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Today is the day, I am moving my body! I have been taking car loads of stuff down every day this week and today some friends are coming to carry the beds and sofas down so tonight I will be sleeping under my new roof for the first time. Not even excited any more, I am just so fed up of it all. Electrician and Plumbers were both supposed to be coming this week to do a few bits - surprise, surprise, neither has turned up. The UFH has air in the system; I have had to top the water up twice already. It is running way too hot and doesn't seem to be controlled by the thermostat, with thermostat set at 15 degrees, the temp was up at 24 degrees, so I have just been putting it on for an hour or two each day whilst I have not been living there. Oh and my 'smart' meter says I have used £1.20 of fuel today, that is with nothing running at all and the boiler switched off.

Try and ignore all the niggles today and get installed. Crack that bottle open and after a few glasses everything will seem more rosy. Tomorrow is time enough for the niggles. Congratulations @Hecateh you have done an amazing job in spite of everything.

Thanks everyone. It still doesn't feel real. I am sitting in the lounge and the friends have all just gone. I had 6 people here, including my son, helping and the place felt pretty small with all those people in but new feels plenty big enough. Although my sofas are a bit out of proportion to the space. One thing at least is working. I could get wifi just inside the door of the new house but not in the lounge. I bought a wifi repeater and it is now working fine in the lounge. Which means I should be able to connect the TV to the fire stick as I haven't yet got an aerial. I am thinking of getting a dish and going with free sat. Currently living it up with a Pot Noodle as all my dry food stuff is down here, fridge and freezer stuff still in the old place. Plates and dishes etc down here but cutlery still in the top house (apart from a couple of teaspoons,) and no fresh stuff as I tried to use it all up before moving.

I posted that after a beer...in the cold light of day with a slight hangover / start of man flu it doesn't seem such a sensible boast! Pretty sure the picture framing guillotine is going to be invaluable for this detail. Other than that it's the Evolution Rage chop saw (non starter) or little plastic mitre blocks to cut this trim. Posted these before but it cuts real clean imo.

Re electricity usage. Forget the silly remote monitor thingy they give you, I keep hearing how in accurate they are (I can't understand why that should be the case). Just take a daily reading from the dial actually on the meter itself and record that, take the reading at the same time each day.

Does that go for bathrooms too?

Or you could consider an electric portable scissor lift, possibly set into a shallow well in the garage floor: https://www.automotechservices.co.uk/products/as-7630-mobile-scissor-lift/

Having now spent a few hours playing with @JSHarris heat loss calculator, just wanted to say thank you, it was pretty much exactly what I was looking for and has really helped me understand the impact of the different u-values. As others have said the difference aren't that great and were much less than I expected.

A busy November saw all the trades coming good, albeit some were cutting it fine for the moving in day – 30th November – However, we have moved in with all the services up and running. Having said that, BT and Openreach have missed the deadlines and as a result we are without any internet, phone line or TV for at least a week! Also the master bedroom built in wardrobes are still be fitted. The landscapers have finished their work, providing us with a patio area and a driveway area which will see plenty of activity. Look closely and you should see the hedging that has been planted. 330 separate plants in all. This was a planning condition and the hedges are a mixture of Hawthorn, Beech, Holly and Maple. Locally referred to as native hedging. The turf will be laid next Spring. Our Air Tightness test was conducted by a guy from Perth - a good couple of hours away. We never set out to achieve such low levels because we didn’t want the capital outlay of such a system as well as the infrastructure it requires. Our score was 4.9 which in our eyes is very good. There are a number of minor jobs which I need to do such as touching up the paint work here and there; re-oiling some wood in places but all that can wait until we have given the whole place a deep clean. The main external jobs outstanding are the erection of the oak framed porch and the downpipes. Both of which should be completed within the next 10 days or so. Anyway, this was not a self build in the true sense of the words but it was project managed by myself and built using a main contractor and sub contractors after the TF had been erected. I hope you have not only enjoyed reading about our project but have found some useful bits of information within the blogs in order to assist yourselves with your projects, whatever that may be. Overall my experience has been a good one. It hasn’t been without its difficulties, such as additional unforeseen expenditure and additional expenditure as a result of our mistakes, or due to us changing our minds! Such examples include ordering the wrong door frame - we failed to realise we hadn't ordered a threshold suitable for level access - a mistake that cost us £1k. Changing our minds over the 3 toilets we had ordered. They simply looked lost in their respective environments so 3 new ones were ordered at an additional cost of £850. A failure to get a full grip of the scaffolding cost an additional £1k and a failure to budget correctly for the foundations and dwarf wall for the carport cost an additional £4k. Final facts and figures - Build schedule – 6 months from the day the TF arrived. Cost per sq metre - £1850 – includes everything, and I mean everything - from the scaffolding through to the landscaping and it includes the car port and porch [ still to be erected] but not the land or fees. Only two skips were used throughout the build – everything else was removed by us to the local dump or burnt on site – best investment was a £25 oil drum which we used as an incinerator. Thanks for reading - Paul.

Couldn't afford to run mine all day either. It will take a while trying to find a program that works but @Christine Walkerwill get there. Get that installer back asap and get him to show you the full instructions on how you work it.

@Declan52 that's exactly how I run my UFH from the electric boiler. It would cost an arm and a leg if I had the UFH calling for heat all the time so the UFH is set so that the boiler just comes on once a day (in my case at 5pm).

The only detail I can find is this. https://www.klover.it/en/products/inserts/pellet/pelletfireplace18 It says there is a weekly programme so have a look through your manual and see how you set it to come on at the times it suits you. Once you have a weekly programme sorted then you need to set your stats to suit that. So have your stove fire up at 6am and at the same time your morning setting on your stats is set to 20/21 (what ever you want the room temp to be). Let it draw heat and charge up the floor for 1/2hrs and then have your stat turn off and stop calling for heat. For example in the morning your kitchen will sitting at 19. At 6am your stove fires up, and your kitchen stat changes to 20. It will draw heat for 90 mins until it gets to 20 and then turn off. The rest of the day you set the stat to not call for heat by setting the temp to not call for heat unless it falls below 18. Over the rest of the day unless it's really cold outside the heat you put into the floor should be enough to keep the room warm at a steady 18/19. Then the process just repeats each day.

Sounds as if you're well on the way to being sorted. I can recommend Freesat, we think it's brilliant. Better picture quality than Freeview and no interference at all.

Some pictures from during the build. Dining room 2400mm wide, 1800mm high Obscured bedroom window (overlooking, 2000mm x 1200mm) External, the top left is the KF410 Bedroom and en-suite.

There is no tax on smelling

We went exactly the same decisions and ended up with stainless. We are copying this house in Aberdeenshire. http://www.exhibitorlist.co.uk/vision-london-2015/exhibitor/4879/aperamuginox . We done a quick drive by a few months ago and it still looked V good!

Well mine was a triumph! Well done for getting it to this stage @Hecateh. I can understand the lack of excitement about the move too as in my case I moved into a single (albeit large) room simply because that was preferable to living in a caravan. Building a house is a slog not a joy most of the time. You have done really well to get to this stage, and to put it in perspective despite all of the difficulties you have managed it in a year. Many people take much longer than this so be proud. The UFH? Well that probably just needs a tweak hopefully. @lizzie's was running way too hot for ages so maybe it's something like that? If you are clocking up electricity costs with the boiler switched off are you sure there isn't an immersion on or something? You'll need to monitor things and maybe switch a few things off at the CU to work out what's going on potentially. And look on the bright side - at least it's too hot and not freezing cold! I hope you've got a decent bottle of something to toast your success. You deserve it!

It's a f**king nightmare. 67.5deg ffs! Luckily I've got a whole bunch of scrap trim leftover to practice on from when I re-did the pockets.

Great news @Hecateh. Well done you. Teething problems will get sorted. Put the rubbish behind you & enjoy today. Celebrate & wake up tomorrow with a smile & look forward to all the nice bits now. Put rugs down, pictures up & start making it your lovely new home.

Although we sort of partly lived in the new house for ages before selling the old house and moving permanently, there was a massive sense of relief when we sold the old house and moved in permanently. The burden of the old house is one that I'm very glad to be rid of - there was nothing wrong with it, but it was just so unpleasant in so many ways from the new house that we couldn't wait to get rid of it. Enjoy your new house; I'm sure the niggles that need fixing will come right one at a time. I share @ProDave's view about someone not being able to get UFH to work first time. I have no idea why we seem to have so many trades people that don't seem to know what they are doing.

Sorry to hear about the UFH. I wonder what the mental block is that prevents some people just setting up an UFH system so it works. Mine just worked first time, it's not rocket science. I hope you get it sorted soon. We were glad to move into a part finished house,infinitely better than a cold cramped static caravan, with the bonus that you can spread the butter in the morning. Try to enjoy your new surroundings in the knowledge all the niggles will get sorted out. This forum will give you all the help you need with that.

Aluminum doesn’t corrode as much as any of the others as what happens is it oxides and the oxide layer forms a protective coating. This protects the aluminium from further degradation. However.... there is one big but to that whole statement ..!!! Where there are two metals together, and aluminum is one of them, then you get galvanic corrosion instead and the aluminum appears to disintegrate. Any land rover owner can tell you what this looks like ..! Anything with a secondary coating is only as good as the coating itself - Tata coated products are guaranteed on the life of the coating and it not being damaged exposing the steel below for example. This will rust whereas an aluminium based product will “heal” around the damage with an oxide layer.

Stick to IT luv

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But it would still be nice to have an acknowledgement they are aware of the problem and they are working on a solution.

Saw something similar to that and they built a pair of slide out shelves below them for the basket to stand on. Brilliant idea ..!

We have light switches next to our beds, great so that you don't have to get out of bed to turn lights on or off. We have inset sockets in our island rather than the pull up ones, much tidier, one socket and 2 usbs Spent more money on a really quiet dishwasher in our open plan kitchen/diner/lounge it is so quiet great when you have company Also love our stair lights, really add the wow factor for very little money

I did that in a previous house and it worked well, in our new build i put the washing machine in the plant cupboard in the cloakroom which has enough room for a pulley maid drying thingy (the room has MVHR extract) and room to use an ironing board.

Whoosh....

We’ve still not got this system sorted out @newhome, can’t really get to grips with it at all sometimes when it’s been on for a couple of hours the water is roasting but at other times it’s not even hot enough for the ufh, I emailed the installer on Friday and told him we were having problems and his answer was give me a call but hubby is getting so angry now he doesn’t even feel like speaking to him, so I await his temper to calm down and make that call!