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Here is my project going up just south of Newmarket. Just under 3000sq ft and is an old hay barn being converted to our new house ! In about 0.7 of an acre. Never done anything like a self build before, but hugely excited and hugely nervous in equal measure ! Yes, lots of glass and all south facing. I guess I'm going to need some serious help from the collective gurus on here please, but I promise I won't become a pest ! Thanks all.

Don't do it! If there's one sure way to ensure it ends up looking like a dog's breakfast, it's to design by committee ?

Time for another update. Our joiner has pretty much finished the plaster boarding. Here are some photos of the progress made. Kitchen/dining room Our bedroom. Our joiner has started to construct the internal partitions, we now have an ensuite and some cupboards. Living room Triple velux arrangement Upstairs kids living room My favourite view had been covered by a dust sheet for a long time. Looking forward to seeing boats go by. The house has a fair amount of south glazing which warms the house. Once opened these big velux windows work well to bring the temperature down. Both bedrooms upstairs have two windows to ensure a good circulation of air. The storage container went this month on a hiab truck. I was a little nervous watching a couple tonnes of steel on chains so close to the house. This has now opened up the window views from the master bedroom and living room and also allows the house to be viewed by itself for the first time. With the recent great weather I’m back to painting. I much prefer sitting in a chair compared to being on a wobbly scaffold. To finish off here is a shot of the Loch. Next up, a few more partitions need to be created, taping/filling, installation of our treatment tank and adjusting the levels around the house.

It’s an ever increasing collection for a an art installation I want to do..... the idea is to build a bridge between two rocky outcrops just behind and to the left of the building, a track leads under the - to be built bridge - and out of the property, another track goes over the bridge and through another aspect of the garden. I have the girders....320x320mmx 20mm steel at >6m and am gathering a collection of old cart axles for the main uprights.... it will be a VERY solid installation but will also be dripping with rust and slowly falling apart (not the structure), always to be added to as new and exciting bits are found ! Just a bit of fun really. Bad photo of where the bridge will go across... sun is setting.

To add to the avalanche of (well-meaning) concerns about overheating, I read somewhere (was it the Passive House handbook?) that the lower part of a floor-to-ceiling window contributes very little in terms of view-out or light-levels inside… but adds greatly in terms of heat ingress and overheating in general. For my forthcoming build I decided that my large windows would be from waist-height upwards. The design aesthetic still works (I think) with contrasting exterior cladding for the section beneath the windows that would have been glass if I had stuck with floor--to-ceiling glazing. My other concerns about floor-to-ceiling glazing is that: (i) it puts on-show the clutter of daily living; and (ii) prohibits furniture under the window.

Now there's an almost universal truth, well understood, recognised and highly valued especially here on BH. That learning process almost always contains pain of some sort. Turning most of that stress into ' ... great fun ...' is the key trick. I'm getting there. Just. Readers can't see your stress or the effort you had to put in, but we can savour the romance conjured by the images. Years from now nobody (except you) will remember the broken finger nails , the timber cut 10 mm too short, the annoying delivery driver, the infuriating '' professional ". But everyone will look at your house and smile. You can be really proud of your achievement.

The last week or so we've been blessed with pretty nice weather which has allowed for good progress on the frame. We hired in a hiab lorry for a morning to help with lifting the gables, ridge beam and roofing. As everyone probably finds out, now we start to get a better sense of the size of the house and how it sits in the landscape. SSE came in the other day for our grid connection. Those who have been following our progress might remember this was quite pricey, and when you see the number of vehicles involved you start to understand why. Here's hoping for a few days of decent weather to allow us to complete the roof.

I asked my MP to find out if the exemption for self builders was intended to include conversions. I'm afraid the answer i got was vague. However see this case that almost went to court. If the council refuses an application for an exemption I would send them info on this case and ask them to reconsider.

this was a newbuild in the local area. https://kirstymaguire.com/portfolio/hayshed-passivhaus-farmhouse/ it was designed to blend with local farm buildings.

I remember starting a post on the doors I am building from scratch but it was along time ago and I can’t seem to find it.....anyway I have now finished all three and am very happy with the result. All three are stable doors and all three are in the original placement. The building is a very old threshing shed. With two doors opposite each other (front and back) for separating the wheat from the chaff as the wind blew through, the other door at the front on the left is probably where the animals were kept. Still got a lot of work to do on the building but it’s one step closer. I will post some close up of the details tomorrow when the bits are not in shade. They all have at least two sets of weather seals and are incredibly solid. They face directly south west into the oncoming storms that roll in of the sea that is only 200 meters away. They took far to long to build but it was great fun and I have learnt a lot. Just another two to build on the other house now.......

Excellent and good luck. These buildings when converted sympathetically are one of the best applications of this sort of work. Unlike brick and masonry, they will rust away and their pleasing shapes will be lost forever from our landscapes eventually. Amongst the various projects that I am condidering is a similar structure. I say considering because of the open ended and potentially expensive reports that will have to be compiled, and then there is the CIL to pay of course. All of this cost and the potential for no time constraints for some of the surveys is a bit off putting. The other issue is the sheer size of this barn. Otheriwse my plan mirrors yours, though I have not sought prior approval yet, though the barn has it's own dedicated and very private drive, electricity and water. We would retain the green paintwork and the existing shape completly. Well done, brilliant project! Steve.

Welcome! To clarify the VAT postion, your conversion is either eligible for the VAT reclaim scheme or it's not. On the surface it looks as if it could well be. Read the notes in this link carefully to ensure that you qualify as the reclaim is at the end of the project so there is a lot of money at stake. VAT431C If you do qualify it works like this (all of this is in the link posted above but to summarise here): Any materials you buy yourself (must be in your name) you pay 20% VAT and can reclaim ALL of the 20% back via the reclaim scheme Any labour from a VAT registered trader is @ 5% and then you reclaim that 5% via the reclaim scheme Any supply and fit arrangements by a VAT registered trader are @ 5% (the whole invoice) and then you reclaim that 5% via the reclaim scheme If you use a non VAT registered trader for work they will need to charge you full VAT on materials as they don't have any way of reclaiming it themselves via a VAT return so if you are using non VAT registered traders try to supply the materials yourself (invoices in YOUR name) so that you can reclaim the VAT Ultimately you should get all of the VAT back (on eligible items and work) if your conversion is eligible and it will put you in the same position as a new build. There are lots of other details in that thread about what is eligible and when things can be 'zero rated'. For new builds labour and supply & fit are zero rated so where you read 'zero rated' for a conversion replace that with '5% rated of which that 5% can be reclaimed at the end of the build'. Pretty much everything else is the same. If you have any specific questions about VAT pop a reply on the other thread so that it keeps it all in one place.

You need it for washing stuff, including hands (HS&E requirement), mixing concrete, plaster, tile cement, diluting paint, and cleaning up after all this stuff. You may also need it if, like us, your have a condition requiring that mud isn't tracked into the lane from vehicles, meaning that tyres and tracks may need to be washed down.

Sage glass isn't that expensive when compared to things like solar control films - for us using Sage glass would have been maybe 20% more expensive that what we ended up doing, which was having solar control film applied to 3G glazing. There are alternative ways to reduce solar gain using glass, by opting for glass that is designed to reflect heat outwards. It's the stuff that's typically used in offices that have a large glazing area, where solar gain can be a real problem. The advantage of Sage glass (and it is a very big advantage) is that it's controllable. In summer you can turn the solar gain right down, in winter you can turn it up. At least one member here has it, @NSS, and finds it works extremely well. My inclination would be to massively reduce the glass area, but place the glazing so that it frames the views you have. Often framing a view can make it more attractive than just having a vast expanse of glass, especially if you have those framed views arranged so that they provide a different aspect of the view. Rather than limit the impact of the view, often framing it can enhance it and make it more interesting, as the light changes from one window to another. It needs some expertise to get right, but when it is done well the result can be stunning, and add to the "wow factor" rather than subtract from it. The key is to get an architect that understands this, as in many ways just fitting floor to ceiling glass is a cop out, as it doesn't require as much careful thought and ability to produce the view you want to be able to see. As a rough rule of thumb, the very best glazing available will be around 4 times worse than an average wall, in terms of thermal efficiency. Average glazing may well be 8 times worse than a wall. Thermal efficiency works both ways, not only does it keep the house warmer in winter, but it also keeps it cooler in summer. In terms of using PV to run an ASHP in cooling mode, then this can work very well, but it's still worth considering how much heat might need to be pumped out of the house. Good glazing, with a fairly high external reflectance, might allow in about 100 to 200W per m² of glazing area. Fairly standard glazing will be around 3 to 4 times that figure. You can work out how much heat that is in total by just multiplying the area of glass that will be exposed to the sun, as that will give you the rough cooling requirement. Using your figure of 150m² of glass, then with an optimistic solar gain of around 100 W/m² that's a 15 kW cooling requirement, which is pretty high. Worst case for normal glazing might be a cooling requirement of over 100 kW. To put this into perspective, our house is smaller than yours, at 130m² (about 1,400ft²) and has ~ 11m² of South facing glazing, that is covered with solar reflective film (we added the film as the house overheated very badly). We have 25 solar panels in the South-facing roof that reduces the solar gain a bit and generates a maximum of around 6.25 kW of power. For around 8 months of the year we have to use active cooling, using floor cooling from our 6 kW ASHP, cooling from our 1.5 kW active MVHR system and cooling in our bedroom using a 2.5 kW air conditioning unit that I installed this summer for additional cooling. Without active cooling our house that is around half the size of yours, with less than 1/10th of the South facing glazing area, would seriously overheat from around April until October. We are in a sheltered valley, though, with low wind speeds, and a mean air temperature that's a degree or two warmer than typical for this area.

The tanker I used was small enough to tow behind a car. The hire places have these small ones: https://www.hss.com/hire/p/250-gallon-water-bowser Our site was pretty tight, but we managed to find space to put this, although it did need moving about from time to time.

Thank you again Mr Dreamer !

https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/6851-a-guide-to-the-vat-reclaim-process/ @Canoehq the thread that @JSHarris mentioned.

Miele has had a large dishwasher for ages in their range and they recommend installlation only in kitchens with plinths 100mm or lower. Siemens/Neff/Bosch brought theirs out aboout 7 years ago with a sliding hinge mechanism to allow their tall dishwasher to go into 'normal' kitchens. I am not sold on the hinge sliding mechanism. We have had some issues with these clips failling if the drilling is as much as 1 mm out on the door. Please keep an eye on your sliding mechanism. Failure results in the decor door just falling off and getting dented/damaged and needing replacement.

Again, thank you. I've been lurking in the background reading the various threads on here for some months. It really is a brilliant place and a credit to the very kind people who take their own time to post up to help others. In many ways, as my wife and I are as amateur home builders as you could ever imagine, I would almost like this to become a showpiece project for the Forum itself ! Whilst we have some ideas that we would like to design into the house, none of them are as yet, set in stone, so we are more than happy to be persuaded/advised by better ideas the forum can come up with (within our modest budget !). Yes, I really would like this to become the house the forum built !

As always, STUNNING. Great tidy site, lovely house, fantastic location, congrats.

Neat boarding

Like you need more kids!

That may have something to do with boundaries between town and country being more permeable in Scotland, both in the mind and in planning policy. F

You are playing at least 2 games here - to prevent financial cost later or to make sure that you create / retain a viable driveway wrt to the planners, planning conditions etc. I can comment on the former. If you have been using it for a period (say a year or more) and supply a Statement of Truth, an indemnity policy may be possible via your solicitor to protect you from financial loss if something appears out of thin air that buggers you later. That is, if you create an entrance which relies on that visibility splay, use it, and someone does something to undermine the splay later - financial loss you suffer (eg loss of value of house) may be insurable as you are covering an uncertain event. That could be used to cover the lower sale price that will result when you sell if your neighbour has poleaxed you, or potentially financial loss if you have to buy them off, or if your house falls in value wrt to the mortgage. In these circs, you need to avoid your uncertain event become a more likely event until after you have insured against it, and this would rely on you not investigating too far and getting it past planning without being explicit eg simply assert that the splay of OK and hope they do not require proof. In a situation I had, the key aspect was that creating an established use which had not been enforced against over a short period of time, which meant there was no expectation that that would happen later. That made it insurable (I understand). Obviously, if you go and find the company who will enforce against you before you get that in place, the event is no longer uncertain, so you have shot your own fox wrt an indemnity policy. The situation I was mitigating against was where the seller (of a renovated house) to me had not got exact planning permission for what they had done and there was also a civil issue, and imo there was a residual risk that a neighbour could theoretically inhibit a parking space, which would have an impact on the value of a property and reduce the value. A solicitor was able to obtain an indemnity policy on the value loss at a good price once the space had been in use. It would in effect make the property mortgageable for a future buyer at full (not slightly reduced) value. I could not comment on whether you could insure against being buggered by the planners on a particular aspect. You need a strategy that will make both the planning and future value risks acceptable to you. Devil is in the detail, and do not saw off your branches before you realise you need them to sit on. What you do not tell planners and people will be as important as what you do. I think I would start with the road - if it is a serious road that the planners will not skim over or miss, then you will have to tackle it head on, and hope the access restriction by next door does not happen. If it is a minor road, or a place where you can create an entrance as of right, there is more room to JFDI. Ferdinand

You've got two fridges? ?

We have a fridge magnet we stick on the door of the dirty one ?

WTF did you use to take that picture with, your doorbell.

I phoned SIGA and they sent a rep to my site, he was in a van filled with more fancy stuff than you could shake a stick at. He was very happy to demonstrate the sticking abilities of his tapes by applying them to our esp blocks and challenging me to pull them off. Not cheap, but do you want cheap, I would rather spend my money on good base materials than a wall hung toilet. My roof membrane has just cost me a little over £1500 plus vat, plus £120 in tape to seal the laps. I hope it was money well spent.

aahh the memories. A sure sign though that things are going in the right direction. Just can't get enough of those views - do you keep thinking to yourself, how lucky you are? I would imagine so, as we often catch ourselves reflecting upon a wonderful achievement, even still, after being in for nearly a year. I think it must be a self build thing. Anyway, good luck with the forthcoming progress.

I used Protekt VP400 plus on my roof, recommended by the builder as it would stand up to prolonged exposure before the roof got tiled.

We have two. First time we have had two and it is great. Particularly good if you have a party or a big meal with lots of pots, pans and bowls. I would also recommend an extra tall dishwasher. We had one in the last house, but not this time as we didn't have the height in a handleless kitchen. Siemens do an 86.5cm tall dishwasher and it is much easier to load than a standard height dishwasher. Siemens SX736X03ME for example or Neff S723M60X1G. I would also look for a sink big enough to take a full oven sheet/shelf. These do not clean well in a dishwasher and if your sink isn't wide enough then you cannot easily steep them in hot water.

Aye your right there, you see these places abandoned and you wonder what went so wrong that they were just abandoned forever, I understand why so many were abandoned up here in Scotland but the example I was showing is in prime English agricultural land, makes me weep to see them slowly disappearing.

You can use a teppanyaki for everything that you use a flat frying pan for- frying burgers/steaks grilling veg/fish/meat Granted its a very expensive appliance with relatively little use depending on cooking style. Often a flexible induction hob with a teppan/griddle plate is a more sensible option.

One for @scottishjohn maybe..... Filling up the hot tub at the weekend and I thought I'd try and jury rig my one remaining, intact solar thermal panel to thermosyphon from the hot tub and back in. A failure all in all. I think I need the "intake" lower than the out pipe so the orientation of the panels is wrong with both in & out at the top. A small solar powered pump might have worked. I even tried priming the panels with water from the hose to fill them (yes I know they're meant to be filled with glycol not water). Here's what I don't get... Filled the panel with water from the hose and stuck one end of another short hose connected to the panel top right, in the hot tub hoping it would thermosyphon, sucking water up from the tub and pushing it out hot the other side. Nothing happened. If I took the hose out of the tub and raised it above the top of the panel then "gravity" appeared to push the water through and it came out steaming on the top left. As an aside the panel elevation wasn't optimum and half the panel was shaded by next door's tall conifers! 1) Are these panels biased to a particular flow direction? As in must they be connected so flow is right to left? 2) Replacement tubes? I think Navitron do them. How easy are they to fit? Cheers