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The other week a 13 ton digger was working close by and was idle waiting for others to catch up. Seeing an opportunity to avoid manually barrowing 5+ tons of hardcore from the drive into the garage foundations for the slab I agreed a price with the driver and stood back. The beast trundled over shaking the ground and then effortlessly munched through the pile of hardcore in 20 minutes, the pile to garage distance was within a single swing of the digger arm which helped. The driver then took another 10 minutes to spread it out within the footings. Good days like that a few and far between.

As I’ve said many times before covertly record all conversations with planning . They lie , contradict , obfuscate any issue to wear you down and make sure your application is rejected .

Don’t avoid alcohol. Or coffee. Buy in normal quantities throughout the project. Then invite all your BH colleagues for a week long party. The very thought !!!

I thought fibres were primarily for prevention of shrinkage cracks?

In a previous house, we built an extension and moved the front door to the extension. the old front door got bricked up and a window put in. That left a large, 6" or more thick, cast in place door step to remove. Whilst pondering how to break it up, one day some guys turned up outside to dig a hole in the road, complete with a pnenumatic road breaker. A quiet word with them and a £20 note, and 10 minutes later my step was reduced to a pile of manageable lumps of concrete to dispose of. The next door neighbour came storming out to find out why her house was vibrating.

some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue.

Standard reaction of iron and tannin in oak in the presence of moisture. Oxalic acid will bleach it out.

The gauge figures aren't always accurate, but 100µ is supposed to equal 400 gauge, so that makes 300µ equal to 1200 gauge, so it looks as if you have the right stuff. µ = micron = 0.001mm

Plus the weight considerations - 750kgs! All the parcels go in there and we also have a letter box. Camera keeps and eye on everything.

I filled in any slight dips with ballast pre the sand blind. Handy time to get rid of any half bags of plaster, cement etc like in The Great Escape...

Really like the K6 telephone box. I've wanted one for years, but SWMBO vehemently opposes the idea every time I've suggested it.

Not surprised the tenant left with a bog like that. I bought a house in a very hard water area (Aylesbury). The bog was like that when I moved in. I bit the bullet, put on rubber gloves, got a kitchen scourer and a bottle of Toilet Duck or similar, and just started scrubbing. Not the worse job I have had to to (that was cleaning out the spa bath filter from the YMCA Sheffield, I have no idea what those young men got up to). There were a few really sticky bits that needed to be sanded away with a pumice stone (which also got rid of the greeny blue streak on the bath a treat). Friends and family were well impressed with how clean I got everything. But they never shook hands with me again.

Not true, IIRC in out case the wall losses were only about 30% of our total heat loss so this would on its own represent perhaps a 5% increase in your heating bill forever. However as Mike says, it is really worth playing with the numbers using a simple spreadsheet approximation such as Jeremy's. Your heat losses are primarily mix of wall, floor, roof, fenestration and air leakage circulation losses and you need to get a good balance. So for example, IMO, if you had to chose between 0.17 + no MVHR and 0.2 + MVHR, then the second option is by far the best. I went through all of these trade-offs when I was trying to decide whether to have a single-wall or twin-wall TF. In the end we went with MBCs twinwall Larson-struct construction. In retrospect, I have absolutely no regrets -- not for the slight U-value improvement, but for other factors that I didn't even consider in my design trade-offs: The cellulosic-filled twinwall has a far higher thermal capacity and decrement delay which makes the whole environment a lot more thermally stable and pretty much insensitive to external diurnal temperature variation. The blown-fill open panel cavity is intrinsically more airtight than pretty much any of the construction alternatives. You are also far less vulnerable to quality issues with insulation fit and potential airgaps / cold spots. So at the end of the day this is all about trade-offs. A good exercise is do the first design iteration then give yourself a £5K improvement budget and look in turn at using this to improve any one of the above components. If one stands out then you've got the balance wrong.

Apart from how to build it, what about fireproofing for anything closer than 1M to a boundary? Have building control said anything?

I believe it is possible to offer a modified scheme to the inspector but not an entirely new one. I know planning inspectors can approve some applications "in part". (Eg 3 wind turbines instead of 6). I think all documents sent to the appeal officer are copied to other parties by his secretary's but it would be polite to send the planners a copy yourself.

@epsilonGreedy I suspect they are asking if you want steel fibres or plastic ones

Keep your options as open as possible for as long as possible. Model each on a spreadsheet. Life will get in the way and help make the decisions for you. Make yourself as comfortable as you can skiing in front of an avalanche. Avoid alcohol. ?

Be very careful who you choose if you go down private PM route (your option e may be closest)........your context is exactly ours MBC house, renting 10 mins away, no experience etc etc. Go and talk to previous clients face to face...ones where the job is finished not part way through ideally as then they can give you an honest opinion without needing to keep anyone on side to finish the job. I wont go into the nightmare we ended up in as everyone on here is bored with it. Suffice to say I have things that are still not right and never can be now plus a huge cost over run due in no small part to errors and mistakes mainly caused by lack of proper supervision and knowledge from those who were in charge during the construction process. That large cost over run was on top of the many tens of thousands paid for management fees. On a nicer note where are you building? Tell us a bit about it.

I don’t think so, you can only appeal a refusal. With mine I was on application number 3 and was advised by a local planning consultant to apply for a room in roof with two beds (which the planners indicated would be approved) but the ground floor exactly what we wanted for the three bed, two bath we wanted, that way we could get on with building and then appeal application number 1, which we won ?so we got exactly what we wanted from day one (only 18months wasted ?).

Thanks, @jack, that all very very useful! I'll report back via this thread if/when Enersign Germany get back to me with a quote. I have requested quotes for Rational/Gaulhofer/Internorm/Schuco also in the meantime.

came acrossone of these while looking through gumtree local ads

Starting to watch this now

Hello folks, finally about to start my new build in Aberdeenshire so thought I would try and document it. I’ll do my best to keep it updated. It's been a long road to get here but the builders are due to start very shortly so the site has been stripped ready for them. Electricity is due to go in mid July, Scotframe kit in August and water will be getting dug in after herst. Below is a photo of the site plan so you have an idea of whats happening. Couple of photos to show the progress so far Site fenced off Sept 2018 Clearing the entrance and making a road in/turning area. Site strippped and ready for the builders to make a start. Next will be the sub build and electricity connection in a few weeks. I'll do my best to keep it updated but I normally forget to take photos

The Moffett Mountie! The brainchild of my sisters husbands Aunt!

this is the exact reason i will never have solid wood worktops, as you have found out they need care and you cant leave anything on them or you will get stains, get it stripped and some osmo applied

Moffett truck. Fortunately my plasterboard delivery guy (CCF) had one of those and he unloaded the whole lot and brought it to my front door. Saved a huge amount of carrying. If you have a large delivery it is worth asking the supplier if they have any vehicles with one. https://www.hiab.com/en/moffett/

Oak and danish oil aren’t ideal - I would have used Osmo Top Oil as it’s more durable. Is stripping it and reapplying something else out of the question ..?

I was just talking to our neighbour about one of those "good days" we had when building ours. The cladding turned up on the back of a flatbed, with no crane or forklift to unload. This was despite me telling the supplier verbally and by email that we were a domestic build with no unloading plant onsite. While we scratched our heads considering what our options were, another delivery guy turned up with something else. I can't remember what he was delivering, but he had one of those portable forklifts that sits on the back of the truck. For the price of a cup of tea and some cake, he was happy to unload the cladding for us. I don't recall ever seeing one of those forklifts again throughout the whole build!

Should have, could have, would have added acoustic foam around the bath. Spa feature is pretty noisy. The foam worked a treat around the WC.

After my hardcore looked pretty level with about 1000 passes with a compactor I think it had some bits that were probably up to 30mm lower in areas. Concrete cares not, you may end up with an extra barrow of concrete going in but it will sure take care of any undulations - no need to worry. I also intentionally left the sides lower so the slab edges were thicker. Just make sure your forms are bang on and everything just literally falls into place!

We've just had our driveway finished with Bodpave. Very grippy. Was super easy to put down once the levelling was done. Quite a bit of it showing, going to give it time to bed in and maybe put some more chips on top.

I say young man, in the bog or the YMCA spa?

Yeh definitely one to pay on credit card ..!!!

As PeterW says work out the size you need first and work from there. I also picked my up one of Ebay and shopped around for ducting mainly baulberg as I found them the cheapest.

Have you looked at ebay? I have one of the Mistubishi / Kingspan units that were doing the rounds a couple of years ago, I still bought all the ducting from BPC which cost about twice the cost of the mvhr unit.

I also went through BPC and went for the Vent Axia Kinetic Plus B, which was a bt more £ than the others that they offered me, but did have the summer bypass option, easy to install, efficiency was better than the others IIRC. There's also quite a few people on here who have gone for that option, so I thought I wouldn't be too far wrong with that choice. Not quite installed it all (loft is too hot) but also plan to site it on top of platform on the ceiling joists. Maybe with some rubber matting to reduce noise/vibration. If that fails, suspending it from rafters.

It’s a fire sale https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/19/bathstore-faces-collapse-putting-700-jobs-168-stores-at-risk

Only brief as I am just about to swan off to interact with the savages of Timbucthree, ie Manchester. Looking a bit more widely at the plan, which I really like the feel of - esp. the basement and courtyard which reminds of that very early UK passivehaus under the barn in the Cotswolds from GD, I would perhaps consider some element of interchangeability between top floor beds, guest bed/study, and TV room - such as to support: 1 - Kids upstairs now and potentially in the basement later when they start playing trombones or drums needing a bit more freedom. That would be divide up basement, give kids more space, and create parent-snug elsewhere say on GF, but that undermines my point 2 a little. 2 - I like studies to be on the ground floor. I think they (and the TV room) are semi-public spaces and need to be available for visitors rather than locked away. Plus be near the door for callers should there be a home based business. Perhaps studios and writing nooks or craft rooms are different. 3 - Future granny flats etc - which would to my eye naturally fit in the basement. That all depends on which extra items make a TV room for you, and how you will live. Just thoughts. Ferdinand

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The trouble now is all new heaters have to comply with LOT20 (google it) which forces them to have complicated controls to make them "more efficient" The price of new LOT20 compliant storage heaters is not cheap. I fitted a LOT20 panel heater for a customer earlier in the year. A week later I removed it as the customer could not live with it's silly foibles. I then had to search ebay for a "new old stock" non LOT20 heater which she is delighted with. The old, basic storage heaters however should be repairable. If it is just the flap not closing, that should be easy to fix. If it is not something obvious mechanical broken, then there is a "heater" (a wire wound resistor) to give some local heat to the bimetalic strip that controls the flap, to force it to close while the heater is being charged. Lastly, there are a lot of people who do not understand how to use storage heaters. The "boost" control should be left turned down to minimum most of the time in a domestic setting, only turning it up in the evening if you are getting short of heat.

For posterity - one thing that did come up is heat management things - it's no fun to find out your house is uncomfortable during hot days. It's probably a good idea to over-spec cooling options (at least - the 'plumbing' to add them later).

Its likely I'll have the roof on in a small number of months but I'm not going to risk it. So far with this build I've avoided ongoing rental costs such as scaffolding, heras fencing, portaloo etc. Even abandoned plans for a highway licence for the scaffold, £70/month, no chance. As a result I've reduced the time pressure on myself and I think increased my enjoyment of the build so far. The egger board is going in the same category; not worth the stress of having to meet a deadline.

I don’t know why everything has to ‘fit in’ as if the style houses were built in a few hundred years ago is the only style that is acceptable in certain areas. Are our minds so closed that we cannot accept new innovative designs too? How do new designs become classic styles if they are not allowed to be built?

Updated plans and 3D renders. My parents are over the moon. WC adjusted to add a cupboard. We might lose the other hall cupboard for a larger dressing room.

Nothing short of encapsulating the oak in plastic would stop that. You're dealing with natural materials. Oak is probably the most susceptible timber to choose too. Beech would have been less troublesome.