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Hiya, we r just coming to the end of our self build in Aberdeenshire (Lonmay), we did the majority of work ourselves outsourcing only the electrics (FYI 5k) bricky/harling and kitchen worktops. My husband is a joiner so would complete our work evenings and weekends. It has taken us nearly 3year, It has not been easy and took VERY careful budgeting, hampered mainly by our first house not selling, but it has given us a home we could never have afforded to buy. Given the nature of our hands on selfbuild i had lots of ordering and to do. Every nail, brick, slate and stick was ordered by myself and this saved us hugely financially. I reduced my work hours to 3 days to allow for this but what we lost in pay we more than made up for in PM and materials savings. A contractor isnt going to go round several companies trying to save on each item. The difference between certain suppliers was shocking. I’d strongly urge you to consider self-PM using individual trades, you could even use one contractor to get you to a watertight shell then subcontract from there. If ur flexible with timescale it will take some of the stress off. Regarding the tight access, We made our timber frame kit ourselves on site which saved approx 30k. I’m sure their would be smaller joinery company’s able to do this locally and this should still offer substantial savings. Painting is also something you could likely do yourselves (although don’t underestimate how labour intensive this is... and mind numbing) but it could easily save you £10k plus on a house your size. Another thing to consider whilst comparing roof prices Is although the slate is cheaper to purchase than the zinc, slating is labour intensive. Pay careful attention to what allowances you have been given in your tendered quotes for kitchens, bathrooms, tiles etc as often it’s too low and something most people will upspec on. We purchased our own scaffold and sold it afterwords for same cost, likewise steel container for storage. Our home is approx 360m2 with integral garage. Like urs it is also slate roofed , walls are granite fieldstone and render (harked as exposed site) with areas of cedar cladding. Your plans look ambitious for your budget if going the turnkey route but manageable with some compromise if going the PM route. My SIL was designed a house, also to be built in Aberdeenshire that could never have been built within budget. There is so much work available in the NE it is driving labour costs up. Another thing we need to consider up here is property price ceiling, i don’t know exactly where you are building but where we are it would be easy to spend more than market value if you get carried away. On another side note if you did need to scale back now but in the future go back and make alterations for disability they could be VAT free if it is a disability/chronic illness (not the bedroom tho but washrooms etc) worth looking into maybe?

The bottom line here is for anyone seeking advice to sift out all the stuff from those that have little or no practical experience from those that do. If I were after advice on ICF, then I'd first of all take heed of those here that have built using an ICF system, as their views are massively more valuable than anyone who has not built using ICF. With regard to bracing, then my view would be to take heed of the experience relayed here by those who have first hand experience of failing to brace walls. What a manufacturer publishes on their website means diddly squat if the reality is that winds or pouring loads can dislodge an unbraced structure. Reading this thread there are opinions expressed by several people who have first hand experience of building with ICF, and their comments are worth 100 times more than those of someone like me that has never used the stuff. In particular I would take heed of @jamiehamy, @AnonymousBosch, @Russell griffiths, @Triassic and @Alexphd1, as they seem to be the only members posting in this thread that actually have experience with ICF. Some of the other comments may well come from just using a search engine.

Sadly this is not untypical of the sort of really awful work that gets done when there is grant funding available. Many local authorities have dispensed with their Clerk of Works in the cuts, so contractors know full well that there isn't likely to be anyone judging their workmanship. First step is to send those photo's to the person in the Local Authority who is authorising the work, and at the same time requesting a stop on all further work until such time as the existing work has been independently inspected. If that fails to produce a satisfactory outcome then I'd take the images and story to the local media, as they will relish publishing it, I'm sure, and there is a fair chance that it might get picked up by national media. Either way I'm certain that the local authority would be forced to act quickly.

Christ on a bike! Makes me look professional!

There's no substitute for a bit of GRP experience when doing a roofing job, as it's probably one of the most potentially difficult GRP jobs to do, just because of the extreme sensitivity of polyester resin to slight changes in temperature. I've seen experienced GRP boatbuilders struggle when doing roofing, because of the need to fine tune the amount of catalyst to add. What's worse, is that you can run the risk of under-catalysing the resin and have the styrene evaporate off before the resin has cured, leaving a sticky mess. I've done a couple of roofs with GRP and found that the secret is to mix the resin very quickly and quickly empty the whole mixing pot on to the roof, then roll it out. If the resin sits in the pot it will warm up and start to cure too quickly, and spreading it out slows this down a lot, giving more working time. This only works well if the roof isn't hot, though. Not a good idea to try and do a roof in bright sunshine. Equally not a good idea to try and do a roof if there is a trace of moisture anywhere, as moisture is a real enemy when it comes to GRP.

So after a month or so in the house, the time has provided us with an opportunity to reflect on what we have achieved and what if anything, we would change or could have done differently. In truth there is very little if anything that we would change. The rooms flow, the doors open in the right direction and the lights can be switched on and off in the appropriate places. Even the WBS has proven to be a worry that wasn't worth worrying about, as it's position within the hearth is no longer an issue due to it being vented through the back as opposed to the top. Some jobs have been completed such as the down pipes and a few jobs remain outstanding but nothing that has an impact upon our daily lives. One such job is the porch that needs to be slated. Thankfully I still have some financial leverage over those various trades so I know they will return. Our satisfaction I suppose, has to be routed in the preparation work, the research and being a member of this superb forum. None of these elements should be underestimated. Therefore I would like to sign off this blog with a heartfelt thanks to all those who have contributed, not only to my issues over the past couple of years, but to all the other threads, as they too are just as relevant / enlightening. I have also attached some images which complete the project, namely the WBS chimney installation and the erection of the much mentioned porch. For a final time, thanks for reading, and given the date, seasons greetings to you all. Paul.

I am now at the stage of choosing door handles. As I am trying to achieve a minimalist (all doors will be flush matt white) look I was wondering why does everyone still use traditional door handles. What are people's thoughts on using flush push/pull with magnetic catches instead of normal door handles? BTW I would get a push plate with no writing on it

My existing roof is slate with no membrane and straight onto sarking, it’s over 100 years old and the timber is still serviceable. I got the house with at least 100 missing slates and no ridge..... but cash was and still is tight so I just replaced all the missing slates and checked the roof really carefully for any other damaged or misaligned slates and repaired as needed. I then put on a new tin ridge and it was back in action. Yes I need to check it and replace slates every year but that’s just life when money is tight. However when the time comes I will rip the whole roof of and start from scratch and there WILL be a high quality membrane included ! So If funds are tight do a really good survey of the roof and fix it up the best you can, but understand it’s a stop gap measure until the time / money becomes available to do a proper job.

Slowly being revealed and no, the electric isn't on. Blokey arrived to fit meter and made reference to a new edict from management that permanent supply is only allowable after second fix is complete for the whole house, and can I fit a commando socket in the meter box instead? Grr. And the reason? Apparently it's to negate the possibility of someone working inside a live CU. Not much of a spark then, I said...

I did consider doing mine in panel form, I was going to set myself up like a little factory make a framing table so you can build a panel in the table, all nice and square air hoses hanging from ceiling for speed and so you don’t trip over everything overhead gantry with electric winch for moving completed panels, or a forklift.

Serious = something big enough to disrupt your budget, or fundamental things you cannot go back and do later eg if you needed to insulate under the floor. If there is anything known to you, then knowing helps us comment. Ferdinand

If ever you need a house sitter...

Well......it’ll keep the rain off your head at the very worst Tres bien, Rodney. ?

Looks really lovely. Well done!

More progress! Can’t wait to see it with the larch & stone work. Will post another update soon.

Water pump pliers then ...

I’ve got my QS spreadsheet that I can share @Powerjen Like @Bitpipe I had a full QS done by one of the online estimating companies who provided it as PDF. I then took that and converted it to Excel and created a number of lookups so you can change the labour rates etc. Probably took me half a day but was worth it as was used for a number of things including cost reduction and also to look at stages and progress.

Imo they've even scrimped on the plasterboard screws. Should be about 150mm max spacing I think. Guessing they didn't tank the walls and floor... Must get back to mine!

The wrench will only work on a hex nut of bolt. The pliers will grip most things. What do you need to grip?

For me, the value of the QS work we got done early on was the quantity bit and the decomposition of the build into an 18 page spreadsheet of individual line items- we treated the subsequent costs as indicative and targets to beat. It was very useful being able to go to a trade / merchant and request a quote for exact square meterage of plastering, rendering etc. I suppose I could have figured it all out myself from the plans but would probably have screwed up - like when I told our landscaper that the 23m x 23m back lawn needed 225 m2 of turf

Well the boss man finally surfaced after I think a fairly sharp contact from the council. He has been round this afternoon and professed himself shocked.....mmmmm. Its all going to be redone/rectified apparently. That stub of pipe is not under the basin its in the middle of the wet area wall.....the mind boggles! There were a lot more issues but I didn't want to bore with too many pics. See what happens next. It is truly awful that these council appointed contractors think they can get away with such terrible work. No shame at all.......I thought bodgit and scarper only worked for unsuspecting self builders now we know their cousins are alive and well and working for the council doing disabled facilities. You couldn't make it up! @Onoff if they dont get it right next time maybe you would like a shot at it! All your input helped the lady homeowner stand her ground and not be intimidated by bodger the builder, thank you.

We went with the QS recommended by our architect.... then discovered he charges a % of predicted build costs.... obviously he then predicts them high! Same reason you dont choose an architect who charges on % of build costs as they have no incentive to keep your costs low. If i had known this to start with I may not have bothered. I feel your pain on this one!

It depends on how good the QS is and how well they keep their library of information up to date but also who they are reporting to and what their liability would be. When our firm QS things we use a library of costs that are kept up to date monthly. The different engineering disciplines will also feed into the QS library when manufacturer quotes are requested for budgeting information, sometimes the QS will even just get quotes for things that may not be simple to QS particularly a specialist system where no engineer or the QS has any experience. There are lots of lazy QS's out there who will just go "ah call it £20 a point or £50 per m" and don't check real life data. I have QSed a couple of builds for myself using the QS library and I came within about 1% which impressed me! QSing should be bloody accurate, it is their job after all, think of it as an engineering discipline, if electrical or structural stuff was not done properly there could be serious issues, QS's work must be accurate or they are no good in my eyes, like a bad engineer frankly. However, like your comment about overegging, this is also true, but it is also true for structural engineers etc. it's a safety margin. When internal QSing goes on it is accurate, as soon as it is put out to a client it can often increase as a cover - but it depends on the scope of work set out by the client. If there is a chance of the client coming back to complain or start blaming people then protection is built in, prices do change, but the client can ask to see how the prices were calculated and if they disagree one way or another they can alter unit costs which will update the cost - if however the client is looking for an accurate cost and contractually there is no chance of the QS getting it in the neck then they will supply this but the scope of work document will highlight the type of agreement and it must be understood and signed by all parties entering into the contract. A QS ought to have local knowledge to within 100miles of the project location as prices vary across the nation and also should take into consideration market and political fluctuations that may impact imports. If you were a painter and you reckon the job would take about 5 litres of paint - would you quote for 5 litres or 6? I know what I would quote.

If anyone's interested:

Yes, it would .. surely. ? Somewhere in the mix there will have to be at least £15-20 of time, and probably £5-10 of vehicle expenses, for each visit. Assuming 10 miles to town. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. In London they may still add x parking tickets per year to the overheads! (Ooops. Thought I hadn’t posted that.)

The mention of RIAS and ARB code of conduct seemed to have a magical effect on ours although I was still waiting for some sort of legal letter months afterwords. We've ended up with what I think are an excellent architect and architectural technician, both experienced but still young and enthusiastic. Proof will be in the pudding and all that. This is all stressful enough without the supposed professionals being dicks. You'll get there in the end and it will all be worth it, good luck to you!

Don’t the split units require an external fan unit? Plus, my above solution doesn’t have the bulky office-looking surface mounted unit cluttering up the wall

Right, useful questions: 1 - Where are you *roughly* (ie county) for weather and Regulations background? 2 - Is it listed or protected in any other way? 3 - Can you upload a site plan (square drawn on a Google sat-view would do)? 4 - Is there anything serious wrong with it - are we into major floor renovation, new roofs, new windows etc? 5 - Are you in a compulsory rush, or is there a reasonable amount of time? 6 - Is everything level? 7 - Can you give us at least a couple of known dimensions, which would really help? A scale if there is one in the top plan would do, or a room size or two. The more we know, the better we can help you think. The general approach that often finds favour here - subject to constraints - is "fabric first", which prioritises long term easy-to-run-ness / liveability. I'm sure I saw something not dissimilar on Escape to the Country, over my mum's shoulder. So you are not alone. We are in the throes of redoing bathrooms for accessibility ourselves, as it was one of just a few things the previous self-builder got wrong (bath downstairs, shower upstairs). (Update - I see you have already answered some of these in the intro forum - cheers. Trust me to choose the wrong one.) F "A ‘fabric first’ approach to building design involves maximising the performance of the components and materials that make up the building fabric itself, before considering the use of mechanical or electrical building services systems. This can help reduce capital and operational costs, improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. A fabric first method can also reduce the need for maintenance during the building’s life." https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Fabric_first

Don't be nervous - it's a constant theme, here. What will we all do in our dotage? My favourite response was Baron Morris of Castle Morris: "I have bought a small manor house in Derbyshire to decline and die in". It was in the village of Foolow. I heard about 8 years ago that his widow was still there, and was the official Duck Warden. My informant was a GP who was the Deputy Duck Warden, who was required - under the instruction of Lady Morris - to let the ducks out from the Duck House onto the village pond in the morning, and return them safely at night. Apparently Lady M is a character; hope she gets a memorial with a duck on it. (Matthew Parris has done something similar more recently.) I believe that the Duck House was bought legitimately, and not paid for out of Parliamentary Expenses. On the positive side, and before I make a serious response, if you *do* kill each other it will solve the budget AND the space problems . Welcome. Ferdinand

It is also worth noting that some manufacturers give their suppliers seasonal discounts around the Christmas period. We were notified of the discount window by our supplier about three months in advance and got our order in on the last day of the discount. In a sense we were fortunate that our build had been delayed by some months or we would have had to place our order on the basis of the pre-discount quote to keep the build schedule on track and would have missed out on the 10% saving which we obtained.

We have a lot of glass in our house and I got quotes from about 15 different suppliers and manufacturers. In the end I went for Internorm UPVC triple glazed windows, clad with aluminium on the outside. The inside has a 3M tape covering which makes the inside look and feel like aluminium. Not a mm of UPVC in sight. The "whole window" U values are between 0.7 and 0.8 depending on frame to glass ratio, which is basically equivalent to triple glazed timber windows. The windows were significantly cheaper than the Internorm timber windows and priced almost identically to the best price I managed to get for aluminium windows from other suppliers/manufacturers but with massively better U values (the best U values I got for aluminium windows was around the 1.5 level). The quality of the windows is superb and I have nothing but praise for the distributor I bought them through and their installation team (we used the supplier's installation team as some of the larger windows were over 6 square metres and I preferred the supplier rather than my builder to bear the risk of any accidents). More importantly, my builder, who is the ultimate perfectionist, was really impressed.

I did some fiberglassing recently and this was exactly my experience. The first lot ended up heating in the bucket to the point where it went off extremely quickly (I only used 2% catalyst and it was only about 10 degrees). In fact, it got so hot that I actually burned my arm on the frame of the roller when I took it out of the bucket when it was partly cured. In the end, I concluded that you needed to quickly get it out of the bucket and onto a coolish surface, or use small amounts each time. I also concluded that the ambient temp was more or less useless for calculating the amount of catalyst. The real temps that mattered were the starting temp of the resin and the temp of the surface to which it was being applied. Once I figured that out it mostly (mostly!) went okay.

Most buyers like plots to be independently developable. What I mean is buyers don't want to have to rely on the seller providing access to services or anything else once they have purchased the plot. It's not unknown for sellers to disappear before the promised shared road or drain has been installed and the plot owner might not be able to legally provide these themselves if they don't own the land over which they have to be laid. So if anything like this applies to any of your plots it would be worth sorting out those issues before sale. However if the plots each have their own boundary with the highway where services are located then I probably wouldnt bother, I'd let the buyers sort it out. It also depends on the difficulty of connecting to services. For example if a new transformer is required then definitely better for you to sort that out.

@gwebstech , for floors you cannot just invert the R value to obtain the U value, you must also have the exposed perimeter and the total areas as thermal resistance of a uniform floor varies with distance to the edge because you have to add in the thermal resistance of the soil

I am going for myson touch 2 wifi stats because the plumber uses myson. the stats are all hardwired, however each stat can be controlled via app if required. https://www.myson.co.uk/products/programmable-room-thermostats-touch-2.htm

No, the R-value (higher is better) or U-value (lower is better) is what you need to look at. Conductivity (often written k or λ) is a property of the material independent of the thickness, so only makes sense for comparison if you have two sheets of the same thickness. It's useful, though, if you know how much insulation value you want and then need to work out the thickness needed to achieve it.

You sure? This is bloody awful. What do these people think when they leave a job like this?

Appalling. That floor is going to leak like a sieve causing all manor of problems. Terrible situation but I would asking the contractor to leave site immediately and get the council involved. If they don’t help to remedy then I’d be getting the local media involved. The local papers will love that story! Sad state of affairs.

Go for the Celotex and also look at Seconds & Co for floor insulation bargains.

so to be fair all you grp issues were due to your inexperience of its use grp is the way to go ,if its really hot use less hardener . don,t do it when its frosty wait for a dry day .do not fit new sheeting your going to cover with grp weeks before ,as it will get wet and that will cause adhesion problems ,or rot of boards if you seal it in If you must then it needs to be covered until your GRP day don,t try to do it when its very cold --and damp most professional roofers will not grp a roof unless its new boarding as well ,because of above problems always under harden if anything --but try to be accurate with mix and mix it up very well .lumps in mix is hardener not mixed in and you have a hardener rich bit ,so it goes off quicker in that bit--do more smaller mixs than one BIG mix ,untill you got the hang of how far it will go and how quick you can use it up after your first mix you will see how long it is before it starts to go off . if gel time is too long then make next one slightly more hardener ,and i mean slightly 1% is normal mix ,1.5% -2% is a quick setting mix for very very cold day on a stinking hot day 0.5%--it iwl ljust effect gel time -- it will still harden completly with 0.5%well mixed up seeing your resin bucket smoking,because too much hardener is not funny or good use of resin lean on the roller --should be see through if you have done it enough ,and if surface is wet with resin -you used a bit much --but not a problem + if you laying 2 layers don,t put as much on second time and roll it hard for see though finish I have used a special grp that is uv activated and will go off in any conditions ,but its expensive and only really for emergency roof repairs in winter . it has a shelf life of 30 days and once you open it it will start going off in the daylight .

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@Mrs S I feel for you. Wanting tips to cut budget but not wanting them if you see what I mean. I think your budget is low for your house design. My house is not a square house it has all sorts of angles and an angled roof. That all costs a lot more than a square box. I dont want to tell anyone on a public forum what per sq m I spent because I dont want to think about it myself LOL but will say luckily were able to to afford it, just hadn't planned to spend so much, overspend wasn't all on top end finishes either I had factored that into budget. If it were me I would look at areas that I absolutely would not compromise on i.e. your glazing to take in your view, then areas where you cannot compromise i.e. your roof covering due to planning conservation area etc. Then I would take a long hard look at what is left and see where costs (if any) can be cut and see what could be done.

Are they currently part of your main residence? Check out any tax implication of splitting the land before sale vs at sale.

First off, I'd not be that confident about trusting the results from a voltage detector pen/screwdriver thing, as they are notoriously unreliable. Perhaps gain some confidence from trying out the test meter on an easy to access circuit, making sure that the meter is set to measure AC voltage and the test leads are plugged into the voltage sockets on the meter (if there is a choice). If you keep your hands clear of any live terminals the worst that can happen is that you will blow a fuse in the meter if you get something wrong. With luck you should gain a bit of confidence and feel OK with carefully testing the terminals in the junction box. I've been trying to label the various cables into that junction box with where I think they go/come from: Some connections are certain. The earth on the left, the neutral on the right and the switched line at the top (this has to be right as it goes to a light drop). The area of uncertainty is the lower terminal, as it's not clear that the switch cable has a line (red) connection to it, as it's hidden under what I think is the incoming power cable. If you don't want to use the test meter, then I would suggest that you remove the cable running to the fan, with its dodgy earth conductor being used as a switched line, and run a length of 3 core + E so that the earth connects to the earth terminal (with green/yellow sleeving), the brown wire goes to the line terminal at the bottom, the black wire (sleeved with brown) goes to the switched line terminal at the top and the grey wire (with a blue sleeve) goes to the neutral terminal at the right. I know this colour coding seems at odds with what you've got, but under the harmonised rules black can be a phase colour like brown, so shouldn't be used for neutral.

Welcome back!! Great to see you have finally got out of the ground and a structure is taking place. That said, there must be a story to tell given your last post was in March last year! If in the area, pop in as I know you are close by. Good luck. ?

Took some pictures I love that there are no hinges or latch plates visible when the door is closed

the difference is in the name. the idea is the same to deliver fully insulated panel system to site SIPS (structural insulated panels system) are skins (osb usually) bonded to foam core, like an ice cream sandwhich , that gives the structural strength to just slot together and thats your house, closed panel --again its in the name - -TF assembly -- but not built on site completed panels ,built in factory . full of insulation skin on both inside and outside and delivered to the site ready to slot together- could even be as big as half a wall in one piece or small as 8x4 --so no crane is needed

Ha, yes, once you have finished your bathroom!! So which August ? ?

Put me down for 2 weeks in August please!