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Although I like woodwork and have many woodworking tools we wanted a “cottage” in brick (although most houses round here are rendered and the planners like “sameness” so had a fight on our hands) I liked the quick erection of TF and having visited @JSHarris was mightily impressed with his build. I also like heavy houses (phew, nearly said thermal m##ss?). We are very lucky that a local builder with a very good reputation gave me a fixed price on brick and block to my specification (passive principle) with me doing all the timber work, roofs, floors, windows etc. ( my second cancer put paid to me doing the roof tho ). What I like about brick is its lack of maintenance and “cottagey” look. I have nothing against timber frame and I suppose I could have had one with a brick skin but the sums did not add . I am extremely pleased with our build and we have very little in the way of cracks, just windows cills shrinking a little. I did pay a decorator to paint and he commented that our build had fewer cracks than any other new build he has been on ? Just had some bad news, the bricklayer who did such a good job and has become a good friend has just had a stroke, he is 6 years younger than me, fit as a fiddle, ex military, does not drink (much). So today’s motto is live life to the full, life is not a rehearsal, we are only here once so enjoy it.

Regarding cracks, here is my tip fir the day regarding wooden windows. I built angled reveals (cottagey) and suggested the plasterer put a stop bead next to the wooden window, filled with non setting mastic to stop any cracking, he said it was not required......I wish I had insisted.

Just to be absolutely clear, this forum HAS NO CONNECTION WHATSOEVER WITH ANY COMMERCIAL ENTITY. BuildHub is not connected with any supplier, builder, manufacturing company or whatever, and is run completely independently, by an association of volunteer members. Anyone can help run this forum, and the minutes of meetings, etc are available for inspection on request.

I have just finished watching this and feel bizarrely annoyed. So one couple without an architect managed to design and build their own house using fairly standard construction methods for a reasonable cost and well below the market value. It was a very nice house. The other couple with the advice of an architect built an "experimental" house which despite being small, cheaply finished and supposedly built with volunteer labour ended up ridiculously expensive. It was of an entirely non standard construction method that looked insubstantial and prone to perhaps needing excessive maintenance. It would be very difficult to remortgage and resell. Building a house at 24 you would think this would be an important consideration. So who is responsible? Did they want to build using this method or were they badly advised by the architect. Why did they not know that they needed sprinklers. They had built an open plan wooden box. The architects specialise in this, you'd think they would know. I would really like to know who's fault it is and think Kevin perhaps needs to ask some more probing questions sometimes. I also don't understand why he is so enamoured with unusually built houses sometimes. A house is most people's largest asset and not a piece of art. Of course if you can get it right you can get something that turns out both beautiful and a great investment, some houses built on the show over the years have been stunning, but being different for difference's sake is not a great idea. I really cannot comprehend how that house cost £200,000 to build.

That confirms my view that the plot prices are now too high, you could not buy a plot and build one of those 2 for what they are on sale for now. It is a great shame as GD keep telling the mass viewers how cheap the plots were and how good value the finished house is. There will be a lot of disappointed people when they find out the current asking prices for the plots now.

I guess not all suppliers want to be associated with an internet discussion forum. This forum is fairly straight talking I believe, with real world experiences reported by its members, and there are posts praising certain materials, designs, suppliers etc and others where the opposite opinion / experience is true. Most suppliers don't want the balanced, 'real world' view I guess. They want you to believe what's written in their marketing brochures. There is an advert going up (or has gone up) in the Self Build Centre in Swindon as a way of making the forum more visible to prospective self builders. That said our membership is growing pretty quickly now so clearly people are 'finding us'.

@lizzie Your house is so stunning I didn't notice any cracks. My house was up for well over a year before it was boarded & plastered, maybe that is why I haven't had any, yet. My joiner friend said after a cycle of all 4 seasons it has mainly settled. One thing I would reconsider if I was ever mad enough to do this again is not to have the internal window frames in RAL 7016. It has been a bugger where the white walls meet them to get a really crisp, totally even & neat junction. I have achieved it but it was a real pain. Mind you, may not be an issue if a professional decorator was involved. Alas, that was not possible on my budget.

Sorry for the delay since the last blog. Things have been very hectic keeping a track of everything that is going on with the build and holding a job down ! As we approach end of January and move into February there are lots of things going on simultaneously on site including battening the roof in preparation for the roofers, finishing of fitting the smartply in preparation for blowing in the insulation and fitting the windows and doors. The first window goes in on 30th January. Many of the side reveals to the windows have splays to help spread the light from the window. We are using Green Building Store Progressions windows and Green Building Store Ultra doors. The Progression windows are expensive, but the narrow sight-lines give a lovely contemporary look and very little of the frame is visible outside, so it should be as maintenance free as you can get and seems like a good investment. The Ultra doors look very similar to the Progression doors and are of a similar thermal performance but are more cost effective to purchase. From the 12th - 15th February, the Warmcell insulation is blown into the frame. I hadn't realised, but you can do this before all of the windows are fitted, as long as the boarding out is completed inside and out. By 21st February all windows and doors are fitted. A lot of time has gone into ensuring the windows are fitted properly and are as airtight as possible. In parallel, the brick plinth is built. Whilst you won't see all of this once the ground levels are built up, I am really pleased with the quality of the job. Next job is and fitting the Aquapanel in preparation for the rendering. The roofer we had lined up pulled out at the last minute, but we are able to get a local firm with a good reputation to take their place at short notice. We took a lot of trouble selecting the roof tiles and we are particularly looking forward to seeing the tiles laid. The roofers are on site beginning of March after a small delay due to rain to do the counter-battening and lay the tiles. The roof is a pretty simple shape so the roofers make quick progress. We are using plain clay smooth machine-made tiles made by Dreadnought tiles and supplied by Ashbrook Roofing. We found out about them at a self build show we attended and have had great support from both Dreadnought and Ashbrook. We are using two colours - 70% staffordshire blue and 30% blue brindle mixed randomly. Before you know it, the roof is in place. Big Day on 8th March as it is our first Air Test. We'd put 0.3 air changes per hour (ach) @ 50pa into phpp so we were hoping for something similar or better. Results were: 0.08 ach @ 50 pa 0.11 m3/hr/m2 @50 pa Absolutely delighted with the results. Given building regs are 10 m3/hr/m2 @50 pa and Passivhaus standard is 0.6 ach @ 50 pa, this is over 90 times better than building regs and over 7 times better than Passivhaus standards and a great testament to the attention to detail shown by the build team. Flashings between the wood cladding and the render are fitted. These were made by a Herefordshire based fabricator. Work continues fitting the cladding. We are using Douglas Fir, supplied by Ransford which is literally 5 minutes down the road. Once the roof has been laid and the weather allows, the rendering starts. We are using the Weber system, with a base coat applied first followed by a thin silicon based top coat which will be sprayed on. The roof and detailing around the dormer window are completed Once the cladding is complete and before the scaffolding comes down, we need to treat the cladding. The gable ends need a fireproof coating due the proximity of other houses, so it's one coat of primer, two of Envirograf and two of Osmo. The front and back of the house get one coat primer and two of Osmo. It's one of those jobs that costs more and takes longer than expected. We hadn't planned on having to to apply so many coats of product and in my naiveity I thought it would be a layer or two of fireproof coating on each gable. The wood looks a little orange at the moment but that is typical when new and it does weather down nicely which is what I plan to allow the wood to do. Hopefully to osmo will help even out the weathering but I have no plans to keep on applying it. The guttering is attached whilst the scaffolding is still up (Lindab galvanised) The scaffolding on the house comes down and goes up on the garage to allow the roof to be completed on the garage. The second coat of render is sprayed on and the shell of the house is now complete.

Tip: Strongly recommend you paint the ceiling above the shower with Zinsser waterproof paint. We had issues with paint peeling off due to condensation or steam and other so called waterproof paints didn't last long. Think someone here recommended Zinsser to me and it's been fine since I used that. I think I used the Zinsser Bulls Eye 123 but it's been awhile.

well i,m chasing much better one now at same time i should say a small estate is a better description . would love to talk about it ,but cannot I told you wrong the showroom monster size windows are bronze anodised i think --not powder coated

when i get these dam plots sorted out trying to sell me plots with a partial ransom strip up the road side and a pp that has the entrance over that bit . last thing was i told them i would conclude when i got change of planning to move entrance down to the bit that I could go over ,if they would sign missives to that effect and not have them be able pull out and then use my new PP

@pocster what i will say is that 15 years on its still ok -even though idid not go for the more expensive option - so its a "clint eastwood" job "do you feel lucky "

If the boxes had holes in the webs then it would seem to be easy to just blow insulation in. Larger boxes with fewer webs might make this even easier to do.

IIRC my O level chemistry, rust requires all 3 of water and air and iron, with water as the facilitator. F

I think that is also the shortcuts of every Windows machine since at least 1990 to my knowledge. Although I am impressed with youngsters who know about it; driving a laptop from a keyboard with alt and windows-key codes rather than flubbing about with mouse pads, and semi-colons, are established ways of intimidating non-nerds aged under about 35. Though I am entirely baffled by people who type on mobile phones with their thumbs; Generation Millenial must have Trump-hands.

It's been looked at, but the combination of the very low flow rate of air in a roof void, plus the low heat capacity of air, makes it challenging. One company came up with a combined direct exchange evaporator panel (rather like that used by the Portuguese/Spanish hot water heat pumps) connected to the rear of PV panels, that were in-roof mounted. The idea was to both cool down the rear of the PV panels, to increase their output, and extract useful heat for heating and hot water. The problems with this were the price and the need for a massive heat dump outside the house to get rid of the excess heat, as once the hot water is hot the heat needs somewhere else to go.

I had trades in for everything I did not do anything myself and it was a complete money pit every week massive bills from 'trades'. Lack of funds or 'trades' were not the issue, planning and co-ordination was a factor of course as was terrible weather also TF provider could not do our roof frame we had to get it made by someone else and my carpenter then fitted each individual shaped truss to form our final roof profile, it was a heck of a job for him then the final covering was done by another specialist roofing company. We had some sort of membrane type thing on the boarding provided by TF company but apparently it was not waterproof as evidenced by the niagara falls of water coming in through the roof in the awful weather. This water then gathered in lakes on the uneven slab and so the cycle of wet warm mould etc was able to take hold.

Worth noting that the problem in Norfolk isn't private water supplies abstracting groundwater (as they are miniscule, as far as impact on the aquifer is concerned) it's licenced farm boreholes. The law is that you only require an abstraction licence if you draw more than 20,000 litres of water per day from a borehole or other water source. A domestic supply won't come close to this; as a general guide it will be around 150 litres per person per day (so we probably draw around 1.5% of the maximum we could use without needing a licence). Farms will need an abstraction licence, as they will likely use very large volumes for crop irrigation. It is the farm and commercial abstraction licences that are possibly being revoked in Norfolk, not the unlicensed use of private boreholes that don't require any licence. The impact of reduced levels in aquifers is still there, but this varies markedly with the region and the underlying hydrogeology. Where we are, the lower greensand aquifer doesn't seem to vary at all, the level stays a constant ~4m below the top of the borehole all year around and from one year to the next. As for uncertainty, then this depends entirely on how good the hydrogeological survey is. We used a very good chap, who produced a detailed survey, complete with a drilling profile and borehole design. Even though we had problems with the drilling company, it turned out that the hydrogeologist was absolutely spot on, in that the water was exactly where he said it would be (within about 1m, as far as I can tell) and the water quality is also exactly as he predicted, with significant levels of ferrous iron that has to be removed by our water treatment plant. Although the borehole saga was a PITA (as @Mr Punter mentions above), the very best £300 I spent was on the hydrogeological survey, as that took pretty much all the risk out of the initial decision to go for a borehole rather than pay a great deal of money to get mains water to the site.

Unless the cost is more than 15% of the total build cost, get a mains connection. The borehole nearly finished off @JSHarris and he is one of the most resourceful members here.

Exactly!

@ultramods it would be a shame to compromise your lovely basins for the sake of a few extra £’s on some wall tiles.

An ASHP will do 50 degrees, I have mine set to 48 degrees. BUT 50 degree water in a thermal store, will give you very little decent hot water. With a thermal store, as soon as you start drawing heat from it, the temperature will start falling. So to maintain a sensible amount of hot water at say 48 degrees, the water in a TS will need to be a lot hotter than that. On the other hand, fill a UVC to 50 degrees, and it will deliver 50 degree water almost up to the point it runs out then it goes cold very quickly.

No, for some reason Peter. anyway quoted today on phone (they forgot to send it).. waaay too much. Two 6' gates, posts, hardware = £650. Very much cream of crop gates then.. a bit overkill for my humble cottage maybe/ a bit 'posh' praps (tho Id love to av'em if £350 as Id hoped). So off to the bargainy-farmers place (a 'very welsh' feel..) & bingo I spotted 6' gates in 2mins flat, decent quality.. £75 +vat each. result! So a pair with two 8', 8x8" posts (nice pointy tops), & all hardware, decent too.. ~£240 inc vat. Excellent. Will buy next week then prep & post jobs (Q's!). cheers all ..zoot

Given that both houses cost about the same to build I couldn’t really equate that given that the plywood box house had so much free labour. It’s hard to see where the main money is spent on these projects without a cost breakdown.

So tonight. The "plywood box" home. I see one major flaw, it takes about 6 weeks to get a roof on, And the plywood is the finished internal surface. So doesn't that mean you really need 6 weeks without rain? And the outside, finished with what looks like pallets painted black, vertical boards with huge gaps between them. What stops water and UV getting in between the gaps? Hope the membrane is UV resistant for a long time. And it will be spider and wasp heaven behind that lot? The other house was pretty normal and even appeared to have a BR compliant staircase.

£4 !!!! Mega money !!!!

Your as well ordering the screed with fibres in and making sure you have a joint at each doorway

Yes, I think that's what they call it. I put up a Jacksons fence in 1993 and when I moved sixteen years later it was as good as new. The gate posts here sit in water when the water table is high so it's a good test for their treatment.

She is absolutely right. I lost the will to live trying to understand it. ' ... overthinking it again, I suppose ... '

We have cracks just like those around our frames, too, where the plaster has shrunk back from the frame edge as it's dried out. I've been going around raking the cracks out and filling them with flexible acrylic sealant, but it's a messy job to do and would have been better done as you suggest.

I haven’t go any cracking here either.....I have bloody great crevasses its like the grand canyon in places. Mine was boarded and plastered whilst still not watertight. It was leaking literally like a sieve for air test and just had temp bits of tape put over to get a result and I was told I needed to sort it properly afterwards by air testers as even their temp tape was having problems sticking due to the wet. The leaks continued right through the whole house being plastered and the plastered walls and floor were wet around the leaking windows. However my cracking (and I have an awful lot) is not around the areas that were wet for so long. Prior to boarding and plastering the frame was sopping wet as we did not get the roof on and watertight for some while and it was very wet weather, then it turned warm and we had black mould growing on the frame we had to treat it with anti fungal and dry it out with dehumidifiers. I guess all thats the reason why my cracks are so bad. Pic just for interest.