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Well it Looks like weve got a fixed deadline now. Better get a wiggle on hadn't I.

The builders put it together to our design. It's made of MDF with a rolled paint finish, Blum hinges & push catches, ours is 350mm deep. I like the clean looks & it gives a lot of storage for relatively little loss of useful space on the shower room. It has a 1400mm shower tray, basin & toilet in it, it feels about the right amount of space - plenty of room to move, but not pointlessly extravagant. Still need to sort out the mirror!

Congrats! @Onoff‘s kid was big enough to help finish the build at the end ?. Could be a strategy? ?

300mm horizontally is the recommendation but it’s not a regulation.

With the benefit of hindsight, pretty much the only changes I'd make to our house would be related to over-heating. I dearly wish that I'd not been so focussed on heating during the design stage, as heating is a complete non-issue. A single fan heater would keep the whole house warm in mid-winter. I should have spent far more effort in designing out solar gain, without any doubt whatsoever. Getting heat out of a house that's already overheated is much harder than stopping that heat from getting in in the first place.

I was given a free shed and didn't stop to think! I merrily went ahead, picked a spot out and excavated it. I build a base with a decent slab with a DMP underneath. I then built dwarf walls from some left over stocks and Celcon blocks and erected the shed on top. Tbh I should have chopped the thing up for firewood and sold it at the gate in bags putting the cash towards a proper shed! Given the available area it's not big enough to swing a cat in. But we are where we are... Looking then to, as cheap as possible, add a small side extension on. (Tbh I want to knock down the treehouse and wendy house elsewhere and build a 30m2 passive esque shed come garden room with green roof but that's for another thread). I'd put the little extension in the excavated bit where the water barrel is: The site slopes so I was thinking maybe cast a waterproof concrete wall on 2 maybe 2.5 sides and key a new slab into the existing one. If I cast the base first with some rebar sticking up around the edges then the walls later I assume I'll get seepage through between the new L shaped wall and base? Or do I cast floor and walls in two hits then just paint the outside with a liquid DPM? This is tbh only to store a few garden tools, old knackered cement mixer etc. I'll strap a sturdy door post to the existing shed side and make some double doors. As to how I integrate with the existing felt roof...

So pleased you have at least the beginning of the end in sight.

@lizzie Thanks Liz. Those photos were taken ages ago. It has come on a lot since then. I am hoping to move in early July. It will be way off finished but upstairs will be liveable.

@Onoff is this the measurement?

@Russell griffithsMy house is mainly single storey & the guttering is very visible. That is why I chose to spend a bit more on that & cut back in places less on show.

You need to do a list of everything in your house that will need to have a duct. Showers, baths, toliets,sinks, washing machines all need to get rid of water and other stuff!!! Then you have your electric,bt,gas, heating pipes, power to outside gates or shed etc. You use these for the water bits. https://www.screwfix.com/p/floplast-long-radius-bend-87-5-110mm/81100 Everything then gets put inside these or connected to them. Water, waste water , toilets etc. The blue water pipe will just be pushed up the inside. For electric it will need to come via a black duct . It will depend where you meter box is going so might need one of these if it's a cavity build. https://www.meterboxesdirect.co.uk/electric-meter-box/meter-box-hockey-sticks.html Telephone cables will be via a grey duct like these https://www.draindepot.co.uk/plastic-underground-ducting/bt-ducting.html I have seen telecoms put in everything from sewer pipes to the proper grey ducting though. Only thing is make sure you put in some draw rope to pull the cable from the out side into where ever you want the cable to go to. Same goes with the electric cable duct. It's up to you to get the ducting from your house to the edge of the site to the location of the water main, bt box etc so make sure you put draw rope in the ducts. And this is very very very important measure and measure and then get some one else to measure and check each and every position of every duct before you pour any concrete. Will be a few mins to move a duct then. After the concrete is in its a major pain in the arse.

It means they are 8 miles away when you may get cross ?.

Have you tried Hanley Economic? I've arranged a telephone interview with then (and Ecology) for later in the week and they seem fairly keen and flexible - very few restrictions on build types, reasonable fees.

Depends on supplier and how much the person is willing to pay for transport. Is it just glass or glass and frame? Double or Triple? Triple we can do 3.25 x 2.8, double would be larger. In lift and slide, 6.5 overall width, 2.8 high. 1 fixed, 1 slide, additional gearing and or electrical operation recommended. Standard T&T windows is a max of 180KG, exposed heavy duty hinging. We can do 6 metre high but need to double check the exact specs on this.

In my case the first condition of the planning permission was we must form the entrance from the highway to the plot before building commenced. I confirmed with he council once we had done that, that it constituted "starting" the development. So in our case, that alone locked in the planning permission.

It doesn't really matter how long it lasts all you need to do is start the build. That could be just digging a part of the founds and pouring the concrete, you don't have to dig the complete foundation . You could ask your local planning person what they class as the start of the process. Once it's started then you can take as long as you like. If you don't want to start then you have 3 years after which you need to reapply.

So you’ve just answered your own question

We had kitchen units in the bathroom when I was growing up and they lasted 25 years and were still there when we left. Is a bathroom really much less humid than a normal small kitchen? Or you could use wooden kitchen unit doors on stud, which should last OK. Anyhoo, let us know if it worked in 10 years ?. Ferdinand

Will they be ok with bathroom condensation? . Will the cheap veneer peel / warp off ????

Wall units from kitchen ranges can be a good thought.

My parents did some of this. Often it will look more attractive if you just leave most of the beams there. One warning - COs have very long memories and very deep filing cabinets. When we lived as a family in a listed Hall for nearly 4 decades, it was in a copse and dad did various useful things that would cause a blizzard of paperwork now. We had one CO visit, who was a chap dad had fallen out with a decade previously, and they never returned for 30 years until we were selling. They even had trouble finding us when on the way - and it can be seen from the M1. Ferdinand

On the recommendation of others here I have used a couple of Ubiquity Unify AC lites and I now have seamless WIFI throughout a 4 storey house.

https://www.marleyalutec.co.uk/products/aligator-rainwater-systems/

That looks well done. How did you construct the cupboards? And pre-cut system? I am looking for storage ideas for the two bathrooms in my forthcoming build.

I did wonder seeing the orange juice on the pub table the other day. Knew it wasn't yours!

We dont know that yet. This is only the 12 week scan and it wouldn't cooperate with the camera for even a chance to check. But all the measurements are pointing at a healthy baby. Even saw the little blighters heart beating ?

Congrats! Boy or girl?

Congratulations!

ARP from Leicester. I am really pleased with it, great quality but it was expensive, about £1000.

Is this having a bathroom in it..??? Bearing in mind you'll have finished the house one before this project starts won't you...??? ??

I just got used to getting strange looks and comments from people working on our build. There's a very strong tendency to disapprove of anything new in the building industry, not for any good reason, just a seeming reluctance to accept change. We have had a few of the people who worked on our house back since it was finished, and every single one of them agreed that what we've done works OK, so perhaps that will go some way to try and get people to adapt to new methods of construction.

That Solargard Sentinel Plus is the same film as we have on our front glazing, which is also St Gobain 3G, although fitted to Munster windows/doors rather than Internorm.

Try guttercrest

http://www.rainclearsystems.co.uk

A bit late now, but when we had our new bathroom put in at our current house we brought the stud work for the wall hung toilet forward a little & used the whole of the wall, excluding the cistern area, for cupboards.

Sorry forgot about your deposit, it’ll really all depend on what you are looking to borrow, personally I think I’d still go for a slightly smaller house, there is nothing worse than the stress of not knowing if you have enough money to finish and having to compromise on materials

We hit a lending policy change right when we came to draw down our already agreed (and fees paid for) mortgage. We arranged an interest only mortgage on our existing house (which we didn't have a mortgage on) to cover the part of the build for which we hadn't got enough savings for. This was arranged directly with our bank, Santander, who gave us a mortgage offer, did the valuation survey etc, took the arrangement fees from us etc, and then left the agreed mortgage on hold for a couple of months until we needed to draw down from it. We'd planned ahead in arranging the mortgage, but didn't want to draw it down too early as that would have incurred additional interest. We only needed to draw down on it in order to pay the first big payment to our frame supplier (who we'd already contracted with). When I went in to our local Santander branch to arrange the draw down, they told me that their lending policy had changed, and that as I was over 60 they would no longer lend us the money. They also refused to refund our arrangement and valuation fees. This left us in a blind panic, as we needed to pay the frame supplier, but thankfully the Ecology Building Society were both prepared to lend to us and were able to arrange a mortgage in a couple of weeks (they get full marks from me, although they are not the cheapest lender). I then did battle with Santander for nearly a year to get our fees back.

Almost exactly the same size as my floor area. Got a quote for £4k for insulated forms delivered, and engineering fees Inc

It's two walls that form all of the North boundary and part of the East boundary of the plot. The North wall is about 35m long, and varies from about 3m high in the corner to about 1.5m high at the end, the East wall starts at about 2.5m high and drops down to about 1m high after about 8m. The wall sits on a ~2000mm wide, 400mm deep reinforced concrete foundation, with a 600mm x 600mm concrete key beneath, to resist sliding. The wall itself is built from 215mm wide hollow blocks, doubled up in thickness, with rebar up through the cores, with those cores then backfilled with concrete. There are also rebars laid horizontally along the courses. The upper section of the wall reduces to a single 215mm block thickness above about 1.5m up from the foundation.

I think an important aspect is to plan for resilience if it turns out to be worse than we expect; there seem (anecdotally) to be far too many occasions when post-facto adjustments are needed. Personally I am not keen on those funny ladder-frame wooden or ally briese soleil at nearly roof level. I am not clear exactly how I would do that yet, as a mix of 'fabric' and 'system' measures. And I do not think that an identified toolkit exists yet, nor exactly how to use ihe different tools.. Perhaps we need a list. Ferdinand

My consumer unit is in a plant cupboard in my downstairs cloakroom, BCO didn’t query it.

As long as the consumer unit is not right behind the sink there is no problem.

That's exactly how ours was laid:

I use Estimators Online

Like @PeterW I went strip foundation and slab with UFH as per https://www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk/golcar-passivhaus-ground-floor-foundations/ the only thing we altered was lowering the internal DPC to floor level to avoid plaster cracking above the skirting. No SE required and BCO happy.

I had exactly the same last week, it took about 5 days to be "validated" the date used for application was the date it was sent, not the day the LP validated it...

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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.

And the madness continues

That's the delay he's set on his time lapse camera...