barns having both agricultural and industrial (B1) uses classification that gave us concerns for the long term future of his property, should he buy it. Long story short... They bought the farmhouse in September 2017 and in October 2017 we completed on the 5 barns (total 11,000+ Sq ft) plus 2.9 acres of paddocks without planning permissions but to us, it was a no-lose basis because, although they might make us a nice dwelling, our primary reason for buying them was to protect our son and his partners interest. Earlier this year, using (superb) planning specialists we submitted applications under permitted development Class Q for change of use to a dwelling on a 2000 sq ft agricultural barn and prior approval for a dwelling under class PA for the 4800 sq ft main barn. Both were approved in July. Lots to think about and lots to do in the forthcoming months (and years) but I will be regularly visiting the forum in search of ideas (and help!).

@oldkettle when the planners initially refused our application, making incorrect statements about the plans, I complained to the Council CEO and when that didn't have the desired effect I complained to the Ombudsman. That didn't work either, and wound them up a treat, but made me feel better. Probably the reason the Head of Planning got so annoyed when the Planning Committee overruled him .

Probably get 20-30 in the basket as long as you’re not a complete pie queen like @Nickfromwales as they have a maximum basket weight limit... fabric slide would work too if you have a catcher.

@vivienz

A few photos and the main elevation to give you a feel for what we're doing. FISH_LAY_03_O.pdf

Would using a reflective film on the windows to reduce solar gain not be a good first step.

Ok. The one that will burn it like fire is vomit. My daughter threw up over my beautiful travertine and it near destroyed it, in the few minutes it was there before I could stop heaving long enough to clean it up . Remind me why we had 4 kids Pee all over it all day long, its fine, but dont puke over it whatever you do. You heard it here first folks !

Another thinking ahead type post, this time on lighting. As I previously mentioned, I've been trying to firm up on the switches, sockets and all of that kind of thing that I will need to put in but wasn't making much progress. Thinking on it further, though, I believe that my slowness was coming from the fact that I haven't decided on my lighting scheme and other electrickery, so I wouldn't be able to define exactly what I want to switch on and off. As a result, I'm now putting some effort into being specific in what I want from my lights and I dropped into a local LED lighting place that also offers lighting schemes to see how they could enhance what I already had. I must say, I was rather disappointed. I talked through my thoughts functional versus decorative lighting, fun lighting and the styles I like and the guy said that he couldn't really add much to it and it was largely a case of choosing the fittings I wanted. I was a bit deflated, really, as I'm not a shopping kind of girl but I thought that this might be interesting, but hey ho, no great loss other than 20 minutes of time. As a reminder, here's the plan of our ground floor: 1120 - 103DIMS - Bagber Farm Cottage - PROPOSED GROUND FLOOR.PDF The floor to ceiling height is a little higher than standard at 2.7m to ensure that the room doesn't feel oppressive, particularly in the living area. Let's start with the kitchen. Functional lighting - over the island (where the hob is located) and over the rear kitchen wall, where the sink and further work surface areas are. This will simply be LED downlighters. Decorative/functional lighting - over the island, particularly the breakfast bar end, nearest to the utility room. I want to have a pendant light here, picture below. Decorative lighting - I want to have LED strips along the island and base unit plinths, with diffusers as I don't like to see the individual LEDs. Purely personal choice. Also, I want to have uplighters above the kitchen wall units as these make a big visual difference in opening out the dark recesses of the kitchen that can otherwise look gloomy. I'm considering a dropped false panel over the island. I'm having a downdraught extractor and so don't need it for that, but I think it will look good with the lights in it and subtly separate the kitchen area from the dining and living area without having a full vertical barrier between the two. I have had some of these on order from China for a few months now. Unfortunately, the first lot failed to arrive so they have been re-sent and should be here in the next couple of weeks (if not, a full refund is given). I'm going to put them over the breakfast bar area and wherever we decide is the most appropriate place for the dining table. The image isn't great as the darkest units are black, not brown as they appear. I ordered the first lot from DHGate, which hasn't been a great experience, as the user interface isn't up to much. Aliexpress is much better, in my opinion, but I shall wait and see what arrives. I haven't decided on the lighting for the living area yet. My thoughts so far are that it's going to be wall lights and lamps and maybe a few recessed downlighters in the ceiling, centrally located over the main seating area. It's hard to decide before knowing what furniture will go into that part of the room. In the meantime, the hallway will also be wall lights and LED downlighters. What I'm aiming for everywhere is at least 2 different levels of light. The LED downlighters for when you really do need a bright light, but softer indirect lighting for other times, from wall lights or lamps. I'm lighting the stairway with some recessed stair LEDs that I saw in the lighting shop at £35 each. Eek! I'm way too tight to pay that. I got these for the princely sum of $7 each on aliexpress, which is about £5.50, depending on the exchange rate. Much more to my taste. As was suggested elsewhere, I've ordered more of these than I need in case the LEDs can't be replaced and I need to substitute a whole unit if the LED fails - hardly expensive at that price. I've ordered the rectangular ones. I've known for a while how I want to do the downstairs loo - thanks, Pinterest! I really wanted the one where it looks like the loo is floating on a pier heading out to a lake, but hubby vetoed that, so here's the one we will have. Again, I like the soft, diffused light effect. It will have a PIR for the on/off as I really hate pull cords. Nasty things. Finally, the bedrooms have got some wildly high vaults going on (nearly 4.7m at the highest) so, any excuse for a fancy light, I've chosen these, again on order from Aliexpress: For information, as I know you'll be wondering, my total order with Aliexpress is for 15 of the recessed stair lights, 1 of the multi-head pendant and 2 of the branch LED pendants, which came to $616, so probably about £480 by the time I'm done. Delivery was free, except for about 30 cents on the stair lights. Finally, I made a slight internal design change today, concerning some partial stud walls in the bedrooms. I have only been able to make a true judgement on these now that the roof is being formed, but I'll put more details on that in a later post. UPDATE, 24/9/18: More to follow, but I've received the first part of my delivery. This is one of the firefly lights, immediately above, and all the recessed stair downlighters. Pending my payment of the customs charges and duty, the remaining pendant lights will be delivered on Wednesay. Cue drumroll........the customs clearance fee is £11.25 and the import VAT is.......£16.09. All told, £27.34 of fees and VAT to pay, so I'm pretty chuffed at that. The dowlighters look perfectly adequate and the pendant looks okay, too. Very well packaged. More to follow when I've got all the lights in my possession. With photos, of course!

Jeeze!

I think the dropped false panel over the island is a good idea. We visited a new build recently that had a similar open plan kitchen/dining/lounge as yours and the three areas had been defined in exactly that way, i.e. sections of suspended ceiling with specific lighting that designated the individual areas whilst the whole remained open plan I guess from your floor plan that the dining area is by the large window to take in the view whilst you dine? If it was me I think I'd turn the dining table through 90° and move it closer to the island, then spread the living room furniture out a bit and define each area with the lighting - minimising downlighter where possible. We had an extension done many years ago that gave us a large open plan kitchen/dining room and the electrician at the time cautioned us on too many downlighter's, especially if they are aligned, as it can start to look like a runway on your ceiling. I think he made a good point. Love the bog, even without the pier behind it!

A little nudge on this topic and closer to the original thread. I'm off to see a friend in Birmingham shortly and I noticed that Worktop Express have a showroom in nearby Smethwick, so I'm going to go and have a look at their new laminate surfaces as well as anything else there. I shall report back with any observations.

I did notice that one of the suppliers could ship from Spain instead of China and that brought the shipping times down to about 5 days, and the prices were no different. It's worth comparing the different suppliers for shipping options as well as prices. It's worth adding that the multi-head pendant light is about $95 but I originally saw it in The Conran Shop for just under £1k.

I love your light choices and have visited aliexpress on your recommendation. If I'm ordering from china then I need to get ordering. 2nd fix is 3rd week Sept. But what I am looking at can easily be changed out later. Please let us know if everything comes in as ordered

If you have, or access to, the deeds you can use the approach @billt suggests LR are very helpful and doing yourself is simple. Without the deeds the process is much more complex and you may need professional help but it is still possible.

Ours are the same, @joe90, and I'm going to change the elements out (or at least the one in our ensuite) for a thermostatic one, I think. I went for the lowest power element I could find, but it still gets too hot for comfort. I have both of them on a time switch, so could play around with the timing settings to try and reduce the temperature, switching the rails on and off every 15 mins during the "on" time.

Yes. I did this for my parents house a few years ago, as the utterly incompetent purchasers solicitor refused to do a first registration. It is pretty easy. You have to fill in form FR1 and send it with a fee to the relevant Land Registry office. Instructions are available on the uk.gov website. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registrations/practice-guide-1-first-registrations FR1 downloadable here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-application-registration-fr1 Fees https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hm-land-registry-registration-services-fees Unless there is a huge complication £1200 is taking the Michael.

Thanks Russell, I do have a 10kW logburner, which altho has to contend with an enormous ton of cold 'VS' it.. it can -just- about win the battle now Ive plugged many big gaps around main room edge (that went up to roof!!), remodelled the corner cupboard/ same issue, & put a thick curtain across the stairway. One room ok tho. The others.. lord alive, you've no idea how cold. In winter I can have a heater flat out in here & it'll only heat the air above it & the mice in the loft in a small huddle above that.. & I can see my breath other side of the room. I have to run the gauntlet to uopstairs main bedroom & just dive under cover (immediately above stove too- no heat evidently gained up here). The cold zaps any heat introduced in such a WALLOP, cos its just so badly built. It was always going to be hugely challenging trying to address it by redoing xyz. But hey, it was one reason it was £125k.. woman before just couldn't deal with it ( snapped my arm off at my 1st lowest offer & scarpered).

Yes, will be opening the shoe box this weekend and cracking on!

A quick option for you would be to disconnect one of the two fans in the unit as a simple summer bypass. I am assuming you have opening windows. Disconnect the intake fan in order to ensure that stale air is extracted. Keep a window open in each room to allow the cooler evening air to be pulled into the room. Some smaller units that advertise a summer bypass use this method rather than a true bypass so check if you do replace the unit

Does baby-oil work with glossy black?

Had some shims thx onoff/ needed. Slow.. progress: went nuts & sink cab IN/ abc, xyz as level as I could, then 2nd LHS. Solid. Waste bits done (£1.27 for coupler.. reused bits as 3m min grey pipe tom buy, so butchered old bits (full of dreadful oomschka omg!!.. worse than the fkn mice). Waste tested- no leakings- & solid. Top back off/ a support rail to put under RHS on wall. Then onto cab3,4 to fit. Then cut top2. Im waiting on glue so held up till then. Then to fit sink in top1- I need to ask Q's on this/ recap.

I'll post a pic of ours later.

Hi, We're near the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire borders - not far from Kimbolton.

All good advice from everybody, so I will chuck a different angle on it safety first, get your site fence up with appropriate warning signs. Guessing you want to do this as cheaply as poss, your main massive cost will be disposal of all the debris, so make a list of everything and work out a couple of ways in which you will get rid of it all the first item you mentioned was the roof tiles, so ol mate down the road will take them for free, if you stack them neatly in his crates, so that will cost you loads, the time to remove them and stack, plus any hire cost. So the opposite thing to do is not save any, can you use any of the hardcore on site, access road, hard standing for your site hut,etc etc if you can use it on site then I would say the way to do it is soft strip the house, as has been said, all non structural parts out. Skips for plasterboard, loft insulation, roof felt, timber on free cycle dig out areas you need the hard standing smash it down with an excavator and move to the dug out areas. Things that could bite you in the arse. THE FOOTINGS. have you had a little it down the sides of the footing to see what sort of thickness they are ? this has recently happened to me, see my blog on cockups, i was fortunate in that once I realised I had substantially underestimated the amount of concrete to remove i knew how to deal with it, and I also had a big hole to put it, so all in a larger excavator for a week and I was finished. If you need to shift them off site have an add up of the amount of trucks to shift it and also the size of the excavator to physically pull them out of the ground.

Hi and welcome. You'd be into a heat pump of some type TBH, but I wonder if you'd be better off using a free standing domestic air conditioner and fitting the hot air exhaust to the flexible duct that goes to atmosphere ( so you can get rid of the nuisance heat created by cooling ). Those ducts could be disconnected, extended and fitted to a free standing unit with ease. To clarify, I'm not suggesting fitting the cooled air outlet of the air con unit to the room ducts, just the hot air exhaust, and then simply leave the air con unit cool centrally. Open the windows just a crack and allow trickle airflow outward as that should promote a bit of airflow through the dwelling.

My first comment would be flexible ducting (put in by builders) will cause massive flow losses. Looks like a Ventaxia Integra model, small 400mm x 400mm, that will be the issue getting a unit to fit in the space. The small Brink Sky150 is over twice a long! I suspect the developer put in the cheapest/nastiest unit they could find to say they had fitted MVHR!

No problem - I would have thought you had some external lights and fittings, such as satellite dishes, aerials, CCTV cameras and Security Alarm? but maybe not? My house has all of these and they required wall penetrations = see pictures

Ah that’s good news then. You might get it quicker than me. They queried something on the PP that delayed it for a couple of weeks or so. Mine was all paid out straightaway and it still took 5 months. If anything had been queried it would have taken even longer for those items.

@newhome Apparently we weren't charged VAT for the asbestos removal. Wendy has looked after the accounting side of the build, she's better organised than me with paperwork. So potentially still quite a wait for us .

Thanks for the info all, especially JSHarris about the repairs - very interesting. Well, the results are in! Completely unaffected by urine, left on for 24 hours. Bleach up next!

The other thing to consider, is there anything saleable in the house, doors, light fittings, kitchen units, flag stones, Next is anything givawayable? The more you can get rid of at this stage the less you have to dispose of. Next talk to disposal companies, ask what is their preferred waste segregation method? everything in skips, or do they just use grab wagons, or tippers to be loaded on site, do bricks need to be separated from wood, what about windows and plastic etc. Consider general waste options for carpets, curtains, paper, glass, If its it’s an old house you might find that the bricks come off cleanly, could these have an resale value, it’s worth asking. Is there any architectural salvage of value, fireplaces, stone Work, leaded windows?

I have my doubts about this. Based on the law of conservation of energy, this much heat production should mean that x10 the number of calories are expended in the production of said heat. Yeah, right. I wish. I have yet to see any other physical evidence of faster calorie burn. Unless another part of me dramatically decreases in temperature at the same time. Oh, of course, that will be my cold, stony heart if anyone dares suggest that I'm going through the change and seem a little grumpier than usual.

At local level it is far more 'nimby' rule than party politics I am convinced

Does a lady going through *the change* not produce X10 the heat of a typical person. Might be an important control matrix consideration, especially if her sister visits too

Now we're cooking. Subfloor poured today, so one row of quinnlites on their edge and we're at FFL. Provisionally looking at 3rd wek of October for the kit to arrive, scaffolder is booked on standby today, it's all moving on now.

There's your problem right there. You should have attached them with a suitable adhesive!

KISS. Touch the rad. Can you keep your hand on it without it being uncomfortable. Turn your hand over and do the same with the sensitive part of your skin on your wrist / forearm. Thats what a child would feel. Adjust accordingly. Pub.