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Best stick 'em down I guess...

After the Christmas hiatus, I am finally getting around to placing the newspaper ad. To my pleasant surprise, the cost has dropped by a third since before Christmas. Unexpected but welcome.

Hi, my main comment is that you've really started to ask some pretty fundamental Qs at too late a point in your project. You seem to have a design that includes a reasonable thermal spec as designed goal, but I am not sure that you or your architect how looked at this from a total system perspective, and at this stage any fundamental rebalancing could involve costly rework so I suspect that you will have little wish to do this. There's over 8,000 topics/threads on the site, most with 10s many with 100s and one with 1000+ posts on all sorts of detailed aspects of the why, hows and why nots of building your own home. There is a lot of gold to be mined if you are willing to use the forum search facilities, do the research of existing knowledgebase and ask the right targeted questions. Like any forum there is a spectrum of users giving advice and opinion here. At one end of the spectrum you've got people that clearly are "shooting from the hip" and not doing the necessary research (or hiring competent experts who are able to do this on their behalf), and their blogs and posts are horrifying to read. At the other end you've got individuals who have come through this process with a house that they love; that performs to their expectation and that was build in a well controlled manner. I am not going to give examples of either or the middle ground, but I do suggest that you research some of the blogs and frequent posters to rank the value of their advice in your own assessment, and weight this advice accordingly. Anyone who builds a house has to deal with the same issues: planning and other external constraints; the feasibility and practicality of their design and its build process; the vagaries and quality of tradesmen and suppliers; financial management of the entire process; and the integration of all of this to achieve an end result that they wanted to achieve. I suggest that the main difference between the two ends of this user-spectrum is the degree to which individual self-builders approach this process. IMO, the best way to solve a problem is to avoid it in the first place by design. The next best way is have sufficient audit and quality checks in place to detect each issue as absolutely early as possible in the life-cycle and at a point where you still have some freedom to identify options and workarounds that you can still implement and at a modest cost impact. The worst is to be left with a fait accompli that will be costly to mitigate and will constrain and annoy you for the rest of your time in the house. As I write this, I am sitting in my home office / 2nd guest bedroom on the 1st floor of my new-build that we have now lived in for the last year. My wife and I are unreservedly delighted with our new house. I am sitting in my shirt sleeves in a room at about 22°C (a personal preference), but we don't have any heating on the 1st or 2nd floors; I do have UFH throughout the ground-floor, but this is currently run off a 3kW immersion heater element that comes on for about 8 hrs a day (mostly E7 cheap rate) at current outside temperatures. OK, achieving the spec to do this added maybe £10K or so to my build costs (if that) but we saved as much in not having to have a gas supply, a conventional CH system and radiators everywhere, and the annual maintenance costs for the same. In terms of thermal design, IMO you need to start will an intimate understanding of the macroscopic thermal performance of the house and what makes up the pie chart of heat losses, because this impacts so much one the costs and characteristics of the build. @JSHarris and I amongst others have blogged and posted copious details on this. It seems that your design is out of balance, e.g. your floor has too low a U-value. Are you planning to use MVHR, what is your fenestration design goals, etc. With these sorts of U-values, you are going to have a pretty conventional house in terms of running costs and heating solutions. Is this a deliberate decision? Why have a garage? You will have less parking capacity and more costs with one. Why not drop the garage and put in an electric gate to secure the property instead? Your floor profiles don't allow UFH unless you have in-slab UFH. This is entirely doable (and we have this), but IMO most builders are not competent to do this to an acceptable standard. The L-shaped design has a large surface area for the enclosed floor space. I can see that your plot geometry really makes it impractical to do otherwise and I assume that you are locked into a approved plan, but this larger surface area exacerbates U-value impacts. There are other downstream comments that I could make, but I'll defer them for now. Time to do some reading of blogs and topics covering some of these points, I think.

Our efforts in the latter part of 2018 was spent on getting the exterior properly wind & watertight. With just the render left to do, we could now concentrate on the insides. Starting to insulate the suspended timberfloor was the first job to do. We attached some little bits of timber to the underside of the joists, which will keep the insulation boards in place. Our primary insulation for the groundfloor is Quintherm 65mm (another two layers of insulation will be added later). Once ordered these were then cut to size using a piece of wood to score a mark and then cut with a handsaw. We left a bit of gap either side which will be filled with expanding foam to ensure a tight fit. The other insulation ordered at this stage was the Frametherm wool which is the primary insulation layer between the studs. But some will also be used to top up the gap left in the joists. The width is already in the correct size so it was just a cut for the required length and then you can pop into the studwork. Compared to the Quinntherm this is more quicker to fit. And that is that for 2018. Reflecting on the build process to date: We are exactly where I hoped we would be at this stage. A proper wind and watertight shell that can stand up to the Hebridean winter weather. Reviewing the finances we are about half way through our build budget. We have been fortunate no real issues. A problem with a wrong size velux flashing and the metal flashing provided for utility roof was provided at the incorrect angle, both were the suppliers fault! At the start of the build, I had visions of the concrete wagon sinking in the road, the windows being dropped on arrival and the trusses not being able to fit down the access. The lesson here is watch programmes like grand designs and building the dream, but don't let the drama put you off, self building, it is achievable by anybody!

Tweet them - they seem more likely to respond on there as it's more public than a good old fashioned customer query. And keep on Tweeting them if you don't get what you're after - they want you to DM them instead to prevent it being public I imagine.

But that still leaves the wiring between insulation layers, it just saves you having to cut channels for it. So the insulation and derating factors still apply.

No, they don't. All three phases are separately metered, so you can be exporting on one phase and still importing on another.

I don’t know where to start as I don’t know what your budget is, the timeframe or what’s your relationship with your architect and or builder. The drawings show your house is built to minimum regulations. For example it’s showing 75mm of insulation in the floor. That might just allow you to get sign off and pass regulations but it’s not near enough in my mind especially for UFH. You’ve a big concrete lintel under the door for another example. That’s a huge cold bridge. Easy to fix but will cost more. This could be all you can afford though. The architect might be taking this into account and know space is more important to you than lower running costs. You need to discuss this with your architect BEFORE you sit down with the contractor as he’ll start seeing money signs everywhere. Talk to them about levels of insulation, airtightness, what the contractor has signed up for (eg does it state in the contract the builder has to reach a certain level of airtightness) what are the running costs and savings to be made long term, etc. Your paying them for a service and you need them to explain in detail to you the insulation they’re putting in and how much more it would cost to increase this.

25 gallon....

first stop is building control regs to see what is minimum insulation value on roof and walls ,and is there a dpc in floor+ walls of the building any conversion you make will have to comply with CURRENT requirements for a habitable dwelling -as it is a change of use ,you may even find that the roof structure will not pass for a dwelling if it was an agricultural building to start with .

I also read your post on white bricks, so I can see where you are with this. Just bear in mind that if you do anything other than standard it will costs £££s and will look crap if it is not done well. I am currently looking at a 1990s building that has used coloured mortar and the batches don't match, so there are bands of brick which really stick out. Have a look at https://www.brick.org.uk/archive/brick-awards-2017/ and download the pdfs for inspiration.

There is no need to move the door , just do the job properly with the right materials if you say that there is only 500 mm of brickwork above then prop the whole lot up on acrow props and take all the brickwork down in the new opening right up to underneath those purlin supports then install the steel and build it up in new brickwork this will save having to try and keep just 6-7 courses in place as you hammer and bang about if you try and keep the brickwork above I guarantee you will disturb it, and you will have to pack the steel up under the old brick work so you might as well take it all down and rebuild nice and fresh. I would like to think under all that loft insulation will be a wall plate of some description just build up to the underside and pack and re bed under it.

listening to the video. It don,t sound like its seen a grease gun in years and even with play in pins its worth greasing it EVERYDAY ,while its warming up in the morning, if you want it to last longer and if it had been done daily to start with it wouldn,t be a rattling now oil+ grease is the cheapest set of spanners you will ever buy

Hi @Adam2 1. We have this, works fantastically. You can save by not bothering with switches at all unless you really think you need them. So far I have not come across a time I wished the lights had a switch also. Actually I often wish almost all the lights came on automatically. 2. Pretty standard, look at reviews to make sure the PIR sensors don't give out water a few weeks. 3. I put bulbs with daylight sensors in the actual bulbs into the outside fittings that I wanted on all night. This is simpler to wire. Also as these lights are on for hours on end I wanted replaceable bulbs. LED fittings often give out well before their expected lifespan and I would not want to have replace fittings which could be especially difficult if you have multiple matching lights and they may no longer be available. 4. I used the Fibaro system which involves adding a small wireless control switch behind the light switches. These cost around £50 a time, plus a couple of hundred for the main control unit. The only extra wiring is to use three core for the lighting circuits. It works very well and you can design scenes etc. Works with standard LED fittings and effectively can make an light dimmable without buying a dimmer switch as this is built into the switches (assuming the light can be dimmed). Can be integrated into Alexa, worked away from home etc if you want to, but you don't have to. I just integrated Alexa a couple of weeks ago to see if it worked, 5.One thing I would recommend is two switches in bedrooms, one beside the bed and one at the door. The alternative is to use a wireless system and one switch which is what I have gone for. If the lights are on a wireless system then you can create scenes to switch all off or on etc. 6. I have put in some wiring for this, but so far it is unused. Motorised curtain tracks and blinds seem to be outrageously expensive, I got an insane quote for some non standard sizes and decided I could just open and close things manually. In saying this I think I may revisit it for our bedroom as it has 4 sets of curtains to open. 7. I use the Sonos system which is so easy to set up. I have not found Bluetooth systems great in the past as it has a very short range and cuts out if you walk around the house with your phone. If you are finding your Sonos flakey I would suspect you have a wifi problem. Ours is rock solid, my wife calls me all the time because something is not working, this never happens with Sonos. You might want to consider a Ubiquiti type wifi system in a new house to spread he wifi signal. We bought two Sonos Connects for rooms that are wet, and put ceiling speakers in there. Otherwise they are outrageously expensive compared to the speakers. I don't think Sonos speakers are too intrusive for bedrooms. You might also consider some of the Amazon equivalents now, also screens may help visitors. I thought about wiring for speakers outside then just decided to put in a socket and I would take a Sonos out there. 8. Put in ethernet cabling to everywhere a TV goes as well as Coax for Freeview. Sky Q and I believe Virgin V6 boxes now network over ethernet. As mentioned any other cables should be in walls/ceilngs and think where the boxes will go if you plan of having TVs wall mounted. We have Sky Q minis behind TVs, in bedroom I brought cabling inside wardrobes with TVs mounted just outside for neatness and we have a recess in the chimney breast in the kitchen. 9. A local security company put in a standard security system for us. These are now wireless and also app controlled. Ours is the Pyronix system. App control is simple and seems to work well. It was surprisingly cheap due to no wiring being required. We have a Uniview CCTV system which works over ethernet. The cameras are powered over ethernet also, you just put an ethernet cable to wherever you want a camera and bring them all back to the recorder box. Hikvision systems are very similar now. The cameras and recordings can be seen on an app. I am not aware of a PIR triggered system, but you can define the areas on each camera that you want to trigger alerts and the sensitivity. To view on TV you can use a HDMI to digital TV converter, we didn't;t bother, I just put the app on all our phones and tablets. 10. Yes Ubiquiti plus ethernet where possible. I get 100% of our wifi connection speed of just over 100megs pretty much everywhere in the house. 11. We have thermostats in every room. A lot depends on whether you have rooms that are never used, it seems overkill to me.

It sounds stupid but lick your fingers and wet the blade, works well

Ta - was a fun project - not dropped a pump in yet as waiting for sparky to finish putting power down there.

Have you had a scope on the hdmi signals to see what signal loss there is? HDMI is not a fool proof standard and it was developed to cope with 1080p over a max practical distance of 50ft IIRC. As the demands of 4k and 16k grow on us it won't cope over even that distance so I would build a space behind / beside the TV to put the boxes and run a fibre cable to your router it is unlikely that terrestrial broadcast will get much beyond 4k in the medium term satellite will and if you have a fast enough broadband you might get beyond 4k.

Probably should have done the other way around... Second time lucky!

Yes, most definitely talk and keep talking, and ask explicit open and closed questions as appropriate. E.g. CAn you take me through the feedback received, and What is your feeling about the proposal, and Can you think of any improvements. You need to know what is in all the objections (also ask about verbal feedback received), and what her ideas are going to be, such that you can address concerns with your solutions influencing hers not having hers imposed on you - which is the default if she does not know what your ideas are. Once a decision is baked in a notice, changing it is a long and painful process. IT is much better to pre-negotiate. You need to be polite but not bootlicking. You also hopefully have a couple of WIBNIs in there that you can negotiate away if needed to preserve the Must Haves. F * Wouldn't It Be Nice If.

I agree, well worth ringing the planning officer. I decided to do this a week or so after the end of the consultation period and the planning officer was kind enough to email me his draft report. In it he mentioned the removal of PD rights as a condition, so I rang him, asked why PD rights were being removed and he said it was an error, from when he'd cut and pasted some text in with the standard conditions they apply. He emailed me a new copy of his draft with the PD rights condition removed, and that version was the PP that was eventually approved. It would have been a nuisance to have accidentally had PD rights removed, as it would have meant submitting a new planning application for doing pretty much anything after completion, even erecting a garden shed, so the phone call was, in my view, well worthwhile.

it's well worth ringing them once the public consultation is over. The planning officer should now be able to let you know what their recommendation will be and also timescale for the decision notice.

The saving is far from just the DHW, now that I have a fully electric car. I've had a go at modelling our year around electricity usage and reckon that around 40% to 45% of it could be at the E7 rate, and that does result in a worthwhile overall saving. This is getting to be a bit off topic, though, so I'll start a new thread, referencing this one.