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So it’s almost 5 years since I bought my little corner of the national park and for the first time this evening after another weekend of slog I looked back at the house and thought.......shit......it’s actually beginning to look close to being finished. Then I remembered that tomorrow sees the delivery of another 120 tonnes of top soil (that’s over 500 tonnes now!) and the landscaping needs another month of graft. Oh and then there’s seeding and planting, the culvert needs building, driveway....OK just loads still to do ? But for just a brief moment in the evening sun I could see the finish line in the distance.

This has been my experience of converting .pdf to .dwg or .dxf formats. Objects end up broken, there are no layers, and there are lots of scaling and positional errors. I recently spent a few hours tidying up and rationalising a fairly simple set of drawings that had been converted from .pdf to .dxf, but for anything other than a fairly simple outline drawing I'm inclined to think that just doing a new drawing from a print out of the .pdf, with reference to some known dimensions, would be quicker and easier.

I do a lot of fire checking on TF and others While the fireproofing is good on commercial Houses are not so good The main objective when fireproofing is to keep the fire out of the cavity The main problem is insulation Gypsun and Hilti have some great products But they are hardly ever used on houses If I was to build a TF house I would close off all window and door cavity’s with Gyp fire batt Extra cost 100s and I’d include a horizontal brake around the perimeter to check any fire reaching the roof space

Never worked on icf but I have had to get around rebar before. Milwaukee make an sds that supposedly goes through rebar. Only difference I can see is it has 4 cutters on the top but they still bind a lot until they get through it. If it were me and I had already suffered all your defeats I would resign to stitch drilling as deep as I can. Break out what you can with a cold chisel / sds +chisel if you can get it in. Then try to work around the rebar(s) and past them. Then finally cut the bars with a reciprocating saw once you can get the blade past them.

Definitely not found them to be, have been knowledgeable and helpful now and back when I was designing - gave good advice a few times.

@Andrew if you are having any velux windows installed as well there is another PV inroof kit called easyroof which is compatible with the mk06 and mko8 size window. Its a very tidy solution.

Fortunately my panels would be on a single storey roof. I intend to install them from my scaffold tower. If you use their system, IIRC the Enphase software will tell you about faults.

I find there is nothing wrong with your heat loss spreadsheet and no need for anything more complicated than that. The predictions from that agree closely with reality.

Indeed. Just to be clear why, if they're not VAT registered and they buy the materials then they'll pay VAT on them and, because they can't reclaim it, pass the cost on to you but you won't be able to reclaim it either because it wouldn't be a VAT invoice. A bad combination.

Goes by the name of Cadamir...

There are raster to vector packages like Scan2Cad that purport to convert. Yes they'll produce a .dwg but unless they've massively improved since I Iast tried don't bother.

By any standards, this thread contains ,for the most part, a good discussion. Good because anyone who chooses can engage with the core ideas and make their own mind up. Were I not full-time on my own on my build, I'd have a good go at summarising it : the process of doing that well would teach me a great deal. Here's a go at a one (OK, 2) liner; Because the term Thermal Mass is both commonly used and seen by some as problematic, its use should be qualified. That qualification should be given with reference to factors commonly understood to be involved in Thermal Stability. In other words, ask the person using the term for clarification.

A good smoke bomb can be made from a pingpong ball or two. Cut balls in to small flakes. Make a foil ball, Fill with the fore mentioned flakes. Pierce several holes in foil and set alight through said holes. Lob in toilet and wait for the fallout action to happen. Useless advice for the day. Sorted!

For those of us who do not have a degree, could you explain the above (in words of one syllable fir me please).

I have played this sort of game a lot over the years. I suspect the new architects want nothing to do with the converted files even though they can read them as they are likely to cause endless pain over the coming months of being worked on. They might look right when printed but could cause problems with inaccuracies and errors that will make working on them very slow and cause further potential mistakes. I hate working on drawings that have been started by someone else and I am sure I am not alone in that. Just re read your post. If it is a basic survey drawing not construction drawings it may be easiest to just trace over the drawing in the cad file so all lines are created from scratch, rather than try and modify existing vector lines that may have glitches in them. That wouldn't be a massive job. There hopefully is a scale bar or dimensioned line somewhere that can be used to check the scale is right.

Vanity cars come with vanity wheels ?

150mm of decent insulation is probably fine, there is a law of diminishing returns, where adding more insulation only makes a modest difference. If the loss is under about 10% then realistically that's about as good as it's reasonable to expect. Worth just doing a quick check to see how hot the floor is likely to run and how much heat will be lost. I wrote a simple spreadsheet to do this that may help: Floor heat loss and UFH calculator.xls To put our floor heat loss from the UFH into perspective, in very cold weather (as in -10°C outside), then that ~8% represents about 128 W, so about the same as us leaving most of the lights on in the house, which isn't a lot to pay for the convenience of not having radiators cluttering up the walls.

Everyone's a critic but few will have the mettle to do what you've done. It's a cracking looking house. We've had our plot for nearly 4 years and still have not broken ground. When I see people finishing it gives me a boost so thanks for sharing.

Well I've still got the garden room/gym to build. That will keep me busy next spring/summer.

Probably unknown beyond about 25 years. There's no real change to the roof structure needed to fit in-roof PV, though. Our roof was just battened at the pitch needed for the slates: and then the GSE frames were fitted to the battens (with a few extra battens added where needed): The roof was then slated and when that was completed the PV panels were installed.

Well that's just jealousy speaking. That is an amazing looking property, well done and good luck with the rest of the landscaping.

If I could offer a hopefully helpful word or two. The term 'lead' doesn't matter. You'll need them to work together - well. Start with either trade, doesn't matter - if they're at all experienced, they'll know who to work with. But do check them both out thoroughly. Good excuse to go down and have a drink in their pub, and listen. You can safely leave unconnected panels on the roof. Good luck! Piccies, please! Ian

For CSH, I believe those conditions should fall away under ‘not enforcible’ or similar, as CSH is no longer a thing which can be imposed. You could ignore them for now and go some variety of “Dead horse, darling” to the planners if they go “Oi”, or get the condition removed first. Imo not one to worry about, certainly not this early on. They are more likely just to ask you to think about improving it because it is better for you. I would mention it to Duty planning when you have informal soundings after The LDC has been provided. https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Code_for_Sustainable_Homes You may get a new sort of green doodah attached to any new permission, but current basic building regs are better than CSH 3 anyway. For the caravan, others have replied. We can come up with ideas that would improve the build quality. I am am not sure whether you will have to deal with newer building regs. I suspect you do. Ferdinand

If I start drinking gin will my house look like that?

Wow, a stunning looking property. Those moments you snatch should be rightly cherished and you should feel proud of what you have achieved. Great feeling isn't it?

That looks amazing! Well done.

I'll second the difficulty of working above the panels. Our roof was an absolute mare as we've panels crammed in around a dormer and with a valley each side. But yes, you can fling them up, poke the wires through a nearby felt overlap, and carry on...

There is not a clear sequence for this job, I installed the GSE kit and PV panels first (inc cables into roof space), slated second and then wired a few months later. It was a real PITA slating above the PV panels if doing again I would try to slate after installing the GSE kit but before installing the PV panels as @JSHarris did this would also protect the pv panels from being damaged from the slates, I was advised against this by the guy supplying and signing it of as he said it wouldn't work but I think it would. No problem with having a PV panel installed and not wired up unlike a solar thermal panel which could damage it. We also looped the connection between each pv panel into the loft space, this will make fault finding easier down the line.

There is nothing to stop the panels being fitted in advance of everything else. The one thing you need to decide is where will the inverter(s) go. then run the DC cabling from the panels back to that point and terminate the cables in the input terminals of the DC isolator switch(es). Then everything is safe and ready to connect later.

The lad and I did a few more courses. We are not brickies by a long shot! . Made a faux pas! 7th course high is a few mm higher than it should be. There's an angle iron welded to the box section that the set back brick at course 7 should have sat on directly. I unfortunately put muck on it then the brick. Living with it.

One of the last two jobs is just being done, the garden walls. The stone has taken ages to come. We fitted a strip of powder coated aluminium to match the windows onto the wall and put a slurry coat n before the render. Hopefully this will stop the render getting too wet and blowing. So many garden walls that I see have the render cracked and falling off. I have noticed at one point on the house where the render comes down to the arch around the front door, the bottom edge is starting to go green above the arch as the water sits on top of the stone and runs into the render. We need to find a way to stop this, either a mastic band or a small flashing. We may mastic the back edge of the bench seat shown here as otherwise we might have the same issue where water sits on the seat and runs back into the wall. The last job after that will be the front gate, which I am told is imminent. I have wanted to do a photoshoot, but wanted everything to be finished. I have bought myself a Nilfisk wet and dry vac, my wife has been laughing as I may have been vacuuming outside today after the work.

A few minor bits to sort like a mirror, toothbrush charger, bog roll dispenser, shelves in the cupboard...plumb the UFH in...plumb the towel rail in...connect the body dryer permanently...do the WC odour take off... So NO! ? But I've just had a nice rainfall shower with the Bluetooth speakers blaring.

Are there hole saws of an appreciate size that attach to your digger? Bit of a stretch but you never know....