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Well, it’s been a momentous day today. It’s taken us a couple of years to get to this stage but we finally broke ground today. All watched over by an archaeologist and in the grounds of a listed building, I’m pleased to say that nothing was found apart from a few copper nails and a few fragments of no significance. Groundworker didn’t encounter any problems and will be back at it tomorrow. Visit scheduled in from Building Control (using Stroma) scheduled for Thursday. Limestone ridge at about 1.5m deep, so a nice solid base to sit on. Here’s some pictures taken by the Groundworker. I’m working away at the moment unfortunately but can’t wait to see what’s been happening this weekend.

Following on from finishing our blockwork a few weeks ago, our brickie came back the next week and fitted the concrete cills. We then had a short wait before before our joiners could come back on site and fit the remaining Siberian larch cladding. Here are some photos. The next exterior job will be rendering, but with the winter weather it might be some time before this can be done. Our attention will now be concentrated on getting the house to 1st fix, fitting the insulation is the first job on the list.

that,s to stop the lids bulging .LOL

Lol, we all have that post to write!

I did use some cardboard for that - but I WAS very naive and hadn't realised until too late how little even the better trades respected what was there. Pluss There are so many questions I could have asked on here that I didn't - because it didn't occur to me that hubbers had solutions to offer for problems I didn't know about until it was too late. I need to go back and post in the 'what I wish I had known post' @ Lessons learned too late

Star Wars is coming! Not bad for 50p each!

Not sure if there is a standard detail for this but if there is it will require you to block the end of the joist and take the main load underneath the bottom flange.

Filth. “Mary had a little bike, she rode it back to front”. There. You happy now that I’m in the gutter too ? ?

Is he using the same tw&t that installed the UVC..?? If so, it needs a picture drawn in crayon with no more than 3 colours....

I would like to add a point about icf and a slab that has underfloor heating pipes in it @willbish and @Big Neil i have just done a pour for my icf walls and found the propping system for the walls required over 120 holes to be drilled into my floor to hold the props up. Make sure you have thought of a way to hold these props up if you have pipes installed

Well it’s a box so yes they’ll stack in theory BUT and in my opinion it’s a bloody big BUT once you get bigger than the smallest units.... As this thread has proven the case design can’t withstand much force, I’m sorry but I just can’t see them being able to support the weight of an additional unit but I suppose the case will withstand downward force better. But there is a more fundamental problem that you’ll need to overcome......you’ll need some lifting gear probably a genie lift as a minimum, have a look at the table below these things weigh a lot and they are a smooth white box, no lifting handles or lifting points. Lastly, all the plumbing is in the top of the units, so you’ll need to plumb one at a time. Personally I’d ensure that the bottom unit was working before I bought in the heavy lifting gear to plonk one on top! In summary; I wouldn’t do it. I had originally considered stacking mine but the plan was to get my local steel fabricator to make up a frame for each to stack into. It would have never worked though as I don’t think I would have got the required lifting gear into the plant room.

A quick CAD model (cardboard aided design). An E/W split, with both halves tilted south a bit as well, viewed from the south. Might still achieve the objective of longer usable generation with the tilt hoping to improve winter performance. Anyone care to suggest how to model that on PVGIS?

Hello fellow self-builders! Having lived in the South East (nr Reading) for over 30 years in various cookie-cutter boxes of varying quality, after a 2 year hunt we have found a building plot on which we are going to build what we intend to be our "forever house". We are currently in the purchase of the land stage, so fingers are still crossed as we wait for all the legal and financial stuff to conclude, hopefully next month. The plot comes with OPP for an eco-designed house (architects were ARCO2 in Bodmin) which we intend to make minor tweaks to as we apply for DPP and Building Regs approval to proceed. Our intention is to perform as much of the labouring ourselves, both being practical minded, in order to be able to spend more on the materials. Personally, when younger, I helped my parents build a major extension to one property and renovate two others, I have renovated and rebuilt two classic cars, and undertaken re-wiring and re-plumbing in our current property - I'm reasonably confident in doing the work. On the Quality/Time/Cost triad, Time is the one that will be most variable :-) I'll probably be using these forums to seek input on the steps and order of tasks for project planning purposes (if anyone has a good starting template I would be very interested!), to discuss various material choices (e.g. raft v strip foundation, ICF v timber frame etc.), and delve into the variety of construction experience that exists here, so on the basis that there are no stupid questions ..... :-) Cheers Stuart

Yep. Though I only paid lip service to the taping. Used more as a draughtproofing thing.

Oh for sure!! It's also the only reason I haven't changed it .

method in his madness???

well i think dumfries & galloway can take that title here is a recent decison on a brick garage a man wanted to build on his own ground . house is within 30yards of river and garage had to placed slightly infront and to the side of house . then they changed thier mind and said no garage cos the footprint of garage would cause a rise in the water level when river was in flood !!!!!. now the river has never EVER been up that far to start with ,if it did the main street would all be flooded.to about 4ft so what was thier work around --fit 6 air bricks in bottom of garage exactly at floor height ,so if it did flood the water would come in and then run out again . now a 8x4 garage --will make sod all difference to river hieght if it did flood cos river by this time would be 10-15ft above normal level and twice as wide . beat that for stupidity if you can

Please remain “within acceptable parameters”

One of my favourites as a kid that. Out about the same time as the one with two nuns fighting over a bike and the Mother Superior threatens to put the saddle back on.....

There was a joke about "wears the soap" and the punchline was "yes it does a bit"

Or perhaps not . Don’t bend down !

Make them all use the communal shower together. Will help with house mate bonding too ?. Wears the soap? ?

We just put in a Radon barrier in our Passive slab and B/insp was ok with that. No sump/fan.

That was kind of my plan when I moved in here in 'the summer'. However as trade after trade let me down, thing after thing went wrong an I lost my mojo for a couple of months I didn't get that luxury. Moving in as I did about a week ago I'm left with just a couple of weeks to get things sorted for Christmas. My 2 adult kids are coming for Christmas, with just my daughter staying over. Matt only lives about half a mile away. Matt's partner and her mother were also supposed to be coming but her mum broke her hip and has been in and out of hospital and won't be able to come and C is staying with her Christmas Day so it will just be the two of us. Not having doors isn't a problem for me on my own but I guess I need some sort of screen on the bathroom and the cloakroom - which opens onto the lounge, is a priority before Christmas. Other than that I really can't be bothered to do much at the moment. Friends and family seem to think I should be so excited and motivated to get on with things - They have no idea how much I just need a break and to NOT have to do anything for a while. Luckily I still have the old house until at least the middle of January. I have brought nearly everything I really need down here already but the house still looks almost liveable. There is so much still to sort and shift but this place being a good bit smaller is almost full. Still I am enjoying being down here in comfortable warmth - despite the heating not working properly and probably costing twice as much as it should as I am having to manually turn it off as the thermostat is not controlling the boiler. I have at least partly sorted it by turning the flow temperature down on the boiler itself. Happy overall but knackered ??

@Big Neil, designing a passive slab is not something that should be done on the "back of a fag packet". If you get it wrong then you might never get the BInsp to sign off on it, and more to the point your house might be structurally unsound. You really need to have this done by an SE experienced in slab design. So you need to find such an SE to do this. If you want then a few of us have constructed our houses this way and can give you our SE details. There are too many variables here for there to be a stock answer. For example our SE required us to do a soil survey because the type of base materially effects the under-slab preparation: whether it is clay or sand, and the sub type, moisture contents, proximity of trees, etc. Any differentials across the site can be critical to whether a passive slab can be used and how deep the foundation layers need to be. The last thing that you want to happen is that you get any differential slump across the slab during pour. This can and has happened. My slab had to support an outer stone skin; Jeremy's didn't: we had to have internal load bearing cross members. The slab has to have a design than is demonstrably compliant to B Regs; it has to work both structurally and thermally.

Jan and I (or to be exact Jan) chose and put up some simple manual roller blinds on all of the bedrooms as a temporary measure a few weeks after we moved in. She used to have a fancy curtain sole-trader business for years so she's pretty expert at making posh curtains, blinds, etc. and intended to replace them at some point. However, the truth is that we both like the simple and clean lines, and they work well for bedrooms so we won't get around to replacing them anytime soon. What I misjudged is just how many little jobs need doing between the house being good enough to move into and being "finished" -- and we found the strain of getting to that point of moving in both mentally and physically exhausting. I would recommend to anyone just moving in that one of the first things to do is to have a bloody good break from it, go away on a holiday and both mentally and physically rest and recover. Then do an honest triage of the jobs still to do: those which you need to "properly" and get right first time; those where you can do a simple interim (like fitting roller blinds in our case) and come back to it in few years time if and when you have the energy, and those which quite honestly don't need doing at all for now and can wait until that "if and when" point. Moving in was a mountain that had to climbed again a ticking clock. You now have luxury of being able to change the tempo, and to prioritise and plan the finishing off tail minimising stress and taking the time to be able to enjoy the jobs more as a hobby.

boooom - any better for people???

@Hecateh I think you have now worked this out. There's nothing stopping you stick into a bit of trellis or even a bit of willow hurdle on the fence at the appropriate point to give extra height, either on it snow or with a vigorous climber. The only extra thing I would add is that if you are going to ask for a change via whatever route, it is probably better to do it reasonably quickly i.e. In 3-12 months not 2-3 years. F

I think if you work out your max flow and divide it by the qty of showers that will tell you something. YOu could do that now. Is your electric shower communal i.e. In the common parts? IF it is then I would stick with it as a crisis resource. IF it is not, then I wOuld consider switching to UVC as your emergency routine will rely on your Ts sharing showers, which is not such a good fallback. Personally I think that sticking with an electric shower is a good idea in addition to the others, as for a self-managed property you could be away for a weekend or a week, and in a luxury HMO you would get your nuts roasted. I would go straight for the accumulator, ideally for everything, but there is an argument that says you could just restrict it to a subset of showers, or even just to the eclectic one if the others are OK together. I think that allowing your builder to go on wild goose chases may, when you examine the whole enchilada, be a bit of a red herring ?. Ferdinand

Our walls and roof U value is 0.1 and our main heating is supplied by electric towel rails in the bathrooms and a small area of electric UFH in the kitchen. This is so that the rooms with a ventilation extract are always warm. We are lucky because our ventilation unit has an EASHP built into it so the supply air to the living rooms is never below room temperature. I would have thought that an electric post heater would be a good idea. When designing our house, before I had found the Genvex Combi, I had looked into using an electric post heater to ensure the ventilation supply air was always warm.

Stacking would solve all these bulging lid issues surely? The one above would stop the lower one's lid bulging and you wouldn't see the top ones bulge as it'd be too high!

All rcbo distribution board. 2 way switching of hall light as well as landing light (so when you get to the top of the stairs you don't have to go back down to turn the hall light off) I don't know why this is not standard but I have not seen it in any house that I have not wired. Master switch for all lights by primary entrance door Think about tv / av / network and phone wiring at an early stage If using a service void, it is easy to leave cables in, in places you might want to add a socket later on. (wire horizontally from socket to socket and you only need one socket on that wall to create a safe zone but the cable can run the whole width of the room so you can add extra sockets later if you need to.)

Don’t forget to leave the light on in the loft.

https://econekt.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/ECONEKT.-ICF-Elements-Brochure2.pdf see page 23 --concrete funnel is available as an accessory . isodom also loks like good system -- certainly the system with the most different types of panels I hyave found from roof to foundations

You applied; he or she objected; you got permission; the house is now built, so it's a done deal. IMO, the issues are: Can you both move past the history of the objections? If so, then surely it would be good to move on, and only consider alternatives if this proves not to be the case. Does the neighbour understand the nuisance of the light? Perhaps a polite direct request explaining the issue might be the best first course. It might just work, and if it does then it would be a more amicable resolution. If you do raise a complaint then you should anticipate that it will become apparent that you are complainer since the spotlight is looking into your windows? I must admit that if I were reviewing the complaint, then I might be more receptive to the escalation if I knew that the originator had attempted to resolve this amicably, and the complaint was only an act of last recourse. I just feel that you will fair better if your actions are seen to be measured and proportionate.

oh if only......

The above pic may be of interest as it shows a) how we divided the flooring so we could pour, level and power float a section of flooring at a time, and b) shovelling concrete from an OSB sheet into the wall void as our pump was too brutal to pour directly into the void. The attached pic shows the moveable platform we used for pouring concrete into the wall void, again because of the wrongly spec'd pump.

You lot will like this ! My requirement to the builder was that 4 uvc showers and an electric shower could run simultaneously ( lower flow of course ! ) and be usable . Someone gave a nice diagram of a system to do that ( showing a cold accumulator tank ) . Anyway right at the start of the refurb I showed it to builders “uvc expert” ( the guy who installed it ) . He’d “never seen anything like that “ - so it was left . Today I run the electric shower and 3 uvc simultaneously- guess what ? . Underflow light comes on electric shower and naturally water cold . Builder takes a look - he’s never heard of a ‘cold accumulator ‘ . Anyway he has to do some ‘internet research ‘ and undoubtedly will retro fit a pressurised cold accumulator just for the shower . I didn’t say “I told you “ . The more I employ ‘trades’ ; the more knowledge I gain ! ???

We have neighbours who have a flood light at either end of a two story garage that come on with PIRs but because of trees blowing in the wind they come on and off all night which is annoying. Especially when we have no light pollution here.